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| | Coming off a pretty busy weekend. Thursday was the triumphant return to Trandoria, my long shelved D&D campaign. Seemed to go farily well. Staying focused of course is always the hard part. Damn distractable nerds.
Friday evening I went down to the Guild and hung out with Ed, Beth, Evan and Angus. I continue to reconnect with friends. Maybe bachelorhood ain t so bad afterall. Saturday I watched over the coffee shop. Despite having to get up unGodly early it was actually a decent day. Got to chat with some regulars. It s still fun to run the shop despite the well documented travails. I also drank quite a few lattes. Mmm... coffee.
Saturday night, was dinner with jkarr, Jamie and his wife. We went downtown to Kokomos for some reason. It was fun though and good for some laughs. Jamie s friend, Andrew, was also there and seems increasingly horrified by how our conversations always tend towards the homoerotic for some reason. Go figure.
Afterward, jkarr and I hung out and watched There Will Be Blood. Was supposed to meet up with Evan and the elusive Todd Gibson, but got our theatres crossed (I did manage to catch up with them later). I thought the movie was very good and loved the disconcerting score. Todd and Evan disliked it and hated the disconcerting score. Weird. I can only assume the Harrisburg and Camp Hill theatres were playing different versions of the movie. Twould explain a lot. Anyway, I can understand not liking the film... the plot and pacing are... non-traditional to say that least, but I don t think anyone could disparage the amazing performance by Daniel Day Lewis. He is crazy good, as usual, and his ever-growing collection of Best Actor awards for this role are well deserved.
Sunday I lazed about and read. Finished two different books in the last few days. One of which was Ender s Game. Anyone else read it? It s almost required reading for nerds so I assume many have. Was looking for some input to see if the other books in the series are worth checking out. I liked the ending (despite really not caring for much of the middle of the book) and was interested to see how the other books developed in spite of the everything-tied-up-into-a-neat-bow ending of book 1. That may do it for my classic sci-fi reading for a while, having recently finished both Ender and Dune.
Later Suday I hung out at Matt and Liz s for her 22nd birthday. Made me feel old. She was 13 when she first started hanging around the Guild. Man, how the time flies.
Anyone interested in a SuperBowl gathering on Sunday? I m up for cooking some vats/troughs of food if people are up for eating it and joining me in jeering both Eli Suckass Manning and Tom Asshat Brady (TAB for short?) endlessly. Lemme know.
Later all.
-bampf | | | OK, much has transpired, much to report. Going back to Thursday I made a trip to the mega-Ikea in Norristown equipped with erion s soccer mom van to further upgrade the house. Trip was a great success. Met up with Kristyn down there, who provided much needed female sensibilities and more than a few belly laughs (she tried to brain a cancer-ridden child with a couch!). I spent way too much dough, but returned laden with cool Swedish wares. Damn those gargantuan Swedes and their industrious nature. Biggest purchase was a new couch. Of course it stuck out the back of the van, so I drove home from Philly in the driving snow and cold with the back door open and the windows down to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning. So I managed to pick up a nice raspy cough for my efforts. But it was probably worth it. The house is looking better and better.
Friday was movie night with Wanderer, Piz and Hoffman the Younger. Went to see Cloverfield. I was pulling for Juno but that s a tough sell for a group of guys. I thought Cloverfield was a great idea, fairly well executed... but downright painful to watch. Blair Witch made me physically ill when I watched it... this movie has much the same effect. So, you are warned.
Saturday was a glorious day. Perhaps one of the most glorious days ever. Late Friday my brother called me and invited me to come do some shooting at a friend of his boss s. Some gun nut guy with over 600 guns in his collection... how could I resist?
So early Saturday I get up and drive to Newville. Little did I know the wonders that awaited me. The gun nut was actually a spectacularly nice guy. Guy owns an electricians contracting company and used to sell guns on the side. In any case he had several full auto class 3 weapons. After shooting the full auto AR-15 I was pretty jazzed, but nothing could prepare me for the glory that is the MP5. Heckler and Koch do not employ engineers... they employ angels or genies or something... creatures capable of imparting endless joy in human beings... for the full auto MP5 was amazing. Perfection on earth. All in attendance were in agreement on this one. As if that wasn t enough, for the grand finale he pulls out the Barret (which I didn t get a chance to shoot... it is like $7 per shot) and then the Browning .30 cal machine gun! Yes! Belt fed, tripod mounted, actual machine gun (like the one prominently featured in Saving Private Ryan). So amazing. .308 rounds, being fired at 700 rnds per minute. Insane! I did get to fire this beast. Now that is a feeling of power in your hands right there! We also perused the extensive complete gun collection. Again, amazing. 600 guns was an accurate estimate, and all were out and displayed within the vault-like gun room of our host. I left in a heady daze, nigh intoxicated by the sweet aroma of gun powder.
God, guns are cool.
The latter part of Saturday was a trip to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the Hershey theatre. Was another very good time. Got to hang out with Josh s woman for the first time (she is now confirmed to be real). So that was cool. And the print of the film was surprisingly good. Much better than the print seen years back when I saw it in Philly. It was well worth the agonizingly uncomfortable seats. It had been at least three years since I ve watched the film (I used to watch it at least thrice annually) so it was refreshing to see it again. You tend to forget just how brilliant that film is, now that every other scene has become a cliche. The dialogue between Arthur and Dennis the marxist peasant is still maybe the best thing ever committed to celuloid. Glorious.
