The lazy days of summer...

Note: This post is going to be a quick recap of my summer. Repeat, this is just a gratuitous catch up post. There is nothing really deep here. I hope to revive my interest in this blog and trying to come up with more thoughtful ideas for it in the not too distant future, but until then, this will have to do. ;)

It always seems that even though I love the summer, I end up being pretty lazy for the majority of it. I end up sitting in the air conditioned splendor of my apartment and not wanting to do much of anything once I get home from work.

Even though it seems like most of my summer was spent sitting on my comfortable couch, with my girlfriend and our laptops, TV shows and books -- we did manage to do some fun stuff.

We went to the Seattle area for a week in the beginning of July to visit my girlfriend's brother, his wife and their son. We had a blast which involved a decent amount of fireworks, drinking, shopping, eating and attempting to stay cool. For a place that has the reputation of being drenched in an almost constant rain, it barely sprinkled only the last morning we were there. It was hot, humid and sunny the entire rest of the week. I learned that if a toddler says "I have idea." to make sure to hold onto the fireplace lighter that you've been using to light fireworks because it will be snatched out of your back pocket. Also, if said toddler comes down from upstairs with his hands behind his back, that there's probably something that he shouldn't have in those hands.

I also turned 30 at the end of July! It was nice and low-key, just like I wanted. My girlfriend cooked me a nice dinner on my actual birthday, her mother took me out to dinner at Brown's on the day after and my family had a BBQ on the day after that. So it was three nice days of birthday celebration, but nothing too crazy.

I purchased an Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbook as an early birthday present for myself and to bring on our trip to WA. It was nice to be able to check mail, pay bills, look for things to do, check plane schedules at the airport, and more all in a tiny, portable little package. I think it was well worth the money I spent on it, even though the battery life (with the 3-cell battery) isn't great and I tend to use my Dell Vostro as my main computer when I'm in the apartment. The display seems bigger and usable than the 8.9" size suggests and it's been trouble free, so far!

I also read some decent books. I picked up a couple books by Christopher Buckley, No Way to Treat a First Lady and Little Green Men: A Novel after reading Boomsday last year. I recommend all three. They were all well written, funny and sarcastic. I also read Steve Wozniak's book iWoz, along with How Walmart Is Destroying America (And the World): And What You Can Do about It by Bill Quinn and Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom. I'm not sure if I'd recommend any of them to people unless they're interested in Apple and/or personal computer history, retailing or marketing and advertising, respectively... ;)

Last weekend we went to The Clark to see the Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence exhibit. There were a lot of interesting oil paintings, watercolors, pastels and collages there (between Dove and O'Keeffe) with one of the most humorous pairings being Arthur Dove's watercolor Happy Clam Shell next to Georgia O'Keeffe's pastel Slightly Open Clam Shell. The pictures linked above are from this review of the show by Judith H. Dobrzynski on the Arts Journal website. There is also another review for Wall Street Journal by the same author that was interesting.

I also spent some time last weekend doing maintenance on my car that I've been neglecting for a little while. I washed and waxed it and my brother and I put on Akebono ProACT ceramic brake pads, Centric rotors, McGard SplineDrive lug nuts, NGK Iridium spark plugs and NGK plug wires. Next it's getting new Bridgestone Potenza G019 Grid tires as soon as they are shipped to Firestone. (The size I need is on backorder.) The brakes are feeling good so far, the lug nuts are much higher quality than the ones they replaced and I seem to be getting a few more MPG with the fresh spark plugs and the reset computer. (Side notes: I didn't like the BF Goodrich Super Sport A/S tires that I put on last spring/early summer. They wore out extremely quickly and weren't worth the money that I paid for them. I also didn't have good luck with Gorilla spline drive style lug nuts. They only lasted one winter before the chrome was peeling off.)

I also decided to finally kill my MySpace account. I found that I hardly ever logged on and I decided not to keep it around for no reason...

There was some other fun stuff sprinkled in there but those were the big highlights... all in all it was a good summer.

Staycation?

Does anyone else hate the non-word "staycation" with a fiery passion? Every time I see it written or hear someone say it I cringe.

Why can't people just say "We're not going on vacation to [insert some some far-away, probably tropical destination] this year. We're going to just go on a few short local trips to save [some money or the environment or whatever the case may be]."

