Last Sunday Pam stopped by to visit me in CT. As I stood unprepared in the kitchen, I realized I needed to make some dinner… AND FAST!

This was the perfect time to call upon my new Jacque Pepin’ book “Fast food my way.” This time, I made the lavash bread pizza.

It was beyond simple, and the end result was an elegant delicious pizza. Throw down some Lavash bread (find it by the deli at your local S&S) and add some olive oil to each side. Cut up some tomatos and toss ‘em on. Add some mozerella, some sauce if it suits you… and you’re good to go. 4-8 minutes in a 475 degree oven and you have delicious crispy crust pizza. It was nearly gormet!

In Jacque’s version, you add some fresh basil and parmesian on top after it comes out of the oven. I forgot to pick up basil so we skipped that step. It was still delicious though, and extremely fast.

I give it four stars.

For whatever reason, today I was thinking about words with double letters. I wondered how many double letter possibilities there are. Let’s give it a shot shall we? Proper nouns are a no-go as are expressions, conjectures, and foreign languages.

aa (cindery lava)
bubble
accent
fodder
meet
huff
kegger
hh?
ii?
jj?
kk?
holler
mammal
nanny
hoops
pineapple
qq - no way
porridge
sassy
attribute
uu?
savvy
ww?
xx - don’t believe so.
yy?
pizza.

Some awesome band names I thought of on the way to work:

—–The Outliers—–
—–The Productive—–
—–Fallen Fruit—–
—–Powers of Three—–

Last weekend there was the annual Plainsville, CT Hot Air Balloon festival.

While the name ‘Plainsville’ does not conjure up any thoughts of wild adventure, follow it up with ‘Hot Air Balloon’ and you’re sure for a good time. I went out Sunday morning to see the morning launch. It was pretty spectacular.

Upon arriving the balloons were just getting fired up. The red balloon on the left in the image above, was definitely my favorite. Many of the other balloons (there were about 20) had dark colors that did not compliment the flame. When the operator of the balloon above ignited his burner the light colors glowed vibrantly and the results were stunning.

The only unfortunate part was that it was a bit cloudy. But it didn’t matter too much. Little kids were still running around pointing with jaws agape as balloon after balloon entered the sky. It was quite a sight.

I realized, I knew very little about hot air balloons. So here are the questions that I couldn’t help but think of while there, and the answers that I just researched.

Q. Hot hot does it get inside the balloon itself?
A. Most balloons operate with an internal temperature of about 250 degrees fahrenheit

Q. What’s the melting point of the fabric?
A. The fabric is typically Nylon which, depending on the variety, won’t melt until over 500 degrees fahrenheit.

Q. What is the fuel typically used for Balloons?
A. These days, propane.

Q. How do they steer?
A. They can’t. The best they can do is ascend to different levels in the atmosphere. Often times wind blows in different directions at different altitudes, so the experienced balloon pilot can manage to move himself/herself in the desired direction.

Q. I wonder if it’s windy when you’re in the balloon basket?
A. It’s not. The balloon moves with the wind, so any passengers won’t feel the rushing air. Apparently this makes the ride super serene.

Here’s a video of two balloons getting inflated. It was pre-sunrise for this video, so you can get a feel for the illumination from the burners.

This second video shows four of the balloons up and ready to go.

This event was super fun, I think I will make an effort to attend next year as well.

There was a guy at the Midway airport that was fantastic.

His job, among other things I’m sure, was to page the whole airport and let them know if something was left behind at the security checkpoint. Here are a few quotes:

“Attention, if you are the owner of a bracelet made up of small colorful stones please report to the security checkpoint. You have left your bracelet behind. It is a small bracelet with what appear to be gems on it. Please come retrieve your bracelet if you want your wrist to be pretty once again.”

“Someone has left a black umbrella at the security checkpoint, if it is yours please return to retrieve it. The forcast shows heavy rains in the future and without this umbrella, you’re going to get soaked. So please come to retrieve your umbrella.”

“Attention males! Check your waist line! Is your belt missing? If so, come to the security checkpoint to retrieve your brown belt. If you do not, your pants may fall down and you will probably be very embarassed.”

“Airline passengers! One of you has left your poster at the security checkpoint. Please come get it. Otherwise I will take it home when my shift ends and place it in my living room.”

