worst-blog-evar

Edible Manhattan

2009-01-13T19:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.ediblemanhattan.com

Hudson County Businesses

2009-01-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

I was walking around the side streets of Hoboken I struck up conversation of a man who owened (and was selling) his produce store. Apparently when he opens, everyone is at work and when he closes everyone just comes home. I asked him why he didn't just change his hours - times are different now - there are no steady market of housewifes spending the family money on the businesses of their neighborhoods. I myself do spend some of my earnings on business closer to where I work vs. where I live.

So a part of what I want to start doing, and you can call it my New Years Resolution, is to start buying locally without breaking the bank.

Here I will list all the places of business I'd like to start supporting:

JERSEY CITY HEIGHTS

Palisade Wine & Liquor

These folks will buy anything you request - the funny thing is that they don't even drink themselves. They are also planning on opening an organic food store in the area.

HOBOKEN

Paramus Meats

305 1st Street, Hoboken, NJ

I bought pork, bacon, ground beef, and whole chickens here. The taste and quality of purchasing directly from a butcher is unquestionable.

The Cheese Store

http://thecheesestorehoboken.com

I bought some gureir and chedder - they will let you sample the cheese if you want to try something new!

Send me a note if you know others. I'm trying to been a good Earth citizen and go for organic, fair trade, etc...

JPGMAG: Delectable

2008-09-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

View My DNA

2008-08-01T23:15:00.000-07:00

Oranges

2008-07-08T20:01:00.001-07:00

SE1Q6608
Originally uploaded by Sandra M. Martinez

California Oranges: 4 Lbs for $4.29

NO - my hat!

2008-07-06T19:18:00.001-07:00

IMG_3248 - NO my hat
Originally uploaded by Sandra M. Martinez

I found this picture in the CF card of my g2 (which I just got back!)...

**the next day i pondered quite a bit where I could have left my trusty hat...**

This was after driving for hours (maybe 8) through a blizzard coming back from Rochester. At the parking lot to get my car, the storm wasn't as bad in NJ. Well, at least a picture lasts forever!

14 Simple Ways to Super-Charge your Brain

2008-06-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

14 Simple Ways to Super-Charge your Brain

50 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do

2008-06-07T19:50:00.001-07:00

This has some pretty neat videos...

50 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do

Free Cycle

2008-05-28T04:47:00.001-07:00

I'm curious if any of you tries this out...let me know! :)
www.freecycle.org

Top 10 Restaurants in Hoboken

2008-04-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

okay, so after living in and around the area on and off for a few years, I have to admit that the better restaurants survive in Hoboken. here are the top 10...

The Dining Room at Anthony David's

www.anthonydavids.com

111 Tenth Street at Bloomfield St.

Brass Rail
http://www.thebrassrailnj.com/
they have a great wine list and i've had some solid dinners here.

LUA
http://www.luarestaurant.com/
1300 sinatra drive north
hands down, this is at the top of the list. I don't think I've ever had anything there that I didn't like. though the place is a little loud the few evenings I've been there, the Sangria is consistently the best I've ever had.

Charrito's
http://www.loscharritos.com/
best Mexican I've ever had. If you bring some good red table wine they also make a killer sangria. These pictures unfortunately don't do it justice.

Court Street
http://www.courtstreet.com/
This place has some salads I really dig and when you go there for lunch on the weekends, the Irish Soda Bread is something you will never get tired of.

Maxwell's
http://www.maxwellsnj.com/
i had an awesome cosmo there on a saturday night.
they also have a solid menu of things they make really well & their shows rock and it's an intimate venue. What's not to love?

La Isla
http://www.laislarestaurant.com/
probably the best Cuban in NJ.

7 Star Pizza
they have the best pizza.
forget about all that nonsense about other places having gi-normous slices.

Qudoba
mexican grill
If you don't eat the whole burrito in one sitting, you will thank yourself in the morning.

The Madison Bar & Grill
http://www.madisonbarandgrill.com/
This place has some top notch steaks and salads. I've spent a New Years dinner here. I've never had a dish here that I didn't love.
Their $25 jazz brunch is awesome too!! Viva creme brulee french toast!

Margherita's
The best Italian in town.

Cucharamama

malibu
when i missed dinner because i was working late while in college, this place always saved me from major cranky tyraids. they have great pancakes, coffee (much love to Lacas), and hamburgers.

Tokugawa Sushi
1120 Washington Street

BYOB what more can I say asesome seaweed salad, awesome sweetheart dumplings, new favorite sushi place in Hoboken...
If you weren't counting, there were actually 12! Ha! I'll update with pictures if I come across them...

Sweet Seattle

2008-04-20T10:56:00.001-07:00

The Story of Stuff

2008-03-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

The Story of Stuff
This is a neat video.

Big Apple Dance Sport Latin Dancers

2008-03-16T19:15:00.000-07:00

Shelf Milk

2008-03-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

I never tried shelf milk (i.e. Parmalat) because I thought the concept was a little strange, but this makes me want to try it out:

http://itotd.com/articles/220/milk-in-a-box/

scrapBlog

2008-03-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

So I created my first scrapBlog using the pictures I took in Seattle. I didn't think I'd get too into it but this brings back the fun back in the days of prints!

It's much easier/fun to see/read when you view it full screen - let me know what you think!

Need Some Hope

2007-11-24T22:00:00.001-08:00

Life's been to insanely busy to really write anything these days. I've seen a couple of great shows. A few CDs that have been on repeat include Delta Spirit's Ode To Sunshine, which is an AWESOME CD! And Josh Rouse's Subtitulo ..both of which I'm psyched that they are so good because it's been such a long time since I've been able to listen to a whole CD from start to end over and over (and over). I saw Delta Spirit open for Dr. Dogg at the Maxwell's a few weeks ago and they brought down the house so to speak. It was amazing. When I was at the show I couldn't help but comment how I felt like I was in a room full of mountain people; but I don't want to bucket the whole room into one category because I do admit that I think I also saw a fisherman, a hunter, and a blacksmith in the mix. So it was to no surprise that the liner notes in the CD said:

Recorded in a cabin.

So I've been addicted to this wine from Australia - Hope. I've had a lot of Hope these past few weeks. A new wine store down my block was sampling a few bottles and this was one of them. So what if I have a problem? I'm beginning to think I need help. What ever happened to the corporate limit? Wasn't it 2 drinks?

My boss came to town a few weeks ago and after a dinner with the team [after a few drinks] I vaguely remember dessert. In fact, the next day my boss commented to me that we went over what the average per person rate was, as to which I responded:

Me: How did we go over? Didn't we only do the $22/person package?
Boss: You forgot the incidentals.
Me: What incidentals?
Boss: The Merlot?
Me: The Merlot??
Boss: You DON'T remember the Merlot??
Me: OOOH! The Merlot? Yeah...(I did remember, it was pretty good...)
Boss: Yeah! After your second glass you started talking to Matt in Spanish!
Me: I don't even know Spanish.
Boss: Well you were also to the waiter in Spanish and you two were having a conversation.

So folks, looks like I know Spanish. There's Hope for me yet.

So a new favorite restaurant as of recent is the much admired and respected Cuba, where we ate more than we should but, nevertheless, the Oxtail was excellent as well as the Sangria. Think of a home cooked meal. Think Martino's up a few notches and less heavy (i.e. not an evident amount of oil and butter).

I also saw a reunion tour of Superdrag a few weeks ago at the Filmore (formerly known as our beloved Irving Plaza). That was a way awesome show as well and was one of those shows that got me listening to all their songs again.

Another satisfying meal was on a biz trip up to the evar-exciting Rochester where I stayed at the Marriott. By the time we got there (we drove) we were so drained that we ate at the hotel restaurant, which is not a bad thing since it is known for being really good anyway.

I has some filet - medium rare and boy did they do me right!

Somewhere along the hustle and bustle, we also paid some guy on the street $5 to write us a poem. Can't say you do that everyday, but if he ever published it into a book, at least we can say we have an original!

Other than all that, nothing too new and nothing too exciting. I'll leave you with a picture that I really like. The kids were really hyper at this shoot. I would wear these socks to work if it wouldn't be such a career killer. Maybe I could use the cold weather as an excuse...I'm not a fan of the 80s fashion comeback, but I'd do these legwarmers...

New York Underground

2007-10-07T08:56:00.000-07:00

This is pretty cool - I always wondered what was under the streets of Manhattan.

Life Explained

2007-09-10T18:49:00.001-07:00

Life explained.

Ron Paul Rocks

2007-09-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

Just like the radio, tv controls what they want you to hear, like, and buy [into]:

http://www.freewebs.com/ronpaulwinsdebate/

http://ronpauldaily.blogspot.com/2007/09/fox-lies-you-cant-vote-twice.html

Hallowig

2007-08-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Can someone knit me one of these?

Vacation Starters

2007-08-20T22:37:00.001-07:00

It's not everyday where you get to enjoy your home and where you live. Especially when you spend so much time working....so, anyways...

I finally took a ride out on Saturday to check out and photograph some parts of New Jersey. I visted a very pretty neighborhood by the beach with some of the most beautiful houses I've ever seen!

It was SUCH a nice day! Picture perfect! (Too cold for beach weather though.) Some kid who said he was going to be famous one day asked if I was a photographer and asked that I take his picture because he almost signed a record deal but had to go do some time for something that happened. He's mixing again though so watch out world!

The evening brought about an early Weston show at Maxwell's. I've never seen them play before but it was one of the funnest concerts I've been to. It was actually the earlier show we saw because the late show was sold out.

Sunday I had an awesome bran muffin at Malibu that made we want to drink a gallon of Lacas. (I was just impressed to see that they had a web site just now...). I can't even remember the last time I had Lacas coffee or where it was I use to go to to drink it. It may have been Felix #9. I digress, but I'd buy Lacas coffee by the pound. Anyway, the day turned out pretty dreary but I managed to get in about half of a photoshoot that I had planned as well as get my jeans soaked up to my knees. I didn't really mind it so much though because the temperature wasn't too cold or hot.

On Monday Loren stopped by! Lana is SO CUTE! :)

She couldn't stay for too long because she had a few other things going on, but I was so glad I was around to see them! So cute Loren!!!

We walked all the way down to Hoboken and split ways at 23rd Street. I went to Adorama to get some supplies (*sigh* => ) followed by a 5:30 meeting at Union Square to get to THE BEST PIZZA EVAR (L&B Spumoni Gardens)!!!!

Yes, no doubt that the CitySearch reviews caught my eye with so much feedback while maintaining a five star average. The long haul was worth it! I've never had such a good slice of Sicilian pizza, chicken parm (which came with the best knish evar!), a bottle of Riesling, coffee, and tiramisu. I think this was the only meal of our day. And make no mistake that when i bit into the lady finger at the end, I almost fell off my chair.

Highly, seriously, highly recommended. You can thank me later or just bring me with you and buy me a slice. hehe... and just for the record, a picture of us in Brooklyn's own Ave. V.

Getting off at Canal to run around some more, we stopped by a place called Cachaca to catch some jazz show that we saw an ad for at Maxwell's.

I forget how much I miss riding the Subway. It's such a different frame of mind and it's more relaxing because you have more time to think and, if you're brave enough, nap.

You know you've done it.

Seriously though, you don't need to spend a lot of money going to far away places, although it's awesome, when you live near NYC. You can go into any neighborhood and find some of the best food, music, shopping, and culture that you can't find anywhere else.

Also, my hand still hurts...should I be charging a claim against the building insurance since it was the door that hurt me?

Low Impact Woodland Home

2007-08-20T00:27:00.000-07:00

So, are you guys really not that into The Dome Home? How about a Low Impact Woodland Home. I think I found the home I'd never want to move out of. Unless flooding became a problem.

I'd need to revisit this idea in a few months and decide if I like it as much as I'm digging it right now...

cookingbynumbers.com

2007-08-15T19:24:00.001-07:00

so I stumble on this site called cookingbynumbers.com and you indicate all the items in your fridge and cupboard, and it gives you all the recipes you can make.

how psyched was i - not only can i make cheese toast, but I can make a cheese sandwich:

Needing A Hand Here

2007-08-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

So about a month ago, I was walking out of my buliding and I put my hand out behind me to catch the door so I could bring it to controlled close. Not knowing that someone tightened the screw on the spring, the door tossed my hand aside to close on my hand and the frame. If I lost you there, it looked something like this.

This is my hand before:

This is the position my hand was in when the door closed on me:

I was in such pain that I stood there for a few seconds with my hand still in the door trying to understand what just happened and how to make the pain stop. I pushed the door open and went to my car and sat there for several minutes until the pain subsided. It hurt to drive and I had to use my left hand to control the shift.

