New Years road trip Part 2: Boardman, Ohio

Posted in Daily Pictures on January 15, 2011 by Verge

Monica made it through the night, and since we had gone to bed so early, we were packed and on the road early.  Kat wanted to drive the rest of the way to Ohio, so I had a chance to be a passenger and take some pictures.

we drove west along Lake Erie, so there were a lot of windmills and nothing.

it didn't take too long, despite some stops for fuel, food and what not. 1 pm, New Years Eve, we arrive just in time as our bourbon was almost completely gone.

 

ahhhh, that's the ticket. whiskey!

actually, because Steve wasn’t home yet, we went out to The Flaming Icecube to score some vegan lunch, and then to the liquor store to get party supplies.

okay, Steve's home, let's do shots!

some time together before the impending party.

we went to Steve's dad's house to the big party. His sister and some of their firends all showed up, and there was plenty to do. Drink, play pool, Kinect dance party...

this is just after the ball dropped. We watched, and all had a toast of champagne, of course.

our girls, looking scandalous.

next morning, I made us all omlettes to cover our hangovers.

Sam had to go to work, so we went for a hike at Mill Creek Park

an ice wall. it's hollow on the other side, with just this one hole in the entire thing.

we're lucky that this park is so huge and so close to Sam and Tuk.

yeah, sometimes I even have someone else take a picture. rare, but not impossible

kinda looks like the set of a movie. It was very overcast, and very foggy, and made for an excellent setting

...

Monika showing off her local support with the shirt that Sam and Tuk bought her for Christmas

ah, there's that familiar self shot photo

Later that night, we all went out to dinner to some fancy local Mexican place that really did have excellent food, especially when you’re already drunk when you get there.  I watched the Winter Classic over Monika’s shoulder on a big screen.  The ending of a very thrilling, and quite busy vacation.  I passes out on the couch at home watching Black Swan before leaving the next morning for home.

WAIT! Before really leaving Ohio for good, the next morning we met Sam after her shift ended at a crazy night club/suchi bar for one last round of shots and beers before we hit the road, for real this time. Great times, as always.

 

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New Year’s Road Trip, Part 1: Letchworth State Park

Posted in Good Times, Vacations with tags , , on January 7, 2011 by Verge

we headed off to upstate NY for a weekend of craziness

we rented a cabin in the woods. I wonder how many times they had to scrub blood off the floors before the cabin warranted this sign?

but, actually, the cabin was awesome. three rooms, electricity, fridge, stove...but no running water.

 

this is about how far we had to walk to the bathrooms, which where also surprisingly nice...and warm.

this is the real reason we came. This is the Grand Canyon of the East.

I know that there is another one somewhere in PA, but maybe next time we'll go there

this Grand Canyon was pretty damn good for us this trip. It was cold, but we layered up pretty well.

we hiked from lower all the way to upper falls, about a 3 mile round trip.

Kreg and Monika decided to cross a frozen stream while Kat and I decided to worry.

underneath the bridge, the tarp has sprung a leak

This is a track of the entire day.  It includes the car ride out of the park from our campground, to the left towards the falls, the entire hike, and our trip back to the cabin.

we tracked down some wood behind the cabin and started a campfire, pretty much a must while camping, no matter how cold.

we were the only ones in the campground with a fire, even though lots of people were out drinking on their porches, so we kind of became the center of attention.

so, of course, we built the largest fire we could for the hell of it.

After we burned all the wood, we went inside and played some dominoes.  and drank…a lot.  We were in bed early for the drive to Ohio for New Years Eve the next night.  Monika paid the price dearly.

 

!!!!!

As always, the full set of pix from this leg of our road trip can be found right here!

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End of Year Pics, December 2010

Posted in Daily Pictures on January 4, 2011 by Verge

we had the yearly Holiday party at Films. It's been ebb and flow with the parties at work since I've worked there, but you know what...even the lamest of them have been 10 times cooler than every single party we ever had at Sam Ash. Seriously, I loved the place when I was there, but....

