settling in

the last few days have been really hectic.. packing up and moving, travelling to come here, and then getting here, running around to find an apartment during the day, and then pub hopping at night.. it's been a whirl of food and drink, places and people.

the place i will be working and staying at is a little suburban town, outside Boston proper. it's one of those little towns, with Main Street being two blocks long, and no chain stores, all being the mom n' pop kind of stores. i got me a pretty nice one-bedroom apartment, and have been busy trying to furnish it. it's such a quiet and peaceful little town that when i take the train into Boston and am back in this maelstrom of noise and chaos, it's momentarily disorienting.

the one thing that i have done is really seen the Boston party life.. clubs, pubs, restaurants and cafes.. and there's still so much more to see. but i need to start working for that, cos my pockets are not cavernous by any stretch of the imagination!! and when i have to start paying $9 for a jack n' coke then somehow even the eye-candy available in plenty does not redeem the place. i would recommend the Middlesex Lounge cos it's pretty cool, and the waitresses are hot.. the Joshua Tree Bar is kinda too much hype, doesn't have the irish pub feel for me, the service was pretty poor too, definitely not worth a second visit.. Caprice has potential to be a really good nightclub and lounge, attracts a pretty young and hot crowd, we didn't head into Underbar, which is the afterhours section of the club, but the Moroccan-themed lounge upstairs was pretty cool.

all in all it's been a great weekend, but now it's time toset up house, and get ready for monday morning.. cos here comes work!

Good Morning..

.. here is the news, read to you by your friendly, garden-variety Blogger.

Confirmed reports coming in say that the erstwhile blogger known as 's!' (aka The Outlaw Torn) has gotten a job. He has been hired to shore up the Maintenance Division with one of the two major cola-making corporations; at this time this site is not at liberty to disclose which one. He is reported to be elated, but at the same time wistfully rueing the ending of his party-filled and slothfully lazy days at grad school. Terms of the contract were not disclosed.

In related developments, The Outlaw Torn will be leaving Buffalo immediately, and relocating further east to the city of Boston, MA. Although the weather there will be quite similar, it is thought that the biggest challenge will be to maintain his loyalty to the beloved Buffalo Bills in the heartland of the hated divisional rivals, the New England Patriots.

Stay tuned to this space as it follows The Outlaw Torn on his new adventure. Thank you.

the DJ will now take requests..

i've written about vagaries of the weather here in Buffalo
and spent some column inches on the days that follow
i've talked about decadent parties i've been to, people i met
and making some memories while i didn't even know that
i've spoken about Kenya my motherland where i grew up
and how i miss the home where my parents still sup
i've blogged about college life in Kgp - aka 'the village'
and how it was responsible for my coming of age
i've scribbled about graduate school and my research
and you've all probably thought it's quite a lurch

i've raved about my favorite music, and the great bands
and all the concerts at which i've pumped my hands
i've written-up about trips i've been on in this country
and travels, travails, travesties all quite sundry
i've averred about politics preferring to steer clear
and controversy has pretty much always been near
i've mumbled about things that rub me the right way
and some that piss me day after freakin' day
i've argued about causes that i strongly believe in
and i try to never shy away from speaking

so now i ask you, what else would you like to read here?

the times they are a'changin'

i was gonna title this post 'good times'.. but then checked and saw that it would be the sixth time i have had that title for a post! now that wouldn't be good form for an aspiring columnist would it?

so vip drove down from detroit for the weekend, and we officially inaugurated sank's new pad as the brownie party destination! unfortunately the weather did not hold, so not much town-painting was done.. we kept it pretty quiet and clean. this will no doubt be of great disappointment to a lot of you, but i promise to remedy that situation very soon!

it was a bit of a hectic weekend, so much beer to be drunk, so many things to talk about.. ate out late at the Jim's Steakout on Elmwood on friday night, then ended up catching up on life and things until 5 in the morn. we were up bright and early then, taking vip's case as always. such a shift in balance.. once upon a time a-rod was everybody's bunny, but now vip being the 'senior' citizen it's always more fun to bug him!

