Dropping the check...

Tonight ellie and I ventured out to one of barfalo's finest mexican restaurant's, cozumel. We dined with big country, and his girlfriend. Big Country is one of the poker guys, and we go back a few years, since shortly after he moved here from Wyoming, and started his clinical psychology graduate work. Past adventures with BigC have including getting called "a bunch of zipperheads" by a bartender at Molly's Pub (which sadly is now closed), the 200 wing night with Kieth Murphy?, and a few late night trips to Kronies, and the Jolly Jug. Anyways after a fine evening regaling over past flag football victories, poker takedowns, grants oppertunities, and watching beginning of the bills game, the check came. It was almost $70 and my buddy gave me 30, and said he would get my next buy in, which added to about half after tip, so that worked out fine, I put it on my card, and managed to do the math for tip and sign the receipt. I like when things are quick and easy, and dislike haggling over bills for an enormous amount of time. Sort of like when I was living with sully for 4 years, and he paid the electric, and I paid the gas, and we never worried about settling up at the end. Anyways as we left the mexican place the waitress came running out of the bar. Evidently I put the signed receipt with tip in my pocket instead of in the bill folder. I really hate when I do stupid stuff like that. My buddy's response was "If you told me we were going to dine n ditch, I would have walked faster!"

How embarrassing, what would miss manners say?

Apparently

I was going to write about the miraculous victory of the Infrared Sox over the Nutbags on thursday, but I got scooped by ellie, so I will just give you the short version:

So there we were at Clearfield Park 5 minutes before game time, and I took a quick head count. Only 7. We have a rather large roster, and I knew coach, the tommer, and Dave would not be there. So that left Joe, Alex, Mike, Andrew, Harvey, Tai, Sheldon, and Michael were all unaccounted for. They were instructed by coach to email me if they could not make the game. They did not, so I expected and hoped one or two, preferable three of them would show up. I told the ump how many we had, and he was worried about losing daylight, so he said we could bat first then, and hope people came while we were up. I made a line up, which wasn't hard with only 7, but then had to assign positions, which was harder since I had to tell John that he would play first, second and right field.
John led off, swung at the first pitch, and promptly was declared out after grounding out. So much for stalling to let the other show up I thought. Someone called Joe and found out that he was having diner. With one out we rallied in the first inning to score 5 runs. The Nutbag's pitcher was throwing with very little arch which made it extremely easy to hit line drives.
So at the bottom of the first we took the field, and one of the guys asked if his girlfriend could catch for us. Now it is a mens league, and the director of the league was playing on the other team with his son. I thought for sure the ump would say no, and disqualify us after having only our second lead of the season. The ump didn't care, so Lindsay wearing her sandals stepped up, and ended up getting on base at every at bat (2 fielder choices and a walk). Amazingly we played well, and only having two outfielders didn't really hurt us all that badly. So the game ball went to lindsay and the Infrared Sox had their first win of the season.

The other thing that I realized after stumbling on to an article from cherkyB's site is that I use the word apparently way to much. It is a great word for describing almost any situation, like: Apparently I am not supposed to forget about my cereal bowl, and leave it on the counter when the dishwasher is 3/4's empty. But I do use that word too much, which I will try to diminish.

All moved in.

Well after a few days of packing, moving and unpacking, I am pretty well settled in OUR place here in Williamsville. I had to let go of the couch, and bring it to the consignment shop after all that plotting. Hopefully it will sell for the initial asking price. I don't see it on the what's hot list, so maybe it sold already! In the process of bringing my grill over to coach's place, I managed to get stung by a yellow jacket. Apparently they decided to make a nest inside the legs of my grill, which I noticed after getting stun, and after I wrestled the grill into the bed of coach's truck. Luckily I had plenty of cleaning products to select from to dispatch the insects, so I chose fantastik all purpose heavy duty antibacterial cleaner on the stream setting of the hand held spray container. A half of dozen squirts later it was all over for the wasps.

