Gypsies!

Today I had to go to Midtown to rent a tuxedo for my friend's wedding. It was such a nice day and I didn't really have much to do, so I decided to walk around the city a bit. Imagine my surprise when I saw a figure hunched over, head covered with a shawl, and her hand stretched out and up holding a can waiting for handouts. You may be thinking "Surprised about beggers in NYC? Is this guy an idiot?" But what really got me was that this was a Gypsy. She looked just like the ones we avoided in Italy and in Spain. The only difference is that I didn't see any Gyspy kids hanging around her waiting to take your money. In Italy, my response of choice was "Get away from me you damn Gypsy." Yes, not very politically correct, but when they follow you and try and touch you and keep trying to get money from you, there's only so much you can take.
Anyway... after getting over my initial surprise of seeing a Gypsy begging in New York, I saw another a few blocks later. They're here and I'm scared...

NP:

Did Heroes Disappoint?

Don't read this if you haven't watched the show and don't want to know what happens in the end.

Last night I watched the season finale of Heroes (we had it on our DVR since I worked Monday night). All in all, I really enjoyed this series and will be watching for it next year. The end, however, had me a little bummed out and disappointed. I almost feel as though they tried to cram too much into the last episode. Maybe if they made it a 2 hour episode it would have gone over better. A lot of things did get wrapped up, but I felt they happened too quickly. Also, there was no big fight between Sylar and the good guys. Sure they battled it out for like 2 minutes, but I was expecting more. He went down way too fast. Also... if Peter Petrelli can fly, why did his brother need to sacrifice himself to fly him away from NYC. Why didn't Peter just fly away? Who knows?

Here's waiting for next year.

NP: Far Cry, Rush

Hey, We're In Delaware...

Anyone remember that scene in Wayne's World where they were playing with the blue screen? They were pretending to travel to different places around the country, and when they ended up in Delaware they had nothing to say except "hey... we're in Delaware." Well... I ended up in Delaware this weekend, and discovered that although there's truly not much to do there you can still have a nice time.
We went down to Rehoboth Beach for a long weekend (we both took Friday off) to have a little rest and relaxation. Unfortunately, Friday turned out to be a crappy day with some rain showers and cold temperatures. We roughed it out and looked around the main strip of Rehoboth. We couldn't really walk on the boardwalk that day because it was too cold and windy for the baby. There seems to be a large British influence in this area. The main old hotel on the beach (where we didn't stay) flies the British Flag proudly, and there are a lot of fish and chips places and like three Thrasher's restaurants (I use the term lightly). Of course there are like 50 Grotto Pizza places and I don't think the town is particularly Italian...
One of the fun things we did while we were there was eat at this crab house called Claws. We both went with the all you can eat crabs and corn on the cob special. It's pretty fun getting to eat your dinner with a mallet. Those crabs never stood a chance.
On Saturday, the weather got nicer, although we did have to deal with some showers at night. Sunday, of course was beautiful for the drive back to NYC. (BTW, driving 4 hours with a 7 month old in the car is not easy...)
Today... back to work.

Today's Wines Sponsered By The Letter "L"

We tried a couple more wines from the Wine-of-the-month club my wife got me for Christmas this year (I've only got 2 more months to go... I'm kind of sad about that). This time, we had another of the reds shipped to me. It was Lara Dao 2005, Portugal. Apparently, this wine goes very well with authentic Portuguese cuisine. Since we didn't have any way to test out that theory, we just had it with some meats (the wine club says it goes well with grilled and/or spicy meats). I loved this wine. My wife liked it a lot, but didn't love it like I did. I would definitely get this again, but my brief search on the internet left me with nothing. This wine was deep red in color and had just enough acidity without being harsh. Some nice dark fruits too with a little chewy-ness to it.
The other wine we had was a chardonnay (one bad thing about this club is that 3 of my 4 white wine selections have been chardonnays... maybe they could get a bit more creative) from Australia. It was Lismore Range Chardonnay 2006, South Eastern Australia. I can't remember what we ate with this wine, but I enjoyed this one too. It was on the fruitier side with little oak. It was crisp and fresh. A good summer wine. I would drink this one again too.

Mail...

