Life at 40 something and other random wonderings

Lima Friends come along for the ride.

2011-01-12T12:38:00.001-05:00

Well since Lima Peru it's been a hard road for me. While we were there I had food poisoning twice, one of which left me with a parasite which I brought home with me.

I went to the doctor's and they put me on the Nuclear option when it comes to antibiotics for this kind of thing. It was three BIG pills a day for five days. Having done this I felt that we had defeated the bug and I could get on with life. The only problem was I kept having the effects an amoeba can give you when you have it living in your gut. It was not pleasant but I thought that maybe the antibiotics had killed all the good stuff in my stomach and that it was just taking a while for it to get better. I keep up this pretense until the day we were getting ready to go to London for New Year's Eve. I bit the bullet and went to the doctor's again. This time they put me on another antibiotic, seems depending on the bug you get tells the doctor what meds to take. One size does not fit all.

I also had a head cold which had traveled to my chest. By the time I went to the doctor's that last time it felt like it was mostly gone. I think because I had the gut infection it lowered my immune system quite a bit. After the fact I don't think it was gone at all.

The really funny thing is I had my physical during this period which was scheduled a long time ago. All the results came back and I'm healthy as a horse. Doesn't feel like it though.

So I get the new meds but decided not to take them until after I got back from London for NYE. You can't drink on these meds and god knows I was going to when I was in London. So we go to London and to make a long story short I partied like it was 1999.

Which looking back on it wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done. My poor body just couldn't keep up, especially have being compromised for a month by the parasite. I ended up getting the most god awful cough, sore throat and I lost my voice. It was one of the worst chest colds/flu I've ever had. I would cough and cough and nothing would come up, I coughed so much I thought I was going to start coughing blood. I think what happened is on NYE I smoked way too many cigarettes and burned my voice box and lungs. I've not had my voice for 12 days now. Feels like it's getting better but it's taking way too long for my impatient self.

So we get back from London and I go to the doctor's again the day I get back mainly because of my voice and the dry hacking cough I've developed. I tell him everything that's gone on and he kind just scratches his head. I don't have a fever, my limp nodes are not swollen and I don't look bad. So he puts me on a different antibiotic for chest stuff, codeine cough medicines for the cough which was quite painful and cortisone to help the voice box shrink back down to the normal size it should be. So now I'm taking an antibiotic for my gut, one for my chest, cortisone for my throat, codeine cough syrup to sooth my throat and my high blood pressure meds and high cholesterol meds. In other words I'm a fricking walking pharmacy.

Cut to six days into the treatment. I can't eat because any food in my stomach starts an uncontrollable bout of hiccups. The hiccups happened anyway but as soon as I ate they really started. I think I hiccupped day and night for about three and a half days straight. Every time I took the meds they made me feel like I was going to puke. This was horrible because I knew I was supposed to keep them down so I would just rock back and forth in bed hoping that the "I'm going to puke" feeling would go away only to puke anyway. I finally got to the point where I told Dave I was not taking them anymore and called the doctor to let him know that. He called back, asked how the parasite thing was going, I told him I thought it was done and he told me to stop taking the meds. THANK GOD!

Also, yesterday the whole left side of my face started hurting. It's kind of like having your nerves on the outside of your skin. Just brushing up against it hurts. I can also feel the tube that connects the ear to your throat for drainage. Every so often it just shoots a sharp shooting pain into my head where the middle ear is. I'm not sure that's happening there. It could be a virus that's taken advantage of my weakened immune system. I'll call the doctor later about all this.

So here I am today. My stomach is almost back to normal, I have my hunger back and I can eat without hiccupping now. I feel much better except I still have no voice. The dry hacking cough is still there and my voice can work but I'm straining it and it's still sore so I try not to use it. There is a good side to the whole thing. I've lost 22lbs and can now fit into clothes that I had given up on. But that's about the only good thing I can say about it.

Well my blood is now boiling.

2010-12-09T14:53:00.002-05:00

A little background first. Recently my favorite aunt passed away from a massive brain hemorrhage. She was 62 years old and I consider that to be way too young for that kind of thing. After thinking about family history my sister and myself decided it was time to go in and get checked out. My grandmother and aunt died of strokes, my grandfather and uncle had heart problems. My other grandmother died of brain cancer and my brother had a brain tumor\cancer that was successfully treated.

Looks like my family covers all the bases when it comes to illnesses.

I made an appointment with my primary care physician for a physical. I'm almost 44 years old and it seemed like it was time. The physical happened today and went well so that's not really what I'm writing about. I'm writing about my health insurance, or my "changing because it was purchased by a mega-insurance company" insurance.

There are two different PPOs that you can choose from, the basic plan and the choice plan. I had been using the choice plan which lets you use out of network doctors more readily without having to pay as much to do so. The deductible is the same ($250) as the basic but it's pays %90 for the bill after that.

The I talked to the HR person who asked me why I was doing that when my doctor was in our network and would still be covered by the basic plan. The basic plan is 1/2 the cost of the choice plan. I thought about it and decided I would change to the basic plan. We knew that Cigna had purchased Great West but we had been told that Great West would be run as a subsidy and it wouldn't affect us.

Well today I found out that was not true.

I was pulled aside by the person who works with the insurance companies at my doctor's office and was told that after January the 1st I would no longer be in network because they stopped taking Cigna ten years ago. Looks like Cigna is just taking over all the accounts that Great West had but not running Great West as a subsidy but closing the brand.

What does that mean for me? $250 deductible before they even think of paying only %60 of the bill if I choose to still use my doctor, who by the way has been my doctor for the last ten years. This is compared to a $20 co-pay that I had to pay for office visits before.

Now this just pisses me off to no end. Not just for the out of pocket cost for me but for the insurance industry and health care in general. How much more can it go up and how much more can we be expected to pay? And how come the heads of the health care cost cutting companies are making multi-millions of dollars.

One more quick example of raising cost. I had a stomach bug at the beginning of the week. Went to the doctor and got three prescriptions for it. One of the prescriptions was for twelve pills and my co-pay was $50. The co-pays on the other two were $25 each!!!. I was expecting about $40 for all of it and when the pharmacist said $108 I had to ask twice to make sure I heard right.

Health Care should not be a for profit business. Period!!!!

Ok, steam now blown off.

P.S. HR person came and talked to me. Said that this was the first she had heard about it and would be contacting the insurance company to figure out what was going on. Stay tuned.

Baby, it's cold outside.

2010-12-02T12:21:00.001-05:00

Well it's finally gotten cold. I guess it should be doing that right around now being as it's December the 2nd and all. This brings up the thoughts of Christmas and all the things that go with it. We've only been back from Peru for three days and the list of things to do is just a little daunting. We have nothing to eat in the house really. Dave has a meeting at his rental condo association meeting tonight and I'm going to go to Safeway. I know, exciting right? All the mundane things have just been waiting for us to come home from our holiday.

This weekend we will be getting the Christmas tree. We figured we don't really have anything planned this weekend and the next couple will be crazy so we better do it.

I've got a physical on the 9th of this month. I know, another exciting thing but it really needs to be done. My Aunt died recently of a hemorrhage to the brain at the young age of 62. This seems to run in the family so I will be bringing this up with my doctor. I will need to make a list of other things I want to discuss. Back pain, lethargy, sleeping pills for travel, and other basic health issues a 44yo needs to discuss.

We'll be having a lot of the family over to Christmas. I mom gets in on the 25th and stays until the 28th. We'll have my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, their two kids, her mother and guest, my mom, friends from the UK and us for boxing day dinner. This means I'll be sending Dave out to pick mom up. It also means that we'll have to play Christmas music which will give Dave a twitch but it's not for long.

While my mom is here we'll be seeing my uncle who lives near us. Looks like he might be the next one to pop-his-clogs of my mother's brothers and sisters. So far it was the youngest, the second youngest and my mother is the third in line but I think the healthiest of them all. Mom wants to see my nearby uncle while here so we'll go. He's not one of my favorite people but hey, what do you do?

On the 28th we take mom to National airport for her plane back to Charlotte and we head out to Dulles for our flight to London. We'll be staying for about five nights. I'm looking forward to NYE in London. I think It should be an experience.

So that's the plans so far for the holiday. As they firm up I'll likely be writing more about them and the holiday experience here. We never know what the days will bring.

Copa Airlines and our trip to Lima.

2010-11-30T16:01:00.001-05:00

Awhile back some friends of ours asked if we would like to go to Lima, Peru over the Thanksgiving holiday this year. As we have never been before we started giving it serious thought. I even found $500 tickets on Copa Air during that time. We've never flow Copa air and thought we would give it a try. The only bit we didn't like when booking was the transfer in Panama but thought it shouldn't be too bad.

Now I'm platinum elite in the Onepass program so I purchased the tickets under one record locator so that I can get my partner (who has no status on Copa ) a chance to be upgraded with me. This in turn made me do some research on the whole upgrade process for Copa Air, and by default Continental, on flyertalk. I found that I needed to split the record locator into two to make sure that I would get the upgrade four days out and that it would be a lottery at the airport as to whether we got my partner upgraded.

So the day of our trip out to Peru we show up at Dulles at 4:30 am to get him put on the "list" as my guest. We ask the agent to make sure he's on the list on the connection from Panama to Lima. She says that yes she has done this but somehow I don't think she did. I want to add that a 5:55am flight out of Dulles is an evil thing. We're getting ready to board and there is no indication that my partner will get the upgrade. I then go to the ticket counter and ask. The guy looks at me and asks if I'm Platinum and I pull out the card and show him. Va-voom, my partner is in the business class cabin. Two very happy people at this point.

We make it to Panama with only an hour between flights. We get off the plane and then realize we will be getting on the same plane for the leg to Lima. I got to the gate agent and asked about the upgrade for my partner. Business is checked in Full at this point and it stayed that way. So for the last 3 1/2 hour leg he had to sit in back. Which wasn't horrible. The only thing is I'm really sure the agent in Dulles didn't bother to add him to the upgrade list on the second let at the time of check-in at Dulles.

I also have to say that flying a 737-700 for 8+ hours is not my idea of fun, even if you are in the front of the bus. The seats barely recline, there are no foot rests so it’s not that much easier to get any sleep up front then it is in back and after getting up at 3am to catch the first flight sleep is what I wanted. I ended up reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" instead.

As for the food on the flights I can say it was actually good. I'm amazed at what they can get out of that small galley. It was tiny and yet they were able to get out drinks and nuts first, then appetizers, mains (a choice of two) and a dessert cart. The wine was good and they had a decent brandy. The only time they failed in my opinion was with the coming around for refills of wine and such. It wasn't automatic like most other airlines I've flown. Not really a problem. You just asked for more if you wanted it and they would have no problem getting it for you.

Entertainment was just a joke. Bring your own iPad or Kendle if you want to be entertained. The small screens that came down from the ceiling could barely be seen, my jack for the headsets didn't seem to fit the plugs to the head sets they had given me. The purser tried to fix it too and couldn't. It was fine because there really wasn't anything on that I wanted to watch. I ended up finishing my book and then purchasing the last in the series "The Girl who kicked a hornet's nest" which I read on the flight back.

Immigration is easy and took next to no time to get through. We had the hotel's car service pick us up for a rush hour trip to Meraflores the Thunderbird hotel Belevista.

We stayed in Lima for two days before going to Cuzco. The highlight was eating at Astrid y Gaston, a chief Guston restaurant. We had found it by just walking around the night before to get our bearings and knew some of our friends highly recommended it. It was an amazing 3 1/2 hour, 14 course dining experience and we loved every minute of it. Two bottle of wine later we stumbled back to the hotel so that we can get up and go back to the airport for a 6am flight to Cuzco.

I'm really going to have to stop these morning flights. They are evil.

We arrive in Cuzco to 10,000 feet up. I think that something I ate had made me sick and then I couldn't breathe either. I ended up going back to the hotel and spending the day in bed while everyone else went sightseeing. The thing is we were going to Manchu Picchu the next day and there was no way I was going to miss that. I had dreamed of seeing those ruins for years and never thought I would actually have the chance. I had chills and a fever but the best thing that I could have done was stay in bed all day. And it worked, I was fine for the trip the next day.

Manchu Picchu, there is no description. You've seen the photographs but it doesn’t prepare you for actually being there.

We end up taking a taxi to the train station. We decided, along with our posse, to take the high-end Orient Express Hiram Bingham to Manchu Picchu. It was amazing. We had pre-departure Champaign to start with at the train station. As we got settled into our dinning booth we noticed the dancing on the platform. They had indigenous people doing a local dance for us. It involved incents and a human skull. It was fascinating. After watching for a while we went back to the dinner car and sat down and the train started its four hour journey. We had announcements and then they came and took our order for brunch. We were then sent back to the bar car to be entertained and wined until we got to Manchu Picchu.

The journey went quickly and the next thing we knew we were there. This part of the tip will need to be seen in person. It's too hard to try to describe it and give it justice.

At around 6am we headed back to the train for the dinner trip back to Cuzco. Once again it was about the same as the way to Manchu Picchu but with dinner being served. After dinner we went to the bar car and proceeded to get somewhat drunk on Peruvian wine, beer and Pisco sours. By the time we got to the hotel it was definitely time for a good sleep and I was actually able to breathe again.

We stayed in Cuzco for another day in a half sightseeing. We found another Gaston restaurant in Cuzco and proceeded to have a fantastic lunch there. We also got to have an amazing dinner at an old Converted Monastery that was run by the same people who ran the Orient Express train operation.

The next day we head back to Lima on a flight that doesn’t leave at 6am in the morning. Thank God. We used Peruvian airlines for these flights and they were easy and cheap. The main difference between US local carriers and other counties' local carriers is that you still get service on flights internally. This flight was just about an hour and they had a drink service (with booze) and served food. Impressed me a little bit.

Once we went back to Lima we checked into the same hotel we were in the first few nights. In fact we were able to leave our big suitcases there so we didn't have to take them to Cuzco with us which made it much easier on our travel. The room was big, clean and the staff very friendly.

Now in lima we did a few things with the family of the friends we went with. We had a drinks party one night at their house, we had Chinese food one night, we went to an award's ceremony where my friend's father got a medal and then went to a cocktail party on the top of one of the nicest hotels in Lima for a book launch party and hobnobbing with the local who's who of lima. The vice president of Peru was even there.

Then on Saturday we went out to the country house to celebrate the father's 76th birthday. This house and country side were absolutely amazing. It was situated out in the dessert in the middle of a poor area where all they had was dust and brown everywhere. You drove down a dirt road and then came to a gate. Once they opened the gate there was a sea of green. On the inside of the wall of the compound it was a completely different experience. Lush green, a pool, three houses, a wine cellar. Truly amazing the whole thing. It had been set up with tables and a tent, there was a dance area and full bar service. We arrived at 1pm and didn't leave until around 1am. The food was traditional Peruvian stews of all kinds with rice. We had Peruvian doughnuts for dessert served with honey. This was another highlight of our trip.

The next day was the Bull Fight.

I tried to get out of this one. Watching something die for other's entertainment just isn't really my thing. We ended up going because the hosts had gotten us box seats and it seemed rude not to.

I will forever have the images of the fights (how do they call it that?) etched into my brain. The first bulls death traumatized me. I had to watch, kind of like a car wreck. I can still close my eyes and see in vivid detail something I will not discuss here.

Am I glad I went, yes for the cultural experience. Will I ever do it again, no.

The next day we headed back to Washington.

This time our flight left Lima at 2 something in the afternoon so we could sleep a bit. I had already been upgraded four days before. We get to the airport with plenty of time to spare. The traffic was just bad and not horrific like usual so it didn't take nearly as long to get to the airport as we thought it would. We check-in at the Elite Access desk and I immediately get Dave put on the upgrade list. The woman takes a while doing it but she gets Dave wait listed on the first flight and on the connecting flight. I'm impressed because I was sure that didn’t happen on the way day.

Now at this point I ask for lounge access. The person says that I can go in but Dave can't. They only let the one with the Elite Access in but not with a guest. This makes the privilege practically worthless in my opinion. We do get to pay our airport departure fee at check-in and don’t' have to go through to another queue to pay it. Security was relatively painless. I tried once more to get us both into the lounge but it was a no go. Dave is a Star Alliance gold card member which gets him lounge access in most cases if he's flying on a Star Alliance flight on the same day. Well Copa air is a strange animal, they use Continental's Onepass program for their mileage program but they are not officially a Star Alliance member yet like Continental. This means that Dave can't use his gold status to get him into the lounge in Lima. We shrug our shoulders and heard to the gate.

We ask about his upgrade there and we're told that the front had checked in full, sorry. Ok, fine. I'll just get him to board at the same time as me. They call for the Elite Access to board and I have him in tow. The gate agent will not let him board with me, only Elite Access. Not guest or spouses or children. The agent will not bend. So I get out of line with Dave just long enough to get his bag so that I can put it above his seat. And then get my seat. Not a very pleasant experience.

Once on the plane I proceed to have this man sit next to me. But before he could actually sit down he had to get a grill, a pink Barbie bag full of god knows what, and another bag (just a bag, almost looked like a garbage bag) stowed. While doing this he has stopped anyone from passing him so they can go to their seats in the back. He finally gives them a little room by standing almost directly on me with his ass in my face. As this point I've put down my book and am actively giving him an evil eye that could melt diamonds. He finally sits down only to get up by way of tap-pushing my legs out of the way. I am not happy with him at all now. Who was this guy and how did he get in first class and not my Dave? Grrrrrr.

A little while later a girl comes in and takes the last seat in business class across the aisle from me. I'm not even sure she was supposed to be there but she sat there anyway. I was getting ready to try and get the seat for Dave when she jumped into it. She and the guy sitting next to me then decided to have a very loud conversation in Spanish across me.

Ok, I've had enough at this point and make the girl change places with me so she can sit next to her friend and talk all flight long if they want. I finally got some peace and quiet and could work on my book which had gotten my attention big time at this point.

The service was about the same as on the way down so nothing new to report here.

Once we got to Panama we went straight to the departing gate for our Panama-Washington flight to make sure Dave was on the upgrade list after a little floundering we see that he has been put on the list and is the first on it but that business class has checked in full again. At this point he's given up hope on the upgrade but I still have hope in the back of my head. Just because people have checked-in doesn't mean they will actually get on the plane.

I then proceed to take him to the actual Presidents Club there in Panama after we try to use the public bathroom and it has a line down the corridor to use it. This time the agent looks at my boarding pass and doesn't have a problem at all letting Dave in too. Seems the other lounge is contracted out so there are different rules. We get in and sit down for a little while, go to the bathroom and then I visit to the bar. I ask for a glass of red and a glass of white to take back to Dave. Sorry, we don't have red wine. How about a beer, sorry we don't have that either. Solamente vino blanco. Ok then two white wines please. There was some booze but didn't want that. Took it back to Dave and at this point he started making a tag line for Copa air, you get what you pay for. Made me laugh out loud.

After finishing our wine we go down to the gate again. Now I forget this is a plane going to the US so now you have to get your bags checked-searched at the gate. Also at this point any semblance of an Elite line is gone so it's everyone for themselves. In Latin America that can be daunting. We finally get through having our stuff searched and having my water taken away (I got it at the airport, I mean really!) and we make it to our seats. Dave is in row 14, I'm in 2.

I'm watching things carefully now. I watch as what seems to be the last people get on, and then a couple of more get on, this happens about five times. I then see the gate agent come in and tell the crew that boarding has finished. I look and see one open seat upfront. I got up and asked the purser about it, he looks at his papers and David's name to see that his seat is now 4b. I go back and grab Dave to come up. He didn't know what I was saying at first because he was resigned to be in the back. Anyway he soon got it and grabbed his stuff and came on up.

As before the inflight experience was the same as the trip down.

Once we got to Dulles we hopped off the plane pretty fast. Dave and I have GOES which is the finger print USA entry system so when everyone else goes left to stand in line we go right and are through boarder control in three minutes. Which is great if you only have a roll aboard. We ended up waiting an hour+ for our luggage. At this point it's 1am and I'm getting tired and cranky. We finally get our luggage and get the heck out of Dulles. I ended up getting to sleep at around 3am so I came into the office just a little bit late this morning.

In conclusion. Would I fly Copa again, probably. Will I like it, probably not. Nine hours of flying on a small plane is a little bit tiring. So this is my trip on Copa Airlines to Peru this last Thanksgiving.

It's about time to come back

2010-11-17T09:07:00.002-05:00

I will be going to Lima soon and will write about it when I get back, maybe on the way down too.

WallGreen's hell

2009-03-10T11:00:00.002-05:00

This is a compliant email that i sent to corporate. I'm still amazed i had to go through this.

Dear Sirs,

I’m writing this with one hand as I have recently had hand reconstruction surgery. Here is the story and the reason for this letter of complaint.

On March the 9th I go into the George Washington University Hospital for my hand surgery to fix what had been broken the week before in a fall on the ice.

All goes well with the surgery except they had to do a lot more to piece the bone back together. I get out much later then I though I would be. There was more damage then they thought and took them much more time to fix I have a friend take me home and then send him to fill my pain medicine prescription.

Your Walgreen's on 21st an M streets in NW Washington DC is two blocks away from where I live and is also between me and the ER at the hospital so I used them last week to fill my prescription from the initial ER visit.

This time I send my friend to fill the prescription because I’m just coming out of general anesthesia and should not be walking about. He calls me to tell me that the pharmacist will not fill it until she verifies the prescription with the hospital and that she can’t do it that night because it had closed.

The hospital is open 24/7.

At this point I get my discharge papers and walk there myself. I’ve just had major surgery and was not going to go without pain medicine, or so I though. I get there and show her my bandaged hand along with my discharge papers and give her a phone number to call. She still will not fill the prescription. The phone doesn’t pick-up and I leave in frustration hoping that the meds from the surgery will last the night.

They did not and I was up all night in extreme pain. I get to the store the next day at 8am when it opens. The same pharmacist is there and she’s calling the hospital. I’m shaking in pain at this point. She finds out that yes I did have surgery the day before (but didn't believe me) but still will not fill the prescription until she can verify the amount. And she has to do this by fax.

By this point I’m on the verge of tears with pain and frustration. I’m luck in that my doctor’s office is walking distance from home and your store to me. Same as the hospital. I first walk to the hospital thinking they would help and they send me to my doctor’s office.

Once I get there I tell them this story and as I tell it you can see the disbelief in their eyes. The doctor calls the pharmacy in the bottom of their building to see if they had the meds and then wrote me another prescription for that pharmacy.

I go down and try to fill it but my insurance refuses because it says it’s too soon. Your pharmacist had filled it (or put it in the system anyway) and still didn’t give it to me. Luckily the new Pharmacist could back out what your person had done and I finally got my pain medicine.

I need to reiterate, YOU PHARMACIST DENIED ME PAIN MEDICINE AFTER MAJOR SURGERY!!!!!!!

I’m really trying to figure out what other actions to take against your origination. This was beyond neglect and on the verge of being just plain mean!

London in Six days.

2008-11-14T13:27:00.001-05:00

And I am crawling out of my skin. I’m ready to be there. Ughh.

Dave and I have gone on a crash weight loss problem and general being better fit routine. I’ve lost about ten pounds and have about another three to go before we go to London. We want to get dance floor ready. I have to say it’s really, really hard. Here’s what we’ve been doing.

No drinking.
Running in the morning.
Working out in the day.
Dave isn’t eating gluten right now, I haven’t gone that far.
No going out to dinner.
I’ve been bringing my lunch to work; I know what’s in it.

So far we’ve both done very well, the only problem is that we’re both a little bit light headed and short tempered. I’ve gone from 213 lbs to 203lbs and want to lose another three pounds before next Thursday. Dave is down to 162 lbs from over 170 lbs.

We look good and will hopefully stay that way unless we kill each other.

We’re looking at this as a life style change. When we come back from London we will be doing the same thing but not as aggressively. Our next big trip is Buenos Aries for Christmas and we want to look good there too.

So much work, so little time.

Miami Trip Day One.

2008-10-25T13:14:00.001-05:00

Well this started off well. I’m on my way to our annual fall meeting. I went to bed early and got up early for this. This time it’s in Miami. I usually fly United or USairways when I travel by air because I like my points. This trip I’ve had to go American airlines. Reason being is it was $200 compared to $400 on my preferred airlines. It’s also out of National airport which is much closer then Dulles.

Being the good boy that I am I got to the airport 2 hours before flight time, which was 12 noon. I checked in and was offered an upgrade for $90 bucks. For me that’s well worth sitting in the front of the bus for a two hour flight so I took it. I proceeded to check my bag in and go through security. I settled myself in at the RCC after a failed attempt to access the Admiral Club (American airlines lounge) and started surfing the net. I then get an alert saying the plane has been delayed. I’m in the Red Carpet Club which is very comfortable so I’m not too worried. I update my computer and then restart to check my email. The next thing I know the flight has been canceled.

WTF??

I call American and they put me on the next flight at 3:05pm. Not happy about that. I ask about my bags and the woman said that it would automatically be on the next flight. Now because I do not trust these people I go over to the American lounge and check. I saw that there was an earlier flight so I asked to be on it. The woman was quite nice and told me she would try but that I need to go pick my luggage up and recheck it.

WTF??

