I'm a Boston Sports Fan (If you didn't already know)

So anyone who reads this blog probably know that Mary and I are not native to Philly. We are originally from Boston (well technically Mary is from upstate NY, but she is a Boston girl at heart). Any how, we are also Boston sports fans. I will admit that I wasn't always the biggest sports fan in general. When I was younger I really enjoyed playing sports and going to games but I couldn't really watch them on TV and I was never fanatical enough to know stats and all of that junk. A game was sort of like a movie, watching one was entertaining, but I watched with out regard for, or the context of, the entire season.

Ice Hockey was the spot I played growing up. I wasn't ever great, but I was good enough. And really I have never had a super competitive attitude so sports were always just fun for me. As I have gotten older it is much easier, and sometime less painful (at least physically), to watch sports than it is to actually participate. Obviously curling is an exception here, but you can't really watch curling on TV in the US. I watched the "fist" super bowl in '97 at a college rush party. I still hadn't really caught onto football yet. It seemed sort of exciting. But I really didn't understand the game. It didn't really matter anyway we lost, and I was still getting used to this whole college thing.

I was really introduced to football during the 2001 superbowl championship season. I didn't watch much of the reular season, but I watched all of the championship games and began to understand the excitement of football. Of course it helped that the Pats won and exhilarating game an played in such crazy weather.

I remember the first time I attended other Boston sporting events. I remember my first Baseball Game at Fenway and my first Hockey Game at the old Garden (a birthday present from my parents). I even remember my first Celtics game which occurred much later in life (I was in my mid 20s). My dad and I went with company tickets. Even tough neither of us understood basketball it was really a blast. The one thing I remember, and maybe this is just because of my lack of interest in sports when I was younger, is that we never seemed to get too down on ourselves for not winning. And we never gave up on our teams. I will admit, however, that over the past few years it has been much easier to be a Boston sports fan.

The one sporting event in Boston I have yet to attend is a Patriots game. When I was in scouts we used to head to the stadium for the tailgate parties (it isn't what you think). We would roam around and collect cans an bottles form all of the parties and recycle them. In MA you get $0.05 a can so this was generally a pretty good fund raising opportunity. Of course I was a young'n so this was at the old Foxboro/Sullivan stadium. Mary and I did get a chance to watch a game in the new stadium, we actually attended the MLS Cup championship game in Gillette Stadium in October 2002, right before we moved to PA.

So why all of this silly background info? Well I came across this video today and it made me chuckle. I felt the need to share it with friends.

Of course it digs at the Bruins, which I do feel bad about. But it is just too true for a Boston fan not to at least find the humor here. Especially since hockey was my sport and the Bruins were my team. If you were to tell me when I was in High School (the early 90's). That the Patriots and the Red Sox would be dominate teams and each would have won (even one) a championship before the Bruins would win a Stanley Cup I would have sneered at you and laughed you out of the state.

I'm not shamed to admit it. I am greedy and I think what Boston needs is 2 more championship teams. I am rooting for the Celtics this winter (as much as I can since Basketball is very enigmatic to me). But really what we need for the Bruins to don their bloody soxs (get it :-) )and pull out some victories. I will accept nothing less than the Stanley Cup.

This one's for Eric

So the curling season has begun. We actually stated in October with ice making and a kick off party. Then Curling officially began. The club had a push to involve new members in the ice making this year and I took the chance to participate. The entire process was very interesting. The process is sort of what I expected with one major difference.

Our club consists of a large rectangular concrete pad with the curling surface painted on it. Under the concrete are a number of pipes. We run our chilled water through these pipes. The chiller and pumps are turned on a day or two before hand to get the concrete cold then we begin putting water down. Here is where the major deviation from my expectation comes in. I figured we turned on a faucet and fill up the rink with water, much like a swimming pool, and wait for the water to freeze. In fact we actually lay down a small layer of water starting at one end and working towards another. We apparently repeat this a number of times over a couple of days. This process serves 2 purposes. First it freezes quicker and more consistently/even (this seems obvious). Second, and less obvious, the layering of the water creates strength sort of like plywood.

After a week or so of preparation the ice is ready to go. I unfortunately went out of town the week the ice was ready so I wasn't able to get on the ice before my first game. Following the ice making we had out Put-in-the plug party (this is a figurative name there is no "plug" ). And now we come to the reasoning for the title of this entry. During this event I was talking to a club member who informed me that I don't write nearly enough. Especially when you compare my entries to Troy. Initially I was shocked that there was someone actually reading this... well I knew Troy checked it out ever once in a while. But I figured that was about it. Then I had to defend my lack of writing.

So what is my excuse... I don't have a good one. Only to say that I have been spending my "free" time toying around with other technology. Specifically I was destroyed by the efficiency and quality of Troy's blogging on our Germany trip. i figured the best way for me to contribute was to get my photos up and inserted into a map so people could see where we visited. I already had the images loaded into Picasa (Cheep Plug) they are here

Germany March/April 2007

and here

Prague March/April 2007

My next step was to get them in a map and post that somewhere. The great news is picasa has a way to drop you pictures onto a map. And you can link to that map. Google Maps also provides you the ability to save maps (Troy has used this in his blog). And one of the options in the map making screen is to show images from picasa. So this should be a super easy task. I have to ways of getting the map I want posted in my blog. But neither of the ways work how I would expect them.

So Lets look at Picasa... Yes you can drop your images in the map and link to the map page but you can't set a view on the map and save it. So I first had to split my albums in two with the Prague pictures in one and the Berlin pictures in another. Even then it doesn't work great because I have a few pictures out side Berlin. These pictures force the map link to zoom far out so you are presented with a view of almost all of Germany. A similar problem can be seen in my Hawaii album as well. I really want to create a view of just the Big Island. However, I don't want to split this into 2 albums.

Refusing to be beaten I figure I will approach this dilemma from a different angle.... I will go to google maps and create a map view. This is also impossible from google maps. Or at least I can't figure it out. So I go to google maps and create a view of Berlin (or teh Big Island) and I invoke the picasa search filter. I search on a number of things (I start with my user name which returns nothing!!!) then I figure I should search on album name. pictures start populating. I am very excited. Everything fills in and it seems to be only my pictures! Great!!! I save the view and send a link to myself. When I click on the image the map view loads... but no pictures! I only get the map view and a search field. I have to type in the album name myself. This doesn't seem very useful!

So the method that does work, which is much more labor intensive, is to put a sticky at each location and link it to one of my pictures. I'm not going to use this method. It will take much too long. I was exploring other options when the curling season (and sadly TV) picked up. So for now I will have to see if anyone stumbles across this post and provides a better suggestion.

Quiet summer?

It seems I haven't written much this summer. That shouldn't be confused with a boring summer at all. We didn't get to Hawaii this summer but we plan to remedy that next year. And there weren't any other "big" vacations (I already wrote about Vegas). But we really had a great summer.

