bobafred

To read about the previous Secret Date Night, go here.

This time, I was the recipient of Secret Date Night, so that was awesome.

We began Saturday evening at Fritti. To start, we ordered the Calamari Fritti, which was light and crispy and delicious. There were super large tentacle clusters and perfectly tender rings. Really delicious. For my main I had the Frutti di Mare. It’s a cheeseless pizza topped with shrimp, scallops, calamari, and mussels. It was a little watery, most likely due to the water content of the seafood and the lack of cheese, but I loved it. Lori had the Crudo e Rucola, a pizza topped with arugula and prosciutto. Again, so good.

After dinner we headed across the street to Dad’s Garage for a performance of Song of the Living Dead. It’s a musical about love and zombies. The show was great — funny, bloody and totally inappropriate at times. Pretty much everything you’d expect. And who would have guessed that zombies could dance? If you get a chance to see this, you should. I had so much fun.

It’s awesome to have someone that knows me so well and can plan a perfect evening like this. I’m very lucky.

Tags: calamari, dad's garage, fritti, musical, pizza, secret date night, song of the living dead, zombie

I spent the entire day yesterday thinking it was Wednesday. It wasn’t until after 10:30 pm when Lori was checking her Google calendar that I realized it was actually only Tuesday.

That’s all I got.

Tags: google calendar, ming, tuesday, wednesday

I’ve pretty much always had fairly horrible seasonal allergies. When I moved from Connecticut to Georgia in 1990 my allergies actually got better, at least for a few years. Then there was the year I had a nosebleed everyday for 2 months. That’s not an exaggeration. I didn’t start taking prescription allergy medicines until I got to college after a trip to the allergy clinic revealed that I was a perfect case study for their nurses in training and that I was getting a “nose crease” from rubbing my nose so much.

First, I started with Allegra. It worked well, but having to go to the doctor to get the prescription refilled is annoying. So, when Claritin went over the counter, I made the switch. It never worked as well as Allegra, but the convenience of it made it the winner (at the time). It seemed that from season to season Claritin had varying levels of success, though. I don’t remember last year being that bad, but the first few weeks of this season where nearly unbearable. I was a snot infested sneeze-fest. One day I sneezed so much, I actually pulled a muscle, which made subsequent sneezes and coughs not awesome.

So, I switched again. This time to the newly over the counter Zyrtec. Initially I bought a five pack to see how it worked and from day one it was great. My head feels way less full, I’m sneezing less, my eyes are less burny, and nosebleeds are at a minimum. An excellent test of its powers occured on Friday after work when I metup with the lady and some friends at Sweet Water for the beer tasting (I did not taste any) thing they do during the week. We were outside for about an hour and a half with only two sneezes. Success! So, this past weekend we headed back to the pharmacy to pick up a 60 pack of the store brand Zyrtec.

For now, Zyrtec is the winner. I’m not sure if I would switch back to Allegra if it ever goes over the counter, guess we’ll have to see how Zyrtec does over time.

Tags: allegra, allergies, claritin, connecticut, georgia, pollen, sneeze, sweetwater, zyrtec

This past weekend we attended the 2007 Whiskerino Throwdown in Nashville, Tennessee. In short, it was awesome.

In not short, it was:

Friday night was a Whiskerino art show at a local gallery. We picked up a small painting by hale! ryan! for the man room at home. I can’t wait to hang all the beard art I’ve bought throughout this thing. After that, 50 or so of the beards headed over to a local bar for some additional conversations+drinks. It was really fun to see the reactions of the people that were already at the bar when that many dudes with beards showed up. The looks on their faces were classic and almost worth the four hour drive to Nashville alone!

Saturday day was an entire bowling alley of beards bowling. We were able to get the lanes all to ourselves for 2 hours, which was pretty awesome. Here is all 132 of us, plus whatever additional others were there.

Saturday night was fancy dinner and then a rock show consisting of Codaphonic, Yea Big + Kid Static and The Protomen. Lori and I saw Codaphonic a few weeks ago here in Atlanta, and it’s nice to see that they are consistently excellent live. Band members and Whiskerino participants Cody! and tao jones are also super nice guys. Next up was Yea Big + Kid Static. They pretty much ruled. Their mix of hip hop with high energy and story telling really was awesome to see live. The final band was The Protomen. We only stayed for one of their songs, though, as it was getting late and we had a long drive ahead of us in the morning so all I can really say is that they were loud and face painted. Both of which is ok by me.

Obviously the best part of the weekend was meeting and hanging out with all the participants. Every single person we met was great to talk to. And, that’s what the Whiskerino is really all about. Sure we all grew beards, but the social aspect of it is what we’ll remember most at the end. It really was a great weekend.

So, will I participate in Whiskerino 2009? Right now, I’d say yes. It’ll probably depend on what’s going on at that point, but I’ve had so much fun, that I’d love to do it again.

Many thanks to Mackle and everyone else involved in putting this thing together.

Here are my photos from the weekend.
Here are a bunch more from others.

Tags: beards, bowling, codaphonic, kid static, nashville, protomen, throwdown, Whiskerino, yea big

I’ve been doing this Whiskerino thing for 84 days now. 84 days without shaving is a pretty long time. Originally I had hoped to win a King Beard or two, but I never anticipated the level of creativity that exists in the participants. There really are some great artists on the site. My current goal is simply to upload a photo everyday. So far, I’ve managed to succeed in this quest. Some days I’m not totally into it and you get lameness like this. Other days, however, I’m totally into it. Like yesterday’s Guess The Movie theme.

This is what I had been thinking about doing all day. I kind of talked myself out of it, though, since we don’t have a chainsaw and I wasn’t sure what to use for blood, etc. I came up with another idea, that I liked, but Lori encouraged me to go with the original idea. I’m so glad she did (she’s awesome). This came out great and was so fun to create. Having ketchup all over your face is not that excellent, but it worked, so I’m happy with it.

Tags: cardboard chainsaw, evildead2, free denim shirt, horror, ketchup, movie, themeday, Whiskerino

1. We looked at a couple wedding ceremony/reception places. So far we’ve seen 2 winners out of 2 visits. 100%. Lori is doing an awesome job at planning stuff. I’m not. But, we’ll soon have the best wedding website ever, so that’ll be awesome.
2. I failed at doing roof things again. I just feel like I’m going to fall the whole time I’m up there. I think we’ve decided that I’m not going to attempt it too much more in the future. We also did some raking and filled up 17 of those giant 30 gallon leaf bags from Home Depot/Lowes. And that was just from the front yard. I don’t want to think about the backyard.
3. Did anyone else notice how biased Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were during the Giants/Cowboys game today? I’m sure it bothers me more because I’m a Giants fan, but it was pretty annoying. Aikman sucks, btw.
4. 3 words: Monster Truck Jam. This will be a separate post. Stay tuned.

Done.

Tags: engagement, falling, football, leaves, monster truck jam, roof, wedding planning, weekend