Friends

Drinks & Karaoke

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After an agonizing second half of the week at work I was glad to meet up with some friends for an all you can drink 2 hours, followed by some Karaoke. I can't go into what went on at work, but I am amazed at the positive and negative capacity of some people. I will probably write more about the topic on my private work blog but whatever I have to say really isn't for public consumption as much as I would like to vent about it.

I meet up with Luke and a bunch of his work friends at a bar relatively near Grand Central around 6PM, aka right before it poured. We had a two hours all you can drink for $15 special going on. I admit i am a light weight when it comes to drinking but I attempted to get my moneys worth. I can't recall if I did, so I might have! From there we went over to Japas for some Karaoke. We meet up with Vanessa, Ben & Mike. I hung out for a while until I went home to crash after my horrible week. Before I left I do recall taking part in some musical antics, but don't remember what songs they were. Oh well.

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Meeting Old Friends

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Last night I meet up with my friend Karen. She was in from Baton Rouge and was having a little get together with her friends. We meet at a bar near Cooper Square. I had fun, even though I only knew Karen and barely knew one or two other of her friends. All our other mutual friends punked out and didn't want to come into the city. Who would have though I was the adventurous outgoing one of the group?

Like I said I had fun, but I guess I didn't realize how much I had to drink. I felt like crap all night long and barely slept. I didn't think I drank that much, but I guess after 4 hours I might have. Dam Jack Daniels, you taste too good in Coke.

I hope to get down to Baton Rouge sometime when I finally get some vacation time and hang with Joe & Karen. It has been 2 years since I last saw Joe. I don't like loosing touch with old friends.

The rest of the day was taken up by me trying to sleep and relax after a horrible sleepless night. I should have taken a photo of all the blown capillaries under my eyes. It was nasty. I am now trying to wind down so I can get ready for the work week ahead.

Friday Out

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Last night I went out with friends for Lukes birthday. We went to Windfall and had a good time. We ended a bit earlier than I thought but fun was still had. Luke usually is out late so for his B-day i figured a late one, but he got blasted early and headed to another bar. He is always fun to hang with. My neck was killing me so I headed out by 8. Yes that is really early, but it isn’t so bad when you start at 5pm sharp!

I got to see a bunch of friends from my old job that I hadn’t seen in a few weeks. I hadn’t gone out in about 2 weeks since work was crazy and i was tired, but I couldn’t stay away for Luke’s b-day. I am hoping to get out again next week with that group.

Wedding Invites

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Other news from this weekend is that I got not one, but two wedding invitations. My cousin Adrian is getting married in August. I need to make arrangements at work to go, since the wedding is just before 6pm on a Friday. It seems like an odd time but I think I can work from my home, or to be more precise my parents house that day and then go straight to the wedding from there.

The other wedding invite I got is from my friend John. He is getting married in September. His wedding seems interesting. It will be very casual. So casual he stated that weather permitting he wants to encourage shorts for everyone. unfortunately my cousin Adrian’s wedding is a bit more dressy than that.

Plans and Canceled Plans

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Last night I went to dinner with Danny. We were going to hit a movie, but as I suspected there wasn’t anything good out. We meet up for food and drink instead. I haven’t seen him in a few weeks so it was nice to get together for a bit.

Today I was supposed to have my friends Rich & Amanda over for a while. We were going to BBQ on the outside deck of my building. Their daughter had other plans for them. She got sick last night so they were up all with her. Not the best time to take a one year old out for BBQ. We have a rain check for later in the month. I haven’t seen either of them in months, so I was a bit bummed. I will freely admit that it takes a while for me to make friend (I can be picky so sue me) so when I don’t get to see old friends it kind of sucks. I understand since Rich is working full time and is in Law school. I did get to talk to Amanda for a while on the phone today so it was good to touch base with them. Like I said we will try again later in the month.

 

THe 4th

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I am off to visit Jayson’s place for the 4th. I had a choice of Jayson & Gretchen in Poughkeepsie or my sister, and my brother in law’s sisters family with all their kids at their summer house in Penn. Since I just saw my sister and the kids last weekend, I decided to go upstate. The trip to Penn is a real pain and Jayson’s is just up the river on Metro North. Granted it is at the other end of the line on Metro North, but so far the trip is not so bad.

I got out of work at 3pm today, since the holiday is tomorrow. That was good. I got a moderate amount of work done today. Mainly updating project plans and going over documentation. Fun.

I was going to meet up with Louis for drinks, but he got really busy at work. I haven’t seen him since Mina’s going away party so it would be nice to get together even if it is for a drink or two. We are going to rain check and try again early next week. I am not holding my breath on that one. Since those plans were canceled I decided to pack my overnight bag and head up to Jay’s tonight instead of tomorrow morning. I figure I can head home tomorrow night after the BBQ or Saturday morning.

