Blog Master G

Lately my Yahoo Music station has been playing a lot of Tom Petty. I think it was a sign of the good fortune we had yesterday: Jen won some awesome orchestra tickets from her company for us to go to tomorrow’s sold-out Petty show at SPAC! I’m psyched and can’t wait. We also went last year, but felt old sitting among the stoned teenagers in our lawn “seats.” I’m looking forward to having an actual seat this year.

Yesterday was an awesome day — my 4th time to the track (Jen’s 5th). I only lost $6. Then it was Justin’s rockin’ birthday party. Pictures coming soon… along with pictures from last weekend.

And it’s a beautiful day in Saratoga today — nice ‘n sunny, but a gentle breeze. Not too hot, not too cold. A great day for another party — this time down in Kinderhook with Sue, Josh, Karen, and Joti.

Odds are you read a number of blogs, right? Do you tend to work from bookmarks within your browser to jump between blogs? Do you use a favorites list or a blogroll to get to those blogs? Or do you use a feed reader?

I’ve yet to find a feed reader that really just clicks for me, though lately the closest that’s come is customizable content aggregator Netvibes. After using it for a few weeks, though, I’m not convinced that I’m feeling it. I’ve also experimented with Google Reader, which is also very cool, but again, not convinved that it’s for me. I’ve long had a Bloglines account, but am not totally hooked on it, either.

What’s your feed reader of choice? Why is it the best one around? There’s no shortage of options out there, from Web-based apps to the desktop-based variety. Convince me, please.

Summer goes by in a flash. When we’re not partying, traveling, or entertaining friends from out of town, we’re hard at work — full-time jobs, volunteer jobs, contract jobs, extracurricular jobs — or sleeping. Which leaves little time for blogging. And when I don’t blog, people start to wonder, and ask me why I haven’t blogged in nearly a week. Sorry about that, homies. Here we go…

Though there’s much to write about and many photos to share — last weekend we hit Albany for yummy Mexican dinner and The Devil Wears Prada with Alex and Cati, the track on Saturday with Justin, delicious BBQ pizza dinner at Matt and Dana’s Saturday night, breakfast at the track Sunday morning, more racing at the track Sunday afternoon (down $8 on the weekend, bringing the season total to down $38 for me over 3 days at the track thus far, and Jen to up $6 on the weekend down $9 for the season) — after working at the computer all day, I just find it hard to have the energy and the eye-strain to do it anymore.

So thank goodness my rockin’ wife has had the energy lately for a very important project, which is even more important in this age of digital photography and blogs: preserving memories for ourselves, our family, friends, and our future children in a non-carbon dependent way by creating a hard-cover book of photos highlighting our lives by the year (and you all know how we feel about photos). After days of getting it just right and crafting beautiful dedications, Jen has completed the first two years of what will become an annual project once we’re caught up to present.

Enter the Kodak EasyShare Gallery Photo Book. It looks awesome. Our plan is to create one for each year of our digital photographic lives, which began in 1999 (conveniently, the year we became a couple, too). Our online photo count with Kodak/Ofoto is now 13,495. That’s a lot of photos and makes selecting the best few hundred or so to highlight from each year no easy task. Using my blog, my Google Calendar, and Gmail, Jen pieced together highlights of our lives from 2005 and then 2004. Which leaves only 1999 through 2003 to go!

She placed the order for the first two books last night — the Classic with black leather binding, double pages, drop-shadow design, and Futura font is our book of choosing — and we got to take advantage of a 30% off coupon (code BOOKS30), which expires today. Not too shabby a savings. Before ordering the next 4 years (and 2006 after the year’s over, of course), we’ll have to wait until there’s another photo book sale. Keep ’em coming, Kodak!

I’ve always loved cars. There are the basic benefits they give us: The ability to efficiently and quickly move across town or across the country, to connect with friends and family, and to aid in national commerce (through trucking). Then there’s the styling and the performance side of cars that I love: The lines, the design, the pure fun of driving them, shifting, and the rumble of the engine.

Oh yes, the engine. That which sounds oh so good but which contributes to pollution, global warming, and our dependence on foreign oil, which, by the way, is still a limited resource even if we were to drill in places like Alaska and off the coast of Florida.

The good news: A seachange is coming. And it’s a super-fast sports car. Yes, a sports car. It has 248 horse power (21 more than does my car), a top speed of 130 mph (slower than my car’s 140-mph computer-limited top speed, but still really, really fast — the fastest I’ve ever driven, in fact), 0-60 in 4 seconds (1.5 seconds or so faster than my gas-powered car), and here’s the best part: The Tesla Roadster is 100% electric! Yes, electric.

