Summer of Dan

Don’t Be A Di*k During Meals With Friends and Family

I won't take credit for this at all, but it's a great idea that needs to get around more.

New Challenge for 2012

The first person to crack and look at their phone picks up the check. The (initial) purpose of the game was to get everyone off the phones free from twitter/fb/texting and to encourage conversations.

Rules:

1) The game starts after everyone has ordered.
2) Everybody places their phone on the table face down.
3) The first person to flip over their phone loses the game.
4) Loser of the game pays for the bill.
5) If the bill comes before anyone has flipped over their phone everybody is declared a winner and pays for their own meal.

Emergencies are the exception. If your phone is blowing up and you need to take a call it's understandable. The aim is to get people away from their phones when they are with friends and family and work on that social interaction rather than work on a social distraction.

I'm going to try this with my sister and my cousin. Because dammit all I want to do is eat for free and they are easy prey. I will not try this with my buddy Flack because he only got a cellphone for the first time within the last year and I'd be shocked if he actually even knows how to use it.

The unity of us all

If you watch this once a day, take it to heart, and strive to do better, the world will be a better place. If everyone did it, I can't imagine what kind of a world we could live in.

This could be the most moving speech I have ever heard in my entire life.

 

I watch it at least 3 times a day. The words just resonate deep inside me. Maybe it's because people don't talk this way anymore. They don't speak with this kind of passion and fervor. The message is awe inspiring.  Take it to heart. What bad could come of it?

A city where Dan never sleeps

A couple weeks ago my cousin Melissa asked how I felt about going to New York City for the weekend on one of my off weekends for football. I thought it was just her thinking out loud, I didn't think there was really a chance we'd be able to make it happen.

I was completely wrong.

My good buddy Zap ( my team's Running Back and Melissa's boyfriend ) had a unique situation for us - his mom's boyfriend had an apartment in New York that he wasn't using and it was ours if we wanted it. So the trip was planned. Jessie, Zap, and I all had Friday off and Melissa was done with school around 12. We tried to get out of New Hampshire around 1:00pm.

Which never happened.

At least we sorta got out of the state around 5pm. 

We finished dinner around 6pm and were on our way. Our GPS said we would be there by 9:30pm.

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

Traffic. In and around Boston and Worcester. All over the place. But not in New York.

Driving into New York was only a slightly mentally jarring experience. Even at night it was busy as hell and you only have half a second to jump into a lane if you need it. You can't use a blinker, it shows a sign of weakness and intent. It's like blood in the water during a shark frenzy. You might as well dig your diving knife into your thigh while you're at it.

We found the parking garage right near the apartment, brought our stuff upstairs and immediately headed outside.

To our right...

And about 500 feet to our left and down the street..

I knew we weren't too far from a lot, but I didn't realize how close. To everything. Times Square feet away. It was amazing. Insanely busy, lit up like a gigantic Christmas tree, tons of stuff to do and see. It was surreal.

Probably one of the coolest things we saw the entire time were street peddlers. Whether the were playing instruments out of boxes and pans and tins and using the sheet metal on the wall behind them or they were drawing charicatures or doing spray paint art it was all beyond words.

This guy was so fast with everything he did, he was so fluid it was like you were in a dream. He was one of many doing the spray paint space art, and it was all just awe inspiring.

 

We only got pictures of him but this is what they do (video is from Times Square and the guy kind of looks like the guy we watched, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were him).

  

Before we knew it we were getting pizza at 1:30am and needed to get some sleep so we wouldn't waste the day sleeping.

For the record - no pancakes were made on Saturday. None. Not a single one. Melissa said she would make them. She didn't know how. She still needs to learn how to make pancakes. She let the entire team down.

Also - when sleeping in close quarters with other people it is important to bring earplugs, maybe even industrial grade. And duct tape to make sure they aren't removed in your sleep. From said snorers. Make note of that. It may help you later in life.

In any event, we got up fairly early and wandered the streets looking for something to eat (again - no pancakes). I hate my Ortiz shirt on, Zap had his McCourty shirt on. Trouble would find us. Right? Not before breakfast! Nothing comes between men and them breaking their fasts.

We wound up at a cool little diner, I ate right next to a guy wearing a Jeter shirt. An old man eating behind us laughed that 'Ortiz' and 'Jeter' were eating next to each other,  and Jeter broke out his sense of humor and said 'I guess it's ok if he eats near me!'. It was a good meal for me. Better for him I am assuming since he ate it in 38 seconds.

We headed to Central Park which is OH MY GOD IT IS MASSIVE AND INSANE AND THEY HAVE THESE BIKES EVERY 10 FEET DRIVEN BY THESE GUYS OFFERING YOU RIDES FOR $50 EVERY 100 FEET AND FULL ON SOFTBALL GAMES AND HOLY SHIT THERE ARE LIKE 10,000 RUNNERS AND SPECIFIC RUNNING LANES AND THERE WERE SO MANY IT LOOKED LIKE THERE WAS A ROAD RACE GOING ON.

