Blog Master G

Sometimes it feels like my life goes non-stop. I used to be better about writing about each day as I lived it and even posting all the relevant pictures. Lately, though, as you may have noticed, I’ve fallen a couple weeks behind in posting photos for all the exciting things going on. When I have a bit of downtime these days, I usually just feel like relaxing with a drink and The L Word.

That said, we just returned from a kick-ass weekend in Buffalo and Canada, visiting Johnny and seeing a live recording of A Prairie Home Companion. So chalk up another item for my unofficial list of Things to Blog About from the past 3 weeks of non-stop fun:

• Jen in DC / Gabe’s Party Week
• Coalition of the Tasty
• Hosting Thanksgiving
• Visit with uncle, aunt, cousin from Ohio
• Saratoga Restaurant Week (Gabe & Jen at Mouzon House and Steeplechasers at Springwater Bistro)
• Victorian Street Walk
• Buffalo Trip / A Prairie Home Companion

By documenting here, I won’t forget and I’m holding myself accountable to follow through as best I can. I’ll make each of the above items links to the new entries as I create the new posts.

I also have a number of blog-related improvement / maintenance things to do:

• Create 301 redirects for archives from old domain here
• Change archive link syntax here to match old domain / site
• Improve / customize this design (custom photo headers)
• Implement contact form
• Relaunch old site

So you see, I have lots of big ideas, but just haven’t been able to find the time or energy to power through all of this. But stay tuned for more blogging soon…

Here it is November 30 in the Northeast and the forecast says it’s going to be 66 degrees here in Saratoga Springs today. What the hell? Oh right, global warming. Speaking of which, my copy of an Inconvenient Truth shipped yesterday from Netflix, so I’m really excited to see that.

Regardless, every day I’ve been doing a snow chant (“I want snow! Bring on the snow!”) in hopes that the white fluffy wonder will grace us with its presence sooner than later. Maybe I just got spoiled by the 7 inches we got last year on Thanksgiving Day.

Yesterday I did put the Scott’s winterizer turf builder on my lawn since the ground hasn’t yet frozen, so maybe one positive of global warming is that my grass will at least be green for a while longer.

Saturday, November 11 brought us to the bowling alley for some rockin’ late-night galactic bowling. We had two lanes, lots of Genny Creme Ale, and tons of fun. The first game was a free-for-all wherein Eric got the highest overall score and I got the number two high score. In the second game we played girls against boys and my overall high score in that round led the boys team to victory with a cumulative score of 508 to the girls’ score of 404.

Bowling is fun. I always have a great time.

View all photos on Flickr

Even though it was a pain in the ass, I think I’ve successfully migrated all my published archives from my old blog to the new domain. Dealing with my 101 Movable Type entries in draft status was a big pain since WordPress has a hard time handling entries in draft — it won’t display them in the authoring interface. So I exported all 1,598 entries from my old site into a text document, manually removed all the entries with a status of draft, then imported the remaining 1,497 published entries into this WordPress blog.

I then moved all the files from my old domain to this one, ran a couple scripts on some directories to handle popup images (which WordPress now makes inline pages containing the images), and voila! Everything appears to be in good shape.

So now all the glory of my former blog can be found here.

Jami’s birthday dinner at Forno Toscano was on Monday, November 6 (damn I’m behind!). Hugh organized a great surprise get together for his wife following that Saturday night’s pub crawl. Although we were originally positioned at the far end of the main dining room at Forno, we gradually took over the large center table since we had a really big gang there. Alex and Cati even came from Albany for the festivities. The wine was flowing and the food was fantastic. I love Monday night parties.

View all photos on Flickr

So I moved to this new blog all motivated to post more regularly, and here it’s now been a week since my last post and I already have a huge backlog of stuff to blog about. But it’s all in my head and in my flickr account, so hopefully I’ll catch up soon. Yesterday was an awesome Thanksgiving, so happy Thanksgiving to one and all, and more on that (with photos, of course) later.

This post is about Borat opening night. We went with a gang of Borat fans to Crossgates in Albany. We had some pre-movie drinks and shots at Houlihan’s. And I wore my Mahir t-shirt from the December 15, 1999 Mahir party. Hugh wore his Kazakhstan t-shirt. The sold-out show was tons of fun and we all laughed our asses off. All I have to say is naked wrestling scene. Too funny. If you haven’t already seen Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, then you’re missing out. Don’t delay! It’s truly a brilliant and hilarious movie that exposes the ignorance of lots of Americans.

