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| incognitoit is absolutely beautiful outside. if this is the result of global warming then fry me up some planet Earth.
home run derby tonight. should be fun. BETTER be fun.
All-Star Game tomorrow. i gave away a shift so i could watch it.
baseball = best reason to skip work.
baseball = biggest reason my paychecks aren't as big as they should be.
i did the dishes, and there's still a sink full of dishes to do. somehow they reproduce.
mmm... dish spawn.
saturday i bought a bottle of Dave's ULTIMATE Insanity Sauce.
this is different then just the plain ol' bottle of Dave's Insanity Sauce.
see... it's ULTIMATE. it's also hotter than the original sauce.
so they say. (note: this link also doubles as a christmas wish list).
i could either tear it open and try it right away, or wait until i'm done with the original bottle i have (which could take years... you gotta one-drop-at-a-time that stuff).
 
yummy.
when cricket 'n' i open up our burrito joint i'm going to pour heaps of Insanity Sauce into random burritos. it'll be awesome! i'm good for business!
i'll expound more on this business venture when we've taken more significant steps towards making it a reality.
feel free to buy some imaginary shares, checks made payable to me.
ohbytheway,
blog updates --
baseball blog update: World Series hitting streaks.
music blog update: turning the way-back machine to 2003.
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| philip ontakoshope you had a happy 4th, happy 1st, and happiness all the days inbetween, and since, and prior to, and ever will be.
me 'n' cricket were laden with stomach viruses, and i complained about it openly and freely. i've only just recently been able to formulate and excrete solid poos. YOU'RE WELCOME.
not at all related to solid pooing,
i just realized the Taco Bell is within walking distance. it's in a weird spot where you kind of know it's there, but kind of don't. anyway, i actually really paid attention to it yesterday, and it's totally walkable. this is not a big deal to you.
5 tacos, $3.99.
canadian dollars.
day off today.
exciting.
not exciting, but appreciated.
i just realized that i work during the All-Star game. shoot. nuts. crap. dang.
too soon to give my two-weeks quitting notice, too.
who wants to cover?
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| mash my brainshave headache.
want to die.
two consecutive days off. some people call it a weekend. i call it a coincidence.
monday + tuesday, 'stead of the sat. and sun.
whatever.
happy canada day eve.
tomorrow, if i don't feel like crushing my skull in a vice, i'll watch the fireworks display over the forky part of the Thames.
in-town firework sales... LEGAL in canada.
in-town firework shootin'... LEGAL in canada.
come for the weather,
stay for the colo(u)rful explosions.
finally some updations.
check it:
baseball blog update - Yankee Stadium
music blog update #1 - New York themed songs
music blog update #2 - Euro-themed songs
hopefully these will come more often than monthly.
monthly: good for subscriptions
monthly: no good for attention spans
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| oh yeah, New York happenedokay.
i've been working non-stop since i got back from New York (city), and now that i have a day off, instead of doing something productive like clean the bathroom sink (which i'll get around to doing anyway... no hurry... it's gross), i'll tell you ALL about me 'n' cricket's brief NYC adventure-rama.
if i can remember the details. this thing happened, like, a week and a half ago.
all the pictures, by the way, are on my caralibro. befriend to see, then get handily defeated in Scrabulous.
wednesday the 4th:
woke up way too early, left town at a quarter after 6 a.m. i may have taken a nap while driving. the trip between london and niagara falls is an uneventful one and there's nothing to report. at the border the guard asked where we were going. new york city. what for? visit. sightsee. yankee stadium. who's playing? the blue jays.
are you flying or driving?
(awkward pause as i realize i'm sitting in a car and not an airplane, so of course i'm driving.)
(cricket later told me that people often fly from Buffalo to NYC, so it was a perfectly acceptable question.)
