Archive for the ‘Friends’ Category

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The $43 Cheesecake

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

So, yesterday was officially both Papa’s (My father-in-law) and Grandpa’s (my dad) birthdays. More on this later, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

We spent the day strolling around NYC yesterday. Running around the city is tough work with three kids. Even with help. Katie and Mike, (our friends from Hawaii), have always made having kids easier. They are a great aunt/uncle (they’re brother and sister) set to have around. When we lived in Hawaii, they were our babysitters. They were great to have around, and frequently crashed at our place. Having them over yesterday and today was like reliving old times a little, and that counts for a lot.

I’m a big fan of using the Subway when in NYC as a way of covering ground, especially with kids. It’s a bitch getting selves, kids, stroller, etc. to the platform, but once there, it’s a straight shot onto the train. The bus, on the other hand, would be sitting there while your slow-moving-herd boarded, while other passengers watched with frothing mouths.

Kevyn, it turns out, likes the subway too.

George and Kevyn on the subway

George and Kevyn on the subway

He kept asking me to let him slide down the pole. So being a dad, I obliged, his laughter being contagious and infecting other passengers.

Lara also introduced him to the rushing wind preceeding an oncoming train.

Lara and Kevyn, as the train approaches

Lara and Kevyn, as the train approaches

Central park has some nice little playgrounds, where the kids can have adventures, meet new friends and explore the properties of matter, As Caelyn was wont to do. She also likes putting sand at the bottom of the slide. Just because.

Caelyn playing with sand

Caelyn playing with sand

Mike and Katie spent some time with their non-blood nieces and nephew as well. Honestly, you should have seen the looks on their faces when Mike and Katie walked into the apartment yesterday morning. It was priceless!

Katie watching over Caelyn

Katie watching over Caelyn

Mike and Quinlyn

Mike and Quinlyn

The end of the evening involved dinner and tomfoolery at Dave and Busters, where the kids made a killing in tickets on some roulette type of game. Quinlyn played air hockey for the first time. And Me, Mike, Quinlyn, and Kevyn took turns blowing up aliens/monsters on various gun games.

The cap to the evening was something Papa had said earlier. Lara had called him to wish him a happy birthday, and he said something to the effect of “have a piece of cheesecake for me.” Well, this became our driving force. Find a whole cheesecake in NYC at 9:30PM. Problem being that we were tired, and it was getting late: most normal bakeries were closed by then. Everywhere else sold them by the slice, and we weren’t having any of that. So after searching Times Square for a deli or bakery with a whole cheesecake we settled on a slightly-used-but-mostly-whole cheesecake, that cost $43 after tax. Some decisions just can’t be explained.

A slightly used cheesecake

A slightly used cheesecake

Posted in Family, Friends, Games, Kids, New York, Pictures | 1 Comment »

The Fat Man (doesn’t want to) Runneth

Friday, August 7th, 2009
Not mine, but you get the idea

Not my gut, but you get the idea. Picture by dotbenjamin on Flickr.

I really don’t like to exercise. I don’t make apologies for it, I don’t try to explain it, I just do.

Running, though, has a special reserved batch of hate I’m willing to throw at it whenever the subject is brought up.

I’m not a runner. And now that I’m carrying a spare tire that weighs more than my 7 year old, it looks even less appealing. The fatter I get, the less I want to run.

Yet it’s probably the only way I’m going to lose the weight.

There’s a weird thing about me that causes me to do things that are difficult. Unusually difficult. And I do them better and with more effort than things that come naturally.

For instance: It’s 11PM, it’s time for bed. I’m exhausted. I gotta get up early. So what do I do? I start cleaning the bedroom. Why? Because it’s hard and it’s the last thing I want to be doing right then.

Or the time back in Hawaii that there was a blood drive at the shipyard. I dutifully gave blood. Then I went home. Lara (my font of common sense) wasn’t there, so what did I do? Did I tell myself “dude, you’re down a pint, play some WoW?” Nope. Not me. I mowed the backyard. In the Hawaii heat. I didn’t pass out, but man, I wanted to.

The best example I have, though, actually involves running. Back in my Navy days, on our 2004 deployment to the Gulf, I had been working out with my good, dear friend Angie. For about two months, we hit the elliptical machine for an hour almost every day. During that time, I got down to 191 lbs., the lowest weight I’ve been at since high school (I’m about 240 now). We pulled into a port, and there was a ship-sponsored 5K run. The port was Jebel Ali, right outside Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Also known as THE FRACKING DESERT. I don’t know what posessed us to do this, but Angie and I did in fact run the 5K in the desert. Sucessfully, if not speedily (though 26-27 minutes is still not bad). That was a helluva challenge. Why we stopped working out after that, I haven’t a clue.