Recheck my baggage? United never made me do this. Seems that they do not have enough ground staff to figure out what to do when I flight is canceled so they just make you do it.

I then made a mad dash to the baggage claim and picked up my bag. Then ran back upstairs and went to the outside-curbside to recheck it. “Sir, it will not let me do it from here. You have to go back inside and do it”

WTF??

So inside I go and all of the sudden it’s really busy. Luckily the girl at the American lounge gave me priority access boarding pass which gets me in the first class line. Thank God! I’m sweating bullets at this point because I think I’m on standby for the earlier flight. I finally get my bag checked in and run back to the American lounge. The girl their confirms that I’m not on the earlier flight but that I’m confirmed on the 3:05 flight and she put me on the wait list for first (I’ve paid for it). She then tells me that if it doesn’t go through I will have to ask for a refund form at the gate.

WTF??

So now I’m at Friday’s having a 500 calorie meal and a beer writing this. And I haven’t even started my journey. I still have five days ahead of me. If this is the way the trip goes I will not be a happy camper.

At least I’m now staying at a place on the beach in Miami. That counts for something. I was supposed to be there for work tonight but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I will check-in and find a store nearby where I can get some breakfast supplies and fruit. I haven’t gotten to this weight by eating crap.

PS. I’m having the healthy meal at Friday’s, which is hard to do really. At Friday’s anyway.

Tomorrow I’ll fill in a little bit more about the trip. I’m not expecting great things to tell the truth.

And he's back.

2008-09-23T10:38:00.000-05:00

Well let’s see, have I been busy since the last time I wrote here?

The answer is a resounding, YES!

I just dropped my mom off from a weekend that was a great success. She got in on Friday night and we went to Café Trope for dinner. It was nice and we got to visist for a bit. I do have to say that driving to Baltimore international airport on a Friday going through the city is about as much fun as being racked in the neither regions. It took about an hour and thirty five minutes to get there. I’m glad I left at five thirty for a seven ten pickup. As it was, I didn’t have to pay for parking because I was there under thirty minutes. We ended up just eating and then going to bed. We had a big day planned for Saturday.

You see my mother wasn’t the only mom in town. Dave’s mom is here from England, this is the whole reason we had a dinner party on Saturday night. The party was for eight with another joining us for dessert after. Here’s is what we had.

Watermelon salad with feta cheese, fennel, Arugula, toasted hazel nuts and a balsamic dressing for the starter.

Chicken Marbella marinated from the night before in a prune, olive, caper brown sugar, white wine and balsamic vinegar mixture. This was served with fresh fettuccini with a garlic, shaved almond, and olive oil sauce topped with poppy seeds. We also had a little cream spinach I whipped up.

For dessert we had a flourless chocolate torte with a fresh raspberry sauce and whipping cream with vanilla beans.

It was a huge success. Mom and I ended up staying on the roof talking after everyone else took off. Dave had to take his mom back to the burbs and all the other guys went out to town (the club).

The next day we had brunch at the Beacon bar and grill. This time it was the whole family, brother and sister-in-law and the baby. Sunday just turned out very nicely as did the whole weekend.

I had to take mom back to BWI yesterday in the afternoon but that wasn’t bad at all. I went to work that morning and listened to a presentation on VMware on the desktop and then meet Dave and Mom for lunch. I then dropped her off, went back to work and actually found parking right outside the building. That never happens.

I was a bit sad to see mom go, we had such a good time together and she so enjoys it up here.

This week I’m having dinner with Kiat at the Saint Regis tomorrow, having dinner with our friends Rob and Carlos on Thursday. Friday there is something to do but it’s date night so I’m not sure we’ll do it. Saturday we have three parties to go to. I think Sunday will be a go see a movie in the afternoon unless of course one of our friends shows up from the UK, which happens.

On another note, I’m finally feeling close to 100%. I’ve had a throat blossom in the back of my throat where my right ear drains into my throat. Now it only bugged me every so often so I thought it was allergies. Well we ended up going to the doctor for another issue and he put us on antibiotics. The back of my throat has almost cleared up completely. Seems I’ve had this thing for two or three months and just felt down the whole time but being me refused to accept that and still worked out and hung out with friend. All I have to say and now I feel like my old self again. Next time I know what to do if it happens again.

Our next trip it the UK in November together, I might have to go to Miami for work in October. We will then go to Buenos Aires for Christmas and Cape Town in October. There might be a New Zealand trip in there somewhere, we’ll see.

I think that’s enough to write for my come back. I’ll write about the restaurant on Thursday.

Cape Town accommodations

2008-07-23T07:11:00.005-05:00

Dave and I started looking for places to stay for our big trips this year. The first challenge was getting affordable plane tickets to Buenos Aries, our fist destination, in December for the Christmas holiday. We originally wanted to leave on December the 23rd and come back on the 4th. We looked at a United flight which is direct from Washington Dulles but the price was close to 3k for a coach class ticket. That is way out of our price range. So I stated looking at alternative offerings from other airlines in the star alliance (we like our points)

We found Air Canada out of Toronto for about 1k each. It would be a trip from Washington National to Toronto to Buenos Aires. The problem is we were not sure we wanted to go so we procrastinated.

We shouldn’t have done that. The prices went up to close to what united was charging for those dates. We made up our minds to stay at home and see what was being offered by way of an esaver the week before Christmas.

But I wouldn’t let it die and one day decided to look around some more.

I found that if you left on the 25th and came back on the 5th the price dropped from $2,900.00 to $947.00 each. I called Dave and told him about it. We got the tickets within thirty minutes of that conversation. Which is good because I looked again after that and the price had gone up again to $2,900.00 for those dates too.

So now we have the tickets to Buenos Aires but no place to stay. This mirrored the situation we were in for Cape Town South Africa for March. I got us free tickets on points, including my sister coming out of Charlotte NC but we didn’t have a place to stay.

Dave and I decided to spend the weekend looking for places to stay, my job was Cape Town and his was Buenos Aires.

Let me tell you, this is not an easy or fast job. There are way too many places to look at on the internet.

I looked and looked and looked and sent off inquiries to a bunch of places but was getting discouraged. You see we need a place for the whole month. We have a staggered schedule of Dave and his mom, then Dave and my sister, then Dave my sister and me and then Dave and me with maybe some friends coming to stay from Brazil and the UK. We were very fortunate in the last couple of visits to get places to stay in the $100 to $150 a day range.

I wasn’t finding anything like that this time, it was all $300 to $ 500 a day for something we wanted to stay in and $200 a day for something we didn’t want to stay in on the bad side of town. I finally asked someone about a place in Bantry Bay. It was rented but they had another suggestion if I didn’t mind looking at it, and they offered a monthly rate.

We looked at it and it looked interesting. It was a three bedroom (we were looking at two bedrooms) with a roof deck and it was in the right location. Here is the link to the description.

Now here is the good part, we were offered it for the whole month for 22, 500 Rand, or about 3k or about $98 a night. Now what you have to know is that it normally rents for three times that even in the slow season so I wasn’t sure what was going on. Seems that the girl mistook the monthly rate paid if you stay for a year with the monthly rate if you only stay for a month and she quoted us the yearly/monthly rate by mistake. And they are standing by the mistake!! We couldn’t be happier. It was looking like lodging was going to cost around 7k to 8k for something we wanted to stay in. Oh happy days.

So now we’re still looking for a place to stay Christmas in Buenos Aires. Dave has a few leads and we are just waiting to hear back from them. I think we've narrowed it down to two in the same building.

Somewhere in all this we have a life with work and friends happening too. Never a dull moment in our lives.

Playa Del Carmen

2008-07-08T08:23:00.003-05:00

Rob over Christmas “We need to go to Playa Del Carmen”

Me, calling his bluff “Ok, how about over 4th of July”

Rob, calling my bluff “Fabulous! I’ll set it up”

Me in my mind “ Oh f*ck, now we really have to go”

Rob and Mikko have been telling us for years how great Playa was (We’ll call it Playa from now on to shorten things even if it does just mean beach in Spanish) for years. They have gone for New Years and other times of the year. We’ve done places like Rio over New Years. So finally we were nailed down on a time to go.

It was one of the best times we’ve had. And that was a huge surprise.

For some reason Dave and I had this notion that Mexico was not a destination that we wanted to visit. There are more exotic places in the world that we wanted to go to but a few things happened along the way over the last year that changed that thought.

The dollar SUCKS against most currencies!!

Fuel prices have driven plane tickets to the point of being ridiculous. I checked a ticket to CLT from DCA and it was $800. That’s an hour trip!!

So both of those reasons made going to Mexico much more attractive. We used points to get the plane tickets and the peso is still a good value so the room was cheap and everything else was cheapish too even though we were in tourist central.

The days consisted of getting up at 11ish and going to the beach to lounge around at the most amazing beach club until about 6 drinking bear and eating lunch. We would then go back and take a little nap before heading to dinner at around 9pm. Then it was time to go to the local gay bar called Playa 69. Funny great name I think. And we would stay there until the wee hours of the night go home and then do it again.

This happened every day except Monday when Playa 69 was closed so this forced us to get some sleep that night. I also went deep sea fishing on Thursday so I had a little bit of an early night on Wednesday because I had to be up and out of the house for the boat at around 7am.

This was pretty much the vacation and we enjoyed it greatly.

I especially liked the fishing even though I feed the fish coffee three times while we were on the very small boat out on the very rough sea. Ughhh!!!! Luckily I didn’t eat any solid food that morning. Still we caught 7 fish between the 8 of us, which was 7 more than what some of the other boats caught. We got a sail fish which I’ve never seen caught before. It was at least 4 feet long but we let it go (Bill fish are endangered) and we also caught a Mahi Mahi that was just as big. I caught a mackerel and a barracuda. When we caught the Mahi Mahi two other boats come over to see us pull it in and when we got to the beach 20 people showed up to look at it. Seems no one had caught a Mahi that big in six months. Everyone was so envious. I was so proud of my friends and their catches.

Also, as soon as I put my feet back on the ground my sea sickness went away. What a relief. I don’t remember feeling that bad and I hate throwing up.

That night we took half of the Mahi Mahi and a Barracuda back to the flat and proceeded to have a dinner party for 14 with plenty of fish. All in all a very good day.

Me to Rob “We are soooo coming back”

Rob to me “We knew you would”

So, that was our trip to Playa Del Carmen. I left out anything that was R rated or worse. Those are stories for in person.

I won!

2008-06-16T13:31:00.002-05:00

Seems I’m going to be in Paris this weekend without a playmate. I entered a contest (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=834270 I’m ckc123) and, wonder of wonders, I won. I leave on Thursday night and come back on Sunday. I’m staying here: http://www.hotel-saintmerry.com/english.html

This is a great little get-a-way. I tried to get some people to meet me there but it happened so last minute that a ticket is now in the 5k price range because all of the coach seats are taken.

Last Thursday I read that flyertalk.com was having a give-a-way of 20 seats on a brand new luxury airlines called openskies.com. They are being started by British Airways. The new service starts on the 19th so I will be on the inaugural flight. I entered and then the next day found out I was one of the chosen to go. This gave me six days to get this prepared. So I have everything set up and I’m ready to go now. I’ve figured out where the hotel is and found a nice bistro that a friend recommended.

I’ll write about it when I get back.

Woodstock and the Catskills. Fun in the New York countryside.

2008-06-11T12:03:00.004-05:00

Well we got invited to visit some friends in Bearsville New York. They live in NYC but have a weekend house about two hours outside of the city in the Catskills. It was an amazing, relaxing weekend.

I got off of work a little bit early and met Dave at Union station for the train ride up to Pen Station in New York. I have to say that Amtrak really, really sucks but this trip wasn’t all that bad. We sat there and read while the country side went by. They even had someone pushing a cart up and down the aisles selling drinks and food so we had a glass of wine. We got to NYC and had about an hour to wait until we got the train out to Woodstock.

We’ve always heard of Poughkeepsie, Yonkers and Hoboken but they always seemed to be funny little names with no actual place to connect them to. Well the train was going to Poughkeepsie and we went through Yonkers and Hoboken, it’s cool to know that they exist and where they are now.

Once we got to the train stop and got off, one of our friends was there to pick us up. About twenty minutes later we were at the weekend house. What a lovely little house it was/is, it is on a couple of archers of land and has been recently renovated from the ground up from its original 1927 construction. It’s open and airy and you can’t be in the house anywhere without seeing the forest outside.

We had dinner waiting for us which was pretty amazing considering we got there so late. Lamb burgers in pita bread with yogurt sauce. It was really, really good. We stayed up a little bit and then went to bed for a nice sleep in the country side silence.

Saturday we got up to coffee and the French open on the TV. I haven’t watched tennis in so long I didn’t even know who the people were on the court. It was still fun to watch. We then went to brunch in a little town down the way that I can’t remember the name of. It was very nice and very country. The price was a bit steep I thought for the area but not too bad. We then headed for the village of Woodstock just to see it. It seems that the whole Woodstock legend is just that, legend. The festival had gotten so big that the original farm outside of Woodstock could no longer hold it so they had to move it forty three miles away to another farm that could near Bethel, NY. Things you never knew.

The village is still full of hippies and your hippie want-a-be’s.

We walked a little way after getting a great parking spot and went straight to a clothing store. The store is run by the neighbors of the friends that we stayed with so we socialized a bit and then started looking around.

This store is exactly what we want it DC. It had cool, funky, not found in DC clothes and Dave and I immediately feel in love with it. $250 dollars later and one pair of shorts and two shirts I was a very happy boy. Funky cool clothes to wear at the next party. Love it.

We then got some ice cream and walked around a little bit. There was this strange guy walking around that kind of seemed to be following us. It was a little bit spooky because everywhere we went he was there. We decided it was time to go back to the house and have a nap before dinner. But first we had to see some art by a friend of theirs in a showing at a gallery near their house.

It was amazing stuff and if we had an extra 30k lying around I’m sure we would have gotten three or four of the paintings. The problem is we need new windows before we need new paintings. Still, if we win the lottery we’ll be back to purchase some of it. Very abstract landscapes. Loved it.

After the nap it was cocktail time. Wine for me, I’ve kind of gone off vodka. The neighbors came over for drinks and chatting and socializing. They brought a whole picture of cosmos. Oh my! We sat on the screened porch for a good long time while a thunder storm went over head. The neighbors went home to cook and we started cooking too.

We had tender loin stuffed with mushrooms, asparagus (which was a little bit burned but interesting just the same) and some kind of starch that’s escaping me right now; I think it was couis couis. All with lots of lovely wine. It was a very relaxing evening just having dinner with friends and enjoying the tranquility of the country.

The next morning was brunch with some Campaign to fight off the little bit of a hangover we all had from the wine the night before. We then just read the New York Times and chilled on the porch again until it was time to head back to the city. We had a bus (yes you got that right, we rode a bus home!) that was leaving from Pen station at 8pm so we left the house to drive back around 3:30/4:00. It takes a little under 2 hours to get back to the city.

We ended up getting there a bit early and after saying good bye and thank you to the boys we decided to eat before getting on the bus. We stopped at this Irish pub across from the station thinking it might not be too expensive and that we could get some real food. One house salad, one ceaser salad, one fish dish, one chicken dish, one glass of wine and two pints of beer and forty five minutes later we were presented with a check for $100. Mind you the food was good and all but it was more like a $50 dinner, not $100. Oh well, it was mid town NYC.

We then decide that we should get to the bus a little bit early just in case it was full. Silly us, there was a rather large line to get on the bus when we got there. Once we finally got on board I think we got the last two seats together.

A few observations about the DC to NY bus.

1. They give you water, which is nice considering it only cost $20 for the whole trip.

2. They play movies, which sucks if you want to sleep.

3. You can only go number 1 in the bathroom. This was fine with me. Seems number 2 stinks up the whole back of the bus.

4. They will take a break in Delaware even though there was a vote that told them not to.

5. It takes a lot longer than the train. About four and a half hours to five hours.

6. It drops off at two places in DC, Eye Street and 14th and in Dupont Circle.

Once we got to Dupont Circle it was a matter of a five minute walk to our house. We finally got in the door around 12:30am and were completely tired because all the sleep we were supposed to get on the bus didn’t happen because of the movies. Around 1ish we finally started to wind down enough to get to sleep.

Monday sucked, I didn’t get to run that morning and showed up at the office at 9:30, I’m usually there around 7:45 so that was late for me. Fortunately I’ve was able to work out that afternoon and have been able to run every morning this week since.

I also had my performance review on Tuesday. It went well.

That’s all the excitement for now.

Do you dress like a Douchebag?

2008-06-05T10:59:00.000-05:00

Check out this site.

Bread, the other white meat.

2008-06-04T12:43:00.007-05:00

Ok, so do you like bread? I mean really like bread. So much bread that you think there is something else with it but you’re really not sure. And do you like to spend a whole lot on bread? I mean just bread? If that’s the case you will love the restaurant that we just had Estella’s birthday lunch at. It’s a new tapas place in Georgetown on M Street called Bodega.

Not that it was bad, the bread they served as table bread was quite good with the olive oil. Not so much for the bread with the sandwiches, big hard baguettes. Mind you, I know it’s a tapas restaurant but we were there for lunch and needed something fast so we choose one of the lunch “specials” which consisted of all sandwiches.

When they arrived we all looked at them and the first thing someone said was “that’s a whole lot of bread”, and it was! The flavor was great but for $14 I want a little more middle in my sandwich.

We also got Sangria. I know its lunch and all but we decided since it was Estella’s birthday we would indulge. Not that we needed to worry because it was really like drinking cool aid. We all felt a bit ripped off at the end of the meal, where was the buzz? It was $24 for a pitcher between six of us. The pitcher, when it showed up, was about half the size of what we expected, it was refreshing but that was about it.

So all in all what I would call a very disappointing lunch. The people at the table where great but I don’t think any of us will be in a hurry to go back. If you want really good tapas go to Jaleo in downtown DC. Well worth it.

Midge Ure and the power of song

2008-06-02T14:20:00.000-05:00

For awhile now I’ve liked Ultra Vox the group from the 80’s. There are a few songs that I remember from then and I liked them all. Then awhile back Dave played Midge Ure (lead singer) and the best of Ultra Vox. It brought back memories and I stated listening to Midge as if he were a new artist and with much interest especially his CD entitled Breath.

I like Breath so much that I’ve pretty much been listening to it to and from work for the last month. I do this every so often when a CD really hits a cord. This is the way my mind works.

There are a couple of reasons that I like this CD. The songs are absolutely amazing and at this point in my life they mean something profound.

You see I’m getting to the point in my life where I need a change. Now this change could take on many, many different aspects so I’m not sure exactly what the change could/should be. I did rule out one change after the last two weeks; Dave. I don’t want to change that at all, I would like to change with him though.

So, the title song is called Breath and it has me enthralled. The lyrics, the melody, the composition, they are just exactly what I need right now. Here are the lyrics;

With every waking breath I breathe
I see what life has dealt to me
With every sadness I deny
I feel a chance inside me die

Give me a taste of something new
To touch to hold to pull me through
Send me a guiding light that shines
Across this darkened life of mine

Breathe some soul in me
Breathe your gift of love to me
Breathe life to lay ¹fore me
Breathe to make me breathe

For every man who built a home
A paper promise for his own
He fights against an open flow
Of lies and failures, we all know

To those who have and who have not
How can you live with what you¹ve got?
Give me a touch of something sure
I could be happy evermore

Breathe some soul in me
Breathe your gift of love to me
Breathe life to lay ¹fore me
To see to make me breathe

Breathe your honesty
Breathe your innocence to me
Breathe your word and set me free
Breathe to make me breathe

This life prepares the strangest things
The dreams we dream of what life brings
The highest highs can turn around
To sow love¹s seeds on stony ground

Breathe
Breathe

Breathe some soul in me
Breathe your gift of love to me
Breathe life to lay ¹fore me
To see to make me breathe

Breathe your honesty
Breathe your innocence to me
Breathe your word and set me free
Breathe to make me breathe

For some reason this has gotten to me lately. I’m not sure if I’m having a mid-life crisis or what but it’s made me realize I need some change in my life.

Another song on the CD is called free and it’s had the same effect. It’s almost the feel of when you where a teenager and you knew you had your whole life ahead of you. You were free, I kind of feel like I want that too right now. I want to feel the way I did then. Here I would put the lyrics here but I can’t seem to find them using Google. (I thought you could find anything on Google!)

Luckily I’ve come to my senses of late and realized the changes I need all have to do with me and not the people around me. And I made one big change so far.

No more smoking, even on the weekends. I want to Breath and be Free!

This is the beginning of some changes in my life that I hope I can keep going forward with. Mainly I want to be healthier physically and mentally. The first one will be much easier than the second. I get a little bit screwy every so often and go out on my own tangent. It takes some pretty big shit to get me centered again. I’m getting tired of having to go through the shit to get better, so I’m going to try to not even get into that space anymore. This will be tough but it’s an effort that will be well worth it.

So that’s it for now, had a great time at Rehoboth beach last weekend but that’s another story all together.

Carrie Bradshaw moment

2008-05-29T08:32:00.001-05:00

Did you ever wonder how to screw up a good thing fast?

Here’s the recipe.

One part long weekend in an exotic location with people that drink more then you.

One part significant other who is stressed for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with you.

One part feeling ignored and uninterested in and feeling that the stress your significant other is feeling is ALL about you.

One part little things that have been nagging at you for awhile. Nothing really big, but that’s the stuff that gets you.

One part drinking too much in general.

Do you know what this recipe adds up too? Disaster.

What a fool one can make of themselves when the proceeding is true, and oh how I know it.

Why is it the person/people you love the most are the ones that get the brunt of your anger/insanity? This part of relationships I don’t understand.

Anyway, if the significant other reads this, this punter is really sorry.

London for 72 hours.

2008-05-06T09:41:00.011-05:00

London was great, what can I say. I get there and the sun comes out
and pretty much stays out the whole time except at night when we
had a sprinkle or two.

I still find it amazing that I can go from our house in DC to our flat at
Old Compton Street in twelve hours door to door. I also find it
amazing that being in London no longer feels like I’m in a different
/foreign land. I get off the plane, go through immigration with my roll
aboard, go to the tube and an hour later I’m at Lester Square and five
minutes I’m at the flat. Not a big deal anymore.

All for about 72hours in London on my part, I left for an overnight
flight on Thursday night and leave on Monday on a daytime flight.

Everyone at work thinks I’m insane, and I think I might have to
agree to that assessment.

I get there around 12ish on Friday and we already have one friend
visiting. I take a quick shower and off to the box for lunch we go. We
sit there for a bit and watch the people come by when another friend
of ours comes by to say hello. We sit there until after five drinking
beer and coffee at which point we need to go to the flat to change so
we can go back and meet more friends at around 6:30.

We go to this other bar across the street from the box at seven dials
to meet yet another friend before going back to the box to get our
friend who we are taking to dinner. These guys are getting married
and we can’t make it so we decided to take them to a nice meal this
trip. This ended up being good because we went back to the flat and
stayed up until 4am talking and talking. We feel like we know them so
much better now.

The next day we really had no plans but to get up and eat. By the
end of the evening we had a drinks party with 13 people showing up
at our flat. We got whittled down to around four of and then went to
a newish club where one of the earlier people at the drinks party had
a friend that was DJing there. We went, we were not impressed. It
was kind of late, around two and the place really wasn’t that full. It
wastiny and the flyers they gave out to get people there in the
afternoonwere not being honored so we had to pay 5 pounds each.
We stayed for a bit and then Dave and I went home.

Now for Sunday, the whole reason we went (or I went for the
weekend) was to go see the Dame Edna Experience at the Royal
Voxhaw Tavern on a bank holiday weekend. We get there at two
in the afternoon only to have to wait an hour and ten minutes just
to get our wrist bands so we can get in later when the show starts.
We’re glad we got there when we did because we had other friends
who showed up at four and were turned away. Crazy, right?

We went and got something to eat at that point and then walked
back to have a pint or two until the show started. We ran into a
friend we hadn’t seen since Rio two years ago. He was looking really
good and we had a good long chat. Then later we meet up with more
friends that we knew from our last trip to Cape Town. Makes for a
very small gay world when that happens. We had a great time there
until about 9 that evening. At which point I told Dave I want to go
back and then go to Balan’s for something to eat. That was fun and
we got to watch the world go by from our perch in the window. We
stayed up a little bit late and then went to bed.

The next day I didn’t feel so good. I think I might be getting a little
bit of a sore throat. But we got up and packed and then went to Balan’s
for lunch. We had four bottles of Champaign left from the drinks party
and didn’t wantto leave it for the owner of the flat we rented so we
were not quite sure what to do with it. But as luck turns out on the
way back from lunch we spotted one of our friends from the first night
having coffee at costa coffee and asked him if he wanted it, and the
good thing was he did. So when weleft the flat we made a little care
package and dropped it off for him then got on the tube to go back to
Heathrow.

Twelve hours later we’re back in the good ole US of A.

Twelve hours after that I’m back at work. A little tired but none the
worse for wear.

We had fun, that’s what counts.

Wine tasting at our house, what fun!

2008-04-21T13:01:00.001-05:00

Ok, so I’ve worked out today and ran three miles in the morning so if this doesn’t make that much sense it’s because I’m tired. This being healthy can really get to you.

