After the bouldering competition on Saturday, Sander, Viv, Darce, Shaun, and I returned to the House of Rock for some cookery under Viv’s direction. The menu included deilciously seasoned steak, mouthwatering potatoes, and kale chips.

Kale chips.

While I foolishly didn’t take any pictures, you can be certain that I will be making kale chips in the future. It was very simple: Kale, oil, salt, pepper, and an oven. They were like crunchy chips from heaven.

To counteract the health, Viv brought some of her famous dark chocolate cookies which we baked on my new cookie tray and silpat (courtesy of Tree D).

COOKIES

These cookies. These cookies are high class.

After dinner we sat around and talked for awhile and eventually moseyed upstairs to bring the epic day to a close with equally as epic rock band.

Extreme.

Personal favorites of the night included B.Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer, The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s I’ve got a date with the Night, and Darcy and my epic rendition of American Woman with Shaun on lead guitar and Viv rockin the bass.

Great events, great food, great rock. There is no better weekend.

Right now I’m lounging in Portland, Oregon enjoying some down time before my return to CT on a red eye late tonight. My visit has been very relaxing. The highlight might very well have been a movie that Sarah recommended called Elling. It’s a really charming Norwegian film about two mentally handicapped fellows trying to grow accustomed to living on their own. The characters have such depth and are portrayed very honestly.

I’m hoping to get the film club (Schuyler, Darce, Viv, and Shaun) together next weekend to watch the film and make some really delicious food. I strongly strongly recommend this film. Interestingly enough, the entire film is available on youtube. So if you find yourself with 89 minutes to spare, go here and enjoy.

(side note: weird that the whole movie is available on youtube, Sarah and I wonder if there are other fun movies available online. We will explore and report back)

Another huge highlight was last night’s dinner. Sarah, Naomi, and I had Alicia and Dwane over for a feast of sorts. We made stuffed cabbage, asparagus, and a glorious artichoke parmesan stuffing. With the apple pie that Alicia and Dwane brought over I think it’s safe to say that no one went hungry.

I’m really pleased with our chefery.

I had a fantastic weekend. Much of my days were spent in preparation for some exciting excavation work that’s going down at the House of Rock. I’m planning on having a concrete floor put in the garage and some more official stairs placed in the front of the house. So I had to make sure that the garage was clean enough for that to go down. After achieving suitable cleanliness levels, I headed out with Kevin to check out this season’s first roller derby bout (check the recap in the features section).

It was a fantastic good time. After the amazing bout we met up with Margo and Bevan and headed out to the after party. The party was a blast. It was great to hang out with Margo and Bevan and totally cool to be in a social environment with the roller girls. We got a close look at Chelsea Grin’s anatomically correct collar bone tattoo and also were able to witness first hand Pam Terror’s awesome hula hooping skills. Seriously. Awesome.

This week I’ll be doing some traveling, first to Mass then to Oregon, so my updates might be a little staggered. Stay tuned for exiting reports on the garage progress and continued reports of all other things fun.

This weekend Shamus and I did some more work on his silk screening project. This time however, we realized a very important thing. It’s really obvious: Rake angle has a huge impact on the quality of the silk screen results.

Of course right? Here we were raking at maybe… 60 degrees, and when we dropped it to 15 degrees we found a much more direct force pushing the ink through the screen. The result? a fuller and much more even coat of ink on the shirt.

While waiting for one of the ink colors to dry we hit up the Southington disc golf course. In general, my consistency is improving. I now feel reasonably confident that I can at least throw the discs straight. The problem is that I’m not getting the distance needed to hit par on these courses. In order to help us keep track of our abnormally high scores we’ve started counting +/- around bogey… yes, that’s bogey not par. Oh Thursday, for example, I went out with Jesse and performed 1 under bogey – that’s equivalent to a bogey on every hole except one where I pulled par.

Someday I hope I’ll be skilled enough to switch my counting style, but for now this works best.