We went up to Boston for the 4th of July. We caught up with friends. Paul bought a house. Rachel and Sudhir are in Nepal for few months and will be moving to San Francisco when they return. Kevin and Amanda are having a baby!! So a lot is happening at "Home".

We watched the fireworks with my family and the parade the next day. I hadn't seen the parade in a few years and Needham did a great job as usual. I also started riding again which is great. I have been doing about an hour ride 2-3 times a week. The exercise has been great and I am sure my bike has enjoyed the use. Finally we worked on a summer show which was great. The show was Chess which is one of our favorite shows. The summer part was a mixed blessing. It ensured that we were home for much of the summer but of course there always seems like something more fun than rehearsal. The show came of well and it was really a great time.

We "ended" the summer with a weekend in Baltimore to watch the Red Sox play the O's. The tickets for Baltimore are very reasonably priced and it is the easiest way to watch the Sox play. Not to mention the Baltimore seems to turn into a mini Boston for Sox games. There were tons of Sox fans mulling around. The weekend went well. While the Sox blew the game Saturday they won Sunday and we left happy.

The fall should be just as fun as the summer. Hopefully I will finish the Berlin posts and provide more regular updates.

Berlin Day 3 - or - how I got someone else to do my dirty work

Okay so the title is misleading -sort of - I may have to give up on the rest of Germany and Prague. Not because the trip wasn't amazing or because I have forgotten. But really because Troy has already finished and has done a really nice job with maps and everything.

It was actually initially my intent to fit all of Germany into one post. Then my first post ended up being pretty much about day one and I realized I have a good amount of material. Then as you can read elsewhere I got side tracked in trying to get my pictures onto a map. So I will leave you with a link to Troy's Berlin posts: Troy's Blog - Berlin

I have also included below the notes I was using for the rest of my posts. They are not complete but enough to spark my memory. So perhaps I will use these to fill out the rest of the trip. But I wouldn't want to keep my reader (I left it singular on purpose :-) on the edge of his/her seat. So Enjoy the stories. and I will try and keep this site more up to date.

Sun - Some mall thingy, Anne Frank museum, museum island (Berliner Dom, Pergamom), Closed restraunt. Mon - Olympic Stadium, Split up (Zoo), destroyed church, New Wall monument, Jewish museum, Dinner at Storch Tue - Train to Prague, Prague Tour, drinks at Uprince Wed - Train home, dinner kinipa - beginning of sickfest Germany Thursday - recovering from sickfest Germany Friday - Fly Home

Happy 10th Anniversary!!!

The Original title of this post was going to be "Vegas Baby!" But after a week there that specific phrase seems over used. Mary and I went to Las Vegas to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Mary's Cousin Bob and his wife. Coincidentally Mary and I met the same summer that Bob and Sandy were married so it also happens to the the 10 year anniversary of Mary and I meeting!

So 1. I can't believe Mary and I have known each other for 10 years!! Wow!!! and 2. do you really need an excuse to visit the entertainment capital of the world?

We had a very good time. Vegas is deffinatly a wonderful place for a group vacation. All in all there were about 20 people who made it out for the trip. We arrived on a Wednesday, spent afternoon cleaning up from traveling, unpacking and doing the normal new hotel stuff. We grabbed lunch and met the Wednesday group for "free" craps lessons at the Imperial Palace Casino. Now I say "free" because nothing in Vegas is free., but at the same time everythign is free. Obviously ofering free lessons is a benefot to the casion because it luers people over to a game people are unfamiliar with and will contribute to the guest spendsing lots of money.

Craps also happens to be a pretty fun game, and is a lot less mindless then sitting at a slot machine punching a button like a mindless slug :-) So we learned the game and then headed next door to Casino Royal to try our luck at the $3 craps table. We didn't do to bad. This started a fairly good craps streak that lasted us almost our entire visit (yeah almost, I will explain the almost part later). We would spend a few hours at a table and generally leave with a bit more money than we entered the game with. Then of course in true Vegas style we would spend all of our winnings on beer, or slot machines, proving that the Casino's really have a wonderful business model, there is no way in hell you are leaving a casino with more than you entered. Well they let a few people out with more, but really this is just an advertising scheme so that more people will come in.

Some people had booked shows Wednesday night so we all split up with plans to meet at 10 when all the shows and dinner were done. Being that we were all on east coast time. none of us made it to the 10 PM meeting. We all gathered again at Casino Royal for some more craps! again we had a fairly profitable morning. Then we went to O'Shey's for beer pong. What a great concept for a bar. They basically had a number of custom beer pong tables and all you needed to buy were 2 pitchers of beer. The cups, ball and tables were free. We grabbed a table and spend a few hours throwing ping pong balls into beer cups. Since the group had grown to 8 we had enough to alternate between playing and just hanging out. When we got to the tables the bar was pretty empty. By the time we left for dinner business had picked up. every table was full and there were some people waiting to get on. We all went back to the Excalibur (our hotel) for a late dinner.

After dinner Mary, myself, and Rob and Becky (Bob & Sandy's friends) walked up to the Bellagio to watch the fountain show. We then waled over to Paris to look around the casino, we tried out luck at the "wheel of death" as we called it. This is a straight odds wheel usually divided into 40 or so sections. Each section is labeled. Usually 1 section with the highest pay out(number of sections to 1). Then lessening payouts down to even money. You win if the number you picked get selected on the next spin. You have a pretty good chance at winning a dollar at a time if you keep playing the even money payout. But how upset would you be if you were at the wheel when the 40-1 payout was spun and you didn't play it? This is what the casino hopes too, so you almost have to play a higher payout and will almost never get paid on the odds. We walked back to the hotel and called it a night.

Friday there was obviously more gambling, but the big even was the Anniversary party. So we all met at he Monte Carlo Brew pub around 9PM to celebrate the anniversary. The Brew Pub here is known for selling bear by the yard, basically a tall 3' or 5' test tube of beer with a gravity fed tap. The 3' looked daunting, until we poured a few glasses, then all of a sudden we started ordering the 5 footers. We spent the evening ordering beer by the foot and catching up with cousins from all over the country.

Saturday Mary and I caught up with some of Mary's co-workers who happened to be in Vegas for the weekend to celebrate a birthday. We met at the bar out side the Crazy Horse theater in the MGM. We moseyed onto the bar in the center of the MGM and ended at NYU NY for Pizza.