The unpacking has been more slow, and there is still lots of clothes and other junk that I have to get rid of or find places for. I decided on Sunday afternoon that since I lost my couch I should reward myself. So I went to circuit city and bought a new magic box, with the upgraded 19 inch monitor. I also bought a 500 gig hard disk to back up everything at work, and anything else that I could possible want backed up. Also got a wireless router, and 2 usb receivers so we won't have internet cable all over the place, and for ellie's laptop. And now my cave is complete as brother would say.
In other news:
We had a low turnout this week for poker, and I wasn't there long enough to find out who won. I wonder if the heat was a factor in the low turn out, now that we are no longer at flickinger court, and no longer have the ac that sully liked to keep set at 59.
I have to step in for coach tomorrow for the Infrared Sox (Thusday D1) and be the acting manager. I hate making the line up for our resilient, if not particularly good team. After checking the most up dated standings we are 0-10, with 30 runs scored and 180 runs given up. Well at least they are all round numbers. Maybe that is why I haven't blogged too much about softball yet.
Talking about pitiful ball teams, I also have the privilege to manager tomahawk's fantasy baseball team. Tommer is visiting the Jersey Shore, and I get to oversee the day to day operations of his keeper fantasy team. I must mention that is a keeper league team was given to him after the previous owner got fed up and quit. I have been vicariously following toms team for the last 14 weeks, maybe next year I will have the confidence to have my own team.
In the big move I noticed that my Ipod was fully operational, which is completely baffling to me since for the last six months it has been stuck displaying welcome to paridise,
being totally unresponsive. After letting it settle for a month I brought it to my higher techie friends who also couldn't figure out the problem. I guess I shouldn't have left it out in the rain that time 2 years ago.

Hazmat team called to Furnas Hall.

Last weekend at Sully’s wedding, the big guy’s lab mates were complaining to me and ellie over dinner about how the 9th floor guys (me, Joe, Pedro, and the rest) use bleach to kill our cells, and then pour the bleach down the drain, which then creates an odor in their lab on the 4th floor. I told them this was not are fault, and their sink trap should be able to stop any vapors that accumulate before they come up through the sink. They told me that they had it looked at my maintenance, and it wasn’t a faulty trap, but instead a broken waste pipe in the wall that was venting the bleach odor into their lab. Sully had complained about this for years, but I never really cared, until today. At the wedding the guys joked that they could call EHS to speed up the maintenance work order request.

Luckily channel 7 news also responded.

Evidently they did not call public safety, they told there boss, (Sully’s advisor) and he told the secretary that his students could smell chlorine (instead of bleach) in the lab. She then called EHS, who then called hazmat, and thus gave us all in Furnas a nice two hour break. Too bad the big guy is on his honeymoon, and he missed the fun.

Granny is right!

I have recently overlooked all of the advantages of moving in with ellie. I was focusing merely on the negative aspects of giving up my old place. Maybe this is because I have been practically moved in with ellie for 7 or 8 months now, and just now having to officially move out, Or because I am a typically shortsighted male. Let me list some of the advantages. She keeps the apartment impeccably clean, including vacuuming it very frequently, and never while I am there (which always seems sort of mysterious). She also does an extraordinary amount of laundry, including mine. As a typical male I usually like to wait until I am out of clean socks, or boxers before I do the wash, while ellie does it as soon as one basket of laundry is full. She is also very kind and loving and fun to be around. She also cooks a number of tasty entries for dinner, and she lets me cook grilled cheese when ever I want.

In other news I have to confess that I was clicking ads multiple times on a few blog sites, including two that have recently been disabled. I am REALLY sorry for this, and I will no longer click ads. I didn't know they would take action against these innocent bloggers. Again I am very sorry about this situation, I didn't know, and I will stop.

Leaving Flickinger Court

There are many things that I am going to miss as I leave my town house apartment, and move in with ellie.

First of all I am going to miss the neighbor’s pool. I haven’t swam there since the eight girls moved out of the house, and a bunch of dudes moved in, but I will never forget that party that we had. It was the “we have a keg, you have a pool, lets have a party” type of parties. The highlight would have had to been either the flip-cup/swim relay game, or Q sending one of the girl’s b-friends to the hospital for a half a dozen stitches. Its not what your thinking, he is a married man now after all. Q threw a football pass into the pool, and the kid somehow cut his foot open on the stone ledge of the edge of the pool, while he was jumping in to catch the football. But it is still fun to harass him about it.

