Posts tagged friends
5 Day Update
Dec 14th
Woah, it seems I haven’t posted here in a couple days. Eeep.
So, time to catch up. First up, I got my bonus money on Thursday and it ended up being a bit more than I was anticipating it would be. So I went out searching for a new desk chair for my office. At Staples, after selecting the chair I wanted, purchasing it and getting it home…it ended up not being the chair I picked. However, after sitting it it…it ended up being more comfy than the chair I was interested in to begin with, so…a happy accident. I ended up with the Tillman Leather Executive Chair. It’s very comfy.
Friday was the official last day of the semester, so my friends and I celebrated by heading out to Tom Cavallo’s for their excellent chicken wings and the fact that they have Newcastle on tap for a bit of a celebratory dinner. Their wings are…out of this world. Their pizza is pretty bad, but they totally make up for it with the wings.
This weekend, aside from getting myself a haircut, I spent the time mostly relaxing due to the stressful work week that I had last week. Urgh. Basically if something could have gone wrong, it did.
I’m getting more interested in playing City of Heroes again after a discussion with Wassy where we figured out really neat story arc idea involving 2 of my characters and one of hers. We need to wait for the expansion pack to come out (sometime next year hopefully) in order to fully explore it, but it’s gotten me back interested in the characters again. I’m currently compiling a sort of story bible on my main characters in an attempt to define them better and work on some backstory stuff that I might be able to turn into in game story arcs.
Thanksgiving Summary
Nov 27th
Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone and it was definitely an enjoyable one this year.
As per usual, I woke up bright and early to head over to my parents house for our traditional putting up of the christmas tree and such. This year, I helped with thanksgiving dinner again (assembling the lasagna and making the lemon meringue pie were my tasks). Unlike last year though, we didn’t do turkey. But that was perfectly fine with me.
My mom had a migrane headache the day before so she was running a little bit late with preparations so we ended up starting doing the tree after the Macy’s parade started. But it seems like everyone was running late (since they changed the parade route this year) so it worked out. The christmas tree has seen better days. Some branches are a bit droopy this year and some parts of the top are being held on by zip ties. The thought was that it’s going to have to be replaced soon. Dah. Especially since all the trees out there are pre-lit which seem to break more often.
The afternoon lead to some Madden with my Dad. I finally broke my horrific losing streak and we *almost* got our franchise mode game up to the playoffs. One more play and we’ll be there, but it’s harder to organize now that I live further away than I used to.
Dinner time arrived and with it came my roommates (along with the Strawberry Shortcake Cake that Wassy made to bring over. Mmmm) and my sister and her husband. The rest of the evening was thoroughly enjoyable, I thought. Dinner was tasty and fun and after we broke out Apples to Apples and played a game which ended up being a really really fun time.
As per usual, I know I left out a bunch of stuff, but the most important bit was that it was a great start to vacation. Lots of fun hanging out with my friends and family.
Turkey Day Plans (Minus The Turkey)
Nov 24th
It looks like plans are beginning to shape up for Thanksgiving this week, and it couldn’t come soon enough for me. I’ve used a vacation day to turn the 4 day weekend into a 5 day weekend and I could use the time off.
As per tradition, I’ll be heading over to my parents house early on. This year to help prep the lemon meringue pie and the lasagna (we’re having a non traditional thanksgiving dinner this year. No turkey) and put up the christmas tree like we do every year. New this year though my roommates are going to be joining my family for dinner later on (and bringing a tasty strawberry shortcake cake for desert. Mmmmm).
As far as what I’ll be doing in the meantime, I’ve been feeling the itch to start working again on some of my personal web design type projects that have been floating around in limbo for a while. I opened up the work that I was doing on my mom’s website last night and I’m not really sure I like where it’s going anymore. Sigh. This project is becoming epic.
A Good Day
Oct 11th
Bully Hill
Ahh… I REALLY needed that. Despite all of the illnesses starting to fly around in our apartment here, my friends and I managed to get out to the Wine Country for the day yesterday. And man, was it awesome.
The particular wine country region we visited was around Keuka Lake. Although we only visited one of the wineries on the trail this time around. My friends went up for a little getaway in the summer and upon hearing how awesome it was out there (and that Bully Hill is one of my favorite wineries) we determined that we would have to go out as a group to explore a bit.
