Pennslyvania in September

this weekend was a lot of fun. i just wish that travelling and visiting friends was a lot more relaxing. :) last night and earlier today when i took a nap my back was very spasming. :( must be from all the driving.

pretty much the entire weekend was spent in the rain. i love the rain! but driving through it exclusively most likely contributed to my back spasms...

gettysburg was so cute. it doesn't have as many gorgeous stone homes and buildings as EHs area, but there are quite a few brick buildings.. A&CLs house is totally awesome.

they live right across the street from a battlefield. not really sure which one.. i walked over there and it started raining, naturally.. i had to hide under a tree and wait it out.

we ate dinner at "the pub" where you could get sandwiches on pretzel bread. sooo goood.

we ended up wandering across the square to another bar where we ended up talking to one 22 year old in particular. 22 people.. that means he was born in 1986. good grief we're old. the funniest thing about him was that when pressed about what football team he roots for and given the choice between new england and the giants he choose new england because "he'd like to go overseas". ohmylord. he also told us that he's dated "a mom before" she had 3 kids.. she was 36.

on the walk back to ALs house we had to walk by at least 15 fraternity houses. :( could not have felt older.

before i headed to Gettysburg i stopped for the night and morning in hatfield and saw E&RH and auds. we went to a baby flea market and got a bunch of stuff for next to nothing.. poor audrey is sick though. she must have picked something up at the snakepit.

here are the pictures i took. way better than MKs pictures. :)


thank you to E&RH for letting me stay with them friday night, and thank you A&CL for hosting me saturday night. i have a great weekend!

amazing race contest!

okay, it's come down to the wire.. i just drew the names. there is one leftover, so the lucky person that gets voted out tonight gets a 2nd chance.. they get andrew and dan...

it's $10 a person, so the winner will get $100! so pay attention!


rebecca aja and ty
cathy anita and arthur
mike mark and bill
amanda nick and starr
ryan terence and sarah
emily anthony and stephanie
hope ken and tina
dan marisa and brooke
sarah kelly and christy
jr toni and dallas

leftover.... andrew and dan

quick thoughts before i hit the road

songs to find/purchase for the ipod...
* american boy - estelle featuring kanye west
* lil wayne - i'm me and a milli -- in researching these song titles i'd be curious to listen to some of the other songs on his albums becuase from the titles they all seem to be about being CRAZY rich.... in my readings about the law of attraction i find that it couldn't hurt to listen to mantras about having a lot of money...

i wish i had made sure to synch up my ricky gervais audiobook before i left the house.. that would be great driving listening...

is it worth it to drive home and get it? and prevent my cheapo sister from cleaning me out of lunch items?

PA weekend...

i'm headed to PA today. my goal is to make it to E&Rs by 8:45, and yet not get a ticket.. will be a tricky endeavor... wish me luck.

tomorrow we will be hitting up a baby junk sale. it appears to be a big warehouse full of used baby crap. the best part of this sale is that strollers are forbidden. thank jesus!

after that i will trot over to Gettysburg to see ALs new pad. MK will be there and the other MD ladies are coming out too. it'll be a big sleepover party! woot! poor CL.

i am almost reluctant to go as i have hours and hours worth of TV waiting for me on the DVR.. how sad is that? i wish i could load them up on my ipod and watch them on my drive down...

i'm getting pressure to start a Amazing Race pool.. who wants to play?

there are 11 teams competing.. if 5 people want to play then we could each get 2 teams and the left over team could go to the first person who has a team voted out....

$10 to play..

i'm in, cath is in, mike is in.. need 2 more... or 8 more if we want just one team each...

my roommate the "young, hip, Creed"

i don't know how much of my audience watches the office, but last season there was an episode where Ryan comes in and starts training the office workers on using the systems new website.. well, Creed is convinced Ryan is trying to weed out the older employees.. so he dyes his hair black.. it had to be my favorite episode of the season.

when i got home from work last night sitting on the couch was Creed. cath is forever changing hair dye, and this latest one is the darkest by far. i think it might be as dark as mine. :)

she emailed me this during the day..

