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[07 Jul 2008|02:18pm] |
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The holiday weekend was excellent. I put together a damn good 4 day/3 night bachelor party here in Boston for my old friend Bri-- I think rock stars would have been jealous. Some highlights included: lobster dinner at Durgin park on Thursday night, playing cards at the rooftop pooldeck at the Collonade, watching the fireworks on the Fourth from our boat on the Charles River, a round of drinks at the Top of the Hub, truly magnificent porterhouse steaks at Morton's on Saturday, fine port and cigars at Cigar Masters, and a rendezvous with a bachelorette party from my and Bri's hometown at a piano bar on Lansdowne Street.
I'll be posting pics soon!
And also, I bought my Garand! I spent a bit more than I'd originally planned, but I unquestionably got the pick of the litter. It's a Springfield Armory rifle, built sometime around August of 1944. Almost 64 years old, but still in gorgeous condition. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet-- maybe later on this week. I've already ordered some clips and a m1923 cartridge belt to go with it, and I'm hoping for a deal on a bayonet on ebay. I'll probably end up with a Korean War-era one, they seem to go for a third the price of a decent WWII example. I'll have to take a pic of the new toy, too!
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| Psychic Salespeople |
[07 Feb 2008|03:26pm] |
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I just spent $150 on framed photographs for my office. There I was, typing away on a motion when a stranger poked her head into my office and introduced herself as "the art girl." Apparently she had sold some framed prints to our office a bit before I started here and was back with a new set. My walls are still mostly bare (I finally hung some diplomas and licenses recently), and I had done a bit of shopping for some pre-framed art prints last weekend, but I was picky and came back empty handed. The stuff the girl brought in looked good and matched the frames I was already using, so I picked up three of my favorites, all interesting shots of Boston landmarks. Score. Frees up some more of my uppcoming weekend. Next time I need some art, apparently all I need to do is think about it real hard :)
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| End of Year Odds and Ends |
[25 Dec 2007|12:00am] |
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The last few months have been as eventful as ever-- I won't bore folks with the details, but the new job is working out very well. I'm getting great experience, including the opportunity to do lots of trials, and having fun doing it. The only two problems are that it's tough to stay on top of the paperwork while I'm spending so much time in court and that the organizational system for the office is badly suited for the volume of appearances and appointments we handle. The solution to the first problem has been learning to utilize the support staff more efficiently, and the solution to the second will be to move our scheduling system to Outlook and set up a comprehensive Open Files database, which I intend to base off of the setup we used at my old office. On a side note, I can't believe I've been a practicing attorney for five years already...
I've been active on the local 40k tournament scene and done well, and even forayed into a WHFB team tournament a few weeks back. Fun stuff. I've also made it out to the range a few times lately, and have a lot future shoots scheduled with friends interested in trying shooting. Good times!
My car has been a magnet for trouble lately. I got hit by a rock on Route 24 that cracked my windshield, and then got into an accident a week later. While driving a rental while my ride was being worked on I hit a dishwasher or something that fell off a truck on I-95. When I got my car back, it still had a bunch of problems, some of which haven't been fixed yet-- and yesterday I noticed fresh damage on the part of the car that had just been fixed! What a pain.
My other source of technology woes has been the new PC I put together last month. The hardware all works fine out of the box, but Vista is the worst M$ OS I've had to deal with since Win98. I couldn't get anything to work with it, so I gave up and upgraded to XP. I'll probably redo it as a dual boot when I get the chance, since you need Vista to run the latest DirectX.
I took some time this month and sorted through my pictures from the last year and uploaded a few favorites on my homepage. Check 'em out.
Happy holidays everyone! Lea and I are throwing a party at our place for New Years, hope to see everyone there!
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| Great Success! |
[14 Jul 2007|02:13am] |
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The big news this week is that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lilbabylea is officially a licensed Pharmacist! She graduated in May, took the boards last Friday and on Tuesday, and got confirmation that she passed today. She'll find out her actual scores on the exams soon, but I'm pretty sure that they'll be off the charts :) She's now officially the Pharmacy Manager of the gorgous brand new CVS store on Route 9 in Newton, about the best possible position that the company could offer anyone. She kicks ass all over the place and CVS knows it :)
Now that Lea knows where she'll be working we've started planning to buy our first house. We're not in any big rush for a few reasons: we've got a sweet deal right now here in Dorchester, we're okay on space since Lea's not pregnant yet, we could use some extra time to square away our finances, plus the market doesn't seem to have bottomed out yet around here. But we are keeping an eye out, and if we see the right place for the right price we may end up moving on it sooner than we expect. Someplace in Milton, Canton, or Quincy would probably be ideal so that we can stay close to Lea's family for free babysitting and it would keep our commutes reasonable. We're also considering splitting a two-family with Lea's sister and her husband, we'll have to see if the timing works out.