Apparently there was an article that was distributed to our local church here in Meriden about young singles trying to find dates at church. Apparently, St. Ignatious in the upper east side of Manhatten is THE place to go if you are looking for Hot Catholic Ladies.

My dad was in his prime play years during the dawn of the science fiction age. Sputnik soared in 1958, and the space race that followed certainly influenced how he entertained himself.

In the early 60’s, when he wasn’t playing the unpolitically correct Cowboys and Indians, my dad remembers playing with a reel to reel audio recorder. His dad has set the equipment up on the porch and made it look like all space age-ish. There were dials all over the floor and panals and general good times. My dad would sit down and play with the stereo pickups to make unique noises.

Although he didn’t mention any direct correlation between his play time and the successful trip of Alan Shepard into space in 1961, I have a good feeling that the two events were not simply coincidental.

I’ve arrived safely in Texas (pronounce “Tejas!”). Things here are just as I left them: uncomfortably large and hot.

The good news is that my hotel is fantastic. The Fitness center is A+ and the business center has a print of Picasso’s “violin and guitar” on the wall (a personal fav).

I will do what I can to continue updating semi-regularly.

Today, I am heading to Texas for business.

I will be in the Longview area, so if you’re a Texas native feel free to fire me over an e-mail. We’ll grab some dinner. I will be there until Friday, and I will do my best to eat as much steak as possible. I will likely have some internet access and I’ve already AUTO-POSTED this week’s Feature section.

UPDATE:

Jesse is engaged to Holy Cross Alicia.

Here’s the story:

It was the summer of 2001. As a leading dude at WPI’s Newman club, I was invited by Father Scanlon to attend a silent retreat in Naragansett, RI. A silent retreat is a retreat where no one is allowed to talk. It’s a time when you can think and be pensive and reflect on your life. I was the only non-Holy Cross student to attend. Upon arriving, the first two people I met were Holy Cross Alicia and Holy Cross Theresa. This was especially odd to me because my dear sisters are named Alicia and Theresa.

The week went well and despite not being able to speak, I felt by the end that I had friends in the Holy Cross folk. After the event H.C. Alicia and H.C. Theresa made frequent appearances at our WPI appartment.

The following spring I went away to Denmark. When I returned, Jesse and H.C. Alicia were coupled.

time passes

Last weekend Jesse went up to Maine where H.C. Alicia just started medical school. On the way to a restaurant, H.C. Alicia’s car broke down. A tow truck was called. In the cab H.C. Alicia commented that she was having a good time because although the car had broken down she was able to spend time with her fat loving boyfriend (awwwww).

A short while later, H.C. Alicia turned to Jesse and asked “you want to get married?” Jesse said “yeah, I do.”

Jesse has asked me to post this story to provide proof to the generations to come that Jesse did not force H.C. Alicia to marry him. That it was her idea and that he is not responsible for the mayhem that will likely follow their union.

Congratulations Jesse & H.C. Alicia. I wish you many years of Rockstar lifestyles.

Despite my best efforts last week, the skyline and satellite image were correctly identified.

Great job to Jes, Bisol, and Caitlin. Jes and Bisol recognized hints of the Montreal skyline and Caitlin picked up on Copenhagen. Great job guys!!

Here’s this week’s challenge!

The Skyline!

The Satellite Image!

1) identify the skyline
2) determine if the satellite image is of the same location
3) if not, determine the location of the satellite image

Good luck!

My sister pointed this one out to me.

Hilarious.

My personal favorite might be “Handcuffed to Tigers”

This weekend there’s a pretty good chance that I will be taking paintbrush in hand and painting my bedroom. I am vacillating between two color combos that Abby and Lori suggested during their visit last weekend. One idea was a light green color with ‘porcelain’ for the trim and ‘belvedere cream’ for accents (yellowish). The other idea was a silver gray with ‘classic light buff’ (white) as the trim and ‘Chinese red’ as the accent.

To be honest, I didn’t notice the name of the colors until now. Chinese red? Awesome! I guess that settles it. I’ll go with that combo. Walls silver gray, whitish trim, and red accents. Nice.

I’ll post a picture upon its completion.

Pluto has been voted off the planet list. This blog says About Time!

I think we’ve all had enough of that “planet’s” presumptuous crap.

Last night Jesse and I went climbing again. It was a wild success. Not only did I whip through the 5.11 that I had been working on (got it cleanly!), I reached the top of a brutal 5.12b. I’ve done the 5.12b once or twice before but last night was particularly awesome because it means that even after a few months of non-climbing, I am right back where I left off.