Instead marketers, advertisers and other hype-masters have noticed the trend of people saying that they're not traveling as much because airfare and other vacation costs are increasing (on top of their day to day costs increasing) and are trying to make it seem hip and/or eco-friendly to not go on vacation by giving it a stupid name. Now that they've got your attention they can push long forgotten local destinations (that have lost favor to bigger, badder, more distant places) and new barbeque grills, slip-n-slides and inflatable pools on you for your awesome backyard "staycation" and you won't feel so bad about not going anywhere.

It's not a bad idea to stick close to home and do a few short trips or just have a barbecue by your inflatable pool instead of going on a long, far-away vacation if you can't afford it (or for whatever reason you have) but please stop calling it a "staycation".

Now that I got that little rant out of the way: I don't think my girlfriend and I are going on an actual vacation this year. We've already been talking about possibly doing an overnight or two somewhere on our week off. I'm trying to save money to pay off debt and to possibly buy a house while property values are heading down to more reasonable levels. I don't think it was the cost of gas (or anything like that) that made the decision for us. For me, at least, I think it was more a decision as to whether it was worth it to spend $1,000+ for a few days away from home or to use it for something more long term... and I think I'm at the stage of the game where I need to focus on the long term a little more.

Mass MoCA and The Clark

The past couple days were spent on a mini vacation about an hour and 15 minutes away in Northwestern Massachusetts. My girlfriend and I left our apartment on Wednesday morning and headed to nearby North Adams, MA to hit up one of my favorite museums, Mass MoCA. I have been there a few times but this was her first time.

I have seen some exhibits there that I enjoyed more such as Robert Wilson's 14 Stations and Matthew Ritchie's Proposition Player.

The highlights of this trip for me were a few of the paintings in the Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape exhibition and Jenny Holzer's Projections.

After the museum we checked into the Holiday Inn in North Adams. It wasn't bad... but next time I think I'm going to spend the extra $30 and stay at Porches. The room we were in at the Holiday Inn had a nice view and was a nice size but it could have been a bit cleaner. The windows were filthy, the desk had some sticky goop on it, etc.

The guy at the check in desk of the hotel was very friendly, though, and recommended a few local restaurants for us to try so we walked around and ended up deciding on getting dinner at the Boston Seafood Restaurant on American Legion Drive which was about a block away. I had a Chicken Parmesan sandwich with steak fries and my girlfriend had scallops that actually looked so good that I tried a piece of one. (I don't eat any seafood aside from the VERY occasional canned tuna drowned in mayonnaise or the even more occasional breaded deep fried clam drowned in tartar sauce.)

This morning I woke up early and my girlfriend was already up... so we got ready to go and after a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts we hit The Clark. I had never been there mostly because I'm more of a modern/contemporary art guy... but I must say there were some nice paintings there as well as a ton of interesting silver and some amazing furniture.

After The Clark, I was wiped out and ready to head home to recharge for NYC tomorrow.

Next time we head out that way I think it's time to check out the Williams College Museum of Art.

(Broken links removed February 7, 2017.)

TAP New York 2008

Another TAP New York is in the history books. According to the 2008 program, TAP NY started in 1998 as the Hudson Valley Beer & Food Festival and was held at the Culinary Institute of America for it's first two years before moving to it's current location at Hunter Mountain in Hunter, NY.

Last year was the 10th year the festival was held and my first year attending. I had a blast last year. However, I ended up eating quite a bit but only sampling a few different beers (which was the main attraction) because I didn't find out about it until last minute and didn't have a place to stay. So I only tried a couple of the best sounding beers before making the hour and 15 minute drive back home.

This year my girlfriend and I prepared a little earlier. We reserved a room just a 5 minute walk up the mountain at the Kaatskill Mountain Club.

We drove up on Friday night and checked into the hotel. It was quite expensive compared to places we usually stay but upon opening the door to the room we decided that it was worth it. Our room on the fourth (top) floor had a kitchen area with full appliances, dishes and a dining room table that was open to a living area with a gas fireplace and a door to a private balcony with a nice view overlooking the Catskills. Off of the living room was a separate bedroom which also had a door to the balcony and a jacuzzi tub. Everything was very clean and neat and in good shape. Nothing was out of place or broken. There were real photographs and paintings and not the typical hotel art. I would definitely stay there again!