We had a lovely party on Saturday night. We invited ten people to come over to our house for nibbles and a wine tasting. We decided since we had brought back some great wines from South Africa that we would have said wine tasting and invite some of our more mature, wine loving friends over to taste a couple of our bottles. Because we’re not too far gone in the smarts department we requested that our friends bring over a nice bottle of wine with a catch, there had to be a story to go with it.

We ended up with 14 bottle of wine for twelve people. The stories ranged from “I used to drink this with a girl friend who was a writer. She put me in her novel she was writing while we dated but unfortunately we ended up breaking up so in the book I die.” (Decent white wine with that story) to our friend SIP who is very interesting individual herself. She grew up in Iran but has lived here for a good long time. She owns a wine store and carries all kind of fabulous wines. She has one wine called SIP. Turns out that when she was a little girl she had smuggled some grape buds from Iran to California (It might have been France) and it might have been the other way around. It was getting fuzzy by that point. Anyway SIP now has ninety acres of grapes planted somewhere that she had smuggled in from somewhere else and now has a wine named after her. Cool huh? One of our other friends brought over some desert wines that actually where created from grapes from their vineyard. Now that is neat.

Names have been changed above to protect the innocent, errr, well, maybe not innocent but definitely so they can’t be identified from this blog.

We had a hard time at the beginning of the tasting squeezing out twelve tasting glasses of wine for everyone but we did it. By the time we got to the 10th bottle we had wine left over in the bottles. Seems that everyone just wanted smaller and smaller tastes as the night went on. After the tasting we ended up going to the roof deck drinking more wine and sat there until about 1:30 in the morning. I was a little bit worried about two of our friends who stayed till the last. They drove home and we really don’t think they should have, we had them call us when they got home so we could sleep that night knowing they were ok.

We got up the next day and didn’t feel all that horrible. I believe that a wine hangover is so much less damaging then a vodka one. In fact we felt good enough to go work out for two hours in the afternoon. At the end of the workout we just looked at each other amazed that we had done it. After that we meet up with some friends to see their house “project”. (More of a nightmare really) They purchased this house three years ago and slowly found out that the whole thing needed to be torn out and built out from the ground up.

Could you imagine?

They had to take out all of the innards. All the way down to the ground. The brick is so old that they can’t put in support beams so they had to go under and create footings in the basement in which to attach the main floor. Pretty much everything is brand new in the interior and only the shell is original but it will need some work too before they’re done. Supposedly it will be finished sometime in mid-summer but it was hard to see with only the skeleton of the rooms up at this point. I wish them luck.

We then went to another friend’s house for wine and then went to Duplex dinner for dinner. And shock of all shocks, home and to bed before 10. This is why I was able to get up and run this morning and why I’m tired right now too.

The next big event is taking Dave to the airport on Thursday for our London trip. I’ll be joining him the next week.

Merry ole England here we come!

If you find my motivation, could you email it to me?

2008-04-16T07:40:00.001-05:00

Boy oh boy oh boy has it been hard to get motivated this week. I’m really not sure what it is but all I want to do is sleep and stare outside. Could it be that I’ve got spring fever? Haven’t had that since I was in high school I don’t think.

I’m supposed to run this week but I just can’t get my ass out of bed. So, I’ve been doing 30 minutes on the elliptical at the gym at work instead. I have gotten much done considering that I don’t have any motivation. I’ve moved servers over to our new virtual server scheme over the weekend. That worked but stressed me to no end. I worked the last two weekends doing this. Maybe working so much has to do with the motivation problem I’m having.

Tonight we have two friends coming over for dinner. That will be fun and may get me out of my funk. Thursday we have something going on that for the life of me I can’t remember but I think it’ll be fun. Friday we’re talking about staying in because on Saturday we’re having a little get together wine tasting at the house for around 11 people.

The next thing you know Dave is going to England and it’ll be the end of the month. Boy things go fast when you get older.

Did I tell you I’m having a motivation problem? We it just kicked in and it’s hard for me to write any more.

Dentist, and why you should fear them!

2008-04-07T09:50:00.003-05:00

So back to the story of the co-worker and the dentist. This kid I work with had just one bad tooth that had been extracted awhile back, it was causing the teeth on each side and the one above to start shifting. The only way to stop this from happening was to put a metal post in the spot of the missing tooth and put a fake tooth there. Simple enough right? Well the procedure all ended in the emergency room with a large amount of blood lost.

Ughhh.

Seems that the dentist drilled a little too far into the bone in his lower jaw, so far in fact when he went through it and into the soft tissue, ie the vein. Blood come spurting out. My co-worker is out on the drugs but gets up in the chair and spits the blood out of the back of his mouth onto the dentist. Now this dentist is the one other dentist go to when they have a “bleeder” but he can’t stop the bleeding and has to call 911. Co-worker goes to emergency room where they finally get the bleeding under control. They keep him for the day, I get a call from his girl friend telling me what’s going on.

The amazing thing is he’s worried because he will be missing working for a day or two. I’m happy that he’s just alive. Crazy work ethic, right?

So after all of this, because it’s considered cosmetic he has to pay out of pocket, he gets all of the 3k he spent on it refunded and it’s being done for free. Which it should be because he could sue for malpractice really. Now they’re waiting for it to heal and the bone to grow back before they try again in about 6 months.

Fun, right?

Well it’s Monday morning after a good weekend.

2008-04-07T09:14:00.002-05:00

We have the Mum and Dad in from England so we’ve been spending time with them. On Friday we went out to Virginia to pick them up for a dinner at our friends house that evening. We had a lovely time but I had to work that evening, which really sucked. On Saturday I had to work in the morning and then we worked out. We wanted to get all this done before we went to our niece’s second birthday party. It was fun and she’s great but I had something that I had done at work the night before not work and ended up having to go out to Ashburn to restart a server.

I was not happy about that.

We got back to the house around 9ish and then went out to JR’s until about 2am, which we needed after all the family time. While we were there we mentioned that we might have brunch the next day. Well we did, it was fun but I was in bed by 8. Not sure Dave enjoyed himself though, seems he just wasn’t in the mood.

At work now and not feeling too bad, lots of water and coffee. Not working out today though, I will run in the morning tomorrow and do chest and back at lunch. Get back into the swing of things.

Cherry blossom time.

2008-03-28T13:12:00.002-05:00

It’s that time of the year in DC where everyone wants to come and look at a bunch of trees flowering. It only lasts for about a week so we feel fortunate that Dave’s mother will be here for them this year all the way from the UK. She gets here tomorrow afternoon and Sunday morning early they will be going to go see the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin. I say they because I plan on sleeping a bit late because we have a birthday party to go to the night before and we all know how that usually turns out. I will get up in time to make brunch for about 10 people.

It was an interesting week. I ran four times, wanted to run today but just didn’t have the time as you’ll understand in a bit. Wednesday I had to go out to Ashburn Va. (aka…ASS–BURN) for work. We finally got the load balancer up and running from a big project I have been working on. That night we go to dinner with a friend of ours who is visiting from San Francisco. We have a good meal at Makatto and then decide that going to Halo is in order. Well, it being a school night, going to Halo is never a good idea on a week night. They have two for one drinks all night and they are HALO sized drinks. We go in and run into our downstairs neighbor and his friend. Well it got messy after that, I do remember having my hands down a couple of people’s trousers. My oh my. We got home around 12ish. I’m usually in bed by around 10. The most amazing thing about all this is that I actually got up and ran the next day. Mind you, it was only a three mile run and not the usual five mile one but I still did it.

So what do we do the next night? Well it wasn’t halo but it was another local gay hangout that just happens to be very “On” on Thursday nights. Duplex Dinner, decent food but nothing to write home about and great drinks which is something to write home about. And hot, hot guys everywhere you turn. We meet our friends Rob and Carlos there for dinner at seven. We end of leaving at eleven and I insisted on taking a cab home because I wasn’t walking home in that condition.

I got up this morning and just couldn’t run, I was too tired. I did show up at work a little bit late this morning. I wonder why? I did do a full body workout so I’m all pumped now.

Dave and I decided that tonight we will go to Whole Foods for sushi and then go the theater to see the History Boys and maybe have a glass of wine there. We want to get up and work out tomorrow morning and then we pick up Dave’s mom at the airport in the afternoon and then Rick’s birthday party that night. So far a very full weekend and all I really want to do is sleep. LOL.

Monday morning blues.

2008-03-24T12:34:00.003-05:00

Well I did it. I really did. I made Dave leave JR’s early on a Sunday night. We actually came home and had a good night’s sleep on a Sunday night. (SHOCK and DISMAY!)

I got up and ran this morning, no really, I did. I’ve been at work all morning feeling pretty good, except for the allergies which are still raging.

So we were actually pretty good this weekend. We had a party at Dan’s house on Saturday evening. We played a rather lame board game that was supposed to be risqué. Maybe for straight people in the mid west, or maybe their six year old children. Not so much for a bunch of gay boys who can’t say anything without it becoming a sexual innuendo. The booze and friends were good though. After about three times playing the game we decided to go to the Green Lantern and check it out. We shouldn’t have. All I can say is that It’s a very mature crowd that finds it perfectly ok to walk around in just a jock strap. We drank fast and then left. It was off to bed for us because we had the in-laws coming over for Easter brunch on Sunday.

Easter was fun, and a bit surprising. The first surprise was that the in-laws were there on time. I hadn’t even started cooking because they are always about thirty minutes behind so it caught me off guard when they got to the house two minutes early. There was church to go to before that so I think that might have been the defining factor for the being there on time. The second surprise was how pretty but cold it was outside. We almost decided to have a fire but decided against it at the last minute. One more thing to look after when you have a two year old running about. The third surprise was when they left early. We expected them to be with us until around sevenish but they left around three. We didn’t know what to do with the rest of the afternoon. That’s one of the reasons we ended up at JR’s.

We did another thing that we don’t normally do. We sat in our chairs and listened to music after brunch. Normally we have lots of other things going on and we never just sit. This was nice but I got to see Micky mouse make a run for under the dining room table again. The music was loud, Dave and I were talking and the mouse still came out to take a look around. We thought we had seen the last of him because none of the traps or the poisons had been tampered with. Seems that the smell of freshly cooked bacon just got to be too much for him and he had to come take a look. He stayed under the table as I was looking in disbelief and telling Dave about him, he ran away when Dave tried to get a better look at him. Time to buy more traps.

Friday we went to Duplex Dinner for dinner and ended up at Jr’s again. I again had to be the one of reason (I think) and get Dave to come home. There was a very good reason he wanted to stay and we’ll just leave it at that. I did sleep late on Saturday mainly because of the allergies. I could sleep for most of the day because of this crap.

I have a story about a co-worker and a dentist that I will tell sometime this week but it just doesn’t quite fit in with the blog above but I'll still leave you with this little something.

Washington in the spring time.

2008-03-19T11:50:00.000-05:00

I love Washington, it’s become very comfortable for me and my partner. This is amazing in that we considered moving to Washington about a two year obligation with plans to move on to the west coast afterwards. That would have been eight years ago if we had followed through.

Everything we need is within walking distance. I walk to work, Dave does too. We have an airport that will take us anywhere in the world that is only about Thirty five minutes away. There are so many restaurants here, we could try one every night and still not go through them all in a year. And these are only the ones we can walk to.

We love it, but….

why is it all of the sudden I’ve started to get really, really horrible allergies in the last two years? I’ve never had allergies in my life, either that or I was just too stupid to notice I had them. Then “whammo” last year it started. I hoped it would be a one year kind of thing, but noooo.

So I thought I had bronchitis, and then realized it wasn’t as bad as bronchitis but just an all over tired, achy, coughing up chunks malaise kind of thing. In other words, what most of my other friends have been complaining about since I moved here, I now have it.

I’ve spent the better part of the last three days in bed. I have gone to work only to leave early because of how bad I felt. I did workout today because I was feeling guilty after not doing it for so long, but that was a really bad mistake. I feel worse now. I think the only thing to do will be to get some allergy medicine but I hate them, they make my skin crawl and make it hard to pee. Also certain aspects of my manhood decide to shrivel up and hide.

Let summer begin please.

Life at 41 now. ugh

2008-03-18T09:59:00.000-05:00

!So, Lufthansa give me a 25 Euro voucher because I had written about the jerk on the plane on my trip back to the US on flyertalk.com. They didn’t need to but they did.

It’s a little lame though because it’s only for merchandise you purchase while on a Lufthansa flight. If it went toward a ticket I think I would have appreciated it more.

So we get back from our long trip to Cape Town at around 7ish pm on Wednesday, I’m at work on Thursday at 8ish am. It was a little bit rude I have to say. After being away for so long with nothing to worry about but what you’re going to eat with your fabulous wine after working out for two hours, coming back to reality wasn’t so nice. But reality didn’t last too long, noooooo. We keep the vacation going.

Why did we do this you ask? Well we had some friends from the UK come in on Thursday night to visit for the weekend, actually from Birmingham to be exact. So Dave picks them up from the airport and brings them home. We’re pretty sure they will be jet lagged and will feel like going to bed. We gave them options for dinner and they choose Duplex Dinner. We kind of pushed them in that direction because Duplex is the place to go on a Thursday night. It’s also the home of some of the strongest drinks in DC.

I was there until 12:30 that night. I made it into work the next day on time but I’m not sure how. The boys didn’t know what to do with all that alcohol in our drinks so they just drank more. One thing to know is that alcohol in the US is relatively cheep. In the UK you get a double, 50ml, which barely wets the ice in the glass and it cost about $12. Here you get about 4oz for $10 which is about 6 times more than the UK for a lot less money. And if you go to JR’s on Sundays it’s $2 double (American strength) vodkas. If you do this it usually ends up in tragedy and tears but I’ll get to that later.

So I go to work the next day and Dave takes the boys out to see the monuments. They didn’t get up until after ten. I had been at work for two hours at this point. Well we set up dinner with them at our favorite French restaurant around the corner. Somewhere along dinner I realized it would be a very bad thing for me to go out. We have a dinner party in their honor on Saturday with twelve people coming. I end up sending them on their way and I go home to bed.

Sometimes I do the smart thing.

I was up and at the grocery store at 9am on Saturday morning looking for all the fresh ingredients I needed. We had scallops with a savory vanilla sauce and parmesan crisps for the starter. We had halibut with a crab meat stuffing with asparagus and multi colored small potatoes for the main and we had a poached pear stuffed with pistachios and dates with small profiteroles and a scoop of butter pecan ice cream for dessert. It all went over very well.

Cooking and plating for twelve can be a bit overwhelming especially in my small kitchen but luckily Tony was there to help too.

So we finish up dinner and then find there is another party to go to. I volunteered to take the boys because Dave had done it the night before. We end up staying at the party until 3am. Boy oh boy. We ended up taking a cab home, firstly because it was raining, secondly because it was too far to walk from that neighborhood and thirdly because we were too drunk to walk that far.

Got Home and passed out.

Only to get up on Sunday and make it to the 3rd annual Saint Tragic’s Day brunch at the beacon bar and grill. $30 for all you can eat and all you can drink. There were 20 of us there and I think we must have gone through at least 4 cases of cheap Champaign. It all started at 12:30pm and didn’t end until 4ish. The boys from Birmingham said at brunch all they’ve been doing sense they got to DC was drink. And it was mostly true. At this point they boys need to get back to the house and pack for their plane to Los Vegas. I decided to stay with my friends and go to JR’s. Really bad Idea.

It always seems like a good idea at the time but if very rarely is a good idea. What I remember of it was great fun. I did get home around 9ish. Dave took a friend to dinner.

I did make it to work on Monday. Got home and went to bed early. Made it to work today too, but……

I now think I have bronchitis. My bald spot hurts, when that happens I know I’m sick. That and the fact that I’ve been coughing up nastiness for two days.

Too much excess for too long. This all started the Thursday before we left for Frankfurt when I went to see the Spice Girls. It’s time to calm down for a little bit.

I might right about the trip to Cape Town too but I’m not sure I want to bore you with all the food and wine stories. Until next time.

What a Jerk!

2008-03-13T09:52:00.002-05:00

I was coming home from FRA to IAD in FC on LH 418 yesterday. There are five of us on the upper deck, quite nice. We have a youngish male FA who seems a little bit wet behind the ears but noting horrible. One of the things he didn’t do that I’ve had other FAs do in FC was come around again with the Champaign again before taxiing, I did ask and got some more but didn’t really think I should have to ask. I’m ok with this at this point because I see he’s trying and it might be one of his first times doing this. I figure they know it’s a light load in FC so they can let him train with the five people there. To me not a really big deal.

But to the guy behind me, OMG!!!

We start Taxiing and all of the sudden I hear a very loud (yelling) conversation between the passenger and the FA (really at the FA from the passenger). Seems the young FA had tried to do his job and take the passenger’s (we’ll call him BUJ (big, ugly and jerk) from now on) nuts and glass. You would think it was the end of the world for BUJ!

He yelled something about how the FA should be working coach instead of first class and that he wasn’t fit to be serving in first class. All very loudly so that everyone could hear it.

I was in shock, I’ve never heard anyone talk to anyone else like that. Especially in the pitch and tone that was used. There was venom and hate in everything BUJ said.

One of the reasons I like FC on LH is because it’s easy and relaxing and I don’t have to deal with stress. This altercation caused me stress. I was happy when it ended and it looked like BUJ had gone to sleep.

Dinner service commenced and it was all fine. I did have to ask for more wine again but once he figure it out I didn’t have to for the rest of the flight. (Another perk of FC is a never end wine glass if you want it). I then watched a movie.

And then BUJ did it again!

I was watching the movie when I thought that’s a strange sound track coming through, sounds like someone yelling. I then take my NOISE Canceling head set off to listen to BUJ completely bitch out the head purser for, I would say, about 10 minutes. I was close to getting up and telling BUJ to shut the **** up, you’re ruining my flight.

He then passed out for the rest of the flight, thank god.

There was absolutely no reason for this behavior. My travel companion said to me after the first bit of yelling that he knew everything he needed to know about BUJ from the outburst and that he wasn’t a very nice man.

There was a bit of justice at immigration at IAD. Our flight was late and we all showed up between shifts so there was only one person working US citizens. I was close to the front so I got through relatively quickly and got my luggage right away. BUJ was quite a way back in the line and looked like he was about to have a stroke he was so unpleased.

Where do these people come from?

Failing apart at 40.

2008-02-19T09:13:00.001-05:00

Ok, so it’s been a very long time since I’ve added to this space. There are reasons other than just being lazy. I figured I would bypass one of them and do it anyway. You see I’ve injured my left hand. This is how it happened.

Dave and I were working out about three weekends ago. Nice strenuous workout. Towards the end of it I had my left hand resting on some equipment higher than the rest of my body, that’s when it happened. For some reason the tendon in my birdie(middle) finger decided that it didn’t like the position that it was in and that it wanted to be closer to its neighboring knuckle.

I made a noise somewhat like a whimpering school girl and just looked at my hand thinking “this really, really doesn’t feel good, how am I going to make it stop not feeling good and how do I do it quickly?” So I took my right hand and pointing finger and moved the tendon back.

Problem solved, pain gone all is good in the world again….Right?

Wrong, it went out another six of seven times that day. It got to the point where I just didn’t want to do anything with it. So the next day with it still going out I go get some medical tape and tape my middle finger and my pointing finger together. This immobilized my finger. It’s also made it quite hard to do things like, oh say, TYPING!!

Hence not updating this blog. This takes forever for me now and lots of typos that hopefully I will correct before I post it.

So I end up going to my doctor for a regular check up. I had taken myself off my meds (high blood pressure and cholesterol) because I’ve been running and losing weight and mostly behaving myself. The doctor wanted to make me the poster child for the office. My blood pressure was that of an athlete and my cholesterol was a little high but not that bad. He tells me to keep it up and by the way why are your fingers taped up? I tell him and it’s an orthopedist visit for me next. Ughhhh.

Off to the Orthopedist I go a week later. Got in kind of quick so I was happy. I saw the doctor, told him the story and he looks me in the eye and says “we’re going to have to treat this aggressively”.

Aggressively, WTF?

He saw that look in my eye that said, I don’t think so and then backed down a little bit. He said that I had done exactly what I should have done with taping my fingers and that we should leave it like that for 6 weeks. If/ When that doesn’t work we can put me in a cast for another 6 weeks. If/When that doesn’t work we will need to have surgery and put you back in the cast.

He wants to put me in a cast sooner than that but I’m going to Cape Town this Friday and I’m not about to go there in a cast for 16 days. So when I get back I have and appointment to see the doctor again. I do also have a good supply of medical tape and feel a little bit like Michael Jackson with his taped fingers.

I’ll try to keep this updated but like I said earlier, typing really sucks now.

Cape Town here we come!!!!!!!!!

ok, so now an update.

2008-01-29T10:14:00.000-05:00

I'm at 205lbs from close to 215lbs and down to 19% fat from 24% fat.

I think I'm doing well.

But....

I've hurt my hand. the ligament in my left hand middle finger now moves in ways it shouldn't. And it hurts when it happens! Typing is really hard now too.

So I have to tape my fingers together and hope it doesn't happen again. Which it did last night!

Doctor said that it will need surgery but we can try making it not move for 6 weeks and see if that fixes it.

6 Weeks!!!

That's hard to do.

ugh!!

That realy screws up my workout schedule.

So now I'm just trying to make it through the day without it popping out of place.

Still trying to figure out Award availability.

2008-01-11T11:52:00.000-05:00

Ok, so Dave and I are going to Cape Town at the end of February. Originally we were going to try and go to Sydney for the Gay Mardi Gras at that time. I looked for award seats on any Star Alliance carrier going west to Sydney. Couldn’t find any availability. So I changed tactics and decided to go through Europe instead. We would get an extra cheep ticket to London and then to through Singapore to Sydney.

This kind of worked, anyone who has tried to get start alliance award tickets on Singapore air in the premium cabins knows that it’s next to impossible. Never the less I got two Business class tickets from London to Singapore and then two coach from Singapore to Sydney. Business all the way back to London.

Mind you this was going to be a three day trip just to get there. All of our friends where going to try and be there because it’s the 30th anniversary of Mardi Gras. Unfortunately Dave and I just never felt the love for it and just couldn’t get excited over it. So, one day when I had a little extra free time I did a search for award tickets to Cape Town for the same time we were thinking of going to Sydney.

I was shocked to see First Class availability for two from IAD(Washington, DC) to FRA(Frankfurt, Germany) and then only Coach from FRA to JNB(Johannesburg, SA) and then Business class (that’s all the rest of the world does internally, no first class like in the states) from JNB to CPT(Cape Town) On the way back I got all first class home except for the CPT to JNB which was business. The big flights are on Lufthansa and the enter SA flights are on SAA.

Ok, this we could work with. We also love Cape Town. So I change the award tickets to South Africa and then did some research. Seems that Lufthansa opens up its premium cabin for award travel seven days out. So if you check now for the 16th you will see anywhere from two to four seats available for awards in first. Having figured this out I wasn’t too worried about the coach leg of our flight. I was pretty sure that a week before travel I could get us into first class for that leg. I also found out that Untied will not let you change the ticket if it’s less than three days before travel begins. So there is only about three to four day to make the change.

But I, being the persistent person I am, have been checking everyday to see if first class opened up for that leg. And today it DID!!!!!

For one person…. :-(

So I called and got Dave’s Itinerary changed so that he was in First Class, alas I’m still in coach. But I haven’t given up hope for me yet. I’ll keep checking every day until I get it.

Our ultimate plan is to push the trip back two days and leave on Friday night instead of Sunday night that week. So I’m also checking the flights from FRA to JNB( this is the bad one to get the award tickets on) on the Saturday before. If it opens up for first, I will pay a change fee and get us to Cape Town two days earlier. I’ve already talked to the lady we’re renting from and she says it looks fine for us to come early.

Keep your fingers crossed.

So, going back to the title of this blog entry, I have yet to figure out how and why they open up seats. Today is no more special then yesterday which had to seats. It’s 6 weeks and 3 days out from our trip. Why did one seat open up today? It’s so strange.

Oh, and the diet is still going well, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will only weigh myself on Saturdays. That way I can see the trend. Everyday fluctuates too much.

Emotional Me!

2008-01-09T12:33:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I’ve been a little confuse on the whole Democratic nominee thing lately.

I started out thinking Hillary was the way to go. And then I thought she was too much part of the system.

So I started thinking Obama was the one. Because he wasn’t part of the system.

Edwards, who’s that?

But I had a little bit of an epiphany after Iowa. I actually felt disappointed and sad that Hillary didn’t win it. And resentful that Obama did.

That really surprised me.

When Hillary did win New Hampshire, I had a huge sense of relief and almost welled up with tears. That really surprised me too. I had no idea that I was that emotionally invested in this. This has turned into a gut feeling kind of thing.

So now I’ve come to the conclusion that Hillary is the one we need. She has been battling these f*cking Republican morons since at least 1992 in Washington and she knows how to get things done even with the road blocks and petty wars that the Republicans resort to. I feel that Obama will get chewed up and spit out and will not be effective, he’ll just spin his wheels. He will try too hard and will get nowhere.

It’s sad but true.