Sarah is visiting, and yesterday we hit up Stop and Shop to get some groceries for the week. This particular Stop and Shop had a new(ish) gadget available. It was a little scanner you’d carry around with your shopping cart. Whenever you put an item into your cart, you’d scan it first and then check out was… pretty much non-existent. You’d just drive your cart through the check out line, scan an ‘end of order’ barcode, pay, and leave.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. Every time you scanned an item the price would pop right up, and the constant barrage of prices acts as a consistent reminder as to exactly what you’re spending. It would also beep regularly to alert you to special sale items – allowing additional savings (or purchasing, depending how you look at it).

I wonder if the technology is a little bit “Apple Newton” in the timing of its entry into the market. I hope that RFID shopping isn’t too far away, allowing us to see cost information and avoid the check-out simply by placing an item into our cart. RFID comes with its own set of problems, so as an intermediary step the scanning tool is pretty sweet.

This past weekend Jesse and I hit up a disc golf course just outside of Waterbury. This was my second trip out, and it’s confirmed: I totally love disc golf.

Disc golf holes are just about as long as real golf holes. On our first trip out Shaun L, Shamus, Jesse and I played in Manchester, CT at Wickham park. The course was beautiful. Instead of a tee, you have a platform from which you throw your frisbee and instead of holes there are raised chain buckets into which you throw your frisbee.

To celebrate my entrance into this exciting new hobby, I purchased a few discs from the Disc Golf Center. I bought a Starfire driver and a Wizard putter. The drivers are obviously long distance discs and the putters are more meant to be tossed in a push-like manner than thrown. AND! It turns out that there are courses all over the place!! If you’d like to find one near you, check out the Professional Disc Golf Association website here.

Awesome!

For a fantastic video (including a shot of some 400′ plus drives) check this out.

This weekend a bunch of us hit up a polo match in Greenwich. Just like last year, it was a hilarious adventure into an environment which is very much different from our norm. Our car included myself, Shaun L, Pete, Chrystal, and Chrystal’s mom.

Shaun and I picked up Pete around 1:15. Armed with cameras, bags full of picnic goodies, and comfortable blankets, we entered the gates at the Greenwich polo club and parked. I think it’s safe to say that my car was the least expensive car in the lot. Now, you might argue that my car wins the same title in most Walmart parking lots, but whatever, you’re a jerk.

This polo match saw Ikepod against the home team, White Birch. As we ate our fruit and drank our Seagram’s 7, we enjoyed the lively banter from the announcer who spoke in a thick Spanish accent.

“Dis player iz like a woolf. Look at him go down ze field!! baddadum baddadum baddadum!”

He was everything you could hope for in an announcer.

One of the players on team Ikepod had the first name: Nacho. I thought this was wonderful so I cheered hard for them.

Ikepod player in action!

As enjoyable as the game itself, was looking at all the other attendees. By far my favorite was this gentleman:

He spoke with a sharp accent and wore a belt buckle with a prominent H.

Sadly, Ikepod did not win. While they controlled the scoreboard for most of the game, White Birch came back with a glorious finish, closing the gap between the teams and taking the game 10 to 8. Special thanks to Shaun L. for the photos.

I’m afraid rainy beach trip 2009 was a bit rainy. Tom, Mykal, and I were able to spend a little time on the sand – but after about two hours we had to admit that the rain was less than desirable. Instead of ending our adventure, we drove back to the House of Rock for some games and cooking. I successfully made a batch of Vivienne’s corn muffin jalapeno cheese balls using my awesome new aebleskiver pan* and we shared in some really delicious snacks – including home made spiced pickled carrots. Lord almighty – they are delicious.

While snacking, we played a card game called Race for the Galaxy. It was a bit involved and the directions were extensive, but the general play was very clever and it seemed pretty well balanced. I don’t think I’ll buy this game, but it’d be fun to try it a few more times with a larger crowd.

On Saturday Shaun, Viv, and I watched the movie Coraline in 3D. 3D! Oh man! What a treat! Though until this movie, I hadn’t realized that when you view something in 3D the colors suffer dramatically. Coraline is a very colorful movie in 2D. In 3D the color was lackluster. at best

Sunday saw some epic rock climbing. After a successful afternoon where I flashed a 5.11 and made some progress on a 5.12, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try a 5.13a. This particular route has a slippery start, but I got a few moves up. To make it easier to try, rock climbing worker Greg pulled over a pad so we could work on it boulder style (sans rope).