The rest of the weekend consisted of more of the same. Our craps luck continued, Mary and I even ended up at a $10 table for a little while. We hadn't initially intended on approaching a 10$ table, we just didn't look at the sign close enough and didn't realize it until after we had already bought in. We actually did well. We played for a few ours and both ended up walking away up (Mary was up $100 and I was up about $80). The casino was just baiting us for the end of our trip. We would meet up with cousins and walk around in between gambling sessions touring teh different casinos and seeing the sights. People started leaving Saturday and by Sunday night it was Mary and I and Bob and Sandy. We decided to round out our tour of the seedy casinos of visiting the Slots A Fun casino next to Circus Circus. This end of the strip is much older and probably a poster child for the dank rundown image that anti gambling people have. We all tried our hand at the $2 craps table a really enjoyed our selves. The dealers weren't the best. There were a few times they paid us incorrectly, or had to discuss the correct payout. There was even one time when the pit boss fought with the whole table about who the shooter was.

There was this one poor guy at the table who contently betting against the shooters and he just seemed to be a very negative person. Wasn't really doing well and kept buying in for more chips. Finally Mary ended up with the dice and rolled a couple of 5 during her turn. The guy kept putting his money on no 5 and kept loosing. Well finally he put all his money (about $200, remember we were at the $2 table) on no 5... and the very next number Mary rolled was a 5. Well Mr. Negative left in a hurry and didn't seem to happy. The rest of the night was uneventful. By the end of the night we all left up just a bit. We returned to the hotel after a long bus ride and headed to bed.

Monday Mary and I had the day to ourselves. We had tried to get into a craps game Sunday night, but the tables were packed. we walked around to all of the casinos in out area looking for a $5 table butt he Excalibur had the only one (and it was packed) we called it quits and decided to try out luck in the AM....

And so goes the casino luck spirits.... We started the day off with a good feeling. We had done well in craps all week. we almost always walked away with more than we started and the few times we walked away with less we hand and by the end of Monday we had pretty much returned to the casinos everything we had taken earlier. We capped off the day by making the 3-4 mile trek up to Treasure Island. Mary and I hadn't seen the Volcano at the Mirage or the Siren's of TI at TI. We watched the Volcano which was really interesting, but we just missed the TI show. Unfortunately it began to sprinkle around 10:45 or so. The 11:30 TI show was canceled. I guess we will have to make a trip back later to see the show.

So Mary and I had a great week in Las Vegas. We got to catch up with family and spend some time touring around The Strip. We didn't end up winning lots (or any really) of money. But we didn't spend a whole lot of money either. I think if you can keep everything in perspective and go with the intention of being entertained you can really enjoy your self.

Berlin Part 1.5

So I have the Berlin part II post almost done. It has taken a bit longer that I was expecting. Stay tuned faithful reader :-)

I'm Sailing

Mary and I were invited on a sailing adventure Memorial Day weekend with a good friend of mine for the early Sun days. I have been on a number of different boats in my life. Even a number of small sail boats. But I have never spent the night on a boat. I was a little nervous about motion sickness. I have only gotten motion sickness once on a boat. Mary and I were taking the ferry from Bridgeport, CT to Port Jefferson, NY and a strong storm blew in while we were under way. There was lots of rocking and rolling and it really hit me hard. I didn't get sick, but I really didn't feel right all weekend after that trip. I was a little nervous that I would feel the effects more in a smaller boat.

Mary and I got up early Saturday and headed to Baltimore to meet Kevin, Jessie and the rest of the sailing party for the weekend. We got to the sailing club around 10AM went shopping for provisions and hit the water. The boat was beautiful. We were on the Miss Ann a Beneteau 343 35' Sail boat. She is a wonderful boat.

The trip plan was to head south to Rock Hall for the evening and head to Waterman's Crab House for dinner. Watremans has the "amazing" crab dip which was Jessie's favorite place to go. I will admit the food was very good. I haven't had seafood that good in a while. I ordered some steamed clams for an appetizer and the Baked Crab Imperial for dinner. Both were amazing and very fresh. The steamers were so good even Mary had one or two of them.

We spent the night at a marina in Rock Hall. The people around us were very friendly. Many of them were older, probably retired. I was sort of prepared for the cold shoulder based on the fact that we were so young. However, he reaction seemed to be quite the opposite. Everyone around us was very friendly and seemed to be excited that "younger" people interested in sailing. Everyone was quick to introduce them selves and chat for a while.

The next morning we got up and cooed breakfast. Eggs and bacon mostly, but we had picked up some other stuff as well. The plan was to head to the western bay to anchor for the night and try our hand at crabbing. The wind wasn't as favorable so we didn't get much speed but we had 7 hours to make a 3 hour trip so we were not in a super rush. Around 4 PM the wind died and we decided to drop sails and motor the rest of the way to our destination.

We got to the Magathe river around 5ish and had an interesting time getting our anchor down. Once we were anchored we decided it would be a good time to try crabbing. We got our turkey necks (chicken necks weren't available) out tied them to some string and chucked them overboard. We had been taking bets on how long it would take us to catch a crab. The first time window of 30 minutes came and passed fairly quickly. We were quickly approaching the hour mark when a storm started to blow in. We left our turkey necks in the water and went below for the storm.

The wind picked up quickly and, while we were watching out the back, we noticed that our anchor had broken free and we were drifting toward a sail boat anchored near by. The men rushed into action Kevin started the engine and got us away from the boat we were approaching. Brian and I grabbed our danforth and sunk a second anchor. We were again solidly anchored in the cove. We went back below slightly moistened by the rain to wait out the storm.

Once the storm had ended we decided to cook dinner and check on our crabbing bounty. Needless to say we had caught nothing. The general consensus was that it was way to early in the season and we were a bit up the river so the water may have been a bit too fresh. The rest of the evening went with out incident. We stayed below deck because it was sprinkling out. Played cards and drank beer. A few of us still hoping to catch something left our necks in the water overnight to see if we would catch anything.

We had breakfast, cast away our turkey necks pulled up our anchors and headed home. Unfortunately the wind was not cooperating with us on Monday. We saw a few other sail boats out in the bay but sails up and they were going no where. We decided to just motor back to the marina.

So our first sailing adventure was great! Mary and I really enjoyed ourselves. The weather was great, even with a brief thunderstorm. It really was a great weekend and we hopefully will be able to make a few more sailing trips in the future. We are also considering making Kevin's international New Years trip next year. Lets hope they pick somewhere exciting.

Berlin Day 2

The remainder of our trip was just as exciting as the first day. Our plan was to see as much as possible in as short a time a possible. A few of the books we had read suggested that we visit sections of the city in a day. Berlin is quite large (remember it used to be 2 cities) and traveling from one spot to another could be very time consuming.

We woke up Saturday and cooked breakfast (one of the benefits of renting an apartment). Our plan was to meet Colin and Maria in the morning at a flea market/farmers market then visit Mitte which is the central borough of Berlin. We read that the line to the Reichstag grows quite long in the afternoon so our plan was to start there and continue on.