"this morning in class this little first grader looks at me kind of startled and says oh Mrs.. Brown, you spray painted your hair!!!!!! I said, why yes, I did!"

i'll take a pic before it fades too much!

i think i'm going to make it.

the painting is going swimmingly. my art blog has the latest pic.

this morning i finished up what was left of my mousse. how come the very last handful and the very first handful are always THE BEST of the whole can? it makes absolutely no sense, but time and time again it's true!

this weekend is going to be a repeat of another weekend i had last july. only this time i am not going to get a ticket for speeding in a work zone. hopefully MK tells us another one of her great "bedtime" stories. :)

before the debauchery though i'll get to visit E&R and auds.. i hear she can hold her head up on her own now!! can't wait to see it! the last pictures i saw her cheeks were really filling out.. they are so cute!

i heard about ricky gervais' free podcasts on the jimmy kimmel show the other night.. i'm always looking for a good podcast so i downloaded them. omg.. i was caught by such surprise at one point today that i couldn't stifle my laugh in time and laughed right out loud at my desk. there are 3 of them on the podcast, ricky, steve merchant and their producer Karl. he comes up with the most bizarre shit, and ricky and steve basically make fun of him and egg him on for an hour. i burned through all the free downloads. then i saw that there are like 5 seasons available for purchase.. i bought the 1st season.. it's 6.5 hours worth. hopefully that lasts me the rest of the week.

slowly but surely.

a while ago i bought a couple of reusable shopping bags at wegmans.. mostly because i liked how they looked. black, with crude white drawings of a fork, plate and a wine glass. i've been keeping them in the car so that i always have them when i go shopping... i've been pretty good about bringing them into the groc store, but not so good about bringing them to other stores, like staples, or eckerds. but slowly i am turning over a green leaf. EBH would be proud.

i'm starting to love this american boy song that i've heard a couple of times. i was surprised to hear it was some girl featuring kanye west. i seem to always like kanye west..maybe i should buy some of his albums...



i saw burn after reading the other night. it was good i thought. definitely lighter than no country for old men.. i didn't have so many questions at the end of this one, and there was a pretty hysterical "reveal" about 2/3rds the way through. :)

i've started the painting... its still very preliminary.. hopefully i will find some inspiration to continue on it while i watch the emmys.. you can check out how far i've gotten on my art blog.

i'm excited for jimmy kimmels emmy special. he's pretty awesome and needs more credit for bringing the funny.

the weekend is almost here!

i got the rough idea sketched on the canvas for what i am going to paint.. the rest should be easy-peasy. i'm getting the feeling it's going to be rather easy. golden retrievers with their long hair just seems like something that is going to lend itself well to acrylics..

i've made plans to go see "burn after reading" tomorrow. i don't care that i've heard bad things about it. john malkovich is in it.. and its the cohen brothers, how bad can it be?

i mean to write about this everyday, but then i forget... the factory windshield wipers on my car suck so badly, that i drive pretty much blinded until about 2 miles from my house when the defroster has successfully been run long enough to warm up and dry out the windshield from the inside. this weekend i need to put that rainX on them, and i probably should just toss them and get the good ones i had on my honda.

today i found out that work holds an annual internal art show and then invites judges from the everson to come and pick a piece or two to go on display at the museum. i'm getting in that everson show damnit! i think it's at the beginning of the year..

must.start.painting

tomorrow if i do nothing all day i must start KMs painting... if i can get the layout down then i should be able to make a lot of progress this weekend. i am looking forward to this weekend something fierce. i will be sleeping in my own bed all weekend, and will sleep till i wake up! oh the thought is heavenly!

i have a friend familiar to most of my readers that is going to have a baby the week of my birthday! (it's become such a popular time!)

see if you can guess who it is...



here is a pic of two of her adorable offspring as a clue.

NYC - September edition

Friday...
after the 3rd question on saturday about whether i was having any luck getting tickets i realized i had not communicated the SNL tickets acquiring process. this is how it works...

in mid august you email your information to an email address to be entered in a lottery. the tour guide on our NBC Studios tour told us they receive hundreds of thousands of emails each season. anyway, if you are one of the lucky ones chosen they send you a pair of tickets to either a rehearsal or a live show on whichever date they choose. you have no say in either.

so.. if you miss the lottery then you can go down to 30 rockefeller center the night before (we came across people that had been waiting in line since noon friday) and get in line to receive a number saturday morning at 7am. they go through the line handing out numbers based on which show you want standby tickets for. there is no guarantee that you will get in, as they are standby tickets and are called upon only if the people that won the lottery decided not to show up. so after you get a number saturday morning you come back to 30 Rock at either 630 or 10 depending on which show you asked for. then they seat the ticket holding audience members, and if there are any holes they start calling on the standby people in order of their numbers.. and repeat the process again for the live show.

i had done some research and saw that in 2005 the most number of standbys that got in all season were 185 people between the 2 shows and it was because the show aired on the night of a HUGE snowstorm. so... our plan was that if there were more than 200 people in line we were going to cut our losses and try to meet up with people in manhattan. well. there were around 200 people in line when we showed up. they had set up tents and tarps and you name it. it was like a single file tailgate. we decided to cut our losses..


so we headed out to the upper east side to meet AW. we went to her new bar du jour Dylan Murphy's. it was a little packed at first, but it ended up being a great little place. the jukebox must have been drawing from my subconscious. it was great, at one point people waiting for the bus outside came dancing into the bar. good good times..