after a pretty heavy lunch buffet at 'Taste of India' we came back home to watch the basketball and hockey playoffs, and passed out! threw the football around in the evening just like old times, then watched the Buffalo Sabres manhandle the Philly Flyers in the hockey playoffs. went out bowling after that.. we wanted to do the 'space bowling' thing (with black lights and fluoroscent pins), but the alleys were booked. did a late dinner at Denny's and then went home to crash. at some point later in the intoxicated phase we remembered we just had to play a game of Monopoly. a long long time ago, it was a tradition that we'd get buzzed every night and then play! with our own rules of course, using credit limits, free stays and exchange deals to keep the game fun and alive for as long as possible. and once again we proved the rule, that the 'orange' set will always win you the game. always. finally crashed at 6 after that.

sunday was lazy.. took things easy. caught lunch at our new fave chinese place Red Pepper,and then before we knew it vip had to leave to make the long drive home and that was it for this round of brownie parties. as farewells go, this was definitely one of the better ones :-)

brownie reunion

i am not going to be available this weekend.. yep the brownie gang are having a reunion in Buffalo. if the weather holds we'll be out and about painting the town all shades of red. stay tuned for more stories and pictures of hedonism, debauchery and other assorted pranks that this gang of four can get up to!

film reviews

it's been a while since i did a movie review.. watched a bunch of movies in that time, here are some highlights:

'Inside Man' - one of the better movies of the year definitely. pretty smart movie,about a bank heist that starts off like a heist, but doesn't bear any of the hallmarks of your garden variety bank robbery. the problem with this movie is that storywise it's all foreplay and then no sex. but the acting is pretty topnotch, Denzel Washington is still one of the best actors out there. Clive Owen continues to play great wooden characters while Jodie Foster does the icewoman bit very confidently.

'16 Blocks' - a flawed Bruce Willis cop, hurt and limping, toting a gun while being chased by a bunch of folks.. flashback anyone? thank God this movie is slightly different from the norm (read Die Hard). Bruce Willis has to transport this witness (Mos Def) sixteen blocks to the courthouse, but gets waylaid. again, the ending is dodgy, but you would rather be on Bruce Willis' side than against him, cos he is one dogged mo-fo!!

'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' - too many serious cops, robbers and murder movies, but this one was refreshing! then again, don't be deceived, it's not really the best picture ever either. Robert Downey Jr. plays narrator, and a two-bit crook who becomes and actor overnight, and takes sleuthing lessons from a suave, gay detective (Val Kilmer does an excellent job here). did i need to mention that he was gay? watch the movie and you will know. like 'Sin City', this movie also uses a film noir technique of adapting from pulp fiction novels all about girls and guns. at the end of the day though it's like a cocktail buffet: you fill your plate with little tidbits and are full after that, but did you really eat anything?

'Two For The Money' - this movie had two things that i really love, football and money.. and yet it sucked for me. i guess it was more about emotions and less about the football and money. Al Pacino was excellent in this movie, he plays passionate men to the hilt. he owns a spread prediction operation, in the grey area of the betting business. Matthew McConnaughey plays a whizkid who calls games perfectly, and Rene Russo plays Pacino's rehabbed wife. you wouldn't miss much if you passed on this one.

'Lords Of Dogtown' - based on the true story of the skateboard revolution that swept California in the seventies, this is a really good movie. excellently remade, it recaptures that hippy generation, and has one of the best classic rock soundtracks ever. you feel the energy of the skater teens jumpout at you, and it addresses the same themes we all faced as teens.. sex, drugs, alcohol, rivalry, peer and parental pressure, going against the odds. definitely worth the watch.