We took the U-Bahn to Colin and Maria's apartment met them and walked to the market. This was a very interesting place. Apparently this is a weekly event and there are all sorts of vendors set up in this square. From florists and fresh produce to jewelry and crafts and prepared food. I assume that many of the apartments in Berlin are about the same size as ours and kitchen space is pretty limited. This means that appliances, like refrigerators, are small. It seems that people rely on fresh produce picked up a couple times a week rather than our habit of trying to make it to the store once a week or so to get food for a while.

The market was filled with people and each stand had something interesting to look at. We all decided to try a local sausage which was a foot long thin sausage served on a very small bun that was essentially a handle. I tried some fresh OJ which was very good. Kate, in an attempt to reconnect with her roots, tried an Alsatian flat bread with cheese on top. It is similar to a pizza. We were getting ready to leave when a jewelry vendor caught Mary's eye. We stopped there for a few minutes and ended up with a very nice necklace with a black pendant. It was a great beginning to day 2 and it was still early!

Colin walked us to over to the Zoo and we hopped on the 100 Bus which is a great way to see the city. This bus route stops at a lot of the major attractions and really gives you a great feel of the city. Unlike riding a subway you get an idea of where things are in relation to each other. We hopped off at the Reichstag and got in line. The line wasn't too long, but there was a wait. Fortunately we had lots of entertainment while we waited. First a group of mime/puppeteers performed for us. There were about 6 of them and they were moving this stick figure human character thing. They would make the character dance and interact with the line. It was interesting to watch. At some point they moved on to another location.

As we got closer to the steps we saw something pretty interesting. A group of people stormed the steps and posted a whole bunch of banners on the pillars of the Reichstag. Of course they were speaking in German and their fliers were in German so we really had no idea what was going on. But it was pretty moving to see an act of democratic free speech in a different country. The "disruption" was over pretty quickly and everything returned to normal. The short wait in line was worth the view from the top.

There is a glass dome one top with a spiral ramp that goes to the top of the dome. The entire structure is beautiful and fun to be inside. There are great views of the city both as you circle up the dome and from the roof deck of the Reistag. You can really see from this vantage point the Berlin is a growing city as there were a lot of construction sites visible.

We left the Reichstag and continued onto the Brandenburg Gate which was originally built as an entrance to the city but now pretty much sits right in the middle of the Berlin. The gate became an icon during the years of the Berlin wall because it was right in the middle on "no mans land". Not much exists of the wall, but in parts of Berlin there is a brick path that traces out the old footprint of the wall. It is easiest to find on the street between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate.

From the Brandenburg Gate our plan was to walk along Unter der Linden and over to Bebelplatz which was the site of the book burning. On our way to Unter der Linden we passed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial was pretty amazing and it is fairly large. The site takes up a city block and it is an arrangement of stone pillars which look like a cemetery. The pillars are not all level or true so it give the appearance of an older cemetery. At the edge of the monument the pillars are rather short, towards the middle the pillars get taller and you are completely surrounded. It is a very interesting place. Beneath the monument is a museum which is dedicated to telling the stories of different Jewish families who were deported during WW II. In the last room in the museum the names of the Jews who perished are projected on the wall and read allowed. It is a very moving exhibit.

We left the museum and it was getting late. We decided to grab lunch (although he sun was setting) and continue on our way. We walked along Unter Der Linden for a while stopping at a few trinket shops and just taking in the street. We finally came across Bebelplatz and we hit it about the right time. The monument here is a room below street level. The room is a "library" with empty book shelves that are painted white. The entire room is lit brightly. You look down into the library from street level through a window in the square. We continued on to Check Point Charlie and out last stop for the evening.

Checkpoint Charlie was an interesting place. As with many location where the wall once was there is an interesting mixture of construction, ultra modern building and older buildings. The checkpoint itself is completely gone. A replica of the American shed is in the middle of the street at the checkpoint location. There are a lot of trinket shops nearby. There is also a Checkpoint Charlie museum which I had mixed feeling about. I think the idea of the museum is great and the collection of items that were there were interesting. However it seems as if this museum was created without much thought to the layout or perhaps the "curator" never received any formal training. There seemed to be a number of repetitive exhibits throughout the museum and the layout and flow was rather confusing. At one point I had gotten totally lost and couldn't figure out if I had been in this room before. I then went to Find the rest of the group and I found myself in a completely different part of the museum which I may have missed if I were by myself. Maybe over time this museum will be refined or redesigned. The exhibits are worth while as they are it just doesn't have a coherent flow.

Well it was getting late and we needed to have dinner. The Sony Center is located in east Berlin neighborhood of Potzdammer Platz. It is a very new area which contains an outdoor mall/entertainment center. We decided to head over there for dinner. We ended up at the Hofbräuhaus which was an excellent choice. We tried some "authentic" authentic German chain restaurant food and had 1 liter beers. We even got a pin for ordering the "medium" size. Of course I immediately regretted not ordering the large, only because I wondered what bauble I missed out on. Alas after a liter of beer I was not ready to have any more. So after a very long day we headed back to the apartment. For another viewpoint to this days activites check out Troy's Blog.

Berlin Part 1

I created this image from one of my Berlin Pictures. What is amazing is the guy on the bench isn't even visible in the original jpeg. I really liked the way this turned out.

Now onto the Adventure.... We loaded up the family wagon and headed to Newark Airport to get our cheap flights to Berlin. The trip had been a few months in the making. Troy and Christa had heard through the grapevine that cheap tickets were available to fly directly from Newark to Berlin and it just so happened that Christa's cousin was going to be in Berlin too so it seemed like a really good idea to go. We started by looking into places to stay in Berlin.

Shortly after Kate was added to the attendee list and the total traveling group would be 5. I quickly realized that we would need at least 2 hotel rooms and that the cost of such an endeavor would we rather high. I, at some point, stumbled on a business week article regarding renting vacation apartments. I realized that if the cost was right then this would probably be cheaper than 2 rooms for a week. A bonus is that we would have we would have more room and a kitchen to cook if we wanted. So we settled on a site and an apartment we were all set of our trip.

Back to traveling day.... Which was pretty uneventful we made it to the airport with time to spare. I had never been to Newark before and quickly realized why the flights out of there were so cheap. You have to drive half of the way to your final destination just to get to the long term parking lot! Well obviously not really but you get off the highway south of the airport and have to drive around the entire airport to get to long term parking. When you finally get to long term parking lot you are almost right next to the exit ramp. So we check-in eat and board the plane. Land in Berlin after a fairly long flight.

Upon exiting the airport our adventure begins. Problem 1.... none of us speak German. Problem 2.... it is really hard to fit 5 people in a regular cab (4 would fit without luggage). So we wander over to the taxi island and stand around like silly Americans not really knowing what the correct way to hale a cab, and not really seeing a cab that could accommodate our party. After a few minutes a van drops some people off and we manage to flag him down. The good news for the cab driver is that he got to circumvent the taxi line which was full of smaller cars. We get in and get to the apartment very quickly.

