It's been a real long while so here are some post-Christmas bullets

Well, as per usual, I've been a lazy bum when it comes to posting.

I spent two awesome weeks in Florida and have been back in the city for a week now... which means it's time for bullets! Hooray...

* Florida was a blast. I got to see a lot of family and friends and do a lot of catching up... and I got some good D-Rays stuff to bring back to the city.

* Myself, my brother/sister, Lisa and Emacy played the third annual Hangover Cup (our traditional New Year's Day golf tournament.) Sadly, my brother won... because she's been taking lessons! That's so not fair and we're considering officially disqualifying him/her in the future so we'll see what happens with that.

I would have come in second, except I had a Phil Mickelsonesque collapse on the last hole that turned a four into a 9 giving Emacy a one stroke lead over me at the end of the day. I was like 20 feet from the green (it was on a little hill) and for whatever reason it took me like four tries with my wedge to get onto the green. It was fugly and I think Emacy may have peed himself he was laughing so hard.

Lisa came in fourth, despite being tied for the lead after the front nine with like a 63... he shot like a 78 on the back nine, we're all still a little confused...

* I'm officially addicted to "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." I watched copious amounts with Emacy down in Florida and I've been watching it kind of non-stop since.

Here's a few fun clips...

When the gang makes a band and is a little weirded out by Charlie's lyrics:



Sweet Dee's trip to the shoe store:



Some of the fun from when the gang has to coach basketball as community service:



Anywho...

* It was in the 70's and 80's for most of the time while I was there... It was actually like 85 degrees when I flew out of Tampa. New York, however, was in the 40's. My coworker told me that on Thursday it may go below zero here (for the first time here since 1994...)

* I'm also addicted to a weird little MC Frontalot song I heard when I was hanging out with a friend at NYU after I got back...



The same day I heard that song we went to Brooklyn to see this free variety/comedy show which was pretty fun. The funniest part was the last comedian, Baron Vaughn.

Here's a random clip from a different show of his...



* After the show, we wandered over the the Trash Bar, with the free tater tots... which is always awesome.

* The other night I headed over to Revival and learned that science can be fun. One of the regulars taught everyone how to shotgun beer straight from the bottle in seconds. The trick is to stick a straw in with a bend at the end, and to seal your lips around the mouth of the bottle and have the end of the straw sticking out. Then as you chug, the air that goes into the straw and pushes the beer out allowing you to drink the whole bottle in about two or three seconds once you get good. So that made for an interesting evening to say the least. He said he learned it from some homeless drug addict, which tells me it might not be something to make a habit of, hmm...

* So last night I went with my roommate to a fancy night club in midtown near Times Square called Opera. A friend of hers got us on the VIP list so we skipped the line and didn't pay the cover, which was cool. Though we didn't wait in line, we still had to empty the pockets and get full pat down once inside, seriously full. I was thinking the guy owed me at least breakfast or something after he was finished. As for the free cover, the money saved went straight to the drinks though... $11 cocktails plus an automatic $2.50 tip on top = ouch at the end of the night, seriously. The people we met there were cool and I even got to shake my groove thing for a while on the floor.

I didn't spend the whole night on the dance floor though because I didn't want to show up the other dudes in the club and make them jealous, especially when I was doing the Margaret Thatcher a la MC Frontalot.

Oddly enough I didn't bump into a group of girls there like these ones from Sunny...



* Also, it snowed about half a foot yesterday, so that's fun.

I'm sure I missed a lot of things because I'm a bad person, but that should essentially catch things up since I'm so awful about updating.

P.S. Happy New Year!

AL Champs, WORD!

I just got home from a neighborhood pub after watching the thrilling Rays game 7 win in the ALCS. How awesome is that!

World Series, here we come!!!!

P.S. I have a new superstition... When a friend of mine came up to the city and we went to see the D-Rays at Yankee Stadium, she brought me a Rays shot glass and mug, so I decided to bring the shot glass to the bar with me and do a shot every time the Rays scored (or did something that was just awesome, like end that eighth inning without giving up a run) in the Rays shot glass.