Another former boss I just spoke to was Gus. He IM’d to say hi. I love that he tries to make me feel guilty that we don’t hang out, but he is the one with the crazier schedule. Jayson won’t even put him down on a calendar to meet up because of the last minute cancel. He figures if i get together with Gus and it actually happens I would call and he would meet up. He is kind of right since that has actually worked for him a few times. I need to get back to Gus and let him know when is good to hang. It is alway too long between meet ups.

My Blog Entry for Friday 6-27-2008

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This entry is for events yesterday but was written on the 28th. Work was what you could call a typical Friday. We almost had a big scare with a file server, but it turned out to not be as bad as we thought. Any maintenance that can be held off until after hours is not such an emergency! I was able to get through a bunch of writing documentation that I needed to work on, but that sucked up allot of my day.

I met up with Jayson for lunch. It is only the second time since I started the new job that I have been out to lunch with friends. It is hard to get time like that at a new job.

After work I meet up with Luke, Vanessa, Jeannette, and others for some drinks after work. We were semi celebrating someone’s departure from my old company. The real going away party is next Wednesday. That will be the 2nd person to go after I left.

I left that group around 8:30 with the hopes of meeting up with Jayson and Gretchen for a drink. Gretchen had traveled into the city to meet Jay for dinner. I didn’t realize they had already headed back to the burbs until after I left my other friends. I was tired so I didn’t want to head back to what would eventually end up being a late night of Karaoke so I headed home to drink lots of water.

BBQ Weekend

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This weekend I went up to Jayson & Gretchen's new house for a BBQ. I went up Saturday afternoon so I could hang out and not have to travel on Sunday morning to the BBQ. I am glad I went up early because besides the hour and a half train ride, I didn't realize that the 7 train wasn't running at my station. That meant a 5 minute trip from my station to Grand Central turned into a 40 minute trip. I actually almost missed my train on Saturday because of the MTA's decision to do construction on a holiday weekend. Great job MTA.

Other than that near miss-hap the weekend was great. The weather was fantastic. There was tons of food. I saw a bunch of people I haven't seen in ages. Scott (not me another Scott) was there with his wife and kid. Kai was there with his wife and kid. Ian was going to come but he is expecting a new born any minute so he was a no show. There was tons of food. I am impressed with myself for not drinking that much. I don't drink allot normally but I am trying to cut back anyway because I am worried that more than one or two drinks of alcohol will trigger a migraine. I did mix up two or three Jack Daniel's Lynchburg Lemonades. They are really good.

I was able to get a bunch of photos with the new digital camera. Man that camera takes good photos. They will be up on Flickr soon.

I was originally going to stay over until Monday so I didn't have to worry about taking the train home late on Sunday night, or leave early due to traveling all that way home via public transit. Thankfully two of Gretchen's friends gave me a ride. I am glad they did because I didn't get home until past 1AM. I think it was better to do that than get a not so great night sleep at someone else's house and then still have to travel home.

Overall a fantastic weekend. I had a blast at the BBQ and got to see some people I haven't seen in a really long time!

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My Attempt At Social Networking

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I announced last week that I gave my two weeks notice at work. Lets face it, once I gave notice there was a whole lot less to do at work than there was before. That is saying allot when one of the reasons I am leaving in the first place was I am bored. One of the things I have wanted to do but never really had the time was to sign up for one of the social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, etc) and search out long lost friends. I have used Linkedin for several months, but that is more for professional use than anything else, so I wanted to try one of the real social networking sites out. If you knew me you would think I would be one of the first people to use a site like that. I am in the technology field after-all, and a fan of the new and interesting. For some reason I have been slow to adopt new online social concepts like online dating or social networking. I think it was because when I was actually interested in that stuff I was so far ahead of my time that everyone I knew would make fun of me about it. Now it is acceptable.

I signed up for the two big sites Facebook, & Myspace. As it turns out I already had a Facebook account that I never did anything with so it was easy to start using. My initial assessment of both sites follows almost exactly a study I read about both sites. It basically did a study of who uses both sites and said that there are distinct general demographic differences between the two. After my brief experience I am believing in what I read. I am not going to get into the details, but I ended up using Facebook. Myspace looked like it was designed by a 16 year old, and was too busy a site for me. It seems most of the people I know thought the same thing. After a brief search I only found one friend on Myspace and that was because I knew she was on it. Within 20 minutes on Facebook I saw like 30 people I knew.

Too me the whole idea of using a site like Facebook is to find friends who I have lost touch with. I had a list of a few names I wanted to look up. I actually suceeded in finding a few people, and in the process found several others I had not thought about. The funny thing about this process is you end up getting invites or hello emails from other people you may not have found, but who have found you. Here in lies the problem for me. I am horrible with names. It is hard to remember a name of someone you knew 5, 10 or even 15 years ago. I have already had to reference my college and high school yearbooks to verify that I knew someone. Sad I know, but it is true.

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