RIP Grandmama
Posted by nedster in Annoucements, Personal on 2006/03/25
Well the longtime expected and inevitable happened last night.
I received a call while I was on my way to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport from my mother letting me know that I may need to take some time off from work soon in order to attend to family business dealing with the death of my grandmother, she was sick in the nursing home, fluid in the lungs, and they were giving her morphine for the pain. She was not expected to make it through this time like she had in the past.
I am sad but at the same time I am not devastated about it since it was something that almost all of us have been expecting to happen for awhile now.
A little bit about my grandmother, she was just past her 101st birthday when she passed on. She lived a hell of a long life and was an amazing woman.
She has 5 children, and lost her husband while the children were still young so that put her in charge of providing for the family.
So back to work she went. She was a grade school teacher before she had children and she went back to teaching after the death of her husband in the mid 1950’s. She then taught until the late 1970’s when she retired.
She was very active as she got older, she lived on her own until her 90’s and she drove her own car until then too, and she was not the typical old blue hair that you all know so well, she drove normally.
She was a great woman, a great mother, a great teacher, a great grandmother, and someone who’s life, accomplishments, and personality can be admired by any and all who knew her.
I know she had a good life and she knows she had a good life, and for all of us who knew her, loved her, and had our lives affected by her are better people because of her, and those us who knew her will always remember her and try to emulate those qualities which she had that were so special.
I’m Baaaack
Didja miss me?!?!?
So yes, in case you were completely unaware I was in Ireland for the past week. I was on vacation with my sister, mother, and my mother’s friend. It was an interesting trip to say the least.
Driving on the left was fun and entertaining, although not quite as much as the road speed limits, 80 km/hr was the speed limit on many roads, some of which had tons of blind corners and are barely wide enough for 1 car let alone 2 cars going in opposite directions!!
We were up in the middle of nowhere at the Renvyle House Hotel, we stayed in one of the Time Share Condo units, I liked it and I am sure it would normally be a wonderful place in the months of May through Early September, however in March it is pretty nasty up there.
We had some crappy weather, rain, overcast, wind, cold, as well as some great weather which was sunny, cool, and only slightly windy. I definitely want to go back during warmer months and do more exploring, we barely covered our little corner in the mid west coast of Ireland let alone the rest of the island nation.
I think 3 or 4 weeks with a mountain bike and good weather would be an awesome trip.
So Very Nice Out Here
Very nice out here, but it isn’t Boston…
I think the drivers out here are actually worse than in Boston, I know people say Boston is the worst, but LA area has them beat as far as I am concerned, especially when dealing with 6 lanes of traffic!
Now what would a blog spot from me be without a reference to a meal I ate somewhere right?
Well I had dinner tonight in the Hotel Sushi Bar, and it was fabulous! SO much better than the sushi around the Boston Area.
I had….
California Roll(fitting don’t you think?) which was crabmeat and avocado with sticky rice in a seaweed wrap
Maguro which is raw tuna on sticky rice with a spot of wasabi
Hamachi which is raw yellowtail on sticky rice with a spot of wasabi
Sake which is raw salmon on sticky rice with a spot of wasabi
Ebi which is cooked shrimp on sticky rice with a spot of wasabi
Hotate which is scallops in a spicy sauce, baked briefly and then put on top of sticky rice with a seaweed wrap
Albacore Tataki which is albacore tuna, lightly pan seared but raw on the inside on top of cucumber strips, with a sesame dressing
All as very tasty and filling while not being too much food either. I really liked the albacore, it melted in your mouth and was practically falling apart when picking it up with the chop stix, the tuna and yellowtail were great as well, and salmon was so so, just confirmed that I am not a huge fan of Salmon in general.
I am gonna head back there tomorrow to try out some other things, Uni(sea urchin) and Tako(octopus) looked very tasty so they may be on the menu for tomorrow night.