After we checked in we dropped our stuff off in the room and went down to eat dinner at the restaurant (Van Winkle's) in the hotel. I don't think I'd recommend the restaurant as much as I would recommend the hotel. We were seated at a table pretty quickly at around 9:30 but we waited about 10 minutes for a waiter to even come over. One waitress walked by our table multiple times actually making direct eye contact with me once and didn't respond when I said "Hello." It seemed that nobody knew who's table we were at so we ended up with a really nice and apologetic waiter named Bill. I ordered a burger from their special (abbreviated) TAP NY menu cooked medium-well and it was medium rare at best. If I wasn't starving I wouldn't have touched it. It wasn't the best burger I've had but at least it stopped my stomach from growling. My girlfriend got a pasta dish with some shrimp added to it. She said the sauce was pretty good but the shrimp were very dry leading me to make the joke that they were probably shrimp cocktail shrimp that got tossed in the microwave when they forgot to put them on the dish when they first brought it out.

Anyway, now we're up to the reason we were in Hunter, NY... TAP NY. At noon we headed down to the base lodge to meet up with a group of our friends and pick up our glasses (that appear to hold approximately 3-4 ounces) and wrist bands. At 1 o'clock the doors opened and everyone rushed in eager to drink as many of the beers as they could. Someone who is better at math than I am figured out quickly that in order to try every beer before 5 (when the doors closed) you needed to try a new sample every two minutes.

I wasn't that ambitious but I did manage to sample about 22 different beers and Heartland Brewery's Berry Champagne Ale was the only one that was so bad I had to dump it out. (I can't remember the last time I couldn't drink a beer...) I do generally gravitate towards the darker beers but I tried to switch it up a little bit and sample some ales and light wheat beers. Some of them were very good... but this one (unfortunately) wasn't.

My favorites of the day definitely swayed toward the dark stuff for the most part. In no particular order, my favorites were: Adirondack Pub & Brewery's Maple Porter, Captain Lawrence Brewing's Smoked Porter, Defiant Brewery's Stout of War, Sixpoint Craft Ale's Gorilla Warfare Porter, Rohrbach Brewing's Bluebeary Ale and John Harvard's Brew House's Oatmeal Amber Ale. Ithaca Beer Company's Apricot Wheat should also be on this list even though I didn't get around to their booth. I have had this one a couple times before (plus had one with my burger on Friday night).

I was really excited that this year's food theme was chicken but it looked like the only chicken they really had (that I could find) were chicken wings with different seasonings. That was disappointing but they did have other food such as pizza, various sausages, soups, sub platters, meatballs, hamburgers, hot dogs, cheese & crackers, pretzels, mini crab cakes, scallops wrapped in bacon, etc. I definitely had enough to eat. Almost everything was included in the admission fee aside from a few of the specialty vendors. One booth was selling chocolate covered strawberries that were 3 for $1 which I couldn't resist.

Overall, though, TAP NY was an awesome time. The beer was delicious and plentiful. The weather was beautiful aside for a little rain around 9:30 on Saturday night and a cool morning on Sunday. The hotel was great and I got to see some friends that I haven't seen in awhile. All in all it was an awesome weekend. (Note to self: I need to get a jacuzzi tub and a fireplace when I buy a house!)

Edited 2024-12-03 to remove dead Heartland Brewery link and update John Harvard's Brew House link as well as changing most links to https from http.

First day back to work...

What a weird feeling I had early this morning.

I woke up at 6:30 AM when the alarm went off for the first time. I didn't remember hearing it or hitting the snooze button but I knew that was what woke me up. I laid there in a daze trying to remember why it was I had to be awake. After a few minutes of laying there, feeling completely blank, "work" popped into my head. The whole idea of going to work seemed like a very distant memory. It felt extremely strange (and a bit frightening) that only one week away from work made me feel like I could forget so completely about a routine that hasn't changed AT ALL in the past 2 years. I wonder if my job is more stressful for me than I initially thought. It felt almost like I was digging out a repressed memory from some deep dark corner of my mind as I laid there this morning trying to remember why it was that I was awake.

I went through all the motions of getting ready, got in my car and drove the entire 25 minutes to work in an almost robotic trance. Only now, at a little after 11 AM, am I starting to feel like I'm at work again. I've been doing my work but I've just been feeling "robotic" again like I was on the drive in. I'm just doing things without really thinking about them...

