Mmmm Fast Food

Well kinda. The wife and I tried Sonic the other day. They just put one up on route 1 in Peabody, and every time we drive by, it's packed. Sunday though, it wasn't. We just did the drive thru, not the drive up spots, and I think that hurt us. The menu on the drive thru didn't seem to have all the items on it. The menu's at the parking spots seemed to be bigger...

Sarah went with the slush and chicken sandwich and I went with the burger and fries. Fries weren't very good, chicken sandwich was ok. The burger was above average, and the slush was basically a Slush Puppy. But for $8 total, I'd say it was worth it...

Turkey Anniversary?

Wait, I mean Thanksgiving and my anniversary. Two great days in history. In one, the "invaders" and natives learned to share and eat in peace (or at least that's what we were taught in the third grade).

On the other, a lovely wannabe princess wouldn't let anyone talk her out of it, and decided to slum it by marrying my sorry arse.

Like I said, both great days.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, see you at the gym tomorrow!

Happy anniversary darlin!!

The Muppets...and Queen?

If you're a fan of the muppets, you need to watch this. And watch the whole thing, cuz it just keeps getting better and better..

Movie Review

So the wife and I saw 2012 this weekend. Wow. Horribly awesome movie. And by that I don't mean that it's a bad movie, because it's not. There's not a shred of reality to it, but it's still a great blockbuster movie. Not a film, but a movie. A film makes you think and usually involves subtitles. This was really the type of movie that should have been released in July and is usually made by Michael Bay (who loves to blow things up).

If you're looking for two and a half hours of escapism entertainment, then I'd recommend this flick. If you want to think while watching a movie, then bring a book. And to top of it, Woody Harleson puts in one of the great bit parts of all time.. fantastic stuff..

Book Reviews

Just finished reading two books...

Jackie McMullen's When The Game Was Ours, is about the Magic Johnson, Larry Bird rivalry. If you're a fan of basketball at all, I recommend picking this us and reading it. Lots of stories I've never heard (and I've read a million Bird books), highly entertaining and well written. I ploughed thru it in a couple of days. Granted I was sitting by the pool in Vegas, so I was umm distracted by the scenery from time to time, but this book still kept my attention, somehow...

I also just finished reading Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman. It's a series of essays, written mostly about pop culture and things like that. 90% of them interested me, but there were a couple that I could have done without. FOr the most part though, a very good read.

Next two book, The Book Of Basketball by Bill Simmons and What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. And it just so happens that I'm a big fan of both of the previous writings...

Ho Hum

Not much really going on. Sad huh. In fact I'm so bored lately, that I'm giving yet another attempt at growing a beard. Granted I'm only five days in, which is equal to like twelve hours for most of my friends, but it's still impressive for me.

Yesterday was the wife's birthday. I bought her an Instyler and a Snuggie. Both of which are widely scene on "as seen on tv" ads. For someone who doesn't have the patience to watch commericals, apparently they still work on me..

Ahhh Modern Medicine

So we're watching tv toinght (Castle, in case you were wondering, a show you should be watching) and there was an ad from one of those miracle drugs out there. Abilify I think, not that I know what it does.

The commercial states that the drug may cause thoughts of suicide, which really isn't a good thing. But here's my question. I've never thought of suicide, buuut.. have you ever thought of driving off a bridge? Not for the the landing and dying part, but for the free fall, soaring thru the air part? Or what about getting into a car accident on purpose, just so you could take some time off work?

I'm not saying I would ever do that, but I could use a couple of days off. The dying part is something I have zero interest in, but the adrenaline part I can get on board with. Is that weird?

Is It Just Me?

So does this happen to anyone else? Not this specifically, but this scenario.

Every morning the alarm goes off at 6:03 so I can go to the gym before work. Now in July, Aug, Sept, I went 4-5 times a week. For some reason in Oct I lost my mojo and didn't go much at all, but I've started to go sporadically (3 times a week) in November. So here's my question, does anyone else have the argument with themselves when the alarm goes off? Like one side of my brain is saying, "get up you lazy piece of crap, get up and go to the gym! See that thing under your chin? Yeah that's a second chin, now get up!"

While the other side of my brain just counters with, "ahh just calmly turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. I'm mean, c'mon who doesn't love sleep, I know you do. You can go to the gym tomorrow."

Meanwhile the real me is like an innocent bystander during this discussion. I just go along with whichever side wins, which lately has been the stay in bed, it's cold, side.

Kinda weird huh..

What Does This Say About Me?

So this weekend, a good weekend by the way, I watched a bunch of great shows on the History Channel that I highly recommend.

First I saw a show on the Berlin Wall. Fascinating stuff. It was all about why it was built, how it was built (starting out as a fence and eventually becoming layers of walls in places), various ingenious escapes (with interviews with the people that actually escaped) and why it was finally torn down. It ran two hours, but it was so interesting, even the wife was watching (which she never does).

