Finally having a weekend of nice weather, Meg and I decided to check out Old Bethpage Restoration Village which is out on Long Island. Bethpage Village isn’t exactly a recreation of any one specific village, but rather a set of buildings that represents what a typical 1850’s (or so) village was like here in the New England area.
The location it self is really nice, big green fields with trees and all manner of plants and gardens. All of the buildings are original period buildings that were dissembled and moved from their original locations and re-assembled out on Long Island. Each building has rooms done up with period furniture and other decorations, and has a guide (also in period costume) to tell you about the houses and a little about the people who lived there. Both Meg and I found the school house and blacksmith shop the most interesting, and got to hang out for a while and watch the blacksmith work on making a pair of special tongs from a solid bar of metal. He explained to us that by the time his shop was set in, in the 1870’s, the blacksmiths were really more about repair and specialty work, and that people were getting a majority of their metal items (nails, horseshoes, ect.) from factories.
Thanks to my friend Connie who had recommended the place to us, we brought a picnic lunch with us and got to have a nice quiet lunch outside at one of the picnic tables under some nice shady trees. Apparently they also do civil war battle re-enactments from time to time which could be fun to check out some day too.
Rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. With the usual chores of shopping and laundry and what not. It was back to work for me today, though in principle it’s a short week with Friday off for the 4th of July holiday. No idea what we are doing this weekend yet, I have a few ideas I am looking at but nothing concrete as of yet.
On a totally unrelated note we found where we are going to do our wedding reception lunch and have the date reserved, Meg just has to call them tomorrow to put down the room payment. Now I can finally get the invitations made up (going to go with moo.com postcards of some form or another I think) and sent out. I just need to get some Simpsons stamps to put on them!
Last night we went down to the opening of the summer concert series at Forest Park here in Queens. We went to a few shows last year and had a good time so I kept an eye out for their summer schedule this year. They tend to have a variety of different acts and shows all summer long. I was a bit worried when I got out of work at 4 yesterday and it started to downpour, but by 7 it had cleared up and though damp turned out to be a really nice evening.
The opening concert this year was a group called The Mahoney Brothers doing a show called “Jukebox Heroes Live.” They cover songs/performers from the 50s and 60s with a little 70s thrown in. Last nights acts included songs by, and impersonations of: Neil Diamond, Willie Nelson, Elvis, The Beatles, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and The Beach Boys. The show was really a lot of fun, even if Meg some how didn’t know 90% of the songs they were doing. (really…who has never herd ìSweet Carolineî before?!?) Though to her credit she did know all the Elvis stuff, so I guess shes not totally a musical lost cause. Hehe.
The band was really good and put on a great show. We had a really fun time. Next time though we should plan ahead a bit more and bring some better food. Since we wouldn’t have time for dinner before the concert I just got some snack food stuff and sodas from CVS. While they were darn tasty, I was still eying the Panera sandwiches that the family in front of us had. I plan to drag Meg out to a few more of these things this summer. They are doing some Shakespeare thing in August and a Disco night some time in July.
Yes, I know my car is beat up.
No, I do not want to hire some sketchy guy who comes up to me offering to fix it “really cheap” in the Trader Joes/Home Depot parking lot.
Seriously this happens like EVERY time we go there. Assuming I ever DID want to fix the dents in the car (which I really don’t care enough to) I think I might find someone more reputable then “parking lot guy” to do so.
Wednesday night Meg and I had a nice “date night” in the city. I had gotten tickets a month or two ago to see Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer at the Housing Works bookstore. They were doing a charity show (music and reading) with all the money going to help homeless HIV/AIDS patients.
I went into Manhattan right after work and met up with Meg in Union Square. We walked though the green market and I got a bottle of pear sparking wine from a local vineyard (they were doing free tastings). We ended up doing dinner the Heartland Brewery there in the square. We were going to try some place new but by that point it had started to rain pretty good so we just ran in there.
The show it self was really good. Amanda sang a few songs and Neil read a newish short story of his and from the upcomming photo book “Who Killed Amanda Palmer” which is yet to be released. They actually auctioned off one copy at the show which ended up selling for $1300! They monew was all for charity, but still. According to the paper they ended up raising over 10,000$ total so that was cool. The only thing that sort of sucked was that she show was standing room only so after all day of walking around at work, standing on the subway and then walking around the square and at the show my legs/knees were killing me by the time I got home.
While Meg isn’t much of an Amanda Palmer fan she still liked getting to see Neil Gaiman and had a good time. I am determined to keep a better eye out for more stuff like this. It’s sad we live in NYC but never take advantage of fun stuff like this more often.
