Holiday Weekend

It was a lovely holiday weekend and once again I kept very busy. On Friday night I saw the Day After Tomorrow. It was okay for an action/natural disaster movie, of course there were some logic defying scenes, but the special effects made up for the weak plot. I came home from the movies and began planning for a hiking expedition up to Mt. Lafayette.

I woke up on Saturday morning hopped in the car and drove up to the trail head for the Lafayette hike. It was right across the street from the start of last week's hike. I opened the door to the car and realized it was going to be a cold one. The wind was blowing about 25 MPH at the base and I could only imagine what it was going to be like on the summit. I packed as much as I could into my bag and began up the trail at around 9:00. The trail I went up had went back and forth over a stream and passed a series of waterfalls. Of course I took a bunch of waterfall pictures, thanks for getting me hooked on those LAG. The trail was sheltered from the wind and it wasn't long before I was taking off layers. About a mile and a half in the trail leaves the river behind and starts up towards the timber line. The higher I climbed the windier and colder it became. I came to a final trail junction which was a short distance from the openness of the top and put on a couple of extra layers because I could tell the wind was gusting to at least 45 MPH at the summit. The trail made a turn and the trees went from a nice green color to an icy white. The mountain must have been in a cloud and everything above a certain elevation was covered in ice. I looked down at my bare legs and wished I hadn't worn shorts. A few minutes later and I was at the top trying to take cover from the wind behind a giant rock.


I glanced to the North and saw the ridge I was going to have to walk across. It was treeless and looked more like the tundra of Siberia than the top of a mountain in NH on the last week of May. A couple who had spent the night on top of Mt. Liberty started out ahead of me, so I figured I would stick with them in case I accidentally blew off the mountain or my legs became frostbitten. It turns out they were from Amesbury, which I thought was an odd coincidence. We stayed together for most of the ridge, but after we made alternating stops I ended up way ahead of them. My pace quickened and before I knew it I was on top of Mt. Lincoln. I went to take a sip from my camelback, but the tube had frozen and I had to go old school and drink straight from my Nalgene bottle. It had been two and a half hours since I left base camp and I needed to get some sugar into my system, so I took a little break. The cold was starting to get to me so I continued on towards Mt. Lafayette. After about fifteen minutes of really chugging along I made it to the top and took a couple pictures. It was too cold to stop and eat lunch so I found the trail down towards the Greenleaf Hut and covered the descent from the summit to the hut in about fifteen minutes. The hut was great, I took off a couple layers and let them dry while I enjoyed my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Clouds began to roll in and I once I finished eating I quickly packed up my gear and was back on the trail in no time. The Old Bridal Trail was very gradual and provided many great views of the peaks and ridges I had just hiked across. I passed a bunch of people and they all seemed under dressed for the peak, but I kept that little detail to myself and just said hi and told them it wasn't far to the hut. At one point on the way down I saw flurries and tried to get a picture of them, but of course they didn't show up in the picture. The weather was nothing like I had anticipated and felt more like a late October hike. The rest of the descent went by quickly and I didn't see many people once I was within a mile of the car. At around 1:45 I made it back to the car and changed into some warm dry clothes. It only took me four hours and forty four minutes to complete the loop of 7.5 miles. I took a couple more pictures and started down I-93. About a mile south of the base a truck was pulled over on the side of the road which at first seemed odd until I saw a moose standing there. I pulled over and snapped a few pictures before it ran off into the woods.

After hiking I went to Amesbury and we celebrated my Mom's Birthday. Here are a couple of pics from Mom's Birthday Party

Yesterday I made the fun trip down to Plymouth for Sarah's graduation party. The weather was great and there was a ton of food, which always means a good time. After the party I went out in the boat with Rich and Mark for some fishing. I hadn't been fishing since I was a wee lad so it was interesting. Thankfully Rich refreshed my memory on the whole casting thing. I only almost hooked myself once. We were out there for about a half hour and caught one fish, oh well I guess its more about drinking beer on a boat than the actual reward of catching a fish. After fishing we hung out at the boat house drinking and chatting with Ian, James, Bradley, Kate, Sarah and Josh. Good times, although it did get a bit chilly and if you are ever cold and outside don't count on a Citronella candle providing you with much heat. Here are some pics from the Long Pond Graduation Party

Cannon Mountain Hike

My weekend was pretty good, Friday night started with me going out after work. It was nice to get out in the city for a change. Saturday involved not much of anything except laundry and the PBS reality series.