I will miss being able to tell people back in South Salem that I live in a complex that is named after my former neighbor/employer’s uncle. Geoffrey Flickinger use to employ me to walk his 150lb dog over the hill for a roll of nickels when I was in middle school. I haven’t figured out exactly how Geoff is related to Burt Flickinger, but he has to be some sort of uncle.

I will regrettably no longer be neighbors with my office mate Pedro, and his cousin Alberto. These Asians from the isle of Macao have Portuguese passports, and it always seems weird for me to use a traditionally hispanic name when talking to a man who is fluent in Cantonese, but not Spanish.

I will also miss the wiffle ball field in the back. The two best memories would be Keith Murphy? striking me out every time I faced him, and Creeps bleeding from the forehead after Coach wound up and pegged him in the head with the wiffle ball from five feet away, after he was clearly safe for two seconds. That was priceless.

There won’t be anymore bbqs, dart games, or poker nights there. All of this I knew going into to the move, but I also know that we will only be in Williamsville apartment for a little while, until I am done, or until we can find a better place, maybe one big enough for a dog (and no Joe, not a poodle). This was all going to be okay; at least I’d still have my couch. Then as Coach and I were try to pry my huge black leather couch up ellie’s narrow entry way I realized I was going to have to let that go too.

So my next mission was to find a safe place for the couch for the next year or two. One of the students I taught in my second year of PhD studies graduated, got a local job, saved up, and bought a 5 bedroom house. We still play softball and football together, so I figured he must have room for a couch. But no, they have 5 couches already, and the three car garage also does not enough room to store my couch. Next I looked to Tots. He bought a house with his fiancé two or three years ago, but has been slow to furnish it, especially the bedrooms. He also said that he would not be able to use my couch, but he could store it in his garage for a short time. So reluctantly I finally went to the person who knows every bartender in the greater buffalo area Keith Murphy?. At first he too said that he couldn’t use it, but then he said he could ask around for me. I am quite confident that he will be able to help me out if anyone can. One of my favorite questions when hanging out with this legend is “So how do you know Keith Murphy?”

I found a home for the grill (Coach said he could hold on to it for a while for me) and my neon bud light sign which will be in Di-Candy’s basement bar after he has his house built (another former student who will be a home owner before me). Other than that it is just kitchen stuff which we already got into Williamsville, and now all that’s left are clothes, books, a tv, puter, desk, bookshelf, and a few odds and ends that can be moved without much trouble over the next week. Everything else should make it up the stairs easily, so things are starting to look up.

Sully's Wedding

Ellie and I enjoyed the reception half of my roommate's wedding yesterday at eagle vale. The best man had a survival kit for them which include pants for Steph to wear, along with a set of ear plugs also for her to use. I found this was particularly funny, since every time I started a conversation with him, it would inevitably end with me leaving the room, while he was still talking. We were seating along with Sully's lab buddies, who also work in my engineering building, and they agreed that she would need the ear muffs. They also commented about how he must have still been hungry after only having two plates of the main dish. Now if you have ever seen Sully you might be able to guess that he can put food down pretty well. He will be pretty hard to replace next semester on the offensive line of my flag football team. His buddies were telling us how their advisor rips on him every time they eat lunch, because of the sheer volume of food that he consumes. I had to share with the guys that when we have poker at my place we would have a pool to guess the cuisine and amount of food that sully would consume that night. Generally the question would be how many whole chicken breast would he cook for dinner. One is never enough, and if you cook two, there is just one left, so you might as well cook all three.

I felt bad for the big guy during the cake cutting ceremony. We all knew that he wouldn't start the food fight, but I thought that he would at least get a little bit of icing on her face after she showered him with cake. He took it like the whipped man that he is, with out any retribution. I still feel bad for him; he takes a beating from everybody all the time. While we were living together he could take his frustration out on the dodge ball court, or by playing his first person shooter games all night, but what will he do now that he is married? I hope he doesn't go postal.

I also heard that his move is going almost as bad as mine. Apparently after rearranging the living room 3 times for his new bride, Sully could not furnish the room in a acceptable way. Evidently his speakers are just too big for the room, and she is forcing him to sell them!

We will talk about my relocation snafus on another day....