Now I will admit that this was my first experience renting an apartment and I was a little stressed about being the one responsible for booking the apartment. We also had to pay cash when we got there. I have visions of us walking into a dirty dingy apartment that looked nothing like the pictures on-line and finding the landlord to be some smarmy guy who was going to demand the full rent plus a few fees for things like running water. But all of my fears were assuaged when we arrived at the apartment. First off it was right on the Spree and the neighborhood was wonderful. Full of residential flats with restaurants and shops at street level.

We rung the bell and the owner answered right away. Then came my first surprise. I had assumed that there would be no elevator and I knew we were on a high floor. I was prepared to make a few trips up and down with the luggage. But right in the lobby was a small elevator which let us get to the top without effort.

We got the the apartment and the place was amazing.

A breif commericial intruption.... if you are looking for an apartment in Berlin check out this place. I'm not getting any money for this ad. But the apartment is great and the owner is very nice.

It was 2 bedrooms with a living room/bedroom a dining room and a kitchen. Plus the view from the balcony was just as advertised! It was truly an amazing place. The owner was very friendly and lived right upstairs so we would be close should we need anything. We quickly got settled in and started to plan our first day out. We knew from advise and experience that taking a nap now (even though it was like 4 or 5 AM back home) would be a bad idea. We we headed out. Our first stop was shopping for breakfast food. Upon our return we decided to take the bus to the Hard Rock Cafe to ease into the German cuisine and get our required souvenirs The bus rid was a great way to see the city. The one down side to traveling by subway is that you get no relation to where this are. The buss allowed us to get a good introduction to the city and allowed is to view some places that interested us.

We made it the the HRC for lunch and some shopping. Then walked around a bit. We had plans to meet Christa's cousin for dinner so we wanted to make sure we got back and dropped our stuff off at the apartment and cleaned up. We had been up for almost 24 hours now and we were deffinalty feeling it. We left the apartment for a 3rd time to locate Christa's cousin at their apartment. It was actually fairly easy to find them. We were already getting fairly good at navigating the public transit system. We hung out with Maria and Colin for a while then headed to this African restaurant Masai. I wouldn't call myself and adventurous eater, but I am willing to at least go to strange restaurants and try and find something. I was not disappointed here. I think I ordered chicken (they did have Ostrich and some other beasties that sounded tempting, but I chickened out (pun intended).

We then walked around the neighborhood (near Viktoria-Luise Platz) for a while. and learned a great deal from Colin and Maria who had been living in Berlin for a few month already. While walking around we toured a neighborhood project that probably isn't listed in any tour book. This neighborhood has posted on street lights a number of signs. The signs contain different laws that were passed by the Nazi party that restricted the rights of the Jewish people in the community. It was interesting and moving to stroll around the neighborhood and read some of the laws that were enacted.

We ended our evening in the Nollendorf Platz which Mary and I had a small connection to since we are theater people and the musical Cabaret takes place at least partially in this neighborhood. We sat out side on a perfectly marvelous evening and ate Ice Cream. It was getting late and we were all fading fast we made it back to our apartment and all fell quickly asleep. We planned to meet Colin and maria the next morning at a farmers market to walk around and see what there was to see.

Well it seems that I have only made it through the first day here and were in Berlin for an entire week! I guess I will have a lot for writing to do and you fellow reader will have a lot of reading :-) Fortunately while the next few days were exciting to us, they consisted of mainly touristy things so I won't need to provide much detail.

European Adventure

A bunch of us went to Europe last week of a little vacation. I will provide more details in some later posts. I was not the official people picture photographer so I will leave you with a taste of one of the places we visited.

The rest of my pictures can be found on my picasa site

PCC Stone Substitution

I played in another Bonspiel this weekend. We sorta. I Subbed for a Philly team that went to the PCC (Plainfield Curling Club) Stone Men's Bonspiel. We were a bit out matched in our first draw. We happened to play a team who's skip has the highest attendance number (25 years I think). But honestly we kind of held out own. We ended up getting 3 points over 2 ends and all in all I felt that we were curling quite well.

The second draw was much more exciting. We gave up 3 points in the first end managed to steal a point in the second and gave up 3 more in the 3rd. It was looking rather bad for us at the beginning of the 4th end. We were facing a pretty large point gap and the other team seemed to be getting a ton of breaks. There were a number of times in the first 3 ends where we just barely missed a shot which then allowed the other team a chance at a double take out (which they made).

But things started looking up during the second half of the game. We took the 4th, 5th, and 6th ends and going into the 7th we were tied. Not only were we curling well but our skip was playing a winning strategy that was beginning to get into the head of our opponents. on 2 occasions we kept putting up targets for the other team to take out all along planning on using out last stone to knock a point in from the other side of the house. Both time this worked the other team never attempted to guard this shot. Of course this type of strategy requires the skip to also make the shot but fortunately we were able to make the shot as well.

We ended up giving up a point in the 7th, but this wasn't to bad because this also left us with the hammer in the 8th which gave us a much better chance to end up with 2 points. The 8th end was going pretty well until finally our opponents got a break and ended up with a stone close to the button and guarded well. By the time the skips stones game we had only one opportunity to come away with a point and force an extra end. We had to make a double raise (the shooting stone hits once stone which in turn hits another) and drop our stone in on the button. It seemed as if it were going to be out night. Our skip made the shot and we were able to sweep the stone an inch or two closer to the button leaving us shot. The opposing skip who had missed a number takeouts and raises earlier was forced to raise one of their stones into ours and not knock theirs out as well. He ended up making the shot taking our stone out of play but he also moved their stone as well. We had once last chance to draw to the out side curling around a number of guards to land in th eighth foot for a point. Apparently victory wasn't in the cards for us last night as we came up about 4 feet short and the stone came to rest just out side the 12'.

All in all it was a great match and I had a very good time. As always the teams we played were great to hang out with after the game and we had some great food to boot.

Of course it is near 50 degrees today.... the curling season is quickly coming to and close.

Philly Curling Club Brings the MACA Trophy home!

It couldn't have been a better day. Well the day could have started a bit later. Mary and I arose before the crack of dawn to pick up Troy and head to the Potomac Curling Club for the last Mid-Atlantic Curling Association (MACA) event of the season. Unfortunately Christa was ill and would not be joining us for what would be CPK's biggest win yet.

So I was a bit nervous about getting to the event on time. I wasn't sure how this ran. I didn't know if we should plan go getting there an hour before hand (for registration, and what not) or 15 minutes. I decided to play it safe. Well things ended up going smoother than we imagined. I had built in about an hour of lag time so we could all move slowly in the AM, hit some traffic and still be a bit early. As it turns out we were all ready to go and ended up at the club by 8:30!! Thanks in Part to Nuvi not getting us lost at all!