The excitement began on Sunday when I drove down to Somerville to pick up Kate, Andy and Clemence. We went hiking up at Cannon Mountain up near Franconia Notch. The weather was cloudy all of the way up until we were within ten minutes of the trailhead and then it started raining. We had driven two hours and figured it might clear up. The hike started off fine, a little wet, but not too bad. We made it to the top in about two hours. At this point the visibility was about ten feet, but it didn't deter us from climbing up the observation tower. The view up there was worse. It was windy and cold up there and we looked for shelter, but everything was locked up. Finally Andy found a generator room. It was warm, dry and out of the wind, there was a strong smell of fuel, but the pros certainly outweighed the cons. The rain stopped at some point during our lunch stop and the sky began to clear. Was it really going to clear up? Sure enough it did, as soon as we were off the summit and about halfway down the sun came through. At one point we stopped and climbed up on a rock and just rested for a while. It was actually a dangerous rock, first Andy slipped down a hole after attempting to scale it and then I almost fell off the top and was only holding on by my fingertips. The next stop was at Lonesome Lake. At this point the sun was out in full force and we were able to enjoy the brief stint of nice weather. Within minutes the clouds glided down from above and overcame us once again. We began the final one and a half miles towards the car, on the way Andy made an attempt at knocking over a fifty foot tall rotten tree. He was able to break off a large chunk, but the main trunk remained, which was probably all for the better since it would probably have fallen on his head. The rest of th etrip was less eventful and it was nice to get back to the car and rest. Overall it was a successful hike and I am looking forward to climbing some more four thousand footers in the near future.

Keeg

Boston Your My Home

Let me start by saying Happy Birthday to Amy. Last night for her birthday we went on a Duck Tour. Six of us met near the Pru for our sightseeing excursion. Kate had a surprise for us though, she had purchased several different hats and we had to randomly reach into a bag and the hat we chose had to be worn for the rest of the night. I thought PPP aka IceCubeIsBoss aka Ryan would enjoy our little game. The tour was really fun and it helped me see Boston from a tourist perspective. Afterwards we went to the Pour House for dinner and of course had a great time. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Noelle had made it to BoCaNO. BTW the chicken sandwiches there on Wednesday nights are only $2.50, what a steal. Birthdays always equal a good BoCaNO.

The Man Tightens the Noose

As if my week hadn't started off bad enough, I try to log on to livejournal.com at work and it comes up as a restricted site. So I try to log on using some third party software, but it is also blocked. In recent weeks work has really cut back on the number of sites we are allowed to access and they have now blocked one of my favorites. It must have been about six ago when they first took away our access to AOL mail, which we were able to bypass temporarily, but now I can only check it using some terrible SMTP mail server in Microsoft Outlook. I am at the point now where I want to email the LAN admins and say well you've done away with Livejournal.com, so you might as well get rid of ESPN.com also. I want to know who makes the decision about what we can and cannot access. I do understand that they have every right to limit our what we can see since they do own the computers, but it is terrible for them to pick and choose based on what some LAN admin thinks is disgraceful. They are so elusive in that little room and will never just come out with the truth. Just today I asked one of them about some technical issues we were having and from her reaction you would think I was Mulder researching an X file. She said if I send her an email she would forward it on to the right people, so I asked her if I could have the address and she said she doesn't think that would be possible. WTF?!?! Yes I know I am venting, but they are also the reason the expenses have not been running on time, although they complete deny any issues are there fault. All I have to say is when I get a Disk I/O Error from something on the network drive it has nothing to do with my application. Ahhhhhhhhh, I am so annoyed.

Mark Catches a Big Fish

Here are four parts to a rather entertaining movie:
Mario Movie Part 1
Mario Movie Part 2
Mario Movie Part 3
Mario Movie Part 4

Day At the Beach

I spent most of my day doing laundry, but by the mid afternoon I was able to get out and go to the beach. Once again I went to Halibut Point State Park and sat out on the rocks. I like it so much there because of the lack of people. You can sit for hours and only four or five people will pass by you. I stayed and read for a couple of hours and then came home as I saw the scary dark clouds coming in from the northwest. Thankfully it hasn't rained yet. I wouldn't mind a little bit of rain though to at least cool this place down.

Another fast week

The weeks seem to be flying by now and I don't know why. I wish they would take a bit longer because before we know it the summer will be over it will be cold and the days will take forever. Wow thats a great observation which was definitely worth posting. I am at a loss for words again, but wanted to make this posting to send a message to all Amesbury High School graduates. I was randomly searching the internet and came across the AHS Archive site It is a listing of AHS info including lists of students from all different classes. So I think you all should go there and submit your info. Not only that, but you should also send the address to your AHS friends. If somebody could forward it to Jacqueline that would be great since she knows so many people in Amesbury.

