Dec 31, 2009

The original plan was to get up and go play a couple of disc golf courses nearby but it was snowing when we got up so instead we went back to bed for a while. And once we finally got up it turned out we probably could have gone out but it was too late.. Oh well.. snow day! Her mom made some awesome potato pancakes for us at night that were strangely good with sugar and sour cream.

We spent most of the night planning future trips/disc golf excursions. That's how we celebrated New Year's Eve. It's all the same thing anyway.

Dec 30, 2009

By the time we headed out, there wasn't enough time to go anywhere far but we decided to play the Vineland course. Everything was frozen and both ended up with discs on the ice on hole 1.

I had to get out the Retriever again to get them back. It took a little while but I pulled them both close enough to recover and then make a putt.

Hole 7 was fun to shoot down the completely iced over half pipe. I ended up not far from the end on the ice. It was fun playing the holes differently by using the ice.

Hole 9 was completely iced in so we had to shoot to it and then recover the disc by stepping on the stump next to it. It's not as easy as it looks here. We played a few more holes that weren't iced over and then we had to leave to get to the show.

We were in traffic on the Turnpike for a while which didn't help since we left late. We got there with plenty of time before the bands we wanted to see though. We came in to see Geoff's other band, United Nations. They are a harder band than Thursday and he did some screaming that messed up his voice more than it already was.

Dillinger played next, followed by a good performance by Glassjaw. Thursday came on, playing some older stuff but Geoff's voice was clearly bothering him so they cut some songs.

Unfortunately, the set seemed pretty short because of the songs they cut. They closed with Jet Black New Year of course so we pretended it was New Year's Eve already.

It was a little disappointing for a Thursday show but the songs they did play were some pretty good ones. I'm sure it won't be so long before I see them again and they'll make up for it. After the show we went back to Joanna's house and hung out for a while before sleep time.

Dec 29, 2009

I went up to the train station in Trenton in the morning to pick up Joanna. I got there early, so I got a bagel and sat in the parking lot of Dunkin' Donuts reading my book for a while until the train came in. We first went to America's Best so she could get her eye exam for contacts. Too many opportunities to break her glasses with the things we end up doing.

After she was set up with her lenses we went over to Tyler to play some golf. It was cold and pretty windy. I started to sympathize with Ryan for not wanting to play in this weather.

The wind didn't really affect us much at all, my discs just wouldn't do what I wanted. On a hole by the water it curved way to the right and then rolled slowly from one level to the next down a big hill and then hopped into the river. We looked for a while but to no avail.

It got a little warmer as we walked and played. When there was no wind it was fine. We finished all 27 holes with a few really nice shots and quite a few tree shots for me.

We went looking for something to eat after the course. I used my handy GPS but ended up at a few places we didn't really want to eat at but passed a Domino's so we stopped there. We got some bread bowls (it was much better than it looks in the photo). I also got to open my birthday gifts there in the car. Side note: it was so cold out! We were sitting in the car eating because Domino's has no seating and it was just damn cold. Ok, anyway, the first thing I opened was a Charlie Brown Christmas LP. Pretty sweet, I just need to set up my turntable again. Somehow Joanna felt this was "not a Christmas-y gift".... haha.. Next was a bag with a candle (all of my rooms should smell fantastic with all of these candles) and two books. One I had read but didn't own yet and the other was by the author of Trainspotting and looks good.

We didn't really have a plan to kill the next two or three hours until the show so we went to Philly, parked on South Street and walked around looking for dessert. The plan was to stop eating so much sweet stuff but it was my birthday so.... We tried a few places. Gianna's had closed the bakery for this week, the ice cream place was expensive and we couldn't find the Ihop. It wasn't looking good until I remembered the crepe place on Sixth. We walked swiftly back there and ordered a crepe with bananas and ice cream. It was delicious. If only it had Nutella... Chuck and Katie met us there and once we finished eating, we got the car and re-parked right in front of the TLA.

The Starting Line reunion show! I have missed their holiday show... even though it's only been one year that they didn't have it.

We got there in time to see Valencia open. They played really well. There were definitely a good amount of their fans there and they played a good amount of stuff from the newer cd that I like a lot.

The Starting Line came out playing the first few songs on all of their albums and then cut into some fan favorites. The place didn't seem sold out even though it has been for quite a while. The crowd was good though and that is always helpful.

Kenny seemed really excited to be playing like always and he involved the crowd as well. It was great to see them play again and sing along to songs I haven't seen played live in a while.

It was a long day of awesomeness and I was pretty tired once we got back home. Happy birthday to me!

Dec 28, 2009

The day had finally arrived for us to go skiing on our annual trip to Blue Mountain. We got food at Wawa and headed to PA. It was cold when we got there- even more when I realized that I forgot my ski pants and my face mask. Oops.. Skiing in jeans!

There were only a few trails closed to be groomed. Most of them were open, including the new one called Dreamweaver and the diamond lead-in to it, Nightmare something. That was probably one of my favorite trails of the night.

We skiied a lot on Dreamweaver and the diamonds that are on the same side before doing a few on the other side of the mountain and then taking a break to get some food.

We came back to the far side after having our sandwiches and I got my scarf from the car. It really helped. Wearing jeans wasn't really a problem at all but my face was cold before that.