I tried again and again, regularly falling on a weak sloper for the left hand. After about 6 attempts, I felt a sharp stinging feeling in my middle finger. I looked down to find a wide gash at the second knuckle joint and blood all over the place. Greg, far more hardcore than I, pointed out that this sort of injury has happened to him before. When climbing a tough route, you can sometimes get little folds of skin on your fingers. If you squeeze them wrong, the whole thing bursts open.

It’s gross, but hopefully it will heal reasonably quickly. I am excited that I was able to stick even a single move on a 5.13. Awesome!

*aebleskiver pan: a sweet pan that lets you cook little stuffed pastries and stuff. Here’s a picture.

Goodmorning!

This weekend was an extremely productive one. It started with a raucous night of festive foodstuffs and the movie Slumdog Millionaire at Viv’s place. The food was, as always, over-the-top delicious. We made two treats.

First, chocolate chip cookies that easily outperformed any cookies I’ve experienced before. These were seasoned with sea salt. The saltiness was such an enjoyable complement to the sweet high brow chocolate Viv chose for the cookie. I say that we ‘made’ them, but really, Viv made them and I helped bake them. Viv had made the batter a few days earlier as these cookies require a setting time. We tried 24 hour cookies and 48 hour cookies. Viv prefers the 24 hour variety, I preferred the 48 hour type. Overall, waay way tasty though. That is certain.

The second treat were jalapeno cheese orbs. That’s not really their official name, but regardless, they were heavenly. We made a corn bread batter, added jalapenos, and then, as they cooked in a handy half-sphere baking tin, stuffed them with sharp cheddar cheese – gah, just typing about them is making my mouth water. They were AMAZING.

Friday was a success.

Saturday and Sunday saw some major housework. Special thanks to Shamus for all his help. Pictures and horror stories pending.

Saturday night I hit up roller derby. Connecticut had a bout against Boston. Boston is a very strongly rated team and they didn’t hold back in their onslaught. Stay tuned, the recap will probably post sometime mid-week.

Finally, I did give the cycling a shot this weekend. Kevin helped me fix up my bicycle and we took it for a short ride plagued with hills. It was a good workout, very invigorating for the amount of time spent on the road. My quads definitely enjoyed it. I’m going to try and work it into a cross training schedule. I’ll continue to report back. Thanks to everyone’s words of support in the previous post, it was helpful and got me trying something I wouldn’t have otherwise.

This weekend saw some tennis, some board games, and some kung fu – but the real fun was a Sunday afternoon trip out to Lamentation Mountain. It turns out that there’s a beautiful part of Meriden that I hadn’t visited before. There’s a park and a ton of trails in addition to a little remote climbing crag. The cliff is nothing that’s overwhelmingly amazing, – maybe 20-25 climbs, at 50 or so feet tall – but I think it has potential. The climbs are comfortably despite their simplicity and tendency to be overgrown with greenery.

Since this was our first trip there, Jesse, Joel, and I had to hike the bottom of the crag to find out the best spot for our rope. It was a bit of a harrowing trip down a gully of leaves and loose rock, but the immediate base of the cliff face was pretty clean. There were a few other really steep cliffs at the park, but I think a few of them might be quarries, or extremely hard to get to. We climbed a 5.8 while there. It was enjoyable, though I think it’d be wise to heed the advice of the book and only consider this location in the early spring or late fall when there’s less heavy foliage. Overall though, a successful trip!

Hello Readers!

Things have been pretty crazy lately, so I must apologize for the lack of updates. First, let’s talk a bit about this past weekend. Friday night saw the purchase of a new vehicle which will find its way into the feature section of the website either this week or next. Saturday had some kung fu and an amazing game of Battlestar Gallactica.

Sunday was tennis and wake boarding.

I took one particularly nasty fall when wake boarding. I managed to get just a little bit of air and land it on one pass and got a little overconfident. I tried a second time and the leading edge of the board dipped below the water surface quite aggressively putting me into a faceplant position. I’m still a bit sore from the impact. It was annoying. Next time, I’ll have to take it a little bit easier and maybe focus more on cruising around instead of making jumps.

