Whatever... My Mom Made me do it!

4th of July!

2009-08-16T14:07:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-12T12:02:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-11-23T10:46:00.000-08:00

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!!!

2008-11-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-10-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

2008-09-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

So after a lot of walking and a bum leg I finally arrived to Santiago, on a bus. It was still cool though... it was fun to limp around the city for the day and check out the Cathedral, which was pretty amazing. It was actually too big to fit in a picture. So I just took a lot of pictures, which I'll show to you someday... if you're interested. I don't blame you if you're not though... Saint James really isn't that exciting anymore as you can see from the picture on top. He was probably a pretty cool guy back in the day though... you know, when he was hangin with big J's posse, being one of the disciples and all that. Doing drive by baptisms and that kinda stuff. Anyway, he's not too fun anymore... he just sort of lays in his tomb and he has this priest outside (like a body guard or something) collecting coins and handing out prayers on little pieces of paper. The inside of his Cathedral is pretty sweet though. One of the chapels within the Cathedral is dedicated to the Pilgrim of Santiago and is decorated with the sea shell that represents the pilgrim.

2008-09-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest parts of the camino is a spot on top of a mountain between the provinces of Leon and Galicia... I actually walked from Pamplona to a town called Logroño, both of which are located in the northeast of Spain. From there I took a bus to the city of Leon, in the northwest of Spain, because I didn't have enough time to do the whole trail and I decided that if I had to cut out part of the trip I would cut out the middle portion between Logroño and León as it is rather flat, hot and boring as compared with the rest of the trail. So several days after arriving in León I came to the top of this mountain where there is an iron cross mounted on a pole. It's one of the highlights of the trip because it is near the end of the camino. The sign explains the iron cross: "Iron Cross. All pilgrims stop in from of the iron cross, a tall post of about 5 meters, originally made of oak, with a small iron cross mounted on top. Every pilgrim places a small stone at its base, creating a hill. It is said that one must bring a rock from one's place of origin and leave it at the iron cross in order to liberate oneself from the sins and guilts that he or she has been carrying throughout life. The stone should be representative in size of the sins that one has accumulated throughout life."
My sins would have created a new mountain! So I didn't leave a rock...
This was actually my last day of walking... I think... because from the top of this mountain there is a steep decline down the mountain slope to a town called Ponferrada. It took me about 7 hours to get there, all the while putting a lot of pressure on my already injured leg. So at the end of the day I was unable to continue walking for the remaining six days of the camino. I did make it to Santiago by bus after seeing a doctor and laying in bed for a couple of days though. So I will post some pictures of that as well.

2008-09-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

These are some of the friends I met along the way. There were several Japanese people, people from Germany, Italy, France and Spain as well. I only met a few Americans... maybe less than five total. I spent a few days in, more or less, the same spot as this mule too, either him following me or the other way around... the goat however, belongs to a little village high in the mountains, so she stayed there.

2008-09-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

So this was pretty sweet! I took this picture at a vineyard which is ran by cloistered nuns and monks. It's outside of a small village called Irache. In the picture you can see a fountain with the name of the vineyard on it. On the sign it says "Pilgrim! If you want to arrive at Santiago with strength and vitality, from this great wine take a swallow and toast to happiness!"
The wine is free and you can take as much as you want... the problem was that they don't serve wine on Sundays, which happened to be the day that I got there. Otherwise, I may have ended my journey here. Crap!

2008-09-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

This guy is a German pilgrim.
This is a fellow pilgrim from Italy.
Here I am on a Roman bridge.

2008-09-02T18:44:00.000-07:00

This church/temple was erected by the Knights Templar for the pilgrims of the camino. It's basically in the middle of nowhere, as much of the camino is. There are hundreds of little churches and monuments like this along the way. Too many to post here.

2008-09-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

So this is a typical arrow that is used to show the pilgrims which way to go in order to follow the Camino de Santiago. They either paint these arrows on the ground, on trees or posts, or they use the symbol of the Camino de Santiago pilgrim which is a sea shell. Sometimes you have to pay really close attention because there are parts of the road that are not well marked and you can end up walking a couple of miles out of the way before you realize that you're lost. it happened to me a couple of times the first day, then I became more aware of what to look for.

2008-08-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

2008-08-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

Toronto

2008-08-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

So I moved to Buffalo to study... or do something different... in the cold... and the snow... The day that I got here it was 75 F and I was thinking that it was going to be like 90 F. It was mid-August, which makes me wonder what it's going to be like in mid-October. Today is the 29th of August and it's pretty freeking cold already. So either I'll be really bored in the house or I'll be able to study a lot.
Anyway, Eva came to help me get situated a little bit over the weekend... which was a terribly nice act of peace, given the fact that she's European and the only thing that Europeans ever did in America was to pillage, plunder and rape. But I digress... Sunday was her birthday and we went to Toronto, Canada, which is about an hour and a half drive to the north. I know, I know... Canada??? What could America junior possibly have that big America doesn't? Well, I'll tell you what! It has Portugal Village... that's right. You heard it here first... Portugal Village.
So, Portugal Village in Toronto is very similar to the real deal. It's like going to China town in San Francisco, but the people are not Chinese. That's right... believe it or not they are Portuguese... and in some cases Canadian. Not like the Canadians that you see on South Park with the little egg heads and a slit in their mouths, but real actual people. HA! Imagine that!
So anyway, we kicked it in Portugal Village and in Toronto and had a jolly good time I might add. Here are a couple more pictures. Next time I will wright more about my quixotic adventures on the Iberian Peninsula...

2008-08-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

These were my first steps along the historic Camino de Santiago. I took this picture in Pamplona... too bad I was only about three weeks away from the running of the bulls, or else I may have had some extra motivation for making those first steps rather quick steps!

The picture to the right is of a building in Pamplona that was once the center of convergence for three distinct Christian kingdoms during the middle ages when all of the Christians decided that it would be a good idea to kill all of the muslims and force them off of the Iberian Peninsula after the muslims had, in effect, previously done the same thing. Note: (some of my history may be a little off, but you get the gist).

A bridge in San Sabastián

2008-08-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

Camino de Santiago

2008-08-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

In June I began a journey across northern Spain. It is a Catholic Pilgrimage of a little over a thousand years... It is said the St. James the Apostle is buried there under the altar. I don't really know who's in there but I did see a tomb. Anyway... check out the trip. I walked a lot and met some cool people. I also met some weird people and almost got kicked out of a hostel one night.