Have a great weekend everybody. Hopefully after this weekend I will be able to produce a better entry.
KWS

Great Birthday

Birthday Slideshow
First I want to thank everybody for making my birthday so wonderful. It is kind of strange as I get older my birthdays get better and better. I was under the impression it was supposed to be the other way around, but thankfully in yet another way I am not normal. So here is a breakdown on what I did yesterday.
Went to work where Matt and Kenny brought me a doughnut with a bunch of candles in it. At one Kenny, Matt and I joined Britt, Vanessa and Sara for lunch at Montien. It was very yummy and also entertaining because Matt had wasabi for the first time. After lunch Miguel bought me a Ben & Jerry's ice cream cake which I had three slices of and shared with all sorts of people at work. Upon leaving work I met up with Mark, Kate and Amy for my surprise night at Fenway Park. They had purchased tickets to the game, so of course we went and got to see a great game. The highlight of course was my birthday announcement on the big screen in centerfield. Thanks so much you guys it was certainly a memorable evening. The game ended around 9:40 and I had to catch a 10:40 train, which was not easy and required some running, but I made it with ten minutes to spare. Once I was home I found a bag with gifts in it from my mom. She bought me a yellow beach ball with a smiley face on it just like the little foam ball.

Overall it was a great day. I hope it sets the pace for my 27th year.

Birthday Well Wishers

Tiffany Staelin
Andy Gale
Clemence Gastaldi
Amanda Wong
Chris Hayes
Kenny Dang
Matt Vears
Marisa Staker
Miguel Castanheira
Elio Mauro
Victor Tavares
Vanessa Morin
Britt Flynn
Sara
Mom
Dad
Carol
Kate Harvey
Mark Lafaver
Amy Winnen
Lauren Gottlieb
Kristen O'Keefe
Carolyn McKenna
Ray Cabalu
Kaitlin Barker
Stacy Drake
Ryan Noon
Emily Ragland
Becky Tessimond

May 11th

Here's for a little shamless promotion for this great day. Let's see my LJ, my birthday so why not really take advantage of the situation and really do it up right. I chose the above picture because it sums up one of the biggest events of the past year, the incident with the deer and the loss of my car for forty days and forty nights back in November.
Things that happened on May 11th in history:
1647 Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam to become governor.
1689 French and English naval battle takes place at Bantry Bay.
1812 British prime Minster Spencer Perceval was shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of Commons.
1858 Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.
1866 Confederate President Jefferson Davis becomes a free man after spending two years in prison for his role in the American Civil War.
1927 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.
1944 A major offensive was launched by the allied forces in central Italy.
1960 Israeli soldiers captured Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires.
1977 Keegan Willis Sands was born in Newburyport, MA to parents Mary Louise and William Douglas at 3:23 PM.
1995 The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely. The treaty limited the spread of nuclear material for military purposes.
1996 An Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades. All 110 people on board were killed.
1998 A French mint produced the first coins of Europe's single currency. The coin is known as the euro.
1998 India conducted its first underground nuclear tests in 24 years.
1998 A French mint produced the first coins of Europe's single currency. The coin is known as the euro.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

It has been a while since I have been this tired, but I keep waking up super early and I can't really explain why. For example on Saturday night I went to sleep around 1 AM and my body decided it would be a good idea to wake up at 5:45. Of course I tried to go back to sleep, but it just wasn't happening. So yesterday I ended up being awake for almost twenty hours before going to bed. Of course I woke up this morning bright and early, and on top of that I feel sick now. Woohoo what a great way to start off the week. The only good news I guess is that since I am sick my voice is really deep, I am thinking of grabbing the guitar and covering some Johnny Cash songs, hahaha.

My weekend was very busy, I did a lot of random errands on Saturday and then went in to the city to pick up Vanessa. We went up to the moutains because she had never seen them before and I thought that was something she had to do before she went back to Florida. So we drove up and along the way saw two deer and two moose. The first moose we saw was gigantic, I felt like I could have driven my car underneath it if I tried. We went to Suds and then back to the house to watch a show about Dave Matthews and Trey visiting Senegal. The next morning I woke up super early (see above) and then we went up to Grafton Notch State Park to see the sights. Next we drove by Sunday River, which was really sad since all of the snow and people are gone. We kept going and stopped at the Ellis River Falls, before going shopping in North Conway. I bought a new spring jacket, a shirt and a few pairs of socks, oooh exciting. The sun finally began to peek out through the clouds within minutes of us getting on to the Kancamagus Highway. We stopped again along the river for some waterfall pictures and continued on in the beautiful weather towards Woodstock. We grabbed a quick lunch and then went back to the 'Bury.