'V for Vendetta' - another one from the DC Comics stable, this is a good story about anarchist governments and how life may become in the future. shades of George Orwell's '1984' and Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' are present throughout this tale, echoing the Brit influence. set in Britain, it fast-forwards us to 2020 where the government plays Big Brother, and freedom of expression has been crushed, almost. one dissenting voice remains, that of V, and his protege played by Natalie Porter. let's just say that if you liked 'Zorro' then you will like this one too.

sounded better in my head

s!: up for some scrabble or something?
a: no, too much work
s!: ok i'll just play with myself then go off to sleep..

---------

s!: his folks really liked 'The Graduate' eh?
l: why, there's someone called Dustin in it?!

---------

s!: i never seem to be able to bang them hard enough, usually the stick slips..
l: *sniggering*
s!: i was talking about playing pool!

---------

l: first 100 ppl to come to me.. free beer!
s!: can i come 100 times, will that count?
l: yes sure! but i think you'll be exhausted!

boston recap

just a quick look back at the trip to Boston, and a bit of a gripe as well. i like the way NYC and Washington DC have well-planned out roads, at least in the city center. Boston however gave the town planners too much leeway, and allowed them to go wild. not only did they let them off the hook, they proceeded to give them the fishing rod and net as well! the city is so easy to get lost in when driving around. not only do half the roads change name without warning, it is quite easy to find streets with the same names (that do not even meet) in adjoining suburbs too!! so in Boston and Cambridge (across the River Charles, and home to Harvard and MIT), it's quite easy to find a Beacon St., and a Washington St., and a Brookline St. too, none of which even are remotely near the other, and helluva lot confusing when you have no idea where you are cos half the streets are not properly signposted either!!

we spent a great Saturday walking along the R. Charles from Harvard up to MIT, then crossed the river into Boston and walked along the fancy-pants Newbury St. before ending up at Penang in Chinatown for some awesome Malaysian food.. enjoy the pics!

here's the Harvard Business School and the MIT main entrance:

and the Boston skyline by day and by night:

NB: i guess i can say i have mingled with some of the smartest brains in the country now, having had the dubious honor of taking a leak in the bathrooms at both Harvard and MIT!!

growing growing grown!

i missed a blog milestone while i was away last week, so please bear with me! on this occasion of the post no. 601, am gonna engage in some shameless self-appraisal.. after all, humility killed the cat, and early to bed early to rise made us all unhealthy, silly and oversize..

so yeah, back to the point.. i've been at this blogging thing for close to two years now, and six hundred posts on this blog into it, i feel no reason to stop.. i still enjoy writing, penning down thoughts on a broad range of subjects, and memories from times and places far receded into depths of the mind. and i guess even if the day comes when i have no one to read this, it will still provide me a record of some very eventful days in my life.

ever since i moved to a private site, www.stheoutlawtorn.com, i've been slowly developing a number of subsidiary sites.. have only changed the addresses on some, and templates on others, but will over time have them all under this site's banner. depending on your tastes beyond the eclectic fare i dish out here on this blog, find something to amuse yourself with in these..

• The Recipe Blog - this needs the most work, because without a camera i cannot post a lot of recipes that i have ready to upload. will get to it as promptly as i can.


• The Blue Blog - an outlet for a lot of pent-up feelings i have, a very different side to my personality.


• The Idea Blog - often a place for me to jot down my ideas, dreams and aspirations, but mostly forwards and quizzes i liked.