(so it's a good thing i didn't give some sort of snarky response.)
once through Buffalo, New York state turns into beautiful and scenic hillsides. pastures here and there, villages in the bottom of valleys, old rocks, rolling hills. the trip was worth taking just for the drive. we skimmed the northern tip of the Finger Lakes (the nails, i suppose). i very certainly want to return there to do some camping.
in Courtland, south of Syracuse, we were supposed to pit stop at a Denny's. Denny's are hard to come by in our part of Ontario, and we had this unused gift card. doggone it, we were looking forward to the Denny's pit stop. but it wasn't there. no Denny's. just an Apple Annie's. so instead we ate at the local Friendly's Restaurant, and that turned out to be okay. the food was good, and they gave us free "happy endings"(!). i made zero dirty jokes.
anyway, we dipped into Pennsylvania (where i would also like to return), took the wrong highway, made up a new route, re-entered New York, crossed Bear Mountain, didn't see any bears, skirted the Hudson River and entered New Jersey via the Palisades Parkway (a cozy and woodsy road that belies the fact that A) it's in New Jersey, and B) it's a stone's throw away from the largest city in the country).
our hotel was located pretty much at the NJ end of the Washington Bridge. it was an EconoLodge, and it was dumpy. but for the price and location i highly recommend it. if you're going to New York you're not going to hang out in your hotel room all day. if we could ignore the stains on the ceiling, or the missing remote control, or the missing alarm clock, or the sink that wouldn't drain, or the continental breakfast comprised of a couple bags of coffee and oatmeal, then so can you.
we got there in the evening and decided to walk the bridge to Manhattan Island. the GWBridge is looong and saturated with traffic, but walking it is neat as it takes you right into the city (not Times Square or anything... go look at a map). we weren't really sure where we were going, and soon we realized that everybody was speaking spanish. it turned out that we were in Washington Heights, and it was getting dark. if we were to continue on in the direction we were walking we would end up in Harlem, and it would BE dark. lose-lose.
somehow we found a subway and took it from 155th street to 42nd street. i don't think we could've walked that. from there we followed 42nd into Times Square. imagine you're playing Super Mario Brothers 3. imagine you're in the world where everything is gigantic. now imagine all that giganticness bathed in neon light and covered with impossibly huge TV screens. the image in your head is called Times Square. add a billion tourists in the street taking pictures of everything to complete the image.
we continued on to Rockefeller Plaza where, were it winter, there'd be ice skaters and a stinkin' huge christmas tree. instead there was expensive outdoor dining.
and we continued further onward to Grand Central Station where we ate pizza (New York style or not, i couldn't tell), caught glimpses of that night's Yankee-Blue Jay game on a tv, and counted the non-recreational runners scrambling to board their trains. there were over fifty in just a half-hour span. New Yorkers need to chill.
eventually we met up with friends who also happened to be in New York at the same time (small world? after all.) and had a drink. we entered the bar just as the Red Wings won their Cup o' Stanley, and for the next thirty minutes all we saw on TV were hockey players jumping around.
then it was bedtime, and we subwayed back up to the bridge and caught the last bus across.
thursday the 5th
walked the bridge again. the air was a little less hazy so we were better able to see the New York skyline as we crossed. and since at this point we were seasoned veterans, we knew it was a bad idea to continue walking into Washington Heights (well, not a BAD idea, so long as the sun was out) and instead went directly to the sweet sweet subway. it may sound like we spent half our trip underground, but the subways are fast and efficient and the waits are almost non-existant.
we had a ballgame to go to, but first we wanted to check out Central Park. Central Park, it's worth noting, is enormous. we should've spent more than twenty minutes there. we should've spent an entire day there. oh well. Bronx time. back underground.
i don't know what the rest of the Bronx Borough looks like. the rails and tubes all dropped off across the street from Yankee Stadium (then, of course, continued on north to whatever's up there). but anyway, upon arriving we were greeted with TWO Yankee Stadiums; the one Ruth built, and the new one next door. the facade was up for the new stadium, and they were obviously still working on the innards (unless plans actually call for cranes in the basepaths).
though there were throngs of people outside all wanting in, getting inside Yankee Stadium (classic) was quick and easy. ushers yelled at the herd (perhaps also using bullwhips), i was frisked, ticket taken, bags checked, in we went. the concourses were relatively small, at least to the expansive ones i was used to at the Rogers Centre and Kaufmann. no big deal. i came here to watch a game, not stand around in cramped food lines.
what a game it was. Yankees scored twice in the first. Jays tied it in the 4th. Jays scored five more times in the 5th. Yankees scored four more times to come back within striking distance. a lot of people went home by the 8th inning, and a lot more left when the Jays added another run in the 9th. by this time the score was 8-6, Toronto lead.
two outs. people continued to leave.
then Alex Rodriguez singled.
then Alex Rodriguez skipped over to 2nd.
then Hideki Matsui singled and Rodriguez scored.
then, with two strikes, Jason Giambi (in his only at-bat of the game) hit a GINORMOUS homer down the right field line to win the ballgame. it was awesome. i laugh when i think of the early-leavers checking the score the next morning. suckers.