We seemed to pick the perfect weekend to go. The area was beautiful (look below for pictures) with the fall leaves in the valley with the lake situated at the bottom. Of course that also meant there were a lot of people around, but it really was worth waiting.
The directions to Bully Hill that the winery provided (the GPS is really fruity in the area down there) took us past Heron Hill first, so we stopped there. Heron Hill is home to the best bottle of wine my friends have ever tasted, and we visited there hoping that they would have some left (It was a very limited harvest).
The first thing you notice about Heron Hill is the spectacular view from the tasting room.
View From Heron Hill
Another View From Heron Hill
There was a ton of people there, so we had to wait a bit to do our tasting, but…as you can see, this wasn’t really much of an issue.
First thing to note about the tasting, our guy had a name tag on it that said “Dave!” and he was quite the character. He kept us pretty well entertained and informed about the wine, so two thumbs up to Dave!. We did the 6 wines for $5 tasting option, including the bottle of the special harvest linked above. Much like them when they first tried it, I had originally thought that I’d see what all the hype was about and then buy a couple of bottles of cheaper wine. But…when the time came that flew out the window and I had to spent my entire wine purchasing budget for the trip on a single $45 bottle of wine. It is the absolute best wine I have ever had, ever. And considering the conditions that created it was once in a lifetime…I had to have a bottle.
There were a couple of other wines that were interesting there too, especially the other desert wine, the 2007 Late Harvest Vidal Blanc. Very sweet and tasty. Perfect for after dinner. Another standout was the 2007 Blaufrankisch Reserve, which was an awesome red wine. And I don’t really like red wine.
The trip continued after Heron Hill with a visit over to the Keuka Brewing Company. Jay is really more a beer drinker than a wine drinker, so this was his destination of choice. And we were worried as soon as we arrived since the place looked more like a shack in the woods, giving off a serious serial killer type vibe. But once we got in it was really nice and the tasting was good. I liked pretty much all of the beers they had availible, except the IPA. That one was a bit…weird. But I even liked the stout and I am not a fan of stouts. Their Wheat beer was the best of the bunch to my taste buds though. My friends ended up getting a growler of the wheat beer to take home.
The Grapes at Bully Hill
After the brewery, we left for our final destination of the day, Bully Hill. We had plans to take a tour of the vineyards and walk through the museum before having dinner at the restaurant on site. My friends had lunch there when they came up before, but this time we were trying out dinner.
The tour situation was a little weird since we couldn’t figure out exactly where they started, so we hopped on one that was already going and missed part of the story of the winery. But the basic plot is, the Taylor family always had a Winery in the area. Walter S. Taylor ended up being fired from his own winery when he became outspoken that wines from New York should have labels on them showing where the grapes came from (You can (or could, dunno if this changed) label a wine as a New York Wine despite the fact that up to 25% of the grapes came from out of state). The established winery community were not fond of this idea, so they fired Walter. So he started up his own winery, Bully Hill.
A few years later, the Taylor Wine company (the one Walter was fired from) was bought by Coca-Cola. Owning the rights to the name Taylor when attached to Wine, Coke sued Walter to prevent him from using his last name anywhere on the bottles of wine he was selling. Coke, unbelievably, won the case and forced Walter to blank out his name on the labels. Additionally, the court case prevented Walter from ever mentioning the history of the Bully Hill Winery, such as where they came from and who they were. Walter used this setback to vault Bully Hill into popularity.
After we took the tour, which was really neat (I didn’t realize that every year all the leaves from the grape vines need to be cut down individually by hand…now that’s a crappy job) we settled down to enjoy the view over the lake for a little while until it was time for our dinner reservation to arrive.
And oh my. That dinner was probably the absolute best meal I’ve ever had. I settled on having the Sauteed Chicken Breast (with a light Traminette and fresh herb cream sauce; served over pasta (from the menu)). Wassy had the 8oz, Center Cut Filet Mignon (served with pepercorn demi-glace, sauteed mushrooms and onion rings) and Jay had the Bully Hill Crabcake with Day Boat Scallops (Maryland-style crabcake served on a grilled portabella mushroom cap). And we grabbed a bottle of Bully Hill Spring White to go with the meal.