Saturday...
the plan was to head to NYC to do the NBC Studios tour as early as possible cause it takes an hour and we had tickets to see the musical Avenue Q at 2pm. 10 AM was our go time. i woke up at 915. everyone else was sleeping so i showered and got dressed. i figured at the very least i could go by myself and meet up with the sleeping beauties later. KW got up and ready in record time at 930 when i told her of my revised plan. B&MK took their time getting ready and met us later. we got rockstar parking as i usually do right in times square. the tour was cool. except we couldn't take pictures. :( we got a tour of the MSNBC set, and the Nightly News set. Conan O'Brien, and lastly SNL. we were able to sit in the audience of Conan, (soooo small) and see the SNL set behind glass. it was so interesting to me to see about 20 people literally running around the set painting the various scenarios at noon on saturday. we saw people painting the locker room, the quiz show set, what i think was the charles barkley show set and the set they didn't use "the justice league" set. she said in the next couple of years ago they are going to change the basic set to pay homage to coney island, right now it's referencing grand central station. an interesting thing to learn was the seats the audience sits on are the same seats yankee stadium uses, lorne michaels didn't allot monies in his budget for seats, so he called in a favor from george steinbrenner. we also learned that each episode cost 2.5 million to make.

after the tour KW and i walked over to w45th and 8th to see Avenue Q. our seats were in the very last row at the very top, i loved them.. however the dark theater made me sooo sleepy. the musical was funny. it was dirty racist puppets. high comedy. our favorite song was "everyone's a little bit racist".


afterwards we were starving so walked over to an italian restaurant and couldn't get in, so we decided to drive over to the feast of san genaro happening in little italy. what a stupid idea that was. it took us over an hour and a half to drive downtown and when we got there it was an outdoor celebration that looked like it was 2K people past maximum capacity so we decided to take dinner out to the burbs. we went back to flushing and ate at joes shanghai. there was a 20 min wait of course after at least 45 minutes of driving. this is the restaurant B&MK took us to when cath and i were in town a couple of years ago. it was delicious.. their fried rice cakes are not at all what you are picturing and hands down the best menu item ever.


at dinner it came out that neither KW or I had ever been to "pinkberry". apparently its been featured on "the hills", it started on the west coast and is making it's way east. there was one right around the corner that BDKs brother used to manage, so they hooked us up with free yogurt. its a little hard to describe what pinkberry is.. its kind of a frozen yogurt i guess. there are 3 flavors to choose from, original, green tea, and coffee. then you put anything from fresh fruit to cereals to chocolate chips and coconut and moshi on it.. it's really quite delicious.

we waited all night for SNL and were rather disappointed with the sketches. MPs acting was bad, but i feel like the writers were on the top of their game either.. two of the first sketches were total copies of the peyton manning episode. and the ugly kids episode? ugh..

this was the funniest one..

the funniest parts of the show were the countless texts that LK and i traded back and forth during the show. like when LK wrote that HEKD thought that during the digital short that andy samberg singing was MP.. i'm thinking that MP media torch is being extinguished as we speak. it was fun while it lasted.

***UPDATE*** Here are the pics

i know, i'm crazy.

friday KW and i have decided to go to NYC, meet up with BDK and try to get into the season premiere of SNL. :) this is most likely going to involve waiting outdoors overnight in line, but how fun does that sound? pretty damn fun i think. :)

i've never been to a taping of a TV show and think it would be pretty damn awesome to see SNL i've been such a fan for many years now... i just hope the rest of america doesn't have the same idea and waiting in line for many hours isn't fruitless.

i just realized that the pushing back of the harry potter movie that everyone was grumbling about recently is directly due to the play i have tix for on broadway in november. score! when i bought the tickets i read that the opening was going to coincide with daniel radcliffes promotional schedule for that movie and i was going to be PISSED if he wasn't going to be in my show. now i don't have to worry.

squirrelling away mode vs crazy earning mode...

on a segment of TAC last week adam talks about jimmy and how generous he is, not just with his money, but with his time, etc. and he makes some statements i've heard before from steve pavlina and the secret about the laws of attraction and "raising your financial vibration". adam speaks about how when you are so stuck in the mindset of squirrelling away your money, and thanking god that someone dropped a dime on the ground and you found it, that you are too preoccupied to allow for making money. i find that a lot of this makes sense and given the chance, i truly believe it rings true. "the people that do the most, get the most"

here is the adam carolla show clip... (EH, SH and CB i highly recommend you listen to this..) it starts at about the 4 minute mark.

and here is the steve pavlina clip... another must read...

irish festival 08

i love these boots/gators, whatever they are.. the irish festival was pretty fun. i went to the gaelic mass in the morning.. it drizzled periodically, luckily DC brought an unbrella, ella, ella, and was kind enough to share it with me.

here is a snippet of the irish priest from pittsburgh delivering the mass in english for a few minutes and then in gaelic.



here are the photos...