View all photos on Flickr

I hate to use the Fox News approach to their sorry excuse for journalism (the question mark in the headline), but hey, Blog Master G ain’t no professional journalist (did I really just say “ain’t,” too?).

Anyway, last night on the way to the monthly Saratoga Chamber Mixer with Sarah and Justin, we drove past a house on West Ave. where a couple cop cars and a camera crew were outside. Of course, we had no way of knowing at the time that a couple had just been found dead inside by the woman’s father. So sad. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to experience something like that — finding your daughter and son-in-law slain in their own home.

Husband, wife found dead:

SARATOGA SPRINGS — A husband and wife were found dead Thursday afternoon in what police are treating as a criminal investigation.

The bodies of James Clain and Catherine Clain, tenants of an upstairs apartment at 285 West Ave., were discovered about 4:30 p.m. by her father, who drove from Vermont because he hadn’t heard from the couple since Tuesday, according to District Attorney James A. Murphy III.

Saratoga Springs police responded to the scene and called in Murphy, who produced a search warrant.

Police would not say how the couple died or by whose hand.

‘We don’t believe the public is at risk,’ Murphy said.

The house was not ransacked and it appeared no valuables were taken.

Watch out, America! The gay penguins have arrived. Grab your children and hide them in the nearest closest. But whatever you do, don’t let them read the true story of the two male penguins in a New York City zoo who lovingly adopted and raised a child penguin on their own. ’cause you know, it’s bad for America and we don’t want to give kids the wrong idea that children should be raised by loving parents.

Parents in Metro East community want gay penguin book blocked

SHILOH, Ill. — A picture book about two male penguins raising a baby penguin is getting a chilly reception among some parents in this village who worry about the book’s availability to elementary students — and the reluctance of administrators to restrict access to it.

The concerns are the latest involving “And Tango Makes Three,” the illustrated children’s book based on a true story of two male penguins — Roy and Silo — in New York City’s Central Park Zoo who adopted a fertilized egg and raised the chick as their own.

Complaining about the book’s homosexual undertones, some parents of Shiloh Elementary School students believe the book — available to be checked out of the school’s library in this 11,000-resident town 20 miles east of St. Louis — tackles topics their young children aren’t ready to handle.

Their request: Move the book to the library’s regular shelves and restrict it to a section for mature issues, perhaps even requiring parental permission before their child can check it out.

If you’re a member of the Saratoga Party Posse, you know that we know how to party — the standing record is the 18 hours that Jen, Alex, Cati, Celia, and I clocked in for Travers 2006 (many of you were also there for other phases of the day and night, of course, but we were the last 5 standing in the final phase that night).

That said, the 8 hours we clocked in last Saturday, November 4 for the combined Jami/Alexis birthday pub crawl of Saratoga bars wasn’t too shabby a showing. Although certain participants who shall remain nameless would have liked for us to hit more bars, I don’t think the 5 we hit is too bad a number — Brindisi’s, Stadium Cafe, The Alley, 13, The Venue. The Alley and The Venue are not places we frequent, or places I had even been before, but it’s always fun to mix it up.

We rocked the house at Awesome Alley, slapped some asses on Caroline Street, rode a giant vodka bottle across 13 (then hugged it), worked the pole at The Venue (it still cracks me up that they have a fucking stripper pole there!), break danced (broke danced?) the night away, then joined Happy in his cage at the end of the night.

Happy birthday to the November birthday girls!

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We now officially control Congress since the racist bastard Sen. George Allen has just officially conceded in the close race for his Virginia Senate seat (and, ironically, began his concession speech by thanking God — whatever happened to separation of church and state?).

I’m also very excited to see that Speaker of the House to be Rep. Pelosi has committed to improving the quality of life in America within her first 100 hours as Speaker:

The early agenda also includes increasing the federal minimum wage, enacting the homeland security recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 commission, promoting stem-cell research and reducing university costs, by making tuition tax deductible and halving interest rates on student loans. Other priorities include giving the government the power to negotiate with drugs companies to lower prices in the Medicare prescription drug programme, eliminating what they say are Republican-backed in-centives to shift jobs overseas and rolling back subsidies for big oil companies, using those funds to promote alternative energy sources instead.

It’s beyond me how anyone could call any of these things anything but beneficial for the betterment of our country.