It was alright I guess.

One of the things I had to see in New York was Strawberry Fields and John Lennon's Imagine Mosaic. It was the day before his birthday, it was amazing. 

For such a small, little tribute to him it was pretty moving, the simplicity was everything that Lennon was. One word, one dream, one awesome little place in the middle of Central Park. So cool. 

The only other thing I knew we had to do was go to the American Museum of Natural History. Everyone said it had to be on our list. It wasn't too far from Central Park so we headed on over there.

HOLY CRAP.

Massive museum and upon first walking in, you are just floored. You're faced with dinosaurs that are so tall you can't even guesstimate how tall they are. A Night at the Museum flashes before your eyes. And you start to wonder what time everything comes alive.

It was everything I thought it would be and more. DINOSAURS. LIKE EVERY SINGLE KIND YOU CAN IMAGINE AND THEN 200 MORE. HOW CAN YOU BEAT THAT?!?

We headed back to the apartment to get ready to go out to Ground Zero and have dinner and I clicked my FitBit activity monitor to see how far we walked that day. We were upwards of 9 miles at that point. 9. FREAKING. MILES. Now I don't have to work out for a month. I know, right??!

Ground Zero and the new World Trade Center was beyond words. It was beautiful, quiet, sad, inspiring, solemn, emotional, mind blowing, all in one. We saw a couple holding each other crying. We saw 4 police cruisers there sitting watch. We met a man selling small magazines that outlined everything that happened and will happen with the rebuilding. He showed us a building that was absolutely massive and then showed us in the picture that it was only 1/3 of the size of either tower. It was the one part of the entire weekend I felt we didn't rush at all. We just took it in.








We couldn't get into the 9/11 Memorial, tickets take over a month to get. A return trip will find us there. Absolutely.

Never Forget.

We had a great time, better than I could possibly hope for and fit in during such a short period of time. The people? The friendliest you could imagine, everyone wanted to help us, everyone wanted to give us their input to where to go and where to get a bite to eat. Friendly ribbing about our Patriots and Sox gear. Amazing city, awesome company, I cannot wait to do it again.




Even if it does mean I'll be close to the Meadowlands and the Jets and Giants again. 

Just a little bit

See this?

This thing rocks.

It's called the FitBit, it's a Wireless Activity Tracker. It's like a pedometer but on crack.

Good crack.

It tracks my total steps, distance, calories burned, overall health, even my sleep. 

For the most part the numbers below are accurate, but on Saturdays it registers almost no activity because I'm in season right now and obviously don't wear it during my games and I never put it on after.

When you get it you get access to their website where you can input what you ate and how much and whatnot and it will work with you to best determine how much weight you want to lose or gain or how to maintain, it's pretty awesome. 

When you sleep you put it on a wristband, record what time you get into bed and when you get out of bed, it wirelessly syncs with your PC and you put in those numbers and it shows you all sorts of scary shit as far as how often you wake up. Like when you heard bumps in the night. And saw a giant owl staring at you from your window.

Or your cat sat on your face at 4:34am.

I don't think I look forward to anything more than seeing how efficient my sleep was on a daily basis...I mean, I'm pretty damn efficient. I've yet to crack the 92% mark but Ray has a lot to do with that.

I've had it for about a month now, I love it, it keeps me honest as far as eating and my activity level and I love cracking the 10,000 step mark whenever I can. It's pretty awesome. You can get it at BestBuy and if you don't like it you have 30 days to return it for a free refund. Where's the downside in all that?

I sound like I should work for them...

Little Eye

Like a lot of folks I spend a lot of time listening to music. I have almost 30,000 songs in my iTunes library, I have XM radio, and I actually pay for Pandora. I listen to just about everything you can muster up, genre doesn't really matter in the slightest. Good music is just good music.

In walks in a little Scottish band called Little Eye. They have one single (Burgundy Sky) on iTunes, and two covers right now (Paramore's Monster and Britney's Hold It Against Me). They make great music and make shitty music sound awesome. Let's compare, shall we?

Fast forward to about 40 seconds in and listen for 20 seconds if your ears can handle it:

 

I'm sorry you had to put yourself through that but bear with me, trust me, it will be worth it.

Now listen to Little Eye covering Britney's song.

You be the judge.

 

Sometimes the best music is from artists you've never heard before. Spread the word, these guys are about to blow up.

Serenity now, serenity later

Every once in a while I find pictures to go with words. On ocassion.