I washed and waxed my car before finally returning to Salem. Wow what a weekend. Oh yeah did anybody see the Survivor finale last night, actually I already know the answer, NO!! Well I am going to talk about it anyway. I just think it is hilarious how some of the people on the show don't realize its a game and take everything personally. They also don't realize that all of the alliances they make are going to have to be broken in one way or another. I am so sick of them whining about how the person lied and said it would be them until the end. Duh, that person probably said the same thing to four other people, but he obviously can't fulfill this tall order. Get over it!!!

Second and Third Date

I mean to update this on Friday after the second date, but of course since I never update anymore I haven't. Well anyway on Friday afternoon Allie and I agreed to meet for lunch down at the waterfront. We had some Baja Fresh, which turned out to be very yummy. Once again the weather was great and we had a wonderful lunch. It ran a bit long because we just didn't want to go back to work. We finally did go back and upon parting ways I asked her if she wanted to go to dinner over the weekend and she said yes.

We emailed back and forth a couple of times to exchange numbers and such. I thought the Miracle of Science would be a good place and so I told her I would pick her up on Sunday night. I drove in to the city and ended up going down her street at exactly six, which was pretty amazing considering I had been up in Maine and New Hampshire sightseeing that morning. She hopped in the car and we found our way over to Central Square. The dinner was good, although I did loose a piece of chicken which had shot off of my plate. We talked a lot about our families and after an hour or so we got back in the car. We took a more scenic route back to her apartment and I had her laughing like crazy from Beavis and Cartman impressions. Upon dropping her off I got a little kiss and then went home. I am now trying to figure out the next move, I was thinking about inviting her to BoCaNO this week and then perhaps a trip to Rockport for the weekend. Hmmmmmm...

Epic Entry

I am quite exhausted today, because of the craziness I have experienced over the past three days. Since I never once came across a computer in my travels I haven't been able to update this journal. Well I am getting ahead of myself though, it all began on Monday morning. After waking up and getting ready for work, I received a text message on my phone giving me instructions to go to exit 21 on I 495 and be there before the end of the hour. At first I thought it was a joke and just deleted the message and continued preparing for work. No more than five minutes later the message appeared again, but this time with the addition of "bring your passport". I thought for a minute and realized how boring my life is and how much I could use some sort of excitement. I grabbed my passport, my camera, iPod and a Nalgene full of water and ran for my car. My watch showed that I only had thirty more minutes to get to the exit.

Ooh I hate work. I would love to finish this, but of course everything here is going wrong again. Oh well it was going to be good.

:o(
KWS

Couple New Songs

My music will now be in mp3 format instead of the old MPEG movies so they can easily be added to your iTunes library.


Twilight
You've Got Her In Your Pocket

Enjoy,
Keeg

Another Random Weekend

It was a great weekend, once again I just went with the flow and just did whatever came along. This included hanging with the Emerson crowd on Friday, beach going on Saturday and some Amesbury activities Sunday, followed by a nice dinner with some of the BoCaNO crew on Sunday night. The weather was great on Saturday, but it was very strange today. We had some sun, lots of clouds and even some rain at points. I wish the the weekend was a little longer, becuase I am quite tired now.

Oh yeah an update on my living situation, I will now be moving on July 31st. It's a long story I don't really care to go into it, bottom line is that it is pretty much a dead issue for the time being. I am going to upload some pictures and then its off to bed then.

Monday, monday is right around the corner.

Zach's Baseball game
Day at the Beach

Lunch Date

So on Thursday I went on a lunch date with Allie, a girl I met on Boston.com. We had been going back and forth on email for about a week and finally met at Jessica's Deli for lunch. When I met her I was glad to see she looked even better than in her picture and had the most amazing blue eyes. For some reason I wasn't to nervous upon meeting her, though she did seem a bit flustered. I ordered a slice of pizza and she a salad, taking advice from Chris Hayes I paid for lunch. We walked to the waterfront and sat on the seawall to eat our food. The weather was great and made the lunch that much better. We talked quite a bit and for the most part I didn't say anything too stupid. After about a half hour we walked back towards our respective work places. I walked her back to her building and said I had a great time. She emailed me right away telling me she had a good time and that next time she would treat. The weirdest thing is I don't have anything bad to say about her, in one word she was great. Now I just have to make sure I don't make a jackass out of myself and let it slip through my fingers. We'll see.