4th of July!

So, here are some pics of the fourth!... We had a crab feast with a bunch of friends from here in Baltimore... I'm not sure if it was exactly on the 4th, but it was around there. We got some live crabs, and here in Baltimore, the local recipe is to steam them in beer with Old Bay seasoning. Pretty tasty. I ate too many, but they were good... I don't know if the beer makes a difference on the crab, but it sure helps to wash them down with.
Later, on the evening of the 4th, we went to D.C. to see some fireworks. You would think that Washington D.C. being the so called "capital of the free world," the capital of the first independent European colony and the capital of capitalism that they could afford some frickin fireworks! Wrong! It took us like an hour to get down there in front of the Washington monument and the show lasted like 15 minutes. In fact you can see a good portion of the thing in the video above. I mean seriously... we are supposed to be the country with the biggest amount of crap to blow other people up with... can't we give ourselves a show once in awhile?

The Mustache

Yeah! I've never done this before, and after I did it I immediately realized that it was way too great of a look for me! Imagine all of the ladies that would be after me if I were to keep this thing... I mean it's like having a lady magnet stuck to your face... their lips would be permanently stuck to my face and it would just be generally uncomfortable... so I took it off after about 10 minutes of torturing those around me (Eva) with my, more than usual, dashing good looks, charisma and physique!

Buffalo

So now that I've been here for almost 8 months I thought that maybe I should post some pictures of this place... All you really need to know is that it's usually too cold to enjoy the place, so cold in fact that there were a few times over the course of the winter that I thought I was seeing Polar Bears, when in fact it was just cars parked outside with several feet of snow piled on top. The snow is bad, but the worst part of it is the wind... when that stuff starts to blow most of my appendages retract into my body, and I mean appendages in almost any place, i.e. my voice gets a rather high pitch to it and I stop producing testosterone. I have to thaw out for half an hour after every attempt at just looking out the window.
But on the bright side, Niagara is cool and when the place finally warms up it seems to gain a rare life to it that could only fairly be named "spring." It's weird, after so many months of not seeing what people look like, actually seeing skin makes you realize that these Buffalonians are in fact people... Anyway, here are some pics!!! The first one is Niagara Falls and the second is the building where I work at UB!

This is an excerpt from an article published in the highly touted online magazine "Ensalada Mixta," published for and by students studying at NYU Madrid. A friend of mine wrote this brief history of Thanksgiving just before this joyous food and fun filled day in 2005, and I have never quite found another history more acurate. Enjoy!

By: Richard Hartsfield, Chairman of American Holidays in Madrid

Editor's note: This article formed part of a series of Thanksgiving correspondences sent by our illustrious and well-groomed Chairman of American Holidays in Madrid, Spain for the 2005-2006 Academic Year at New York University in Madrid, (for short: Chairman of American Holidays in Madrid), in order to organize the Turkey Day festivities.

Dear Fellow Indians and Pilgrims,

We are mere hours away from the day they call Thanksgiving Day. Let me start by giving a quick history of how Thanksgiving Day came to be:

The soon to be Plymouth colonists traveled across the stormy sea to flee the religious persecution of King James I "the Douchebag" of England in 1621. After weeks of turmoil and hardship upon their sturdy vessel, the Mayflower, they landed in Plymouth Rock. Later, following months of doing typical pilgrim things, they were ready to collect the harvest. The harvest was plenty and bountiful, and it all fit very nicely into the cornucopias, or horns of plenty, that they had so wisely brought over from England just in case they would have a good harvest. Once they realized the extent and delightfulness of the harvest, they decided to throw a little shindig. They invited their good Indian pals, the Wampanoag tribe, to enjoy and share in a virtually never-ending feast to give thanks for the harvest with which they were blessed. Because of the giving of thanks that was done before, during, and after the feast, the day came to be known as Thanksgiving, and the first one is typically called the "First Thanksgiving."

Halloween in NYC!!!

So I spent Halloween in New York City!!! The capital of capitalism and the world market, currently not looking so good... but it doesn't really matter because you have to have money to lose money, and I have what is known as less than money, or debt... so I'm hoping that I can lose that somehow if the market gets bad enough. At least I think it works that way... I don't know, I read really old books and things in a different language and they don't talk much about that stuff on Wall St. Anyway, you can see me there in Times Square... pretty cool with all of the lights at night!... But given all of the financial trouble that Wall St. is having I don't know how much longer they are going to afford the electricity bill... Oh, wait... ya I do... I spent a lot of money on some lousy beers there... and got ripped off by a guy in a cab (something that seems to be a recurring theme for me) who didn't like me very much because I refused to fall in to his money scheming trap. But it was a pretty cool trip overall... I got to dress up as a woman... I've got some killer curves... I didn't even know that my boobs were that big until I put on that skirt. When I saw myself in the mirror I wanted to ask (with the voice of Joey from Friends) "How you doin?" God I look good!
You can also see here my friend Mariel, who is dressed up as Ugly Betty, and some of her friends dressed up for a party on Halloween night... It was crazy... I'll have to go to New York for more Halloween night celebratory events.
I got that picture of the pig because I thought it looked a lot like some of my relatives... you know who you are... Jill? Kelli?!!! Actually it was taken at a pumpkin farm in Maryland, where I went along with a couple of fellow jack-o-lantern makers to pick the perfectly orange and round little vegetable (or whatever food category it belongs to) to hack away at. There was also a corn maze there... I didn't get lost at all... Mostly because I went with the two lovely ladies in the picture with me who happen to be Biosomethingorothers that spend all day looking at boring things like charts and maps and numbers... so they came in pretty handy when it came to following them out of the giant corn maze as they kept an eye on the map. Although I think it goes without saying that I could have done this all on my own... but it's nice to make the womenfolk feel good about themselves... poor helpless little people.