KW and i talked about driving to NYC on friday after work... hmmm.. it's totally spontaneous and right up my alley.. i'm going to have to think seriously about this.. could be crazy fun!

why all of a sudden?

people from all over the world have been searching google images and hitting my blog looking at this picture.. i wonder why. it's crazy.. in the last 24 hours i've been pinged from:

Lazio, Rome, Italy
Connecticut, Simsbury, United States
Nuevo Leon, Monterrey, Mexico
Gelderland, Harderwijk, Netherlands
Zadarska, Zadar, Croatia
Texas, New Braunfels, United States
Maine, Portland, United States
New York, Corona, United States
New Jersey, Union, United States
New Jersey, Pennington, United States
England, London, United Kingdom
California, Los Angeles, United States
Oregon, Forest Grove, United States
Ile-de-france, Paris, France
England, London, United Kingdom
Noord-brabant, Tilburg, Netherlands
New York, Brooklyn, United States
District Of Columbia, Washington
New Jersey, Princeton, United States

wow, so tired.

so, i've been at my new job for 2 days now. it's definitely a different environment/culture than the station.. i've been compiling a list of pros and cons..

pros

next week is employee appreciation week, it sould like there are going to be little activities/parties each day next week. :) culminating with a wii bowling tournament

my new desk has two 19 inch monitors. i'll take a pic of my cube once i get it all settled.

we have an office in blue bell, PA, and my boss said i could go down one of these times.. i think it's near EH..

there is an ATM machine right in the lobby. woot! there is also a childcare place and gym, not that i need either of them.

there is a cafe in the building. woot! that is very exciting to me.

they have cold water/hot water tnkless water coolers. (it's the little things that excite me)

there are 4 fridges in the kitchen

they hold company tailgates. how cool!

you can get a cup of soda fountain ice for free from the cafe

there is a mostly mandatory IM program that everyone uses.. woot! too bad its internal only

cons

instead of outlook, they use novel Groupwise. :( it's subpar in my opinion

not being in IT i have to ask permission for every little thing. :(

No IE 7, it conflicts with oracle, so i need to use firefox. not happy.

i can't download an email client, so i need to do my home email through webmail.

i was so tired this morning, mondays, tuesdays and thursdays i am doing double duty and working part time at night. so yesterday i was there from 6-11. i had a lot of work to do... then when i got home i saw that my michael phelps book had arrived that i bought on amazon about 16 years ago (could book rate be mailed any slower?!). it's crazy easy reading (prob cause i was witten by a teenager) so i was able to buzz through half of it last night. the chapters are so short i kept telling myself just one more.. then there would be a whole chapter about his dad, or his sister.. by the time i forced myself to put it down it was after 2 am. and in case you didn't know, my new job starts at 8am. :(

i'm going to bed as soon as i am done watching last nights episode of jimmy kimmel, and i'm only going to read 3 chapters!

what a long weekend...

this weekend has seemed wicked long. friday i went to see Vicki Christina Barcelona, i was expecting it to suck, but it was shockingly great. maybe it was my no/low expectations, or maybe it was that they drank wine in almost every scene, or maybe it was that two of the main characters were painters, or maybe it was just the romantic notion of going off to spain and having a tryst with a spanish man..

whatever the reason, it worked. i will surely be buying this film when it comes out on DVD.

friday night all the guests arrived, the MA people and i were able to grab dinner at the dinosaur. i had two ribs.. i was so proud of myself.

saturday we took our time getting ready, and walked over to a couple of prospective houses in the neighborhood and peeked in the windows. later we headed out to the fair in the early afternoon. whoa what a good time we had. DD and HEKD were impressed by the sheer size of the fair, i knew they would not have ever been to a fair that big before.. the time flew by.. after the fair we headed out to mulligans for a nightcap. cath met us there. in retrospect i was too drunk to go out more, and it resulted in my taking a 1/2 full pitcher home with us. now what the F are we going to do with a pitcher?

sunday we woke up and most people headed up to the beach, while HEKD, DD and i had breakfast at wegmans before they headed out..

i would imagine DD doesn't want to hear how cheap it is to live here anymore.. :)

here are the photos i took...

there is a reality bites back marathon on today. i like that show.. i think i mostly just like michael ian black though.

i happened upon a segment of The Adam Carolla Project this morning.. oh that was such a great show. i am looking forward to ACs star to blow up as a result of American Top Gear so that TLC will get their act together and put that show on DVD. shiiiiiiit.