So we decided to see what Nuvi had listed in the area. In searching for nearby shopping we came upon Costa-Rica Laptops. And figured why not check it out, they probably weren't open at this hour, but it might be interesting to window shop. Well window shopping for this company would be more like being a peeping Tom. Apparently Costa-Rica Laptops (I could not find a web page for this company) is a home business, or was a home business. Nuvi led us to an apartment complex and got us as far as a building. We decided to end our shopping trip with out window shopping.

By the time we got back to the Club it was near 9 Am and we figured we would go in and see what was going on. The club is attached to a hockey rink so in the worst case we could watch a few minutes of hockey practice or something. It turns out that there were people there setting up. We offered to help, but they had pretty much finished up. Se we registered and just hung out for a bit. People started arriving shortly so we figured we should get changed. Troy needed to "Get his curling pants on.", as did I.

The MACA events are designed to be ultra social events between a small group of "close" clubs. The idea is different from a normal bonspieal where you enter a team of 4 to compete against other teams. This is a random format where each club send 8 curlers (or is supposed to) for a total of 32 curlers or 8 teams. The teams are made up by a random draw. So team are comprised of curlers of all levels and from different clubs. This is a great way to meet a number of people form different clubs and learn alot as well. Aside from the random draw each player switches positions after 2 ends, so you get to curl at every position.

So I ended up on a team with one person from Philly and 2 from other clubs. And we did pretty well. We ended up winning both of our games. Game one was 9 - 6, and we all had some very good shots. Game two was against Mary's team and the score was fairly lop sided. I think the final was 17 - 1. The score came down mostly to personalities on the opposing team.

Ultimately Mary's team had a member who played a different game than we had been working on. In our short time at curling one of the pieces of advise that have been given to us over and over again was to not try and throw heavy take outs. Ultimately we aren't accurate enough to make them and since we miss we just end up sending potential points out of play leaving the competition with a change to guard their points. Well this teammate was a new curlier who liked to throw heavy takeouts, and call for them when it was his turn to skip. So we were able to take advantage of a few missed shots and stack some points up in the house.

Fortunately, Mary played an excellent game she made all the shots that she was called to make and at then end of the day we all had a very fun time. The only unfortunate thing is that the warm weather in Potomac signaled the fast approaching end of the curling season.
br> The scoring of the event is complex and took the event coordinator about a half an hour to work out. Basically the scoring favors attendance. Fortunately for us the team we were in second place to at the start of this MACA had an event at their club and didn't send any one down. It made finishing second place almost impossible. So of course we ended up taking 1st place in the event this year and returning the trophy to Philly for the first time since 1994!

The trip home was rather interesting. We all recognized the need for dinner and Mary was Jones'n for some BBQ ( a pulled pork sandwich to be exact). So we figured we would hit a local BBQ joint. apparently the 'burbs of Philly is not the place to get BBQ. and as expected M$ data was insanely wrong. So troy brought up the internet on his phone and searched M$ live for BBQ places near KOP. He found a Smoky Bones restaurant sorta near the curling club (according to M$). So we called some friends had told them to meet us there. We get a call a little while later.... "um there isn't a Smokey Bones in Frazer, PA" so we look again and look at a map... "sure there is, it is right by the intersection of PA 29 and PA 30". So we give Kate the phone number (strange Area code that we don't recognize) and she calls them. a few minutes later we get a call back from Kate, this Smokey Bones is in Frazer County out near Pittsburgh (about 6 hours from us!) So we again look for BBQ places and every one we call is out of business. We ended up at the Sly Fox, which is a brew pub that has a great pulled pork sandwich. So if you are in the KOP area and looking for BBQ check out the Sly Fox.

No HDTV? No Problem

So I have been considering purchasing an HDTV and because I am easily influenced by advertising I figured I should get one "Before 'The Big Game'!" as all of the commercials have been telling me to do. Well things came up, mainly some new TVs announced which may be better and if not may drop the price of the existing models. In addition to the new TVs I realized that I am probably going to spend more money than I really want to on this item.

See my parents bought a new TV for somewhere around $1500. and I was thinking to myself cool I can swing that. Well then I start doing the research and I find out that really I want a $4-$5K TV... so I decided to wait until after "The Big Game".

This was compounded by the fact that I really wasn't interested in the game this year. Mainly because I had a deep feeling that the Colts "Horsey Team From Indianapolis" would win, but really didn't want them to. So I watched the game, and I have to say I am very glad I didn't purchase a TV just for this event. Now of course I would be able to use the TV the rest of the year as well and it really wouldn't have been a waste. However, I would have been pretty upset if I went through all the trouble to upgrade my TV just to be able to see the High Definition rain drops on the camera lens. Or the High Definition fog on the wide shots.

I was surprised that the cameras weren't more protected. We noticed from the beginning that the cameras had lots of moisture on the lenses but we figured this was because they were field cameras and hard to protect. It seems that even the fix position cameras had lots of moisture on them. This seemed to be compounded by the fact that it looks like a few camera operators used a dirty rag to wipe the lenses off. The result was a great many shots with huge rain drops on the screen or shots where everything was out of focus.

In short I am still in the market for a new TV. But I am glad I waited. Watching "The Big Game" in HD would have been a real disappointment.

2/13/07
Edited based on Troy's comment

For those unaware of the reference. The NFL"Company that operates professional American football in the United States" sent a letter to a church somewhere informing them they were not allowed to advertise for or hold a Super Bowl"Big Game" party. The church was only requesting that people chip in some money for the snacks provided.

CPK win streak stops a 2

So CPK as officially entered another slump. Well, slump is probably not the right term. We managed to pull off another win during our novice league game just over a week ago (You can read Troy's Blog for the gory details). But the 2 wins in the novice league were just enough to get out confidence up for the Schenectady 100th anniversary Bonspiel we attended list past weekend.

The Bonspiel was great. The team had a good time, we got to visit with family (M's) and see a bit of snow. We even got to curl. The only unfortunate thing about the weekend was the condensed draw times. Since this was the 100 year event they had a very nice party at a near by country club. In order to ensure that every one could attend the last game was at 3:15 on Saturday. This meant that our first game would be at 10 PM Thursday night and if we didn't win any games we would be done curling by 5ish on Friday (less than 24 hours after we had arrived!) Of course that is about how the weekend played out. We lost Thursday night to a very good team from Canada. We played well, but they just played better. Then we dropped our second game to a mixed team from Canada/Schenectady. I will have to say that while I don't think we would have actually won that game either I feel we played well. We lost or final game to an Albany team which also was close (aside from a few bad ends).