Ok, so during my trip to Portugal, Eva and I had to make a trip within a trip... sort of like when you're writing and you have to use parenthesis in order to make a better definition of what you are talking about (like what I'm doing now). Anyway, this trip within a trip was accomplished because not all of us are fortunate enough to be red, white and blue blooded Americans, and if you happen to be one of those unfortunate soles you have to have a visa to come and stay here. So we took a trip to the capital... Lisbon... which is a pretty cool city, but what makes it even cooler is a little town near it called Sintra. This town was my favorite part of the whole trip... The first four pictures are of this wacky house that we visited built by a wacky count, or ancestor of a count, or just someone wacky and he was related to royalty or bought the house from said wacky count and/or royalty... I don't really remember... I only remember that it was wacky! It had a huge garden that traversed the side of a mountain, and it was all connected by underground tunnels. So you could walk from one little wacky part of the gardens to another underground and suddenly pop up in a tower or the bottom of a well. The inside of the house was equally wacky... but pretty cool. There were also a couple of really awesome castles, of which I will post pictures of later, that we visited in this town.
The bottom two pictures are of a place called Fatima, where it is said that the virgin made an appearance about a hundred years ago to some children. Since then the church has built this enormous shrine in honor of that event. You can see some people on their knees in one of the pictures. They are honoring a promise that they've made to the virgin, or God, by walking a certain amount of times back and forth on their knees. It was kinda cool to see this place... it's one of those places that gives off a certain oara or feeling that makes you feel like you're an ant in the grand scheme of things.
The video is of me singing, what is probably, that Canadian singer Celine Deon's most publicised diddy. I think it is safe to say that she ruined music for all of man kind, and I felt that it was within my rights to take back some dignity for the pop music industry. I've therefore taken the liberty to correct any poor quality renditions of that song from the top of one of the towers in that wacky guys house. He was probably an ancestor of the aforementioned Canadian who has forever scarred my virgin ears.

Porto

So I'm kinda slow at getting this stuff up because this all happened back in July, but whatever, I've only been blogging for a couple of months and I've got almost 33 years of crap to put up here. Wow! 33... If I die on the cross this year you'll all know that three days later you'll have your chance to say goodbye again and take back all of the mean stuff you've all done and said to me over the years... Especially you, Jill and Kelli!
But I digress... These pictures were taken in Porto, Portugal, where I spent the last three weeks of my vacation... actually four, because I hurt my leg and was forced to rest. Anyway, it's a pretty sweet city, and the natives are not too unpleasant to hang around either. Great conversationalists and good people to eat fish with... in fact they are fairly good people to just eat with in general. Most days I would wake up around noon so that I could eat lunch, even if I didn't want to. I remember one particular day in which I ate for nearly 8 hours straight... I went to Eva's grandmother's house and ate lunch, then I went to her other grandmothers house to eat some more and drink some fruity liquor and watch a family feud between her aunt and uncle in which I was forced to participate (I sided with the aunt over the question in contention simply because there were about 800 women at the table, but as soon as I did I knew that I was going to have to watch my back for a flying knife as I walked out the door. Her uncle made one of those I'm watching you gestures and I had to take another shot of that fruity beverage to calm myself)... and after that it was time to eat dinner with some of her friends. After that day, I finally knew what grandpa Fuzi meant when he used to say "I ate so much I can't shut down my tail!" My tail didn't shut down the whole time I was there.
Anyway, the first picture up there is of the river that runs through the city. Porto wine, believe it or not, actually comes from Porto. Go figure! Those boats were used to run the wine up and down the river in barrels. The boats are just for show now though... and tours, I guess... but I wasn't fortunate enough to take a tour... so I guess I'll have to do that in my next life... but I'll always have my imagination and dreams for this life... Thanks for nothin Eva! Behind the boats is a bridge that was designed by Ifle... it sort of has the same structure as his tower in Paris... I guess.
The next picture is of the ocean... I was fortunate enough to wake up to that every day and just walk across the street to it. I was also fortunate enough to be blessed with a physic capable of fighting off a school of Great Whites... but that's another story for another blog.
The next picture is of a horny cow... It was along the side of the road in the mountains where we went to stay in a place called Geres. Both the cows and goats had the same kind of horns... They must eat a special kind of hay or something to get those.
The following photo is of some houses in the center of the city of Porto... just so you can get an idea of what it's like.
The last picture is the gem of them all! For some reason, even inexplicable to the natives of Porto, the women enjoy hanging their skivvies out the front window. The weird part is that you only see old lady underwear, or Granny panties, as the youth of this day and age like to call them (you know who you are Kelli). There are no boxers, no bikini style underwear no briefs (wow I really know all the styles of underwear). It's really funny though, because almost every house in the center of the city has underwear hanging outside... they must really like to make sure they are wearing clean underwear in case they get hit by that bus.