Basically, ice was applied until my hand almost had frost bite and then it was bruised for several days afterwards. That was about a month ago. About 2 weeks ago when there was heavy rain and high humidity, my hand started to hurt when I was using it in different ways. I thought it may have been caused by what had happened with the door but thought I was just being paranoid about it. I would bend my left hand in the same angles I would my right to see if it caused the same feeling and for a day or two I thought that it was just that. Then one day while driving I realized, no, this hurts and it's not normal. So the question is do I see a hand doctor or just let it heel? I got concerned when some people were telling me their ACLs disappeared and I don't want something similar to happen to my hand. And when I was meeting a vendor and he had a stent on one of his fingers and mentioned that his doctor wouldn't comment on whether or not he broke his ligament and that he's have to go to the hospital to see a hand specialist.

So let's spend some time looking into this. I hate to waste my time because the last time I've been to a doctor, there wasn't anything he could do for me but write me a prescription for Vioxx. I think I got one 2 or 3 times from the same guy. When I told my mom that they gave me Vioxx she was concerned and told me not to take it if it's pain that I can handle. It was. Apparently, it's a strong pain killer used in the ICU for people needing to handle serious pain (i.e. surgery) and she didn't agree with the mg prescribed for me. I wasn't even there to complain about the pain, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong that I was ignoring. I will keep my opinion as to why he gave me this to myself for now. Anyway, I digress and my hand is starting to hurt again, so let's continue the research.

So I go to webMD to do some research into what I should be concerned about and it tells me that the conditions associated with my selected symptoms are:

Broken (fractured) hand
Peripheral neuropathy
Cervical (neck) spinal stenosis
Osteomyelitis (bone infection)
MS
Shingles (herpers zoster)

Let's go with the first one because with the reaction to the humidity I was thinking I may have a hairline fracture. Apparently, from their Broken Hand Overview, a broken hand could take "months" of rehab.

The hand is composed of 27 bones, including those in the wrist. Broken bones most commonly result from a direct blow to the hand [*check*] or a fall onto the hand. Common injuries include fractures of the fingertip, or of the pinkie side of the palm, or of the thumb.

Now let's list all the parts of my hand that may be involved here:

Carpals -the 8 bones in the wrist
Metacarpals - the 5 bones that form the palm of the hand.
Phalanges - the 14 small bones that, when strung together, form the thumb and fingers.
-The thumb has 2 phalanges.
-The other 4 fingers are made of 3 phalanges each.
PIP and DIP joints - the joints in the fingers.
-The PIP (proximal interphalangeal) joint - the joint closest to the palm.
-The DIP (distal interphalangeal) joint- the joint closest to the fingertip.

So I guess my self-diagnosis is that there is a lot involved here. Time to call a doctor. If you see me walking around with some cast around my hand sometime in the near future, you will know why. I'm hoping that I didn't tear/injure a ligament - I think I'd be very upset. Is a hairline fracture a lesser evil? Was/am I being neglectful by not seeing a doctor in the first place?

SABOTAGE!

2007-06-03T22:06:00.003-07:00

Walking in Lambertville, I suddenly felt the strange sensation of being in a Beastie Boys video...

Links

2007-05-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.bugmenot.com
http://www.anysoldier.com

I really like this one:
http://soundwalk.com/

Blue Ribbon Sushi

2007-04-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

Blue Ribbon Sushi
119 Sullivan Street
212-343-0404

nuff said.

700167

2007-03-05T14:59:00.001-08:00

700167
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

test

Kabalarian Philosophy

2007-02-01T14:54:00.000-08:00

So this web site apparently tells you "the real meaning of your name based on the Mathematical Principle as explained by the Kabalarian Philosophy."

It is dedicated to creating mental freedom in the world by teaching the universally applicable principles of the Kabalarian Philosophy to help individuals live a more progressive, constructive and healthy life through the knowledge and application of the Mathematical Principle as it applies to language, name, mind and cycles.

So, if you're looking to choose a baby name (*ahem ahem*), this maybe a fun thing to poke at...

I looked my my name's meaning:

Although the name Sandra creates the urge to understand others, we point out that it causes you to be emotional and temperamental.
This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the fluid systems, liver and the bloodstream.
Your first name of Sandra has given you a quick-minded, sensitive nature.
It gives you a clever, creative ability in art, music, singing, or drama and an appreciation for refined surroundings.
Your sociable nature expresses affection, kindness, and thoughtfulness to the extent that it is difficult for you not to be affected by others and governed by your emotions, rather than by logic and reason.
As you respond to love and encouragement from others, your romantic and dreamy nature can easily lead you into love affairs.

I don't really agree with all of this, but Ivan's was WAY more accurate...

Ode to Sandra Bullock

2007-01-31T14:29:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I removed the shrink-wrap from my Two Weeks Notice DVD. It was a movie that I believe I caught in the theater when it was released. I bought it because I liked it

I have to admit that Sandra Bullock is my favorite actresses! That explains why I have so many of her movies at home. Actually, I'm not sure how many of hers I have. It really may only be two...(let's see...Two Weeks Notice, 28 Days (never finished watching this), While You Were Sleeping, In Love and War (haven't watched this either)...) Ivan said he likes it that she's my favorite actress. Hmmm...what does that mean?

Anyway, Two Weeks Notice is such a funny movie! It was well written and the actors all did a great job and worked well together. It really was funny and witty, an all around young, sexy comedy without being too sappy....hahaha...

Of all the well-known actresses out there, I don't really pay attention or pick favorites. I like her because all the characters she plays reminds me of myself. How I trip over everything, do dorky things, and am pretty much a big dork in general. I am reminded of her this week as all the salt in the parking lots at work act like rosin to my shoes. As soon as I set foot on the shiney floors, I'm walking on egg shells. Like I did today, and yesterday, and on Monday. It is a matter of time before I wipe out one of these days.

On a side note, I'm hooked on this Lemongrass Lotion Bar that I got from some new store in hoboen called Lhea Skincare. I originally went in there to get change because I went to this class and was $2 short and they couldn't break my bill and this was the first place I found on Sunday morning that had change. I decided to buy something to support my local businesses...this was one of the products I bought and I'm addicted to it. I've never seen a lotoin bar before, it looks like a small bar of soap and it smells SO good...

Annie Leibovitz

2007-01-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

On Sunday my Father had planned on stopping by to help install some things for me, but he ended up cancelling. This gave me the perfect opportunity to catch the Annie Leibovitz exhibit Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005, which has a book of the same title, at the Brooklyn Museum.

By the time I got there, it was a little past 3pm, but the line was out the door and around the premisis. After an hour and a half, we reached the ticket counter and finally made our way in. Annie Leibovitz is probably my favorite photographer because she does it all and she doesn't conform herself to one style, they say "her pictures are almost as varied as her subjects." She mostly does portraits and I love taking people's portraits.

Anyway, her exhibit was awesome! I can't remember a time where I went to an exhibit and had to stop and read all the signs. I don't know what it is.

Afterwards we went into Tribeca and found the best Latin Bistro EVAR, Ideya! They bring you out a basket of banana chips that were awesome and salsa that was awesome. I ordered the Costillas de Reyes (braised beef short ribs, roasted sweet potato, beet salad, orange gravy) and that was the best beef short ribs EVAR! (Although the one I had at Knickerbocker was awesome too!) Ivan had the Chuleta Rellena, which is
cornbread & chorizo stuffed grilled pork chop, apple-tomato slaw, sherry wine sauce. How can you go wrong with that combo! I found my new favorite restaurant! You have to try this place!

We also tried the Sangria Blanco and the Sangria Roja, and thee Banana Tres Leches Cake (Latin sponge cake made with three milks, banana cream sauce) and the Ideya Flan.

I need to plan a trip back here....EGW dinner? Brunch of the month?

My camera battery failed to recharge (*grrr*) and I didn't get any pictures except those I posted to my mobile blog, but better than nothing! :)

Gemini Profile

2007-01-11T13:52:00.000-08:00

Saw this one someone's blog. I don't know if this really matches me though, but whatever. I feel as if I'm in such a rut and have such a blase attitude towards everything. Is this my quarter life crisis?

Gemini - Your Love Profile

Your positive traits:

Your lively, outgoing attitude attracts people to you everywhere you go.
You can talk your way into - and out of - any situation you desire.
You're adaptable enough to flirt with anyone - and people tend to fight over you.

Your negative traits:

You get easily bored in relationships, and tend to jump from person to person.
You tend to be a bit of a player - and have a high tolerance for drama in relationships.
Not the most empathetic person, you tend to tell lovers to "get over" their problems.

Your ideal partner:

Is intelligent and quick witted enough to keep you interested.
Is a bit of a shape shifter, providing you with the variety you crave.
An open minded person, who's willing to have a non-traditional relationship.

Your dating style:

Exciting. If your date shows you a new experience (like Egyptian food or scuba diving), you're very happy.

Your seduction style:

Experimental: it's rare that you try the same thing twice.
Ultra kinky - you do stuff that's not even in books yet.
Hot and cold... sometimes you're just not into the whole sex thing.

Tips for the future:

Settle down a little. Sometimes good things come with time - so don't let people go so fast.
Acknowledge that you're a player and flirt. If your mate can't live with this, find someone who can.
Give your partner a little more attention. You don't have to be a social butterfly all the time.

Best color to attract mate: Sunny yellow

Best day for a date: Wednesday

What's Your Love Profile?

My Mobile Blog

2007-01-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

By the way, right before New Year's I set up a Mobile Blog...my last post (took a picture of the biscuits), never posted though.

Garbage!

Bisquick

2007-01-07T11:28:00.001-08:00

Today I found a cookie cutter in the kitchen and used it to make pancakes! Guess what's the cookie cutter shape?

I used Bisquick Heart-Healthy mix which I bought earlier in the week while I was on a Cheese-Garlic-Biscuit-making frenzy...

Bob Dylan Exhibit

2007-01-07T11:23:00.001-08:00

207-0794_IMG
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

Went to the Bob Dylan exhibit at the Pierpont Morgan Library on Saturday. They had all these sound rooms where you could listen to his music from different albums, watch clips of him being interviewed and from other films. There was also a lot of other paraphernalia on display.

There are other albums of his that I now want to get...

Happy Holidays!

2006-12-27T13:38:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone! I know I owe a bunch of people a bunch of phone calls so sorry about all that! I just wanted to send out a quick message of Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope that everyone is doing well! I am so exhausted from this weekend, which included a Russian restaurant - Kabaret, a trip out to PA to visit family, and a trip back to NYC for more family fun.

I also went back to the favorite Argentinian Caracas Arepa Bar with Carl and Ivan followed by The Fab Faux show at Webster Hall, where they played the White Album from cover to cover.

Awesome.

NYC Chocolate Show

2006-11-26T17:32:00.000-08:00

gustaux
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

So at the 200 NYC Chocolate Show the award for the best chocolate goes to Gustaux French Chocolate Truffles. They have a web site (www.gustaux.com) but it seems to be temporarily unavailable.

The best ports and dessert wines goes to these in this order:
1. Quay's Starboard - Batch 88
2. Elysium
3. Essensia
4. Electra

But that may point out my problem because the order of alcoholic content are 20%, 15%, ??%, and 4% respectively. Other members of the present party seemed to enjoy my #4 better so go figure.

www.quadywinery.com
www.vya.com

Wind Energy

2006-10-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

We should invest $10k to put this into out Engineers Gone Wild home:

Wind Energy

I say we invest in land in PA. so that we can go Skiing, play paintball, build snowmen, etc.

Noel's Costume

2006-10-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

I think I found a Halloween costume for Noel:

http://www.beanos.com/~tsoutij/domokun.php

New 7 Wonders

2006-10-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

They're re-electing the New 7 Wonders of the World:

New 7 Wonders

BEST PAELLA EVAR!

2006-10-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

I can't seem to stop raving about this. This is hands down, the BEST PAELLA EVAR!

If you're in Ft. Lauderdale, go to Brio Mediterranean Bistro on Las Ola...
I also posted a review on City Search.

Best Bed Evar!!

2006-10-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Last weekend went to Ft. Lauderdale and stayed at the Hilton in Deerfield...OMG...BEST BED EVAR!!

www.hilton-hotelsathome.com

One day these pillows will be mine....yes, they will be mine....

2006-07-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

Taco Town

updates below! =)

2006-07-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

Recovery

2006-07-17T07:54:00.001-07:00

coming soon...

