Memorial Day Weekend '06
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.