I cannot say enough good things about this meal. We each sampled each others dishes and they were all awesomeness. But Jay won with the crabcake. That was probably the best crabcake I have ever tasted in my entire life. It even beat out the crabcakes I had IN Maryland. The Fillet Mignon was done perfectly, so tender and juicy and my chicken was great as well. The sauce was excellent and they actually prepared mushrooms in a way such that I found them tasty. Then the deserts (I had peanut butter pie, wassy had the apple crisp and jay had the carrot cake) just topped the meal off.
At one point the chef came by to ask how our meal was and Jay had to shake his hand. It was that good.
Sunset Over Bully Hill
An excellent time was had by all, and we went home full and feeling satisfied. I’m definitely going to try to go next year again. As we were leaving, we had a really awesome sunset as well. And the view over the lake at night was really cool.
Two thumbs up for this trip. Would go again. And again. And again.
Counting Down The Days
Oct 7th
Things have been, thankfully, quiet this week, with only a few minor events to write about. And after last week…yeah, I think I’ll take quiet any day.
So, first up, we’ve discovered we have a mouse in our apartment. My roommates cat has been stalking our dishwasher for the past few weeks and last night, Jay found her with a mouse in her mouth, looking totally confused as to what she should be doing now.
She dropped it, which lead to a merry chase as we tried to capture it. It escaped into one of the electrical baseboard heaters in the downstairs bathroom and the cat seems to have given up the hunt. So I’m not sure if it’s gone or lost or what. I’ll update if the saga continues.
Other than that, things have been, as mentioned, uneventful. I’m mostly just playing persona 4 at the moment and working on my mom’s website design off and on. I’m trying to draw up a spool of thread in Adobe Illustrator that I can use in the header as it needs something. Hoping to get that done today so I can also use it in my Digital Typography class tomorrow when I’m making up an envelope design for her too. Figured might as well combine projects!
The big thing I’m waiting for now is Saturday, where my friends and I are going to head down to, among other places, Bully Hill Vineyards in the finger lakes wine country for some wine tasting, hopefully touring and dinner. We’re also going to try to hit a couple other places in the area, including a micro-brewery. But we’re concentrating mostly on Bully Hill as far as time spent goes. Should be a good time I think.
Two Days In Philly
Sep 28th
I have returned from my weekend trip to Philadelphia. As mentioned earlier, my friends and I had been planning on heading south to see Porcupine Tree in concert at the Electric Factory in downtown Philadelphia.
Philadelpha
There was a slight hitch in plans though, as Jay who got hit with a stomach bug earlier in the week was still feeling horrible Saturday morning, so Wassy and I were on our own for the trip.
Things started off uneventfully. We decided not to take the Pennsylvania turnpike down because of the potential for horrible construction, but we hit our fair share on the way anyway. One section of road was closed for about 4 miles with people who seemed to let random amounts of cars through the one available lane. And then as soon as we hit pennsylvania, it was construction galore. The runner up to most annoying construction zone was through Quakertown where they had a major road reconstruction project going on. It was slow going for us, but the other land was totally stopped for miles. We decided at that point to take the Turnpike back and avoid the horribleness.
The most annoying though was about a mile away from the hotel. They had set up cones closing off (for reasons totally unknown) the left lanes of a 4 lane (2 in each direction with a turning lane) road. This caused the last mile of our drive to the hotel to take roughly 10-15 minutes. And then as soon as we got into the hotel, they took the cones down! Jerks!
After that began the search for dinner. We had planned on hitting one of the Olive Gardens in the area, but we had some difficulty with this plan. The first one as plotted by my GPS didn’t exist. The second one existed but was totally full with no parking anywhere in the parking lot. The third one was also totally full with no parking, so we settled on Papa Johns pizza.
Then we made our way out to the venue. I had to game the GPS a bit to prevent it from making us drive straight through downtown Philly. And thankfully, Wassy and Jay had just gone on a trip down there for a wedding and knew about the evilness that is the Roosevelt Boulevard. If you are unaware of this road, I will direct you to this visual aid. Take a normal road with 6 lanes in each direction and then split it into 4 roads with 3 lanes each. In between each of the roads going the same direction, add some little merge lanes so you can go between the sections. If you need to turn right you need to be in the outside set of roads. If you need to turn left you need to be on the inside set. And if you’re in the wrong set of roads and you miss the merge lane to get you to the right set, you’re in trouble. So thankfully, Wassy was around to make sure I was on the correct road as the GPS doesn’t understand this setup at all.