Benelux

2006-07-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Paris in 4 Hours for Dummies

2006-07-17T07:53:00.001-07:00

TBD

Barcelona

2006-07-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

coming to a theater near you

US > London > Spain (seville & madrid)

2006-07-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

Oh where do I begin... Before we left on our journey Ivan's parents paid us a visit to wish us off well. Actually, we almost didn't go on the trip because there was a health scare in the family, but we won't talk about that. Anyway, Ivan, Sof, and I trekked out to my parents house where my mom fed us with cheesy gooey spaghetti and chicken. mmm...

Then they drove us to the airport (thanks mom and dad!). When we got on the plane we all sat in seats apart from one another and we pretty much dozed in and out of consciousness to a plane that wasn't taking off.

The woman I sat next to lived in NJ but was originally from Argentina. I told her that I knew she was from Argentina from her Spanish that she was speaking on the phone. She said that she eventually wanted to moved back there with her husband because here it's harder to raise a family because there's no help. I totally knew what she was talking about; back where my parents come from there are always "help" who did all the cleaning, the cooking, the laundry, and entertaining of the children...all of which is more than reasonably affordable (think about paying 10 USD/month to have all that done...). Pretty much when you have a job and are living on your own you have to do all that stuff by yourself. No wonder everyone doesn't move to America.

Anyway, by the time we got to London, we missed our connection flight! The airline booked us for the next flight and while we were entertained by London Medics trying to diagnose some Russian man who was pretty much passed out on a chair.

London Medic (animated with thick British accent): do you feel a strong crushing pressure on your chest?

When we got to Madrid we took a bus to the city and a train to the station nearest to our hotel and from there we walked...

And here is where we encounter our first lessons learned from out trip:

Lesson #1: If you go backpacking, invest in a backpack that has a waist strap.

We did not have this and I'm sure we would have appreciated the torque it would have created in bearing that load. But, no worries, we used the wheels when we could.

By the time we got to our hotel, it was time to totally wash up. This is where we come to...

Lesson #2: Unless you go to maybe a 5 star hotel, Eurpoean hair dryers area joke. When I was a kid I had a toy vacuum cleaner where, if I was lucky, it would possible pick up crumbs. Put it in reverse and EUREKA! you have a European hair dryer!

Good news was that it was so hot and humid, I didn't even bother to dry my hair most of the time. Oh well... So then we made our way to the train station to make reservations for the Saturday train to Seville (as per Sobray's recommendations...and a few others later as well). But good luck doing that since they were on strike for the rest of the evening.

Anyway, the trainstation on the outside had a lot of construction going on (probably from evil-doer's crimes) but the inside had beautiful palm trees and flowers.

So since these Spaniard ticket agents didn't want to do any work, it was time to eat! We walked over to a place called Do Salmon that our Madrid book recommended.

The noise level there was pretty low and the food was pretty good. I had the salmon and it was alright.

Here we sampled our first pitcher of well-deserved Sangria. Upon finishing, we cabbed it back.

On Saturday we woke up and went to the train station to, again, make reservations for the train to Seville...and guess what? It was sold out! The closest train we got was at 14:00, which brought us there by 16:30. *sigh*

So, trying to keep positive, we walked around Madrid for a bit to take some pictures and kill some time. We passed by the colegio (shown below).

We got to Seville around the time it started waking up again. So it worked out perfectly. I loved it!

If I had to do it again, I think I would have stayed there instead of Madrid. Many of the streets we made of cobblestone and it reminded me of Salvador, Brazil. So apparently Seville is known for their fancy tile work...and we bought a very small set of tiles (remeber, this has to fit in our backpacks...) that spelled out Unit #2. =)

A friend from work told me we had to try to Paella off the streets... I didn't find any paella off the streets, but we did go to a restaurant off the street and had some of their paella, which is probably more hygenic. =P

I don't remember the name of the restaurant we went to, but we had some calamari which was HUGE, garlic chicken and the paella, of course. My favorite was the garlic chicken and the paella. Mmmmm... The paella's prawns weren't deshelled so I helped Ivan open some of his and showed him how to do it before he played with too much of them (best viewed in IE):

The people who sat in the table next to us were from Australia and California so Ivan helped them trakslate to the waiter what they wanted and what the menu said. =) by the way, you can see them laughing at us in the background of the video.

Afterwards we walked around some more to take pictures of the beautiful city and when Ivan sat down...well...let's just say that it's time for the Ivan-got-pooped-on-action-sequence!!

Either way, Sevilla gets two thumbs up from us. The train ride back to Madrid was cool and relaxing and we brainstormed what we would do when we got back to Madrid at 00:35 on Sunday morning.

When we got back to Atocha, Madrid's train station, we ended up walking over to the seemingly lively area and caught a jazz band.

I have to get back to you on the name of this place, but here we discovered the best coffee drink EVAR! It was called a bombon and it was coffee (or expresso) on top of a layer of condensed milk.

So that was day one and day two of our trip. It was a struggle to get back into the blog of things.

cookie cupidity

2006-06-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks ago, more like the last week of May, there was this UPS notice floating around the lobby of my house. The first attempt notice, it was hard to read who the package was from. Ivan had many suggestions and after staring at it for a while I thought it said Cookie Outlet(!!!).

I was laughed at for that by 2/3 of the building. I guess that sounded rediculous to some.

So then I got a second notice and it didn't say who that was from. Eventually Adam saw the UPS guy lurking outside of our place and acquired the goods. I was the from the Cookie Outlet!

Inside was a batch of brownies that turned out to be the best brownies EVAR But there was no note in it for who it was from. There was a like note in it that said ...we are proud to offer this premium selection to our Loyal Customers and Hope you and your Family enjoy then as much as we do...but I have never ordered from them before or even heard of them so how would I be a loyal customer?

I thought perhaps it was from Lilibeth, who once sent me a huge cookie for my birthday a few years ago from Mrs. Fields. Yesterday I was talking to Dr. Cini online, one of my best friends, and she asked me Hey, did you ever get my cookie?

Oh! You mean the brownies?!?! That was YOU?!?!

Mystery solved! Thanks Cini!!

So when I was researhing this company (I had to make sure this package wasn't a trap!) it seems that there is a lack of Italian bakeries in the mid-West. Hence a lack of Italian cookies. Apparently Italian-cookie lovers have this company as the only resoure for getting their hands on Italian cookies in their respective remote locations and they all love this place. I do too. I'd eat it all up like the fat kid that's in me.

bob, bubble, & beatles

2006-06-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

I was waiting to get some pictures from a friend before I posted this week.

Friday I had off and I visited a friend in Hoboken who was working. We went to a local coffee shop and relaxed and caught up. It was nice to be able to have some time to catch up with friends who you'd otherwise not see on a normal week. She also gave me a book that she was the publishing editor for. It must be so satisfying to have your name on a piece of work that you had a hand in producing. That's so cool!

On my way back home I ran into Ivan, Sof, and Adam who were maliciously loitering around in the street. They were hungry and we all ended up going (back) down to Charritos in Hoboken. The food there is so dangerously good.

After my class I visited my family to join them for lunch. Visiting home reminds me of how much I missed my family's cooking and it left me craving for real food for the rest of the week. :-)

On Sunday we had a performance at the Jersey City Museum. Ivan was playing Bob Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man and his guitar teacher and myself were accompanying him.

We were the last act in the last show, so you can say that we were headlining the headlining show. =) Ivan's friend came over to take these pictures and help us move all the equipment and just to see the performance. Ivan's sister and her friend also came to see the show.

Ideally we wanted to hang out with everyone afterwards to celebrate, but we had a salsa class in Hoboken that we had to get ready for afterwards (after fixing the neighbor's air conditioner). The class was a private 1x1 lesson and before us there was a couple learning to do a ballroom dance for their wedding that was the following weekend. That was their last lesson of 4 lessons and they had their dance down. The salsa class was a lot of fun too and the girl who helped out the instructor was a girl I knew back from our college days as well as the days when we use to drive down to the group lessons, which stopped after the accident. Private lessons are a little more than group lessons but they progress much faster and you get more out of it because of new people who'd join the class every week.

Afterwards we went back home to change and then went back down to Sinatra Park to see a show that was rescheduled due to rain last Thursday. The band was called Bubble and they were doing the whole Abbey Road and A Hard Days Night album. They were excellent! We bought their album of original music too. Apparently last year they did the whole White Album. That must have been great too...it was probably the best Beatles performance I've seen.

I realized that the next best thing to seeing a concert in New York, is see a concert with New York as its backdrop. It's even better when the band's musicians are pro and the music is awesome...it leaves me with such a satisfied feeling...

Afterwards we went to The Brass Rail to do a little celebrating for our show earlier in the day. We both had one of the specials, tilapia, and a really good bottle of wine. Ivan said if was the best weekend of his life and I agreed. It was a lot of fun, especially since the show went really well!

Here is a clip of Bubble doing Carry That Weight (it may only work in IE), if you listen real carefully you can get an idea of how beautiful the strings sound (!!!) :

I will try to post a video from the show when I get a chance!

Real Age

2006-06-14T07:37:00.000-07:00

According to RealAge my:

Calendar Age: 26.1
My real age so far is 24.2

<-- Speaking of real age, I forgot to post this picture in my Memorial Day blog.

I didn't really plan anything this year except eat with my parents! On my actualy birthday, which landed on a Tuesday, Ivan and Adam took me to Cold Stone to buy me an Ice Cream Cone but ended up buying a cake instead! =)

Thanks hunny!

Woman at Cold Stone: What do you want the cake to say?
Ivan: Happy Birthday Sushi!
Woman at Cold Stone: Happy Birthday SUSHI, S-U-S-H-I?
Ivan: Yes!
Woman at Cold Stone: (out loud) WE NEED ONE HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSHI!
Man at Cold Stone standing next to Woman at Cold Stone: Sushi? S-U-S-H-I?
Woman at Cold Stone: Yes!

The flow of conversation was so smooth that I thought they were going to break out into song! Then...

Woman at Cold Stone: (accusingly) Is Sushi in the room right now?
Ivan: Yes, Sushi is here!
*Everyone in the store starts singing*

And so the story goes...it was SO funny.

Cold Stone cakes are the BEST, by the way! We got one at work yesterday for someone who sits next to me - it happened to be the same girl who took me out on my first day working here so we had to celebrate! =)

weekend update

2006-06-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

Before much time goes by, I need to give the weekend update.

Thursday we got throught the list this time at the Verve! We went to their wine tasting with a few friends from work. It was a lot of fun and we stayed there later then we ever have stayed there before.

Saturday I slept in and it felt great. I can't remember the last time I just slept because I could. Saturday evening we went to the Alfonso's Medical School Graduation party, a friend that I've known from college. I can't believe 4 years went by so fast! On our way there we went accidentally went on the express lane on the NJTPK and we missed our exit. So then we tried to get off the same exit going in the opposite direction, but that side seemed to have skipped that exit. So frustrating...we pretty much went all the way back to get back on the other side to get of the right exit. That part of the NJTPK is very poorly labeled, by the way. I think I need to invest in a GPS or something. A ride that should have taken 20 minutes ended up taking twice as long...

Anyway, his mom managed to secure tents so that they could continue to have it ourdoors. It was a nice party and I don't think I knew anyone there besides him. We did however got into a really nice conversation with a family friend of his. We talked about everything from travel, sushi, colleges, music, etc. Another hightlight of the night was the jazz band. The guitarist said he remembered me from the Fonz' NYU Graduation party. I asked if they did requests and they did Tangerine for me! I love that song! Ivan also requested some songs and they played them too...I have to ask him again what they were.

Sunday was a nice day too. We woke up early and went to the driving range in New Brunswick. I am not very good at golf but Ivan is pretty good though. I'd like to get better but Sunday proved to me that that will be after much trial and tribulation. Afterwards we drove around looking for the Short Hills Mall, we eventually found it and we got the The Office Special (British version). I really liked the last episode. This is such a funny series and such quick-witted humor. It seemed that the show started out so funny and there were parts of it that became more and more serious and kinda poignant. You should watch it if you get a chance - it's probably right up there with Arrested Development. We also got some maps for our vacation.

Later we went walking to Hoboken. It was a pretty nice day so we wanted to enjoy some of it before the weekend was up. I finally got a picture of some art/graffitti that appeared on one of the street nearby. What do you think it's suppose to be? I'll tell you what I think it is after you tell me - that way I don't lead anyone on.

We ended up watching a girl's softball game. It was a lot of fun to watch but we both couldn't figure out who that guy was on the field. It's an all-girls team and there's a boy wearing big jeans and a huge t-shirt. What's that all about? The other team also had an extra player between 1st and 2nd base...2 short stops perhaps?