Unfortunately the way the US is right now, the only way to change it is to “pander” a bit to the right wing constitutes. But one can still change things this way, it just takes longer. Hopefully Hillary and Bill will be able to do this.

Now for other non political comments.

I’m tired, this not eating and exercising things is hard. But I am making some progress. I just have to keep this up for another, oh, six or seven weeks. By that time I should look rather gaunt and pale. But I’ll be skinny. And we all know, you can never be too rich or too thin.

210lbs today. Like I said, making progress.

211lbs, WTF

2008-01-08T11:27:00.001-05:00

Well I guess it just goes to show that things can change very fast when you have a body mass like mine. Today I weighed myself in the morning and after working out, 212lbs and 211lbs respectively.

So, I guess I’m going in the right direction and that the day of rest on Sunday had everything settle for a bit. I just had to get it moving again.

I walked home the long way last night. By the time I got home my legs where wobbly. I didn’t help that I have a huge head cold going on right now. When I got home I cleaned a little bit and then put some of our left over gumbo in the microwave just in time to see that I had gotten a call from a friend who wanted to go out to dinner. I had to call had give him a rain check. I didn’t want to be around people while I felt that contagious.

It’s much better today.

I ended up taking some cold medicine and watching some movies. I was in bed by 9:30 and up at 5:30 this morning feeling much better but still having the sniffles. Here is the morning routine:

· Get up and go down stairs to the kitchen to make coffee. It's Tuesday so it’s trash and recycle day. Empty the trash cans and recycling bin and place in the appropriate place for pick up while I wait for the coffee to brew. Pick up news paper while doing this.

· Drink coffee and check emails. Wait for coffee to “work”

· Coffee starts to “work”, go to bathroom, read news paper and get cleaned up.

· Get dressed, pack workout clothes for gym at work in backpack.

· Make oatmeal, do stomach exercises while waiting for it to finish cooking.

· Eat oatmeal and head out the door. Leaving by 7am.

From here I take the long 5 mile walk to work. I’ll take the same walk back tonight.

So, here’s hoping all the work begets some results.

Later.

Well, up to 213……

2008-01-07T11:12:00.000-05:00

But I need a new hole in my belt!

What’s up with that?

I guess fat turns into muscle which weighs more but, shouldn’t 1lb of fat turn into 1lb of muscle? If not, is the mass coming from another dimension somewhere?

Ugh….

Anyway, I walked the long way to work today, about 5 miles. I plan on walking the long way back, about 5 miles. I plan on keeping this up until I can see the muscles in my stomach or i drop dead. I might keep doing it if I like the results. What's two hours of my life a day?

I also only want one chin, not two or three.

I did chest and back today for weights. I starting to look like Chriszilla. I’m use to being big, but not this big. I’m hoping that once most of the fat is gone I’ll start leaning up and showing more definition.

Onwards and upwards….. To space and beyond!

January and the unobtainable goal!

2008-01-03T14:45:00.001-05:00

Being the crazy wacky kind of guy I am, I’ve set up a goal to lose 20lbs before we go to Cape town at the end of February.

The way I’m going to do this you might ask?

Well it starts with cutting out alcohol for at least a month. Yes, you heard me. No booze for at least a month. Do you know how many empty calories there are in booze? LOTS!

And a strict exercise regime, 1 and ½ hours a day for six days a week. Monday through Saturday or until I drop dead. Also, 40 minutes of walking to work and back every Monday through Friday.

Eating about 1600 to 2000 calories a day, I should have about 3100 to keep my weight where it is now. So far so good.

Did I mention that I’m not smoking either. This one wasn’t so big because I only did it when I drank, and that was on the weekends.

So we got a head start and worked out four times before the new year. I’m glad for that. I finally weighed myself yesterday, Jan the 2nd, and I was at 213lbs. This might sound like a lot to you guys but I was thinking I had gotten up to 220lbs. Sooooooo, I’m already ahead, right?

So here are the stats so far for yesterday.

Calories eaten = 1855
Calories burned = 3634 (exercise, walking to work, working, just living and sleeping)
Net loss -1779
Weight 213lbs

Today I have these stats.

Calories eaten = 1699 (estimating the snack and dinner that I have planned for this evening)
Calories burned = 3798 (exercise, walking to work, working, just living and sleeping)
Net Loss -2099

Weight 212lbs

So, why am I doing all this now? Well, because we have just gone through 10 days of excess, too much eating, too much drinking and not enough exercise. At the end of the holiday season, when you look in the mirror naked, you realize you just need to stop and detox for a bit. Not to mention losing some weight.

I would love to go into the details of the holiday season but I don’t have enough time or space to do that. Suffice to say we all had a great time, especially my mother. And besides, I’m moving ahead right now and would rather focus my attention that way.

I will keep this blog updated with my progress/digress hopefully every day. I hope I will make my goal and look good in a speedo in March. Wish me luck.

Christmas tree purchasing, before and after.

2007-12-18T09:25:00.000-05:00

Well, this weekend started off with all the best intentions of getting a Christmas tree on Sunday and doing our Christmas cards then too. Alas, it didn’t happen.

Friday we had two parties to go to, the office Christmas party was from 3 until 5 (two hours, that was just wrong). We held it at a restaurant across the street from the office in the Washington Harbor. It was good enough, I ended up winning the first prize giveaway right when I was commenting on never winning anything. Two $50 gift certificates for BP gas. This was nice but I don’t drive that much, sooooo I swapped with a friend who got a best buy gift card. Everyone was happy.

After that we went to the Bench Gym Christmas party. It was fun and we enjoyed it. It was a bit weird drinking wine at the gym. Great new space they moved into. There old place is now just a hole in the ground.

We then got food at Duplex dinner with Brett and Daniel and went to bed. We had to get up early as we were having a dinner party and we hadn’t gotten anything yet and the main course (BB-Q pork ribs) took close to eight hours to cook.

So off we went to Harris Teater at 8 in the morning on a Saturday morning to go food shopping. $450 dollars later we had everything, shrimp for a pre-dinner shrimp plate, scallops for the starter, apples and cranberries for the desert and 14 bottles of wine for the whole meal. Here was the menu:

Amuse bouche was a collie flower with cumin and parmesan cheese soup.

The starter was seared sea scallops on top of potato cakes on a bed of an assiago, peppercorn sauce with drizzled olive oil topped with cream freche and caviar.

The main was slow cooked pork ribs with mashed sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts cooked with bacon.

Desert was an apple and cranberry crisp with vanilla ice cream. And some chocolates that Derek brought over.

The next morning we counted the bottles, I think it came out to 15 bottles for 10 people with one not drinking. Well that was definitely what I would call a successful party. I ended up going to bed before most people did. I was just exhausted after cooking all day and I was l little too drunk to stay awake. Mind you it was twelve midnight and I had been up since six that morning. I was going to take a nap but our friend Evegeny from VA beach came up for the party and showed up right with I was drifting away.

Oh well.

Sunday wasn’t our usual Sunday. Thanks goodness. I think we’ve gone off the whole drunken brunch thing at our house. We had a full house at that point as a few people stayed over. We agreed to go to brunch at Logan Tavern, some more friends came over and we headed that way. When we got there the was a 45 minute wait so we went to Makato instead. Ten of us total and we got sat right away. It was fun.

It’s amazing how quickly a buzz will come back when you have a cocktail the day after a heavy night. We were supposed to go get a Christmas tree and do the Christmas cards but that wasn’t happening that Day. We ended up going back to Rob’s house and having a sauna. We then got invited to another friend’s house for another party. We stayed there for a bit and then I was ready to go home but got talked into going out for Thai food. That was a very good thing. I came back and enjoyed the rest of the night. Dave and I were in bed by 10:30 so everything was good.

Monday I get to work and get a message from one of the guys I work with

Him “you here?”
Me “Um, yes, why?”
Him “When are we leaving”
Me “oh shit, I forgot about that”

Anyway, we updated some software on Friday here at our main office. Everything went pretty well except we forgot about a remote office in Arnold MD. That office is connected to our servers by a dedicated t-1 line. It’s not fast enough to install software over. So we had made plans on Friday to go to Arnold on Monday to sneaker net to the computers.

I walked home and got the car. Came back to the office and picked up my coworker. We drove out to the eastern shore and did the install on their computers. We were done and back at the office around 3ish so I dropped my coworker off and went home.

One thing I forgot to mention was that Dave had tasked me with getting a Christmas tree while I had the car and was out and about. On New York avenue there is a place but unfortunately I drove right by it and didn’t think about it. I tell you this because it fits into the story latter. So as I said before I dropped my coworker off and really didn’t go home, I went Christmas tree shopping. On a Monday, after a big Christmas tree buying weekend.

To say depressing is an understatement.

I first went to the local charity lot on 17th street. Oh my god, it was picked over like a turkey on thanksgiving. That and the fact there was no one there to give my money too made me decide go to the Home Depot.

It wasn’t any better. Dave and I went there two weeks ago and it was packed with good looking trees. We decided we didn’t want the tree in our house that early so we didn’t get one. I finally found one that might do, tried to get someone to help but no one was around. I picked it up, went inside and then got into a line that was the shortest of three huge lines. All the construction workers where there buying stuff for their projects so they had lots of stuff. And there were at least 8 or more people in each line. I gave up and took the tree back and went home in despair.

By the time I had gotten home I had decided that we didn’t need a tree and the it was the most bizarre custom anyway.

Take a perfectly good LIVE tree. Kill it, Bring into your home, put lights on it, and then bizarre ornimates. Throw out in two weeks.

Repeat process next year.

So anyway I get home, Dave listens to this and says that we can go back out to the New York avenue place and get one later. After all we do have the niece coming over and we needed to get one for her sake.

So at 7:30pm we head out there. All the trees they have and standing in stands with water in them. The trees a beautiful and in good shape.

But not cheap.

We pick one and this guy comes to help us. He’s talking to us with an east Indian accent, island accent. I talk to him for a bit without making eye contact but when I finally do I’m little bit freaked out. One of his eyes was completely white. I’m not sure what causes that but it freaks me out when I see it. So from then on I had a hard time looking at him. He finally get the tree and cuts off the bottom part and off to home we go. Total price with tipping him, $80. It will be worth it when Dave’s niece comes over.

So we now have a Christmas tree in the house, tonight I will put lights on it that I purchased on the way to work. We then have dinner with friends out. Wednesday we have a friend’s birthday party to go to and then a stopover at Dave’s brother’s new house. Thursday I’m having a dinner party for some people from work and then Friday my mom arrives for the holiday. We’ve decided to have an open house on Saturday for drinks and help on decorating the tree.

So, if you don’t hear from me for a week or two I think you’ll understand.

Happy holidays.

Coffee talk, err bitch!

2007-12-12T14:38:00.001-05:00

Ok, so for the last couple of months I’ve been having an extra cup of coffee at work. I didn’t use to do this but the stress from working got me doing it again. So to get an understanding for my morning I’m going to write down my average schedule.

Get up at 6-6:30.

Go down stairs and start the coffee. Empty the dishwasher from the night before while the coffee is brewing.

Get the news paper from downstairs next to the front door.

Make a cup of coffee and then check work emails to make sure that Europe is doing fine and that there are no other big problems.

After coffee starts to work, go upstairs to the bathroom and start getting cleaned up.

Sometimes I will do some stomach exercises if I have time before the shower so I don’t have to do them at the gym later.

Finish getting dressed and say good bye to Dave and head to work between 7:30 and 8.

I arrive at the office and if it’s Monday I buy a new 1.5L bottle of water, if it’s not Monday I go to my cube and get my bottle from the day before to fill it up in the kitchen with our filtered water machine. While I’m in the kitchen doing this I will get a cup of coffee.

Well the last bit has changed a bit and I’m not sure what happened. I use to come in and there would be plenty of coffee made. I could get my cup and not have to worry about the next guy because there was enough. But not anymore.

I’ve had to change my whole routine in the morning to stop by the kitchen before I do anything else and make a fresh pot of coffee before I even make it to my desk because I know there will not be any there waiting for me. I know this is a small thing but It’s gotten to me the last couple of months.

I know I’m not the first one there to make the coffee and that other people are drinking it but just leaving the pot empty or close to it. What happened to human decencies. Thinking of your brother sometimes. Maybe going out of your way to do something nice for someone that isn’t, oh I don’t know, YOU!!!

It’s not the coffee that’s the problem, it’s the total disregard of anyone else other then one’s self that bothers me. UGH……

I’ve gone to the kitchen late to get coffee before and watched someone leave with two cups in their hands. When I went to the coffee machine, it was empty. It was all I could do not to follow this person out and tell them off. And the thing is, it probably didn’t even occur to this person to even think about making more coffee.

This is what the underlying problem is about, the fact that our society has raised our children to be so damned self centered.

It’s not about the coffee.

But boy would it be nice to see someone else making a new pot of the stuff at work every so often.

The Sound of Music and other wonderings.

2007-12-11T08:48:00.001-05:00

I think you will find this quite interesting.

Our friend Derek invited Dave and myself over for dinner last night. We had no idea who else was going to be there but graciously accepted. One thing you need to know about Derek is that he has had a fascinating life and has meet all kinds of people from his time working at Cambridge and after from his church goings.

Of course Dave and I get there first, we were running a little bit late too. It just meant more Veuve Clicquot (Champaign) for us. Derek already had his friend, Ralphie baby, there. He is staying with Derek visiting from London where he is retired from the BBC as an actor and producer.

Now being as bad as I am with names I don’t remember the rest of the cast of characters name’s there at the dinner. And this isn’t because I had too much wine or anything like that. I’m on the end of a very bad cold and had a hard time going to begin with so names were going in one ear and out the other. We had a mother show up with her 8 month old absolutely adorable baby. We also had an older, very eccentric lady that use to work for the Washington opera.

All these people with the most entertaining stories. Ralphie baby (whose name I do remember for some reason) had all these great stories about when he was in school for theatrics and who his class mates where. Mind you, I didn’t know most of them because they were English but every so often he would spit out a name that I knew. We also came to find out that he was the producer on Doctor Who, the third rendition. Now if you are an American of my age group, there is only one doctor who and that’s the one with the really big nose and really bad curly hair played by Tom Baker. Well Ralphie baby produced the one before that played by Jon Pertwee. Jon is the same person that comments on the Little Britton comedy show from the UK.

Such great stories.

Now for the interesting bit.

Seems that the lady who was sitting next to me all night does some work for the Kennedy center. She use to be really big with the opera here but retired so now she’s doing part time work. When she worked for the opera every so often she would have to get some “extras” for the shows. So she’s telling about going to JR’s (local gay bar) and going up to boys and telling them that she’s casting for some opera but that she needs men without hair on their chest.

She said she had never seen men pull their shirts off so fast. That had me in stitches I thought it was so funny.

But this is the bit that really got me.

Every since we were children we watched the Sound of Music almost every holiday season. It was a tradition and we can sing all the songs. So there she is in the middle of JR’s getting guys to take their shirts off for an audition when she notices that the Sound of Music is playing. She comments “Oh, the Sound of Music, I was in that. I’m the short nun behind the head nun in the climb every mountain song.”

Well, she was popular before but after that the boys were all over her.

My jaw dropped to the floor. There was someone who was in one of my all time favorite movies sitting beside me for a casual dinner on a Monday night in Washington DC!

I do have to say, my life is never dull.

I'm backkkkkkkkkk!!!

2007-12-04T14:33:00.000-05:00

Ok, it’s been awhile.

Just haven’t been in the mood to write. But now I have a little bit of time. Here’s what we’ve been up to.

After getting back from my Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Los Angeles trip Dave and I had a pretty quite two weeks at home. Always nice because it doesn’t happen often. We then headed off to London in November, me the 22nd and Dave the weekend before. We had Daniel come along too. It was a real whirlwind of activity. Daniel and I get off the plan and decide to take the tube into town instead of my usual (and much favored) Heathrow Express to Padington and taxi to SOHO.

I don’t think I want to do that again.

The tube took over an hour to get to Lechster Square. After being on a plane for 8 hours I was ready to be there. Once we got there we get out to the street and I’m completely lost. Mind you, I know London so this surprised me. We were staying on Old Compton street and I started us in the direction I thought it was but got confused when we ended up in China town. I didn’t remember there being a China town there. So I stopped and called Dave. He walked me the long way around to the flat.

I was headed in the right direction but had only seen those streets in the dark and with most of the Chinese stores closed with no lights on. That’s where I got confused.

We go up to the flat, take a shower and then head out for lunch. I’ve been in London for two hours at this point. We meet up with our friend Derek who lives in DC and is extremely British and was in town visiting the same time we where and Diago, another friend that lives in London. After our quick lunch we realize we need to make it to the train station to go visit mum.

We’re running late.

We still decided to get some beautiful flowers on the way. It takes forever for the girl to arrange them, but it’s well worth it. We finally get a cab and make it to the train station on time to sit down and leave. Luckily we had assigned seat as the train was packed.

We make it to Bedford and Dave’s mum is waiting for us. Off to the house we go. Auntie and Uncle show up and we have a great meal. Decide to go back to the flat at around 10ish. We get there and for some reason I now have energy. We go out to G-A-Y late until about one. I don’t know how I did it but I did.

I did get some sleep that night.

The next day is Friday and we have a party at Ian and Darryl’s that evening. They have this great place near ST Pancreas that they purchased three years ago. What planning! They now have the Euro Star a 15 minute walk away from the house. Did I mention it’s a penthouse with great views of the city? We’ll it is.

We stayed there until about 11, around 20 people showed up by the time we left. We then cabed to the last ever night of Fiction nearby. What a fun night. We stayed until 3ish. We more or less just stood around and talked, not really dancing at all. The funny thing is that as the night went on the more I talked to people. By the end of the night I decided to chat up this guy that had looked at me a couple of times. I go over and introduce myself, bring him and his friend over to say hi to Dave and chat for a bit only to find out, get this, that he was

Straight!!!!!

Just my luck, picking up the one bloke in the place that wasn’t really interested. Oh well.

Saturday wasn’t really that eventfull. We did end up staying up in our flat until 3ish with some friends. But that was about it.

Sunday was another clubbing night. We got invited to a 60th birthday party by Diago and Mark. I don’t remember the name of the venue but it was cool. We had the whole place to ourselves and it was right down the road from DTPM so after the party we all walked there. Daniel and I didn’t stay very long as Daniel picked up. We went back to the flat and Dave stayed for a bit and danced with our UK Daniel friend. It was a good thing to do because Dave could relax at that point and not worry about US Daniel so he could dance.

About 3am Dave shows up back at the flat, we’re all still awake and end up staying awake talking. Dave and I end up getting breakfast at Balains’s café that morning because neither of us was sleepy. Daniel had already taken his boy back into the bedroom.

So that’s Monday morning. Here’s when I get a little bit confused. We had dinner with Andy either on that night or the next. When we did have dinner with Andy, Paul came by after buying 25 pounds (UK Money not weight) of grapes at Harrod’s. It wasn’t that big of a bag either. That’s some expensive grapes. We ate at Balain’s.

At some point we had dinner with Laurence at Caffe Bohim, I don’t remember if it was Saturday or Tuesday night or maybe both. It all runs together. I did work on the later bit of Monday and all of Tuesday, travel home on Wednesday.

We always leave wanting more, that’s a good thing.

We get home, poor Dave has a cold/flu and I’m just worn out. I go to the office the next day. I might as well not been here I was that out of it.

Butt….

I still had the strength to meet Kiat out for drinks and dinner, (just because I don’t think I spent enough money in London$$$$) I meet him at Halo for happy hour at 6ish, Dave had a networking thing in Tyson’s that night. We stayed there waiting for some of Kiat’s coworkers that never showed up. Finally we take a cab (it’s Kiat, remember) and high tail it to this new restaurant that opened in the Ritz on 24th and M streets, the Blue Duck Tavern.

Us- Do you have a table for two walk-ins?

Lady Hostess – (Looks us up and Down) No reservation, I’m so sorry, we can’t seat you without a reservation.

Kiat- Sweet talking- Awww, come on. You don’t look that busy.

Lady Hostess –No!

So we leave and go to another new restaurant down the road at 22nd and M. Just opened up and took over where David Gregory was.

See conversation above but replace lady with man.

So we end up going to Pesce on P street near the house, we meet Tony there and proceed to have a really good meal. As consolation prizes go we did ok. I had Scallops in the shell with spinach and garlic butter to start and for the main I had tuna encrusted in pepper with slices of Grapefruit and a passion fruit sorbet. Very scrummy.

So remember, this is the day after I got back from London. The day before I was eating at Zuni fish with Dave in Soho. I mention this and Kiat reminds me that he had been in Sydney the Sunday before. Too funny.

Ok, Friday at home with my man watching an Italian movie where I understood about half of what was being said. The movie wasn’t so good, Dave fell asleep.

Saturday we had the most productive day. Up early because we had stayed home the night before. ( I think that will become our date night from now on) We went to Home depot and finished getting things for the New bathroom that Dave is having put in his rental. We then went to Harris Teater(Tosco for you brits) and purchased $500 in groceries. We hadn’t been in a long time. We helped our friend Brett pick up some art that he had framed. Cool Stuff.

We then had a party at Rob and Mikko’s. We all know how those go.

Sunday was brunch at the house with some friends over.

Monday was work and then an event for the Williams Institute. Dinner after at Hank’s oyster bar. Bed by 11, which is one hour later than normal for me.

Work today, Dave’s brother, sister-in-law and niece are coming over for dinner. I’m cooking. I need to get home early to do that. Going to stop by trader Joe’s on the way home.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on in my life. Never a dull moment for the wicked.

Blogg Love

2007-12-01T09:39:00.001-05:00

Not feeling the blogg love right now, hopefully it will come back later. Sorry

LA bound

2007-10-31T18:14:00.000-05:00

Well, I’m at the Palm Springs airport waiting for my flight. I changed to an earlier flight for a few reasons. My checkout was at twelve anyway so it just kind of made sense. That and I had a stalker that wouldn’t leave me alone in the place I was staying.

Onward and upwards to new locations.

I’m really ready to be home to tell the truth. As it looks now I will be back in DC on the 7th but…..

The LA office might not be ready then, they’re having a few issues with the phones and network. I will be able to set up the computers but we need to make sure the internet works and the VPN is up and running. I might be in LA a few more days then I wanted. UGH!

I use UGH a lot lately.

I want my bed and my boyfriend in my bed.

When I get back we already have a very full weekend. I forget what happens Friday night but I know it’s something. We have a good friend’s 60th birthday on Saturday and on Sunday we’re having a dinner party for David and Anton. Anton is from Cape Town SA visiting L’David. I was going to ask for Monday off but I don’t think I’ll be able to do that after being away for so long. I’ll just have to behave myself on Sunday night.

Last night, Tuesday the 30th was nice. I took Simon and Jeremy (visiting Palm Springs from the UK) to my Corporate Secretary’s house out in the dessert. It’s an amazingly huge house that they just had build right outside Palm Springs. It was perfect.

The boys always wanted to see a huge USA house out in the dessert and we showed it to them. Lloyd pulled out the stops with Filet and shrimp. We ate outside by the pool and looked at the stars (the ones in heaven, not the ones walking the streets). It was just perfect. I behaved myself because I was driving so I have three drinks over a four hour period.

I think the boys were just gob smacked. (British term here)

When I got back to the room I just went to bed, it’s been a long two weeks.

Got up this morning and just took it easy. I was going to work out but just decided to chill instead. I packed, called the airlines to change to an earlier flight and then said goodbye to the boys. I have to say I was quite sad saying goodbye. They are the kinds of friends that you only see once a year or so but you pickup exactly where you left off.

Now for the LA experience. We’re going to have dinner with Mike and Gary tomorrow, Thursday NOV the 1st in their Hollywood hills home.

I might be working the weekend, we’ll see.

Until next post, take care.

What happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas!

2007-10-28T15:54:00.000-05:00

Ok, so now let’s just talk about Vegas.

What a pit.

Maybe it was because it was work, but I don’t think so.

It’s everything I don’t like about America rolled up into one hideous place.
It’s expansive and expensive, it’s tacky, it has the whole of Middle America visiting it. They are taking pictures of the fake Paris with no one wanting to see the real one.

The native girl sitting next to me at the info desk (actually more like old hag but that’s another story) keep going on about how great this city is. Did you see the piazzita san marko? She asks me, it’s just amazing. I then realize that she talking about the fake one in the Venetian, the one with the fake outside sky. I did say yes I had seen it but the real one was much more impressive. Ugh, that’s the way everything is here.

I did have a spa day on Saturday. Started at one and didn’t finish until six thirty. That was ok actuall. But yes again very expensive. A message and facial and manicure and pedicure cost around $600. The Same treatment in DC would be half that price. The message ended up with a happy ending, at the VENETIAN!!!!

Friday I did the strip with some work friends. We went to the Bellagio (sp?) to see the fountains. That was cool. We then went to some of the other casinos around. All I have to say is that if it’s not one of the newer nicer hotels, the casinos are just tragic. Scary Middle America with Middle America middles. Smoking and drinking. I ended up gambling some at Harrad’s on the $10 table. I put in twenty.

I won $120!

I lost $100!

I left with my original $20 and three free drinks, so not really that bad.