This is the most excited I’ve been about a car in a long time. It’s too bad the price tag will be around $80,000, so most of us can only dream about driving one. I do believe, though, that this is what we need to begin weening ourselves off the black gold.

Two nights ago I read the Wired story about the Tesla (great for the technical angle):

Battery-Fueled Car Will Smoke You

And then yesterday I was pleased to see that one of my favorite columnists, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mark Morford, wrote about the car and the environmental/political angle:

Lick My Silent Sports Car / How much has Big Auto lied? Take a drive in this four-wheel electric orgasm, and find out

I’ll leave you with this excerpt from the Morford piece:

See, they lie. And they’ve been lying for years, decades. They lie about how difficult it is to replace the internal combustion engine. They lie about how unfeasible it is to eliminate auto emissions without sacrificing real performance (the 130-mph Roadster’s lithium-ion battery system is estimated to be twice as efficient as a Prius and three times as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell. Not to mention Tesla’s fabulous solar option).

But they lie, most of all, about how much we still require foreign oil, because these billion-dollar corporations claim they can’t possibly afford to develop sufficiently advanced technology in your lifetime to create a 100-percent emissions-free, oil-free, ultragreen vehicle that still has all the comforts and performance of a regular car.

Nice pipe dream, they say. Here, have a bloated SUV, they say. Sorry about all your dead kids in Iraq, they add, smirking like a chimp and blowing their noses into a big pile of Halliburton profits.

Did you already know? Did part of you suspect that we could be, if we were directing our country’s massive resources at all correctly, already mass-producing the technology that could quickly wean us from our dependence on foreign petroleum?

Did you already calculate that if even a fraction of the $300 billion — a truly staggering amount — we’ve wasted on BushCo’s failed and disgusting war could have gone to revolutionizing our nation’s energy infrastructure (like, say, funding large-scale development of the Roadster’s technology), instead of annihilating a pip-squeak nonthreatening nation over its oil reserves while simultaneously serving as the most successful terrorist-recruitment poster in world history, the United States could be considered the epicenter of integrity and invention once again? Of course you did.

But oh wait. Such an obvious, lucid redirection of resources and ideology would require someone with true vision in the White House. Someone with integrity. And intelligence. And fearlessness. And an articulate understanding of complex ideas. And a Congress to match. Never mind.

Read more…

Southwest Airlines Assigned Seating Poll

NYRA cancels races Wednesday

We’ve seen some record heat this week, with temperatures here in the Capital Region soaring to 96 degrees yesterday and the heat index — once you add the humidity — making it feel like 108 degrees. I caught the treemometer displaying about 92 degrees yesterday afternoon (keep in mind it’s on a tree that’s mostly shaded, so it doesn’t get much direct light, except in this photo):

It was already 80 degrees with 70% humidity before 8am this morning and severe weather alerts remain in effect. Needless to say, thank goodness for air conditioners, which have been my saving grace (I don’t do well in extreme heat and humidity; I think no A_ndersons really do). And speaking of power, record usage levels were set in NYC and across the state. Walking upstairs at one point yesterday felt like moving from a cool existence into a swampy jungle of watery air.

Of course, the heat lately really isn’t that bad compared to what we endured in Spain, where we rested often in our air conditioned rooms to seek respite from the heat that was literally melting the sunscreen off my face and arms throughout the trip. The heat here also does not compare to what I can only imagine Jane’s experience in Dubai in 1993 must have been like (though it’s no doubt much hotter there now, thanks to all the fun global warming).

I recently started using this great Ajax-based customizable site as my home page: Netvibes. Check it out. It’s very cool. You can add all your favorite blog and news feeds, integrate your Gmail (or other email), a to do list, your Flickr photos, the weather, your del.icio.us bookmarks, and lots more, including custom tab creation. Oh, and it all happens and is saved on the fly.

A year ago yesterday we had just been to the Tom Petty concert and our first day of the track season. A year ago today Stella was drinking Stella.

Thursday: Dan and Shira arrive and the fun begins. Seth and Niki join us as we BBQ up a storm and talk wedding planning for our NYC friends. Dan and I end the night with two daring shots of the Listerine-like Dr. McGillicutty’s.

View more Thursday photos.

Friday: Johnny arrives from Buffalo and the fun gets even funner. We enjoy some snacks and drinks around the house, (until 9pm or so), then take to the bustling streets of downtown Saratoga Springs in the summertime (street party every night). By this point, Shira’s friend and a fellow Vassar alum (and boyfriend) have joined us. We decide to high-tail it to Bailey’s (great food for the value and we somehow managed to get a table for 7… outside… in Saratoga… in the summer). Shira’s friends take off and we decide to check out the crazy scene on the roof of the City Tavern. We fight our way to the bar for drinks, snap some rooftop photos, then retreat to the third floor where we secure seating and enjoy another round before moving on to the next bar on the list: The Parting Glass. Irish band Greenwich Mean Time is rockin’ the house and we take to the floors, Guinness in hand, and dance a little jig. An energizing and really fun end to the evening.