Then I got an unexpected call from Loren and she invited us to a Vietnamese restaurant in JC!! It was one that she took me to a long time ago when she lived next door to me in college. Loren & Don met us by the park (Thanks guys!) and the ride to the restaurant in Loren's car can only be described in a picture:

Ahahahaha.....The food there was great! We had some trouble getting all the condensced milk out of our cups (as you can see from the picture), but once we did, we devoured the iced coffees.

When we left he restaurant it was pouring! Luckily, they drove us home too! Thanks again!!!! You guys are loads of fun and we are looking forward to the Sushi place too! ;-)

P.S. We kinda weren't expecting to see anyone we knew, which is why we looked so fluffy.

the junk truck

2006-06-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

Before I go on to talk about my weekend, I would like to talk about a topic that's very near and dear to my heart: the junk truck.

Some may know if for its incessant clanking which bombinates when nearby and some may know it purely for its asthetic qualities, but this neighborhood faux pas has been the subject of much chatter. It came to my attention this week when the DSA asked me, no, wait, dared me to extricate a dolphin from the varigated assortment. I declined.

If you see the junk truck, you should NOT panic. Contact the Suspicious Activity Hotline and the DSA will get right on it. The junk truck can be identified by the following characteristics and words of the day:

bombinate \BOM-buh-nayt\, intransitive verb:
To buzz; to hum; to drone.
Cries of terror bombinate about the junk trunk.

extricate \EK-struh-kayt\, transitive verb:
To free or release from a difficulty or entanglement; to get free; to disengage.
Many furry friends will not be extricated from the junk truck.

variegated \VAIR-ee-uh-gay-tid\, adjective:
1. Having marks or patches of different colors; as, "variegated leaves or flowers."
2. Varied; distinguished or characterized by variety; diversified
We spotted varigated assorments on the junk truck.

fulsome \FUL-sum\, adjective:
1. Offensive to the taste or sensibilities.
2. Insincere or excessively lavish; especially, offensive from excess of praise.
Junk trunk = fulsome.

virtu \vuhr-TOO; vir-\, noun:
1. love of or taste for fine objects of art.
2. Productions of art (especially fine antiques).
3. Artistic quality.
The junk truck speaks to the taste and virtu of it's owners.

pocket change

2006-06-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine has been working with this new startup company in NYC called Pocket Change. It's about some of the most expensive places and things to do in the City. If you got some time, check it out:

http://pocketchangenyc.com/

Let me know what you think!

Memorial Day Weekend

2006-05-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

The weeks just seem to fly by and the weekends go even faster. Most of the time it was a blur and if it weren't for all the pictures I take and receipts in my wallet, I probably would forget most of what happened. We started our weekend early on Friday.

We played music at home and went into the city to run some errands. What those errands were, I don't remember exactly, but I do remember buying some 120mm film for one of my cameras - Ivan's request. Oh, and we also bought Home Movies Season 4! I found a Tower Records credit receipt from 2001 and they let me use it, so that's always a good thing.

We saw another bike protest and NYC cops were purposely blocking the bike path. I saw one giving a ticket to someone without a helmet, but I didn't understand why they'd block the bike paths in several places though. A lot of the bicyclists were yelling, "Stop blocking the bicycle path!" and then they all started chanting something but I couldn't make out what it was.

We eventually ended up at Gonzalez y Gonzalez, where we shared a pitcher of pink Sangria and some appetizers. We sat at the bar afterwards to watch the end of the Mets game and walked back home. Before we hit the Path we stopped by a Wine store and got a German Rielsing, which I've recently gotten hooked on.

On Saturday I met my parents at Churrascaria Plataforma by Time Square in the later afternoon. It was a place that I trudged across Manhattan during the Transit Strike last December to get both our parents Rodizio gift certificates for Christmas. My parents never used them so I figured I'd use this opportunity to get them out of the old neighborhood and try something new (finally!). My dad, being the meat-eater that he is, tried practically everything! =) The bread on the table tasted like a Pan de Yuca and it was so warm! We had a pitcher of Sangria, and I would definitly go there just to hang out at the bar with some Sangria and some dessert.

For dessert, I had a flourless chocolate cake. It was in the shape of a pyramid and it was delicious! The coffee was great and that's always a major plus! When we left they had put some sushi out, so I think the buffet area changes during the course of the day. The sushi did look really good, but I was so stuffed at that point.

Saturday my hunny told me to reserve the whole day for him. =) We went to Time Sq. and walked through the Time Sq. festival. We got some elephant ears and coffee and walked by some Spiderman filming that was going on. Then we went to Rockefellar to see the Top of the Rock! He surprised me with tickets he bought ahead of time! The views from up there were amazing! I brought my medium format camera and took some pictures with that. Ivan took a bunch of pictures of me taking pictures, which explained why he was lurking behind me a bunch of times...hehehe... We also bought the pictures that the people were taking at various places. As soon as they would take the picture, they'd give us this ticket and the picture would already be sent to the place downstairs where they were printing them out. That was a pretty cool thing.

Then we walked up to Central Park and did the Walking Tour of Central Park and ended up by the American Museum of Natural History, where he had purchased a package for us to see a few films! A surprise again! We are both fans of documentaries, and national geographic, etc. so it was something we both enjoyed. One of them was about Cosmic Collisions and how the earth formed. Some of the timelines they mentioned seemed new to me, I wonder if they were results of more recent space research. They said it took the moon about a week to form. Hmmm. The other movie we saw was at the IMAX and it was about the Galapagos island. That one was pretty awesome too.

Then we went back home to rest up a little before going out to dinner. We went to Knickerbocker Bar and Grill. If you've been in the village, you've probably seen it..it's on the same block as BBQ but on the other corner. If ever there existed a place that made steak to melt in your mouth, this was it. (the DSA said I said that 8 times this week, but I'll say it every time...). We both had the braised short-ribs and...oh my goodness...SO GOOD! Since it was a celebratory day, I tried the Churros. We also had a bottle of wine that was EXCELLENT!! Hopefully, our walking burned some of that off though.

When we got back to Hoboken, Adam met up with us near the Path. (Thanks Adam!) And he brought me another bottle of wine, Riesling. We didn't end up drinking it, but probably later on this week. I think at that point we had already drank so much.

Monday we kept it low key. We did some cleaning and went to get some fake food and groceries. We bought a watermelon and I made a bunch of watermelon balls. Then Ivan filled it with flovored vodka and rum and we put back all the watermelons inside and let it sit in the fridge to soak. I don't know where that idea came from, but I think Ivan got it from his little sister (ironically, who's underage!! hahaha...go figure!).

Adam came upstairs and he made some Guacamole and brought some chips and crackers. The Guac he made was really good and we broiled some salmon and ate it with Salad. Then, on to the watermelon!

It was all really good and we had so much left over...we were glad we only bought half a melon b/c we almost bough a whole watermelon. So, then we put a lot of watermelon into the blender with some popsicles and made some drinks and watched Home Movies.

softball

2006-05-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

So, I am on the Softball Team at work. Last year a co-worker/friend of mine got me to join. I warned him that I wasn't that good, but he said that it was more for fun. So, I, not being one to turn down fun of most sorts, joined the team. I'm #12.

I didn't want to be a bad player so I did my best to learn to learn fast, play right, catch and throw better, etc... I got a hand-me-down glove from Ivan, which at one point ended up with his sisters. I have to explain this everytime I leave the glove lying around and hear someone say, "Ilona loves Ricky Martin??"

The people on my team are SO NICE too. The coach is great and there is another team member who I call my personal coach (PC). Unfortunately he gets to help out the most girly girl of them all - me, who can't throw if my life depended on it. He did get a bunch of players into the Major Leagues, including some current Yankee players, so I figured if anyone could teach me, it would be him.

After the first game, we beat another team from our company and I had, surprisingly, the 2nd best batting average of the team at 0.667! I kept telling people that it's all downhill from here, but the team was supportive.

Former Team Member : You go Sandra!

After our 3rd game, I was still 2 for 3 and still had a 0.667 batting average. I still don't think I'm really that good though. I'd be happier when I'm at the point where I can catch and throw aggresively - i.e. when the heat is on, baby.

Opposing Team Member: Oh please. I remember you hit a couple balls down the third base line that we perfectly placed. I think you sit there and smile like you have no clue then bam. There is a nice hit ball for a single. =)

Well, I don't like to sit there and smile like I have not clue exactly... After last week, we went into an extra inning and finally beat a team that beat us once before. I was a sub runner but I got home in time to end the inning at 12-11. Whew!

Current Team Member: where are the stats? I want to see how much further behind Sandra I fell...

Anyway, last game I didn't do as great, so my numbers may come down a bit. But I did get a few RBIs in! =) Afterwards we went to a bar nearby to meet up with several other teams that had games that day. Below is my PC, our team coach, and me and a co-worker (who's on the other team! *Grrr*).

NY Culinary Festival

2006-05-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

Thursday after the softball game, I came home to U2 and U3 plotting to get pizza and ice cream. As I got settled they entered their journey into the wilderness. Our Director of Suspicious Activity (DSA) was able to secure some evidence of SA in Hoboken. Video awaits. I heated up the oven to warm up the pizza and we just hung out and talked.

Friday - passed out early! Woke up at midnight STARVING! So we headed out to Malibu to have some food and stayed up late watching Conan do some pole dancing. He is SO funny.

Saturday, went into Queens and got caught in traffic on my way back (mental note: summer street fairs in the city = bad bad traffic) so I decided to hang out in NY until it was time to meet up with my friend and his gf who was in from California. It was a really nice day and we went to the New York Culinary Festival. We were actually suppose to see a movie that night but they ended up seeing it the day before, which worked out perfectly because we found out about this and all wanted to go. Lloyd, being a vegetarian, even found some chocolate vegan cake and there was a whole table of vegetarian cuisine.

His girlfriend tried the chips and guacamole. My favorite was the Chocolate Souffle. They were raffling off an Easy Bake Oven - I'm not sure if that's how they made all the souffle cakes, but oh man, I don't think I want to know. My hunny and I split everything we got so that we wouldn't fill up to fast and could try more things. We also tried some of the wine and had some Chicken Quesadillas. All of which were wonderful.

There was fruit sculpting too. They had very detailed sculptings on Cantalopes and watermelon. If you are able to zoom in on those pictures, you'd get a better idea of how much work went into it. Lloyd's gf's favorite was a tea made by Avalon tea bar by Union Square. She had some drink called Genius and I think I'm going to head down there one day to try it out at the store.

At 11pm the Spin Doctors were suppose to play, but we weren't ambitious enough to stay that long nor to come back to see them. We did however catch Nashville Attitude practicing or doing sound check. They were pretty good.

Then we walked around NY by Rockefeller, where there was some Rock Art Exhibit. There were some peculiar art films and other art forms to see.

Probably one of the highlights was this one man dancing with some girl who were working at a radio station. I have great video of that, which I will add later (so check back for it!). Afterwards, we went back into the hood to meet up with Elvia for some more fun.

We hypothesized crashing Sobray's friend's BBQ (he only wanted to be in the blog! You could at least say something!) but instead ended up going to the new Charrito's again. It's just that good my friends.

We sat outside but when the temperature dropped they happily moved us inside where it was toasty warm. I think that all of us are going though summer happy thoughts, since we weren't dressed appropriately for the sudden yet predicted drop in temperature. I love the pitchers they use over there; they're so colorful!

Sunday = shopping! I think I have been meaning to go shopping the whole year. When I went shopping during the holiday season, I didn't really see anything that caught my eye, but at this point I was running out of some necessities. I didn't really get everything I needed to get, but boy did I spend a lot. I didn't even mean to spend that much, it just happened and when I would see things I loved, I didn't even hesitate because I can get pretty picky with this stuff.

Anyway, I still need to get new sneakers. Mine are probably 3 years old and have no soles. Cleats so that I don't mess up my new sneakers and so that I don't go slipping on bases like I did last Thursday where I was clearly safe but slid right off 3rd base because it was raining and there are no more treads on my sneakers, which are kinda gross at this point. Hmm...and new black shoes because my shoes are probably at least 4 years old. I also need new casual shoes because mine are probably 5 years old. Geez, I need to take better care of myself.

So anyway, I ended up buying some things I wanted to wear on my vacation and a bunch of stuff for work; so watch out for the new spring lineup! So then Elvia and I went to the Seaport and ate at Uno's. There was a concert going on outside...a Merengue band and there were SO MANY PEOPLE drinking, dancing, and enjoying the day. We had some drinkie drinks and had some time to rest our feet.

We had some killer flat-bread pizza that was so good, we ended up taking 2 more pies home to U2 and U3 who waited in my car in Hoboken to pick up the goods. Eventually it got so cold we went inside to finish out drinks, pay the bill, and wait for the other pizzas. What a pizza week it was! It was such a nice day, I think all the raining had left the sky really blue and the clouds so fluffy white.

