Cruise Pics

Somehow do to my tinkering, my post with the link to the pictures is gone. So here it is again...

http://www.pbase.com/squilky/cruise_2004

While talking with Niel tonight, after viewing the photos he was curious about whether I shaved my upper arms or not. I can honestly say the answer is no. My forearms get tan from golfing, so my upper arm and chest tend to stay a lot whiter.

Introducing Tony!!!

This is Tony the turtle, he likes to hang out in our back yard. He's quite the ladies turtle, and he does tricks. I once saw him spin on his back like he was beakdancing and he's been to known to do flips.

I've got gas...

So Rachel's dad calls me at around 6:30 tonight and says "We got a tee-time at Meadows Farms tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM". I giggled politely and nervously in hopes that he was kidding about the time, but not about the fact he had a tee time for us. Well he was balls on serious. But here's the kicker, Meadows Farms is about a 80 mile drive, which means we're all meeting up over at Rachel's parents at 7:15 in the AM. Dear lord...

And of course, the night time cold medicine I took about an hour ago hasn't kicked in yet. I'm wide awake, and I have gas from the Mexican food we had for dinner. How will this affect my golf game? I'm about to find out in a few hours.

Yankees are on quite a roll. They've hit a weak portion of their schedule, and have been beating up on the Orioles and Devil Rays the way they should be. Red Sox have lost 2 in a row, and the Yankees have won 6 in a row and have jumped into first place. Booyah!!!!

I was watching a Blues Traveler concert earlier and John Popper looks so bizarre. I think some people are meant to be overweight. He sounds exactly the same when he sings, and he is no way a skinny man, but he looked so much cooler when he was heavy. Same goes for Al Roker, he looks bizarre as a thinner man. His head looks like it's out of proportion with his body. The guy I would love to see lose about 150 pounds is Ted Kennedy. With that giant potato head of his, he would look a frigging bobble head!

Oh man, I need some Gas X or Beano or something...

Misuse of a word...

Dictionary.com defines the word literally as: In a literal or strict sense...

So why do so many people use this word incorrectly?

I thought it was just dump people I interact with through work using the word improperly, but I heard an ad for that Denzel Washington flick "Man of Fire" that says something like "Denzel Washington literally lights the screen on fire". Ok so you mean to tell me, while this dumbass film critic was watching the movie, Denzel Washington walked into the theatre, sprayed the movie screen with gasoline and torched the screen with a flame thrower?

Another misuse of the word. I was recently talking to a coworker, and she said "It was so hot in there, people were literally melting". Ok so was it like when they opened the holy grail in Indiana Jones, and peoples faces melted? I don't know how hot it had to be to melt human flesh, but I think its got to be hotter than 95-100 degrees.

Oh how I long to be in Mexico...

A week ago, I was sitting on a warm, sunny beach in Mexico drinking rum punch. A week later, I am eating my lunch at my desk at work. Ugggh.

Rachel and I drove up to Baltimore last night to see the Yankees vs Orioles game. On the way up, we saw hundreds of cicadas. Apparantly they have surfaced in large numbers in Maryland. Still haven't heard or seen any by my house, but they were definitly out in bunches in Maryland. They were so loud at one point that they were louder than the radio playing in Rachels car. We had the windows up, the AC on and the radio on and could still hear them. There were also a lot of dead ones around the outside of Camden Yards.

The Yankees game was cool, but long. In the top of the 3rd inning the skies opened and it poured and thundered and lightninged for about 45 minutes. That experience was one of the worst I've ever experienced. People are just rude. We walked out back near the consession stands to get out of the rain. Little kids were running wild, stepping on our feet. Adults were shoving and pushing. Pathetic adults were lighting up and blowing cigarette smoke in everyones face. People were yelling and spilling drinks. At one point one drunken idiot with mustard all over his shirt came walking through the crowd. Lucky for me, most of the mustard on his shirt he must have wiped off on other people. If he would have gotten mustard on my Don Mattingly jersey, I swear I would have spent the night in jail. It was hot, crowded and smokey. I was so close to just leaving at that point. But luckily we stuck it out and the game resumed. Got to see Alex Rodriguez hit a three run home run, saw a rare Derek Jeter RBI single and got to see John Leiber pitch a beautiful game. So it made it all worth it. But the experience re-established that I hate crowds!!!!

Last week while in Mexico, Rachel and I relaxed quietly on a lounge chair and enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere. Then the three jackasses showed up. Why is it that there is always a group of middle aged guys who feel the need to toss around a football on the beach? Not only were they splashing and kicking sand everywhere like a bunch of fools, they were screaming the entire time. I just don't understand how some people were raised. Didn't their parents teach them any manners? Don't they realize that people are on vacation and want to relax? They don't want to get hit in the head by a footballs or hear you yelling and screaming. Don't parents tell little kids that when they run into someone, or step on their feet that they are supposed to say sorry or excuse me? The future of America is scary....