I then went back to my room and crashed, my work colleagues stayed up until 8am on Saturday and when I saw them in line for a cab to the airport they said they didn’t sleep at all the night before. That was at 10:30am. I’m so happy I went to bed.

The rest of the week we pretty much stayed at the hotel and worked the show. 6am until 7:30pm every day except Friday when I got to leave work at 1. I did go to the young leaders event on Thursday night. It was at Tao in the Venetain and was pretty cool. Because we were staff and they didn’t think that they had enough drink tickets I had to pay for my first drink. I got a martini; I was immediately $18 poorer.

Holy Jesus batman!

Luckily, or not, my boss came through before I needed another one and handed out the tickets to staff. The event was from 7 until 9. At around 15 to 9 we decided it was time to use the rest of the tickets, and we now had lots. I think I had three martinis before this. So we go up to the bar and order shots, we don’t do shots here but I can make you a martini sized lemon drop shot.

We bit.

I don’t remember about an hour of stuff. When I saw the girl I was working with the next morning I asked here where she was the night before I missed her. She was like “you said hi and we talked for a long time” I was like, Shit. One of my other friends walked be back to my hotel room. I came too during that walk.

But I wasn’t the worst.

This other girl that works for my company tried to and succeeded on grabbing a bottle of gray goose vodka from behind the bar. She had it for about five minutes when they discovered she had done it. She got thrown out of the bar and was marked with a black sharpie X on her wrist.

Didn’t make me feel so bad the next morning about my predicament.

I guess what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

I’m not coming back though.

OMG! Las Vegas on a Sunday!

2007-10-28T14:10:00.000-05:00

This was amazing. I decided to go to the airport early because I was over the whole Las Vegas thing after a week of working a conference.

Boy am I glad I did. It was just a zoo. I’ve traveled all over the world and I’ve never seen an airport so crowded. The line started all the way on the other side of the airport. I made it to a point where I thought I was getting close only to have to turn the corner for another line that bended back around again. That happened three times!

I’m never coming back to Vegas, that’s all I have to say.

Travel, travel, travel.

2007-10-19T12:35:00.000-05:00

Here is my schedule for the next two plus weeks. Ugh..

Leave for Dulles at 6am on Sunday the 21st for a 8:30am flight to Las Vegas. Staying there until the 28th.

Catch plane from LAS to Palm Springs to sort out our corporate secretary’s internet access. 28th throught 31st. Paid for by work think you very much.

Leave Palm Springs for LAX on the 31st to set up new LA office. Work Thursday, Friday and Monday and come back on the 6th.

Weekend with Dave in LA.

I was supposed to be back on the 28th, 29th and 30th but they decided to send me to Palm Springs.

I will have 50089 points after this. Just making gold by the skin of my teeth.

I'm tired!

2007-10-15T12:57:00.000-05:00

I’ve gotten a few messages about not updating my blog, so here we go.

Friday night we took L’Alex out for his birthday at Monsire. It was a nice little dinner and everyone left with a full belly. We didn’t go out because we had to get up early the next morning to drive to a birthday party in North Carolina.

It was a five hour drive down there on Saturday and 5 hours back on Sunday. The surprise was that the party ended at 8. I suppose this was going to happen considering that Ivy just had an emergency c-section two Wednesdays ago and the baby was still in the neonatal care unit. That and the fact she had to “pump” her breast for the new baby at 8. (I wasn’t sticking around for that one) I was surprised that they still had the party to tell the truth. We ended up going back to the hotel room and watching the Simpson’s move on pay per view afterwards and got home kind of early on Sunday.

The weird thing is seeing all these people that I spent my twenties with turning 40ish. We starting tell stories from college and our younger years. It was just bizarre. I still think of myself at 20 something, and I’m not. It’s better than the alternative I suppose.

On our way home, L’Dave asked us to come pick him up in Alexandria. He had spent the night there with a friend after going dancing all night. We ended up going back to our house and drinking wine on the roof until it was close to time to go to dinner at Derek’s house that evening.

So to put everything in perspective, we had a birthday dinner with L’Alex on Friday night. Got up on Saturday and drove 300 miles to Durham for a BBQ\Birthday from 3:30 until 8, watched a movie, got 8 hours sleep, drove 300 miles back to DC, picked our friend up and went back to our house for wine on the roof followed by dinner at a friend’s house.

All in a typical weekend at Crave’s

This week I’m getting ready for the Fall meeting at work. I’m trying to get some computers set up and shipped to LA for the setup of the office there. I’ll be in Las Vegas from the 21st of October to the 28th for the fall meeting. I’m back in town for two days and then I’m off to Los Angeles to set up the new office out there. I’ll finally be home on November the 6th. It’s all such a whorl wind. While I’m in LA I’m going to have dinner with some friends who live out there and Dave should come over for that.

Once we get back we have a 60th birthday bash to go to on the 10th of November and on the 11th we’ll be having a dinner party in honor of L’Dave’s love interest from South Africa who is in town for three weeks. Oh, and we’re going to London for Thanksgiving.

Luckily we staying home for Christmas, I might get some rest then but probably not. The family is supposed to come visit then.

I love this girl!

2007-09-25T11:14:00.000-05:00

Just watch the video below. She pretty much says it as it is. What a gal.

Jennine Garolafo, i want to have your baby.

And, another busy weekend with lots of stuff I can't put up here. It's a family blog don't you know.

Ok, another wacky weekend.

2007-09-24T08:57:00.000-05:00

I had to work the whole weekend. Not happy about that.

On Friday at 4:15PM the network in our DC office just went tits up. We didn’t make any changes or anything (I ain’t done nothing or nothing). So, instead of going to the movie with Dave like I had planned, I ended up staying at work until around 8:30. At that point I told my boss that I need to have dinner with Dave and I would be back in the morning.

Next day I’m in the office from 8:30 until 6:30 redoing the whole network. Dave (the contractor) comes in and helps upgrade the firewall and pull a bunch of cables. We think it’s all good and I go home and then go to Rob and Mikko’s for a party. 2:30 that night we finally get home.

Only to get up and work again.

It wasn’t fixed at all. So I had to come in on Sunday and work again! Seems that a switch on the network was taking over the network. I finally figured it out. It was either my computer or my switch at my desk that was causing the issues. This after two days of work and reconnection all the physical equipment. I do remember it looking like I had got a virus on my computer but that it was caught by the virus software. Guess not. I’m scared to plug all that stuff back in so I’m in the server room on my laptop right now.

And then we went drinking again on Sunday night. Ugh.

I think I’ve had about four hours sleep over the last weekend. I’m so tired now.

On to the joke of the week.

So on the way to work I saw a car accident. Rear end thingy. The guy in the car that hit the truck got out and walked to the truck. Out from the truck stepped this dwarf who proceeded to cross his arms and proclaim that he wasn’t happy!

The drive of the other car said, “so which one are you?”

That’s when the fight began.

Tell me it's not so Spock!

2007-09-17T13:56:00.000-05:00

Just when you didn't think it could get any weirder.

Lary Craig (I'm Not Gay)

2007-09-17T07:15:00.000-05:00

Only in America would this happen....
http://www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdates/story/159879.html

Boy oh boy, is it just me or does it seem like the republican party are all closeted gays?

Italy, 2007 with the moms

2007-09-13T18:58:00.000-05:00

OK, it's been forever since I've updated this. So with no further ado, here are pictures of our Italy trip. Have fun.

Italy 2007. Dave me and the moms

While I wait

2007-09-13T17:28:00.001-05:00

I'm uploading pictures from Italy to picasa web alblums, while I'm waing I thought I would try something and show pictures from Capetown though a link. Have fun.

Life at 40 and other tales of the mildly cranky

What a weekend!

2007-08-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

Well we keep doing it, good on Friday and then BOOM!

Of course this time we facilitated it by having a small (30+ish) party on Saturday night. I’m not sure but I think we went to bed around 3ish on Sunday morning. It was great fun but it was also very drunken.

We should have just stayed in bed the next day, but no…. It was brunch time and Lil’David was bringing over the Champaign. So We had Evegenny, Cole, Jason, David, David, Craig Dan and myself getting slowly toasted again. Mind you, one glass of mimosa after the drinking done the night before was all it took. We sat around talking shit for about three hours.

Then Dave and I took a nap.

Only to get up and go to Brett’s for dinner and get more drunk. Dear me what a weekend.

So, anyway I’m sitting at my desk really just wanting to go back home and sleep right now. I think next weekend will be just a little bit more tame.

Sydney the long way.

2007-08-13T16:49:00.000-05:00

Well the story turns out ok, but only after weeks.

I’ve been trying to get award seats in Business of First for the last few weeks to Australia in February. There is absolutely nothing going out of the west coast on United for the times that I wanted so I started looking at going through Europe. I had done some searches on the ANA tool and came up with a good itinerary in first on Thai out of London. Called up the to make the reservation. Sorry Mr. XXX, we don’t show any of that being available. United can’t get that from Thai airlines. We can get you there through Asianna on Dates that you don’t want or we could get you there in coach.

I’m not doing a 20+ hour flight in coach, isn’t gonna happen.

So I call back over and over again. Most of the time it’s very nice people with the name “Bob” who you know are sitting half way across the world from you and who will follow the rules to a tee and not go out of their way to be helpful. This happened many, many times to the point where I was just going to give up on the whole idea. Then for some reason I called today to enquire again.

I got a very helpful person who was sitting in Chicago I’m pretty sure. I told her what I wanted to do, LHR-SIN or BKK and then Syd and back. I have looked at these routes and Singapore Air and Thai Air service the routes but the many people I had talked to before just couldn’t find any premium seats. Somehow this person did. I now have two Business class tickets on Singapore Airlines from London to SYD. I’ll purchase a ticket from IAD to LHR for around $600.00. So a 9k ticket for about $900.00 total and a couple of days of my life

It’s all a mystery to me.

It’s been awhile.

2007-08-09T10:36:00.001-05:00

I’ve been busy beyond belief. In the build up to moving all of our servers to an offsite hosting facility, I had been neglecting to update the blog. I finally have a little bit of time to write.

We had a big outing yesterday at work. It was the summer retreat and it was held at a bowling alley. I was great fun but I had a little too much fun. The weird thing is I didn’t drink all that much but it really affected me like I had drank gallons. There is a reason for this. I’m on antibiotics because of a root canal (more on that later) that I got on Monday. These antibiotics are really nasty and they mess up your stomach something fierce. So I had been going to the bathroom a lot and had gotten somewhat dehydrated. Add to that the fact that I had woken up at 4 yesterday and you have the recipe for disaster. I had 5 beers between 1 and 4 and half a bottle of wine after with my friend Melanie. It might as well been 10 bottles of wine by the way if affected me. I pretty much came home and crashed big time.

First thing I did this morning was write an email to Dave apologizing. We’ve decide that drinking on antibiotics is a really bad idea and that I will not do it again.

As for the root canal, I had gone to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned on Monday of this week and had mentioned that I thought the tooth was ready for the canal. We’ve know that I needed one for about two years but was waiting for it to pop through the gum like a blister, and it did. He said that he had an opening that afternoon otherwise it would be about a month. So I showed up at 12:30 for the procedure.

An hour later he was still working on it. He told me that normally it only takes about 15 minutes but I had a really tight canal (who knew) and he really had to work on it. They get to the canal and then insert a file into it and start to file the nerve out. This is fine so long as I was numb but by the end of it I was starting to feel things.

Not a good thing.

Anyway, I have to go back. He put me on the antibiotics to take care of the infection and that takes about a week. Meanwhile he has a temporary filling in that on the first day disintegrated while I was eating. Nasty tasting thing. So I had to go back for a third time in one day to the dentist to get the temporary filling put in again. I have to go back on Monday of next week so that he can put the regular filling in and shape the tooth.

All in all this is not a pleasant experience and if you can avoid it, do at all cost. There was one benefit though, seems that the infected tooth had been wearing me down over the last two years and I didn’t know it. I just attributed being tired to having turned 40. After taking the antibiotics for one day I felt great! It’s made a world of difference. Wish I had done it sooner.

Off to lunch now.

The joys of home ownership.

2007-07-24T14:08:00.001-05:00

This is the drama that I've been going through for the last three to four weeks. I've had a leak in my rental unit for the last couple of weeks and I couldn't get the condo association management to look into it. I finally got an email address of the owner of the business that runs this thing and sent him the email below this morning. I got a call within an hour after I sent it.

As I write this it is being fixed. I've gotten quite a few phone calls from Gerald to first appoligize and secondly to say that it was all being taken care of. The people upstairs will be responsible for fixing my unit because it seems to be thier tolet that was causeing the problem.

I can only guess that Gerald got his ass chewed up for this. He didn't respond to any atempts to contact him se we could fix the problem. He only started doing something when I sent something to his boss.

Go figure. Enjoy the following. This is leaving out alot of stuff too.

Yes, I spoke to Gerald about it. He said that they apartment above is responsible for the fix.

-----Original Message-----From: ********************************** Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 3:12 PMTo: Chris ***********Subject: Re: FW: Apt 809 leak

just spoke to the plumber and it looks like it is the toilet in 908.
they are fixing it now. the lady from the mgmt co. said 908 is paying
for it.

On 7/24/07, Chris **********************************wrote:
Sorry, they said in about an hour and that was about an hour ago.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew **********************************

Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 2:01 PM
To: Chris*************

Subject: Re: FW: Apt 809 leak

what time do you think they will be stopping by?

On 7/24/07, Chris ********************************** wrote:

They are going to look at the leak today. Seems that calling the owner of
Piercom got his but in gear.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew **********************************
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 10:29 AM
To: Chris ******************

Subject: Re: FW: Apt 809 leak
that's great news. i'll clear out the bathroom tonight so if they need
to do anything right away they can. I'll keep you up to date on the
progress. Thanks a lot chris, i appreciate it.

-AW

7/24/07, Chris K. ********************************** wrote:

Just got off the phone with someone from Pierlink who wasn't Gerald.
They will be coming over with a plumber to look at it tomorrow. They
apologized profusely. I sent an email to the owner of the company. Looks
like it will be taken care of now.
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew **********************************

Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 10:16 AM
To: Chris *************
Subject: Re: FW: Apt 809 leak

The bathroom is still 100% functional, just an eye sore, but i want to
make sure it is solved before there is any structural damage. having
dealt with mgmt companies on a day to day basis in my previous career
for 5+ years i feel your pain

On 7/23/07, Chris ********************************** wrote:
Just called and left a very not happy message. Don't understand what
we are paying these f*ckers for.

Frank,

I’m only writing you because I’m not getting any information from the person below. It involves a leak in the bathroom of unit 808 in the Saint George, a condo unit the pierlink oversees. I found your email address on the internet. Please read all of the correspondence below. If matters are not resolved I will be forced to seek the services of a lawyer.

Chris *********************

PS. Please see the damage in the pictures attached.

let me know if you need me to do anything.

On 7/23/07, Chris ****************> wrote:
> Are you kidding me, nothing!!! Ok, I'm getting a lawyer.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: *********************]
> Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 6:23 PM
> To: chris *****************
> Subject: Re: FW: Apt 809 leak
>
> Chirs,
>
> Have you got an update on this situation?
>
> -Andrew
>
> On 7/15/07, Chris ********************* wrote:
> > Gerald,
> >
> > Are you guys going to do anything about this? Seems that the water isn't only damaging my unit but the fabric of the building. I would think that because of this it would be high on your priority list. Please let me and Andrew know of your plans and progress on this matter. Thanks.
> >
> > *********************
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: *********************]
> > Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 5:42 PM
> > To: *********************

> > Subject: Re: Apt 809 leak
> >
> > Chris,
> >
> > Any word yet?
> >
> > On 7/10/07, Chris ********************* <*********************> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Amy,
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Thanks for your diligence in this matter.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Gerald,
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I need to know where to go from here. It looks like it is a
> > > building problem and not one that Amy is responsible for. My tenet
> > > has been patient with this for long enough and I'm starting to get
> > > significant damage. Thanks for your help and response.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Chris
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > From: *********************

> > > Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 9:30 AM
> > > To: Gerald Sullivan; *********************; *********************

> > > Subject: Apt 809 leak
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Dear Gerald -
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > As discussed, I checked my bathroom for any leaks, and could not find any.
> > > Furthermore, I have put a tarp around the wall of my shower for
> > > the past week, and the leak still continues. The leak is
> > > particularly strong in the late afternoon when I have not used any
> > > water, so it is not likely that the leak is coming from my shower.
> > > Therefore, the leak appears to be coming from a common element.
> > > Please have someone inspect 809 to determine the cause of the leak.
> > >
> > >
> > > Thank you
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > >
> > > *** ***

> > >
> > >
> > > PS - The owner of the unit - Steven ***, is not my father. He is
> > > my brother.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 7/3/07, Gerald S******* <*********************> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Mr. Cost*****:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > The owner of UNIT 908 is listed as follows:
> > >
> > > 908STG
> > >
> > > *********************
> > >
> > > *********************
> > >
> > > #908
> > >
> > > Washington, DC

> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > His daughter Amy ********************* is resident there. She
> > > has spoken with her father. She will be speaking with you to solve this.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > If it is not from the deeded Unit above your Unit, then the
> > > Association looks to the common elements and pays for any repair of a common element.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Thank you for your help with all the information you provided.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > *********************************
> > >
> > > Gerald J.*********
> > >
> > > *********************
> > >
> > > *********************

> > >
> > > Washington, D.C. 20007
> > >
> > > *********************
> > > *********************

> > > **********************************.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > .......................
> > >
> > > Saint George Apt 908.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Hello, I'm the owner of Apt 808 below yours. We seem to have
> > > another leak coming from your bathroom into mine. Please contact
> > > me so we can discuss fixing the problem. Please also find a picture of the damage attached.
> > > Thanks.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > *********************
> > >
> > > *********************
> > > Unit A
> > >
> > > *********************
> > >
> > >
> > > ********************* (Home)
> > >
> > > *********************(Cell)
> > >
> > > *********************(Work)
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > *********************
> > >
> > > *********************
> > >
> > > *********************
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > >
> > >
> > > From: *********************
> > > Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 2:33 PM
> > > To: Gerald Su*******; *******************
> > > Cc: *********************
> > > Subject: Let's try this again.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > The pictures and letter.
> > >

London Heathrow

2007-07-19T09:11:00.000-05:00

Well here I am again in the Red Carpet Club in London. Getting here and check-in was quite easy. I came a little bit early because I had to be out of the hotel by 11. Thought about shopping but decided it was too expensive now that the dollar is at a 30 year low against the Pound. This trip hurt.

The trip has pretty much been straight forward. It was a pure business trip. I came in on Monday on the day time flight, it was three hours late. I didn’t get to bed until 2ish that night and had to be at work the next day . I ended up showing up at 12ish.

I did all of my network stuff and then headed off for a drunken lunch with my co-worker Melanie. We sat outside and drank blush wine for about three hours. Gret lunch but I didn’t get much else done that day. I pretty much went back to the room and slept until the next day.

I went into work and fixed all of the little issues that happens when you do a major network change over. The printers didn’t work right, the polycom system was screwed up and various other small issues. Before I got there I remember to go to the Teb Baker store and switch out the shirt I got for Kiat for a larger one.

I SMSed the boys and meet them out last night. We went to Rupert Street’s and then Balian’s for dinner. It was fun and it was great seeing all the boys again.

Not really into writing long drawn out witty blog posts right now so I think this will be it.

Can I get another opinion?

2007-07-12T12:15:00.000-05:00

Where to begin, not much has happened this week. Just waiting for the big move and squashing small fires at work.

I’ve been going home and watching movies this week while Dave is in Jamaica. Superman returns, Ghost Rider, and some weird movie on HBO call happy ending. I’m also studying my Italian. So very exciting I know but it’s keeping me out of trouble. I’m going to have sushi with Kiat tonight which should be fun. I need to wash clothes too.

It’s so exciting I just don’t know what to do.

I got an email from my long lost friend Colleen today. It was good hearing from her. Seems she’s had another baby. Last time I talked to her she was pregnant and now there is this little human being. Amazing really. I’m trying to set up a time to go out to Virginia and see her and the family. It will be good to catch up.

So here is our schedule for the next couple of weeks.

Dave gets back on Friday and we have a quite weekend planed because the week after is going to be very hectic. I’m going to London and Dave is going back to Jamaica for the week. I get back on Thursday and he gets back on Friday. We then turn around and go straight back to the airport to catch a plane to New Burn, NC for my family reunion.

The next week Dave leaves for Jamaica for the week again and our friend Alex comes to stay with us for a bit. He’s looking for a place to rent here in DC and we’re putting him up until he finds it.

The weekend after that I will be moving my servers from our current location to an offsite facility. This is going to be fun but a mess of pain. Hopefully it will all work very easily. Keep your fingers crossed.

We then don’t really have plans for August except for Italian classes two times a week until we go to Italy at the end of August. Dave will probably be called down to Jamaica again. We’ll see.

Now on to another topic….

My mind is a little bit butterflyish today, it’s all over the place.

Work, I had the opportunity to think about it the other day. My boss and I had discussed me taking over some responsibility and getting a promotion. I thought this was going to definitely happen around review time.

And then I got my annual review.

It was a good review and I got the max raise that I could get, and then was told that they would be giving me the responsibility and NOT the promotion. We would look at the promotion again in three months. My boss said that he had proposed it too late to the powers that be.

I found this very funny in that the powers that be can make things happen the same day, I’ve seen them do it.

I was not happy at all. I left my boss’s office and went outside. I sat on a bench for three hours thinking.

It was like someone had punched me in the stomach. I had tears coming up and felt sick.

I’ve been at this job for over 7 years. I’ve seen many, many people promoted that do ¼ the work I do and who have been there one or two years. It just told me how appreciated I am here, as in not very.

This makes you reevaluate your life and what’s important and right now work isn’t it. I’m 40 years old and the idea of doing this for the rest of my life makes me feel quite ill. The stress from work has been affecting the rest of my life drastically, and not in a good way. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it yet but I’ll keep the blog posted.

Enough for now.

3rd Time at the Inn and we didn’t strike out!

2007-07-05T13:40:00.001-05:00

Oh what a wonderful experience we had. It was amazing. We were a bit worried because you never expect something to be better the second time you go let alone the 3rd.

We left the house around 3 in the afternoon and arrived at little Washington around 4:30. We settled in and went for a walk just to get our blood pumping, dinner wasn’t until 8:30 so we had time. When we checked in the Innkeeper at the Gay Street inn asked if we would like some wine but we declined at that point and did the walk. By the time we got back he were ready for the wine but no Inn keeper was to be found. They went to dinner at a friend’s house and left a number to call if anything was needed. We decided we could wait for the dinner.

We really wanted the wine at that point, because he had put the idea in our head, so we walked back up to the Inn at Little Washington to the store that they have. Which happened to close about ten minutes before we got there. We knew that they had wine but it was too late. Nothing else was open so we went back to our inn to take a nap.

The nap was good, we woke up refreshed and decided to take showers and go earlier to the inn then our reservation was for. We were told earlier that they where kind of slow that evening so we could come in earlier if we wanted.

So we dressed in what I would call fabulous conservative, with sports coats and cuff links and walked on over to the Inn.

When we got there we where met at the front by the doorman who knew out names and asked us to come in. Once in we were asked if we wanted a cocktail, which we declined because we knew that we were going to have copious amounts of wine once we sat down. Three to four people greeted us and we were then lead to “the most romantic table” table by a very happy headwaiter that exclaimed this as we walked past quite a few other tables. Kind of funny and a bit embarrassing, we just smiled and headed toward our gorgeous table.

Once we settled in at this most amazing table, we ordered Champaign. One rose for me and one White for Dave. This was a repeat of the 40th birthday dinner for Dave that we had at the Plaza Athanade in Paris. The table was at the end of a long corridor with windows on both sides and a little creak running underneath with gold fish swimming below. We then started reading the menu, oh my goodness what a menu. We had already decided what we were going to do, which was the tasting menu but it was a hard choice. Here’s what we had, and we paired it with wine.

1. A quartet of Island Greek Oyster Slurpees with Grosset-Hill Smith, Mesh, Riesling, Eden Valley Australia, 2005 as the wine
2. A Tin of Sin: American Ossetra Caviar with a Crab and Cucumber Rillette with Feudi San Gregorio, Pietracalda, Fiano Di Avellino, Campania, Italy, 2004 as the wine
3. Morel Dusted Diver’s Scallops and Louisiana Crayfish on Carmellini Beans Dress with summer truffle Vinaigrette with Domain Chapoutier, La Bernardine, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Rhone, France 2004 as the wine
4. Potato Crusted Tuna Wellington with Caponata Rivioli and Bearnaise with Westbrook, Blue Ridge, Pinot Noir, Marlborough, New Zealand, 2005 as the wine
5. Braised Veal Cheek with Saffron Risotto with Hillinger, Hill 1 Burgenland, Austria, 2005 as the wine
6. Lilliputian Passion Fruit Dreamsicle No wine
7. A Limoncello Souffle with Lemon Ice Cream with Vietti, Moscato d;Asti, Cascinetta, Piedmont, Italy, 2005 as the wine.