Harey Carey in Chicago
No, I am not going to commit it, although I might have considered it if I lived or had to stay near the landfill we drove past earlier today! NEVER smelled anything that bad before coming from a landfill.
But anyway, been in Chicago since yesterday, well not really Chicago, right outside near O’hare. Not a terrible area, but very industrial, which makes sense since the software we sell is for manufacturing and that is usually in an industrial area.
I wish I had been closer to Chicago so I could go in and check it out, maybe next time I will be able to have a car and do my own traveling around here.
We hit up a place called Harey Carey for dinner, and it was totally not as good as the prices would indicate, $37 for a 16 oz Sirloin is just totally way too high, I cannot imagine any steak being THAT good, but whatever, I went with the penne with asparagus, sun dried tomatoes, and pesto sauce. The pesto sauce was really good though, very fresh basil and not too much olive oil, and no pine nuts – I like em, just sick of places putting them in the pesto as a filler.
Well, I fly back to Logan tomorrow, I picked the 9:30 flight instead of the 6:30 flight, no need to wake up at like 4:30 to go home.
I also get to go to court tomorrow to try and get the money back from Rob. Such an annoying ordeal, and I hope that it can get the judgment go my way, and then deal with trying to collect it. it really is a shame he didn’t just deal with me and forced my hand to this extreme, since it would be a lot less money that he would end up having to pay me, plus no lawyer costs, and he never would have had to move out! People really confuse me sometimes.
Also, on another positive note, I have a guy coming to fix the hot tub tomorrow!! WOOHOOO!
Who is up for naked hot tubbing after it is fixed, filled, and heated?!?!?
The Good and The Bad
Posted by nedster in Home Improvement, Work on 2006/02/15
The bad first….
No hot water yesterday, at first I thought we were just out of oil cuz the tank sounded pretty empty when I was banging on it, but no, that was not it.
What it turned out being was the circulator pump was all clogged up so the water wouldn’t get hot, and also, the water heater has RUSTED OUT! So yeah, water was on the floor, not a good situation.
Also, today I went to court as a “witness” against one of the guys who broke into my house, but unfortunately the asshole who was on trial today is getting off because of a lack of evidence, no one was able to identify him, even though he was caught running from the area, covered in leaves and dirt, while sweaty and out of breath. Sometimes the court systems piss me off.
but onto the Good news…..
I have my first paycheck sitting at my desk at work! So I can pick it up when I go into the office tomorrow, and then deposit it into my ever shrinking bank account!
I had my first day of real work yesterday, it went well. I was out in Springfield at a customer site, I learned a lot about the installation process. Although I was very jealous of the computer we were working on, please pardon the geek speak that is forthcoming, Quad Dual Core 3.0 Ghz Intel Xeon Processors, 36 Gigs of RAM, with a hard drive capacity of 1.5 Terabytes of Storage space, a Terabyte is the equivalent of 1000 gigabytes, which is the equivalent of 1024 MB. That is a crazy sick amount of everything! To put it in perspective, the normal computers people have in their homes are a a single processor that is between a 1.0 and 2.7 GHz in speed, this server had the equivalent of 16, SIXTEEN, of these in it with the quad dual core xeons. The RAM in a normal personal computer is nowadays 512 MB or 1 GB of RAM, this had 36!! and the space on the hard drives?!? That is enough to store the equivalent of 384,000 average size mp3s! And it was all rack mounted with a super cool fold away LCD screen.
Ok, all done with the geek speak.
The super duper good news now….. my water heater was under warranty!!!! YAY!!! So I do not have to buy a new one, they replace it for free, except I have to pay for the labor to have it installed, hey I can deal with that, it will end up only costing me like 300-400 for the labor instead of the 650-800 for labor and the new tank! I am definitely gonna drop the $100 for a lifetime warranty on the new water heater, how can I go wrong with that?!?
Also have an appointment to get my taxes all taken care of on Friday…. which will be great, definitely gettin back a nice chunk of change with that one!!!