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| She's Made a Dot Rat Outta Me... |
[30 May 2006|03:26pm] |
In other news... Lea and I have decided to move down to Dorchester at the end of June. Her family owns the place and it's in a nice area around the corner from the church Lea and I got married in. We don't know how long we'll be down there, but it'll be a great way to save some money. The only catch is that it needs some work before we can move in, so we'll be having some folks over all day this coming Saturday to strip wallpaper and prep for painting (which we hope to do the weekend after). There will be pizza and beer for those who can make it out.
Btw, I added my schools to my user profile... neat feature. Still waiting for my last Elementary School to be approved.
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| Memorial Day Weekend '06 |
[30 May 2006|02:20pm] |
Friday night we met up with lindyninja and kickindancer, bunkai_man and katesg7, derbyhat and Stephanie to watch Xmen3 in Boston. Randomly, Matt ended up sitting right in front of us. It was fun, about on par with the second Xmen movie-- great visuals, a couple great one-liners, and the story held my interest. Movies like this are great for watching while cleaning guns-- put them on, follow the dialogue, and look up from what you're doing when a good action sequence comes on.
Saturday morning Lea and I drove out to our friend Dan's place near Poughkeepsie, NY for his graduation party-- he just finished up his Masters in English. It was relaxing-- the high point was an intense game of whiffle ball. We took off around 9pm and drove into the city, where we planned to stay for the weekend. Our friend Sara was unfortunately out of town for the weekend, but she left the key to her place with my buddy Derik, so we picked it up from his place and crashed at her place in the Lower East Side.
On Sunday we drove back uptown (parking in NYC was pretty easy because of the long weekend) and met up with Dave and Andrea for lunch at the Carnegie Deli. The place lived up to its reputation-- I got a 6 inch plus tall pile of Roast Beef on top of a slice of Rye with another slice balanced on top (their idea of a sandwich). We all walked around the Times Square area for a little while and then headed back to Sara's place so Lea could do her homework. We had a quiet dinner together at a nearby Sushi place and then walked over to the Strand, my favorite bookstore on the planet. After they closed up we caught a late show of the Da Vinci code, which was entertaining... it was a pretty good adaptation, although it edited out a lot of the more interesting parts of the book. I should re-read it one of these days.
Monday morning we met up with Derik and his friend Theresa for lunch and did some shopping-- Lea picked up a new pair of Pumas she'd been looking for and I finally bought a pocket-sized digital camera, a Canon Powershot SD450. I've been a big fan of the Canon cameras since I was selling them back in school, and playing with new one has confirmed my opinion. The camera was cheaper than pretty much any of the cameras I used to sell back 5 years ago, more compact, and much faster between shots than even the high-end cameras were back then. The movie mode lasts 8-45 minutes per gig of memory compared to 30-45 seconds, so it may even be useful. It has a huge screen, and retains an optical viewfinder, which is a big plus for when the glare prevents use of the LCD. Unbelievable. We got on the road around 2:30 and made it back to Worcester in time to catch Jamie and Melanie's BBQ. Zack brought a few gallons of home brew with him and we had some fun "touch" football out back. Great time.
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| I Was Deliberately Wasting Your Time, Sir. |
[01 May 2006|09:07pm] |
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Suzanne -- Weezer |
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Ugh. Today was rough at work... The bunch of NYC morons I spent all week last week chasing for documents seemed genuinely surprised that they screwed up the deal I've been working on by giving us the info we needed 72 hours late. I spent all day trying to salvage things, and expect to look like a complete idiot when the house of cards I spent all day today building falls apart again tomorrow morning. Dealing with these jokers has reminded me of Monthy Python's Cheese Shop sketch... it's sad that I can't end this whole charade by shooting them.
The day's bright spot was an unexpected call from sharpshootah, who I'd barely talked to in the past year. The rush you get after talking with a friend you hadn't spoken to in a long time as though nothing at all has changed has to be one of the best feelings in the world. Hopefully I'll be getting together with her later in the week to catch up. The whole episode makes me want to get back in touch with a dozen people I've lost track of in the last couple years-- Mike A., Rachel F., Yogi and Liz, Andy and Lily, and others... I'll have to sort through my Palm address list this weekend and get on the phone. If you're reading this and we haven't hung out in a while, give me a call... I've actually got free time again these days.