We also had an amuse bouche to begin with that consisted of one small shrimp dish, one small tuna dish, one small beet and caviar dish and one small mango Virginia ham dish. These all came out in small spoons. They were wonderful. We received a plum soup to try and to cleanse our pallet too. So if you think about it we had nine courses and life was good.

At the end of the meal one of the waiters quietly came down our corridor and opened a door onto the garden to my right, she opened it just a little bit but both Dave and I noticed. A little while later I see a figure in the garden moving toward the ajar door, he was coming from the kitchen across the way. The next thing I know Patrick O’Connell opens the door and comes over to our table. What a great surprise. He chatted with us for a good ten minutes and wished us a happy anniversary. That is one of the reasons why the Inn at little Washington is such a wonderful place to go, the personal attention and the thought put into everything.

We stopped by the Monkey bar an had a single malt scotch just because we had to. Not that we needed anymore drink but it was fun and we then paid.

OUCH!

But worth it.

We stumbled back to our Inn at around 11 being one of the last to leave the restaurant. Went to bed and got up around 8ish this morning to have a wonderful breakfast at our Inn. I’m fooded out at this point but Little Dave is coming over tonight for more food and wine.

Like I say it’s a hard life but someone has to live it.

Oh, and I think I fixed and issue with the exchange server. All in less then 36 hours.

10 Year Anniversary, or 4th of July

2007-07-04T11:38:00.000-05:00

I’ll pick the 10 year anniversary over the other.

Today 10 years ago in on a small island called Key West Dave and I meet. It was only supposed to be a very short term thing and we're still together.

We met in a bar ( I know, I know but hey…. It can work) and that night was supposed to be it. The next day we got together and had a great time. Dave was there (key West) visiting form the Cayman Islands using up an airline voucher that was about to expire. I had just been to a company pick-nick that got rained out and had gone home. I decided that I didn’t want to be home alone on a holiday so I got dressed and headed out to the local bar Bourbon St.

I thought it would be dead, who in their right mind would go to Key West in the middle of the summer. Turns out lots people did. It was packed, totally nuts to butts packed. I didn’t want to be alone but I didn’t want a huge crowd either. So I looked around and saw a seat at the back bar that was open. I quickly grabbed it and then ordered a beer. I then looked at the guy next to me (Dave) and said hello. He then answered with a heavenly British accent.

That was all she wrote.

I learned how to scuba drive and then went to the Cayman Islands to visit Dave. This was the first time I had ever been outside the US. We had a blast. I did the turtle farm with Dave along with some of the best scuba diving in the world.

After this we talked almost every day. Cayman is very expensive to call but luckily Dave worked for the phone company there so he could make cheaper calls if not free.

We both had made plans to move from our perspective locations, me to Charlotte, NC and Dave to Washington, DC. I had already moved up to Charlotte when Dave came for an interview in DC. I was at a family reunion in the mountains of NC and had decided that DC wasn’t that far away so I would drive and come see Dave. After about an 8 hour drive I showed up. Dave thought that was the most romantic thing every. I guess you could say I got lucky that night.

Dave got the job in Washington and I had a job in Charlotte. We did the long distance thing for about 2 and ½ years until I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him I was coming up and bringing my two dogs. That was close to 8 years ago. Lots has happened since then.

We still like each other.

Dave has shown me the world. Sydney, Cape Town, London, Venice, next up Rome.

Dave now works at home and I’m the one going into the “Real” job every day. I did think it would be the other way around.

It all just kind of works, very strange really for something that was never supposed to work at all.

Tonight we’re going to the Inn at Little Washington. This is one of the best restaurants on the East coast if not in the US. It’s about an hour outside DC in Washington VA. We’ll be staying nearby in a B&B that is owned by friends of friends of ours. It’s way too expensive to stay at the actual Inn. We fully expect to spend at least $500 on dinner alone tonight. It better be good.

Did some Italian today and will finish my home work tomorrow for the upcoming weekend class. We’ve decided to double up on it during August before the actually trip. And to do it during the week.

Dave will be gone next week to Jamaica for the whole week. I have a physical on Wednesday of next week. I figured I turned 40 I better get it all looked at. Dave comes back for the weekend and then we both leave for the next week. I have a business trip to London. I need to get that office ready for the move to the off-site location coming up. When I get back from London we then go to Newburn NC for my family reunion. The next weekend will be the move of the servers to the off-site. Hopefully August will calm down a little.

‘till next time.

Chris

Exchange Server go blewie!!

2007-06-27T16:54:00.001-05:00

Here I sit at the office hoping that the restore I’m doing from tape will get the exchange server up and running. Please oh please let this happen.

I got into work with the news that email was down. This was at 7:30am it’s now 6pm and I’m still working on it. Thank God for backups. This has kind of been how my week has been going.

The beach was fun last weekend. Not sure I want to write about it though. There was some drama too.

Not feeling very chatty right now, just felt like putting something up on the blog.

Off to the beach this weekend

2007-06-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

We’re off to Rehoboth beach this weekend. Our friends Rob and Carlos invited us down. Kiat and Tony will be there along with little David who is catching a ride from us. We’ll be leaving around 7-7:30 tonight to let all the traffic die down before we go. It’s a mad house getting over the Bay bridge on a summer Friday from DC. It should be good fun.

Dave will be in Jamaica next week for work. We’ll be getting back from Rehoboth late Sunday night and he’ll get up early on Monday and take off. It’s a crazy wild world but someone has to do it.

Today is my day not to touch anything at work. We don’t want to break something because it means that we would have to abandon our beach planes because I would have to work the weekend to fix it. So I’ve been told not to start any projects on Friday and not to change anything big unless we have a working weekend planned.

The hazards of being a computer geek.

Have a good weekend all.

Well, Blackberry do da, do da da daaaaaaa…..

2007-06-21T15:51:00.000-05:00

What a fiasco! All I wanted to do was set up a blackberry for our new Atlanta guy. Really, that was it. Nothing special or anything like that.

Who knew it would take two weeks for me to get it done, and it only got done because I walked down to the Cingular-AT&T store in Georgetown to get a new SIM.

Here’s the story. We hire a new guy in Atlanta and he wants a blackberry. We get him a blackberry with an Atlanta phone number. The next day he emails me to say he wants his old phone number with the new blackberry.

It’s too late to change the number at this point so I figure we’ll fix it when I get the device. I always make sure I get the new blackberries so I can set them up correctly and then send them on their way.

I get the blackberry and then proceed to get very busy for the next couple of days and a weekend comes along. So I get back from fire island after the weekend and decide it’s time to get this thing going for our new guy. I call Cingular- AT&T and ask about moving the number over to the new phone.

No they can’t do it.

Why?

Well because he’s already a customer of Cingular&T but at a regional level and because of this he would have to call and “release” his account so that the National Business unit (the one we use) could take over the account.

Fine, GA boy, get in touch with your Cingular&T peps and I’ll get in touch with mine. Another two Days go by and I get an email from my GA guy saying that it’s all ready to be switched.

Now at this point you have to remember that I called before but didn’t think I had activated the old 770 number that came with the phone. But I had. Who knew.

I call and ask to have the phone account switched over to the corporate account. The nice rep says that will be fine can I wait while she fills out some forms. She comes back on and tells me that because it was a regional account that it would take 24 to 48 hours to have it added to our National account. At this point the poor guy has been without the device for almost two weeks. I tell the nice rep that I’ve had an easier time moving another carrier’s phone numbers over to our master account. She laughs and says that yes that’s true.

So we wait two more days.

I call today to finally get it set up and ready, four times I called! The first person can’t help me because the phone had been activated and the 770 number was attached to the new SIM card. I said that I hadn’t activated it, she says I had and that the only way to make it work is to send the device to GA guy and have him switch out the SIM card with his old unit’s SIM. I told her I can’t do that because I have to configure it before he gets it. I thank her and then hang up thinking that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

I wait about 20 minutes and try again.

I’m on the phone for about 7 minutes talking to another rep when all of the sudden I get this feeling that I’m talking to myself. And I was. The phone had been disconnected. I call back and the exact same thing happens.

At this point I’m thinking that the first rep had put a nasty gram in the file saying that I had been rude to her. I don’t think I was but I did hang up kind of fast.

So I call back and it happens again BUT this time the rep called me back. Turns out it was our phone system. It’s been on the sprits for about a month now. Anyway the nice rep tells me I can’t use the SIM because it’s associated with the 770 number. At this point I believe him. So I hang up, get on line and find the closest Cingular&T store. It’s just up the way. It happens to be a nice day so I take a walk up and get a brand new spanking SIM with no number attached. I get to the office, call back and get it all working!

It was only 10:15 at this point of the morning. It’s Fedexed and on its way to Atlanta Ga as I write this. What a relief.

Oh and I’m still sick.

Boy am I ready to go home. Cio

Tuesday and it's 100!

2007-06-19T07:50:00.000-05:00

Ok, just enough time to update a little bit.

I’m in-between trying to fix my rental bathroom’s leak from above and getting the new Exchange server up and running and trying to port a phone number over to our corporate account. All I have to say is it doesn’t pay to get to work early to do this as no one is open. So I have to wait until 9 before I can get anything done.

So I’m at home yesterday with Bronchitis which I had all weekend but choose to ignore and go out with friends anyway because I’m an Idiot. So it didn’t get better. I stayed at home and took a real sick day which I never do. I usually will work from home if I’m not feeling well. This time I just vegged in-front of the TV and tried to feel better. During this time I would check my emails and this is when I found out that my Rental apartment had the leak. I just wasn’t up to confronting anyone about it yesterday.

So this morning I try to tackle it. The office isn’t open yet. I’ll call after 9 and hopefully someone will call be back. I hate our new condo association people.

I did however get in-touch with AT&T to move one of their numbers from a private account to our corporate account. Turns out to be harder then moving a number from another carrier. Because it’s a private number the person who has the number has to call and give permission for us to take over payment. Once this has happened I have to call and tell them we want to take over payment. They then tell me because he had a local account in GA and we have a national account it will take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to do it. A-FREAKING-MAZING!!!!! So my guy in GA has to wait for another couple of days before he gets his blackberry. I don’t think he’s too happy about that.

Waiting for the new Exchange Server so I can finally build the new instillation and test it before we move it to the off-site location. It should arrive today. I should be busy for awhile getting it up and running. Still, the people that we’re moving over to have this uncanny nack of not getting back in-touch with us or not giving us information that they promise us on time. Not having a good feeling about this.

Ok, off to work again. Hopefully I’ll be able to update this a little bit more regularly.

Fire Island, we’ve made a friend.

2007-06-11T11:55:00.000-05:00

Well we finally got invited to Fire Island, which if you don’t know is the gay Mecca beach community for all the New York boys, and we loved it!

It was pretty amazing actually considering that it rained most of the time we were there. We just relaxed. We never relax. I like relaxing.

We need to do it more often.

Anyway, I’m back at the office after an amazing weekend. We even flew on South West and it wasn’t that bad. My favorite comment about the service was “the trainee was so chirpy that it became my goal to make her cry” not that I would ever do that but it was still funny.

It did get sunny for a little bit on Sunday before we left to come home. We had a BBQ on the deck with about 12 people. All in all a good time.

I am however looking forward to have a weekend at our house this weekend coming up. Sometimes staying in for a weekend can be the best thing in the whole wide world.

We’re going to go see Mika at that 9:30 club on Tuesday night this week. I think I’m going to be late to work on Wednesday.

I’m not in a very big writing mood so I think I’ll stop here. I just felt like I was ignoring my little blog and had to write something.

So, nobody told me……

2007-05-31T12:02:00.000-05:00

That the older you get the busier you get.

What’s up with that, I thought you were supposed to slow down? I’m not sure I like this.

First things first. Dave and I now have Andy living with us for a few weeks. He arrived while we were in London with a friend of his; Antony and they had a good time. Unfortunately Antony had to go back to London because of work but has another ticket to come back here this weekend (I know, it’s kind of crazy but he wanted to do it). Anyway poor thing got back home (in 1st class) only have an a cysts start to grow very fast on a certain part of his body. This was causing pain in the extreme so he went to the doctor’s right away.

Emergency surgery!

And he still plans on coming back to DC this weekend after this ordeal, how crazy is that?

Anyway, I’ll get to meet Antony finally after reading his blog for a couple of months now. I think we’ll be walking gingerly around him while he recovers.

We will be having a 40th birthday celebration this Friday. Our friends Simon and John are back in town and it’s Simon’s big 40 so we’re having a surprise party Friday at 5 for him. Hopefully it will not turn into a complete blow out because we have our Italian lesion in the morning and I don’t want to miss it.

Saturday is pretty much clear except for the Italian lesion. We’re having a brunch on Sunday in honor of Simon and John. A friend from the UK was supposed to make it but he’s gotten an ear infection and is grounded. So that’s it pretty much for the weekend to come, now for some stuff about the past last two weekends.

First off two weekends ago was Kiat’s 30th birthday. Can you believe we’ve known each other for over 8.5 years? Isn’t that amazing. I never knew I hung out with such chicken back then. The party was great with a little bit of drama. Seems that the caterers said they would make one drink and then tried to come out with another one when they actually got there. Kiat was not a happy camper. Luckily they mostly fixed the situation. I ended up staying there until about 3:30am. Had a blast and wasn’t too trashed which is always a good thing.

The next day we did brunch and then went to Kiat’s house again. I stayed until about 6 at which point I just couldn’t stand it and had to go home. Bed was calling my name.

I’ll write more about the next weekend and the London trip a bit later. I’m swamped at work right now and my Italian hasn’t been getting the attention it needs in the evenings.

I'm alive, just bloody busy!

2007-05-23T06:18:00.000-05:00

I'm in London this week. Work and pleasure.

I have lots to talk about from the last post, here are some bullet points

Kiat's 30 birthday party
Matthew's first day at the job
Busy, Busy, Work, Work.

When I get some more time I'll expand on the topics above.

Until then,

Slugs and Hisses,

Chris

Spring meeting hell, or Chicago in the spring.

2007-05-12T08:23:00.000-05:00

Sitting in the Red Carpet Club at O’Hare.

Well, well, well. This wasn’t my average week at all. I’ve been in Chicago all week working our spring meeting, and surprisingly it wasn’t that bad. Although it seems like I’ve been here forever, but that’s because of the five hours sleep every day since Tuesday. Tuesday and Wednesday were quite busy. I ran around and set up all the computers to be able to access our network and our database.

I was also on hand for some of the big wigs meetings. Mainly to make sure things went smoothly. It’s fascinating to hear all the stuff they talk about. Not going into that here though.

Thursday wasn’t so busy in that all the setup was done and there were no more meeting that I need to be in, and I question why I was even there on Friday (today).

I don’t think I mentioned this but I didn’t know that I was going to be here until last Thursday so it was a very last moment kind of thing. I’m glad to be going home now.

Now some thought on Chicago in general. I like the place but I couldn’t imagine living here. I’m not sure what it is but there is just something that’s not quite right.

It might be that most everyone here is large, having eaten in a few restaurants here I understand why. The amount of food served here is beyond belief. There is no reason for anyone to eat a 22oz steak, none. And then if you want some greens you have to order them on the side. I’ve seen this before in places in the rest of the US but in Chicago every other restaurant is like that. It’s also very expensive. Seven of us went to a steak house and it was $800.00, and I only had two appetizers.

Another thing. Why do all the bathrooms have attendants up here. I find this a bit creepy. Someone is paid to sit in the bathroom and wait for people to finish their business, he (men’s bathroom) will then turn the water on for you and squirt soap in your hands and hand you a towel to dry with. Then you reach into your pocket and take a nasty ole paper bill and give him a tip. I just fine it strange that someone is paid to watch you pee.

If you think you have a bad job, just look at what I wrote above and thank god you’re not doing that.

Lastly, everyone smokes and I mean everyone. You can smoke in almost any venue. It’s just strange seeing it after DC banned it in-doors. Now, I am one know to partake every so often (the weekends) but it was just gross.

Oh yea, Chicago has really tall building too. Kind of cool

Don’t stay at the Hyatt Regency on Wacker drive. It’s a dump. That’s where our meeting was. Needed updating badly.

I also didn’t get my upgrade on the way home. Too many people and a full plane of people with status.

Dinner parties galore

2007-05-07T09:25:00.000-05:00

It’s been a week since I last wrote, a very hectic work schedule is the cause.

The girl that works for me is out for a funeral in Jamaica so I’m doing her work along with mine. We also have the spring meeting coming up this week and I found out last Thursday that I would be going this Tuesday to provide Tech support. Just another example of my work’s brilliant planning skills. All of this and the fact that I had a gourmet dinner planned for Saturday evening made me wake up at 2:30am on Friday night. Ughh. I “computed” for about an hour and had a very strong gin and tonic thinking that would help, it didn’t. Dave ended up waking up and coming to find out where I was, he was smart enough to recommend a sleeping pill. I took one and was asleep within 15 minutes.

The only problem with those things is I don’t feel like I really sleep when I take one. So even though I was passed out from the pill, I felt like I only had 3 hours sleep the whole day. It was horrible.

Anyway, we had Robert and Kathy, Ralph and Amy, Mikko and Rob, and Maria for dinner on Saturday evening. One of the reason I couldn’t sleep the night before was the dinner and who was going to be there. Mikko is the chief at the Finnish Embassy so I always try to cook something impressive when he comes over. Also Robert and Kathy love to go to good restaurants and know their wines, they even own some land in California growing grapes for wine making. So I was worried everything would turn out well. This is what we had.

Seared sea scallops atop wilted spinach with a calvados cream sauce for the starter.

Grapefruit and Gin sorbet for a pallet cleanser.

Lamb chops done French style with saffron rice and grilled asparagus for the main. The saffron came from our friend Andy direct from India.

Homemade cream cheese ice cream (sounds funny but it was amazing) with half a poached pear cut into a fan, poached figs and a red peppercorn sauce.

Very rarely does everything go right and Saturday night, it all went right! I was thrilled with the results and there was nothing left on the plates. I love having dinner parties because it’s one of the few things in life that I get instant gratification out of. One day of cooking and happy people at the end of it . Always good.

For the nine of us, we went through 3 bottles of Champaign, four bottle of white wine, 5 bottles or red wine, a whole bottle of Pear Williams brandy, and most of a bottle or regular brandy. This doesn’t even include the shots (grapefruit and gin sorbet) that where served before the main. We were all very happy by the end of the meal.

I got up on Sunday before Dave which is very unusual for me. I had my coffee and then ended up munching on the rest of the sorbet. So I got a bit toasty in the morning and started making calls. We ended up at Tony and Kiat’s house after I picked up lil’David from the circle. So it’s Tony, Michael Mathews, lil’David, Rob and Mikko, Dave, Kiat and myself sitting on the back deck drinking for the whole afternoon, and it was a gorgeous day. All of this before we go to Brett’s for dinner at 6 that evening.

We get there and we have exactly the same thing I served the night before at my dinner party. Scallops to start with, lamb for the main and ice cream for dessert. It was all quite good but very funny. We meet some interesting people whose names I can’t remember. Mind you I was pretty tanked at this point to the point that remembering the meal was pretty amazing.

We then leave that party and remember that Rick has a come meet the mother thing going on at his place which is on the walk back home. So we stop in for yet one more drink. We stay for just a little bit. I was exhausted at this point so we take a cab back home.

Next thing I know, it’s morning and I have to go to work. I’m moving a little bit slow today. Tomorrow I’m off to Chicago for my work’s spring meeting. Hopefully I’ll be able to write some where I’m there.

Excitement on the 6th floor, or how I spent my Sunday night.

2007-04-30T09:58:00.000-05:00

Monday morning, yawn. Not lots happening today so far but I expected it to be a mad house today. Why?

Last night I get a call from my boss. The internet is down at work. We can’t get to our web server and the VPN server is down too. So I take another sip of my wine, because it is the weekend and we just had lil’David, Alex from London and my mother (who is in town visiting) over for dinner, and ask Dave to drive me to work after saying a few choice cuss words. This is 9:30pm.

I’m very happy to say that there was nothing that I could do to fix the situation when we got there. As we got closer to work we noticed flashing lights and as we got to work we noticed about 12 fire trucks surrounding the building. Seems that a electrical transformer caught fire on the 6th floor and they had to turn off the electricity. I wasn’t able to get into the building so I just came home after calling Paul and letting him know what had happened.

Up early this morning. Dress in Jeans and casual shirt, I’m sure I’m going to be doing battle with the Dragon when I get into work….. at 7am this morning. Walk in, look round, what do you know? It all looks good. Every server came back when they turned the power back on, the internet came back. It all came back?? After the last couple of weeks I fully expected to open the server room door to a couple of inches of water on the floor and all dead drenched equipment.

This was just amazing to me.

There is a smell of burning electrical wires in the building but I can live with that.

Now here’s the funny part. I sit down at my desk and Melanie from the London office calls. Seems that they have been evacuated from the office because of a fire nearby. She needs me to send a logo out. How freaky is that, fires at both big ULI locations. Strange.

Anyway the weekend was a great success. We had the most amazing dinner on Saturday night. It was supposed to be just five people and it grew to nine by the end of the evening. We had Jon and John, Tony and Kiat, Todd, Rob, Mom and Dave and myself. Salmon for the starter and lamb for the main. Fresh strawberries on pound cake for dessert. And about 10 bottle of wine. LOL.

Saturday morning started out with getting up at 6am, Italian classes at 8am (Stanania said I’m doing really well), go pick mom up at BWI at 12, stop at the Whole foods on the way home to get dinner for the evening. Get home and start cooking. I finished cooking just a little bit before the guest started arriving at 7PM. It was a very long day.

I’m meeting mom and Dave for lunch in Georgetown today. We going to go have dinner with Brett someplace close by his house tonight. Dave has to pack tonight because he’s going to Jamaica for work Tuesday. I’m working from home on Tuesday because mom is there the whole day. She leaves Tuesday evening. I then will need to plan for the next dinner party on May the 5th. I think Dave gets back on Friday.

Somewhere in there I get to sleep. LOL.

Busy weekend.......................Again.

2007-04-27T10:15:00.000-05:00

Just for those of you who think we’re too busy. Here are the weekend plans so far…..

Tonight when I get home we’re going to study Italian until around 8. We tried to do it the last two evenings but work got in the way and by the time I got home I couldn’t focus on studying. After studying I’m dragging Dave out some place to eat. I don’t want to cook tonight at all. It will be an early night because of what we’re doing tomorrow.

Saturday morning Stefania is coming over to the house for an Italian lesion at 8 am, yes you read that right, 8 am on a Saturday. We’ll finish the class at 9:30 so she can make it to the school for her regular class. We’ll walk her over and pay for it there.

We then head off to Baltimore International Airport at around 10 to pick up mom. Her flight gets in a little after 11. On the way home we’re going to stop at Whole Foods and pick up dinner for a dinner party that I’ll be cooking for that night. Still not sure what I’m going to make but I’ll know when I see it. We’re having Tony and Kiat, Jon and John (hopefully), Mom and Dave and myself. So I’ll be spending most of the day cooking and talking to mom. I have an opening between the kitchen and the dining room so she can sit there and talk to me.

Sunday we’ll be figuring out accommodations for our trip to Rome, Italy in September. We’re still trying to figure out where to spend the most time and exactly what to do while there. We’ll be in Rome and Florence. Not sure if we want to do the hectic tourist thing or if we want to find a villa in Chianti and take it easy. I’m thinking the latter one for my mom and the hectic tourist thing for Dave’s mom. Conflict, I love it.

We also have Alex coming over for dinner Sunday night, I think I’ll invite Lil’David too, it’s a good chance for mom to meet some more of our friends. It will not be as elaborate as Saturday night’s dinner. More like comfort food that’s easy to make and good for you.

We had some good news I suppose. Dave is going to Jamaica early on Tuesday morning instead of Miami on Monday. Now he can be in the house while mom is there on Monday. I’m working from home on Tuesday so we’ll have someone there at all time. This makes me feel much better. Dave has to work in the morning but we’re talking about mom and him walking to Georgetown and meeting me for lunch on Monday. I like that idea.

And, you guessed it again, we have another dinner on Monday night. Brett is coming back into town after being away for a good long time(about a month it seems like). Now that Dave will be there too, it will be a nice sit around, chat and have dinner. I might have to put my foot down and “suggest” we go out. Since Brett is just getting back I’m thinking maybe meeting him closer to his house. He’ll be tired and it’ll be better for him and everyone else all around.

Tuesday, I’m working from home and that night I take mom back to BWI to go home. I might have my mac mini by then so I’ll have a project while Dave is gone. He’ll be back on Friday.

And you thought this would be a computer free blog entry. Hehe.

I hate computers part I

2007-04-26T12:52:00.000-05:00

Ok, I’m ready to cry now. I just spent the better party of late yesterday and all the morning up until 1:30pm trying to install the new helpdesk software. It’s supposed to be easy. You just install it over the old version, right? Nope. First you have to install the service pack to the old one. Then you have to install the new one and import all the information into it. But the new one will not install on the same server as the old one even though they tell you it should. So I installed and uninstalled over and over again and finally gave up on it and went home for the evening last night.