Rock the Vote

2006-05-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

In case you're not registered to vote, you can do so by clicking the link below.

It's time we start changing things around here. Who needs a Senate that wastes their time deciding that English is our National Laguage? OR perhaps they are trying to rule out a large chunk of the voting population by eventually only having to print ballots in English?

Me thinks that would give an unfair advantage to a certain political party. The world is ruled by politicians with conflicting insterests.

To make a difference, click the link below:
http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=900387&l=7973

Popsicle Riddle

2006-05-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

Question: What did the mountain climber name his son?

Florida

2006-05-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry, it's been a crazy week and when I came back I had to hit the ground running.

So, to recap, it looks like I left the East Coast in time to miss another rainy weekend last week. Florida greeted us with blue cloudless skies and bright green palm trees and colorful flowers. I so needed a vacation.

Coincidentally, the hotel we were at wasn't too far from the hotel we stayed a a couple years ago when we came for my cousin's wedding.

On our first day we got a rental car and drove to the Welcome Center and then to Rangatsu, a Japanese Restaurant that a friend of mine claimed was the best Japanese place she's ever eaten at. I had to take her word on it since she's been to a lot of Asian countries. We tried to go there for lunch but they only had dinner hours so we made our way to the hotel instead.

We parked the car and walked a few blocks to International Drive, where there were a lot of sites and attractions to see and it was SO nice to feel the warm sun on our skins. The totem poles was a golf course we passed by on our walk as well as Wonderworks.

We tried to hold out for the Sushi place but we caved in! We were SO hungry! We ended up going to a place called Tu Tu Tango, a tapas restaurant, and got a pitcher of...guess what! You know it! The food was pretty okay and it helped us continue our walk.

We then went to play mini golf at one of the places we walked by: Pirates Cove. The course had some pretty neat obstacles: rocks, hills, marsh, holes, water. It has been a very long time since I have played, but I did pretty well! It was a lot of fun and I was SO happy to be out! It was a perfect day. =)

Afterwards we went back to the hotel and payed a visit to the pool. We went in it for a bit but got skeeved out! There was an egg in the pool and it wasn't hard boiled if you know what I mean! Eww!

So we just sat outside on the chairs talking and reading books and newpapers. 2 ducks came by and decided to take dip as well. Perhaps they were looking for a lost egg? *Shiver* After relaxing a bit we went back out to international drive. By the way, my pedometer counted 30,924 steps or 11.22 miles we walked! International drive was a decent walk away. We went to a place called "Howl at the Moon" where they had a dueling piano show. It was awesome! There was a full band and even a keytar! They let you request songs and they had all these people coming up in stage. It was a lotof fun to watch and cheer on. Afterwards we were hungry for dinner so we stopped by a steakhouse next door, by then we had quite a few drinks and the camera caught what happened to the rest of my Mango drinky-drink. =) I don't even remember what those egg-roll looking things were. Ivan claims they were mozzerella sticks but I barely recall.

Saturday we went to some timeshare event and Universal Studio. We didn't expect to spend that much time in the former, but who knew we'd end up with property in Missouri? Universal was kinda crowded, hot, and over-rated. It's really not that much different than great adventure, except it has different "themes, which means it's painted different colors. Don't be fooled. But who knows, perhaps if it wasn't so crowded it would have been more fun.

Then we went to a Colombian restaurant named Lenos y Carbon to meet my cousin, her husband, my aunt, and Ivan's parents for dinner. The food there was really good and it was a really good time! It was nice to see and catch up with my cousins and my aunt and Ivan's parents, I just wish I had more time to spend with them. It was out Happy Mother's Day dinner for them too! There was lots of plantains, chorizos, and sangria, which was way better than the one we had the other day.
Afterwards, we followed Ivan's parents to there house, which was over an hour away. It was dark by the time we reached there house.

The following day Ivan's dad took us around there development to the Community house, which had its own swimming pool, a gym, a library with computers, an auditorium with a stage, a pool tables, and a library of movies to borrow for free! We also stopped by the golf center (below with the palm trees and flowers), which had a lot of golf carts and a nice golf store. By the end of the tour I wanted to move in! It was like being in college without the homework! They also had all kinda of activities going on - walking clubs, pilates, tap dancing, couples golf tournaments -- basically, loads of fun. The country club also was planning all these shows, including a musical tribute to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass! I NEED to see that. By the way, every day I realize how old fashioned I really am. Anyway, they only thing they were missing was a yearbook club. In the tone of Maebe: Hire me!

Their neighbor came over and brought 2 bottles of wine and we had a BBQ. There were all kinds of steaks available - mmm. Below you can see the wine and flowers sent to the Mrs. from her daughters. The neighbor which was an older woman, was apparently a golf pro and won 2nd place in a tournament, which had monetary benefits, in the community a few times. Ivan's mom said she's not into golf, but the neighbor responded,

OH! Once you start playing, you'll be addicted - IT'S LIKE CRACK COCAINE!

That was the last thing we were all expecting her to say and we were laughing histerically. SO funny!

After we ate, Ivan's dad jumped in the pool and we soon followed. As you can see, out heads got more sun than the rest of our bodies and we looked like Oomps Loompas as we get caught doing our synchronized swimming routine!

Their pool had a whole meshed fence around and on top of it - I think all the pools in the community were required to have those enclosures around them. I think it's to prevent alligators, but it's also good for keeping bugs out of the back as well as twigs and things out of the pool.

It was a much-needed relaxing day and in the evening we watched Bringing Down the House. It was actually kinda funny and everyone was laughing. The next day we drove back to the airport and arrived early enought to catch an earlier flight back home. My parents met us at the airport and took us to luch at Natives, a Colombian restaurant in Queens. I had a steak with arepa con queso. MMMMM. Apparently there was a fire in there and it was closed for a few months, but now it looks like they're expanding. This is the same restaurant I had my college graduation party at, complete with Mariachi and open bar. Afterwards people were asking me if we had ties to influential families, if you know what I mean.

NYC WT #17: The East Village

2006-05-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

As always, the weekend went by faster than we ever hope for! On Friday we both went to see my piano teacher. It was the first time I ever took someone else into a lesson with me! That's a step WAY out of my CZ and I'm happy I took it. We stayed there longer than expected but he gave us some good tips and advice, and talked about some of the theory behind the chord progression, which is always much more helpful when you see it in context. We also had a good discussion...

So we continued the Great American New York City Walking Tour this weekend - Saturday with the East Village and Sunday with Nolita. I don't have any pictures from Nolita because it was a little rushed.

Our Sunday tour started by Astor Place. As you can see, they have returned the infamous cube, which disappeared for a while.

We passed by a small little garden named The Creative Little Garden. It was very cute! It had a few small benches and tables with magazines and a game of checkers. We left a note in the visitor's book too!

We passed by Tompkins Square Park, once known as tent city for its high density of homeless people taking shelter there back in the 80s. We took a picture of the famous tree that was in the center of it.

On our way we, coincidentally, ran into a salt and battery. We retraced our steps to visit a place called La Palapa, which we have been to before but the one on 6th Ave. We had some sangria and a snack for lunch. We stopped by some other bar/karaoke place but their drink was so bad we left we didn't even finish an 8th of the drink before we left.

Afterwards, we went into Greenwich village to run some errands and we also picked up some things at Eva's.

On our way back to the Path, we actually stopped by the other La Palapa and had a "glass" of Sangria, which really is 2 small individual pitchers instead. This picture is taken at the one on St. Mark's.

On Sunday was the Hoboken Arts & Music Festival. Ivan's friend stopped by and we did a quick walking tour of Nolita. We passed by this awesome brunch spot that had a tight jazz band playing, we all wished we could have stopped to eat there but we had plans to meet my hunny's sisters in Hoboken.

When we actually got back to Hoboken, we were tired and hungry. It was about 4pm and our dinner company was running a little behind so we decided to grab some coffee, split a sandwich, and sit down for a while. It took a long long time for our sandwich to come but it was such a nice day that we enjoyed sitting outside. Afterwards we walked back up to our place where Ivan's friend departed and we met up with Ivan's sisters for dinner.

We ended up going to the new Charrito's in Hoboken, up between 10th and 11th street. It was more than twice the size of the other Charrito's and the food was just as excellent as the other one. We brought a bottle of Sangria mix, since it was BYOB and that was awesome as well!

And, NO, I do not have a drinking problem if that's what you were thinking...but if you really think I ever do, let me know. =P

lota

2006-05-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

I read in a health magazine today that if you drink water out of a copper cup, the minerals the copper deposits in the water improves your immune system. They sell it on a web site called Ayoma.

It looks like a vase and reminds me of a chamber pot.

a party, a protest, and a picnic

2006-05-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

The weekend, altough very quick, was very eventful. On Thursday evening we went to the Maxwell's to grab a bite to eat. Afterwards we went to the Goldhawk to see if there was any shows we could catch. There was an artist who was accompanied by a drummer and a trumpet player. She was pretty good - Rachael Sage. She was really entertaining. She was a 2005 Indie Music Award Winner for Folk/Singer-Songwriter and promting her new album The Blistering Sun...

I met up with my friend Martine for lunch at Bombay West, where we had Lamb Simosas, Naan with a side of Mango Chutney, and Chicken Tikka Masala. Mmmm. It was just spicey enough that I didn't need to keep downing buckets of water.

It was really nice to catch up with one of my BFFs from NYU, we hardly ever get to see each other outside of Ozo concerts due to our conflicting schedules.

Friday night I met up with Aiyana in Time Square to see Lucky Number Sleven. I had no idea what the movie was about going into it, which makes it even more enjoyable because it's fun to figure out what's going on and really get a good feel of the plot development. I really liked the movie and Lucy Liu's character too! We both came equipped with our snacks and the movie theater even sold coffee, which is a great idea because for a while I would fall asleep after any movie I saw past 9pm.

Saturday we took a walk into Hoboken - it was such a nice day! That's a picture of a vintage car that I saw and the fountains at Sinatra Park. Look at how blue and clear the sky was!

We made our way into NYC to check out the war protest and ended up joining it, walking from Union Square down Broadway to Foley Square. There were several thousands of people there, many were friends and relatives of troops abroad as well as troops who lost their lives. Along the way there were people on their fire escapes playing instruments and provide a beat for the chanting crowds. There was also a several people holding up a rope of pictures of troops who have all lost their lives in the war.

While this supported a good cause, we were talking to an older gentleman on Foley Square who made a good point to us: there was no leader to rally all the people together. The protest ended on Foley Square and there was no one to give a speech. This country is in dire need for someone to step up, lead the masses, and drive all the momentum. There's too many people in high places with conflicts of interest that are taking advantage of their power all for the sake of profit, while in our country we have cities that need rebuilding, public schools that need text books, and a health care system that needs more money to support the aging masses (baby boomers) - to name a few.

Saturday night we went to the Brasilia Grill in Newark with some of Ivan's work friends. The Rodizio and the Sangria was plentiful/wonderful and we ran away before dessert came out. Adam came over too but by then I was passed out.

On Sunday we went to my house to pick up my mom to bring her to her friend's BBQ. It was the first time Ivan saw the basement since the accident and he said it looked completely different. It really did too and I can't wait until the new bathroom is done. Although my dad had some disagreements with the way they did their work, it is really up to him since he is the customer and he needs to be happy with the end result. They all did a really great job though.

The BBQ we went to was in Bergenfield, NJ with one of her classmates/family friend from Nursing School in the Philippines. There was lots of Flip food that I haven't had in a while and even a whole Lechon! Mmmm. It was the first time that Ivan tried some of this food, although some of it is also native to his parents' home countries. We learned how to deshell some crabs and there was even more Sangria.

Getting back home we ran into some traffic, but after we got out of the tunnel, guess who was behind my car - good 'ol Unit #2. We followed each other to the grocery store where we continued to replenish the liquid diet we are currently trying.

couch etiquette

2006-04-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

I never thought too much about the visitor etiquette of couch sitting until a friend of mine visited me in college and wouldn't sit at the edge because it was, apparently, the most confortable spot on it relative to where it was in relation to the television.

So, since then, I alway make a conscious effort to be polite when visiting friends by sitting where it would continue to make the visitee comfortable in their own home (aka they get to sit in "their spot").

Well, I guess I should have figured out where that placement was before deciding to switch it up in Unit 3, where I totally moved from one end off Adam's couch to the other end for this week's episode of 24.

