Nate's Journal

Happy New Year

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 14:08:22 GMT

Happy New Year everybody!

Weekend?

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 02:42:07 GMT

Does anybody want to do anything (a la dinner or drinks) Saturday night? Drop me a comment/phone call.

Jen and I are probably going to the mall (not sure which one) but the rest of the day/evening should be reasonably open...

Mmmmm. Sushi.

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 15:50:55 GMT

Sushi fans, and anyone who's taken Japanese at school, you'll get a kick out of this video:

The Japanese Tradition - Sushi

Happy Thanksgiving

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 13:27:48 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

This is what it looks like here (click to enlarge):

Funky

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 15:57:58 GMT

I found a mannequin head in the trash on Friday.

Her name is Viola.

Successful Mission

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 18:08:24 GMT

Jen and I just got back from a nice outing. Went to the Circle K flea market in Newington. Nothing too thrilling there -- I didn't get anything -- but Jen picked up some old photographs. Picked up a new wallet at TJ Maxx since my old one was falling apart, and got some apartment stuff at Bed Bath & Beyond. Best of all, we found an excellent Italian bakery in Wethersfield, maybe 2 miles from our apartment up Route 99. They fill the cannolis as you wait.

That's all... enjoying my three-day weekend so far. Laziness factor increasing.

Bastards! You’ve got to let the Dark Lord escape. Everyone knows that.

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 17:56:07 GMT

I just found out Terry Pratchett is coming to New Haven!

Friday Sept 16, 12:30 PM EDT
Yale Bookshop
77 Broadway
New Haven, CT 06511

And for you Boston people (this means you, ryenna):

Fri Sept 16, 7 PM EDT
Harvard Bookshop
Askwith Hall, Longfellow Hall
13 Appian Way, Harvard Square
Cambridge MA 02138

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 00:31:04 GMT

Jen is really funny when she's drunk.

Lovely lovely Johann S

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 13:18:54 GMT

I knew I was reminded of the Clockwork Orange soundtrack for a reason.

Jen and I were treated to the entire B-side of this album in the car this morning, and did not hear a single human voice on the radio for her entire commute. (I managed to hear the announcer as I was pulling into the parking lot at work.)

It was the Robert Moog commemorative edition of Radio Nothing on WPKN.

R.I.P.

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 12:45:05 GMT

Last Saturday the 6th, my aunt Kathy passed away from lung cancer. It was quick -- only a few months from the initial diagnosis -- and she was only in the hospital for about two weeks before the end. The wake was last Sunday, and the funeral was Monday. She will be greatly missed.

Posts with more mundane things to follow later today.

mooooving

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 19:20:04 GMT

As of this past Saturday, Jen and I have moved into our new apartment in Rocky Hill. After quite a few car-, minivan-, suv-, and pickup truck-loads of stuff (thanks to our family members that helped, and Liz), we've finally got pretty much everything there. We've arranged a majority of the large furniture items (bookshelves, desks, etc.), and are slowly unpacking all our vehicle-loads of stuff. It's looking pretty good. We'll need another bookshelf, as we have tons of books. (They'll be the death of me, said my mom as I was loading the car with boxes full of them.)

The apartment is pretty spacious, except for the kitchen, which is quite small. Not too big a problem, but there's hardly any good cabinet space -- hopefully a trip to Ikea will be able to solve this problem with some hanging baskets or something. There's a dishwasher, which is a plus (albeit no garbage disposal), and air conditioning (two units, one in the living room and one in the bedroom).

I took off work on Friday, and it's been an exhausting three days of moving stuff. It will be worth it, though -- I'm feeling good about the new place. I'm certainly going to have to bone up on my cooking skills. Feel free to shoot any favorite recipes my way.

In other news, also getting a new (used) car to deal with the commute. Paperwork is churning through the system, and I may be able to pick it up later this week. Updates to follow.

