Busy

Yep I did some more hiking this weekend and spent most of Saturday in the 'Bury.

Britt and I On 1A We went to Salisbury to listen to get some beach pizza and listen to the new Beastie Boys CD. Aftwerwards we took some pictures up in North Hampton.

Moosilaukee Hike Kate and I went up to hike this great mountain. It was such an easy hike, we were at the top within a couple hours and a couple hours later we were back in the car. Nice peaceful hike. Tried to eat at Peg's restaurant, but it was closed. I made the terrible mistake of trying to go across the Kancamagnus and then down towards MA. The traffic was gross and I was amazed at my choice of route.

Finally we made it back and I went to the baseball game with Scottie, John and Appleyard. It was so much fun. When you get the three of us back together its always a crazy and hilarious time. Okay thats it for now.

I leave for St. Louis on Wednesday. Can't wait to see Dave.

Scooper Bowl

Today was my third Scooper Bowl and I broke my old record, by eating 15 cups of ice cream. I am feeling a little yucky right now, but it was well worth it.

The Good, The Bad

Yesterday was an odd day, here are the highlights:
Sleeping in until 7:45. Good.
Walking two miles to work in the 85 degree heat. Bad.
Getting Friday off for a day of mourning. Good.
The added work to make the holiday run smoothly. Bad.
Eating lunch at the Upper Crust. Good.
Carrying hot pizza across Boston Common in the heat. Bad.
Setting up expenses for a new fund for an hour. Surprisingly Good.
New expenses not working the next morning. Bad.
Taking the Green Line to VolleyballCaNO to save about a mile of walking. Good.
Getting off two stops to early. Bad.
The ability to still play a decent game of volleyball. Good.
Ripping my boxer shorts from bending over in above volleyball game. Bad.
Driving with Clemence in her car, with a shower curtain over the passenger door. Scary.
Clemence trying to park her car with a shower curtain over the passenger door. Very Scary.
Cleaning the dirt off of my arms and legs in the bathroom of the Asgard. Good.
Putting on my wrinkled, sweaty work clothes again, but still wearing the ripped boxers. Bad.
Guzzling down four glasses of water and a glass of lemonade. Good.
The Asgard screwing up my order and putting lettuce and tomatoes in it. Bad.
The rain stopping before I had to walk to the T. Good.
Waiting fifteen minutes for a train at Central Square. Bad.
Making it to my train with 240 seconds to spare. Good.
Running from Charles/MGH T stop to North Station. Bad.
Taking a cold shower to clean up and cool off. Good.
Sleeping in 70 degree weather with 100% humidity. Bad.

The Heat, My God the Heat!!!

So apparently the hot weather is here once again and I am starting to miss the sub zero temperatures of January (NOT!!!!!!). Obviously I hate the extreme temperatures during the day, but last night I spent about a half an hour just laying in the grass of Boston Common. The temperature was perfick!! I was near a few teenagers (two guys and one girl) they were throwing around a bottle of advil and a water bottle. I thought it was a bit odd, why not toss around a ball. Other things I noticed were the planes flying overhead. The averaged about one every minute, believe me I know I timed them. The common on a warm evening is also a girl mecca, most were excercising, which means leave me alone I want to get fit not get hit on. Some were coming home late from work, maybe I should play my guitar in the common every night and say will accept dates in lieu of tip money. Now wouldn't that be hilarious.

Back to Back Entries. Can You Believe It?

So yeah I am breaking the mold today and doing another entry. Unfortunately I am not including any pictures for today's entry either, this is very ground breaking. I just had to share something that made me laugh on the way back from getting a bagel this morning. Now I don't know why I find it funny and really it is just wrong, but comedy is a strange thing. I was walking down Summer Street and saw a mysterious substance on the ground, it had a texture somewhere between iced coffee and oatmeal. My first thought was how Mark would look down at it, frown in a disgusted sort of way and then avoid it all costs. Thinking further I though how if he had been there it would have been funny if I saw it ahead of time and had pushed him just enough to actually step in it. Of course he would not have found that funny and would probably have been less than happy with me. On top of that I could only imagine what would happen to the messed shoe afterwards. Would it be completely abandoned in a trash bin somewhere (not the kitchen trash bin thought)? Or just scrubbed clean with some powerful anti bacterial cleaner? Okay that is my thought. Isn't my mind just messed up?

Hiking Again

It was another busy weekend and it is beginning to take its toll on me. I had such a hard time waking up this morning. However I am here now and updating this old LJ once again.

Let's start with Friday, because I prefer chronological order to any other order when documenting the past. After work I went over to Amy's for dinner with the fishing crew from Thursday. Since I didn't catch any cod I wasn't allowed to have any, no really I just don't like fish. The dinner was great and afterwards we appropriately watched the movie "Big Fish". I had seen it before, but you can never see a good movie too many times.