Last night was some rock climbing and some board games, tonight is kung fu. On top of life’s adventures, work has been super busy with a heck of a lot of customer visits. I love being busy.

So far it’s been a pretty great summer.

Over the holiday weekend, I must admit, I really didn’t do too much. Shaun L. and I finished watching DeathNote and started in on Battlestar Gallactica. I got a little bit of housework done and a fair bit of paperwork organization. I really have to make an effort to keep paperwork and mail organized, so I figured the only way to do that would be to start with a clean slate for July. I went through and organized everything. Such a pain, but a necessary one to be sure.

There was some mild cookery this weekend as well. Chili, coffee cakes, banana breads, and the like. Additionally, Viv, James, and crowd headed out to New Britain on Saturday night for an epic fireworks show. The fireworks were so close that after exploding the burning embers frequently passed across the zenith. It was wild fun – a long show too, maybe 30 or 40 minutes?

Kevin’s band came over on Saturday to jam, so I joined in for a bit on my sax. It was fun to bring the horn out after its extended stay in its case.

Overall, nothing too notable, but everything relaxing. Three cheers for America!

All things Mike D… some updates.

1. I received my Kung Fu sword. Pete has offered his services in taking some sweet photographs of the weapon with his fancy-shmancy camera. After photos are taken, you can rest assured that they will be posted here. I’m also thinking that if I can somehow take the coloring and match properties to the current banner, perhaps I’ll update mikedidonato.com’s look.

2. I’m working on a sizable mikedidonato.com project. It’s going to be a research paper of sorts that explores some geekery. I’m very excited about it, though it will be weeks, if not months, before I have amassed satisfactory amounts of knowledge to post the results. Still though, get pumped that fun geekery is in the making. It will appear in the feature section.

3. Did I tell y’all that I got a promotion at work a few months ago? I leveled up from Mechanical Engineer to Engineered Systems Product Manager. OSNAP! Look out!

4. Climbing is going very well. On Sunday, I led Broadway (5.8) at Ragged Mountain without fault. It was ridiculously smooth. This is exciting because, so far, I’ve only ever successfully led 5.8’s under the burden of heavy stress and nervousness. Being the leader can be rather stressful. Perhaps I will soon be able to begin working 5.9’s without getting too wigged out and failing miserably.

5. I got the new eating well magazine and will be trying a melon soup this week. If it doesn’t explode with summery tastes and flavors I will be sorely disappointed. Stay tuned for reports of success or failure.

There’s a hidden theme in today’s post (probably obvious to some). Can you find it and identify all the instances?

Saturday saw annoying encounters with both mosquitoes and wasps. Sarah and I were doing some yardwork at the House of Rock on Saturday to beautify the yard a bit. I bought a bunch of rose bushes and some mulch and we worked for a few hours (with great results!).

The mosquitoes… well those always hit me hard; but the wasp encounter was a special treat. There I was, digging a hole for a beautiful pink rose bush and I felt a quick stab in my back. I’d been working around roses all day so my first impression wasn’t ‘yellow jacket’ it was ‘thorn.’ I casually reached back to try and find the thorn that was lodged in my shirt but found none, so I continued my work. Moments later I felt another quick stab.

“Darn it!” I thought, and tried again to find the pesky culprit without success. Two stings later my hand found the wasp in my shirt.

Bee and wasp stings are really interesting. I think I’ve only been stung about 5 times in my life. Each one has been a dramatically different experience. The last time I got stung, I got stung on my toe as I walked through the yard with open shoes. That sting felt like I’d had my toes amputated with a rusty barbed wire chainsaw laced in death.

But this time the immediate pain was minimal – nothing more than a lightly lingering burning feeling. Each of the four stings were very mild. Unfortunately, the sting locations have since blossomed into itching welts of extreme discomfort. Oh well, I will continue liberal use of itch cream.

Every spring I get excited for summer. And every summer I forget the bugs.

Oh man!