Second one was on death masks. They took the supposed death masks of Caesar, Napoleon and Shakespeare and the legit masks of Lincoln, Dillinger and someone I'm forgetting. They then gave you the history of the masks and used a laser scanner to produce a color 3-D image. On the Napoleon mask, there were actual eyebrow and nose hairs suck in the plaster from when it was done. And in case you don't know what a death mask is... when the person died, a plaster imprint was immediately made of their face. Don't ask me why this was done, all I know is I think I want it done now too.

And lastly, feel free to judge me, was Pawn Stars. It's all about a pawn shop in Las Vegas and the weird, rare, expensive and not so expensive stuff that people sell. Pretty interesting stuff really, and it's fun to watch people who are that desperate for cash...

Worst Thing Ever

Well I was going to write a review of a book I just finished, but that'll have to wait.

The saddest thing ever just happened to me. If you remember, a couple of weeks ago, our computer died. A friend of ours, generously, reimaged it for us, saving us the money of having to buy a new computer. In the process we lost everything we had on the cpu, which for the most part was no big deal. Our iTunes libraries were lost, but that was ok because we had all the songs on our ipods.

Tonight, I tried reinstalling iTunes on the computer. Somehow, in doing so, EVERYTHING got erased off my ipod. EVERYTHING! Over 4000 songs, at least 1100 of which I purchased from iTunes directly. I haven't bought a cd in six years.. everything was downloaded and now it's all gone.. pooof, just like that...

I can't remember the last time I was this pissed/sad at the same time... stupid me being stupid and not backing up my purchases/library. Stupid iTunes for deleting everything!

Vacation Pics

New York, New York and it's roller coaster..
The Stratosphere...

Yep, that's 900 feet up and we rode it..

See how tiny it is?

Paris at night, with the Bellagio fountain in the foreground...

Me at the fountain...

The wife at the fountain...

The lovely wife, on Halloween. Isn't she the cutest flapper you ever did see? Makes you want to go to a speakeasy with your tommy gun...

I went with the gangster look, but she looks way much better than I did

Tales From Vegas

Oh what a time we had. Where to start?? I'm going to go with the bullets to best shorten my ramblings...

• Remember when I said I thought I found the world's happiest place? Terminal E at Logan (the international terminal), well I found something happier. A flight to Vegas. Everyone was in a great mood for that early on a Saturday morning...
• On the flight there, the 730am flight there, we get stuck sitting next to the whacked out 50 year old who thought she was still 23. Pretty sure she was drunk, and if not, I feel sorry for her friends for having to deal with that all the time. Not the brightest bulb on the strip if you know what I'm saying. While flying over the mountains, she and her friend couldn't agree where we were. She thought we were over the ocean and her friend thought we were over the ocean (on the way to Nevada, there's an ocean right?). Painfully annoying. Thankfully I just fell asleep..
• Discovered a new fast food joint. FatBurger. Holy crap are their burgers great! And the best part is, their burgers come in like 5 different sizes, so someone like the wife can get the little ity bitty one and not not finish her food for the first time ever..
• I don't know what it was, but there was pro football jerseys everywhere! Easily dominated by Green Bay Packer shirts. Not in large groups either, just here and there scattered about the crowd. The only thing that outnumbered the Packer fans, were the University of Texas fans. These people love the color orange and apparently that's all they own...
• Took many long walks down the Strip. It's amazing the things you see. Best costume on Halloween we saw, Jabba the Hut and Princess Leia. Kinda disappointed otherwise. Too many store bought costumes, although I really didn't know that "sexy sailor" (female of course) was that popular...
• Weird thing about Vegas, no animals, pets, or bugs. None...
• Did one of the rides up on top of the Stratosphere. It's basically a claw arm that holds you out, over 900 feet above the ground, and whips you around in a circle. I loved it, not sure if the wife did though, as her eyes were slammed shut the entire time...
• We saw a couple of exhibits while there too. Titanic and Bodies. Titanic was amazing. They really did a great job bringing all the objects to life and tying them in with the people who once owned them. Bodies.. well once you got over the fact that everything you were looking at was at one time walking around, it was amazing. See what the human body looks like under all this skin was really interesting to say the least...
• Interesting question. Husband and wife in their 50's, stood next to us in line. We bought tix for the two exhibits mentioned above. They bought tix for Fantasy. No idea what he did to convince his wife to go, but I salute you sir..
• Did the roller coaster on top of New York, New York. Once again, great stuff, and this time the wife even kept her eyes open..
• We didn't really gamble at all. I think we lost $70 and that's it. Over 3+ days, that's not all that bad. Tons of people there, but no one was gambling. There were even $5 tables everywhere, which I've never seen before...
• All in all, a great great great trip. So good in fact, that I won't have to beg the wife to go again. She loved sitting by the pool all afternoon, as did I of course. Only problem was there wasn't enough waitress's to bring me beer.