We got to the venue without too much trouble, aside from having to park way the heck away in the event parking lot. Parking was only $10 though…I was thinking it would be more. The venue was pretty cool. Looked like something to come out of Guitar Hero actually. It’s a converted Electric Factory (hence the name of the venue) with some animations of machinery on the wall and 2 full bars on the upper and lower right hand side of the room as you face the stage. Pretty cool vibe, but it’s unfun being packed in like sardines on the floor.
The show itself was pretty cool. We watched King’s X and the first half of Porcupine Tree’s set from the back of the floor and then after we got tired of getting crushed by people trying to squeeze into places where they can’t possibly fit, we moved upstairs and listened to the rest of the show from the bar while watching on the video screens they had set up. PT’s second set was really cool and had a lot of treats, including Strip The Soul into .3. They had some sound issues in the second set, but nothing too bad. Trains in the encore was also really cool with everyone clapping in time and singing along. Overall, I wouldn’t mind going back there to see a show, as long as I didn’t mind not actually seeing the band all the time.
The drive back was abysmal. It was raining…at night…on unfamiliar roads…unfamiliar 4 lane highways…with lots of traffic. We somehow managed to make it back to the hotel ok though, and after Wassy scared the crap out of me (She was sitting over by the window after I came out of the bathroom into the dark room. I thought she was in bed, but she wasn’t. Once I got over to my bed she said quietly “It’s awfully dark in here…” and it freaked me the heck out).
The next morning I got up before her and went down to the hotel lobby to plan our route to the Philadelphia Museum Of Art. Wassy wanted to go to complete a couple of school requirements, as well as to look around at their collection. So I figured out the best way to get there and wandered back up where I was informed that the roads in the area of the museum were going to be closed due to a charity run/walk. Daaaaaahhh!!!!!
Philadelpha Museum Of Art
I managed to find an alternate route and we left expecting horrible traffic in our future, but we were able to make it to the museum parking garage without any problems at all. The first thing we did was walk around to the front of the museum where the famous steps are that Rocky ran up in the movie.
Being a tourist, I had to grab a picture of the stairs since I was right there…but I declined to do the whole “Run up the steps and celebrate once you reach the top thing”. Much too tourist-y for me. Plus there’s an awful lot of steps and it was very slippery out.
Thankfully, not 30 seconds after we arrived at the steps we were graced by the presence of not one, but two individuals making the famous run. Or trying to. One of the guys had to stop to catch his breath halfway through. But the first guy made it, allowing me to snap this picture:
He’s the guy in the middle with his arms raised. The guy on the right hand side is also running up. You can click on it and see the original size in Flickr for a better view. Every single time we looked out a window at the front of the museum, there were people making the run up.
French Cloister
The museum itself was REALLY cool. This was my first time there and I didn’t realize that they had more archetectual installations than actual art. Entire columns from old temples and churches (even the entire front of a church). They also had a bunch of recreated rooms, like a chinese study and an old kitchen. The coolest two was a French Cloister (pictured above) and a Japanese tea house sitting in a garden.
Celestial Woman
One of the coolest things though was the HUGE collection of Indian art and artifacts. The exhibition that Wassy used for her assignment was particularly cool. Ragas and Rajas: Musical Imagery of Courtly India. You can read more about it there but I’ll briefly summarize. It’s an exhibition of works that went hand in hand with the music of the court of India’s rulers. The pieces were amazing, very vivid colors and amazing detail with a style that looked a lot like it came from ancient egypt…except they were mostly painted in the 1600-1700s. And accompanying the exhibit was the music. It was extremely neat.
They also had a bunch of other artifacts from India and Nepal on display, including a Buddha statue that had about 40 hands, all giving the metal hand sign (throwing up the horns as it were). Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of a lot of stuff since I was too busy looking at it all. What I did take is in my Flickr photoset. We enjoyed the museum so much that we skipped out on going to the bakery we had planned on visiting and picking up some butter cake from.