• The Music Blog - this is a site with weekly reviews of music albums that are making waves in the world of rock.

thank you all for dropping by, and hope to keep seeing you here!

out in the sticks

spent an excellent day in the city yesterday.. one thing i really like about Boston is that it is a very walkable city, and conducive to pedestrians. at least every time i try to cross the street the drivers aren't staring at me with menacing growls, licking their chops like Wile E. Coyote does looking at the Road Runner!

the rest of the brownie gang made it (finally) into Boston from Buffalo, which turned into an adventure on it's own cos Boston has this bad habit of renaming roads halfway down the length of the road, like they just got bored or something! and then with all the suburbs so close together, it gets more than a bit confusing cos you have the same street names in every suburb..

we had a couple of drinks at the Asgard, one of the upmarket pubs in the MIT area, this place is crawling with yuppies and 'suits'! after which we went to watch the Blue Man Group at night.. believe it or not, instead of paying the $40 entry, if you usher for the show you can watch it for free! the show itself was excellent, we had an awesome time! if you can make it to the show, do it.. or else look for the DVD, it has to be seen and heard to be really enjoyed. (read more about them)

drove out late at night to New Hampshire to crash at a friend's place.. i tell you this place is really in the sticks! apparently not only do you not have to wear a seatbelt in this state, but it's okay to not have car insurance either!! the roads only get plowed once a day in the middle fo winter also, and salting is not that frequent either. and the clincher.. the damned deer keep thinking the interstate highway is their local pub where they can meet up and chew the cud.. sample this
Deer 1: "hey hey, did you check out the new doe in Purchasing?"
Deer 2: "ooooh yeah, what a rack she.. BAM!!!"
and before you know it you are eating deer for the next two weeks!

these Harvard types!

came out of the metro (called the 'T' here) tunnel at Harvard Square, and found myself in a whole different world! impromptu bands sitting around playing music, coffees and cigarettes everywhere, intellectual talk (i'm assuming!) around the sidewalk tables.. a man could get used to hanging out with these types!

at night we went out to Wally's, which has become a landmark of the Boston nightlife, and listened to some decent jazz. had a couple of beers and wings at John Harvard's, which is another landmark of Boston.. so all in all it's a meet-the-city tour, going pretty good. like all big cities, the night time skyline along the river is beautiful.. i kinda forgot how big cities can be like living in Buffalo as i have been!

a walk through the Harvard campus late at night, admiring very vast libraries, very ancient buildings and some very comic stories about Harvard myths rounded off the tour. today i go on a walking trip around Cambridge, which is the other half of Boston city across the Charles River.. i've heard good things about a Punjabi restaurant around here, plus i gotta hit the other hallowed institution, MIT!!

apologies for the lack of pics, still don't have a camera

Bos·ton (bô'stən)

The capital and largest city of Massachusetts, in the eastern part of the state on Boston Bay, an arm of Massachusetts Bay. Founded in the 17th century, it was a leading center of agitation against England in the 18th century and a stronghold of abolitionist thought in the 19th century. Today it is a major commercial, financial, and educational hub. Population: 574,283.

yes, you read correctly.. The Outlaw Torn is in the land of the dreaded enemies of the Buffalo Bills, here in the heartland of the New England Patriots for the next few days. i havent seen much of the city yet, the whole episode of getting here has been quite breathless, but will get out and see more tomorrow. i have to say that the trains were really comfortable, i love that about big cities.. the punctuality of the out of town trains was a bit off, but i shall let that slide.

stay tuned for more stories and pictures of the impromptu holiday in Boston!

Golden GC!!

a small piece of news, of no value to anyone who was not in IIT-KGP..

RK Hall has won the golden GC, the first by anyone for 17 years.. i.e Sports as well as Soc n' Cult.. well done boyz, everyone else, read and weep baby, read and weep!!

am on a really sentimental trip after reading that news.. days and nights of blood, sweat and tears seem vindicated, and at the same time rewarded. :-)

Allegany pics

the brownie gang had gone hiking last week to the Allegany National Park.. it was a bit early in the season, so it was nice and quiet, and we had a really good time! here's me near the lake, doing my frat-boy impersonation.. it was a brilliantly clear day, a mite chilly though

we started of in the lighter forest, but climbed to the evergreen forest.. quite a change from the stark and barren trees to then see the green again. there is hardly any wildlife left in the Allegany region now unfortunately.