Wedding

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 03:11:30 GMT

Went to Long Island with Jen this weekend to go to James and Sherrill's wedding. It was nice; everything (lodging, transportation, ceremony and reception) worked out nicely. The wedding was in Mattituck and the reception was in Southold. Ended up giving Neil a ride back to New Haven. The happy couple is on their honeymoon now in Scotland.

Saw the new Willy Wonka movie Saturday night with Jen. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and read the book (again) before you do. You can probably finish the book in about an hour -- it's a quick read -- and the new movie is a lot closer to the book than the old one. I quite enjoyed it. Tim Burton definitely places his touch on this one.

Didn't do much today; went to Mamoun's for lunch, though, which was good.

Sat, 09 Jul 2005 20:00:12 GMT

Opened my shade this morning, and noticed a little yellow thing on the roof outside my window. Looked a bit closer, and realized it was an injured bird. Went with my dad and took the ladder to the front of the house to try to get it down, and it heard the noise, got scared, and flew off, pretty much straight down onto the grass. We picked it up and put it it in a shoebox, then called the animal hospital. They gave us the number for a "wildlife hotline" run by the Humane Society. Left a message there, and got called back with the contact info of a songbird rescue place called The Recovery Wing in Southington. Drove up there with the bird in the shoebox, and gave it to the lady there. She said it had a broken wing, but she'd try her best to fix it.

Here's the little guy, btw:

Beer?

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 16:02:45 GMT

Just saw this on fatwallet: 2 free Molson beer glasses. Form here.

Summer Hours

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 01:05:04 GMT

Summer hours for the library suck.

Monday:	12 - 8
Tuesday:	10 - 6
Wednesday:	10 - 6
Thursday:	10 - 8
Friday:	1 - 5
Saturday	Closed
Sunday:	Closed

What kind of crap is that?

At work

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 19:20:41 GMT

The Ice Pirates is a really horrendous movie. Thanks to Netflix for suggesting such a quality film.

Cookout went okay yesterday, even without something to flip the burgers. I've still got a bunch of charcoal if anybody wants to plan anything for later in the summer.

Chatfield Hollow

Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:12:27 GMT

Tomorrow (Sunday): Cookout at Chatfield Hollow

Starting ~11:30am. Directions/ park info here. Wear a bathing suit if you want to go in the water -- it'll be hot.

Let me know if you want to come so I can figure out how many hot dogs/hamburgers to buy. (Or if you want veggie/turkey burgers or whatever). Parking is $7.00 -- if anybody wants to get picked up or carpooled, can do as well.

[Edit Sunday 9:50AM: I'm leaving, so call my cell phone in lieu of posting any comments at this point. Hope to see you there!]

After the rain

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 00:52:21 GMT

There was a nice rainbow this afternoon.

Stylin'

Mon, 20 Jun 2005 03:36:25 GMT

Inspired by cobaltnine, I updated my LJ to use one of the new S2 styles. Had to modify it a bit to suit my tastes. The S2 style system is actually pretty neat; the layer overrides seem to work pretty well, even though "layer" is kind of a confusing name.

One thing which slightly bugs me is that the style I selected puts a 1px border around everyone's userpic for each entry (my old S1 theme did not do this). I changed it to remove it (which worked fine), but it looks better with a border, so I put it back. The drawback, however, is that this will break any userpics that use transparency. I'm not sure the theme designer thought that one through, or maybe he/she did but figured the æsthetic gains make up for that drawback. Well, for now, I don't think any of my friends are using any icons with transparency, so if/when they do and it bugs me, I can always go back into the code and special-case that icon to not show a border.

Ketchup. Yum.

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 13:37:56 GMT

Becky and I found this quote from today's Hartford Courant article on the tailgating at the Dave Matthews concert at the Meadows immensely entertaining.

Before the show, Logan Danvers, a Boston student who planned to take a break from his "boring" summer internship, said he arrived without a ticket. "I'd planned to buy one here, but I spent all my money on beer," he said.

