the thing de la resistance

This weekend was a trifecta of fun: my dad was here visiting from LA, toby was here visiting from north toby, and AND it was halloween weekend. you can see more and better photos here and here, but above is a nice tableau of our saturday night. on the far left you'll see a mummy with an erection, next to him is meagan. she's nice. then there's ian as a monkey, me as rosie the riveter, and a pumpkin. the pumpkin was the life of the party, obviously.

On Friday night Dad, Toby, and Seth came to our soccer game - playing in the freezing rain sure was fun: i can only imagine how much fun it was to stand on the sidelines. Super fun, i'd imagine.

Saturday Dad and I went to the Dylan exhibit at the Morgan Library - the exhibit was pretty good - lots of listening booths and old guitars and yearbook entries and stuff, and the library itself is absolutely gorgeous. I highly recommend. Then we returned to brooklyn, had a nap, hopped in a rental car, and went to manhattan to buy a new tv. On the way to the best buy, I held the door open for Ryan Adams. pretty pretty pretty good.

Armed with our new tv (and aquarium dvd) we prepared for the evening's festivities. Costumes were worn, beer was imbibed, and then we went to the bigger party downstairs which, after a false start, turned out to be pretty fun. Sunday involved an early brunch and then an hours-long walk through prospect park. then I put dad on the A train, took a nap, saw Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-d, watched Lost, talked to Sheena until all hours of the night and went to bed. All in all a fantabulous weekend. Thanks, dad, for coming to visit!

pictures thanks to toby.

7-alarm vindaloo, or how i became a non-vegetarian

As some of you may know, I've given up my quasi vegetarian status and have gone back to eating all kinds of meat after about 13 years.

It has been an interesting journey. Will said I should document it here because it amused him so very much. So, will, this is for you:

I'll do a step by step, multi-post documentation of my fall back onto the meaty wagon.

I've been contemplating going back into the fold for a while, but made the decision to actually go for gold when, during the last service of yom kippur this year, i couldn't stop thinking about a big juicy hamburger. now, i know, after 24 hours of fasting you're guaranteed to be thinking about food but this was the first time in my 13 veggie years that i actually was fantasizing about meat. i took that as a sign.

the most interesting part of this conversion is the reaction i get from friends, family, and acquaintences. people fall into two camps: they're either really excited, or they're confused bordering on angry. and i'm getting tired of explaining why i decided to go back to eating meat (because i want to) and why i stopped in the first place (my aunt adopted us a cow, she was killed (the cow, not my aunt), i stopped eating beef. then mcdonalds had a commercial with an opera singing chicken and i stopped eating everything else). apparently i'm now more interested in the taste of food, than the provenance of said food.

next time, i'll discuss our trip to white castle and my first taste of lamb.

strange moment of honesty?

so I heard on the radio this morning that g. bush actually admitted that the war in iraq was similar to the tet offensive and resulting years of the war in vietnam.

wait. i know this. you know this. everyone knows this. but bush knows this too?

he followed this up by pledging that our troops would stay there "as long as it takes".

riiiiiight.

do you boys like me-xi-co???

This weekend marked the triumphant return of (some of the) extended gang of idiots to the wilds of New Hampshire. Below you will see (or would see if blogger weren't a douchebag) that the wild turkeys took over our previous camping site. So, instead of fighting back, Seth, Erin and I just had a sleepover in Sheena's room (with the three dogs AND the cat). (it was a pretty full room).

The mini-brigade set out after work on Friday and made excellent time (except for the last five miles of 84, which took us 40 minutes), getting to the Mohan homestead at about 12:30 (for a 5 1/2 hour trip. not too shabby). We were greeted by a be-pajama-ed Sheena, enjoyed a beer-chew, and passed out shortly thereafter.

Saturday we slept late, were made fun of by the Mohan parents for said sleeping late, and then went to the dump. At the dump we threw bottles at other bottles. It was awesome. Throwing things was follwed by a trip in the convertable to Portsmouth, to peep some leaves and drink some beer. Both of these things were done. Plus, we got to look like douchebag tourist leaf peepers in our convertable out for a weekend in the country. Doesn't get better than that. Whilst in the lovely town of Portsmouth, I ate some hamburger (man was that good. veggie burgers just don't compare) and Erin and I found that Crocs (the hideous huge clogs made of rubber of which I would show you a picture were blogger not a horse's butt) makes lovely little ballet flats. So we bought them. And Seth bought a jacket to keep him warm in Iceland. It has GPS rescue tek-mology, so we can find him in the avalanche. Oh, and we drank beer. Lots of beer. We started with a sampler, and moved on to our favorites. Erin and I liked the double Witt, Sheena enjoyed the Hopp Harvest, Seth had some Old Brown Dog. All of them were delicious.

Saturday night we headed to Harlow's, where Sheena works tending tables, and drank (you guessed it) more beer. Then we went to a weird quasi-college party upstairs from the bar. It was weird.

Sunday, Erin went to visit her sister in Boston, and Sheena, Seth, and I went apple picking, ice cream getting, and general lazy hanging out-ing. This was followed up by a wonderful massage from John (just me, not the rest of the kids), and a fantastic dinner chez Mohan, after which the plan was to party all night long with Hayley. What ACTUALLY happened was that we watched Supertroopers and were in bed by midnight.

I really, for the life of me, can't remember what we did on Monday. I do remember the day ended with a migraine (which was a crappy way to spend the last few hours with Sheena). Whatever it was, it was fun and relaxing. We were in the car heading back to the wilds of New York City by about 5 and were on the platform at the 125th street D stop by 10:30.

Some day I'll get some pictures up there. Someday.

All in all it was a fantastic trip, as always. The only thing missing was the fire pit and the rest of the idiots. Oh, and Sheena when we got back to Brooklyn.

Thank you Sheena (and Mohans) for another wonderful weekend. We'll be back in November to see Hayley play the Wicked Witch of the West in her high school musical.

is this what you find at the end of a rainbow?

Some of you may remember this little guy. He is the personification of the smell in our office bathroom.

He's baaaaaack. The airfreshener has been replaced in the loo, and it's back to bubblegum for us. This time, however, it's bubblegum mixed with, ooh how do you say it again? oh, right. sewage.

So really the picture should look like this:



Also, we have a lot of Columbia classes in the rooms next to the bathroom (part of the cleanliness/smell issue). I'm sorry. Isn't Columbia supposed to be a "good school" with "smart students" who know how not to "piss all over the toilet seat"?

well, i guess they took that out of the curriculum. it's a shame. they could use a refresher course.