The bartenders look was priceless when I first explained my plan, but once he figured it out, he was cool with it... and as we all know, the Rays totally won the game!

The bar wasn't too well stocked, so eventually the shot ended up being one part vodka, one part peach schnapps and one part cranberry juice... pretty delicious if I do say so myself.

The important thing is that we won, and now I'll have to bring that shot glass to the bars with me as I watch the World Series... and see the bartenders' reactions, hehe.

But the real most important thing of course is Go Rays! Word dizzle!

Back in the city...

So my Texas-sized adventure has officially come to an end.

I've left the endless miles of industrial refineries as far as the eye can see to come back to endless hives of apartments as far as the eye can see.

So I just got home from the airport... and I'm pretty exhausted, so I'm just gonna follow the Rays game and hit the hay. (A win tonight means we go to the World Series! Word?!?!)

Well, g'night!

Plus, what the heck... here's a few seemingly appropriate Overheard in New York quotes just for fun since I flew into LaGuardia...

Pilot flying into LaGuardia: If you look out the right side of the plane, you can see the beautiful, famous downtown skyline of Manhattan. [Pause.] And if you look out the left side... [pause, sighing] New Jersey.

--LaGuardia

----------

Flight Attendant: Thank you for flying US Airways, and have a happy... happy... what the hell holiday is this? Columbus? Psssh, that ain't no holiday. Have a good week!

--LaGuardia Airport

----------

AirTran flight attendant over intercom: We hope you ladies and gentlemen had a nice flight, and we ask that you all press your faces against the windows so Delta can see what a full flight looks like.

--LaGuardia

I'm still alive in Texas...

Hey, I saw this story and it was just so random I figured I post it real quick... thus also providing proof that I'm still alive.

Just click it, it's just one of those truth is stranger than fiction kind of things.

Also, I'm keeping plenty busy in Texas and I'm trying to eat plenty of Mexican food while I'm here (since they really do outnumber folks like me where I happen to be working...)

Lately I've had lunch at such hot spots as "Pepe's Taco House" off the side of the highway, "Taqueria," and "Tacos y Tamales." They were all pretty good, but none were as good as the place in Fort Worth.

I've also gotten to try Jack-in-the-Box and Whataburger (both firsts for me).

So... is it a bad thing that my travels seem to always revolve around eating and getting drunk? Oh well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it I suppose.

Also... go Rays! I'm hoping the Red Sox win tonight, because if they do, the Rays game will be moved later and I'll be able to watch at least some of it after work at my Hooters here! We'll see what happens with that.

On that note... I've got to hit the hay. G'night!

Oh yeah... and it really isn't uncommon to see folks wandering around with cowboy hats on at all here. I didn't realize how common that actually would be... and I seriously heard this guy yell out "Dad-vernit!" while the Texas Longhorns game was on at Hooters. I just found that interesting... and chuckled a little bit because it caught me off guard.

Well, g'night for real now!

I'm headed to Texas tomorrow, plus some random ish...

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A friend from home, Law and Order, the Vag-ankees and toilet water definitely make for an interesting weekend...

So this weekend was definitely an interesting one.

First, on the way back to the office from lunch Friday, I noticed some commotion on the steps of the courthouse across the street from my office building. Upon further inspection, they were totally filming some "Law and Order" action since its steps are the ones you always see people on in the show.

Unfortunately I didn't see anybody I recognized, but whoever was there got
some schnazzy looking director's chairs to chill in.

It looks like they were filming some sort of press conference. You can't really see it in the picture, but the people were crowding around a guy standing at a podium.
So that afternoon, a friend of mine from back at USF flew in, which was cool. I hadn't seen her since last winter, so it was fun to catch up. We went to see the D-Rays at Yankee Stadium... twice! Granted the first time, our game got rained out... so we had to go back Saturday night.