I wake up at 5:30 am this morning so I get up and start working on it again from home with terminal services (remote control). I do that for a bit and then decide to come to work after getting ready. I’m here by 7 this morning. I decide the best thing for me to do is take one of the old servers and reformat it and start from scratch. I decide on the old Dynamics server. This is our old financial software server so I decide to make a full backup of is first. This takes most of the morning.

I then proceed to reinstall windows server 2003. It goes pretty smoothly. I tell it to use the whole disk for the install and then keep installing it. After a couple of hours it’s installed and the computer comes up to the blue screen and a desktop. I’m happy and then start to look around only to find that it hadn’t erased the partitions form the old install. So I still had a small c drive and a big d drive. I decide that I can live with this and that I will proceed with the new install.

I install the service pack 1 for windows server. I install SQL server. And then I start to run the automatic updates. Goes for a bit and then tells me the c drive is running out of space. It’s taken me all morning to find out that there REALLY isn’t enough space on the c drive. I then spend 50 bucks on a disk partitioning software to try and make the c drive bigger without having to redo everything I just did. I download it and then try to install it only to find out that I had downloaded the workstation version, not the server version.

Ok, I go back on-line to find the server virsion------$499!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I almost cried. IT really shouldn’t be this difficult at all. Anyway, I’m here right now reinstalling windows server 2003 on one honking huge c drive after I made for damn sure that it was erased and remade. Hopefully I’ll be done by the end of the day. Trying to get my serial number off of the eopen Microsoft website right now and it’s giving me grief. It’s been that kind of day.

Did I mention I woke up with some major allergies this morning? This only makes it ever so much more annoying.

P.S. Just a little request, if you read this leave me a comment. I do enjoy them. Thanks.

Lots to talk about this time.

2007-04-25T08:50:00.000-05:00

Computers at work.

Computers at home.

Mom coming for the weekend.

Dave and my 50 year retirement plan.

Fist off I got everything up and working - at work - yesterday. Finally. The last server was much kinder to me then the first. It still has a few kinks to fix (maybe) but it’s doing what we need it to do right now and that’s a good thing. Hopefully nothing like this will happen again for a long time. It makes my blood pressure go up until I tell myself no one will die because of this.

We also got some more good news - at work. We’re hiring the new guy from Ohio. He starts on May the 21st. Iyante is thrilled to death about this. It will defiantly help in the transition to off site server hosting that we’re talking about. She’ll also be able to get to some paper work that’s fallen behind. Keep your fingers crossed he works out.

Now for the home computers. It’s starting to get warm here and I can hear the old Mac that’s my server making a lot of fan noise. Usually I hear this at night when I’m trying to go to bed. So what did I do, I purchased another Mac Mini. I did it with a friend of mine’s help. He works in the apple store on the weekends and can get a decent discount of 25% off. The only problem was that it was a custom order so it had to be assembled and it just finally got released for delivery today after being ordered on the 21st. (no I’m not impatient). So it should show up tomorrow or Friday.

Once I get it I have to transfer everything from my old Mini to the new one (I use carbon copy cloner) and then wipe the old one and put Mac Os X server on it. I then need to setup iTunes again on both computers and get email and my website working on the New(OLD) Mac Mini server. Once this is done I can decommission the old Mac server and we’ll then have a nice quite and cool office to work in again. Now all I have to do is find the time to do this. I need to learn how to live without sleep, that would solve a lot of my time problems.

This segways into mom coming for the weekend. I’m very excited about it. Dave and I talked about going down for the weekend but figured it would be cheaper to have one person come here then to have two go there. And get this, the airfares to charlotte (an hour flight) cost $375 from DCA (downtown DC). We have mom coming into Baltimore on Saturday morning for $198. I’ll be picking her up. I don’t know what’s going on with the airlines but the prices now-a-days are insane! You get treated like crap and get charged twice as much for the pleasure.

Unfortunately Dave now has to go to Miami on Monday for a meeting on Tuesday. I’m going to see if I can work from home on Tuesday so I’m at least there while mom is in town, she goes back on Tuesday evening.

I think Saturday might consist of the Portrait gallery followed by Tapas at Jalao and then a quiet evening at home. We might get the Italian class in early if Stafani can do it early. Sunday I think we’ll just lay low until the evening when Alex comes back into town. We’ll do a nice simple dinner with him. On Monday Brett comes back and he’s supposed to come over for dinner. Dave will be leaving for Miami that day to so there should be lots of excitement in the air. Hopefully I’ll be working from home on Tuesday. We’ll then take mom back to BWI for her flight back.

All this and I still haven’t gotten to Dave and my plans to retire by the time he’s 50. That’s what we’ve been working on the last few days. I think we’ve about decided we can do it when I’m 50 but not when he is. We have a spread sheet out with all kind of scenarios, some involving not spending any money and not working, some involving spending money and working part time. It’s very much a moving target but one that I think we can manage. Dave is calling it the next 50 years plan.

I don’t like thinking about it but it’s good we’re doing it.

I use to wonder what the heck I would write about in a blog, now I can’t figure out when to shut up. Go figure.

Computers, and why did I choose to do this for a living?

2007-04-23T18:37:00.000-05:00

Oh my god, what a week. I’ve been so busy at work.

We had two servers go down on Friday, well one didn’t officially go down, I killed it. My boss told me to, really.

We need a development server to test out a new version of cold fusion (I’m just going to assume that you don’t know what I’m talking about but I’m going to say it anyway.). Paul told me to use this server that we’ve had since I got there 7+ years ago. So I wiped it and started over. Got a nice new install of windows 2003 and the developer’s version of Cold Fusion installed only to find out that Paul had put a production instance of Sharepoint on it. This wouldn’t be so bad but the person that was using it is coming up with a big dead-line and needs it back up. It has agendas for our spring meeting that starts in a couple of weeks. People log in and then make changes and then save it back. Up-to-date agendas that can be changed on the fly. People love it.

The other server I thought might have the instance of Sharepoint on it so I rebooted it to see if it would fix the problem. What you need to know here is that I didn’t set up Sharepoint, Paul did, so I had no idea where all its parts where. When I rebooted it, it didn’t come back. Dead, gone, ciao, bye bye. More work for me.

I’m at work until 9PM on Friday because of this little mishap, and guess what, it didn’t get it fixed.

Once again it wouldn’t be so bad working on the weekend but it’s the nicest weekend we’ve had in DC since last year. Absolutely gorgeous, the last thing I wanted to do was be stuck in a server room all weekend.

Luckily it was just Sunday that I went in. We had gone to Rob and Mikko’s on Friday night after I had gotten back from work and stayed there until about 3 that morning. Saturday I wasn’t in the mood for going into work at all. I did go to the circle with Dave and enjoyed the weather. We went to dinner and just had a great day together. Just what the doctor ordered.

I did go in for about 5 hours on Sunday and it still didn’t get fixed. I tried everything, and everything didn’t work. I do have a backup of all the data, the problem was the data didn’t want to get restored over the network. I ended up installing the backup software on a new install of windows 2003 and then attaching the tape drive to the server. This was great except that when I tried to restore it said I had to catalogue the tapes. Little did I know that it takes about 5 hours to do that? So I get fed up with the whole process and meet Dave in the circle again. I figure it can wait until today.

Dave and I go for a nice late lunch (4PM) and then head home only to be hijacked to JR’s until about 9 by Kiat. Boy was it was crowded! We had fun but it always proves to me why we spend most of our Sundays away from that place when we get up on a Monday morning. I’ll put it this way, we were both just a little bit slow this morning.

I did get to work and did a restore on the first server. I figure it’s best to do one at a time so I don’t screw something up. I did the restore following the instructions that the software gave me. It was working and I was so happy. And then it came time to reboot the server to finish the restore.

Booting,

Booting,

Windows starts.

Windows starts.

Windows starts.

Rebooting.

Rebooting.

Windows starts, kinda

Over and over again it goes without the Server really starting up. WTF?? I followed the instruction completely to a tee.

Ok, install windows over the restore and do a recovery.

Spend the rest of the afternoon reinstalling all the software from scratch. Restore the Databases. If I didn’t mention it this was a SQL Database server used for testing out web aps. Finally get the server up at around 4 today.

And I still have the other server to do tomorrow. It did the same booting, windows starting thing above after I restored to it too. Hopefully it’ll be nicer to me tomorrow.

Time to cook dinner now, I have a hungry tired looking boyfriend across the dining table from me now. More to come soon.

Another Drunken Brunch or the Day the Russians invaded….

2007-04-16T09:09:00.000-05:00

Well, for all the intentions of being good this weekend it all went tits-up yesterday.

Evgenny come down late Saturday night. We were out eating at Mark and Orlando’s with Rob and Carlos and kept the table open for Evgenny and his posy. He had Cole and Dimitri with him when he arrived. The whole reason for them to come down was for Lil’David to take them to the club called 5. It’s mostly a progressive straight club. So, Lil’David shows up at the restaurant to meet everyone and we leave and end up going to our place for a night cap before they go to the club.

Dave and I were having nothing to do with staying out until ungodly hours clubbing.

I ended up making shots for the boys of vodka, triple sec, lime juice and Madori. They downed it and off they went. Rob, Carlos and Cole stayed over for a bit and we talked while sipping on the most amazing pear brandy. We ended up going to bed around one or two none the worse for wear. This is where I’m supposed to tell you how we got up early the next day and did productive stuff, well part of that is true.

I woke up at eight and couldn’t go back to sleep so I got up. Evgenny had come home around three or four, alone. Somewhere along the way he lost Dimitri. We found him later that morning but that’s another story. Dave and Evgenny stayed in bed and I did Sunday morning stuff, read the news paper, made coffee, got cleaned up and showered, that kind of stuff. Well after a bit everyone was up and we decided to do brunch. I got the bacon out of the freezer and started to thaw it. Dave went to the farmers market and got farm fresh eggs, French pastries and various juices and sparkling wine for mimosas.

Around 10:30 I started cooking. By 12:00 it was ready and Lil’David had show up with, you guessed it, Dimitri. We sent a text out to some more friends to come on over, Michael Torra was the only taker, Rob and Mikko decided to stay home and watch Shortbus and we never heard from Todd. I’m Glad Michael came over because he helped finish most of the food that was left.

Did I mention that we were also drinking this whole time, not lots but for a long period of time. The pear brandy is practically gone. To tell the truth I was a bit worried about Evgenny going home after all the brandy he drank. We did start having coffee later in the afternoon though.

We also played Jinga (sp?) and got trivial pursuit out but didn’t get around to actually playing it. So brunch started at 12:00 and kept going until about 9 that evening. Evgenny got another Russian friend, Misha, to come over and then they headed out to go back to Virginia Beach. I’m not sure why but Virginia Beach has a large population of Russians. Cole decided to go home too and Michael had to finish his taxes so he left also, so then there were three. At this point you would think it was over, but no. We had Sheila’s going away party to go to in Capital Hill.

So off in a cab Lil’David, David and I went. It was a great party and it was good to see Sheila before she left. We stayed for awhile, nibbled on the food and finished the white wine. (They ran out) Then home we came. I think I got to sleep before ten but I’m not really sure.

I’m feeling all the excitement catching up to me it today too.

All I really wanted to do was stay in bed all day. It doesn’t help that we have a nor’easter happening and it’s cold, wet and windy outside now. Bleagh….

After all this I forgot to say that it’s Emancipation Day here in the District. This day in 1862 Slavery became illegal in the District. All of the District government offices are closed along with schools. Lil’David has the day off because he works for the city. Here’s a quote about the Day from Wikipedia:

“The municipality of Washington, D.C., celebrates April 16 as Emancipation Day. On that day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia. The Act freed about 3,100 enslaved persons in the District of Columbia nine months before President Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation which presaged the eventual end of slavery to the rest of the nation. The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act represents the only example of compensation by the federal government to free enslaved persons.

On January 4, 2005, Mayor Anthony Williams signed legislation making Emancipation Day an official public holiday in the District. Each year, a series of activities will be held during the public holiday including the traditional Emancipation Day parade celebrating the freedom of enslaved persons in the District of Columbia. The Emancipation Day celebration was held yearly from 1866 to 1901, and was resumed as a tradition and historic celebration in 2002 as a direct result of years of research, lobbying and leadership done by Ms. Loretta Carter-Hanes.”

The funny thing is that by having it on this day, it pushed Tax Day back to the 17th. So what our local government does can effect everyone in the nation, cool!

Saturday April 14th, the weekend so far...

2007-04-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

Saturday morning and here I sit with a banana and a cup of coffee. It’s 10:30 am and I’m waiting for my big Mac (G5) to finish copying over to a fresh Hard drive. I’ve decided to clean up our office and that means getting rid of the big Mac, the Mac server and moving everything around. I’m going to replace the server with a Mac Mini. These things are great, they take up no room whatsoever, they don’t put out too much heat and they’re quite. The computers that I have running now are way too loud and in the summer it will heat the office/guest bedroom up to an unbearable temperature. This is just the first step today, I still have to get the new mini and then move everything off of the old one onto the new one and then set the old one up as my web and mail server. This all takes time. We’ll be putting the big Mac on eBay. I’m amazed at how much people will pay for an old Mac. If I’m lucky, hopefully it’ll pay for the new Mac Mini.

We had dinner last night at Rory and Derrick’s. It was Ed, who is a person that we keep meeting there every so often and who I can never remember his name, Jim (who happens to be a world renowned economist and is retired from Cambridge), Sheila, Rory and Derrick and Dave and myself. It was quite a thought provoking evening. We were there from 8 until 11:30 so we had plenty to say. Topics ranged from Latin languages to missing the naked boy dancers in South East DC. And one particular story of Sheila's, who was a high powered big wig at some place, being taken out in Bangkok by one of the people who worked for her to a sex club to watch the live sex shows on stage. Seems because of her rank in the company the guy just treated her like a male collogue. She was mortified and talked about all she could do was look down and talk. So that explains a bit about how our dinner went last night.

We have our Russian friend Yevgenny showing up tonight at around 8pm. Dave and I already decided that we are going to let him go out and have a fab time without us. It can get sloppy when he comes to visit and we have way too much to do tomorrow.

Hello and goodbye, house warmings and bon voyages!

2007-04-13T08:31:00.000-05:00

Ok, can someone help me with my spellings above if it's wrong? Thanks and on to the blog.....

Did I mention I ran out of oatmeal? I need to get more. M&M's just don't do it for breakfast.

Well it’s finally Friday and all I can say is think goodness. It’s been a long exciting week and I’m tired.

We had Rory, Derik and Sheila over last night for a chicken curry dinner. Sheila is Rory’s mother and she just got back from having a fabulous time in Key West Florida. She’s a widow and has taken the opportunity of being single to see the world. Good for her is all I have to say.

We had a great time talking about her trips and our trips and about life in general. And as always happens in Washington DC, we got to politics by the end of the meal. We had done so well for two hours. Oh well.

We did find out the Rory got a job in Cambridge for a company that’s the leader in Bluetooth technology in the world. He’ll be heading up their tax department. He starts the beginning of next month and will be leaving Derik here to fend for himself for awhile. They will be traveling back in forth for a bit. Derik wants to get his citizenship here and stay with Intelsat until he retires in two years. That way Rory will be covered with medical care here if he decides to come back. Intelsat is another progressive company that offers domestic partnership benefits and one of them is retirement medical coverage. Cool Eh?

This weekend will consist of Italian studding this evening, Friday, April 13, 2007, from 5 until 7 and then off to Rory and Derik’s for cocktails and dinner. Well be up in the morning for a little bit of writing on my part, Dave wants to study some more Italian. I can’t do that much Italian in a short period of time. My mind goes into overload and it just doesn’t matter what I’m looking at, I will not get it. Besides, we have a class at 12:30 so I’ll get two hours of it them.

We then have a house warming or something for the evening, I’m not sure what but it’s on Dave’s calendar. Hopefully we’ll be home early and have an early night. I getting too old for these late nights.

Sunday we have the afternoon off but we have a going away for Sheila in the evening from 6 until 8. Then off to eat and bed. A good way to end the weekend. Hopefully I will be able to get some writing and studying in during the afternoon.

Domestic Partner Benefits, who knew?

2007-04-11T08:21:00.000-05:00

Ok, I made a mistake on Monday’s blog, it’s Kevin Kline, not Kevin Costner and the movie is called Trade. Andy added a comment mentioning it. Opps.

Eating oatmeal again, apple cinnamon, it’s the only way I can do it. Bleagh. I hope I still get some benefits from it after all the sugar and fake flavoring!

We had the best news at work last week and I’m thrilled. They started offering Domestic Partner benefits. I have been asking for these since I got there and it’s finally happening.

I think what happened is the one of the big wigs here moved to Palm Springs with his boyfriend. He kept his job at my company and is telecommuting and I think his boyfriend quiet his job. So, one of the qualifiers for keeping him at my company had to be that domestic partner benefits be offered so his partner was covered. Also, come to think of it, our CEO just came out recently! totally forgot about that one. I don’t mind how it happened just so long as I benefit too.

We get some of the best medical coverage in the industry, well actually in the US. My company is very generous. Even the girl that works for the insurance company we use doesn’t get coverage like we do.

We also get free Legal services. It’s time for Dave and myself to redo our wills, living power of attorney, medical power of attorney and I think that’s it. It’ll save us a good $400.00 each. Didn’t even know we had this one.

Another one I didn’t know we had is World Travel Assistance. We get this at no extra cost. All you do is call them, no matter where you are so long as it’s another country or 100 miles away from where you live and they’ll do Medical services (Locating medical care, Insurance assistance, Emergency evacuation, Transportation for family member or friend, Hotel convalescence, and remains return-icky), Emergency payment/cash assistance., Legal Services, ticket replacement, credit card replacement, baggage assistance. All in all kind of nice to have considering how much we travel.

We can also get extra Insurance; I can get some for me and then get some for Dave too. It’s amazing that we can do all this considering that there is nothing like domestic partner benefits in the US. I’m very excited about getting this all together and handed into HR. Dave is coming down to my office this afternoon and we’re going to get everything notarized.

Been busy working too! Not as interesting though.

Went to bed early last night, I was just plain tired and it’s still cold here. Feel like a million bucks today. Ready to face the world. I will work out today too.

As I sit here eating my oatmeal…

2007-04-09T07:42:00.001-05:00

I’m thinking, this stuff is supposed to be good for you. That must be why I think it’s gross. The things I do to try to stay healthy.

The working out, not drinking and eating mostly vegetarian seems to be working only after one week. My trousers fit better and I feel thinner. I’ve been doing 50 minutes on the treadmill every day and I’ve been feeding Dave and myself things like veggie chili and beans and rice. I save my greens for lunch when I have a spinach salad. Now if I can just keep this up.

Exercise, don’t smoke, exercise, eat right, die anyway.

This weekend was pretty good and not as hectic as the last few. Lil’David came over and we watched Shortbus on Friday. I have to say I like this movie but it’s not a movie that you would take your mom to go see. It’s the next best thing to porno with a good story behind it. Very explicit sexual scenes, that actually helped the story along but man, it was porno. Go see it if you get the chance but not with parents or the auntie.

Saturday was Italian class and then we headed over to Rob and Mikko’s for a Brunch. We were late because of the class but everyone else got there around 1, we were there at around three. We had to stop and look at an open house which delayed us a little bit more. Well we didn’t leave Rob and Mikko’s house until about 12 while some people stayed on, lil’David being one of them. The next day, Sunday, Alex and lil’David came over for some veggie chili. The funny part was Dave and I were having no part of drinking anything else alcoholic this weekend. Lil’David Kept joking that he’s been having brunch since Friday night and that it hasn’t stopped. We got the vodka out for him but all I wanted was a little food and to curl up next to David on the couch. After dinner Lil’David headed out to JR’s to meet up with Michael Mathews, Kiat, Rick and whoever else was there. Dave and I wouldn’t touch JR’s with a ten foot pole at that point.

Speaking of curling up on the couch, we had a fire all afternoon because it was bloody cold here, still is. We’re expecting freezing weather again tonight. Charlotte North Carolina, where I’m from, broke and all time record for cold in April with a low of 24 F last night. Weird weather, we also had a layer of snow on the ground on Saturday. Which was very pretty because all the blossoms where out and had what looked like frosting on them. I will try to get some pictures that David took and post them.

We watched a German film Summerstrum (or in English Summer Storm) last night, why you ask? Well because our friend Andy (the one who’s living in India) while he was in Cape Town hooked up with this really cute German guy. The guy even slept in our apartment. He happened to be a director and has a film coming out with Kevin Costner next year. His name is Marcco and he directed Summer Storm. It’s a very good movie about gay coming of age and coming out. I’ve seen so many of them that I was kind of dreading this one. It was worth it though. If you get a chance, rent it.

Today is a weird day at the office. It’s not an official holiday in the states so everyone needs to work Friday and Monday. But people take it off as vacation time to do the family thing. There was no one on (these three words are strange to write together) the streets on the walk to work today and there isn’t anyone in the office yet. I have a few things to do so it will be good to have a quite day.

Ok, I'm a Trend follower, not setter.

2007-04-05T14:41:00.000-05:00

Here is the lateset blog exercise. Enjoy.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

What kind of American Accent do you have?

2007-04-04T10:36:00.000-05:00

Lil'David pointed me in this direction and boy is my accent screwed up. ;-)

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The South That's a Southern accent you've got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don't have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it.
The Midland
Philadelphia
The West
The Northeast
The Inland North
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

30% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

5% Yankee

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Dave is Officially Back!

2007-04-02T12:00:00.001-05:00

And I’m so happy. He got in safe and sound on Friday. He wasn’t home for more than a couple of hours before I had him out on the town for dinner.

I wasn’t cooking.

We went to Hank’s oyster bar around 7 and it was already filling up. We sat in the back and I had fried oysters and peel and eat shrimp while Dave had coriander encrusted tuna. Very, very good food but the sticker price after Cape Town was a bit of a shock. I picked up the bill after Dave looked at it in amazement. I told him just not to think about it and that he would get use to the prices again soon. Not that that’s a good thing.

Little David came for a glass of wine and then we went to Cobalt for a drink, we didn’t stay long. We where home and in bed by 11.

Saturday was quite a full day. After puttering around the house in the morning we went to our Italian class at 12:30 for two hours. We then went for messages at Deluka’s at 3:00. After that Brett came over and we headed to Rory and Derrick’s place for a cocktail party honoring Sheila’s (Rory’s mother) return from Australia. That lasted from 6:00 until 8:00 at which point we go over to Rick’s place to help celebrate Rick’s birthday. Dave stayed until about 10 and just couldn’t make it and more so he went home. I left with Tony and Kiat later and forced Tony to stop by Alberto’s pizza on P Street.

Home, eat pizza, bed. In that order.

Sunday was spent trying to get Dave’s computer back onto the new wireless network I set up. I spent most of the morning and much of the afternoon working on it. Dave went off to the gym while I fixed it.

I got a call from lil’David (as he’s beginning to be called) that he wanted to come pick-up some of the books that we gave him so I said come on over. Then I get a call from Alex that he and Gustavo are on their way to the house after house hunting (Alex is going to move back to the states from London). They both work for Untied as flight attendants and worked the same flight from London to Washington. It was a bit of a treat for us because Gustavo stopped coming to Washington and we only see him when we go to London. The timing was perfect, lil’David showed up and then the London boys showed up and they finally got to meet. You can only hear about someone so much without meeting them. So when it finally happens it’s really fun.

Lil’David left after a bit to change for the BB-Q that we were going to at 6:00 so the London boys stayed and we had coffee until Dave showed up.

We then headed over to lil’David’s house to see where he moved to. Very nice, close-in to town, two bedroom flat. So at this point it’s Alex, Gustavo, Dave, lil’David and myself at the flat. Lil’David had invited Ken to come by and look too, Ken in turn invited Brett (who is an ex of Gustavo). Brett has no idea that Gustavo is there and when he shows up and sees him, well let’s put it this way; I’ve never heard Brett squeal like a 9 year old girl before. So next shows up Kiat and Tony with Rick in tow. I think that only Kiat and Tony and Dave and myself had invites, everyone else was an invite of an invite or an invite of an invite of an invite. We’ve got quite a group now and head over to Rob and Carlos’ house for the BB-Q.

It was a very nice BB-Q with lots of cute boys everywhere. At one point Gustavo points out that he’s a 3 tier invite, which was true and quite funny. I got to catch up a little bit with Jimmy and Berry, it had been way too long since I’ve seen them. Alex is smart and leaves the party at 7:30 because he has to work the flight back in the morning. So does Gustavo but as he said “I’ve woken up” so he stays and proceeds to get drunk. All I can say is that I feel for him this morning. He had to get up at 4:30 to be there in time. We leave and I’m in bed by 10:00. All in all a good weekend.

Dave and I plan on eating vegetarian all this week and not touching alcohol all week (empty calories!) We might have Tom and Genève over with their new baby on Wednesday. They’re in town for a wedding and will be staying with Kiat across the street. It will be good to see them.

Holly Cow! It's the reverse of the Bees Knees.

2007-04-02T08:47:00.001-05:00

I just saw this article and it has me a bit worried. Maybe I wont go on that diet after all.

Dave's Home cooming!