Beach Volleyball

Here's what a girl in a bikini looks like serving during a beach volleyball game...



This is what a man in relatively good shape looks like serving during a beach volleyball game...



This is what a hairy, out of shape guy who spends 40 hours sitting at a desk looks like serving during a beach volleyball game...



dear lord, I need to join a gym or something...

I'm baaaaaackkkkk

Well we made it back safe and sound from the Caribbean. I'll post a longer post about the vacation down the road, for now I'll just say we had a great time. We had a few problems along the way, but overall it went very well. Here's a pic and a few keywords to tickle your collective asses with a feather...

beach volleyball, crazy old man, stingrays, pirates, turtles, motion of the ocean, captain Mike of the USS speed boat, and of course Mexican drinking water.

Cicada Madness

Ok, the northern Virginia/Southern Maryland area has officially gone nuts. There are entire news segment being dedicated to cicadas. Bug "experts" are being interviewed for their insight and predictions about the cicadas. I think it's all being blown out of proportion. SO far I haven't seen a single cicada. Yet up in DC and parts of Maryland, they are reporting that people are waking up and finding their lawns and sidewalks littered with cicada shells. I'll keep my eyes peeled and my camera handy. Of course the invasion would have to begin as I am about to leave the country.

On my way into work today, they aired the "Howard Stern Miss Butaface 2004 Contest". It was pure genius. For those of you who don't know what a butaface is (shame on you), it's a girl who has a smoking hot body, but a not so great face. ie Sarah Jessica Parker and Adriana from the Sopranos. They had about 10 contestants come out one by one. They came out in a bikini with a bag on their heads. They were first rated 1-10, 10 being best for how goof their body was. Then after the judges (Howard, Robin, Artie, Fred, Baba Booey, Ralph and Rob Sneider), finished rating their body, the bag was removed. They were then graded for their faces. The faces were rated the opposite of the bodies. So if the girl had a hideous face, she would score high numbers. If she was attractive, she would score a low score. So theoretically the perfect butaface would score a 10 for her body, and a 10 for her hideous face for a total of 20.

Despite not being able to see the girls, they did a wonderful job explaining what the girls looked like. The show airs on E! sometime next week I believe. Ill have to Tivo that. Artie was quite drunk, so he didn't hold back. He described one contestant as looking like former Yankees 2nd baseman Willie Randolph and he described another as looking like Tony Soprano. They must have been lovely ladies :-).

The cicadas are coming... the cicadas are coming!!!!!

Canon Baseball

Even though I've lived down here for almost 4 years now, I hadn't been to a Potomac Cannons game. The Potomac Cannons are the Cincinatti Reds minor league team, partof the Carolina League. The stadium is only about 5 miles from my house, I drive past it all the time. So Rachel and I decided to go see a game last night.

Walked up to the ticket counter about 5 minutes before game time. Got tickets in the front row, just about halfway between the pitchers mound and home plate. SWEET!!! Best part is that 2 tickets only cost $20. We walked to our seat, and there were maybe 300 other people in the stands. It was spooky quiet for a sporting event, kind of like being at a Mets game. bah dum bah!

The 1st thing that I noticed was how small most of the players were. A good number of them were no bigger than I am. In a modern era where major leaguers are well over 200 pounds, it seemed funny to see guys who were averaging between 5 foot 6 and 5 foot 9 and weighing 150-175 pounds. There wasn't a radar gun, but it seemed like the pitchers were tossing the ball pretty hard. There was a good pop coming off the catchers mit. It was neat being so close to the action. The visiting teams on deck circle was right in front of our seats. I could have literally reached out and grabbed someone on the on deck circle.

One of the big differences between a major league game and minor league game was what happened between innings. Generally at MLB games they have giant jumbo-tron screens and state of the art sound systems. So they usually play music, or show some wacky bloopers in between innings. At the Cannons game, they had little contests in between innings. One involved a little kid racing the Cannons mascot around the bases. The next inning the promotions crew came out with a sling shot and fired some t-shirts into the crowd. One of the more bizarre contests was when they put these bungee harnesses on two little kids and had them run in opposite directions till they crossed the finish line. One of the kids was quite a bit bigger which caused the smaller kid to face plant in the dirt.

We stayed till the 7th inning stretch, then headed home to watch 24. Overall it was a cool experience. Rachel and I plan on going back over the summer when they have fireworks night.
Some pictures can be seen here....

http://www.pbase.com/squilky/cannons_baseball

Here I am with the Cannons mascot "Big Shot"

Weekend Wrapup...