It's been a strange morning.

Vacation Recap

Well, the "vacation" part of my vacation is over. One more day to relax and get shit done before work on Monday. Here's a QUICK recap.

* Monday - The drive up to Hampton Beach, NH was smooth with no traffic. Checking into our hotel, the Boardwalk Inn, was pretty painless. Our room for the first 3 nights was right at the top of the stairs from the hotel side entrance. The room was basically a big, squishy bed and a TINY bathroom. The description of "Ocean View" was a little bit of a stretch. If you stood in the corner of the room and looked at an angle through the window you could see a sliver of ocean. The air was VERY hazy on Monday but we walked the beach for a little while after we checked in to the hotel, anyway. We had dinner at our hotel's restaurant. One thing I did notice right away is that the New England coast isn't a good place to be someone who doesn't like seafood. ;)

* Tuesday - At midnight my girlfriend let me open most of my birthday presents. She got me three AWESOME books of art (Tragic Kingdom, The Saddest Place on Earth and The Magic Bottle by one of my favorite artists, Camille Rose Garcia, a print of a robot with headphones and ORANGE paint to repaint my bike like I have been talking about for awhile. Slept. Woke up. Spent some time on the beach. Went out to a nice birthday dinner at the Ashworth by the Sea Hotel Dining Room. I ended up having a turkey dinner that made it feel like Thanksgiving. Overall it was a very nice birthday. :)

* Wednesday - Basically just hung out at the beach and the "boardwalk". We watched the fireworks on the beach from The Purple Urchin restaurant across the street from the beach. The food there was great and the service was good, too!

* Thursday - For Thursday night we switched to an ocean front room with a balcony at the same hotel. The room was bigger and nicer... and quieter, even... If we go back next year this is probably the room we'll try to get for the whole week. Thursday night we drove up to Wells, ME to go to The Steakhouse. It definitely lived up to the hype surrounding it. I had to park next door to the restaurant because the parking lot was more than full and we had to wait for almost an hour for a table but the food was amazing! It was well worth the wait.

* Friday - We checked out of the hotel and walked around the boardwalk for 40 minutes and decided it was too hot (95+ and humid) to walk across the hot sand on the beach and down to the water. I didn't want to be all hot and nasty for the start of the 3.5 hour drive home. The drive home wasn't bad, though. There were a couple spots of traffic here an there but nothing too bad.

Overall it was a amazing and relaxing week! The weather was much better than we expected. My birthday was very nice. Everything was great. I'm not looking forward to going back to work.

(Broken links removed February 7, 2017.)

The day before vacation.

The only thing worse than the last day of work before vacation begins is the first day of work after the vacation.

Today is the day before... and I'm already not looking forward to the day after because today is dragging along so badly. I have PLENTY of work to do but my brain is already partially on vacation. I'm trying to get the time-sensitive things done first such as setting up products for a store which is going to carry a new (to them) line of products the week after I return from vacation. A little under 5 hours left until I'm out of here!

Website updates: I've been messing around with scenebot.com for the past couple days. I've been trying to think of interesting (non-scam) ways that I can get my currently unused domains to make money for me instead of sitting there lifeless.

I thought about actually putting up local show (concert) listings (like I had initially planned) and selling advertising. I created a SIMPLE MySQL database and wrote some PHP to search it by date... but I decided that I don't really want to start a business out of it (mostly since I barely have time or money to even go to shows anymore) and I'm kind of thinking that isn't going to be easy for me to do all by myself. There's a lot of data to collect, update, search and display. Most of that data is already available other places... but I still think it would be cool to integrate them all into one website that has information on all of the good local venues in one spot... but in short, it's going to be a lot of work for not too much return. So, I think that project is dead yet again.

Now I'm trying to think of ways to work some of the PHP and the MySQL database that I've been messing around with into something for suburbicide.com. It has been fun/interesting to start to teach myself PHP. I miss being geeky and writing code and PHP seems like a pretty good way for me to ease back into coding again. It seems pretty easy to pick up and it seems to integrate well with HTML and MySQL and it works with my current hosting... I keep thinking I should teach myself something more cutting edge, though... especially if I eventually want to get back into web development. ;)