The curling weekend also almost ended in tragedy for CPK. During the last end of the last game we almost gave up all 8 points. A feet that I could most closely associate to getting a hole in one in golf or shooting the moon in the card game Hearts. Although I get the feeling that an 8-ender occurs less than either of these 2 events. Fortunately 2 things happened to prevent this. One, the other team missed a double takeout which left us with one stone in the house. All we (and by we I mean Troy) had to do was to draw down to the 4 foot to cut them from 6 or 7 points to 3 or 4. We had already lost the game so giving up the points didn't really matter, but we needed to make this shot so the people viewing the gallery didn't get too rowdy. Our only real danger was being wide off the broom and heavy (something I did 2 stones earlier to promote one of their stones into the house). Fortunately Troy made his shot and we recovered rather well from what could have been a pretty bad end.

More important than whether we won or lost games was the number of people we met and acquaintances we made. Curlers in general are very friendly and welcoming, one of the best things about the sport(at least the non-competitive leagues) is that it is very social. We meet a girl from Colorado who gets to curl a few times a year (she came dressed to the decade party very similarly to M and Christa {80's}). We also had a great time with the teams we did play against.

So this was slated to be our last Bonspiel for the season, but it is possible that we will make an attempt at one or possibly even two more before the ice melts away. We do feel as if we are getting better with each game and it would be ashame to loose forget everything during the summer.

Lets hope we can win a few novice games before the end of the season!

Since we were done curling by Friday afternoon we got a chance to spend some time Saturday with M's family. Troy and Christa got to meet all of M's Uncles as well has her grandparents. I gave Troy and Christa the cold weather (15th street) tour of RPI. And we got to take it easy a bit. The one downside to actually winning games is you have to play more. Not that this wouldn't be fun, because that is what we were in town to do. But, we are getting trough our 3 and out Bonspiels. We will have to work up our stamina to play the 5 to 8 games required to win the 1st event.

CPK Wins but someone else doesn't

So I'm not claiming that we stole the Patriots thunder or anything. But I find it odd that the Patriots end up loosing on the same night we win our first curling match. Well okay I guess I can't really pretend that the two are related.

First the Curling match: We had a great game. We were evenly matched which I think was a mixture of us all getting better and playing a team that was short a person. There were a few ends where some amazing shots were made. Including a point where the other team had 2 stones sitting right over the button (the center of the target at end of the ice) and the front of the house was well guarded. Troy and I cam up with this wild plan to tap one of our guards back into the house and at least knock an opposing stone out. Well Troy made his shot perfectly and we actually ended up sitting one point with a stone directly over the button!

Unfortunately the other team had the hammer and they managed to curl down directly to our stone and knock it out. I would not have expected to see 2 shots like that in a novice league game.

Later in the game we had snuck a stone into the house. We had 2 options with our last rock. One, guard the other teams rock. It was sitting just in front of the house and could have easily been tapped back for a point. Or draw around the outside and hope they missed the tape up. Well since we were in a good position and (for the first time) were in the lead we decided to put up a guard and play conservatively. Troy mad his shot and put up a real nice guard so the tap up was now impossible. The other teams only option was to curl from the outside. Well they ended up making their shot and got a nice roll, which took out our shot rock out and left them barely sitting 2!

I don't want to get over confident, because I am sure we will meet still competition in Schenectady, But I am feeling really good about how our team is coming along.

So on to the Patriots game..... not much to say here. I actually missed most of it. But I did hear that the Pats gave up a pretty good lead and just couldn't hold it together for the last 2 minutes of the game. They had a good season, I just really wish they hadn't lost to the Colts, and really mainly to Manning. There is too much press about how he is the best QB in the NFL and all of that crap. And he is so annoying on TV (it seems like every 10 seconds there is another Manning commercial), like he needs more money. I am all for sports figures making some extra money on the side, but really with his commercial filming schedule I'm surprised he has time to practice.

Well enough about that. I guess we will have to wait until next year. For the Pats any way, I curl tomorrow!

The Cracked Bell (Our Inaugural Bonspiel)

M, Troy, Christa and I participated in our first Bonspiel this weekend. The event was held at the Philadelphia Curling Club which is our home club. We were pretty much destroyed this weekend. But since we have about 3 months of total curling experience I think we did pretty well.

Our first event was Friday night. At first we were all a little bit excited because we realized that the team we were playing was a family consisting of a 12 year old, 2 college age girls and a father. Being new to the club we figured that this was a family out to have fun and we would at least be able to hold our own......

It turns out that the Father is the coach of the Club Juniors teams and his daughters have all been to or are starting to go to Nationals. Needless to say we got our stones handed to us. The final score was 17 to 2. But as a team we choose to look on the bright side of this. 1. We scored 2 points against a very good team who throughout the rest of the weekend made a number of very good shots and ended up finishing 3rd in the event. 2. We actually got out on the ice and made a great effort to learn the sport knowing we probably wouldn't do that well.

Each match we learned a bit more, scoring a few more points and allowing other teams to score less. We played 2 more games that weekend (each team entering is guaranteed 3 matches). And curled against 2 other clubs which was great because it also let us see the other side to club curling, which is the social side. We kept asking for advice and taking that advice to heart.

By the end of the weekend we had a chance to finally combine our lessons learned in our first Novice league game as a team. Again we scored more points and allowed our competition to score less. Still loosing, due in part to the fact that we were all pretty tired from having curled all weekend.

So we are off to Schenectady in a few weeks and that will be in interesting event. I am sure the out come will be similar. One of the best things about or team is the attitude we take with us. We would all love to win and eventually we will probably take a game or two. But until then we need to learn as much as possible and get as much practice as possible. Oh, and have more fun than anyone else there!

Nuvi Saves the Day

So we were in Boston for New Years, which I have stated already. Of course the one bad thing about going to Boston (or any where for that matter) for a holiday is that you have to come home (with everyone else in the world who went where you did). Usually we can time things so that we don't get stuck in too much traffic, but there is almost always some traffic.

I have to say that the Nuvi performed wonderfully again for this trip. We hit a little bit of traffic at the I-90/I-84 Interchange where there is usually traffic on heavy holiday travels. This is due mainly to the number of people without EZ-Pass or Fast Lane. On a side note it amazes me that people still don't have EZ-Pass or Fast Lane or what ever. No I can understand people who live in places out side the system, but if you have MA, NY, NJ, or PA Plates and no EZ-Pass you should be forced to drive backwards to your destination on secondary roads. It really doesn't matter how infrequently you use it, it just makes everything easier. As this traffic wasn't too bad and I can blow by almost everyone because I DO have EZ-Pass there was really no need to explore an alternate option.