As he provided us drinks and took a seat, I heard,

Is this yours?

as he produced a glass of water from the floor by his side of the couch. Yes, it was indeed mine as I recalled placing it there during the last episode of 24 (last week) and told myself not to forget about it. Before we all could recover from our laughter, I heard,

Is THIS yours?

and I looked up to see him holding up a bottle of Poland Spring on his other hand. There was no question about it, as we usually have cases of the commodity in stock, and when he followed that a few minutes later asking

Are these your socks?

I believed him and his canard for a split second.

kramer crash-in

2006-04-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I joined Ivan in gathering our goods to bring upstairs to Adam's - we were going to watch 24. As Ivan looked like he was in a rush, I grabbed the bottle of Lindemans and the box of ice cream and we ran anxiously out the door.

As Ivan ran up the first flight, he said

I forgot my shoes!

and he did a rewind as he ran backwards and back into the apartment. I waited a little until he came back into the hall and proceeded to opened Adam's door and stumble into his apartment and into his living room, where he wasn't sitting.

When I turned around to see Ivan standing in Adam's doorway, he asked me

Did you knock?!?

as Adam came our of one of the bedrooms in the back and started laughing at us.

Our building is becoming more and more Seinfeld-ish and this is my public appology: Sorry for pulling a Kramer!

Best Ice Cream Bar EVAR!

2006-04-25T06:12:00.000-07:00

We bought a box of these, Weight Watchers Giant Cookies 'n Cream Ice Cream Bars, and let me tell you, these are the best ice cream bars EVAR!

Every bite is an epiphany of redefined Mmmmm's !

Earth Day

2006-04-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

Despite the cold wet weather, we were able to get out during the weekend. On Saturday we accompanied Adam for brunch at Le Singe Vert in Chelsea, where I had one of the best French Toast EVAR! His friends were lots of fun and the place was loud and packed with customers.

Afterwards, we wandered with them uptown to check out the Earth Day festivities, where we ran into Vinny, a soggy soggy walrus.

The festival didn't span more than a block or so and there were a few different things to try - organic coffee, clif bars, etc... Too bad it was raining though, I'm sure people would have stuck around longer for the festivities.

On our way back downtown, we happen to get into a subway car where Adam sat next to someone with the exact same brown corduroy jacket, which by the way, is very similar to Ivan's light brown corduroy jacket, which he was also wearing. The man who was wearing the identical jacket, took off his headphones to say:

Guy in Identical Fustian Jacket: (taking off his headphones) You're not suppose to be here.
Adam: (quickly responding) This is not suppose to happen.

Other than that, it was a successful day.

On Sunday we got up early to get air filters from Home Depot and bought some energy efficient light bulbs at IKEA. We must have changed about 11 60W light bulbs with 11 11W light bulbs. We'll see if it makes a dent in our electricity bill. The spot lights it replaced in out living room were definitely a little dimmer but it was easier on the eyes - before it was a constant battle to keep looking as out eyes dilated from the extreme brightness.

We also went to get some Philly Cheesesteaks in Hoboken. I had the pizza cheesesteak and Ivan had the BBQ. Actually, mine was pretty good but I think I like the plain cheesesteak better, closely followed by the BBQ one Ivan ordered. If this place was open while I was still in school, I would have definitely frequent the place.

Dome Home

2006-04-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

I know we've discussed buying an island and setting up our own government and, if that happens, I propose we get the EGW crew and build a dome home.

Another possibility is to make one at another "location of interest" - how about Pa or some other place driveable and near things to do. Who's in!?!?! =)

hey, aren't you from...

2006-04-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

Usually when one sees a famous person, one is never quick to assume that it's who they think it is. I once saw Mr. Big on 8th street in the Village and these 2 Asian girls froze before asking, "Aren't you [fill in the blank] ?"

He graciously approved as they began the picture-taking.

So I always wondered what it would be like to be famous and get "spotted" until it happened one day and I'll tell you where: it was in a Vampire Store in San Francisco. It may have been the head of Philippe peaking out of my sweater, but I was recognized for having been one of the top runner-ups from an Achewood photo contest.

The girl was even able to recite what Chris captioned under my picture. I also must mention that I walked all over Halifax looking for this place called "The Snug" because I thought that was the neatest name evar and I wanted a picture of us standing in front of it. It is 110% something Philippe would do and I was actually turned-on to the comic because someone in college (who read it at the time) said the otter reminded him of me.

Don't you just love pointless adventures!

Hookah in da Hood

2006-04-17T06:34:00.000-07:00

Again cars are just a wasted expense. On Friday I stopped by a dealer a few towns over that said they do roof repairs (the 2 places near my work don't do it) and they wanted to replace the whole top for $1,000. I declined. Watch me replace it just to have someone poke more holes in it. Such a catch 22. I am going to try a different place that one of the dealerships near work recommended and see if they can just patch it. At one

point I was considering putting waterproof bandaids on it for the novelty of the idea, but I'm sure many would think I'm nuts if I did that. I would consider replacing it if they had crazy colors or patterned roofs. That would be awesome.

Other than that, it was a very fun weekend. I visited my parents on Friday night for dinner. On Saturday I spent the whole morning cleaning and I finally went to get my car washed! Loren and Don came over and got to see my place too! =) I think they may be my first college friends to see my place, besides Juan. It was fun to chat with friends! They even left a note down stairs next to our on-going game of hangman.

Elvia came over too and we went to La Isla to eat. I finally got to try their Cuban Sandwich and it was excellent! It may have possibly been the best Cuban Sandwich EVAR! Elvia had the Arroz con Pollo and she said the rice tasted like paella rice...and it really did! They also have the best Cafe con Leche, it is so good that you don't want to put any sweeteners in it.

We walked around, went into a few shops, and got some wine before heading back. When we got back Adam came down and all 4 of us cabbed our way to the Abbey Pub in the hood.

I don't know what was up with the cab driver but the cab kept jerking as if he was accelerating and braking. After the first block, I was thinking that if it continued then he was probably drunk and I was going to request for him to let us out. Then he couldn't' find the place and insisted it was this funeral home - I thought he wanted us to get out there! That was definitely not going to happen as there was some shady characters hanging on the corners. Luckily Adam was sitting in the front and is very good at being demanding.

anyway, when we finally got there the place was pretty empty but it was really cool! We had drinks and appetizers and vanilla raspberry mixed in our hookah. I had a French Kiss Martini and it tasted like fruit juice, a very dangerous trait for an alcoholic beverage to have. Then we came home and drank the rest of the wine and made some cinnamon rolls.

Sunday we got bagels at the Bagel Smashery and sat down in the park by the water by Frank Sinatra Drive to eat them and enjoy the weather and the New York City view. It was such a nice day!

Later Sof came by and we all went to visit Ivan's parents before they left for Florida. We ate Easter dinner at his sister's new place. I can't believe how these past 3 years have flown by so fast and how much has changed! It was so sad when we were saying our farewells and we were all teary-eyed and trying not to cry.

They really have helped all of us out a lot, from emotional support and monetary support to delicious nutricious food, family events such as family BBQs and his dad spending time with Ivan and going to play golf together, his mom keeping such a role-model home and giving me tips from cleaning to girly things, his parents visiting us and sharing dinner with my parents when they would visit. It was really refreshing how openly the communicated with their kids and it inspired me to be more open with my family. Not having them nearby anymore makes me feel lonely in this state again (it reminds me of when I moved out of NY to central Jersey and didn't really have complete mobile access to see my own parents). I can't imagine what a transition that must be for the rest of the family. We are all really happy that they have reached their goal and that they are doing something for themselves finally after raising all their kids and ensuring they were on their feet before they left. I really hope that one day if I ever have kids that I can be as good as a parents as our own parents!

We are going to visit them in a few weeks while we are in Orlando, so I'm hoping that seeing them in their house will cheer my hunny up.

Groggy Bloggy

2006-04-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

When I first came back from the Philippines in the early 90's it took me over 2 weeks to adjust to the time difference back in the US of A. It most likely was attributed to my clockwork sleep cycles that, only as kids, do we ever get to really have (not that it's much of a choice).

Now that the clock has moved forward an hour, I feel so groggy when I wake up. Is it just a coincidence that I'm feeling so beat when I wake up or are other people out there sensitive to these small time differences?

who will you marry?

2006-04-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

OMG! This is SO creepy!

http://www.crushcalculator.com/content/love/353943439

three dollar desideratum

2006-04-03T05:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning started with a walk to the Bagel Smashery. It was such a nice day too! We walked over to Hoboken, bought our bagels and sat on a bench near Washington St. to eat them.

I drove into NY to go to my class and stopped by my house to visit my parents. The basement is almost finished and it looks really nice. They put a lot of insulation in the walls so it made the room look a little smaller than before, but the windows looked huge and it made the room, with its new walls, ceilings, closet, and lights look really bright and feel more like a regular room as oppose to a musty basement feel.

We went to Central Jersey to take a friend out for his birthday and saw V for Vendetta , which I really liked. We arrived at the theater early and were playing games until the birthday friend arrived. Their game selection was weak and I could not play my beloved crane-grab-the-toy game because I did not have any three-dollar-bills on my person.

Afterwards, we went to Thai Kitchen II where we feasted on the house special duck, satae, and pad thai.

Sunday we went to NY and walked from the West Village to Chelsea to go to a museum. We had some NY pizza by the Empire State before taking the PATH back. Then we walk home from there. We probably walk at least 7 miles this weekend. It feels good to be in a place that has sidewalks again.

Our neighbor came back from his vacation and we spent a bunch of time just talking and laughing. At some point we were making paper hats. I don't know how it got to that. It looked like an origami competition.

Then we ended up watching some movie at his place. We totally missed a good half of it and fell asleep on his couch. It started off pretty good but there were so many characters and I was so tired I couldn't keep up with who was who.

Note: Desideratum - Something desired or considered necessary, as in fun and crane games that give you toys you don't really need and/or want.

Natalie Dee-lightful

2006-03-31T06:47:00.000-08:00

I found this site, and I don't know who it is, but the cartoons on it are ridiculous! Let me know which ones are your favorite!

Health by Chocolate

2006-03-31T05:53:00.000-08:00

I read about this Health by Chocolate in a magazine at the gym. The Instant Beauty Bliss Bar is suppose to improve your skin. It also seems that they made a vitamin out of a chocolate bar.

This is great news.

Whipped Cream & Other Delights

2006-03-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

I bought Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass' Whipped Cream & Other Delights a few weeks ago and it finally came in the mail this weekend.

Oh my gosh! This is my new favorite CD! I've been listening to it nonstop for DAYS! I first heard of it when a member from Ozo mentioned that they were performing one of the songs in the remake of this CD (Whipped Cream & Other Delights Rewhipped).

The remastered version of this 1965 album makes the music seem so fresh and they are so ON POINT that it's sick!

I have not bought the Rewhipped album yet. I want to let this one soak in for a few days/weeks...

On a related note:

Ozo is playing with Herb Alpert next Friday March 31st on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

They'll be performing Love Potion #9 in support of Herb's new remix album "Whipped Cream & Other Delights, ReWhipped."

Late Friday Night March 31st, 12:35pm, CBS

Set your Tivo, VCRs and reminders.

Apparently they just recently played on Leno. How on earth did that get by me?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:
This performance got cancelled! Noo!

Quest for the Best Pancakes EVAR

2006-03-27T06:37:00.000-08:00

If there is anything I like about New Jersey it's that there are many diners and if you look hard enough, you may just find the one that has the best pancakes you've ever tasted. For me, that place is the Metro Diner in Ringoes, NJ. This diner is near my old apartment in Neshanic Station.

They have, probably hands down, the best pancakes EVAR!

Our old neighbors once claimed though that the Spinning Wheel Diner in Whitehouse Station had the best pancakes. So, in order to confirm these allegations we did indeed make a trip out (different trip, different day) to Whitehouse Station, made a left after the field of Buffalos, and found our way to the Spinning Wheel diner.

I tried their pancakes, and while it's pretty hard to mess up breakfast food (the Midtown Diner in Hoboken made an art out of messing up breakfast foods before they "caught" fire), theirs was not as toothsome as Metro's. Sorry Spinning Wheel!

Another plus about Metro is that they give you your own pot of coffee so that you never really have to wait for a refill. All coffee lovers are able to appreciate this. If you live in in that area, I would recommend driving yourself out there and trying the pancakes out in this place. If you know of any noteworthy diners closer to the Hudson County area, let me know. Another plus about diners is that, although they're pretty quick with their orders, you don't feel AS rushed to come and go as a just-as-popular place in the city makes you feel.

Another weekend highlight was our Saturday Night retreat to Comedy Village. Comedy Village is formerly known as the Boston Comedy Club, but for some reason unknown to me, they changed the name as well as a number of other things (aka people). The headliner was Judah Friedlander, the World Champion of the World. No matter what answer you would give him to a question, he would have something to say to beat you or outsmart you.