Ummm… I am sure there are some other things as well… but my brain has kind of shut off for the day…..
Walkin in a Winter Wonderland
Posted by nedster in Fun, Home Improvement, Work on 2006/02/13
SNOW!!!!!
How fabulous was today’s snow? It was BEE YOU TEA FULL outside, cold but nice. The snow was dry and light and fluffy, terrible for a snowball but great to shovel!
Driving was not too bad, I dropped the roomie off at the T so he could go get his car, and then tailgated the plows on the way home, but not before going into a parking lot and doing some donuts and just plain having some fun with it all.
Still have some more shoveling to do tomorrow, but most of it is done today.
Still loving my stove, cooked a pizza in it today and it was wonderful!!
No real work for me tomorrow, some more development work at home, the trip to Springfield was called off since the other consultant is still on the west coast, his flight into Hartford was Cancelled.
DONE!
Posted by nedster in Food, Home Improvement on 2006/02/04
ALL DONE!
Stove is installed and all done!, It works and looks fabulous!
Dinner is cooking, I just need to figure out what to do with some of the empty space between the stove and one cabinet, but whatever, that can come later! I just am glad to have an oven again!!!
I have a pork tenderloin and some potatos roasting in the oven right now…….
YUMMMMMMMMMMMM
and no, I cannot explain my mood right now, not even sure why I am!
Joe’s in Natick
ok, went here for dinner last night.
We got seated right away which was nice, but the table we had was very small, and in a corner, not terrible but if the table had been 4 inches wider it would have been much better, trying to fit everything on the table at once was kind of tricky at a couple of points in the meal.
For an appetizer we got the calamari, it was good, however there were way too many red peppers and pepperoncini mixed in with the calamari, but it was still good overall. The fresh baked bread was warm and tasty though, and the whipped butter was firm yet easily spreadable.
Caesar salad was a bit of a disappointment, lettuce was kind of wilty and not many croutons, but not terrible either.
I had the Prime rib, I went with the 12oz cut instead of the tempting 24oz cut, although right now the leftovers of the 24 oz cut sound really good. It was cooked to near perfection and had little to no fat and gristle on it, the baked potato that came with it was awesome though, it was giant and nice and soft all the way through.
I had a granny smith martini which was acceptable, except the slice of apple the gave me was kind of skanky looking. They should have cored the apple and then sliced it thinner than they did before placing it with the drink.
All in all a decent experience, and I will probably go back at some point.
Ok, So I Really Did Start on Thursday!
Posted by nedster in Annoucements, Home Improvement, Work on 2006/02/04
I was in the office on Thursday, for real, this is not a dream!
I went in, picked out a cube, spent some time with my boss trying to figure out what phone extension I was going to get, got handed a whole bunch of training manuals for our software product to read, spent an hour and a half on an HR Welcome to the company do you have any questions conference call, and then went to the post office.
All in all, a pretty successful day in my mind.
Friday, I worked from home reading the previously mentioned manuals.
It is now Saturday morning and I am just sitting and waiting for my stove to be delivered, sometime between 11:30 and 3:30, but with my luck I figure it will be at 3:30!I can’t wait to get this thing in here and get it all set up, very little excites me like this, I will finally be able to REALLY cook in my house after almost a 4 month hiatus!
So I Started Today…
Posted by nedster in Annoucements, Work on 2006/02/01
but yet again, no not really.
Boss called me at 7:45 and told me he was busy with a customer, and my laptop and stuff had not arrived yet so there was not much of a point for me to come in yet.
So I am going to start tomorrow now, although my official start date is still 1/31.
I am getting too many breaks, I need to get on my laundry now and actually do it and finish setting up the office in the empty bedroom.
On a different note, my new stove gets delivered on Saturday, and hopefully will be installed in time for dinner Sat night. Any suggestions on the first meal?