Moving on.... Saturday, I did some laundry in preparation for hiking and then drove to Quincy to pick Mark up for an afternoon of fishing in Plymouth. After chatting with Sarah for a while, we went out on the pond and attempted to catch some fish. However, after three hours my fish-less streak continues. We went all over the pond, back and forth, stopped for a while, basically tried everything, but still not a bite. To top of it all off, the fish were jumping all around us. I was able to improve my casting and before long was shooting the red and white lure up to thirty feet away from the boat. Upon returning from our trip, we drowned our sorrows in food at the BBC. It was there that we learned of the death of Ronald Reagan. Very sad, although it may mean a shortened work day on Friday.

Finally, the story you all have been waiting for, Sunday. We originally planned to hike up Wildcat Mountain, but in an effort to avoid driving through North Conway we went to climb Kinsman Mountain instead. I met Kate, Mark, Clemence and Andy at the park and ride in Andover. We piled into the car and drove North up 93 towards Franconia Notch, my new weekend home. It was a packed car, but fortunately I drove so I was fairly comfortable. We mad it to the Basin parking lot in about one and a half hours. The hike was great, of course I had all my gear and had worked out a nice big loop so we didn't have to track back over the same terrain. Our first major stop was at Lonesome Lake the same place we had stopped a couple of weeks ago. The rest of the hike to the top of North Kinsman was nice, very gradual at first with a few short steep stretches. The view from the top of North Kinsman was amazing. There was a steep overlook where you could view the entire Franconia Notch area. We finally stopped for lunch on the top of South Kinsman. We were all pretty tired at this point especially the old man of the group, he fell asleep in the fetal position in the underbrush. We started back down towards Kinsman Pond after about a half an hour. The trail we took was basically just a river bed and was rather tricky to negotiate and navigate. It took a bit longer than I thought, but we finally made it back to the car at 5:30. The stats on the hike were 9.85 miles hiked in around seven hours. I couldn't believe how far we had hiked, based on the guide book I thought it would be a few miles shorter. We high tailed it out of there and went South to the Macaroni Grille in Methuen. It is the new post hiking restaurant, replacing the Olive Garden. I think I like it much better, because the food seems less manufactured. I finally dropped everybody off at around 9:15. It was a long and exhausting day, but I wouldn't change a thing.

The Big 3-0

Yesterday was Mark's 30th birthday and to celebrate a bunch of us (Mark, Kate, Clemence, Andy, Amy, Rich and I) went down to Plymouth for some deep sea fishing. I drove down on Wednesday night for BoCaNO Plymouth style. It was such a great surprise to see Noelle at Kate's house. We went to the BBC afterwards, not Bahamas Beach Club, but British Brewing Co. I feasted on pizza and fries, which I washed down with some Vodka and coke. At midnight we all did shots to celebrate Mark's big day, even though he insisted he wasn't 30 until 9:09 AM. Afterwards I felt pretty sick, I don't know whether it was the alcohol, the food or maybe both. Somehow I managed to make it back to Kate's without getting sick.

We all woke up the next morning around six o'clock to get ready for our long day at sea. Somehow we all managed to get down to the docks before the boat left. I originally intended to share a rod with Amy, but the crew insisted I get one of my own. We boarded the boat for the hour and a half trip out to the fishing spot, we were a pretty tired bunch. It was still cloudy, but there was some clearing on the horizon. We began fishing and one by one people started catching fish. Within a half an hour the guy next to me had caught about fifteen mackerel, sometimes three at a time and all I managed to catch was the bottom, which required help from the crew and a new sinker. After we pulled up our lines and moved to a new spot everybody except Clemence and myself had managed to catch a fish. We continued to move about to different spots and the weather continued to improve. At the next stop Clemence caught a fish and she kindly yelled to me to help rub it in. I didn't catch any fish then either, although I managed to loose two more sinkers and catch Mark's line. In the end everybody caught at least one cod, but only three were keepers (>22 inches). I believe Rich caught the most fish and probably the largest variety of fishes. Mark somehow managed to catch a small lobster, which was pretty neat. Unfortunately I didn't reel in one fish the entire day, but at least I can say I have the smelly hands to prove that I did fish.

We got back to the dock and had a nice lunch at the Cabby Shack. It was funny because they had "freedom" fries on the menu and Clemence needed to get a picture of it. The sun began to fade and the clouds rolled in, I abruptly left the table and ran towards the water to get pictures of the clouds. Some of the formations were unbelievable, to the west it looked like Plymouth was getting hit by a huge tornado. Eventually I could see the rain making its way across the harbor and ran back to my car for shelter. We all said our good byes and half of us went back to Kate's house and the other half went to Boston.

We got back to Kate's house in the middle of a huge downpour and eneded up scattered about the house napping on beds, couches and even the floor. Upon waking Kate noticed a rainbow across the pond and we all went outside to take a peek. I took a bunch of pictures, at one point it even had an outside rainbow with the colors in reverse order. It was a great end to a great day.