He is truly the world champion.

judah: What do you do?
student: Programmer.
judah: me too.
judah: What do YOU do?
man: I work for the government.
judah: me too.
judah: How long have you guys been dating?
Ivan: Two and a half years.
judah: Three and a half.

so sick

2006-03-22T08:50:00.000-08:00

This weekend I got so sick for the first time since maybe the 6th grade. I think it was a virus.

I saw the documentary Corporation. Has anyone seen this? I can believe that a company illegalized the collection of rain water in a 3rd world country. Is nothing sacred anymore? I also made me want to stick to "Organic" Milk.

chilling at sea world

2006-03-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

This weekend I saw March of the Penguins. Growing up with fun PBS channels (all 2 of them: 13 and 21 - Woo hoo! Go Marty Stauffer!!) and watching a lot of National Geographic, this was a great movie but I am surprised that it got so much hype. It's no less great a film than so many National Geographic films out there.

So are nature programs going to go main stream now that this was such a hit?

That may not be such a bad idea, considering all the work, especially the years of filming, watching, and studying/noticing patterns and making sense of what's really going on (especially in such harsh temperatures). This may be the perfect opportunity to get the public interested in actually learning something other than blowing up stuffing, learning how to be drama kings and queens, and finding new actors/actresses with lives to be nosy about (no offense).

Maybe this is the perfect opportunity for geologists/scientists to make it big and raise money for more research. Maybe this is the perfect opportunity to get kids out there interested in other fields. That would certainly help the country's declining number of smart people.

If you haven't seen this movie, you may want to see it first before reading the rest of this post.

Anyway, these poor penguins go for months without food in the freezing cold with the seasonal goal of walking 70 miles away to procreate. Many of them die and "fade away" from the harsh weather or starvation. So, with all these dead penguins lying on the ice, where do they "fade away" to? I'm thinking that they freeze and just get snowed over.

So if the ice caps were to melt, would these penguins "unfade" and litter the earth? Probably not - sea creatures would feast before it got to that point.

So, anyway, these penguins walk forever to reach the water to eat for the first time in 4-6 months and bring food back to their significant others and babies. Sometimes they don't make it. As they take turns doing this with their partners, I can't help but think, "Man, what a life."

Penguins at Sea World must be chilling!

Not only do they have nice weather, but they don't have to worry about being eaten while swimming, having their eggs/babies frozen, sending off their significant others to the corner store for food with the chance that they may not make it back, and having freezing sub-zero wind blowing on you ALL THE TIME!! The penguins at Sea World [most likely] get fed everyday, have an easier time taking care of their eggs/babies, enjoy the weather... If you tried to place that penguin back in its natural habitat, it would probably commit suicide.

Anyway, go see this movie! Penguins are SO CUTE! Look at them snuggle!!! SO NICE!

Bronx Zoo anybody?

This is my favorite movie about penguins now...more like the only movie I've ever seen about penguins. On an un-related note, my favorite movie about monekys is People of the Forest: The Chimps of Gombe. I LOVE that one!

SUCH A GOOD DOCUMENTARY!

Update: I have another question about the penguins. They showed a part of the movie where one accidentally killed their unborn child (the egg froze) and the penguin tried to steal another's egg but the other penguins wouldn't allow it and butted in (talk about morals). Do you think she tried to steal the egg because she was having separation issues or was it that she didn't want to get in trouble by the father? Afterall, the father went on a dangerous journey and all she had to do was stand there nursing the egg while starving.

Oh! And I also went to see Chicago! I loved the movie and the play, although had minor differences and went about some of the character/relationship development a little differently, was still excellent!!!

level101halloffame

2006-03-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

Oh, I meant to post this a while ago, but I had the SS in my other computer: we made it to the level 101 hall of fame in 2 weekends - one of them being that snowed-in weekend!

Loren, I found your name in there too! =)

What's [Gross] in My Cup: wrongodongo & cataldi madonna

2006-03-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

Today, wrongodongo was discovered to be on its way out.

It was actually pretty good while it lasted. What do you think that's suppose to be on that cartoon's head?

That's rediculous.

This one from Italy was really good but was way on its way out the next day...forgot to cork it. I blame the director of suspicious activity for not mitigating this risk of gross intoxication.

He reportedly was "way too busy" with operation power failure.

Noel-hari

2006-03-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

Here are the final results of the Noel-harri. The Noel-hari Window is a challenging version of the Nohari Window, only it was answered by Noel alone. By describing my failings from a fixed list of adjectives, then having Noel describe me from the same list, a grid of perceived and unrecognised weaknesses can be explored as well as broken friendships.

Arena

(known to self and others)

childish

Blind Spot

(known only to others)

selfish, chaotic, panicky, smug

Façade

(known only to self)

timid, loud, self-satisfied, passive

Unknown

(known to nobody)

incompetent, intolerant, inflexible, cowardly, violent, aloof, glum, stupid, simple, insecure, irresponsible, vulgar, lethargic, withdrawn, hostile, unhappy, unhelpful, cynical, needy, unimaginative, inane, brash, cruel, ignorant, irrational, distant, boastful, blasé, imperceptive, impatient, weak, embarrassed, vacuous, unethical, insensitive, rash, dispassionate, overdramatic, dull, predictable, callous, inattentive, unreliable, cold, foolish, humourless

Dominant Traits

100% of Noel think that Shaman8933 is selfish
100% of Noel agree that Shaman8933 is childish
100% of Noel think that Shaman8933 is chaotic
100% of Noel think that Shaman8933 is panicky
100% of Noel think that Shaman8933 is smug

All Percentages

incompetent (0%) intolerant (0%) inflexible (0%) timid (0%) cowardly (0%) violent (0%) aloof (0%) glum (0%) stupid (0%) simple (0%) insecure (0%) irresponsible (0%) vulgar (0%) lethargic (0%) withdrawn (0%) hostile (0%) selfish (100%) unhappy (0%) unhelpful (0%) cynical (0%) needy (0%) unimaginative (0%) inane (0%) brash (0%) cruel (0%) ignorant (0%) irrational (0%) distant (0%) childish (100%) boastful (0%) blasé (0%) imperceptive (0%) chaotic (100%) impatient (0%) weak (0%) embarrassed (0%) loud (0%) vacuous (0%) panicky (100%) unethical (0%) insensitive (0%) self-satisfied (0%) passive (0%) smug (100%) rash (0%) dispassionate (0%) overdramatic (0%) dull (0%) predictable (0%) callous (0%) inattentive (0%) unreliable (0%) cold (0%) foolish (0%) humourless (0%)

Created by the Noel-hari Window on 8.3.2006, using data from 1 respondent, Noel.
You can make your own Noel-hari Window, or view Shaman8933's full data.

Johari/Nohari

2006-03-06T11:30:00.000-08:00

Arena

(known to self and others)

silly, witty

Blind Spot

(known only to others)

caring, cheerful, clever, friendly, happy, independent, intelligent, kind, organised, trustworthy, warm

Façade

(known only to self)

calm, logical, reflective, spontaneous

Unknown

(known to nobody)

able, accepting, adaptable, bold, brave, complex, confident, dependable, dignified, energetic, extroverted, giving, helpful, idealistic, ingenious, introverted, knowledgeable, loving, mature, modest, nervous, observant, patient, powerful, proud, quiet, relaxed, religious, responsive, searching, self-assertive, self-conscious, sensible, sentimental, shy, sympathetic, tense, wise

Dominant Traits

100% of people think that Shaman8933 is cheerful
66% of people think that Shaman8933 is happy
66% of people agree that Shaman8933 is silly

All Percentages

able (0%) accepting (0%) adaptable (0%) bold (0%) brave (0%) calm (0%) caring (33%) cheerful (100%) clever (33%) complex (0%) confident (0%) dependable (0%) dignified (0%) energetic (0%) extroverted (0%) friendly (33%) giving (0%) happy (66%) helpful (0%) idealistic (0%) independent (33%) ingenious (0%) intelligent (33%) introverted (0%) kind (33%) knowledgeable (0%) logical (0%) loving (0%) mature (0%) modest (0%) nervous (0%) observant (0%) organised (33%) patient (0%) powerful (0%) proud (0%) quiet (0%) reflective (0%) relaxed (0%) religious (0%) responsive (0%) searching (0%) self-assertive (0%) self-conscious (0%) sensible (0%) sentimental (0%) shy (0%) silly (66%) spontaneous (0%) sympathetic (0%) tense (0%) trustworthy (33%) warm (33%) wise (0%) witty (33%)

Created by the Interactive Johari Window on 6.3.2006, using data from 3 respondents.
You can make your own Johari Window, or view Shaman8933's full data.

My NOHARI

What's in My Cup: Luzon Verde 2004

2006-03-03T10:40:00.000-08:00

It seems that a majority of the online population alway posts what they're "currently listening to"...while I have stong feelings about music, I am going to put a new spin on things. Instead of telling you what I'm currently listening to, I'm going to tell you what I'm currently drinking.

The most recent drink is a red wine from Spain by Luzon Verde 2004 called Jumilla.

How Evil Am I?

2006-03-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

Loren did the weight one but I found this one funny. =P Is this accurate people?

You Are 26% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.
In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

You hear that? I'm the most dangerous kind of evil! So exciting!

Also, please feel free to judge me my clicking on the following link: http://kevan.org/johari?name=Shaman8933

Disclaimer: Please note that most of the things I write here are mostly drawn out jokes...so if things start to not make sense, just imagine that, even when other people are involved, I'm just joking around all the time. I can't help it.

FUN FUN FUN

2006-02-28T06:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes after a busy weekend, I can't quite remember everything I did. However, my neighbor did say,

Every time I pass by your door, all I hear is hysterical laughing.

So at least whatever it was I was doing, I was having a good time.

We took out our birthday celebrant on Friday to Illuzion, a new Japanese Fusion Sushi place in town.

The food there was actually really really good. I'm very skeptical of places that look as if they're targeting the "hipster" crowd...as many of those places have mediocre food, often more on the lower end, but the food here was surprisingly excellent. It was obvious that the owner was a Beatles fan because there were Special rolls such as Yellow Submarine and Helter Skelter.

I had the Angry Dragon and I highly recommend it. I think the celebrant had a good time and enjoyed the food, so it was nice! ;)

Back on the home front, while the neighbor was out, we promoted him to our newly-created position of Director of Suspicious Activity. So when we got home, we figured we better give him some work to do.

Coincidentally, our PA system was in need of some fresh air and exercise, so we decided to give it some change of scenery and test it out.

So now with a speaker in front of our Director's front door, the announcements begin. The acoustics of the hallways floors actually sounded nice as different announcements and animal noises echoed throughout the building. In addition to association members being called down to the principal's office and other announcements we shall not mention here, our Director decided to join the creators of suspicious activity in an effort to learn about his new role.

SO, for training purposes, we decided to make our activities even more suspicious by placing the speaker in a cardboard box (illustrated above).

We placed the box by their door and went into the crawl space of the building. Interestingly enough, our director complied without question. He even practiced some of the announcements himself.

Exercises such as this are very important to keeping our local community government on their toes and ready.

Needless to say, that although it was about 9pm, we still managed to wake up the neighbors (whom we only intended to entertain).

Saturday was filled with a 6 hour class in NY and when we came off the PATH, we ran into a "Pub Crawl" - a birthday party which we intended to join later in the evening (after nap). Needless to say we were drawn into the festivities.

We left a little early to recuperate from the day and eat something other than pub grub...namely ice cream.

Sunday I met up with some old friends at Westville for Brunch. I had missed Caroline's birthday adventure the week before so I treated her! Happy Belated 21st!

Ideally we wanted to get cupcakes at Magnolia but there was a line out the door, wrapping around the store, so we decided to nix that idea since the wind was so strong and it was so cold that the only thing that we could think about was how unreasonably cold it was. Even Caroline, who is normally filled with alacrity, could only think of crossing whichever street had the walk sign on just to keep from freezing. Nonetheless it was a lot of fun.

Maybe next time we'll nix the brunch and do a movie...with cupcakes of course.

Forwarding Emails

2006-02-24T07:34:00.000-08:00

So some unnamed person, who shall remain unnamed, was in charge of getting "bodies" for some public eleemosynary event at some unnamed nearby city.

Among all the people interested who responded to this event, many of them unnecessarily included head shots. One very emaciated person included, let's say disparate images of their self. Now imagine Marilyn Manson trying to look pretty or cruella deville trying to look like Marilyn Manson.