We did quite a few runs and stayed until everything was closing around ten. It was a lot of fun and a successful ski trip.

The drive home didn't seem too long. We stopped for bagels at Dunkin' Donuts and I got a white hot chocolate. That's good stuff.

Dec 27, 2009

I started the afternoon with dinner at my grandmom's house with some family. There was veggie lasagna, broccoli casserole and sweet potatoes. It was all delicious. I got to see Aiden for a while and talk to everyone else that I rarely see. This was a belated holiday dinner.

It was really nice out so I decided to take advantage of the weather by playing a few holes. It ended up being harder than I expected. This is hole 1. The water is usually back to behind the far trees. All the snow we got last week that melted under the tons of rain the day before really rose the level of the lake.

A lot of the holes were completely unplayable. Hole 9 was completely submerged but it looked really cool.

I skipped 6-9 and started back up on ten. I really like the view here from hole 7 though. Once I got back to 13 I decided to call it a day. Not only was there too much water to even walk through that one, there were paintballers playing on the next holes. It was still a nice short game.

Later on was the holiday party at Sam's house. There were lots of desserts and foods out already when we got there to snack on.

We all sat down for a proper dinner. Sam made vegan lasagna.. so amazing! Always. Diebra brought more pumpkin roll that was also delicious. Tooooo many desserts!

After we ate it was time for the swap. The idea is that you get a gift or you swap with someone else. The rules were a little fuzzy and didn't seem quite right since you had to choose to swap before you even opened a gift but it was interesting.

We went in the order of randomly drawn numbers. Katie got Jenga early on and there wasn't a lot of trading right away.

Nate and Ryan both got Snuggies on the first round, even though everyone ended up switching in the end.

My initial gift was a bottle of Jameson. After a bunch of swapping and making up rules to an already curious game I ended up with a Snuggie and who knows where everything else ended up with. It was somewhat entertaining at times but I think if we ever do it again the rules need to be more clearly established ahead of time.

Next on the agenda was game time. We played a game called "things." The idea is you get a category like "things you would never eat.." You have to write something on a paper and hand it in and once they're all handed in and read aloud it goes around the table until everyone's answer has been figured out.

It's a good idea for a game, it just took forever because we had twelve people. It was fun a lot of the time but sometimes it got redundant and we were all getting tired by the end.

I went to Katie's after the party so she could give me my birthday presents since she wouldn't see me before it. She got me a few things; a book by Augusten Burroughs that I had wanted and another book I hadn't heard of but it looks really interesting. She also got me some candle things that I needed and a sweatshirt. Thanks! After we hung out for a while watching Greek I headed home. Lots of food for one day.

Dec 26, 2009

I went to the gym with Ryan in the afternoon as one final day of ski preparation. After running and working out for a while we both went to Target to get our gifts for the the next night's party. It didn't take too long to pick out some gifts and get out of there.

A little later, Katie and I went to Johnny Brenda's in Philly to see Mewithoutyou. The place itself is really nice. It's a small tavern but spacious and quiet. I liked it.

There was one opener before Mewithoutyou came on. They all seemed happy to be playing a show together again and played a lot of great songs. They're so good.

Aaron joked around for a while and talked about his adventures of working as a substitute teacher now. They played a great encore and left everyone happy but still wanting more. I hope they continue the tradition of playing holiday shows from now on.

We went to Maoz after and met up with Nathan there since he just got done playing a show a few blocks away. We got a falafel that fell apart when it fell off its stand because there was a creepy girl staring us down from outside. You had to be there. Nathan got a giant cone of fries. That's a large. They only have two sizes.

It was a fun night overall and the show was great.

Dec 25, 2009

In the morning (or something close to morning) I went to my mom's house and hung out for a while. She gave me some money wrapped around a 16GB flash drive. That should hold everything I need for a while. I hung out and played Wii bowling with Larry for a bit and had something to eat with them. I went to my dad's next where I got a GPS--this is probably a good thing since I kinda need one but I would have a hard time buying one for myself. After hanging out for a while, I went to see my grandmom and got a gift card for Looking Glass. I'll be hitting it up for a burrito and a smoothie soon enough.

After the family stuff I went over to Ryan's where they had a family dinner that I was welcomed to. All of the food was really good, especially the casserole and veggie mix. After I was stuffed too full of real food to even think about dessert, we went to enjoy Ryan's new present.

He got a Wii for Christmas so we decided to play Blades of Steel, originally for NES. Look at those graphics. We played Mario Kart 64 next, originally for N64 of course. After those, we finally played a Wii game... New Super Mario Bros. That's right, we went old school for all of it. I love it.

After a few hours of video games, I went to Katie's, where her family was gathered as well. We go into teams of two and played Cranium Wow.

It was a lot of fun and there were some new challenges like using your opponent as a mannequin to act something out and spelling words backwards cooperatively with teammates. Apparently I'm really good at acting out muscular guys; I had to act out the Hulk and Mr. T. Katie got them both right away.

We didn't quite finish the game because we went to the late showing of Sherlock Holmes. We all packed into the theater just before pretty much every other seat filled up. The movie was really good, I'm happy to say. I would like to see it again. Really good acting.

After the movie we went back to the house but no one wanted to stay up and finish the game so we just hung out for a while watching tv before I went home.