Recent Exposures

Well, I signed up for a bartending course off Exit 8a of the Northway for the next two weeks and tonight was my first night.  It was a lot of fun.  Our teacher Dan is great and Ryan Doyle from Lake George Highschool is in my class.  I can’t wait to get behind the bar to start making some drinks.  This will be the perfect job for me throughout Graduate School to quickly earn some extra cash and to meet new people in the area.   The course has a job placement rate of 85% but I don’t know if that means he also has connections in R.I. where it is starting to look like I’ll defintiely be going. 

Had a few drinks last night at Baileys with my friend Sarah Abbey.  She works for Peer Impact in Toga and even has a cartoon characature of her in the company for promotion.  It was a fun night hanging out with her and Mike.  We ended up going to Gaffneys and getting pretty drunk!  I woke up this morning and thought I was fine until we went for breakfast and I felt awful!  I’ve been feeling sooo hungover all day!  I’ll really miss Sarah when I move for Graduate School wherever I end up going…

Went out with Mike last night to Gaffneys and hung out with his friend Kate and her friends.  Kate is a beautiful blonde who is going to Medical School somewhere soon but doesn’t know where yet.

I heard that Kates friend Leah Serbalik asked about me so I decided to go out and get to know her a little.  Very much like Nicolette who I met the weekend before, she also volunteered to help children, but she went to Peru.  She was very nice, I’ll have to get know her better…  She is the one on the middle in the picture and Liz Keane is on the right.   Kate Shea is on the left.

At 9pm on Sat I got a call from Adrian and Kristen asking if I wanted to go out with them and Kristen’s friends from Merrymount College.  I said sure and we all went down to Desperate Annies at about 10:30.  Kristen’s friends Carolyn and Nicollete were both very energetic fun people.  Walking downtown was very eerie…. It was pitch black.  Apparently the only reason our apartment regained power was because we live on the same power grid as the Saratoga Hospital so we got priority.  Everything south of Church Street was a black hole, which meant 90% of Saratoga was still in a blackout.  Desperate Annies had a generator going and heat lamps inside but it was still frigid (coldest day of the year).  We had a couple rounds there and then went back to Adrian’s which also had power (his apartment is also on Van Dam Street) and continued to drink there.   There was  a
lot of dancing that ensued at that point (see pic).  We started to watch Elf but it was 2am so we all were falling asleep.
    Nicolette was telling me about her experiences in Rawanda helping the children there through
World Vision which really impressed me.  This girl has beautiful green eyes and a perfect smile.  Truly beautiful.  Adrian passed out early drunk holding his cat so it ended up being me and 3 girls on a small little futon couch all spooning each other… haha… Nicolette is the most wonderful person I’ve met in a long long time.  Her energy, her laugh, her smile… in one word - Amazing. 
    Sunday we woke up and went to breakfast at Comptons, which had regained power overnight, and then to Kristen’s mom’s and the mall for a bit just to kill some time.  Adrian felt awful so he
stayed at home while I went out with the lovely ladies (after stopping to take a shower at my place of course).   At the mall we found a jumbo
gumball machine and Nicolette got a giant grape gumball! Mmmm, my favorite!   It was a great day hanging out with Nicolette before she had to go back with Carolyn.  It was a totally unexpected but wonderful weekend and I hope to see Nicolette again soon!

   Holy gale force winds batman!  I woke up friday morning to what sounded like hail hitting my window.  I threw on my glasses and looked out to see the tree in front of Kate’s apartment bent over at a 90 degree angle and the roof panels of the house next door tearing off.  It sounded like a freight train was coming through.  Figuring it was just a quick front passing through I climbed back in bed but it wouldn’t stop.  I tried working on my computer for 30 minutes before the power started to flicker killing my computer.  Everytime the power would go back on our electronic dartboard would go off blaring electronic trumpets!  While the dart board was going off I got a call from Professor Yang Shen at URI saying I had full funding for next fall.  Yeah! - although I could barely hear him over the damn dart board!
    I decided to drive to my parents and Glens Falls for a much needed haircut… bad idea…. the wind was so bad on the Northway trucks were pulling over, and I was almost getting blown off the road.  I counted about 40 trees down along the Northway on my way.  When I got to 19 there was a long line of traffic because the signal had gone out so I kept going to exit 20… where there was a huge pine tree down across all 3 lanes, so I had to wait there.  Glen Lake Road was closed off as well.  I barely made it down 149 and onto Bay road to go the long way around to Tee Hill.  When I got to my parents it looked like a hurricane had come through, branches everywhere and the pool fence destroyed.  I looked up the street and could see a tree had taken out the transformer by the Britton’s.  Amazingly my parents still had power.  I walked around the back yard to take
pictures and as soon as I had come in half of our giant pine tree in the backyard broke off and crushed the bird feeder I had just walked under!  I made the trip to A Cut Above to see if they had power but they didn’t.  When I got home I walked out to pick up the pool fence panels by the road and saw a large pine tree snap at the base and fall over the south entrance of Sherwood Acres, slicing through the power lines.  Unfortunately for me those powerlines were also the ones directly above my head that started to fall on top of me so I quickly jumped out of the way.
Thankfully they only sagged a deal and actually didn’t land on my head!  So now both the south and north directions out of Sherwood Acres were blocked off by downed trees and yet… my parents still had power for some reason.  Wierd…  While outside NIMO workers were asking me how the hell to get out of there and I heard that most of the major roads in the area were closed due to downed trees.   The wind just wouldn’t stop!  I watched as a bearded man who looked like Santa Claus chainsawed the tree apart before a large front end loader pushed it out of the road.  It had crushed our neighbors garbage can but missed his mailbox by less than a foot.  When I walked back into the house the power was finally off and stayed off for the next 4 hours.  We ordered Chinese and I picked it up (waiting in a line of almost 20 people desperate for food as well).  As we ate it my parents power went back on and stayed on. 
    After dinner I drove back to Toga to find my apartment pitch black.  You’d think that living with
people that smoke I’d find a lighter… nope.  I had to dig around to find an old pack of Coach House matches I’d saved.  Then I used all of Josh & Jess’s romantic V-Day candles to light the place.  Josh and Jess came home soon after and Mike stopped by. I called my mom to have her look up the news online and was shocked to hear the damage - tornadoes touching down, 100mph winds at the
airport, most of warren and saratoga county without power and reports saying that power wouldn’t be back to most until monday night!!!  What was
going on!!  Rick showed up around 11 and Megan showed up shortly after.  Mike and I made a desperate trip for beer to the only place open - Price Chopper and picked up some delicious Newcastle.   We then had a little "lights out" party by candle light.  Mike had brought over his portable speaker so combined with my ipod we even had music to listen to.  We remembered Rick
had brought over his portable grill earlier in the summer so we set it up in the kitchen and I put on some delicious steaks.  Although the kitchen and apartment smelled like meat - sorry Josh - the grill helped to keep the heat in (today was to be the coldest day in the winter).  We played cards for a bit and
drank ourselves silly in the darkness.  Check out the picture of Jessica - Dahli Lhama?  Rick crashed on the couch with about 8
blankets and I pulled out my 20 degree bag for myself to keep warm.  The apartment held the heat well and only got to about 56 degrees before the power came at 11am this morning.  What a crazy 24 hours!  Hopefully the power will stay on.