...they never had some shit like this!! It's a giant, frozen snowflake with a tube running through the guts. Pour vodka in one side, out somes an ice-cold shot to dump into either a cranberry, cosmo, or into an empty cup, like me and my boss...twice.

we headed to Philly to see Jordan's band play a sick set to debut his new album

this place was pretty cool. we hung upstairs, which actually was an absinth bar, and had a delicious, seriously delicious absinthe I had never tried before.

well, most of you know how this one went down

Christmas Eve at Plunge Lounge!

a gift from kreg and kat...and truly appropriate

seriously, martinis for Christmas is pretty perfect.

then came the snow the day after Christmas. there are no pictures because we just got snowed in and drunk...hey, this blog is honest.

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The Fourth of January, Two Thousand and Eleven

Posted in Daily Pictures on January 4, 2011 by Verge

back at films. this was the set for all of last season of NFL Films Presents...except it's not a set, it's just another part of our office, filled with memorabilia

I think someone drowned tonight in Atco Lake. Or, it was some elaborate rescue mission drill, but it didn't look all that fake to me.

who isn't playing mega millions tonight. only reason I'm torturing myself and staying up till 11 tonight.

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2010 in Review

Posted in Daily Pictures with tags on January 3, 2011 by Verge

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2010. That’s about 9 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 105 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 127 posts. There were 739 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1gb. That’s about 2 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was June 29th with 100 views. The most popular post that day was Atco Devastated.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, onthevergeoftears.com, stumbleupon.com, OnTheVergeOfTears.com, and touch.facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for pernod, on the verge of tears, cachaca, verge of tears, and constantly on the verge of tears.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Atco Devastated June 2010
1 comment

2

Jackfruit Recipe (Vegan Pulled Pork) February 2010
1 comment

3

Italy Vacation Sneak Peek October 2010
1 comment

4

Ten Liquors You’ve Probably Never Tasted November 2010
1 comment

5

Spiritualized @ Radio City Music Hall August 2010
1 comment and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

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Sunday Afternoon Hike

Posted in Daily Pictures, Good Times with tags on December 14, 2010 by Verge

After Monika came home from work, we decided to head out to a patch of woods in Marlton that we’ve yet to explore.  Craig wanted to come along for the ride.  It was the second time I was using my phone to explore, using a breadcrumb trail and the gps to geocache and track out location and hiking distance.

I drive down Kettle Run Road everyday on my way home from work to avoid Rt. 73. I've wanted to explore back here for a while, but I'm usually attracted to abandoned buildings and defunct rail lines.

Then, about a year ago, I noticed off deep in the woods an rusted out abandoned water tower. I've wanted to make it out there ever since, and finally we had a free afternoon to try to track it down.

I guess this tract of land is wetlands or protected somehow. It could easily be developments, and probably pretty expensive ones. But, there's not really any "no trespassing" signs, so I guess this open space is owned by Evesham.

after a leisurely half an hour hike, we tracked down the tower. Turns out it's not really abandoned at all. It must be the local water tower that feeds King's Grant, a huge development of houses, condos and townhomes in Marlton.

...

at this point in the hike, we were just on the outskirts of Indian Mills Golf course and you could literally walk right onto the fairway.

we got back to the car just as it was getting dark. Below is the breadcrumb trail of the day. I forgot to turn it on right away, and then again when we left, so it also hilariously shows our trip out of the woods, to Canal's for some beer, and to Murphy's to pick up some things we needed to make dinner.

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The Fourth of December, Two Thousand and Ten

Posted in Daily Pictures on December 9, 2010 by Verge

On Saturday, we headed to Cherry Hill for the annual Hanukkah party at the Shanfeld home.  Because we don’t exchange gifts for eight nights straight, we just save them all for this party and exchange all of them over a few drinks and good times.

first we had to get the formalities out of the way. Schmoo and J-me light the menorah

everyone looks on as Gisela picks the next present to dispense

Kreg's eyes welled with tears. he was touched by such a thoughtful gift!