• Sometimes the buildings and shapes in Concord are just strikingly awesome. Old school meets new school, brick meets glass. One of my favorite things about where I live.
  
  
  
  
• One thing is for certain - the NBA Draft is the 2nd best draft behind the NFL by default. MLB doesn't televise it and 90% of the players drafted in the NHL played overseas, you have no idea who the hell they are, and/or they will have their names butchered 100 times a game. NFL 1, NBA 0.
  
  
• I totally fucked up not getting this badass pizza cutter at Newbury Comics the other day. Sometimes I make terrible choices in life. This is one of those moments.
  
   
  
  
• Game of Thrones is probably one of the best shows on TV. The only way they could pull it off is having it on HBO. Well worth getting HBO for just that but Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Boardwalk Empire, and True Blood make it a complete no brainer. 
  
  
• Last weekend Jessie and I hit the drive-in with my buddy Flack and his wife Nicki. So awesome. Biggest highlights of the night were the odd UFO thing we all saw changing colors and turning on it's cloaking device and the old school introduction. I can't decide which one was cooler...
  
   
  
  Ok, neither. Laying down with Flack's foot up my ass was the highlight of the evening.
• I find this Pottermore concept J.K. Rowling has drummed up slightly amusing. She always said she didn't want to have her books in e-reader format, because they "were meant to be read". I said before I found it odd she would say that and allow them to become movies...
  
  Anyway, it's funny because she can do what she wants with her site, she will be the conduit to getting all the Harry Potter books in e-reader format. She can set the price. She can control everything. She seemed a bit smug in it.
  
  Hasn't she heard of torrents and newsgroups? For someone that has such a loyal following does she think that someone out there wouldn't scan every single page of every book she's written? That maybe they've already been in e-reader format for over a year now?
  
  Huh. Funny...
  
  
  
• Serene. The only word to describe my Nana's house on the lake. Amazingly peaceful. Slice of heaven in a little town in New Hampshire.
  
  
• Back to shows - Dexter is the best show on TV right now. No debate. 5 seasons. 5 amazing fucking seasons. Every season somehow gets better than the last. Always.

I'm not going to lie, I'm loving the sudden dip in temperature in New Hampshire. I can live with 60s ;)

 

 

See you in another life brotha

I love where I work. I almost never write about it on here and for good reason. Unlike my personal life my work life isn't something I like to get into. I love the work, I love the technology, I love the people, I love the building I work in. It could not be any better.

No, really, it couldn't.

Especially when I realized I am working in a super secret (not so much now, but...) Dharma station.

You might think I'm crazy, but I have other reasons to believe this as well. More details to come, but for now, I'll be thinking twice before I jump onto a plane to Australia...

SOMEONE NEEDS TO GET THIS SIDE!

This is alarmingly similar to the night the Niff moved from Connecticut up to New Hampshire.

Only my sister was on one end yelling at us that "Someone needs to get this side!".

What she failed to realize at the moment was:

1. Because of how the couch was positioned no one could get to her side
2. The person that needed to get her side...was her.

I swear my sister would be the ultimate State worker.

The biggest smallest gesture

You know what is fantastic?

This.

Do you know how cool it is that anyone in the world can give the gift of a book to someone just with their email address? Even if you don't have a Kindle, the free apps work the same!

This seriously blows me away. Ever since I got my Kindle I always felt a little left out, I always used to ask my family for certain books for Christmas but when I got my Kindle I just started asking for Amazon Gift Cards so I could buy my own. Now I don't need to do that. Now my dad can surprise me with a book he wants me to read. Now I can send all the classics to my sister's Kindle. 

It may seem like a small thing but the gesture of someone giving you a book that they think you will enjoy is something that has never been lost on me and never will.

Entering the Pain Cave

I've been a slacker lately and haven't carved out time to write some more meaningful posts about life so that's what I'll attempt to do here.

Turning 30 almost two months ago was a mentally traumatic milestone for me. I have no idea why, but it was almost earth shattering to me. I've never felt that way before, I felt like I had to grow up, but truth be told, I already am. I just don't act grown up.

And I don't want to. 

Yeah, I pay my bills on time, the Niff and I go on mini vacations and do semi-grown up things, but I'm a kid at heart and always will be.

The Niff planned the perfect birthday party for a 15 year old. Or a 30 year old with the mentality of a 15 year old - pizza party, with desserts like cannolis, tiramisu, fudge cake, carrot cake, cream puffs. Everything a fat kid would love. This would all be followed by hitting one of the greatest amusement parks in the history of New England. Or New Hampshire. Or, pretty much, the only amusement park really, unless you count the ones for the little kids up north.

Anyway.

It was perfect. It wasn't crowded, the weather was great, the company was even better. We had a series posse mounted up to attack the park. And attack we did.