I suck at updating and again I blame twitter. Its so easy to post random stuff a few times a day/week that actually sitting down and writing a longer post of any substance is more work than I want to do most of the time.
We ended up going to CT for Memorial day weekend. Had a nice visit. We did the usual Bookbarn trip and had a BBQ at my parents house Sunday. We ended up driving back early Monday and beat all the traffic. I think we made the best time for our CT-NY drive ever.
We are still working on wedding planning stuff. The main focus right now is finding a place for our reception lunch after the actual wedding. We are looking at a few places but really have to find and book something soon, if not people will be ordering off the dollar menu at McDonalds before we have our wedding-hot-apple-pie 
Speaking of weddings this week at work we did a little party for one of the guys who is getting married this weekend. My job was to bring the bagels since I have everyone here addicted to Glendale Bagles when I bring them in from time to time. It was an adventure to say the least when I realzed while already on the bus that they forgot half my bagels and I had to go back and get them and then go BACK on the bus to head to work. Still bagels were darn tasty
This weekend we went to see UP which was a cute little movie. We both liked it, though I think Meg liked it more than I did. She especially liked the talking dog “Doug”. We also went out for a little walk later in the afternoon to enjoy the nice weather.
Today was just us being lazy for the most part, which was nice too.
Just finished a two day photo training class we had at work. It was really quite informative. Thanks to my camera here at home I knew a decent amount of how to physically USE the camera but still got a lot out of learning more how to control depth of field and exposure levels. Should be a help both at work and home.
Nothing much else exciting going on at the moment. The girl and I saw Star Trek this past weekend and we both thought it was awesome.
I should post more here but tend to twitter more now than anything.
This past weekend in the car with my sister at one point the conversation touched on the whole swine flu mess. I made a joke comment that I had been having these dreams about an old lady on her porch named Mother Abigail. Well looks like other people had the same though, but took it to the next level thanks to Twitter. You now can follow Abigail Freemantle and Tom Cullen “MOON that spells Swine Flu!”
(If you haven’t read or seen The Stand by Steven King this will mean very little to you )
We were told someone we work with was found dead this morning in their appt. News/facts are still coming out but it was quite a shock. I didn’t really know the girl that well. She worked in my section for a short time before she started training. Still…was quite a sad day at the lab today.
Yesterday was our first day of class. We pretty much covered the basics and theory behind the microscope, how to set it up, how to calibrate the scale, things like that. They brought in lunch for us since there really isn’t much with in walking distance from where the class was.
Last night 5 of us all met up in the lobby and went out to see a little bit of Chicago. We took the subway a few stops up to the John Hancock Center and based on a tip from one of the instructors, went up to the Signature Lounge which is even higher than the visitors center (96th floor) and instead of paying 15$ to ride up and look out the observation deck windows we spent 10$ on a drink in the lounge and got to look out those windows which gave a quite impressive view of the city.
Ohhh also while up there we saw Bobby Lee from Mad TV up there having a drink with some friends. A few people took pictures with him and he seemed nice. Just figures that I live in NYC for 5 years and the first “famous person I saw on the street” story is from Chicago.
After the sun set we went back down and headed to Giordanos (the famous pizza place) for dinner. 4 of us split the tropical pizza which was pineapple, cheese, and canadian bacon. It was VERY good. Plus we didn’t eat till like 9 here which is like 10 for me so I was just a little hungry.
Today is day 2 of class. No idea what we might do tonight. One of the museums is open till 8 and free today so there was some talk of being total nerds and going there. Have to see.
Well I made it to Chicago safe and sound. I even learned a few things along the way!
1. LaGuardia is a crappy airport.
2. United is a crappy airline (15$ for 1 checked bag…pfft!
It HAS been nice that all my travel is paid for so my trip from the airport to my hotel was covered, along with the hotel it self. I am staying at the Club Quarters. Place is a business hotel so the rooms are small but I wont be in it much other than to sleep so it should be fine. When I got into Chicago it was raining/snowing an after unpacking and what not it was REALLY raining out. Hence I had dinner in the Elephant and Castle pub thats attached to the lobby of the hotel. Had a decent burger/fries and a beer, and even was bad and got bread pudding desert to go and am enjoying it here in my room.