So I think there has to be a certain amount of challenge involved for it to be worth getting off my fat ass for. I think this gut has reached the point where it will provide sufficient challenge all by itself.

Now I need some running shoes.

Posted in Friends, Health, Things I don't want to do, Working Out | 1 Comment »

Ok. Phew. Glad that’s over… or is it?

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Well, it’s been a ridiculous last week or so. After spending three days working our asses off getting the house ready for final inspection (with the help of our dear friends, Dorathy, Jim, Mike, Chuck, Kris, and Mandy, with a big nod to Shar and Ivan, whose house we were crashing at), I finally get my DD214 and it’s time to fly out. One problem; we’re broke. As a matter of fact, as of this writing, I still haven’t received my separation pay. IT’s December 31, 11AM CST and I’ve been a civilian for 35 hours, and haven’t gotten my separation pa.y Needless to say, I’m a little miffed.

Anyway, if you noticed my status the other day, it was because we had no money and needed some for things like travel food, checked baggage costs, and shipping  Cody (the Dog). Well, I won’t say where I got the money, but I’m grateful, and we were on our way. Agriculture check went fine, ticketing went fine, and then the clerk saw that it’s about 43 degrees in Dallas. That meas we needed a “letter of acclimatization” (or something) saying that Cody wouldn’t die in the cold. Which means, since none of us are veterinarians, we had to leave him behind with a friend. I miss my dog . Quinlyn was crushed.

So now we’re in Oklahoma with Mimi and Papa, and I’m (impatiently) awaiting my separation pay. It’s like one last F-U from the navy.

I’ll keep everyone updated. We fly outta here on the 4th, headed for NY.

Posted in Family, Farewells, Friends | No Comments »

Who Am I?

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

So I posted a bulletin on Myspace with this idea, and I’ll do the same for Facebook.

And since I’m lazy and its’ late, I’ll just copy the dang thing here:

I’m having a lot of trouble describing myself.

I almost feel like I’m losing touch with who I really am.

I firmly believe that a lot can be said about a person based on their friends.

So I challenge you, my friends. I want you all to write my little “about me” section (I think it’s called “blurbs” here).
Whatever ends up here will also be on my Facebook profile and the about me section of my blog.

So either leave me a comment, or send me a message with something you think I should say about myself.

This isn’t one of those stupid chain things, or a bulletin game. (If you know me at all you’ll know that I pretty much despise those :p ). I’m seriously having a kind of identity crisis. Not so serious that I need psychotherapy (not for this anyway), but not so minor that I can ignore it.

If you don’t want others to know that a certain thing was your idea, then send it in a message. I’m not going to be writing is as a “this person says this” or anything. But I will post EVERYTHING that you, my friends, think of me.

Help me out here :)

Posted in Family, Friends, Life | 2 Comments »

Everywhere and nowhere

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

If you’ve noticed some unusual activity on my blog, and on MySpace, it’s because I’m trying out some new things.

I like having/hosting/maintaining my own blog. However, I’m well aware that with the connectivity of this age, where people have more friends and acquaintances than ever due to the web, asking ALL of my friends, past and present, to always check this bog is totally whacked. It’s just not going to happen.

I’ve already got an app on Facebook that reads my blog posts and updates my feed with them, driving the visitors here.

What I was lacking was something similar for MySpace. I gave up blogging on MySpace over a year ago, but I realize that a lot of my friends are still there, still blogging. So I found a plug-in for this WordPress installation to post my published blog posts to my MySpace blog.

It’s a little funky. It doesn’t quite work right, and I actually had to go into the code for the plug-in and modify it to get it to work a little better.

I also had to decide whether or not to post the whole article to MySpace or to just post a notification. I went with the latter.

Part of the problem with hosting content in different places is that it becomes nearly impossible to keep up with the feedback. Trying to read comments on Facebook, MySpace, and the blog itself every day would become pretty tiresome. So I’m making the best compromise I can. I’m having all of them come back here. Hopefully, my friends will come visit me here more often, and leave their feedback.

I’m also subscribing to all of my friends blogs in my feed readers on my computer and my Blackberry, because I miss knowing what’s going on in their (your) lives as well.

So here’s hoping that these tools help me maintain the close relationships I once had.

Posted in Blogging, Friends, Technology, Web Tools | No Comments »

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