So when we were done with the museum, we started the trip home, with a pitstop at an Olive Garden in Binghamton. This time it existed and it wasn’t busy, so we finally got our never ending pasta bowls. But we could really only eat one, so they ended pretty quickly.
But the drive back, in the Philly area was all about traffic and construction again. I-76 out of the city was packed and slow moving in places and the turnpike was also packed for quite a while. Oh yeah, the best invention of all time in highway toll roads is the EZ-Pass express lanes. No need to even go through the tollbooths or slow down. Awesome. Although speaking of EZ Pass, I’m afraid to look at my statement to see how much all of this cost me…
Once we got sufficently north of Philadelphia, the traffic thinned out and the driving was a lot easier. We started to wonder if we were going the wrong direction though because every time there was a construction zone, the way we were going, north, would be clear but the way south was backed up for miles with cars trying to make the merges. Strange.
Despite the heavy rain at night making it nearly impossible for me to see much in the way of lane markers on the roads and the guy who thought he would just make a left hand turn in front of me across my path of travel at an intersection that would have caused a pretty nasty accident had I not seen him, we arrive back at the apartment around 8pm. Just in time to unpack and get settled in for sleeping.
It was a fun trip, although I’m sad that Jay wasn’t able to come with us. I really want to go back to check out the rest of the art museum as we only had time to view about half of the main building. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it back down there again soonish.
Who Needs Trail Markers Anyway?
Sep 21st
Berries And Flowers
This weekend, since the weather was so nice, my friends and I decided to go out to one of local town parks that has a bunch of trails in the woods. We were out there once before earlier in the year but the trails weren’t really marked at all and we ended up getting a little lost in the woods.
This time though, we went out earlier in the day in case we did end up getting lost. Which we did, but not as bad as before.
First of all, we really had no idea where the official trail entrance is. We wandered around a bit until we located the path we took to get on the first time with the intention of only following the marked paths and making as few turns as possible. Despite this method, on our way back, we ended up crossing a bridge that we hadn’t crossed on our way going. You would figure that you couldn’t mess up just walking straight back, but…there we were.
But thankfully, we were on a “marked” trail. I put marked in quotation marks because this is what the town considers to be a marked trail:
Trail Marker
You see the paint on that tree trunk there? Yeah, those are the trail markers. Usually these are invisible if you’re walking the trail in the wrong direction, or just plain hard to spot like this one.
Eventually we stumbled onto a wood marker post which pointed the direction back to the main foot path and we ended up getting out of the system without too much trouble. But man…we had hoped that they would have done some trail maintenance since the first time we went there. Obviously this was not the case. It was good to get outside though. The weather was really really nice.
[Plinky] Memories And Music
Aug 19th
What three songs remind you of a specific time in your life?
Amazon is being fruity right now, so I’ll put the pictures in later. But here’s the answer
The New Math by OSI
This OSI album will forever remind me of Scuba Diving. That’s a little odd considering the fact that the album doesn’t have the slightest thing to do with scuba diving. But I was taking a scuba course at the local college when it came out and I remember sitting in my car listening to it, waiting for class time.
This song reminds me of a fish purchasing trip with my friend Wassy. I had just gotten Fear of a Blank Planet (the album this song is on) and was playing it in the car while we were driving around. Later she said “That music you were listening to sounded really cool. What was that?”
That sent her on a musical journey into Progressive Rock and Metal and all of my favorite bands, which was cool because finally I had somebody to talk to about this stuff and go to concerts with.
Fatal Tragedy by Dream Theater
Speaking of musical journeys…this song was my introduction to Dream Theater and Progressive Metal. I heard it as a random pick on the old internet radio station Echo. Echo was a station that learned your musical preferences and played songs you might like along those lines…one of the first ones that did that. It also randomly played a song that was outside your likes and dislikes occasionally, to potentially broaden your horizons.
Well, the random pick was Dream Theater and I really enjoyed it a lot. It took a year or two for me to really check it out further. But once I did, I got Scenes From a Memory and I was hooked. My journey into Prog Rock began.
Portable Pocket Hamster!
Aug 14th
Monk, Nomming, originally uploaded by derang0.
When my roommate Jay put the apartment hamster into his pocket, I had to run upstairs and get my camera. He’s soooo cute!!!