Danvers was lying flat on his back in a pool of ketchup in the parking lot of a Mercedes-Benz dealership near the Meadows. His right eye was blackened from a run-in he'd had with a neighboring tailgater.

"I totally can't remember what got us going at each other," he said. "A girl, maybe. No, wait, it was 'cause he borrowed our bottle opener and then acted as if he'd lost it. Totally not cool. ... I'm still having fun, though."

Apartment; Coffee; Books

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 01:59:13 GMT

So, it's (almost) official. Jen and I are moving in together, into an apartment in Rocky Hill. The model apartment was really nice. AC, dishwasher, and it's pretty big. We haven't signed the lease yet, but have been approved and already have a security deposit in. We should be moving in late next month. I'm looking forward to it; it's a big step for me, I suppose.

On an unrelated note, Dunkin Donuts should just stick to making donuts and not coffee. I got one of their lattes this morning, figured it would be stronger than their usual slightly coffee-flavored water, and... well, it ended up being slightly coffee-flavored milk. Bleh. Waste of money. I wish the train station would get some good coffee... sigh.

On the book front, I've been totally digging Memories of Ice, the third book in Erikson's Malazan series. The first two books were hard to get into and a bit slow, but the third book has been awesome. Great stuff for any epic fantasy fan -- definitely rises out far above the usual Jordan/Goodkind kind of stuff, and it has much more complicated magic and religion systems than Martin's series. And I have two more volumes waiting after this one -- good thing I ordered them together, because I'm hooked :)

books

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 04:00:12 GMT

Bleh; it's late.

Went with Jen to the Book Barn in Niantic on Sunday. Picked up a few books, one of which I realized I already have. Anybody interested in a hardcover copy of A Cavern of Black Ice? It's a first US edition and the hardcover is out of print.

On a related note, does anybody want the two-volume Mordant's Need series (1,2) by Stephen R. Donaldson in paperback? Free to a good home.

Work was boring today, but there are some new projects shaping up that should be interesting.

Had some surprisingly decent sushi for dinner at Tokyo Sushi in North Haven. I'd never been there before -- it's in a pretty ghetto plaza but the food and prices were both good. I'd go back next time I'm in the area (off I-91 exit 12).

good art; bad art; beer and ribs

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 16:01:54 GMT

Yesterday: work in NYC. Went into the city with Becky, met up with her after my meetings and hung out in the city. Went to the Strand Book Store, and saw an exhibit of Gregory Crewdson's photos at a gallery on West 24th in Chelsea. Very eerie stuff, and it's hard to realize that they are actually photographs sometimes. Stopped by some of the other galleries in the area -- one across the street had "art" done with, I kid you not, puff paint, glitter glue, pom-poms, and horrid embroideries. Oh yeah.

Went to some bar called the Hairy Monk for some beers and to kill some time, and then met up with lqiu for dinner at Blue Smoke, supposedly the best rib place in New York. We didn't have reservations, but only had to wait half an hour or so, which wasn't too bad. Good food, and lots of it (but pricy of course!). Had a good time.

No plans for the weekend yet.

Star Wars

Thu, 19 May 2005 06:55:01 GMT

Just got back from seeing the Star Wars premiere with gslickfan. Even though my expectations going in were pretty low, I enjoyed the movie. Aside from the expected horrible dialog and acting and some pacing issues (IMHO), the special effects were excellent, there were tons of fight scenes, and it made for an entertaining showing on the big screen.

Now to sleep, for I must go to work in short order.

google randomness

Fri, 13 May 2005 20:04:28 GMT

I accidentally typed "convestion" instead of "conversion". It's not a word, but really sounds like one. A quick google search reveals 850+ uses of the word, most for conversion, convection, conversation, or convention. I guess people often make the same typos. Either that or lots of them are just quite bad at spelling.

Enterprise finale tonight. It's too bad; season 4 was actually quite good compared to the previous three.