I just read that the United States Postal Service has increased the price of a first class postage stamp to $0.41 today. That sucks.
Yes, in this day and age, most "mail" communication happens via e-mail. And yes, most bills are paid electronically. And I'm assuming that a decrease in overall paper mail volume increases the individual price of mailing a single letter, but it still sucks to pay 41 cents to mail a letter. And why 41? They couldn't make it an even 40?
Ah well... pass the beer nuts...

One Comic-Book Geek's Opinion

This weekend, we went to see a movie in the theater for the first time since our son was born. We decided to go and see Spiderman 3. Personally, I thought the first two were some of the best comic-book-to-the-big-screen adaptations out there. Maybe my expectations for the third installment were too high. I was definitely entertained by this film, but I left feeling somewhat disappointed. Maybe it's because I read these comics as a kid (I don't think I've bought a comic since college, so it's been a while and maybe I'm not up with all the comic-book-facts), but I wasn't totally happy with how some of the characters were handled. I also felt that they were trying to do way to much with this movie, and some of the plot lines moved so quickly they were a little hard to accept.

Yeah, I know it's a movie about a guy with spider powers and you have to have a certain level of acceptance of the ridiculous...

A big part of my difficulty accepting this movie is because they changed some characters and moved some classic comic story lines around. The first two films didn't do that too much, but this one was full of changes. Gwen Stacy... Eddie Brock... The Alien Space Suit... Venom... The Sandman... Harry Osbourne (The "New" Goblin). Nothing was really faithful to the comic, and that left me feeling a little let down. Maybe it was because they tried to cram so much crap into one film, they had to cut corners and change things around to make it all work. Perhaps if they only had one villain... who knows?
Overall, it's a fun summer flick. We were entertained and enjoyed ourselves during the movie. Looking back on it, I'm disappointed, but you've got to learn to live with life's little disappointments, right?

NP: How Many Times?, Zack Hexum

Back Again

Today, Roger Clemens announced his return to the New York Yankees. Once again he is coming out of retirement to join his friend Andy Pettite. Hopefully, this will be a good thing. The man is 44 years old. But hey, it's not like the Yankees have a plethora of pitchers at the moment. And they won again today. Nice.

Mr. Smithsonian Goes To Washington

Although I was in DC for work related reasons (an overall disappointing conference) I decided that during this visit to our nation's capital, I would visit some of the museums. Over the past few years I've been to Washington DC about 6 times and the only time I did anything somewhat tourist-y was the last time, and all I did was walk around The Mall. Anyway, I decided I wanted to check out the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. In some ways it reminded me of the Museum of Natural History in NYC, but in other ways not at all. Mainly, the entire place had a modern sheen that the NYC museum doesn't have. The stuffed animals actually looked like animals to me, unlike the one's in the NYC version. I think that a big part of it is that in NYC, the animals are placed in fake habitats that basically cancel out any form of realism once you've reached the age of eleven. In the Smithsonian, there was just a big stuffed grizzly bear in a plexiglass box. Also on display were the winners (and honorable mentions) in the Smithsonian's 3rd Annual Photo Contest (these were the ones in the "nature" category). This exhibit was awesome. I can't find this exhibit online, but you can see the finalists for the 4th annual contest here.
I also went to the National Gallery of Art after the throngs of school children drove me out of the Smithsonian. I loved this place. First of all, the architecture is awesome, with nods to places like the Prado in Madrid, Museu Nacional d' Art Catalunya in Barcelona, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums like it. It's cool because it has the only Da Vinci painting in the entire United States, as well as tons of paintings by El Greco, Cezanne, Lautrec, etc...

Coffeebucks

One of my favorite things to be brought into Scrubs lately is the in-hospital Coffeebucks. I love the fact that they didn't even try to hide that they were ripping on Starbucks.
Today, I have the pleasure of sitting in a place called Caribou Coffee. I've never been in one of these before (although I think maybe I've seen one in NYC). The place I went to grab breakfast in yesterday was really sub-par even though it looked like it would be good. It was called Corner Bakery Cafe. My breakfast sandwich was cold (although it took them 20 minutes to make it) and my coffee sucked. This Caribou Coffee place is pretty good. My latte is excellent, and my cinnamon roll is good (not great, but good). The thing that cracks me up about this place is how much it wants to be Starbucks. It should be called Cariboubucks. If you went into a Starbucks and hit it with an odd Montana-living-Canadian-mounty-riding-magic-wand-thingy, you'd get this place. It's laid out like a Starbucks. The food and drinks are like a Starbucks, and they even sell the same crap as a Starbucks. Now, let me tell you that I don't love Starbucks. In fact, I don't think they make great tasting coffee (although if you hide it in a lot of sugar and steamed milk, it turns out pretty good). My main point is that the similarities are amazing. Who knows, maybe this Caribou Coffee place came first and Starbucks rode it's ideas to fame, but somehow I doubt it.