View more Friday photos.

Saturday: Dan and Shira take off. Jen, Johnny, and I cruise to the track for our inaugural day of the season. We load the car with chairs and tablecloth (on the off-chance we could secure a picnic table) and head to the track around 11am to drop off the goods and claim a spot (Saratoga Race Course has a highly developed system of trust and respect wherein no one sits in your chairs or raids your beer cooler). We hit Hannaford to load up on beer for the track and BBQ food to be enjoyed later that evening (when Alex and Cati were due to join us). It rains. And rains. Really hard. Just as we’re about to wheel our rolly cooler in our journey to the track.

We wait out the rain a bit. Then we start walking. We arrive at track. No more rain. We meet up with Justin and the fun begins. We place bets. We drink beer. We bask in the sunshine. We take photos of Sen. Hillary Clinton. We lose money. I lose $30 across all races on which I bet (5, 6, 8, and 9), and Jen loses $15 on the day. We see Preakness winner Bernardini smoke the field in the Jim Dandy. Unless there’s an upset, I’m sure he’s a shoe-in for the Travers. But with 3/5 odds like he had on Saturday, there’s no point in betting on him unless it’s part of an exacta or trifecta.

View more Saturday photos.

We head home and take a brief breather before round 2 of the day begins. Alex and Cati arrive, and the funner fun gets even funner. It’s the first we’ve seen them since their rockin’ wedding in Spain, so we greet each other with an enthusiastic driveway photo shoot. More beer, more Pimm’s No. 1, more wine, more snacks. We roll the grill around to the front of the house — a strikingly fine idea — and Alex helps me grill up a storm of chicken sausages and broccoli. Jen busts out the Kinder Surprise Eggs from Spain and we laugh into the surprise-filled night. Jen loses her voice (and it still hasn’t come back in that oh so sexy raspy way).

At 1am Saturday night/Sunday morning, we decide we haven’t quite partied enough, so we decide to leave our porch patio and walk into town (it’s Saratoga in the summer after all, so it’s a party every night and downtown, as expected, is hoppin’). We grab a round at DA’s before making our way up to Broadway. The newlyweds feel like dancing (it’s now 2am), so we scope out the new dance club, the Grotto. We don’t want to pay the $5 a head cover, so we hit Brindisi’s, where there’s a funk band and a dance floor. We dance.

3am. Late-night diner Compton’s on Broadway is about to open, so we walk across Broadway and are the third party to arrive for breakfast. We order the standard fare of omlettes and the like, but then we’re intrigued by something on the menu: stewed prunes. Yes, prunes. Stewed. “How are the stewed prunes tonight?” I ask the nice waitress. With a straight face, she says, “They’re really good.” Then she busts out laughing. I order them anyway. They arrive and look like a cross between turds from a small breed of dog and shriveled testicles (from what mammal I dare not guess). Despite Jen’s and Cati’s attempts to hide their respective stewed prunes (Cati in her bowl of oatmeal and Jen beneath her onion rings), we cleaned up the dish of stewed prunes with some heroic effort — Alex fed his new bride… who was then merciful enough to hold Jen’s nose for her when it was Jen’s turn to taste the sweet nectar of this glorious underrated fruit (nut? vegetable? nay! manna from the gods!) — and discussed the market for the prunetini. Imagine it: a martini with prune juice and stewed prunes on a toothpick rather than olives.

We call it a night at 4am and are in bed by 5am.

View more Saturday photos.

Sunday: Though little can top the previous evening’s stewed prune extravaganza, the fun’s not over yet. We have a lazy morning on Johnny’s last day in Saratoga, enjoying a brunch of leftover chicken sausage and coffee on the porch, for which Justin joins us. We play with the Kinder Surprise toys who held down the fort for the night, and have cookies for dessert.

Then it’s time to party some more. It’s Anne’s birthday, so we high-tail it across town to celebrate with her, Tom, friends and family. We enjoy a delicious BBQ and some backyard sunshine while watching the kiddies tear it up on the slip ‘n slide. We sing happy birthday to Anne and we enjoy Tom’s most excellent homemade chocolate cake — the best chocolate cake I’ve had in as long as I can remember. That man is a baking machine. We call it an early night and head home to head.

View more Sunday photos.