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| 3 Random Quotes of the day |
[23 Jul 2005|09:55pm] |
1. "You can't make a muppet out of D20." -angryfederalist
2. "I would have no qualms licking any part of this weapon. Oh wait... there's a bit of lint on the firing pin." - zack
3. "I'm Swedish and Irish. That's why I work so hard for so little." --Kris
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| Leafest '05 Venue Change |
[12 May 2005|11:03pm] |
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btw, if anyone's coming out for Lea's birthday tomorrow night and hasn't already heard, we're meeting up at 7:00 at the Brown Sugar Cafe (the one at 1033 Commonwealth Avenue) instead of P.F. Chang's. Hope to see you guys there!
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| Dead to the World Infodump |
[04 Dec 2004|08:00pm] |
The last few weeks have been insanely busy. I've been consistently working 60 hour weeks at the new job and I feel like I've completely lost touch with everyone and everything other than Lea.
That's not completely true... I did get to spend some time with Bri and Alan while they were in town for Thanksgiving, and got to relax a bit that weekend. I definitely needed that. Unfortunately, things don't seem likely to calm down any time soon, either. I'm strangely resigned to this. Despite the stress I've been enjoying the work and I've been learning even more about the practice of law than I thought expected to. It's not the hours themselves that bother me, it's just the growing sense of isolation. I need to get out more and make better use of my ever-diminishing down time.
Random stuff... My computer has been in pieces for a couple weeks now. I took it apart to do some upgrades and pack it into a Micro-ATX case, but I couldn't get the damn thing to work. Seems like another defective Motherboard, but it could be a mistake on my part. Tonight I'll take one last stab at getting it to run before putting my old box back together... Does anyone have any suggestions on good Micro-ATX MBs?
Lea and I have our wedding album mostly together now. We're about to order the last of the stuff we need to finish it, plus what we'll need to do our parents' albums. My Dad is scanning in the photos for us, so hopefully I'll be able to add more to the ones up on the webpage soon...
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| Good Times |
[23 Sep 2004|04:51pm] |
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Lots of good news this week.
Last Saturday Lea and I attended Shavenyak and katesg7's wedding and had a great time. The ceremony was at a gorgeous old church in Winchester and the reception at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, both excellent choices, and a good time was had by all. The wedding was early, so they threw an afterparty at Jillian's that night. It was fun to continue celebrating the wedding wearing normal clothes and doing normal going-out stuff. A nice change of pace after all of the weddings we've been to these last few months. I'm sure that Shavenyak and Katie will be very happy together.
It was also good to meet Rob's old college friends at his bachelor party the Thursday prior to the wedding, they seemed like a great bunch of guys. I missed the day's early activities and met up with them at Fire and Ice in Harvard Sq. (which, by the way, is freaking heaven for Atkins dieters) and then we played a few hours of 4 on 4 HALO capture the flag. I think I'm getting addicted. I may have to pick up an Xbox when HALO 2 comes out.
Speaking of getting to like new games, last night I won my first no-limit texas hold 'em tournament! I was playing pretty well and I had some good luck early on. Those early wins built up my stack to the point where I was able to survive an expensive beat by Zack toward the middle of the game and recover. When it was down to the last three players I went all in on an AJ before the flop. Paul, the chip leader, called me (I forget with what) and got clobbered when two more Jacks came up. From there on it was smooth sailing. It's been a few weeks since I've played well, and I'm usually one of the first ones to go when we have these tournaments. It was especially satisfying to take Paul's money :)
Also speaking of games I like, I'm putting together my first Car Wars game in ten years (Division 15 at the Cloverleaf). If you're interested in playing, email me with your availability.
Lea and I are talking about going down to visit DC over Columbus day weekend. She's never been, so we'll probably hit the touristy places and visit some old friends of mine. If you're in the metro DC area and want to hang out while I'm down there, let me know.
I've been sending out my resume lately, and I had two interviews this week, both of which went very well. The one I had on Tuesday is a real estate closing gig, the one I had today is for an associate spot at a small general practice firm. Both seem like great places to work. The closing job seems like it would involve minimal actual legal work, but the second seems like a good place to develop my skills. The interview was unusual-- after a few minutes chatting in his office, the owner took me out with him for an hour while he ran some errands. He did most of the talking. He pretty much told me his life story and outlined why he was looking for an associate and what qualities he felt were important. It was actually pretty fun. We got along well and he invited me back for a second interview with his office manager on Monday. It sounds like if that goes well the job is mine. It's pretty much what I've been looking for for the last year, so if the money's right I'll take it. Hopefully the money is good enough that I can replace my car, since the firm is up on the North Shore.
All in all it's been a kick-ass week. Life is good.