It’s only 8pm here, stupid time zones. So that combined with my travel has me dead tired but its a bit too early to go to bed yet. At least I have WiFi to entertain me
Meg and I are back in NYC. We flew out of FL at 6am yesterday and got back here around 830ish. The rest of our visit to Fl was quite productive wedding wise. By the end of our visit we had:
1. Set the date – 10-10-09
2. Location – The Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine Fl.
3. Found outfits for both Meg and I (her a dress, Me nice pants and a shirt, we are going casual)
4. Scouted out a few locations for our reception lunch, we still have to call and work out those details but we have some ideas.
All in all it was quite productive. We still have a good deal of work to do. Figure out a guest list, flights/hotels, officiant, wedding license, cake, ect. but its a good start.
Our Fl visit wasn’t ALL wedding planning though. We did get to go see Monsters vs. Aliens in IMAX 3D which was quite impressive visually, story wise it was alright, I mean what do you expect from an animated movie where one of the characters is a living blob? We also had a nice dinner at her sisters house and got to play Scene It on their Xbox after, we played teams and Meg and I kicked ass, and by Meg and I, I mean Me Finally Monday night they did a birthday BBQ dinner for me with a cherry cheese cake birthday cake. I also got presents from her family which was really nice of them.
Today was back to work for me, though it will be a short week. I head off to Chicago on Sunday for my week long microscope training class and I don’t get back till Friday. Then we will head up to CT for Easter with my family so I wont end up back at work until that following Tuesday. By the time I have to work a full week I will probably do nothing but complain since I have been so spoiled this past month!
We just got back from dinner at Meg’s sisters. They made us chicken parm and pasta which was really good. We also played Scene It on their Xbox and Me and Meg (ok Me) totally OWNED at it!
Meg, her mom, and Me spent the afternoon in St. Augustine looking at places to have our wedding lunch/dinner/reception. Found a few possibilities but have to wait till we are set on our wedding date/location before we set any after wedding stuff. Still was fun to walk around the city. I got a bottle of Key Lime wine to bring with us to megs sisters house. It went well with the Key Lime Pie we had for desert. Tomorrow might be shopping for stuff for me to wear to the wedding (the women folk did their dress shopping yesterday) and we might do a movie (Monsters vs. Aliens).
Two last notes…1. its lightning like crazy out here right now and 2. earlier in the day I brought out corn to feed the ducks behind Meg’s grandparents house and got to pet a duck while he was eating.
We made it to FL yesterday. Flight was fine. Megs mom picked us up at the airport and we came back to her house. Just sort of visited and had a light dinner and then went out to the bar for trivia night. We came in 4th which isn’t bad I suppose. They had “Gator Tail” on the menu as a snack sort of thing and I just had to try it so I could say I ate gator. It was fried in little bites, sort of like chewy chicken nuggets. Still was an experience. Today the women all went wedding dress shopping. As of 5:45 they still aren’t home. Needless to say I did not go, just hung out here on the couch with the laptop and the TV. Not exactly exciting but beats work I suppose.
Friday night Meg and I ventured out to the wilds of Long Island for a little going away get together for one of my co-workers who is leaving. We had a good time, few drinks and some food. Given that I had to drive Meg to to have a few more drinks then I could but I was able to try a very tasty Scottish Ale they had there.
Friday night was also the Battlestar Galactica final episode. We didn’t feel up to waiting for them to re-run it at midnight so just downloaded it Saturday morning and watched it Saturday night.
All in all was alright for a final episode, though the very end was well summed up by the Simpsons Tree House of Horror episode:
Frink: Yes, over here, n’hey, n’hey. In episode BF12, you were battling barbarians while riding a winged Appaloosa, yet in the very next scene, my dear, you’re clearly atop a winged Arabian. Please do explain it.
Lucy Lawless: Ah, yeah, well, whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it.
Frink: I see, all right, yes, but in episode AG4 –
Lucy Lawless: Wizard.
Frink: [under breath] Aw, for glaven out loud.
Just replace ‘Wizard’ with ‘god/God’ and there yah go.
Have a short week at work this week. Heading down to Fl Thursday for a mini-vacation/wedding planning trip. It seems we have a date set, though haven’t put any money down for it yet, we want to check out the place first. But it looks like it will be October 10, 2009 down in FL (Yes waiting a year and doing it 10-10-10 WOULD be cooler but I bet that date is already booked like everywhere). We get back next Tuesday and then I have 3 more days at work before I head out for my Chicago training trip. I will be down there for a week learning all about microscopes and what not. I fly back that Friday (Good Friday actually) and then we will likely head up to CT for Easter with my family.
Yeah next few weeks are going to be just a tad crazy to say the least.
When androids dream of electric sheep I bet it looks a lot like this:
Extreme Sheep