Some things I discovered this weekend/things on my mind...

1) Not a good idea to cut the grass when it's still wet
2) Snoop Dog is one funny dude
3) Eli Manning frightens me almost as much as Kerry Collins
4) Nick from the Apprentice is now working for the Oakland Raiders
5) Air conditioning is one of my favorite alltime imventions
6) I can make lasagna!
7) I REALLY dislike "Boston Rob"
8) Quizzes are fun and addicting
9) Adriana from the Sopranos is a "Buta Face"
10) Hybrid vehicles intrigue me
11) The price I paid for gas last night ($1.82) is the highest I've ever paid for gas
12) Our old vacuum didn't work very well
13) Spiders creep me out
14) Tiger Woods peaked too early
15) I really want to play a game of softball
16) The photos of the Iraqi prisoners don't really bother me
17) Nothing beats Cocoa Crispies!

It's a Girl...

As expected, Rachel's sister had her baby last night. Last night, at around 7:30 PM little Ashely made her grand entrance. Mom and baby are doing well. Labor was pretty quick this time around which made all the nurses happy. They were all joking that the baby needed to be born before 8:00 so they could watch the series finale of Friends. Labor was induced around 6:00, water was broken at 7:00 and about 30 minutes later, Ashley was born. Got to hold her, take some pictures and eat some celebratory pink "It's a Girl" lollipops before leaving the hospital.

The finale of Friends was ok, much better than Seinfeld. The story line was pretty predictable. I enjoyed the lie Phoebe made up about the faulty filange on the plane. There was a commercial for the new Joey show, and it looks like they are taking the whole Frasier route. Just the way that Frasier moved from Boston to Seattle, Joey moves from NYC to Los Angeles. And the chic from the Sopranos is indeed in the show.

Last night I was woken up at around 12:30 because of a monitoring issue at work. Kept me up till around 3:00 AM so I am zombielike today. I can't wait till I can go home and take a nap.

Current Mood:

YES!!!!

I've been a fan of kiss since I'm about 4 years old. My sister Linda was a fan, and I would listen to the Alive II and Love Gun album with her. I clearly remember a 5 year old me, jumping around on my sisters bed pretending to be Gene Simmons in concert. Well, it's always been a dream of mine to see Kiss live. I've always felt that Alive II is the greatest live album ever done. Well, I will be going to see Kiss on Sunday July 25th in Virginia Beach!!! I am so pumped!!! They toured last summer with Aerosmith, and I was going to go, but I had to pick my mom up to take her to Maryland, so I never got around to it. So I am very excited they are touring again this summer. I'm sure the members of Kiss who are now in their 50's aren't as energetic as they were in the 1970's, but I hear their pyrotechnics are amazing! Rachel is more excited about the opening act (Poison), but that's ok with me. I think it will be funny to see how old the guys from Poison got.

I'm going to see Kiss....YES!!!!! YES!!!!! YES!!!!!

8 In A Row

The Yankees are on fire, en fuego, Sur Le Feu, Auf Feuer!!! They are looking much more Yankeelike the past 2 weeks. I guess the factoid about teams needing several weeks to recover from opening in Japan is true. The bats are finally coming alive and the pitching for the most part has been spectacular. If John Lebeir can get the Yankees 15 wins, and Mike Mussina can get his control back, the Yankees will win 110 games easily. Kevin Brown and Javier Vasquez are amazing pitchers. Kevin Brown worries me a bit, because he looks so old, sad and fragile, but when he gets out on the mound he baffles the hitters.

Last night Rachel and I finished watching Something's Gotta Give. While it's not a true chic flick, it was a bit painful to sit through. It was a 2 hour movie, that dragged on way too long. I thought the movie had some real creepy parts. Seeing Jack Nickolson and Diane Keaton making out was sort of like watching your grandparents make out. It wasn't easy to watch. And when I heard there was nudity in the movie, I was expecting to see Amanda Peete naked, but nooooo we get to see Jack's ass and Diane's pruney boobs.

To balance0 the evening out, we watched the premier of Wild Boys which has been sitting on Tivo for over a week. Wow that show never fails to amaze me. If Steve O lives to be 40, I'll be shocked. In a single episode, he wrestled a sloth bear (and lost), was deficated on by an elephant, pierced his cheek with a needle about 5-6 inches long, licked a man with elephantitis feet, walked on broken glass and across hot coals. He did all that for a 30 minute show.

Rachel's sister has an appointment with her doctor today. She's very uncomfortable, and word is she will ask the doctor to induce labor. Giving birth on the night the final episode of Friends is on. What is she thinking ;-). Good thing for Tivo. Not getting too geared up for the series finale. After the horrible ending to Seinfeld, I don't expect much from Friends.