Went out for dollar draft night today to meet up with Adrian and Jen Harris again.  It was fun to see a bunch of FGM people again such as Sam Clune. Gluck gluck gluck.  Man, his laugh is hilarious.  Jen looked beautiful with her hair straightened but after sitting in her car with it’s navigation system, pair of 12"s, and license plate that said "daddy’s little princess" I don’t think she really is my type.  But she is a really sweet girl.  Besides… I think she has a thing for Adrian anyway… haha.  Regardless it was a fun night and it was nice to see the FGM crew again and hear them bitch about how awful that place is.

Tonight I had a couple drinks with the beautiful miss Jennifer Harris who was nice enough to give me some company on Valentines Day.  We went down to Baileys for a couple after she got out of work.  She’s a nice girl… don’t konw what she’s doing back at FGM though! haha.

I’d just like to take note of the first half an hour of the day….

1.  Wake up and take an uneventful shower
2. Mistake #1 - Turn on front right burner which was last used for steaming clams and has dry clam juice all over it quickly resulting in a very potent stale burnt clam smell throughout the appartment.
3. Mistake #2 - Ok, I’ll just run down to my truck and grab the febreeze air freshner… Oh, look…. my front right tire is completely flat to the ground… that’s nice… oh well, atleast I’ll get the febreeze….
4. Mistake #3 - Nope… the febreeze is frozen solid but I try the nozzle anyway where it procedes to get stuck open releasing all the pressurized air.  Undaunted I still try to run hot water over it and use it…. nope, nothing..  It is at this point that I start to get a little frustrated with things and start stabbing at the febreeze with a knife… bad I idea, and thankfully I wasn’t able to pop it.
5. The last straw - I make myself my chai and chocolate mix but can’t find the lid to my $25 starbooks travel mug.  Shit…. What a morning

Last night I met up with Travis, Myla and Jessie again to go see Final Destination 3 but for some reason the girls thought it would be a great idea to see it in Albany.  I found this odd but didn’t say anything.  Travis brought it up on the ride down there in my truck and we all laughed about it.  We ate some food and got some drinks at Hoolihans in front of the theatre before going in.  The movie was exactly like the first two but more gruesome and with more nudity… and not that good.
        After the movie we went back to Travis’ place in Wilton for drinks and foosball and to hang out
with his super cool dog Tyler (a husky and shepard mix- my favorite).  We broke out some beers and cinamon After Shock which left us all a little buzzing.  Travis and I are still a little overwhelmed I think after meeting these two girls.  He’s a super cool guy and I’m glad he’s around for support when we hang out with the very energetic girls.  Ha!

Went out to dinner last night with Josh, Jess, Rick and Kate to the Stadium on Congress Street.      Watched the opening ceremonies there of the Olympics and I had a great turkey club while Rick ordered awesome calamari for the table.  We ordered several pitchers and were pretty buzzed by the time we left. 
    I ended up connecting with Mike and we dropped Kate off downtown before walking down ourselves from his apartment.  We connected with a bunch of girls he knows (he seems to know a lot of hot girls..).  The girl he is interested in, Kate, is a pre-med student in Albany and is absolutely drop dead gorgeous (obviously I’m jealous).  I was innocently flirting with her friends when Kate called me up and came over for a few drinks.  At this point I was pretty drunk and getting tired so after a few more quick drinks Kate and I ended up walking back to our apartments together.  It was a great night and it was good to see Kate and Mike again after my trip.