be yourself

something i've been thinking about the last few days now.. do we really act our age? somehow some of us always seem to do things that befit people younger than us, and some people act more mature than their tender years. when i was in undergrad, i was older than most of my buddies, and always took the driving seat as such. somehow ever since i joined grad school and my current group of friends, i was always gonna be the younger 'un..

thing is, i find myself where i am now, 27 and done with grad school.. and i really feel i should be asking some more pertinent questions, making some more important decisions, and definitely taking more responsibility for my actions. it's all easy to think that i'm still in college and it's all good, but i don't wanna be stuck in that mindset. i think i am ready to take the next step, and start thinking beyond college, and thinking of a life more than where to drink tonight, which beer is better, and why did i stop doing pot.

it's time to grow up, and act my age.

To be yourself is all that you can do - 'Be Yourself', Audioslave

primary colours

i would like to say that my days in primary school were really innocent, but then i would be lying! i was a living terror to teachers and prefects alike.. which was worsened by the fact that i was a prefect too! sample some of my masterpieces, worked along with my best bud 'H'..

• school assembly was an open-air long-drawn affair on mondays. one monday during assembly i found myself near a school bus parked next to us in the back.. so i stuck in a twig in the tire nozzle and as all the air hissed out, i spread a rumor that the bus was gonna blow and in the widespread panic assembly and the first two classes were cancelled!


• the headmaster had a fish pond where he had two beloved rainbowfish, right outside his office window.. so naturally whenever he was not in his office his fish would disappear into two plastic bags that H and i had.. and poor headmaster never solved the mystery of why his fish would go missing and then magically reappear!


• this headmaster was much hated when he first joined the school, as he tried to impose himself. so one day at lunch break, while someone distracted the watchman, his car's front license plate was mysteriously switched with another hated teacher's.. no idea how that ended!


• i would like to clarify here that i was in no way connected with the girl's restroom phantom in class 6. apparently, during lunchbreak when there was a crowd milling past the restroom doors, the girls' door would swing open and a firecracker be tossed in, scaring the living daylights out of the girls inside when it went 'bang'. that was not me, i swear, i looove chicks! *snigger*


• in class 7, all four streams were in the same row, with huge windows on the left side of the classroms.. so we devised a clothesline telegraph with color-coded clothes pegs to hold messages and a hand-drawn system to pull the looped cable to and fro.


• when in class 8 we had these desks that had built-in door flaps and you could latch them with a padlock from outside. earlier in the day the Johnson & Johnson folks had come by to give the adolescent girls a talk, and hand out free samples.. of which a box H had swiped and hidden in the bushes as he was passing the pickup truck offloading the 'stuff'! since i was Deputy Headboy, i had keys to all the classrooms, which were locked at lunch. i went into our class, picked a padlock with a paperclip, and dumped all the free samples in the desk. the desk belonged to a tattletale who had told on us for talking in class before, you can imagine his face when he opened his desk after lunch, with everyone looking at him!


• same year a class 1 teacher had called in sick and no one was available to substitute, so i was asked to mind the class for two periods. i gave them some math homework and promptly fell asleep at the desk, only to wake up an hour later with half the class dirty and/or crying, and the other half running around outside getting dirty or about to start crying.. luckily the lunch bell rang and i mysteriously vanished after that!


• end of every school year we would have a last day party, kids could come to school not in unifrom, and there would be no classes, just cake and soda, playing games and stuff. H had gotten his elder bro to buy us some beer and cigarettes, and when he wasn't looking, swiped his Playboys too! the party went awesome.. we had kids lining up to take a peek at the centerfold, and/or sip beer, and/or take a puff.. we were legends! this was class 4.