The game was a lot of fun (though we lost), but it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get, right? As she'll probably tell you, I won on that front.

They had the final destination of this year's Vag-ankees team on
display right in the stadium.
P.S. Along with both being mature and taking the high road we found ways to include "gay" in every Yankees player's name (Bobby A-gay-u, Gay-Rod, Robinson Gay-no, etc... sometimes I miss middle school)... We also determined that the Devil Rays need to draft Oroku Saki and put him in the infield to complement Akinora Iwamura.

Though, unfortunately Saki might be on the DL for a while after getting jumped (like out of nowhere and for no reason!) by a group of crazy teenagers...



Sidenote... On the way to the game, we passed a bunch of kids playing in a spraying fire hydrant, which I always thought was strange. For a little while there in the middle of the summer, I saw kids playing in gallons and gallons of spraying hydrant water almost daily. Heck, in Florida we had lawn watering restrictions, so it's always crazy to me to see that.

Every time I see it though, part of me is just waiting for someone to come out of nowhere and start beating the crap out of someone on the street, a la "The Godfather."



That's why whenever I see the whole fire hydrant thing... I keep aware of my surroundings.

Anywho...

So, along with baseball, we did some barhopping and wandered around midtown and just had an overall good time. We even caught Brutus the Buckeye being naughty...

Maybe they were a bit distracted
during the USC game, hmmm...
So God decided to make sure the weekend stayed interesting even after my friend flew back to Tampa, I kept busy all day Sunday in the bathroom... since that afternoon my toilet clogged and flooded out the bathroom... twice. The room filled with toilet water, I cleaned it up, then it filled again. That was weak... and gross. I'm pretty sure my neighbors heard me yelling obscenities as it flooded the second time. I was quite pissed.

Don't worry, I have no pictures of that to post, as it wasn't too pleasant.

It was extra weak because it made me miss the WNBA game I was going to go to to get Bill Laimbeer's autograph at. I guess that will have to wait until next year.

I've never been to a WNBA game, and while I've heard people talk trash about them I'd venture to say they are probably more fun than being on your knees cleaning up toilet water.

On another interesting note, my work is going to send me to Texas for either a couple of weeks or a whole month to help with Hurricane Ike related work... so that should be interesting. I'll probably leave by the end of the week. I'm not quite sure yet how exactly that will impact the posting and such, but we'll see.

I'm really excited, I think it will be interesting...

The MLB All-Star through the eyes of a commoner - a photo essay

So I got home from work Tuesday and figured, "What they hey... why not hop a subway train over to Yankee Stadium where the All-Star game is tonight?" I decided to throw on a Devil Rays shirt and go check out the scene since I hadn't seen the stadium and the area around it yet. No matter what I figured it would be pretty neat... despite being a lowly commoner with nowhere near the means to be allowed anywhere near an entrance of course. Oh well...I mean, how often am I going to be a 15-minute train ride from the All-Star game, right?





So I hop on the train and it literally was only like 15-20 minutes max to get to the Yankee Stadium station. So that was pretty neat. You can see that they support everybody's favorite Belgian brewer, :(, on their sign. I read today that they might sell off Bud's theme park assets, including Busch Gardens... which is just plain sad. Oh well...

Sidenote, some of the people exiting the station were really weirded out that I was taking pictures of "them," even though I was just being an uber-tourist and taking pictures of the Yankee Stadium's subway station entrance/exit.

The station itself was not too different than any other station... save for one thing that sort of caught my eye...





I have never seen one of these at any other station, not even the main touristy ones like Times Square or at the main West Side stop for Central Park. Apparently the Yankees are just that special that their stop gets to be rodent-free?

I wonder if there are signs like that near Shea Stadium? I bet not... how could there ever be any rats in Flushing anyway, right?

