Boston trip

More of a log to help me remember the trip. We sure did a lot of stuff and had a great time.
+++++++++
-walk along the Charles river
-leaf peeping
-Walk the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall, Old State house, Old North Church, Paul Revere's house, walked by USS Constitution, more old buildings...
-Grave yards, including the granary and Cobb's hill. Sam Adam's grave, John Adam's..ahem..headstone..also later on in the week a scary late night haunted grave tour, which I would highly recommend
-Both Mike's and Modern pastry for cannolis, I prefer Mike's slightly, both great.
-How many amazing dinners? Legal Seafood twice at the wharf, Helmand for Afghan in Cambridge, Limoncello for Italian in the North end, LoLa for swishy American/Asian fusion on Nantucket, Brotherhood of thieves on Nantucket for some great seafood, Brasserie Jo in the middle of Boston for some hearty French
-Pretty legit Irish pub complete with an Irish band, drunk dancers doing a jig, a shot of Jameson followed by a pint of Guinness
-ridiculous view from mother in laws downtown building, overlooking the Boston commons, Charles river, beacon hill, the state house, and a view downtown. Spectacular!
-High speed fairy out to Nantucket for the night, hit the only brewery/winery on the island for some tastings, decent stuff, bought a bottle of syrah.
-stayed in quaint bed and breakfast, seven seas, chatted with the other people, pretty much everyone on the island is 40+
-road bikes around 2/3 of the island, pretty much everything is just straight off a postcard or calender. Very calm, quiet, isolated, unique.
-Museum of Fine Arts, saw some great American art, Coppely, etc
-some shopping, picked up some cold weather clothes, boots, jeans.
-visited some of the fine schools in the area, Emerson, Umass, Harvard, MIT
-rooted for the Red Sox to win on Sunday, so we could catch the next game on Monday...didn't happen...
-Saw a play at the Cutler Majestic, theater amazing, the play...well the theater was amazing.
-JFK presidential library, first time to one of those, would highly suggest visiting.
-still made time to watch USC beat the Irish
-hmm feels like i'm missing stuff...was a busy week...

speakers

Intimus 4T Hybrid SD - modified

Front Speakers: 2 Intimus 4T Tower Speaker

2 Intimus 4B Satellite Speaker

1 Bravus 8D - Dual 8" Powered Subwoofer

Intimus 5C Center Channel Speaker

powered by PioneerVSX-1019AH-K

Well Ive had these set up for about a month now, but let me just say there is 0 buyers remorse.

Kirsten made sure I stayed close on budget, but I was still able to set up a high quality, and high volume system that can make my neighbors complain.

Having high def speakers is actually a really dramatic change. It's very similar to that feeling you got when seeing HD TV for the first time. It's like "Wow, I didn't know there was so much more out there."

However, if you ever find yourself complaining about lack of HD content for your TV, wait till you start checking the audio compression rates on the back of the blue ray box. Yeah... 96k is quite common, and never sounded so bad. It's like watching a non HD Chanel on the HD TV, just looks even worse.

Anyway, in the rare case where you find both inputs in high quality, the output is a remarkable experience.

Lake of the Ozarks

So Kirsten and I went out to Lake of the Ozarks the weekend past with her parents and extened family. Record setting low temps left us wanting a little more, as it was cooler at the lake then back home in LBC.

As you can see, its a long stretch of water, I heard 1200 miles of shore front. Mainly a local weekend get away from KS and St. Louis, I was not sure what to expect.

let me asure you, there was none of this happening at all.

drive by snaps - fresh on the scene

Progressive on the scene asap! LOL. Notice how the small sedan is pretty deep under that heavy truck, and pushing it out of the lane? Yeah that means the blue car was going too fast at time of impact.

Why would you sit like this???

Why not, looks comfortable enough.

Man the AA guns!

This is from the Naval museum in San Pedro.

I love Progressive

Spotted this on the back of a buddies car from work, I guess Geico wants to play hard ball.

Happy as a.....

Over this past weekend I went up to Oregon to visit my buddy Zach, and also to see my family.

The plan was to go fishing, and claming, and just have a wild time.

Fishing didn't work out, something to do with the river levels being to low. Blah!

However, we did make it out to the clam fields on Sat morn. This is a generic file photo from the internet, but they all look just like this out there. Called Razor clams. About 4 inches long, and 1 inch thick. They move quick! As soon as you start digging for one, they dig deeper stright down into the sand.

Sweet seats

Over Easter weekend we were down in San Diego visiting Kirsten's parents and friends. We had the chance to go to the Padre's game in the dug out seats!

This is a photo of the golden glove award, which they were giving to Padre player that night.

Back at it, Beast sighting!

Well, it's been a couple months since I posted here. Got out of the groove I guess, busy with other things so the blog slipped...

But then I spotted this beast the other day, and it all came back. Purpose restored, faith refreshed, goals set.

Sure a '96 Viper doesn't carry the same cache it did back in it's prime, but this machine is still pure grit and muscle. V12 engine up front, no door handles in back. The rocker warning labels say extra preventive maintenance is required if consistent race track use. Serious Nasty!

Chargers vs Colts

Plenty of football this holiday season. This was the only pro game I went to, but it sure was a good one. Playoff game with San Diego at home vs. the Colts. Went into overtime, with a touchdown run right into the end zone in front of our seats! Alas, no jumping high fives from Scroles.

Rose Bowl 2009

I started this blog with the 2008 Rose Bowl, so I had to make sure and get a couple snaps from this years game for the blog.

We sat on the other end of the bowl this year, but pretty much every seat in the house is decent views.

We were at the VERY top row, but we had the wall behind us to lean on, and no knees in our back, so a solid trade off.

The game of course rocked, and USC looked solid as ever.

Went with Kirsten, but saw a couple other TKE's and friends at the game. Overall good times.