A very happy 4th wedding anniversary to my hot wife forever! On July 4th this year we celebrated 8 years as a couple. And we met 10 years ago in 1997 — as fellow Vassar English students and Miscellany News editors. It’s been an incredible ride and each year just seems to get better.
As we tell each other every day, we’re so lucky to have so much in life: Each other, great family, awesome friends, loving dogs, a wonderful house, a rockin’ town, plenty to eat, and, of course, our health. I love you, Jen!
And some scans in honor of my hot wife forever and our ongoing excellent adventures — from my amazing 30th birthday scrapbook (click below images to see larger):
My Hot Wife Forever (created by Sarah & Eric, also fans of Jen)
I love Saratoga Springs. It’s not in every town where you can go from basking in the beautiful sunshine watching Shakespeare in the park (Much Ado About Nothing) like it’s 1599 to enjoying some drinks downtown before finding yourself on a giant tour bus driving from one bar to another around the corner, vis-a-vis a party tour of Broadway. Saturday night with Alex, Anne, Tom, and Justin, Jen and I did just that.
Strangely, even though Cati was in Spain on Saturday, she was kind enough to use her newfound intercontinental transportation superpower to show up in our kitchen for a photo:
Then, our magical mystery tour (here’s the route we took) — the bus’s ID number? 420, of course:
(Thanks to all the contributors to this blog entry — Jen, Alex, Justin, and Tom all played key roles in providing the content! This one really was a team effort, and I couldn’t have done it without all you guys.)
The Olde Saratoga Brewery — location of my awesome 30th birthday party — is the best kept secret in town. Not only is the beer really damn good (and strong), but you can hang out there all night and spend a whopping 10 bucks. Since it’s technically a tasting room and not a bar, you don’t actually buy the beer. Rather, you buy souvenir glasses — 2 glasses for $4. Conveniently, each pint glass comes filled with the beer of your choice. So one “round” is 2 beers, which is $4. Two rounds is 4 beers, which is $8. Throw in a $2 tip (at least), and you’re good to go for only $10. Where else can you do that?
Last night we had a chill evening at the brewery — which also happens to be really close to our house — with Justin, Anne, and Tom. And we even saw a DeLorean parked outside. The license plate? BACINTYM. How cool is that?
Friday, July 20th, 2007 · Comments Off on European Travel BBQ
Wednesday night we had Sarah and Eric over for a fajita BBQ dinner — delicious grilled chicken and portobello with all kinds of goodies like peppers, guacamole, sour cream, and hot sauce. Sarah and Eric were just back from their two-week European vacation to France and Italy, so we wanted to hear all about it and exchange Italy notes with them since they had visited the same main cities (Rome, Florence, Venice, Sienna) we’d visited during our 2002 trip to that most excellent country.
Without knowing our story behind limoncello, they brought us a bottle to thank us for hooking them up with our 2002 Rick Steves Italy travel guide, which ended up “making our trip” since it led them to the highlight of their trip in Cinque Terre (though Jen and I haven’t yet been there, two other friends recommended it before they left).
And speaking of travel, last night I got really into creating my TripAdvisor Travel Map — yeah, they sucked me in by promoting a one trip per year for ten years contest — and have so far pinned 191 destinations of places I’ve been. I’ve gotten pretty detailed in some cases, zooming way into the Saratoga Springs vicinity and San Francisco Bay Area. It’s fun. It uses Google Maps. Here’s a screenshot of how my map looks so far:
By the way, let me know if you want me to invite you to TripAdvisor — it’s a really cool site — and if you do, and you accept my invitation and build your map, then I get another entry into the trip contest (and you can then do the same). 🙂
Finally, a 4.2 earthquake rocked the Bay Area this morning, and my Dad, the Earthquake Hound, has already emailed me about it from Marin, where it woke him up, but all is well.
Ahh, to have friends with a swimming pool. Monday night Justin and I both cruised over to Seth and Niki’s place for a sunny evening of BBQ, swimming, and rockin’ the night away. (Jen was chillin’ down in Kinderhook & Valatie once again, so unfortunately, she didn’t join us.) There’s nothing like enjoying a hot summer day with friends and a drink in the pool — or swimming at midnight with disco lights in the pool.