What a weekend! On top of the graduation feature over on the left, I have two more exciting features to share this week (stay tuned for those). Outside of those big events there were a bunch of fun small events that were noteworthy. Sarah is visiting so we had some truly fun and relaxing times including:

- burritos, twice.
- the completion of the firefly series (the movie shall be watched on Wednesday at Vivienne’s)
- reading at the park
- a walk down a cute little CT trail
- homemade meals with Theresa
- board games (which I loved, and everyone else hated)
- some guitar with crowd Kevin
- a great trip to Plan B with the fam

It’s a beautiful day and things are going very well at the moment.

Saturday was pretty intense here in CT. It started with an early morning trip to Ragged Mnt with Pete, R.C. Lauren, and Evil Ben. Pete and I have started getting into the routine of getting to the cliffs at 7am. It’s perfect because CT climbers are notoriously slow started with their weekend crag expeditions. When we get there at 7, it’s pretty much guaranteed that we’ll have 2-3 hours with the rocks to ourselves before the next wave of ambitious climbers comes out at 10. Additionally, the cliff faces west so the sun doesn’t crest the rocks until afternoon – providing a cool, quiet, shady climbing locale for us. It’s so wonderfully serene at the cliffs in the morning.

I left the rocks around 11 and headed out wakeboarding with Brandon. Shaun and I met up with Brandon and John. These were my first board runs of the season. I had no trouble rising from the water, but I felt pretty consistently unstable once I established myself outside of the wake. Hopefully the day will come when I’m as fluent on the water as Brandon. Brandon had some extremely smooth jumps and looks like he’s in constant control. Color me envious. We kept it up until about 5:30 and then headed home. It was an exhausting, though truly intense day.

Sunday saw some major cleaning, some tasty cooking, and a fair bit of music with Crowd Kevin.

File this weekend under Epic.

This weekend was a welcome entry into Summer. After Saturday’s adventure (see feature section), Sunday saw a whole heap of house work and a super fun visit from Vivienne. She introduced me to another side of my rice cooker.

Originally, her purpose was simply to stop by and pick up her MP3 player that I had borrowed. But it didn’t take much convincing to get her to stay for some food. We made a chicken curry rice dish, but made the whole thing in the rice cooker. Chicken and everything! Rice, onions, jalapenos, a heap of spices, yogurt, chicken, ginger, garlic, and… other ingredients that I forget were all thrown into the rice cooker. Then we hit ‘go’ and 25 minutes later we had a full meal. I’ve never thought to add my meat right into the rice cooker – genius!! Now I can get all the delicious with less effort and fewer pots. Awesome! Thanks Viv!

Monday started with an early trip to Main cliff in Southington for some climbing with Pete, Ivonna B. Chu, Chris, and Good Ben (as opposed to evil Ben). We started with Kor Crack (sp?). It’s a 5.9 with a tricky roof. I climbed first, and was zipping through until I found a rock (maybe the size of a coffee can) that was both pivotal for climbing the route and also… loose. I called out to my friends below to look out and I gave the rock a pull. It broke free and trundled itself to the cliff base. Interestingly, I think that the climb should now be considered more of a 5.9+ or 5.10. Now, instead of a handy grip… you have to do an intimidating fist jam which hurts like heck.

After Kor Crack, Pete led Main Street (5.4) and I led Wishbone (5.7+ a personal favorite). This was my first real lead of the season so the adrenaline was pumping in full force. Add in some healthy sun exposure and you can be sure that I came home utterly and completely exhausted. Overall, a very enjoyable weekend.

On Saturday, Kevin and I took the train into New York to participate in Improv Everywhere’s MP3 Experiment. It worked like this: a whole heap of people downloaded an MP3 into their MP3 player. Then, at a decided time and location (4:00:00pm, Roosevelt Island, NY) we all hit play at the same time.

We’d been instructed to come to the event in either a Red, Yellow, Blue, or Green t-shirt. As 4:00:00 approached huge crowds of people in colorful t-shirts started pouring out of the subway station.

photo by Brian Fountain

We were given a general area to collect (anywhere in the blue). And at 4pm, on the dot, everyone started the track.