Naturally, you're going to want someone to see this. Time to forward to friend!! Now, after hitting "send," this unnamed person instantly realized that he replied to the sender instead of fowarding to the friend and wrote the following:

*Names & places have been removed from this POSTING and replaced with SAT words to protect the guilty.

Operation Cupcake Expedition: Complete

2006-02-13T13:58:00.000-08:00

magnolia

This weekend was plagued with fevers and chills for my hunny. On top of playing the part of Nurse, we still managed to get a lot of fun in between his fevers and fainting.

I have always heard a lot about Magnolia and always have wanted to try their cupcakes. So, on Saturday we went on a cupcake expedition to find these treasures.

I must say that it was well worth the adventure. The mobs of people in this tiny shop gobbled up the cupcakes faster than they could put them out.

I waited and waited for them to come out with another one with chocolate frosting. We got our two cupcakes and sat down in the park across the street and enjoy the day. The coffee there was really good too.

The day continued to go into an exploration for the fabled Coffee Crisps from Canada. Online documentation reports that some were sighted at different locations around New York, particularly, at the Hudson News. That operation did not go as successful as we planned. Regardless, the cupcakes were the big win for us.

There was also midnight adventure into Hoboken during the early part of the snowfall.

Sunday morning was a Winter Wonderland! Preparing for the big storm, we hit the supermarket right before the weekend to stock up on food and entertainment. We "borrowed" an egg from the neighbors and made scones! They came out great and the gastronomes of the building reconvened to find out what all the hype and fuss was about.

Since we were all there, there was only one thing left to do:
GAMES GAMES GAMES!

A game of risk broke out and lasted FOUR HOURS! The blue army ended up winning the war, as blue overtook 24 countries. As the green army, I managed to take over North America twice, but failed to take over Africa, even though the continent itself was self-plagued with it's own battles between blue, black, and red so I was afraid to go in there.

We managed to dig out our cars before the food we ordered arrived. Mine was buried in 7 feet of it. It may have been the wind that did it. Ivan came out in his PJ's and an Army helmet to do his part. Fun eventually turned into business since we were all there anyway.

Anyway, back to the cupcakes! Brunch of the month club, which meets every other year, has tentative plans to make an appearance there towards the end of the month! Woo hoo!

Fight the Good Fight

2006-02-11T18:01:00.000-08:00

Everybody, please support a good cause:

http://www.CoffeeCrisp.org

~peace, love, and chocolate

Leave me a note if you sign it!! =)

(P.S. chocolate = happiness)

My Pink Plant

2006-02-09T12:26:00.000-08:00

So I wanted to write something but nothing too interesting has happened in the last 24 hours. So I'll tell a story.

Some of you may have heard this story already, so just be patient...

So last year, I'm away in Belgium for a few weeks. When I get back, my hunny meets me at my house with a gift! =) He gives me this cute little plant with pink flowers! I've never had flowers in a pot before so I wanted to take good care of it.

The first day I get back to work, I put it in a plastic bag and hung it on hook in the backseat of my car. (I didn't want it to get knocked over and spill.)

Pinky, my plant, gets to work safely. I started leaving the light at my desk on so that it would always have light, even on the weekends! And I would water it every few days - enough so that the water coming out the holes on the bottom didn't overflow the little ceramic tray at the base of the flower pot.

A few weeks pass and I'm doing an excellent job! The plant looks as good as the first day I got it! I was SO happy! I thought

Wow! These are some happy flowers!

I couldn't believe they hadn't fallen off yet. The leaves looked like they were getting dusty though so I wiped the leaves and while I'm doing that, my hand brushed against the Pinky's flowers. Something was odd...I take a closer look to find out that...

THE PLANT WAS ARTIFICIAL!

I was watering it and taking such good care of it for so many weeks and it wasn't even real!!! So many people at work laughed and laughed at me about that. =/

But I don't care, I still like my pink plant. =) Go Pinky!

Admissions is Different

2006-02-08T06:06:00.000-08:00

admissions
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

As of yesterday night, I have a new favorite movie: Admissions

You have to see this movie! It's such a good movie!!! I can relate SO MUCH to the main character. Don't read what it's about and just see it with no idea what it's going to be about!

I loved how the main character gets along so well with her sister and it seems like she picked up some of her mannerisms. The sisters are SO NICE to each other. So is her guy friend...it's so nice to see people SO NICE to each other. I want this girl to me MY best friend, we'd get along so well. Which makes me think that I'm abnormal in some way. But what is normal is just some personal mental acceptance of what you know, do, and are comfortable with. If what other people do and say things that are unfamiliar to you, they'll call it weird...maybe everyone should stop using the word "weird" and use the word "different."

So that way, instead if hearing

"You're so weird..."

you, instead hear,

"You're so different..."

Which sounds so much more flattering. Actually, when people use the word "weird" with me, I have already trained my brain to hear the word "different." This is one of many translations I have made in my head in order to make life more pleasant.*

On a different note, I'm looking to do upgrades to my house and found this website called contractors.com . It seems pretty cool that you can see feedback from all these companies about who stayed within budget, on-schedule, and on-quality work. I'm guessing that if a company is getting bad revews from here they may take their name off the site's database.

I think everything should be rated on. Are there any web sites that do this? I know there's a rateitall.com but they don't seem to be to all-encompasing yet. I think I was looking at them to find a Moving Company but they didn't have a large selection. I ended up picking a horrible company that lost $15,000 worth of stuff and them tried to deliver a shipment that wasn't even mine. You think they would check the lot # with our name, but that just makes too much sense.

* Sandra brain translations are copyright of smarti, LLC(c) 1998.

The Best Fruits Evar!

2006-02-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

YaY!

No Lunch Outs!

2006-02-06T06:33:00.000-08:00

So after a long weekend, I feel as if I will never drink, eat, or spend money again (in order of importance).

This mess may have begun on Tuesday, when we took advantage of Hudson Restaurant Week. The Brass Rail makes some great crab cakes and who doesn't like crab cakes? Perhaps it was the pitcher of sangria we should have held off on or the chocolate dumplings. Or maybe it was that wine tasting on Thursday where I discovered a new love for white wine.

2006's outlook compare to 2005's baseline of wine consumed may provide some competition. I blame my co-workers for getting me started. Coming out of college I was probably the most dry person I knew, except for almost all the EGW participants, save one. Those 4-5 weeks I was in Belgium (work-relate) introduced me to a whole new world of controlled over-indulgence1., good alki1., and extremely fashionable clothes.

Friday was suppose to be the well-anticipated-for Media Night Out. We intended to also re-take advantage of Hudson Restaurant Week again, but instead ended up at Ruth's Chris, where 2 Medallion served Medium rare opened myself up to jokes by their "friendly" wait staff.

The wine was plentiful as well as well as the martinis.

My Chocolate Explosion dessert I would recommend to anyone. It was well worth it even though it provided another opportunity for the wait staff to add on to their earlier joke.

Saturday provided me with the opportunity to retrieve my car from the dealership. It was the first tune-up I have receive since becoming a car owner and a licensed driver. It was expensive but everyone says it's worth it. I'm sure it is, but the day I brought it in I recalled why I was able to save (and spend!) so much money when I was in college.

Kelly, Vaughn [N... are you crazy busy right now?
Kelly, Vaughn [... I need to go pick up my car.
Martinez, Sandr... lol
Kelly, Vaughn [... I'm serious.
Martinez, Sandr... my car is at the dealership too!
Kelly, Vaughn [... hahahaha
Kelly, Vaughn [... man.
Martinez, Sandr... millenium VW
Kelly, Vaughn [... impossible!

Not only am I paying so much money on gas, car payments, and insurance but also maintenance. If I were to get a job accessible through public transportation, I would probably save about $8,000 a year, conservatively. That's a lot of money.

I tried to be more frugal for the rest of the weekend, did my piano thing for 2 hours, and even made some healthy version of Southern Fried Chicken, which was baked with Special K and some other ingredients and walked about 5 miles through the rain. It was a nice walk despite the weather, but I ended buying a skirt that I loved (and didn't regret). We even found some Nag Champa and a new facial mask to try. That was shortly followed by the purchase of two bottle of white wine, one of which we'd drink while watching that Family Guy Movie.

Saturday was additionally defeated by Sunday, where we were defeated in my first-ever game of Beer Pong. I have never heard of Beer Pong, by the way, until I entered the work force1., thus adding more evidence to the corruption of me by Corporate America.

Also, if anyone asks, we drank the other teams beer and didn't pour it down the sink... Unit 1 is 50/50 in believing that and we will leave it at that.

Our pre-gaming provided some damage as well as the bets I didn't win.

I don't think my hunny won anything either but we were happy we were next to each other on the paper. By the way, I've never bet on football before, but someone at work explained this grid once to me while she was soliciting bets for some sports game (or something).1

Yay!

So, anyway, the lessons learned from the weekend include:
1. I don't like beer
2. I don't really like to watch football either
3. Football fanatics make loud TV-watchers
4. Ruth's Chris is the place to go for steaks
5. Corporate America will lead to my downfall
6. Don't bet cookies on football

So, to make a long story short, as a part of my cost-savings initiative, I will not be eating out this week. =)

1. Corporate America will lead to my downfall.

The 21st Century Letter Notebook

2006-02-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

When I was in high school, and probably in elementary school/jr. high, there was the Letter Notebook. The Letter Notebook is that notebook you pass back and forth between you and your best-friend and/or significant other. Some of you may think that's rediculous, but if your Asian (or have friends who were), you know what I'm talking about.

Blogs are The 21st Century Letter Notebook.

You have officially participated in an eLetter Notebook.

Community Streak: February 14th 8:00PM

2006-02-02T06:06:00.000-08:00

IMG_7225
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

On February 14th, 2006 at 8:00pm, the Condo Association will host it's first annual Community Streak.

Participating streaker are asked to fill out a consent form and slip them under the door of Unit 3 for insurance purposes.

The condo association looks forward to this event as

"the premier launch pad for emerging condo events."

shut it

2006-01-24T11:37:00.000-08:00

Sobray, Ryan [N... who has this best blog ever?
Sobray, Ryan [N... you should ask them for tips
Martinez, Sandr... that was the other one you were reading
Sobray, Ryan [N... oh right, that one was pretty good
Martinez, Sandr... the funny one
Sobray, Ryan [N... rigth'
Sobray, Ryan [N... the opposite of yours

No more Kibble & Bits?

2006-01-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

IMG_7220
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

I think that this dog was trying to get some attention by blocking the exit to A&P in Hoboken. This dog reminded me of how sad my Father was, only my Father didn't give as much eye contact. I love my Father.

Time for me to cheer up! Cheer up too! =)

Phebe's Tavern and Grill

2006-01-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

IMG_7212
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

Out Saturday for a friend's friend's birthday celebration. This was my planned outfit for my dad's birthday outing, but he wasn't in a going-out mood. =( I wish I knew what to say to fix everything...

Anyway, my hunny cheered me up! =)

Oil Tanks

2006-01-24T07:02:00.000-08:00

So last Tuesday (1/17), our oil company, let's just call them Stuyvesant Fuel Service Corp.'s subcontracted oil deliverer Mystic Bulk Carriers, came to fill our tank. While this guy is in the basement, my parents are startled by him yelling. They go downstairs and there is oil coming out of the boiler vents. Long story short, this guy helps my parents clean up the spill. Apparently, there is suppose to be some whistle that goes off that signals when the tank is full. It didn't go off.

Anyway, fast forward a few hours. The heat isn't working. My dad calls a repair man to check it out. Ring ring. Hello? Fix it please!

So Thursday (1/19) rolls around and this repair man comes over. He check out the scene. He gives his findings:
There's no oil in the tank.

What? They just filled Tuesday.

Repair man calls oil company. Oil company man shows up. He tears down wall covering tank (along with the phone lines for everysingle phone upstairs).

His findings: There's no oil.

Oil company report it to the EPA. EPA shows up (still Thursday). So apparently the oil company over filled the tank and, on top of that, put too much pressure when he was filling it, causing it to rupture. The tank apparently was rusting on the bottom too. EPA calls our insurance company to reprimand themfor telling my dad they wouldn't cover any of the work that now needs to be done. When I say work, I mean digging. Lots of digging. For a few weeks or maybe even a month. Let's not even mention the Passive Remediation System that they may need to install and keep down there for like 6-12 months.

The inhabitants in the house are not in the best moods. It smells like gasoline. It smells like Vinegar too. Let's just hope the oil companies pay for all the work that now needs to be done. In the mean time, we have switched to a brand spanking new natural gas boiler.

The DEP showed up yesterday, and the insurance estimator shows up today. My only question is, can anyone recommend a good architect to fix up our basement once the EPA and DEP are done destroying it?

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