Who doesn’t love MSPaint?

I really don’t know.

This week’s contest is a brutal one. The challenge was to draw your best representation of the phrase REVENGE OF THE TREES using only MSPaint. And draw you did. We have over ten entries, check it out.

NOTE: some of these drawings are large, if it opens to full screen just click the drawing again to return to this screen.

TREE 1: An instant classic! These trees are clearly on a path of destruction.
mike d’s fav. part: the color of the clouds

TREE 2: Ahh Britney Gallivan! how we love you here at MIKEDIDONATO.com, while normally we disqualify entries with copy and pastage… I think this deserves a pass. (if you ARE Britney Gallivan, click here)
mike d’s fav. part: the tree’s face. very cartoony, I like it.

TREE 3: Hilarious! I love this!
mike d’s fav. part: This is just insanely clever. A+

TREE 4: Colorful, fun, a work of art no doubt.
mike d’s fav. part: This tree, of all those submitted, has the best leaves in my humble opinion.

TREE 5: The artist of this piece entitled it “Devil in Eden.” The devil is intended to be possessing the tree called “The Forbidden”
mike d’s fav. part: The devil is ellusive. This one takes a minute to figure out, I find this mysterious.

TREE 6: This is by far the most unique of the entries. It appears to be a female tree of doom, on a quest to kill.
mike d’s fav. part: Actually, my fav part of this entry is the funky dog on the right.

TREE 7: This artist gave a quick description of her drawing, I quote:

the reason the trees want revenge is because they are being overharvested and sprayed with chemicals. So they call a meeting and decide to drop all fruit (so that there is none to eat). Obviously some females can adapt to a junk food diet and these are the ones who are paid to keep the species alive. The desired result being a stabilised population where everyone eats a non-fruit diet.

also the cherry on the cupcake is intended to be a Mangel-wurzel. (A vegetable in taste, very similar to very sweet, red beets; in shape, greatly resembling carrots) This was used in the war-time to make fake cherries.

mike d’s fav. part: the round table of trees and the main tree’s face and color.

TREE 8: Oh man. We love the cupcake purple dude. We really do.
mike d’s fav. part: it’s obvious. The purple dude.

TREE 9: These trees have no mercy. None.
mike d’s fav. part: The bulldozer!

TREE 10: Please note: these trees are using Chainsaws. And their facial features are near-perfect.
mike d’s fav. part: The tree on the left. It’s great!

TREE 11: Whoa, impressive shading. I like the color choice and the funky leaf method
mike d’s fav. part: the ground shading

TREE 12: CUPCAKE ARMEGEDDON 2 - REVENGE OF THE TREES
mike d’s fav. part: RAWRG!

TREE 13: Brilliant! I tried forever to think of a way to get “revenge of the sith” into my drawing idea… but came up with nothing. Special props to this artist for achieving this.
mike d’s favorite part: The tree’s blood is clorophyl.

So there we have it. 13 entries.

Please use the comments to vote for….
1) your personal favorite
2) the most artistic
3) the most hilarious

and a bonus point for the most inane.

YOU CANNOT VOTE FOR YOUR OWN! If you don’t feel comfortable voting publically, you can vote anonymously, however the e-mail must be legit. Otherwise I will revoke the vote, and publically humiliate the poster.

Need a review? Here are the entry thumbnails in order 1-13. click on the small verson for the big version.

TREES 1,2,3
TREES 4,5,6
TREES 7,8,9
TREES 10,11
TREES 12,13

Once again, 1) personal fav. 2) most artistic 3) most hilarious
and a bonus point for the most inane.

Please feel free to write commentary on why you chose the drawings you did. votes will be tallied next Thursday, Aug 30th.

There is an MSPaint contest post in the works. It should be up sometime later today.

UPDATE: It’s UP! Check it out on in the feature section!

Tim Baird pointed this one out to me:

A few Mexicans survive many many months at sea, fishing, singing, and playing Air Guitar.

REMINDER: MSPaint drawings due today at noon EST!

This morning I had a surge of ambition. I’m not sure where it came from, but I think it has something to do with Hacky sack.

Last night was really strange. Jesse and I checked out another house in our quest to own all of Connecticut. This prize was a boxy 2000 sq footer with two units. Everything was looking great until we entered the basement.