The rest of it was pretty smooth sailing until the dreaded merge. For those of you unfamiliar with the merge just think of two 3-4 lane highways coming together into one 3 lane road. This almost always spells disaster whenever there is heavy volume. This is compounded a bit by the fact that maybe a mile after the merge there is a rest area so people try to get from the far left to the right to exit for the rest area.

At the first rest stop on the Garden State Parkway I decided to finally enter in my traffic subscription. I had the number but entering the code is laborious task, perfect for taking up time at a full service station in NJ. Am I glad I entered the number. I will admit that Nuvi didn't tell me anything I couldn't already have guessed, but it was good to know to expect it.

As we approached the NJ Turnpike Nuvi told us that the car lane (Nuvi usually recommends that we take the car lane) was backed up and I could avoid this. Now from experience I know that usually the car lane backs up a lot more than the Truck lane. I think this has to do with the fact that the Truck lane drops to 2 lanes before it enters the merge and then only one of those 2 lase actually merge. This allows trucks to sort of glide through the merge without having to actually merge. It also tends to keep the truck lane moving a bit.

We as almost always choose the truck lane no matter what the traffic situation is. Nuvi some times picks up on this (this time it did) and after a little bit Nuvi tells us that the truck lane has building volume as well. We have also discovered from experience that usually once traffic gets bunched at the merger it take a few miles for it to recover as well. so usually just about the time we are ready to get off at the PA turnpike traffic is moving well again. So we asked Nuvi to avoid the traffic.

Ass we approach the first wall of traffic Nuvi has us get off at the next exit (about 1/4 mile ahead. We take a NJ State highway (speed limit was 45-50 most of the way) with a few traffic lights but the stops weren't worse than what we probably would have experienced on the Turnpike. We end up on 195 headed to Trenton then, after a brief user error, ended up on route 1 South towards the PA turnpike. We were seated for dinner near our house by about 8 PM. Great Job Nuvi!

Of course I can't say this way was faster or slower but it felt faster, which is important. And I was not contributing to the traffic jam buy getting off the highway. I can't wait until we have smart vehicles that know where we are going and can correlate our destination with the destinations of the other cars on the road to pick the best route (heck I would even let it drive me there).

Sam Adams Brewery Tour

M, Troy, Christa and I decided to extend the 2nd annual New Years visit to Boston this year and take part in some of the winter activities. Noting says winter like staying in side and drinking beer. We journeyed out to the Samuel Adams Brewer to learn how the Best Beer in America is made.
Mary and Christa enjoying FREE BEER at the Samuel Adams Brewery

Troy contemplating the importance of Free Beer and what effect it has on our society. Or maybe he is just wondering if he likes the Cherry Wheat.

I would recommend the earliest tour possible. At 11 AM on a Saturday there weren't many people there. By the time we left out tour at 12:15 or so the lobby was packed with waiting tour goers. After the Brewery tour we went to the Cactus Club for lunch, which was surprisingly not crowded, but the food there is excellent. Then on the the Mary Baker Eddy Museum to see the Mapparium. This is a very interesting picture/map of the world around 1935. It is amazing to see what has and hasn't changed.

Having grown up in Boston it was amazing to me that I had never heard of this place. I had been to the Christian Scientist campus a number of times, but didn't know that this room existed. A truly amazing place to spend a few minutes of your day.

Happy New Year!!!!

-Edit 01/04/2007-
I should mention that the picture above is provided courtsy of Troy's Blog. Thanks Troy!
-End Edit-

We went up to Boston for New Years again. That offically makes this the second annual Boston New Years Trip. We didn't get snow this year, but the weather was good. Cold enough to remind us that it was winter, but warm enough that walking around wasn't a problem. This year despite our best efforts we caught the fireworks at midnight. They were interesting. As you can see for the picture Christa had her drinking hat (and glasses, and noise maker, and new years beads) on.

Aside from M and I, Troy and Christa, we were again joined by cousins Sara and Roy, with new additions of cousins Chrissy and Doug and My High School Friend Rachel and her husband Sudir (Last year they were off getting engaged, Happy Engageaversary). After last year we decided there was entirely too much walking so we headed straight to the Red Hat for the evening. On the way we made a pit stop at Hong Kong (the bar not the city) for some chicken on a stick and Scorpion Bowls (I refrained because I over indulged the night before).

This year the Red Hat hired a DJ, who in our opionion ran hot and cold. When we got there he was playing some great 80's music, he played a request or two from the group. But he quickly changed his format to hip hop, which bad but wasn't what we were in the mood for. He made up for it by closing the night (at least our night) with a splash back to the 80's for some AC/Dc, Def Lepord and Van Halen.

So Happy New Year to all! Maybe we will see you in Boston next year!

Broadway Birthday

So I was surprised for my birthday with tickets to see Monty Python's Spamalot. What a wonderful show. On a different level than Evil Dead but in many ways the same. Of course the story was hilarious, and in true Monty Python fashion the show takes many diversions from anything resembling the true story.

All of the famous mini scenes are there, the one notable sections being Sir Bedevere, who's part has changed dramatically from the movie. They have removed the entire witch burning sketch from the musical. I guess they just couldn't come up with a good song featuring a witch (although a good place to maybe make fun of Wicked). They have added the lady of the lake as a character, because (to steal an idea) you won't succeed on Broadway if you don't have a leading lady.

This is a very visual show. I also received the soundtrack for my birthday and while some of the songs were amusing the picture isn't complete until you see they choreography on stage. They whole show just works together.

After the matinee showing we went to dinner at Virgil's and decided while we were in the City we should stop by a few other places and see if we could get tickets. We walked over to The Producers and were in luck they had some center Orchestra seats available. We figured why not, another trip back into the city would just tack on another $100 + bucks to the day so were were in effect saving money by seeing 2 shows in one day. besides we were very energized after seeing Spamalot.

I would like to be able to give the Producers as glowing a review as Spamalot, but I can't. The show was excellent and the actors were very good. But the first act seemed a bit slow. The second act picked up and was much more entertaining. M and I very much enjoyed the show and we are glad we saw it. I'm just not sure we would go see it again. We both commented the for Both Evil dead and Spamalot we would totally be willing to go again Even if we purchased the cheapest seats in the house it would be entertaining to watch both shows again. The Producers while very entertaining didn't strike us as something we would go to again.

The theater was fairly empty, we were surprised when we got there that we were able to get such good seats, but after the show started and the entire row in front of us was empty were were no longer surprised with our "good fortune". During intermission a few people moved around to get better seats so a few chairs in front of us filled in, fortunately no basketball players relocated to directly in front of us.

All in all it was a great second Birthday! Mary and I also took some time in between shows to walk up to see the Christmas tree, and while interesting it seemed as if everyone in NY had teh same idea we did. It was totally packed and that may have hindered our enjoyment.

The good thing is after this trip we both realized thatw e need to get into NY more often to see shows. It is almost too convenient to get there.