• as a inter-class competition project in class 7, we had to come out with a weekly magazine, with full records of accounts and etc. we rigged the editorial board of the magazine (ours was called SPYY) so that it was our gang all in power, plagiarized most of the cartoons from mags no one had heard of which i got from my american neighbours (MAD magazine), copied reviews from Kerrang! (i was the only one who listened to heavy metal), conned local businesses to sponsor our printing costs, and then eliminated all printing costs by sneaking into the school print room when the janitor was out at lunch to make the photocopies, and swiped all the money that we made from sponsorships and sales claiming printing expenses with fake invoices we made.


• the final exams of class 7 i was feeling very restless, as was H. since he was the better sprinter, we hatched a great plan. we got this huge firecracker, with a fountain fuse that gave you twenty seconds to get away, and planted it behind a tree in the football field, just beside the school block. H asked to use the restroom an hour into the multiple choice Geography exam, scooted down, lit the fuse, and came tearing back upstairs, just entering the door when the cracker went off. windows went vibrating, walls shook, and kids started screaming like crazy. when the chaos settled down, i had all the answers, and most of my friends had a copy of my answers too!

April 5th

a black day for the world of rock.. one that shall be commemorated every year, as long as music lives

the day grunge died

yes, 5th April is gonna go down as the day grunge died.. kurt cobain (Nirvana) supposedly pointed a shotgun to his forehead on this day in 1994.. and some eight years later in 2002, on the same day, layne staley (Alice In Chains) asphyxiated on a speedball and his body was only found days later. was it something in the season.. when the seattle winter refused to be sprung by Daylight Saving Time.. and two people who defined grunge as we know it offed themselves?? R.I.P.

kurt was the quintessential trailer trash kid.. strumming away his guitar to abstract rhymes.. and living under a bridge when the shit hit the fan.. he played a hundred and one bars before finally laying down some tracks on tape. this was the birth of Nevermind, the album that went on to blow all the pop-wannabes off MTV.. with the one single 'smells like teen spirit'. later on he stumbled from one gig to the next, then on to the recording studio.. with a deathwish drug-habit, and a desperate desire to prove (to himself??) that he had finally made it.

layne was the ying to jerry cantrell's yang. together, they created the melodic riffs and driving metal sounds that define most rock bands spawning after that uber-generation, grunge! layne and gang once actually got evicted cos they didn't have enough cash to pay rent! then the album Dirt happened.. and the energetic layne never looked back.. even touring with a broken leg in plaster! layne died still looking for himself, his lyrics showing the desperate scrawls of a man torn inside.

grunge represented all the angst, the desire, the rebelling, the ambition, the whatever-you-want-it-to-be, and the pitfalls too, of teenage.. and which is very surprising to find you don't ever outgrow. maybe it's just me, but i still listen to grunge, and get a totally different lesson each time. music rocks! :-)

kurt had disagreements with axl rose (Guns N' Roses) regarding their genres of music, and when asked all he had to say was this: "They fuck things up and then they sit back and look at what they fucked up and then try to figure out how they can fix it, whereas we fuck things up and just dwell on it and make it even worse." i couldn't have described grunge any better.

High School

i loved high school.. it was tough, and yet fun. high school in Kenya was four years, grade/class nine till twelve.. known as Form One to Form Four. at Strathmore we had a pretty small boys-only student body (80 per batch, divided into two streams), but we had very high standards, and worked very hard to maintain the top three in the country status. the school was run by the Opus Dei (Latin for 'Work of God'), which is a prelate of the Catholic Church. The teachings of the Opus Dei embody the sanctity of work, and is for the lay people. being a small science-focussed school, there was not much choice of electives at the eight subject, board exam level, with Engineering Drawing or Commerce being the only choice.