I got some pictures too, but I need to run those through some color correction due to the lighting. They’ll be up later.
Progressive Nation 2009
Aug 5th
Progressive Nation 2009 was VERY awesome. As I mentioned before Wassy and I went off to Albany to catch one of our most anticipated concerts of the year. The bands were Scale the Summit, Bigelf, Zappa Plays Zappa and, of course, Dream Theater.
We left for Albany around 3:30 and aside from one small hitch (some local construction had closed one of the lanes of a 2 lane road for 2 freaking miles why the paved it. Totally unnecessary…) we arrived at the parking garage on schedule. We grabbed some sandwiches and headed over to the venue a few blocks away.
Wassy grabbed a ridiculously overpriced t-shirt (seriously…$40 for very thin shirt?? Add $5 if you're XXL) and we settled in for the show.
First up was Scale The Summit which I liked well enough. They were a pretty dorky looking band, honestly. One of the guitarists wore his guitar so high it looked like a necklace. They had good music but it was a little same-y for doing a setlist like that. There's definitely instrumental bands that I like better. After they had their set, we decided to go see what beers they had on tap. They happened to have newcastle which was one of the ones we like (we're kinda picky about beer) and so off we went.
Bigelf started soon after we got back to our seats and man, they blew me away. I liked their studio CD but seeing them live really made the whole thing "click" for me. Very high energy show and their main vocalists is…scary looking. Complete with top hat and a coat with a long beard. I am definitely going to have to pick up more of their stuff.
Zappa Plays Zappa…eh. I had high hopes for this band as it's the sort of music I might enjoy. And sure enough the first couple songs were really good. But then it got…weird. Too weird for me. I need a little song structure in my songs. So instead I spent an hour and 15 minutes being bored.
However, about halfway through the ZPZ set, two obviously huge older Zappa fans came and sat in front of us in matching tshirts and one pair of binoculars. It should be noted at this point that we were sitting in the 9th row. Binoculars at this point seem a bit unnecessary. But use them they did. In fact they sometimes fought over them so they could watch the individual fingerings of the flute/sax player I guess. Anyway, despite being huge zappa fans and practically bouncing up and down through the entire set, they got up and left before ZPZ was finished. They confused the crap out of me…but it gave me something to watch.
After Zappa Plays Zappa, the main wait for DT arrived and, man was it worth it. They have a totally badass way of opening the show this year. Their stage setup is also really cool with a new upgraded video show and some neat stuff that Jordan does with a HDTV behind his setup that has a computer animation of him playing that's synced with the song as he's playing it.
The setlist was A Nightmare to Remember, A Rite Of Passage, Hollow Years, Erotomania, Voices, Prophets of War, The Count of Tuscany and with an encore of Metropolis pt 1. Pretty much the perfect setlist.
Wassy and I were praying that we were going to get Voices this time as it's one of our favorite Dream Theater songs and we thought we'd get it in Washington DC last year, but ended up not getting it. So the moment the first note of Erotomania was played, we went kinda crazy. My throat hurts this morning… But it was so worth it. Voices! It still feels a little like maybe I imagined it. Those were all the songs that I was expecting to hear and even the extended soloing bits in Metropolis pt 1 were pretty cool. Sometimes they can go on too long, but the band was interacting and having a lot of fun which kept things interesting.
James LaBrie was good last night, but I've heard him better. I've also heard him much worse. He hit all the right notes but had a little trouble in Metropolis which is a hard song to sing at the end of the night anyway. He was totally on in the showmanship department. Interacting with the crowd…lots of energy and it looks like he's in better physical shape than he has been in the past few tours too. I was particularly impressed by Jordan and John Petrucci during the introduction to Hollow Years where they had a really neat extended introduction solo that was just the right mix of technical and melodic stuff.
I'd put this as one of the best DT shows that I've gone to (this is my 8th DT show). I do enjoy going to concerts with Wassy as it seems like she has some sort of concert karma that makes the show extra awesome. And going with a friend who's as into it as you are is much more fun than going alone.
After the show got done, a quick walk back over to the parking garage and an easy drive out completed the evening. We ended up making an emergency stop at a McDonalds in Herkimer since we were both pretty hungry after the show and couldn't find anything good on the thruway.
All in all, a very enjoyable evening and well deserving of the anticipation
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