As the cruise inches closer, I am both excited and a little fearful. I'm excited that I will be away from work for a week, and that I'll be visiting places I've never been before. But Im fearful because it sounds like there are tons of rules on a cruise ship. There are certain nights when there are formal dinners where men have to wear a suite. If you eat in one of the main dining areas, you have to wear long dress pants, no shorts aloud. And I have this fear that I will somehow get lost on the ship due to my horrible sense of direction. I guess I should stop worrying about it...

Current Mood:

Random thoughts from the weekend...

Spent Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday up in NY for my Godsons Communion. It was fun, most of the kids were well behaved. One of the things that struck me about the Communion ceremony is that there were about 10 girls who didn't have a male partner to walk down the aisle with. No big deal really, just seemed funny to see two girls walking down the aisle together. I know this is wrong of me, but it reminded me of some sort of lesbian wedding.

The party afterwards was fun. The amount of food that was served was alarming. It seemed like they were dishing out more food aboutr every 10 minutes. Started out with appetizers like baked clams, calamari and stuffed mushrooms. Then we had salad. Followed by a bowl of pasta. Then the main course which consisted of chicken parmisian, sausage and peppers, chicken scampi, and veal scallopini. Then of course came dessert. We left the restaurant quite full and bloated. Most of the kids were well behaved, some were a little out of hand.

To burn off some of the calories, a few hours after the party ended, Rachel and I played basketball with Dylan and Samantha. I learned that I can still shoot a basketball with the best of them, but I have no stamina or dribbling skills whatsoever. I wowed the kids during a game of HORSE by sinking a shot while sitting "Indian" style from about the foul line. My reverse left handed layup was also impressive. Samantha impressed me with this drill she learned call Spider Dribbling. She looked like one of the Globetrotters.

Sunday we had a rather interesting experience at a rest stop in Maryland. We saw a sign for smoothies, so we decided to stop and get one. The smoothie place was just a madhouse. Apparantly they couldn't afford .50cents for a sign to say where the line started. So there was just a mass of people standing in front of the counter. One of the people standing in front of the counter was just making me sick. It was this little girl with hair that looked like it hadn't been brushed or washed in weeks. There was this big bin of ice in front of the counter, and in the ice they had bottle water. The little girl kept taking the ice from the bin, putting it in her mouth and spitting it back in the bin. Its gross for 100 different reasons. Her dad, father of the year didn't say anything to her the whole time we were online. What made it worse was that the people behind the counter were terrible at their jobs. They didn't speak or understand English very well (Strike 1), they were horribly slow (strike two) and half of the items on the menu were not available (strike 3). So we decided to just get 2 shakes at Burger King instead. Burger king spent the money to puy up a sign to say where the line started, so the line was formed in an orderly fashion. The woman behind the counter was about 2 minutes from having a meltdown. The man in front of us asked where he could get a kids meal. He first asked a young Asian girl behind the counter. She didn't answer him, she just pointed and smiled. So then he asked Miss Congeniality where he could get a kids meal. Her answer "just take a hamburger and keep moving". Then a woman comes back and says "excuse me, I got a Whopper with mayo, I just wanted ketchup." The women behind the counter rolls her eyes, and tossed her (literally) another Whopper. "The woman asked, does this one have mayo?" Miss Congeniality answer "well take off the wrapper and look!". Finally it was our turn, Rachel asks for two large chocolate shakes. Miss C replied "the machines don't work". Oh wonderful :-). Got home in time to catch most of the Sopranos.

This morning Im driving into work and Fat Mike from NoFX is on the Howard Stern show. He's promoting a CD/DVD called Rock Against Bush. Ok so maybe there are plenty of reasons why President Bush shouldn't get re-elected, but Fat Mike didn't know a single reason why. Howard asked what kind of stuff the band was against, all Fat Mike could say was, well it's just a scary time man. Great answer, a great way to back your cause. Mike didn't even know most of the track names or who else was on the CD. He did mention a song called Baghdad by The Offspring, he mentioned it was written in 1991 during the GUlf War. Ok Mike, do you realize this is a different Bush in the White House than the one in 1991? Then the lead singer from the Misfits called up. He was part of a group called something like "Conservatives for Punk". He challenged Mike to a debate, Mike declined. The guy from the Misfits didn't sound much more intelligent, but he was smart enough to realize Mike from NoFX, didn't have many of the facts. I have no problem with a band, or a group of bands putting out a CD or DVD that calls out the president. Free speach gives them a right to do so, but make it clear what your beef with the president is about. It's real easy nowadays to say you're anti the president, but if you don't know why you are so against the president, you just look a tool trying to sell some records.