So that was a pretty amazing day. Full auto guns and Python... a nerd s brief glimpse of heaven.
Come Sunday I was still assembling Swedish wares and organizing the house with Josh s help til it was time for football. The playoffs this year have been downright depressing. Pretty much every game I have watched resulted in the team I was rooting for losing. That sucks. And the two teams I least wanted to make the big show are of course the ones left standing. Bastards. I d contemplate boycotting the Super Bowl if it weren t such a cultural event. Bastards. At least Brady sucked. Maybe that will stymy some of the Golden Boy talk. Sigh. Did I mention? Bastards.
In other random news. A note to all: my cell phone has basically become a land line. It s ability to hold a charge is about nil. So it stays powered on pretty much only while plugged into the wall. Eventually I ll replace the phone, but my general hatred for cell phones means this will remain a very low priority probably for a while. As an added cell phone hatred note, my old Nextel phone paid the ultimate price for it s shittiness, being sacrificed to the MP5 Gods (see above).
Also, I really love today s quote of the day. Ah Hunter, we miss you.
Enough prattle for now.
-bampf
| | | A few quick observations and ruminations about the weekend.
Saturday was a sad day. Josh and I took down the Christmas Tree. Poor fella. A sad statemend indeed, as the once grand icon of goodness gets haphazardly stripped and discarded. The Marla Singer line from Fight Club about the discarded wedding dress comes to mind. I m not gonna bother looking it up, if you re not familiar with it you are a cretin, and should get off my site and go watch that movie a couple dozen times. Only then will you have attoned for your sins and will be allowed back into my domain (ha! bad computer nerd pun).
Football. So I need to make some remarks about the playoffs. Tom Brady is an inhuman passing machine. Now we all know Brett Favre is an unstoppable robot. But this is different. Favre, like any machine running a modern operating system is prone to glitches, bugs and seemingly random and erratic behavior at times. Brady is some avatar of a long ignored football god. He makes Elway and Marino look stupid. He must be stopped now. I can not stress this enough. He must be stopped. Lest he comepletely change the game of football and its storied history forever.
It was nice to see the Colts lose. Peyton has proudly reclaimed his Chokasaurus Rex title (recall even when they won the SuperBowl Peyton had a crappy playoffs... as always). And again, the Colts lose despite the referees doing everything in their power to assist the NFL golden boy. At least he s now free to attend to his calling... making comercials. Eli is of course a minor aberration. His powers of suckitude will come forth soon enough. I hate Eli only slightly more than I hate the Cowboys, so I was only slightly annoyed by their advancing. Just means I can revel in Eli s defeat next week in Green Bay.
An important note: the Subway Expense Report commercial may be the funniest thing to ever be shown on television. Seriously. Pure genius. Slightly edging out the old Nextel Dance Party commercial as funniest all time.
I know there was some other stuff to blog about, but I m drawing a blank. Maybe it ll come to me later.
bampf | | | So far 2008 has been pretty good. Probably too early to pass judgement on the annum in toto, but so far so good.
Sure the Steelers were eliminated from the playoffs. But that was gonna happen regardless. Too many injuries in too many key positions. Down to third stringers in a couple of positions. So I was happy to see them make a good showing against the Jags. We could have won that game easily, and the officiating was questionable (clearly more one-sided than SuperBowl XL) but, hey, it happens. I m not gonna go all Mike Holmgren and turn into a whiny bitch. Jags played well... I just hope they can kill Tom Brady. As, like all good sports fans, am now in Anybody-But-The-Pats mode. So let s go Not-Pats! All the way! Woooo!
As for everything else. Primo. House looks great and is getting better. Still reconnecting with old friends. Been devoutly sticking to my new workout routine and am now down below my college playing weight. I m pretty pleased about that, I haven t been this light since my senior year in high school in nineteen hundred and ninety friggin two (anno domini)! Not bad.
I have my list of movies of 07 compiled and will be adding that entry soon. Though I am stalling to allow maybe one or two more entries.
Here s the next question. When to take down the Xmas tree? I assume maybe shoulda been pitched by now. But it s making such a fine pine scented cat toy. It was nice to put one up again. Had been a few years. Though when Josh and I were picking it out I can t help but wonder if people assumed we were a gay couple... at least there s no confusing me for the girl in that relationship... poor Probie he s so small and smooth.
Probably do some house cleaning of the Blog Friends. Most are dormant. Making me look bad. Maybe I ll replace them with myspace links. Though I certainly don t condone such silliness, seems by brother and sister have pages complete with devoted followings.
Well enough rambling.
-bampf | | | Well Happy 2008 to one and all. I keep meaning to post and instead just sit at my computer and wander aimlessly about the interwebs (or shoot Americans in Call of Duty).
Anyway, let us look back at 2007. All in all, I d say it was a pretty good year. It ended a little tumultuously, but that certainly isn t an all bad thing. Had a lot of fun, took some great nerd trips. Had some fun trips with Meghan. Played some paintball (until we suddenly just stopped). Did a considerable amount of nerding. Good stuff. The coffee shop was fun and a good experience, but I m not sad to see it go. I prefer my non-grown up schedule to be honest. With Meghan gone, I m excited about moving forward (I think we make better friends anyway)... the house looks good (maybe it ll look great with a bit more work), I ve been re-connecting with old friends, the possibilities are endless.
I ll need to take some time to do my annual movie review sometime in the next couple of days. Decent movie year, if memory serves.
I ll try to update some more soon.
-bampf
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