The basement was only about five feet tall. So we crouched our way into its depths. It had a half brick half dirt floor and was in moderate disrepair. There was only one light in the corner, so we used Jesse’s keychain flashlight to find our way around. In the center of the basement there was a well. ?. That’s right. There’s a well in the basement. 10-15 feet deep with water at the bottom. Little cobble stones around it in a circle… it’s got everything except the bucket on a rope. My first reaction was: “AWESOME! A WELL! If we buy a Brita we’ll have free water forever!! Do you hear me? FREE WATER.” but Jesse didn’t hear me. he was far more concerned with liability and Baby Jessica incidents.

Afterwards we hit up a bar in Middletown, I fired through kung fu and then returned to the House of Rock for guitar and social events, including an attempt with Jesse to beat Kurt and my record at back and forth hacky sack foot stalls.

Jesse and I got 13, I think Kurt and I had topped out at either 9 or 11.

It is that monster accomplishment, accompanied with the perfect sleeping weather, that I believe is responsbile for my ambition this morning.

My trip to China has been evaded!

FUN: no 13 hour flights in the immediate future
FUNK: It would have been cool to see ShangHai
FUN: I can help out at work here at home base (highly needed) and ease the burden of my boss
FUNK: I did enjoy my last trip to the far east and I’m sure the same would have been true about this one
FUN: I can return to my regularly scheduled kung fu classes and rock climbing adventures

So after a summer of almost zero climbing, I am back FULL force. Saturday I climbed outdoors at pinnacle rock in Plainsville CT with Irene and K. It was a solid good time. We set up two ropes, one at ‘Emerald City’ and another at a name-unknown 5.10ish crimpy beast just to the right of beefy overhanging Supermantle. We met a few folks who were busy battling Supermantle. Irene tied in and gave the climb a shot but just barely missed a critical left hand two finger pocket on her first try. It would have been hilarious had she pulled it off because these 6 foot tall grunting dudes without shirts would certainly have been humbled if 5′2″ Irene cruised up their prize route on her first try. I was routing for her.

Sunday, Abby and Lori visited for an indoor climbing experience. They did pretty well and showed plenty of confidence (which, to a belaying teacher, is very much appreciated). They said they had a blast. I have yet to meet a person who hates rock climbing.

I hit the gym again last night with a couple easy climbs. I found a 5.11 that I’m going to make my new project. There’s a move about 10 feet up that requires a left hand lunge up to a less than awesome pinching hold.

I will defeat it yet!

All entries for the MSPaint competition for “REVENGE OF THE TREES” are due WEDNESDAY at NOON, New York time. We have a bunch o’ entries so far. don’t miss out on the fun!

It’s Sander’s Birthday! Woo!

Our company has rewarded him with a round trip ticket to Tennessee!!
He leaves in 10 minutes!

My folks picked up a sweet board game in Cape Cod. It’s called SHUT THE BOX! It’s essentially a box with 9 tiles inside numbered 1 through 9. The tiles are attached to a dowel and can be flipped up or down.

The player rolls two die and then has to flip down a number of tiles whose sumation is equal to the sumation of the dice roll.

Example: if I roll two sixes, I could flip the 9 and 3, or a 6, 3,2,1 or a 7,5… etc

You keep rolling until you either can not flip down the total sum of the dice, or you run out of tiles. When you don’t flip down all the tiles, your score is read across the tiles left to right. So if your end tiles were 1 - 3 4 5 6 - - 9, your score would be 134,569. If you completely run out of tiles you shout SHUT THE BOX! then you Shut the box! and the game is over. Apparently this originates from a betting game where people would throw money in the box. The person who successfully “SHUT THE BOX!” would then close the box, win all the money, and take it home.

So Ryan Schenk played this game, and like any human being fell in love with it immediately. But unlike the rest of us mortals, he then decided to program the game. So here it is, Ryan’s first draft of SHUT THE BOX!

SHUT THE BOX!

Congratulations to Becky, who not only beat last week’s skyline by identifying it as Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, but did so quickly and efficiently. Indeed, both satellite and skyline were of the same location.

Well done becky! I thought for sure I’d have you stumped last week!

This week, we have the same rules as usual.

#1. Identify the SKYLINE.
#2. Determine if it is the same location as THE SATELLITE IMAGE.
#3. If it isn’t the same location, identify the location of the satellite image.

Good luck!

WARNING: THE ANSWER MAY BE IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!