I guess it's all kind of a moot point anyway, I haven't seen any rats in any subway stations or on any tracks yet... oh wait... except for the PATH Train tracks in Jersey. The PATH is the subway that connects New Jersey to Manhattan (remember Journal Square?... I vaguely do). I saw lots of mice on the PATH track at Newark Penn Station.

Don't tell me you're even the slightest bit surprised at the only place I've seen subway rodents so far... because I know you're not.





So back to the game (or outside at least for commoners like myself). New York's finest were out en masse for the All-Star game. They were everywhere, literally in the hundreds. I couldn't get a picture to convey the massive police presence. There were also rows and rows of police cars and police vans on lots of nearby streets too.





It wouldn't surprise me if there was a lot of crime in other parts of the Bronx last night, since it seems every cop in the Bronx got pulled for "show of force" duty at Yankee Stadium.

Not that I would have been able to afford one, but that many cops make buying a scalped ticket not the most appealing thing. I did see a deal go down though at one point... it looked like enough cash changed hands to fund a small Colombian guerilla force. One guy offered me a ticket for $675. I almost debated the idea of skipping food and beverage for the next month or so... key word being "almost."

There were tons of people trying to get tickets. One guy asked someone heading into the game for a ticket, and the guy on his way in jokingly said "maybe for $5,000." The guy wanting a ticket said "sure," totally stunning the first guy... who thought about it for a good bit but decided to go in the game and not ditch his family... which could have made for an awkward All-Star game experience for all parties involved.

For non-ticket-having folks like myself there were some neat things and free stuff... most notably gobs of free candy. "The House that Ruth Built?" ... sure, Baby Ruth.

Baby Ruth was out in force with people like this guy giving out Baby Ruth's by the handful... it was awesome.





I don't want to know how many I had, but I do know my stomach was getting a little off... though that definitely could have been a result of being surrounded by thousands of Yankees fans... either way...

I did see a couple of other Devil Rays fans pass by in the throngs, which was kind of neat.

The area around the stadium had plenty of bars and memorabilia stores and such. I like when a stadium has an actual district around it to keep folks busy and entertained. There was one store selling baseball cards including various Rod Carew cards for $20-$30... weird... he's inescapable.

There was also a little fanfest kind of area set up with plenty of ways to drop some cash, but I just wandered and snapped a shot. At least there was a kind of cool mural behind it.





The new stadium being built is right across the street from the old one...





Hopefully I'll be catching some Devil Rays games there in the future (I already have plans to catch one at old Yankee Stadium before it's demolished), but who knows how much tickets to the games at the new stadium will cost, especially since George Steinbrenner is apparently greedy (shocker, right?)... Apparently some folks, like this guy wandering around the throngs, aren't too pleased with the idea of replacing the old Yankee Stadium... oh well..





So after wandering around I decided to find a bar near my apartment and watch the game since one of the biggest names in the game is from Washington Heights... Manny Ramirez... who is affectionately nicknamed ManRam... which I maintain is the worst nickname ever, but whatev I suppose...





So I wandered to the "dos por uno cervesas" bar down the street and parked myself for the game. It was actually pretty fun. They spoke all Spanish for about 90 percent of the time. However, I was able to gather that they, like all good-hearted people, hate E-Rod. They say he should help the Domican Republic more after natural disasters, like many other big-name players do... they also hate him for the other normal reasons too.


One guy, for whatever reason started talking trash about Julio Lugo, which was pretty funny... and especially random since he wasn't in the All-Star game... he didn't speak English, but I could talk with him a little in Spanish and gather that apparently Lugo hits into too many double plays for his liking... and he hates him with a passion because of it.

We bonded over me being a Devil Rays fan... though Navarro totally made me look like a bitch with all his "awesome" plays and strikeouts... oh well... I've been a Rays fan long enough that I'm used to a little ribbing.

Overall it was fun, and the guys were all nice and I think it will be a good place to hone my Spanish skills.

Anyway... dinner time... I think I'll grab something in Chinatown, mmm....

