fun

Assimilation

The whole houseboat is IKEA! We’re in a neighborhood a bit outside of Central Amsterdam. Although it’s only a 30-minute walk or an easy tram or bus ride into the center of it all, we are far enough away to feel more local. Buying a cup of coffee yesterday down the road, a man asked, “Did you guys just move in?” “Nope, here for three weeks though, we’ll see you soon,” I say “Cope back,” He answers, “We have great food.” This windmill is down the road. Day one – Philly to Amsterdam. Departed at 6pm – landed at 830am. Our trip started in Philly thumbing our way onto an eastbound flight to Amsterdam… Although there were still a few seats in the back open, we dropped a hundred bucks on the upgrades to sit up front. Awkward though as passengers walked by to their seats in steerage making comments about the first class ‘accommodations.’ “Could you imagine spending a thousand dollars more to sit up here?” They didn’t know about the dessert choices. I kept reading my complimentary copy […]

The summer of fun just got ‘funner’

With her off for the summer, I ‘bid’ to have some weeks off with her. I was awarded six weeks from the end of June through early August. Eager to kick the summer off, I asked for—and was granted—a drop of a trip at the end of June that leads up to my vacation. Now, I have the last ten days of June off, effectively extending my six-week vacation by an additional ten days! Our plans include a few days in upstate New York with her family in an area she discovered on the show “Cash and Treasures.” We’ll follow that with three weeks on a houseboat in Amsterdam, where we plan to relax, see some good shows, and enjoy great food. Then, we’ll top it off with a week in Reno with my family, running around dude ranches and the like. And then—still a few weeks at home in the new house!

Simpsons – opening night

We went to the opening night of The Simpsons Movie. THE opening night. The midnight showing at select theaters. First of all—movie = awesome. But it was the crowd that made it exceptionally fun. Laugh Out Loud Funny. One of the treats of the episodes is that there is no laugh track, so they can squeeze in many more jokes that you would normally miss because of the laughing. In the theater, many jokes flew by because of the laughing… but the catharsis of laughing with your peers was a hell of a good time. The movie was supposed to begin at midnight, and as you can imagine, MANY people were there early to save dozens of seats for their friends. Now, get this—at 12:15, there was still no movie. Grumblings about something maybe referring to issues with the curtain. I get up to grab some water and hear a manager say to an employee, “Get theaters 15 and 16 cleaned now!” It flies right by me. 12:20 and she asks what’s up. I say, “Now that you mention it…”

What’s on my dock

As friends make the jump from windows to mac – I often get asked what mac apps to use? Where are some good places to get software? What’s in your dock? Here is what is currently in my dock… some programs I use often – others I recently downloaded and need them visable so I remember to try them out. Most are free… I left out the standards “I” Programs. Itunes and whatnot. My Dock djay – Uses Itunes tracks with two digital turntables.. not sure what to do with it. But’s it’s fun to play with. Now I really have two turntables and a microphone. quicksilver – A quick app launcher. the precurser to ‘spotlight’. It works much faster than spotlight and has many plugins to make the program dig deeper into your computer. It searches bookmarks and address book entries as well as Ichat logs. appzaper – They had it free one day. It’s a great way to delete apps and makes a cool sound when deleting. Like uninstall for windows in that it deletes many of the

C.S.I. Baltimore

We were woken up by several very abrupt knocks on the front door at 2 am this morning. Luckily, I’m feeling under the weather and had called off a two-day trip. I say ‘lucky’ because if I had not called out, my alarm clock would have been going off in about an hour, and I’d have been pissed. With Bella, the 60-pound pit mix, away on vacation this week, I thought I could ignore the knocks for a bit until they assumed we were gone. Had she been here, she would have let us know someone was there before the knocking. After a few more forceful pounds on the door, I looked out the window to see who it was. A Maryland State Police car had the one-way road blocked outside our house with lights flashing. Still, when answering the door, I let out a bellowing, “Who is it?” “Maryland State Police! Open the door!” Knowing my innocence, it was actually kind of fun. If only they were filming COPS. I opened the door to be greeted with a flashlight

Who’s the boss?

I would have missed more school as a kid if Tony Danza had a talk show rather than a blue van full of Milano’s. I’ve learned so much from daytime TV today. The day began with the Orange County Chopper guys taking me on a tour of Ireland, Scotland, and France! Even though I was comfortably nestled in my Nashville DoubleTree bed with my free cookie, I could almost smell the exhaust from the vintage Triumph motorcycles they were loaned! During commercials, I flipped between some crappy MTV show about rich kids and their sweet 16th birthday party and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. There is no basement at the Alamo. But the real treat came from Mr. Danza. You can’t really appreciate how crappy his show is simply from seeing Conan make fun of him at 1 am. I thought his show was pretty bad then, but those were just outtakes! Today, we made chocolate eggs by draining the egg out of the shell through a small hole (VERY CAREFULLY). To make this work, you have to make faces, dance around,

And it only cost a quarter

Jesuit high school. All-boys. Shirt and tie. A Beanie for freshmen, Catholic guilt baked into the curriculum. Everyone else had cars or rides or parents with flexible schedules. I had the city bus. The H.A.R.T. Line. Hillsborough Area Regional Transit. Big red heart logo, which, after a few sunburned summers, faded to a kind of medical-waste brown. The buses didn’t allow smoking anymore, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t smell the ghost of menthols past—or whatever mysterious stew had been simmering in the vinyl seats since 1983. Looking back, I’m convinced the whole thing was a character-building exercise from my parents. Some warped suburban rite of passage: “Let the boy take the bus. It’ll either toughen him up or teach him to get better grades.” That, or they just really loved the phrase “twenty-five cents a ride.” Enter: Diggs. Richard Diggs. Bus #7. We called him Dick Diggs because it felt right. He was a barrel-chested, don’t-make-me-turn-this-bus-around kind of guy. I met him on day one. Fresh shirt. Stiff tie. Armed with a quarter and a lot of misplaced confidence.

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