Monika turns red because she just unwrapped five pairs of panties in front of a crowd of "adult" friends

Kat and Monika crack up at the "fuzzy friends" coloring book that they both will surely use in the near future.

later, we visited Rob and Marla for her birthday, but I failed to take any pictures. Instead, here's a picture of Dan and Gisela after drinking some more back at our house!

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The Second of December, Two Thousand and Ten

Posted in Daily Pictures with tags on December 5, 2010 by Verge

Craig decided to have a real Christmas tree this year, but we had to warm up first.

plus, drinks inspire creativity, and we didn't want to squash that.

Kirsten came over to help decorate...and drink

it's Plunge, so the tree gets a toilet paper top that Monika made into Santa

the tree came out really nice, and we came out pretty toasty ourselves.

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Christmas Trees or The Benefits of Blogging

Posted in Reflections on December 2, 2010 by Verge

We often say “I’ll never forget.”  It could refer to a hilarious time you and a few friends got drunk and did something ridiculous that will live in infamy within your crowd.  Perhaps it refers to a unique moment between two people who have experienced some life changing event together.

We try to clutch to memories because they are so pleasant to remember.  But, like bad times in our lives, even the good memories fade away.  We don’t do the things that remind us of them anymore.  We don’t see the same people that reminisce with us anymore.  Life goes on and things change.  Eventually, even the most emotionally amazing memories are only thought about once every few years, and then they die.

...

I guess that’s a reason people keep journals, or in my case, a blog.  But, in a very weird sense, journals are sometimes more about processing than remembering, like a dream.  And I think it’s curious that I’ve always written in my journal with the idea that it would be someone else reading them in the future and not me.  In a sense, it was a running documentary of my life, not for me to relive, because I’ve already been there, but for someone else to read and think, “wow, this guy had an amazing, and sometimes terrible, life.”

...

All of my journals, my pictures, my love letters from all of my girlfriends, old trophies, posters, patches, pennants…all of that stuff I keep in trunks and buckets in my attack.  Occasionally I take a peak, but not really. And, I’ve never felt it was appropriate to show that stuff to any friends or even my wife.  I always thought my journals would be something that someone discovered after I died, and would sit down and read and be thankful that I wrote all the things I wrote.

...

But things do change, and the internet came along, and now I have this blog.  And, it’s an amazing sense that I feel when I know writing this stuff down gets immediately consumed by interested people.  I’m glad to share all these thoughts and crazy times with the people that read my blog.  I try to live my life every single day as if it might be one of my last and in a way, I think I use this blog to try to prove to myself and others that I have.

...

Perhaps it’s a bit pessimistic that I need to reassure myself I’ve lived a great life, had a great time, but heh…we’ve all got issues.  One of the best side effects of writing this blog, though, is that it’s served to be my memory bank.  I won’t remember all the things I’ve written about forever, but they’ll exist here for a very long time, and I, or anyone else in the world, can check back into the history of my life whenever we want.

cheers to another year of future memories...

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24, 25, 26 of November, Two Thousand and Ten

Posted in Daily Pictures with tags , , on November 27, 2010 by Verge

Played a show on Wednesday night in Philly. I don't have any pictures of myself on stage yet, so this is a shot of our opening act on stage while I ran the sound.

and the closing band. We played two set in the middle to a crowd of aroudn 150 of our friends. Free draft beer for the bands all night = a great time.

Next day was Thanksgiving at the shore with my family. It's Monika's favorite holiday...she really loves turkey.

drinks are mandatory in our house, and every day is a holiday

the spread before the dinner. We had tofurkey, of course, but everything else was delicious also. It's not really too difficult to do vegetarian Thanksgiving. Most of the food is already vegetarian, if you think about it.

next night we went to Sisters Nightclub for a burlesque show which happened to coincide with the release of the movie.

don't get me wrong, I still love a good strip club outing, but Burlesque is so much more playful, and no one begs you for cash.

we had a great time, did some dancing, got to see some beautiful ladies, and partied till 2 am. tonight, we do it again.

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