I think I may have laundered money today... maybe I should ask the Office Space guys?

So, I signed the lease for my apartment in Washington Heights today... and I can move in tomorrow, so that's pretty awesome.

All I had to do was bring about $3,000 worth of bank certified checks for various things (first month's rent, security deposit, etc...) The only problem is my bank (along with my vast fortune of course) is in Florida.

Hmmm...

So I also have a checking account with Bank of America, which is almost as common as Starbucks in some parts of New York, so I go there and start trying to figure how to get $3,000 in my hands in New York City asap... without catching gonnhasyphyherpeles from some random stranger in Chinatown.

I talk on the phone with my bank in Florida and they can't help me get my money in any way shape or form. No surprise, they've been as useless as my appendix lately.

So instead they tell me to take a cash advance on my debit card, and assure me not to worry because there's no limit. Sounds too good to be true right? Well it of course was.

So I go to the counter at the BofA and ask for a cash of advance for just over $3,000... and it comes back denied... which is pretty damn embarrassing to say the least. Teller #1 then tells me I need to call my bank in Florida again to figure out what's wrong.

I do, the different person says I do indeed have a limit, and it happens to be exactly $3,000. So I go back to the counter, and get teller #2. I try to be subtle and not too loud in asking for $3,000 cash money, but she's a little hard of hearing and has to doublecheck the amount... "$3,000 you say, right?" she nearly yells from the safety of being behind her bullet-proof glass. I'm sure a a couple people in the not so empty place glanced our direction.

Awesome.

So she gives me this wad of cash that barely fits in my wallet and makes my wallet barely fit in my back pocket and I start wandering the streets of New York City.

I really do feel relatively safe in NYC in general. I figure if something is going to happen to me, it is going to happen to me anyway no matter where I am... but wandering around the city with thousands of dollars in cash bulging out of my ass left me a little uneasy as I walked to the subway to head toward the apartment complex.

So I go into a different bank and ask if I could use the cash to get bank certified checks, and they tell me only a bank I have an account with can do that. I'm a writer, not a banker, I know jack about these simple banking matters.

Then a lightbulb goes on in my head and I go back to the BofA. I have an account there.

I get teller #3 (conveniently situated right between tellers 1 and 2) and ask if I can now deposit my fresh just out of the bank 3 g's cash money. If she hadn't seen me just cash advance the money from the girl next to her, she probably would have assumed I was a drug dealer. Luckily, she just thought I was a confused moron instead.

So then she takes the cash back, puts it in my account and then takes it right back out to make some certified checks for the apartment folk.

So long story short, I went to a bank and magically created $3,000, deposited it into my checking account with the same bank and then produced certified checks from the same bank.

No wonder so many people are in so much financial trouble. Once I figured out what I was doing, that was just way too easy.

Anywho...

So my wrist has been hurting. I started thinking, and I realized the only dairy I've had since I got here was the cheese on pizza and cheeseburgers... so I'm convinced it's from a lack of calcium. Maybe I'll have to start drinking white russians once I get over this quasi-cold. Every little bit counts right?

Also, I'm still feeling a bit under the weather in general. So to fight that, I've been downing virgin screwdrivers like there's no tomorrow at work.

Gratuitous Chinatown mention...

Also... I went to Chinatown for lunch again today on the way to signing my lease...

Eating in Chinatown is an interesting thing. There are so many restaurants and no way to really pick... so usually something has to catch your attention. There is usually some sort of sign that points to the "right" place to eat.

Today, the decision was pretty much made for me. As I was walking down Canal Street, I saw a cook hop out of the back of a truck with a whole dead hog heaved over his shoulder and I totally followed him to his restaurant. I could still see a big blood stain on the pigs not-so-smiling face as it bounced up and down on the guy's shoulder.

So tomorrow should be pretty busy with the whole sort of moving in thing, so it's time to hit the hay...

P.S. The Devil Rays are currently number one in the AL East right now, in case you didn't know...

Word?