It was a mix of music and instructions that guided us through hilarity including the following:

- High fives for everyone
- Nap time

photo by Katie Sokoler

- Dance Parties (ho-down, robot, and 1920’s)
- Freeze tag
- A giant war with inflatable weapons (hammers vs. bats)

photo by Electricllya687

- An epic wolf story
- A long march towards unity

photo by Brian Fountain

Overall, there were probably about 2000 people who came to the event. It lasted for 47 minutes and was one of the most unique events I’ve experienced.

After the event, Kevin and I met up with Jesse and Tyler. Tyler was a major player in the MP3 planning and execution. His primary role was the development of all the music played. It was all original work and if you’d like to check some of it out, head over to his MySpace page Here. For a specific song sample, check out Peters and the Wolves here.

Great job Improv Everywhere and Tyler! Also, Special thanks to Vivienne for letting me borrow her MP3 player and to Kevin for joining me on Saturday’s adventure.

Hi!

This past weekend was pretty awesome! Friday started with a night of Kung Fu followed by a trip back home. It was nice to spend a little time at home. My folks are pretty wonderful people. I spent some time running some errands with my dad and tried to help my mom with dinner. At one point we were all sitting outside in the gorgeous sun reading and drinking coffee. What a luxury! It was a truly a perfect moment.

On Sunday I zipped out with Vivienne to a beginner’s climbing day at Ragged Mountain. I set up an extremely stable five-point anchor (five? excessive? perhaps. I excess the crap out of my anchors) on easy peasy Main Street (5.4). The anchor had two bomber nuts, and three cams that ranged from super secure to unmovable. Viv did super. It was her first time outside and she overcame the fear of heights and the differences of rock vs. plastic. The weather was toasty, but not too much so in the shade of the cliff. It was great. When we got back to the house of rock there was some crafting and a legendary sorbet based smoothie.

Sunday night I practiced guitar, read, and made some delicious kabobs. Is there such a thing as an undelicious kabob? I’m not sure. This one had a tasty tasty sour cream, vinegar, cumin, chili pepper sauce. Whew, A+

Add onto that the wins by the Sox over their dreaded rivals? Bottom of the ninth homer? Stealing home? Dang. It was a good weekend for Boston fans.

Happy Easter MikeDiDonato.com readers! Mine was spent with the folks and was pretty enjoyable. The food was plentiful and the company was hilarious as always. Our Easter ham didn’t quite meet the historic glory of the Ham of ‘97, but it was darn close in my opinion. We talked of crafts, roller derby, and world travels.

Speaking of crafts, I’ve started the process of turning the Proxima Centauri MSPaint into a t-shirt, though I suspect it’ll take a fair amount of time to make this shirt a reality as it’s multi-color. I’ll probably only make about 4 of the shirts because colored shirts are a pain in the butt.

On Friday night Darce, Schuyler, Viv, Kevin, Shaun, and I had a raucous night of board games and Vivienne’s famous Tomato Basil Pie. We played… 5? maybe 6? games of Pandemic. We didn’t win once with 4 people, though Viv and I brought it home in the two person version. What an amazing game! I’m confident that with some finesse we can turn our losing record around. The game has such remarkable depth.

I hope you guys had great weekends! I hope your Mondays are A+.

Part I: The Kitchen

This past weekend was a flurry of activity. It started right after work on Friday. Jesse, Shamus, Tony, and I hit that kitchen hard. We tore down the soffits* above the sink and range, and started building new and improved ones. Tony singlehandedly annihilated the annoying ceiling sections above the original soffit. Meanwhile, Brian completed most of the electrical work and gave us light.

Saturday saw the building of the new soffits, tons of cutting and prep work for the new beadboard ceiling, and the beginning of the long process of putting the new ceiling up. Special thanks to Brian, Jesse, Tony, Shamus, and my folks for coming down to help. Dad D was a fiend with the skill saw and Mom D treated everyone to delicious paninis and enchilada casserole.

Sunday Sarah arrived and she, Tony, and I completed the rest of the beadboard ceiling. What’s remaining? Well, there’s some beadboard that will go into the soffit. Then there’s painting, crown molding, and new appliances. Daaaang.