2007-04-02T08:46:00.003-05:00

I’m so excited I can’t stand it. Dave will be home tonight around 6ish. He’s going to be jet lagged for days but we still set up an Italian class for tomorrow. I haven’t even looked at my Italian book since before South Africa so I’ll be very rusty. I almost feel like everything has been on hold until Dave gets home.

On another note, I’ve gone around the house and made sure everything was in order. All the beds made with clean sheets, dishes washed, trash taken out, clothes washed and ironed and general tidying of the house. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that bad it’s just that I let some things go for a bit because it doesn’t bother me but would really bother Dave. I did miss one thing. Little David got out a lot of our CD’s last weekend and I haven’t put them back. I think I might have enough time to do that when I get home tonight. Wish me luck.

Looks like another fun filled weekend is in store. Tonight will be a couples night, probably dinner and then bed. Tomorrow we have Italian lessons in the afternoon and not really sure what at night, depends on how Dave feels. Sunday Alex will be in from the UK and I think we’ll invite him to go to a friend’s house for a BB-Q. Should be pleasant enough.

Oh, and the cherry blossoms are supposed to be in full force on Saturday. I’ve been here so long I’ve become Jaded so I’ll probably skip the whole thing. Why go see it again when I need to see the real ones in Japan, right?

iPod World

2007-04-02T08:46:00.001-05:00

I love my iPod

I hate my iPod

I started thinking about this when I went on vacation and I wondered that maybe I’m not the only one thinking about it.

I’ve had my current iPod for two years and before that I had one variation or another almost from the original that came out in 2000. And all this time I’ve been shutting the world out.

Since I’ve been back from vacation I’ve not used my iPod. I use to use it on the way to and from work and in the gym. Sometime during vacation I stopped the noise addiction and starting hearing the world around me again.

Did you know that birds sing and that weather makes a noise?

I’ve begun to think that the iPod isolates you in very unhealthy ways. I can walk to work and back without hearing or seeing any of my surroundings except for maybe the occasional traffic signal. In the past few days I’ve seen the daffodils blooming, heard the dogs in the park, listened to the wind go through the trees and heard the traffic. The sounds of the city can be amazing and I’ve cut myself off from it for close to 7 years.

I would rather be a part of the world, not a part from the world.

So that leaves me pondering about my iPod. Do I keep it? Do I ditch it? What value to me does it have other than to cut me off from my world and the rest of humanity?

Stay tuned, after I’ve been back for a bit I may just want to isolate myself again.

Ok, Meez too

2007-04-02T08:45:00.001-05:00

Fun with Meez, Joining the ranks. Enjoy.

Interviewing Potential Employees

2007-04-02T08:44:00.002-05:00

This morning was great fun. PM had interviewed this guy for a helpdesk/project manager/network engineer a week or two ago and told me a little bit about the guy.

What he said wasn’t the good.

When you go to a job interview, no matter what, do not talk down your current position and employer. Or talk about getting into someone’s face. This guy talked about doing both. Bad sign.

The dilemma we had was that the other three candidates that PM interviewed last week either didn’t come close to what we wanted or had a job offer already. Unfortunately the one we wanted got another job. He was young, energetic, full of enthusiasm and knew what he was talking about. Oh, and he also had a good way with people. No wonder he got a job so fast.

So we bring this guy back in for a second interview with the whole department, PM, JW, LG, IA and myself. We had JW and LG on the phone and the rest of us where in a conference room. He’s right on time and first impressions aren’t bad. We then sit down and proceed with the interview. I’m up first and ask some of the usual questions about IT.

What was your most challenging/rewarding IT experience?

Can you work with -blagh –blagh –blagh kind of software/hardware?

Do you communicate well with others?

Where do you want to go in the future in this field?

All of the common questions

I wasn’t impressed with his answers, or lack thereof. Some questions just were not even answered. Like JW says, he kind of almost interviewed himself and rambled with the answers he gave. He also came across as not really wanting to learn any new things until forced, which is a very bad thing in the IT field were things change daily.

We keep him there for about an hour and then walked him to the door.

The after interview meeting was interesting, we went to PM's office and called LG and JW; everyone was a thumbs down. We were asking PM if there were any other candidates. He assumes that there are and that the recruiter is on it. It’s a very tight market right now in DC for IT help and you don’t want just anyone. They need to be able to fit in with the organization’s culture and your team.

I guess we’ll just treat this one as a test interview until the next one shows up.

A weekend in the life of Mr.

2007-04-02T08:44:00.001-05:00

Well, what a weekend. Kiat and I started out on Friday after work at Laurel Plaza where we went to met up with Jason, Britton, Amy and Mary. At least I think those where the girls names. They didn’t talk to Kiat and myself very much.

We stayed there for some (strong) frozen margaritas. Then everyone, but Kiat and myself, went to see a concert of some band I don’t know. Kiat and I then went to eat at Hank’s oyster bar. We got it into our heads that oysters would be the only thing that would do. Well, 48 oysters and two oyster shots (Thanks Ken) later we go to Jr’s to meet up with David and his friend Mary.

There’s a little bit of a story here. Jr’s had been closed to “redo the floors”, which they did do but everyone knew the real reason. They had served an underage person and the city closed them down for a bit. Friday was the first time they had re-opened and they were being super cautious. So, David’s friend Mary had an expired driver’s license and they actually checked out the expirer date. She couldn’t get in. Sooo… off the Halo we went.

We stayed there for a good long time, Mary got in no problem. I ended up leaving Kiat there and David and Mary came back to my place and stayed in the guest bed. We also got a pizza on the way home and ate most of it. David woke me up around 9 to say goodbye so he could make sure Mary got on her train to go home. Had a slow morning and decided to go shopping.

I had originally asked David if he would like to come to the mall with me and he did but he’s moving and had to stay at the house to wait for the Salvation Army to show up. Of course they came 5 hours later. I called Kiat and off we went. Now the only reason I wanted to go to the mall was to go to the Apple store and pick up the new Apple TV. Which I did. But. We ended up spending a lot of money. After the mall we went to Georgetown to the Diesel store, and get this, got parking right in front of it. That never happens. I got a pair of nice pants and Kiat purchased half the store. It turned into a 1k day for both of us. Eek.

After shopping we went and picked up David and Ken at Ken’s house and then went to Bistro Du Coin to meet up with Rick. We ate some very French food, shared a bottle of pink Champaign and then proceeded to go back to my house to sit on the deck and have drinks. A lovely time was had by all.

The next morning I made breakfast for Ken, David, Rick , Kiat and myself. Rick and Kiat went to Kiat’s house while David and Ken stayed in the guest bedroom. Just so you know Kiat lives across the street from me.

1 lb bacon

3 Rather obscene Italian sausages

Lots of mushrooms cooked in the bacon grease.

Beans

1 dozen eggs

Oh, yes, we also had mimosas and coffee. What we’re thinking of I don’t know. At some point Rick and Ken had to go. So David and Kiat and myself went out into the afternoon. And somehow made it to Jr’s for two dollar vodka. I stayed for a bit but then just got to the point where I was like “go home” “now”. Luckily it was still quite early and I got home in time to get a good night’s rest.

Dave comes home soon. Next Friday and I can’t wait. Let the countdown begin.

Andy's Blog has pictures too.

2007-04-02T08:43:00.002-05:00

I forgot to mention that Andy has put up some great pictures of Cape Town too. Not to mention that his blog is a interesting read anyway.

Every day life starts to settle in.....

2007-04-02T08:43:00.001-05:00

OK, so I’m not as miserable by the end of the week as I was at the beginning. All the jet lag is gone and I’m actually smiling at work again. Which is a good thing.

Bret had me over to his house for a mid-week dinner last night. The evening started out with Kiat coming over to my house to chat and have a glass of wine on the roof deck. It was an amazing evening, about 74 degrees and still sunny. We talked about the Cape Town trip until about 6:30 at which point I needed to make a mad dash to Bret’s house for dinner, stopping along the way to drop off clothes at the cleaners and buy a bottle of wine for Bret. No matter how much time you give yourself to get to Bret’s, you always need more. 30 minutes is just about right if you don’t have errands on the way. I was sweating buckets by the time I got there.

Dinner was great, Ken was there and we treated it like a school night. In other words I was headed home around 9ish after only drinking a little bit of (excellent) wine. All is good in the world and then Kiat texts me “we’re at Cobalt, stop in on the way back” So I did. And to my credit only stayed for two more drinks. I was at home and in bed by 10:30.

It’s Friday today so I’ll be heading out of work early and going over to Laurel plaza to meet up with, you guessed it, Kiat for happy hour. Little David will met up with us at some point and I think we’re going to go eat and then bar hop. It could be a very drunk evening. I need to be somewhat good because I have a few things I want to do tomorrow and one of them means getting up around 9.

Speaking of things I want to do tomorrow, I’m going to the Apple store in the mall and I’m going to get an AppleTV. If they have them in stock. This will be my big purchase for the month. Once I get it I should be entertained setting it up and connecting it all for at least 1 or 2 hours. LOL.

I’m off to lunch with my boss now.

Kiat's Cape Town Pictures.

2007-04-02T08:42:00.002-05:00

Ok, Kiat just put up pictures from Cape Town on his blog and all I can say is wow. Lots and lots of pictures with less words. Go take a look.

Tuesday, and still Jet Lag!

2007-04-02T08:42:00.001-05:00

Jet Lag, who knew it could take so long to get over? I’m still tired, going to try and workout tonight though. Sometimes that gives me energy.
Work has been interesting so far, most of the problems that I’ve fixed have come from the people off-site and most have to do with blackberries, oh my favorite of favorites.
I did get in trouble for miscalculating my vacation time by what I thought would be a little over a day under but turned out to be close to three days under. Can’t say Paul (My boss) was too thrilled about that, I wasn’t either. I don’t like being put in the hot seat. It makes me very uncomfortable. Not going to happen again.
Tonight will be an evening of giving David his card from Anton along with a couple pairs of underware that where left in the wash in Cape Town. Afterwards we’re going to get something to eat. I’ll probably do some laundry too. I was getting used to having a maid everyday on vacation who did that. Coming back to reality has been more like a crash landing and less like parking in your garage.
I’ve been invited on Sunday to a going away party for Andy Post, who happens to be leaving for San Diego on the next day. That was a bit of a shock to me because I knew nothing about his leaving. You go away for close to three weeks and the world changes.
Ok, enough about all this excitement since I’ve been back. On with life (and work).

The Trip back.

2007-04-02T08:41:00.001-05:00

Frankfurt, oh Frankfurt, oh how I love thee……

That was my feeling as soon as I set foot in the first class terminal. Mind you the flight wasn’t bad at all but there is some amazing calm at being in a first world country that I can’t explain.

I think my main gripe about the trip back was that Jo-Berg is a mess, totally. They put us on a bus to go to the plane, which was parked by a boarding ramp attached to the terminal. Why they didn’t use the boarding ramp I’ll never know. Lots and lots of people everywhere. I got there just in time to find the first class lounge, pee and leave for the plane. Next time to SA will be direct to Cape Town.

I’m missing Dave already. I got a text from him saying that he watched TV all night and that it was strangely quiet in the apartment. Wish I was still there. What a great time was had by all and so sad to be leaving it.

I have to say that I love Cape Town, so much so that I would move there and Drag Dave along. As we sat the last day at Salt eating lunch with Simon, I remarked that it was good to have Dave stay a bit and see what real life was like there. To which Simon responded “it’s exactly like this” as we sat and ate our amazing lunch. Oh to have that life.

Enough for now…..later.

Cape Town South Africa 2007

2007-04-02T08:40:00.002-05:00

Well ok, sorry it’s been so long. One of the things I found out about South Africa in general and Cape Town in particular is that internet access is very expensive. Relatively few people have private DSL. I’m writing this from the dining room table looking out over the ocean. I’ll then take it to the internet café and upload it.

So here we go.

Here are some pictures of the Place we’re staying. We were very lucky to get this place. The views are stunning, there is plenty of room and it’s close to most everything that we need to get to.

This is the main living area above.

Here is one of the views from the balcony.

And another looking up the beach.

Above is a picture of the place we’re staying from the beach.

We didn’t start taking pictures until David and Brett showed up on Sunday. Dave and I kind of kept a low profile until then. We had dinner with Simon and went out to the local gay bar – The Bronx. We also got invited to a very Afrikaan’s event on the Saturday before everyone else showed up. Mark, the owner of the property where we’re staying invited us to what I can only call a high-school dance with a bar in it full of youngish Afrikaners. It was a blast and not something everyone gets to do who’s visiting.

Here are some pictures from the first day of having everyone here.

This is us having a drunken lunch on the first Sunday where everyone was here. It’s at our favorite restaurant in Cape Town, Paranga. This is our friend Andy who came out to see us from Mumbai India.

This is everyone on the deck this Sunday. Tall Simon has his back towards us. Little David is the one in the bathing suit. I’m behind him with the sun glasses on. Brett is lying down and Andy has his back towards us in the background.

Monday we tried to go to Robben Island but they were sold out so we went to the top of Table Mountain instead. This is one of the most amazing views of Cape Town you’ll ever see. We froze to death while we were up there. Tony and Kiat went on Friday and almost burned up. Depending on the day you can do either.

Behind the smaller mountain in front is where our apartment is.

This is a view of downtown Cape Town from Table Mountain.

A good picture of me with the view in the back ground that I was privileged to witness.

David and Andy looking down the mountain. Kind of scary.

On Tuesday we had tickets to go to Robben Island at 5 that day so Dave and I decided to work out while Little David went to the beach and others just hung around the deck. We then got the call from the Robben Island people that it was too windy to go that day and that we would need to reschedule which we did to Saturday. So we just ended up going to diner and then out to the Bronx again. We went to bed early and woke up early the next day for a long day out. Cheetah petting and wine tasting. (Sounds kind of like lawn mower repair and cappuccino doesn’t it?)

We rented a van and a driver for the day, that way everyone could partake of the wines and we would all get back safely.

After getting everyone up and ready (getting 8 gay people to be ready to leave early in the morning is a lot like herding cats) we first stopped at Spier. This is where the cheetahs are, it’s a conservation area for the cheetahs and they make their money by letting people go into the cages with the Cheetahs and pet them. Look below.

Little David, Andy and myself petting a young male Cheetah whose name escapes me.

After petting the pussy cats we went to a nice long lunch at Reuben’s in the city of Franschhoek. This is like having lunch in the Napa Valley. Below is the menu. This was one of the best meals that I can remember having. Brett chose the most wonderful wines, the oysters were to die for and the duck was just amazing. After we got back to Cape Town and started telling locals where we went, they told us it was one of the best in the country. Way to go Brett for making the suggestion.

Tne thing to remember is that you get 7.5 Rands for the dollar and 15 Rands for the pound so going out to eat for us was cheap. What would cost 40 dollars in the States would be 12 in South Africa. I’m talking about some of the most amazing food too. It’s also hard to spend more than 30 dollars on a bottle of local wine. I guess I’m just saying that I’ll need to go on a serious diet when I get back.

Above you’ll see the gang. We have Kiat, Little David and Brett on the left and we had Tony on the end. Daniel, Andy and Dave are on the right with Dave in the Back. I’m taking the picture.

Chris in his natural habitat.

Kiat, David and Brett.

Here we are boarding the magic mystery bus after visiting a lovely winery.

Belly up to the bar, at yet another winery. Very cool place.

See Dave and I did travel together.

A size for everyone.

We go to another vineyard and then off to Stellenbosch to waste a little time before we head up to Tokara for dinner.

Before I show the pictures for Tokara you need to know a few things. We have a few world travelers in our group. Kiat and Tony are regularly doing fabulous trips to Asia and beyond, Brett has been known to be sent to amazing places for work. So, when we got to Tokara for sunset drinks on the porch overlooking the valley going back to Cape Town and they were speechless I was thrilled. It made me feel great that I was able to show them something like that.

Here is the view from the deck.

More wine. It’s a lovely rose sparkling wine.

I would like to have more pictures for the food and the inside of the restaurant but at this point we were tired and DRUNK. So I do have one picture but it’s so blurry you can’t make anything out.

After dinner we crawled to the magic bus and went home. Most of us slept but Tony and Daniel had a fascinating discussion about satellites the whole way back. I learned quite a bit in though my dreams. LOL.

The next day was the day of my birthday, the big 40. Now the only problem is that we tasked Tony with the picture taking and well, he’s not here anymore so I don’t have those pictures. We’ll just say that we ate at 95 Keerom and had an amazing time. They put us in our own private room and closed the doors. Thank god.

Here is a picture of little David and myself before going to the restaurant on the deck of the flat.

It’s a hard life but someone has to do it.

Our friends Brian and Dale, who we met in Rio, live in Cape Town and were lovely enough to invite us to an amazing cocktail party at their house on Friday. Little did we know that we would be in store for.

Unfortunately we didn’t think of bringing cameras and I’m really sorry for it now. In Cape Town they have an area called the Bowl, it’s mostly down town and has most of the business district along with residential along the top going up the mountains. We arrived at their place after going up and up to a gated community. We followed the road up to the end and there sat the most amazing place I think I’ve ever seen. In Cape Town there are lots of houses on the hill sides and most of them are being overlooked by other houses. Not this house. It was at the top.

The front of the house was all glass and it had a deck with a pool and Jacuzzi that overlooked all of Cape Town. Think of the pictures that you see of the house in LA that overlooks the city. We had views of Table Mountain, which is lit at night. The inside was something out of architectural digest. I wish I had pictures because I can’t express in words how amazing it was. We stayed there until about 2 in the morning.

The next day was Saturday and now we’re off to Robben Island, now I’m not sure if I’m spelling it right because it’s Dutch and means the Island of the seals. This is the island where Mandela spent 18 years of his life during apartheid. It’s about 12 miles from Cape Town by way of ferry. We first did a bus tour of the Island where you could see all the famous areas where they made the political prisoners do manual labor. The funny thing is the island has lots of wild life too. We saw springbok, penguins and get this, rabbits, lots and lots and lots of rabbits. There are no natural predators on the island to curb the population. Here are a few pictures.

This is inside the prison where Mandela stayed.

This was Mandela’s cell where he stayed for 18 years. Amazing what people can live through.

We stayed there most of the day and then went to eat in the V.A. Water front. Kiat and Tony left at this point. They had to catch a plane that evening.

The next day is Sunday and it’s time for most people to leave. The only problem is they need to go by 5:30 in the morning and we’ve stayed up until 2 the night before. Actually, little David didn’t go to sleep but he had someone to help him stay awake but that’s another story for another time. Dave got up and helped everyone get out, I had said my goodbyes the night before so I wasn’t about to get up.

Andy didn’t wake up so there was a 15-minute rush to get him packed and out the door. I had a hunch he might have trouble because he stayed up and edited some of the photos that you’ve seen in this blog until about 1. Anyway, no one showed back up because they missed their plane so it all worked out.

We spent the day taking it kind of easy; it was a bit of a relief to have everyone go if not a bit sad. Dave and I walked to Paranga for lunch; they have this huge bicycling event that was happening on that day so we had to walk because the roads were closed. There were 42 thousand bicyclists and it started at 6:30 and went on to 6 at night. Huge event. We then came home and Daniel moved in and we went to eat in De Waterkant. That was pretty much it so far.

I do have some pictures of when Kiat, Tony, David and Andy drove down to the end of the cape on Thursday before my birthday dinner. Dave and I had gone before and I didn’t realize that Tall Simon had set up a birthday surprise for me so I was at the spa for a facial and pedicure. Enjoy the following pictures.

The boys on the cape.

They have baboons at the cape; here is a mother and child.

This is the light house on the cape.

Another view of the cape.

And now for a few parting shots of everyone’s time here.

Wine with friends.

Chilling with friends.

I have to say, all in all, this was the most amazing holiday/birthday I think I’ve ever had. And I still have a few more days to go.

I also have to say that I feel blessed to have friends that would travel halfway across the world to spend my birthday with me. That’s the best present in the world.

I’ll be updating the blog again in a few days, maybe from the Frankfurt airport. We’ll see.

Frankfurt, Lufthansa 1st Class Terminal

2007-04-02T08:40:00.001-05:00

Well, first off there will be no pictures. I thought my laptop had Bluetooth so I didn’t bring my usb cable for my phone to connect directly. So now, no conectie no pic.

Sigh

We arrived early this morning and took a cab to the Kapinski hotel where we were given a day room because we’ve flow Lufthansa first. We ate breakfast and then sleep for awhile. We then got driven back to the airport by private limo to the 1st class lounge. That’s where we are now.

I love this place. The limo stops and they come out to greet you. You are the only ones here there so you go right through security and straight past the duty free to the lounge part and for us, to the restaurant. Today they had a special there of giant prawns done in an Indian style. We just did the Mediterranean tapas and some local German wines. All in all not a bad experience.

It’s about 8pm here and our flight doesn’t leave until 10:20. They will come and get us around 9:40 and take us to our airplane by way of a chauffeured limo service( Porche or Mercedes) . This is one of the coolest bit of this service. Once you are driven to your plane, they stop everyone else getting in and then you walk to our seat in the upstairs. People think you’re a rock star. ;-)

We’ve finished with the computer/internet stuff for now and are going to get another glass of wine and go shopping in the duty free. This is the only place I know where you can take a glass of wine with you to shop the duty free. Love it.

Anyway, it’s a tough life but someone has to do it.

Fun and useless

2007-04-02T08:39:00.000-05:00

Visitied Countries. Looking to see more

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Special thanks to Andy for the link.

Dilemma on Travel and other irritations…

2007-04-02T08:38:00.002-05:00

Well, Dave and I are going to Capetown with the journey starting tomorrow. When I booked the Award tickets months ago the only flights they had down there in first class where flights stopping in JoBerg and carrying on to Capetown on South African airlines in business. This is fine but after posting a question about it on flyertalk I realized it would be better to go direct without the connect in Joberg where it can be a beast in immigration. Also we would then have to drag our luggage to the domestic terminal while swatting away the “helpful” locals. So. I’ve been looking on the ANA star alliance award tool everyday to see if first class opened up on the direct flight to Capetown. This morning it opened up, it’s an A340 (which I like) and it has availability for the direct flight to Capetown from Frankfurt. Here is where the dilemma comes in. I have two secured first class tickets right now. I know the award people and how bad they can be. I had one ticket on a previous trip get canceled when I called to make a change after they told me everything was ok. I fixed it two days later but It could have cost me my vacation. You have to get the right award reservation agent. I also wasn’t sure if they would have to cancel the trip we have booked to make a change to a segment. In the end it just wasn’t worth the risk of changing them. It still gave me a twinge of excitement that we might get the flight we wanted. So now its onward and upward with the original plan/tickets. I still want the direct flight though. Today is a beast at work too. Paul, my boss, has had the whole weekend to think of things that might go wrong while I’m gone. Not good to come into in the morning. The first thing that happened was Martha (aka Marthra) couldn’t get onto the new mac server again. She sent an email to Paul and he forwarded it to me stating that “ he didn’t want to have to deal with this while I was on vacation”. I had it set up to use our Active Directory for authentication. This worked for a day and then would quit. You would have to re-bind the mac server to AD domain everyday for it to continue working. So this was more of a “it’s cool I can do this” kind of thing and not really necessary for the server to work. I ended up creating local user accounts for the mac people and enabling guest access for the windows folks. Seems to be working fine with one level of complication eliminated. The second thing is Paul is freaking about the Day light savings time change that congress approved and that is being implemented this spring. This is going to happen halfway through my vacation so he wanted to make sure all the patches where installed and working. They are. I did have to push out the fix for Outlook by way of a group policy. Hopefully I will not be getting any calls in Capetown. We also have Dave Wilson on call if something horrible happen, which I doubt. I think we’re going to buy a 30k video conference system after Paul and I have a meeting this afternoon. Should be cool if we get it. The next post will probably be from the First class terminal in Frankfurt on Wednesday.

testing this feature

2007-04-02T08:38:00.001-05:00

If this works, it will be cool.
Ok so this was a test of one of the features of this service. You can email your blog post to your blog and then publish it later. This will make it so much easier to post to. On vacation, all I'll have to do is write an email to myself and the blog will be updated. I love technology, except when I hate it.

1st Blog stuff

2007-04-02T08:36:00.000-05:00

Well, we’re off to Capetown soon. Kind of getting excited.
After the week I’ve had this week I need it.
It’s funny how everything goes tits-up at work as soon as your ready to leave for a bit. It’s almost as if the great cosmos thingy (God or whatever) out there wants to make you nervous that you might just not be able to go on your big trip. I’ve had our email systems at work go down, our mac systems go down and I’ve had to update all the servers for the new daylight savings time settings. Everything was working great for months before this week. What a pain.
I get to stop for a bit now. Hence the blog setup. I’m not messing with any setting on anything else at work before I go to Capetown. As it is, it looks like I’ll have to check-in\up on the computers while I’m there. I can’t wait until we get some more people.
I might go out with Rob and Mikko tonight for happy hour at Bar Rouge. It’s a cool hip place nearby that serves great drinks. We’ll see. Dave isn’t feeling the love for that endeavor so we might just hook up with them for dinner later. Don’t feel like having a huge night out. Getting kind of old for that and we have lots to do before the flight next Tuesday.
Ok, I know the first post is kind of lame but I’ve never done this before. Hopefully it will get more fun and interesting as I get better at it. Bye for now.