we had some of the most amazing teachers there.. most of them being ex-Strath boys who simply refused to leave! the Physics prof was a passionate Spaniard who could cuss the color off a sailor.. the Chemistry teacher was an absent-minded Aussie who we nicknamed Doc for his penchant of mumbling under his breath and blowing things up with disdain in the labs. the Drawing teacher was a Southern Italian who regaled us with stories of the Mafia while he puffed his pipe and walked up and down the class as we drew. we had another teacher who was also Italian, and the wisest, most disciplined man i have ever come across. i think there was no question he had no answer for, and you can bet teenagers can come up with a helluva lot of questions! the Swahili teacher was a wizened old man who was five foot nothing, and with immaculate precision and punctuation scared the wits out of every one of us. the Geography teacher was also a national level rugby player, and we loathed him so much that we all did excellently at the nationals in geography, it was difficult to get his nagging voice out of your head while writing the exam! then the Biology teacher was this quiet bloke who we made so much fun of, that it was not even funny! some of the pranks we pulled on him were legendary, but that is all fodder for another post.

the day would be pretty hectic for me.. i could be found running up the street to catch Bus A every morning at 6.42 a.m., i was never a morning person. school bell rang at 7.50, and first class was at 8.05. two classes then break for 15 min at 9.45. 10.00 to 11.40 were two more classes, then there was a 40 min class where you could either go for Mass at the school Chapel, or else have a study lesson. following that was another class till 1.10, which was the most agonising class ever. the class before lunch always was. lunch was in the Dining Hall, where the food was above average for school messes. you were expected to learn and use table etiquette, including forks and knives, which was quite an achievment for the teachers cos we were a bunch of unruly teens! after lunch would be three more lessons until 4.30, with wednesday and friday afternoons being sports classes. after which i would hang around and play soccer, catching the 6.05 bus to be home at 7.

looking back at that period, i don't think there was ever a time i worked that hard. there were no free periods in school, so homework was done at home, and often i was up till 1-2 studying cos the system at Strath was pretty tough. we had 3 school terms, with an exam every halfterm (called CATs), and all six counting towards your final grade. you were ranked in four quarters (20 students each), and had to fight tooth and nail to retain your position in the first quarter in each subject. one bad CAT would send you plummeting.. i remember once in CAT II i had 85% in geography and was in 1st-Qtr., and when i got 80% in CAT III i fell to 3rd-Qtr. you had to bring your A-game to school, every single day. even at sport, everyone was a competitor, and you could go from regular starter to fringe player with two consecutive offdays.

all in all it was a good time, and even though i am hardly in touch with anyone from that era, i know everywhere the boys of Strath are, they are doing the school proud..

all hail the power of Strathmore School,
let all teams fall before us, let all teams fear..

spring has sprung

Daylight Saving Time kicked in this weekend, so we moved our clocks an hour ahead.. and it seems spring kicked in with some verve and gusto. had some really pleasant weather, the light rain was welcome and sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day! i finally pulled out my shorts and my pale legs got their Vitamin D shot after ages.

A-Rod's best buddy N was in town for the weekend, so we hung out and had some fun. went to the Niagara Falls (again!).. i should seriously consider getting a volunteer guide position there for the upcoming summer, i almost know my way around blindfolded! chilled out at home and drank some.. ok, i lied. drank a lot. heh! i spent the whole weekend starting friday afternoon in a kind of happy haze, the kind that a couple of quick beers brings.. a gentle smile wafting around the countenance, eyes slightly squinty and leg-pulling galore.

we were up till really really late on saturday night.. and a couple of hours of sleep later were up early sunday to go hiking after a quick bite and a breakfast beer(or three!). went to the Allegany National Park, and it was awesome. the weather was great, not too warm and not too cold.. perfect for some solid hiking. we chose a pretty tough trail, and it was a total of around 8 mi. (13 K).. good workout, and especially with my new no-smoking resolve, really helped purge the body. will have the pics up soon.

rounded off the weekend with an early dinner at Chili's, and another beer to top off the tired limbs.. and an early-to-bed night that still ended up stretching beyond midnight.. hope this week is as good as it promises to be.

weekend!

yeah! finally the weather is changing, spring is here, and so is the weekend.

so have yourselves a great weekend, and do what you do best.. i'm already on it!