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| Sniped! |
[26 Aug 2004|09:54am] |
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Poker was a lot of fun last night. I played better than I have in a long time and came out pretty far ahead. My buddy Zack showed up late and drunk-- he played a few hands, ordered some Chinese food, and then passed out on the couch about halfway into the night. Just before we all went home, our mutual friend Matt swiped the fortune cookie he had left uneaten. It read: "You and your wife will be happy in your life together." Now Matt is a bachelor, but Zack is getting married NEXT WEEK. It looks like that rat bastard Matt sniped Zack on that fortune and made off with the happy life that Zack and Kristina were destined for. If things go badly for them, we know who to blame.
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| Dieting, Demotion, Sun Burn, and Car Wars... |
[23 Aug 2004|03:42pm] |
On the way to B's wedding a couple weeks ago I decided to try the Atkins diet, based primarily on the success a number of my friends had had with it. When Lea and I got back, I spent the week in phase I of the diet-- eating all of the carbs in our kitchen :) A week ago, when they were all gone, I started induction (limitation of 20g carbs/day for 2 weeks). It's been going pretty well. I don't think I've managed to keep my consumption quite at 20g (it's hard to keep count when you're eating out as much as I've been), but I've come reasonably close. I haven't been militant about monitoring my weight, but I've definitely been making significant progress. Atkins is a great first step for me because of the nature of the rules-- if you break them, the diet doesn't work and you're even worse off than you would have been without it. It helps you maintain discipline that way, which I hope to apply to an exercise regime as I ease off of Atkins. Rob pretty much sold me on a gym in the area, and I suspect that I'll be joining there soon.
Zack and Kristina's wedding is coming up quick, and then Rob and Katie's soon after. I notice that I'm steadily getting demoted-- first I'm the groom, then best man man at the next one, then an usher at the one after that, then a regular guest... if this keeps up I'll be washing dishes in the backroom if I get invited at all :)
( The weekend was excellent. )
Robert reminded me that I need to put together some people for a game of Car Wars sometime soon. Any of you mob ever play?
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[18 Jul 2004|09:10am] |
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Well, it's 9:00 on Sunday and I'm awake, but not blasting clay pigeons like I'd hoped to be. I'm at work, pulling in some sweet overtime pay, but not terribly happy about it. Speaking as an economist, I must be happy about it, since I'm here, but that doesn't really help much.
I'm particularly unhappy about this since I was up until 4 last night watching the complete Firefly series on DVD (who needs TWO rem cycles anyway?). I can't rave enough about this series. It's not what I'd call hard sci-fi, but has a bit of the flavor of Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick. If Han Solo ever had his own TV show, the plots would be a lot like the ones on Firefly. The constant stream of details just ooze flavor, and the characters are the most compelling of any sci fi series I've seen yet. Two thumbs way the hell up.
The place should be together in its final form by the end of the week. The new furniture Lea and I ordered from Crate and Barrel arrives Thursday, and a print I dropped off for framing should be done on Tuesday. Yesterday B and I managed to get my couch out of the old place in Newton in about 15 minutes, about half of what it took the professional delivery guys to shoehorn it in. Tougher than it sounds since the place in Newton was an old Victorian with narrow staircases. The pros left half-inch gouges in the walls to prove that the couch was the exact largest object that would fit up and down those stairs :) That leaves a new end table and a nightstand for Lea and we'll be pretty much all set.
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| Moving and the Week in Review |
[12 Jul 2004|09:53am] |
The move went without a hitch last weekend. Smoothest move I've ever done, despite the staggering piles of stuff we had to haul. Lots of practice, I suppose, and good help. Many thanks to lindyninja, kickindancer, salt_peanuts, Nick, and Glyn for all they did. The new place is coming together pretty nicely and I think Lea and I will be happy staying there for the next few years.
We spent the fourth over at Rob and katesg7's place in Winchester, had a great time.
The week at work was fairly boring, although the project may be ending sooner than I thought, so I need to get back into serious job-hunting mode. Not fun. EDIT: Turns out to be just a rumor. Looks like my job will be safe until January. I'll still need to get my hunt going, but it won't be as urgent as I'd feared.
Last weekend was pretty busy, too. Aside from the move-related errands we played kickball with lindyninja and company on Saturday afternoon and then went to P.F. Chang's and the Top of the Hub with Ashley, an old friend of mine, and her husband. We hadn't seen each other in about four years and have both been bad about staying in touch, so it was great to re-connect. I should really make an effort to catch up with other folks I've been only nominally in touch with for the last few years.
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| Wedding Pictures Are Up!!! |
[28 Jun 2004|02:21am] |
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We still haven't seen the professional shots, but photos have been trickling in from everyone who came-- I've already got hundreds! I finally had time this weekend to put a few of my favorites up on my homepage The page is a couple megs, so it might take a minute to load depending on your connection.
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