Monday: (Yes, still going.) Back to work, but the party’s still raging, though it’s pretty tame by tonight. Jen’s parents and my Dad join us for yet another night of grilling. The front-yard BBQ action is so successful, we do it again tonight — more chicken sausages and broccoli (leftovers since the crowd Saturday night was smaller than expected).

View more Monday photos.

And done. Now I feel like I need to sleep for the next few days to get rested from the non-stop excitement of Summer 2006.

One part of our banner four-day party weekend during which we had all sorts of crazy times (later blog post) was seeing Sen. Hillary Clinton at the Saratoga Race Course Saturday. The first time I saw her in person was when she was First Lady Hillary in 1995 when she came to Vassar to give a speech in the amphitheater, the same location where I would receive my degree 4 years later.

Sen. Clinton was in town to promote rural economies. “I’ve been working to improve the value of not only our farm products, but also to revitalize our small towns and bring back their main streets,” she said. “Most people in the rest of the country don’t know how rural New York is.”

Many of us cheered for Sen. Clinton when she appeared and turned to face the crowds; unfortunately, just as many people booed. It sucks that people either love her or hate her.

Sen. Clinton enjoys the races with Saratoga Springs Mayor Valerie Keehn

More: Clinton attracts attention at Saratoga Race Course

A little more than a year ago, Jen, Justin, and I were enjoying drinks one evening at 9 Maple, our favorite (and the best) local martini bar here in Saratoga Springs. We struck up a conversation with a cool guy who had just come to town from Portland, Oregon to open a new restaurant that sounded right up my alley: Only fresh and local produce, meat from local farms, twice-weekly visits to the Farmers’ Market. It was to be called the Beekman Street Bistro, he told us as he handed me a business card, and was opening in that new Beekman Arts District.

At the time, the Beekman area was just starting to see a turn-around and has come a long way in the past year — now filled with a number of renovated buildings housing the newest food and arts center in town. The recent transformation of places like Gotchya’s from cafe into restaurant (I do miss the cafe version) and a number of arts galleries have really made Beekman Street the hippest new business center off Broadway.

Turns out the guy we met at 9 Maple — head chef of the Bistro Dan Spitz — really knew what he was talking about. To celebrate our 3rd anniversary last night, Jen and I finally got around to eating at the restaurant, and it was simply incredible. We agreed it’s our new favorite place in town, right up there with Dine. The decor is stylish and understated, with just the right amount of lighting — bright enough to read the menu, but dim enough to enjoy a romantic dinner. The food was out of this world. I’d been cautioned about smaller portions, which they were, but everything was so rich and delicious, I wouldn’t have wanted the portions to be any bigger.

We enjoyed a light and crisp bottle of 2005 Colombelle Blanc, a cheap French blend that hit the spot (especially following the earlier martinis on our porch). Jen started with a goat cheese and walnut salad, and I with the sweet corn risotto. For our main courses, Jen had the mouth-watering scallops and I another second course offering, incredible homemade raviolis stuffed with parmesan and other goodness, which I had upgraded to a larger entree portion. We didn’t want the night to end, as we savored every delightful bite.

The only suggestion I’d have for the Bistro staff that would make it an even more perfect dining experience would be to do a two-minute check-back after serving the entrees, and to do wine fill-ups. That aside, the service was pleasant, efficient, and timely.

Happy 3rd wedding anniversary to my best friend and wife! I love you, Jenner. Thank you for 3 amazing years (well, technically, 7 amazing years) and many more to go! You’re the best.

July 26, 2003
Wedding limo, Pougkeepsie, NY

July 17, 2006
Gaudi’s Park Guell, Barcelona, Spain

More reflections:

• 2nd anniversary
• 1st anniversary
• julytwentysix.com

It’s taken a few days of gettling back to normalcy before we could squeeze in the time between Jen’s 101-degree fever and jobs and email and book clubs and volunteer commitments, but here we go… Quite simply, our vacation to Spain — Mallorca, Barcelona, and Madrid — was amazing, and words can barely describe what a beautiful wedding Alex and Cati had. We are lucky to have been a part of such a special celebration, and that we could double the trip as an extended vacation wasn’t bad, either.

So without further ado — I know we’ve promised photos to many of you — and since pictures speak louder than words, here they are (well, about half of the nearly 400 we took, so as not to bore you too much)! (We do have a very detailed, handwritten trip recap, but that will have to wait for another day when it’s not almost midnight on a school night.)

Best of the Wedding

Best of Mallorca

Best of Barcelona

Best of Madrid

You can view other photos in the Mallorca section of Alex and Cati’s site, including Alex’s own beautiful photos (more surely to be posted in the coming days and weeks).