the rest of the day was left to wander around, so we subwayed back to Manhattan, this time hopping off in Greenwich Village. the atmosphere there was much more laid back and serene than the one at Times Square. there were nice apartments/condos everywhere and patio dining on nearly every corner. we had a mexican dinner here (though our servers were white New Yorkian guys, cricket noted the kitchen was full of hispanics).
the day was winding down and we thought it'd be a good idea to see the WTC site. so we did. and honestly there wasn't much to see. it just looked like a construction site (albeit a very LARGE construction site), and it was all fenced off. i find it slightly rediculous that even though the towers came down seven years ago, absolutely nothing has been built in its place. i'm not talking about a little plaque with names. rather by this time you'd expect either the first few floors of a new tower built, or some sort of Washington DC-esque memorial. SOMETHING besides a big concrete hole. God bless red tape.
and then we wanted ice cream. the only ice cream place we recalled seeing was back in Times Square so back we went. unless you work in Times Square there isn't really a good reason to visit it twice. but we hadn't done our ice cream research, and really it's probably the safest place in New York when it's dark out.
ice creamed up we decided to give Central Park another courtesy look, but it was dark and scary so we opted to call it a night. we walked across the GWB one last time (at night the city is all lit up and very cool to look at) and made it back to our room without getting mugged.
friday the 6th
i don't know how, but somehow we got out of Jersey. our next destination was Cooperstown, and Cooperstown is located in the middle of nowhere, NY. the scenery was terrific, though, at least as soon as we re-entered New York state. lots of trees, lakes, winding ups and downs, small towns, etc. we even stumbled across an elusive Denny's. the eggs may have been undercooked, but it sure was good.
eventually we came to Cooperstown where we discovered it was just as hard to park there as it was in NYC. it made sense, though. tourists come from all over the country to visit this small town (and the Hall of Fame located within), and it probably agitates the townies when they can't park anywhere themselves. there's plenty of 2hr parking, but you can't see anything in two hours. but eventually we found a pay lot a couple blocks away and spent most of the day wandering the halls of the museum. every sort of baseball artifact you can think of is in there. some of that stuff was over 150 years old, which may not seem so long ago when you consider other museums' loot, but there were rare items dating back to baseball's infancy. they also had a couple old baseball cards there worth a few dollars.
darkness came, dinner came, and finally it was time to head back home. i don't remember what time we arrived back in London, but it was well into sleepytime territory. i always forget how long (east-west-wise) New York state is.
so another trip to NYC is definitely necessary.
a trip to midstate/upstate NY is also necessary.
a voyage to Pennsylvania is necessary.
New Jersey... not necessary, but okay if it's on the way to something else.
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| lists are hardwe've got a new Staff Picks table at Chapters. every couple of weeks two staff members will cover the table with their "picks": 10 books, 4 DVDs, 4 CDs. picking ten books was hard, but not too hard. picking four DVDs was harder, but not too harder. picking four CDs is completely and wholly unsatisfying and every hour that passes i think of something else i'd like to add.
anyway, here's what i ended up with. keep in mind i had to tweak some of my choices due to stock availability.
10 books (in no particular):
- "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
- "Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life" by Richard Ben Cramer
- "The Rock Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge" by David Kemp
- "Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?" by Bill James
- "Angry Candy" by Harlan Ellison
- "The Cold Six Thousand" by James Ellroy
- "The Complete Stories" by Flannery O'Connor
- "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins
- "The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe" by Donald Wolfe
- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
4 DVDs
- "Raising Arizona"
- "The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Vol. 2"
- "When It Was a Game: Triple Play Collection"
- "Nosferatu" (1922)
4 CDs
- "Regulate the Chemicals" by twothirtyeight
- "Genesis" by Genesis
- "Odessey and Oracle" by The Zombies
- "A Breath Between Battles" by Sleeping by the Riverside
it was either Sleeping by the Riverside or For Love Not Lisa. i figured SbtR would get me more scene points.
and it was either Genesis' self-titled or "Selling England by the Pound," but i figured i knew the words to more songs off the self-titled.
i kind of like explaining myself, even though you've all quit reading by now.
check out my table when it gets set up.
come to canada and look at my dang table.
what would YOUR 10/4/4 look like?
instead of taking a much needed nap i made a music blog post.
1984.
and last friday's baseball game account is up.
check it.
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