Alex & Cati’s wine tasting party got blogged about in the Times Union food blog. My (less scientific) blog entry about the same event is here.
Last night following a Steeplechasers meeting, Jen and I enjoyed a delicious salad with homemade dressing and watched this week’s episode of Big Love. We also discovered that, as HBO subscribers, we now get HBO on Demand for free! (I believe Joe had mentioned this the other day.) Jen made these delicious lemonade-Bacardi icees. It was a much-needed relaxing evening.
Monday, July 16th, 2007 · Comments Off on “3, 2, 1… Jack Off!”
No, it’s not the porno version of the educational program many of us grew up with in the ’80s, 3-2-1 Contact. Rather, “3, 2, 1… Jack Off!” was the agreed upon battle call we (Jen) developed yesterday afternoon at Tom and Anne’s place as we gathered, along with Alex and Cati, for a great day of bocce ball and BBQ. Specifically, it was how the jack thrower was to announce that he or she was ready to chuck the ball somewhere in the yard — to make sure everyone else was ready to watch closely as it arced through the sunny sky to a landing spot. Naturally, the boys defeated the girls 15-9 as we came from behind and secured an early lead.
It was also Alex and Cati’s 1st anniversary, so we presented them with the front page news from that day, which was a hilarious picture-laden story highlighting all the good times we’ve had in the past year; Jen and I had a really fun time creating that yesterday afternoon (PDF available for anyone who’d like to enjoy it; let me know). Happy anniversary, Alex and Cati!
Anne made an “Aniversario Feliz!” cake, which we all agreed was the best chocolate cake ever, the perfect blend of moistness, topped with semi-sweet Ghirardelli-based frosting. Mmm.
Before that, we enjoyed delicious eats from the grill (teriyaki chicken, portobello mushrooms), and after the cake we relaxed by the fire, telling riddles, stories, and laughing the beautiful night away.
All in all, a wonderful evening. Thanks, Tom & Anne, for hosting us! That’s what summer’s all about.
Comments Off on “3, 2, 1… Jack Off!”Tags:photos 2007
Sunday, July 15th, 2007 · Comments Off on Meet Sylvia
Yesterday we cruised down to Valatie (the next village over from Kinderhook) for an evening BBQ at Karen’s parents’ place to meet Karen and Joti’s new baby (now 2 months old), Sylvia.
She’s really cute, sporting Karen’s eyes and Joti’s hair. Newborns always make Jen cry. I think Jen looks great holding babies (no, I’m not implying anything here… just sayin’). We all marveled at how the 11-pound 2-month-old baby is pretty much the same size my bro was when he was born (Pete was 10 pounds, 11 ounces).
Congrats, Karen and Joti!
(For the record, Karen and Joti are now our second set of friends with babies named Sylvia. Apparently it’s going to be a popular name for the next generation — Generation Z?)
We enjoyed a plethora of tasty summer dishes — broccoli, turkey burgers, fake chicken patties, coleslaw, homemade cornbread, multiple pasta salads, and even Jen’s homemade chocolate chip cookies later in the evening.
Tempers flared in a fierce round of Taboo (in which the boys got spanked by the girls, as usual — oh wait, that sounds naughty). We laughed our asses off into the wee hours of the night (about 2am or so) and cracked up at the silly photos we took (having party hats on hand is always a good thing).
Justin declared Jen’s coleslaw the best he’s ever had, and encouraged her to enter the world championship of coleslaw making. Hmm, is there such a thing? Regardless, I agree. And I generally don’t even like coleslaw (except for Jen’s).
Many of the photos (full set here) — particularly those in the fun group shots with lots of poses — are from Tom’s camera, so he (and his automated multi-photo taking feature) get credit for those (we transferred them to my computer last night).
The summer fun continues… onward ho!
(On a not-so-fun aside, we had our local plumber/neighbor here today to look at a bulge in the ceiling over our front door. We tore down part of the ceiling to let the wood dry. Although there’s no visible evidence of such in our bedroom above the area, the window air conditioning unit seems to be the culprit since the angle was off, not allowing the moisture to drain properly onto the roof. So now we have a hole in our ceiling that’ll need fixing at some point soon.)