For now, I'm off to the Smithsonian.

NP: Some crappy smooth-jazz, courtesy of Caribou Coffee

Tapas This

As I said earlier, I'm in DC for a work conference. Actually, my hotel is in this place called Crystal City, which is somewhere between DC proper and Ronald Reagan Airport. It's basically like a fake city that was built specifically for the convention crowd. There's a bunch of hotels on a strip with a bunch of chain restaurants littering the main strip. There are also a couple of underground malls with more restaurants and crappy souvenir stores (can someone tell me why a place with weather as nice as DC feels the need to build so many underground shopping areas?). So, tonight, after being unsuccessful contacting old friends in the area, I went to get dinner by myself. I decided to go to this Tapas place called Jaleo which is a few blocks away from the hotel. I've actually been to another Jaleo last summer when I was in DC for another conference. That was the one downtown, and although I thought it was okay, I didn't love all of the choices the friends I was with picked out for dinner, and was hoping tonight would be different. A couple of my DC-centric friends have vouched for this place as having great Tapas. Unfortunately, I can't say they were correct. Tonight I went with some standard fare - chorizo, a Spanish tortilla, and string beans with garlic and Serrano ham. All were labeled as "traditional" in styling. Unfortunately, neither the chorizo nor the tortilla was like anything I had before. Neither were bad, so I'm not going to complain too much, but overall, it wasn't what I was expecting. I did have some great wine, however. Lorinon Crianza Tempranillo 2003, Rioja Spain and some free cheeses. It was no Tia Pol or even Las Ramblas. But it was okay. It was the Disney version of Spanish Tapas.

And since we're talking about Tapas, I figured I would mention my favorite Tapas bar in Madrid (out of the ones we were able to try): The Alhambra on Calle de Victoria. It may not look like much, but it's always crowded, the bartenders are really friendly, and they serve good, cheap wine. While the Tapas menu may be small, everything we had was excellent. They tend to serve everything either with or on this fantastic toasty bread, which goes great with some chorizo or manchego cheese. We actually went there twice, which says a lot that we'd rather go back there than try somewhere else new.



NP: Vancouver, Jeff Buckley

Batali's Vegas Vacation

Mario Batali has opened up two new restaurants in Las Vegas' Venetian Hotel. He's opening up the B & B Restaurant (Mario Batali and his partner/ winemaker Joseph Bastianich make up the B & B), which is supposed to be the Vegas version of Babbo (which is my favorite restaurant in the U.S.A.) and Enoteca San Marco (which is supposed to be like NYC's Otto).
On one hand I think this is great. On the other, I'm kind of sad that these are opening over there. I feel like they're a part of New York that has now just become another example of commercialism. Of course, Batali is a "celebrity chef," so commercialism should be expected...

In The District

This week I've been hanging out in Washington DC for a work conference. It's been okay so far. I think I would have enjoyed it much more if by butt wasn't kicked by this cold I've been fighting since Friday. I'm actually starting to feel a bit better today, which is great.
The weather here has been fantastic, so the few moments I've had to get away and step outside have been really nice. As part of the conference we were taken out to dinner to Ruth Chris Steakhouse last night. I have to say, my steak was excellent and cooked perfectly (the way I like it). Coming from NYC where there are so many great steakhouses to choose from (Sparks is my personal favorite) I've never thought about going to Ruth Chris, but this was terrific. And it was free, which made it even better. It's really difficult to pass up free steak.
Tonight I'm just hanging in my hotel room watching television. I'm trying to give my body an evening in to get some sleep and hopefully finish recovering.

On a totally different note, I read today that the Yankees fired their newly hired conditioning coach. Personally I think it's about time. 3 pitchers in one month suffering hamstring injuries is just plain odd. Also with all of the other injuries the Yankees have suffered this year, something needed to change (I think the only injury that definitely can't be blamed on the conditioning is Karsten's broken leg). Personally I was blown away when I heard that Phil Hughes got hurt last night, especially when he was on pace for a no-hitter. But what can you do? Right?