*a Soffit is a kind of protruding corner that, in this case, is used above the kitchen cabinets to hold recessed lighting for the counters

Part II: The Watch

Sarah got me a really funky new watch. When I was out in Portland, Sarah and I visited a few of the little craft stores out by Cannon beach. In one particular gallery I saw a Pop Art watch and really fell for it. It’s got a firetruck red band and the imagery on top is colorful and vibrant.

The artist who made it is Sonya Paz and she had a whole bunch of different styles and colors. I didn’t buy the watch while I was out in Portland but Sarah noted my excitement about it and totally picked it up for me. Thanks Sarah!

I am done with classes.

I have completed the academic marathon that began when I was first accepted to graduate school on August 16th, 2005. It’s been 3 years, 5 months, and 30 days. I’ve participated in 1,220 hours of classroom time. I’ve learned a lot and, so far, I’m extremely happy it’s over.

I celebrated with a weekend of extreme awesomeness. Friday night after class, I zipped over to Darcy’s where we enjoyed tomato pie (holy crap – delicious), and some homemade chocolate cake (with frosting and ice cream!). We played some games and hung out. It was the perfect evening to conclude the quest for degrees.

Saturday saw Longboarding (more about this later), kung fu, guitar practice, rock band, and the movie: Death Race. Sunday included intense cooking (ribs – deeelicious), running, smoothies, rock climbing, more longboarding, more guitar, and some pleasure reading: (I Know this Much is True by Wally Lamb)

Longboarding:

Longboarding is like skateboarding, but… you guessed it… the board is longer. It’s more of a traveling board than a trick board. I’ve never been good at board sports so it’s about time that I worked out the kinks. Roommate Kevin introduced me to the sport. My hope is that by the end of the summer we can don helmets, gloves, pads, and other protective gear and go up to Meriden’s famous Castle Craig. After about 8pm they close the long steep road to cars and I’m hoping we can scream down the road performing sweet tricks and videotaping the intensity.

Anyway, I am totally stoked to be entering a new phase of my life. I hope I can cram it full with as much adventure as possible.

This weekend was superb. The highlight was the conclusion of my 8 hour long Saturday classes at RPI. I’ve spent 50 Saturdays at RPI in Hartford since the dawn of this program and I’m really sick of it. After class on Saturday, I went out to a celebratory dinner with Darcy and Schuyler at my favorite West Hartford burger place: Plan B. Then we went back to Darcy’s and watched Old Boy. I think it’s safe to say that it was the single most psychologically disturbing/screwed up movie I have ever seen.

Sunday a whole heap of us helped Irene move into her new place. Afterwards, Darce, Schuyler, Aaron2, and I grabbed lunch at The Funky Monkey, and then Aaron2 and I went climbing before the football game.

After months in Ohio, it was such a joy to go climbing this week. I’ve been suffering through about 4 or 5 months of sporadic exercise, so it’s exciting to work myself back into a reliable schedule. My finger strength is still there, though my finger endurance has suffered heavily. Hopefully I’ll be running laps on 5.tens and 5.elevens before too much longer.

This week will see more climbing and my return to Kung Fu. Hmm. I’ll have to make sure I eat well this week lest my body unduly suffer from the sudden return to fitness.

It’s so nice to have a life schedule again. Take that Ohio!

John and Irene had their annual Halloween bash on Saturday night. I needed a costume that could compete with last year’s nunchucks. I don’t think I surpassed them, but I’m pleased with my costume nonetheless.

The Concept: Scrabble D.

The Execution:

That’s Darcy on the right as a Popple. Also, it should be noted that HOLY CRAP I NEED A HAIRCUT.

Here are some other fun photos from the night:

Darcy eats my scrabble tile as Irene stands provocatively as Madonna.

Darcy was really going at that tile. She likes to gnaw.

without arms, it was difficult for me to eat and drink. Thankfully, Iron man was available to help me out.

Me and Chris (some shrubbery)

Scrabble D and the Popples*

Really, the night was a huge success. More photos may appear later as party participants post photos on facebook.

*Whoa – band name potential?