   

That was the first ride of the night - the Xtreme Frisbee. You know it's the shit when they leave off the E. Hardcore ride for sure. It's so hardcore it even has it's own webpage. They lock you in, you spin around faster and faster and higher until you want to puke. Everyone is screaming their head off, not because it's scary, but because we are all wondering if we will make it off the ride without losing our lunch. We are screaming so damn loud, I look over across from us and there is this teenage girl ON HER FUCKING CELLPHONE. I lose it, I'm screaming, "I'm about to puke and this chick is updating her Facebook status 'I'm on the Frisbee and I'm going to puke!!! lol'. Most bizarre thing I've ever seen on a ride.

I think she was related to these guys.

 

I think after that we knew we were in for an interesting evening.

Flack and I decided to team up with our superpowers and squeeze into one bumper car to destroy the rest of the bumper car field. We laid some sick hits, but I'm not sure what was more painful, getting hit by us or me having to lift my gunt to get the bar to drop down.

 
 

No ride was safe from us, we decided that early on. We kicked everything up a notch, including seeing how many people could fit in the photo booth.

 
 

We were playing for keeps, I don't think Canobie Lake Park was ready for us that night. We got shitfaced on fried dough and even more fucked up on the Turkish Twist. We were wild and crazy. Yup. Hardcore Canobie Lakers right here.

Probably the highlight of the night was the Log Ride. No one was in line whatsoever, so the Niff, myself, the Niff's step-brother Aaron, and my sister Jessie piled into one log. The splashes were going to be epic, everyone would be soaked, people would be drowning.

Ok, so it was about 2/3's accurate.

Aaron was in the way front, followed by my sister Jessie, then me, then the Niff. Mark and Laura were in the log right behind us. We noticed early on that we started taking on some series water but it's a water ride. It's to be expected. Right?

Following some serious turns, we started slowing down and Mark and Laura were catching up. It wasn't a big deal, we were ahead enough before the grand finale 45 degree hill that takes you to Drenchtown USA that we would be fine.

Until we lodged the log into the final turn. Like, really jammed it in there. To the point of us not moving. And taking on a shitload of water. And Mark and Laura not only caught up, but they wedged us further. And then another log behind them did. And then another.

Many people don't know Aaron, but Aaron is a fucking survivalist. He has lightning reflexes, and is a combination of Mother Theresa, Chuck Norris, and Bear Grylls. Before we knew it, he was out of that fucking log, in the most selfless act I have ever witnessed, and said, "I'm doing this for you guys so you can survive!!! Don't worry about me, save yourselves!!!" and with that, he pushed us free and onto the giant ramp that brings us to the top of Mt. Everest. We saw him run into the trees like a wild animal and proceeded to hang on for dear life. 

Now, when you are on the Log Ride at Canobie, the final hill is so steep, it feels like you are going to roll out the back of the log and die. Or flip. Or slide out and tumble into the trees below. Or onto the barbed wire fence below we could only imagine Aaron was scaling by then.

About 3/4 of the way up, the ride stops. The kid at the top of the tower was yelling at us, they had to find out if our dearly departed passenger was in danger. They had to stop it, he could be laying in front of the log at the bottom and get smashed. Or drenched. Or something.

I'm not one to shy away from adventure. In fact, I'm good friends with the Dos Equis guy. He plays next to me on my football team. For real.

But we were up there for a solid 10 minutes. Mark and Laura were right at the bottom and were being escorted by park employees off the ride. Before we knew it, there were now three people on the wet, metal ladder type stairs that led to the tower at the top, explaining in painful detail how we would exit the ride. From 60 feet up. Soaking wet. Stepping onto wet metal. At a 45 degree angle. No big deal.

Jessie went first, almost took a digger, which was understandable given the circumstances. Then I went and the Niff was right behind me. They walked us the the side, presumably where Aaron made The Great Escape, and there was our posse. Waiting. With Aaron. There was a 2 foot high wooden locked gate. I could have stepped over the damn thing but the person that brought us down had 12,000 keys and had protocol she needed to follow. And we waited. And waited. For like 5 fucking minutes.

After the longest time, we were reunited with our log mate, and we had a picture taken, simulating the final plunge to the bottom since we were so deprived of a normal conclusion to the ride.

 
 

Look at us. LOOK. Fearless. We could do anything. Except ride more rides without being followed by park security for the rest of the night. Which was probably a good thing...

Without a single doubt, going to amusement park rides when you are older is 1000 times better than when you are a kid. Partly because you're an adult living a kid's dream. Partly because of the memories you make. And a big part because you can buy all the food and candy and drinks you want without getting yelled at by your parents because you're going to "get sick" or "won't have room for dinner" or "it's time to go, it's getting late" or "i'm sorry, i don't have anymore money, you ate everything in the park twice already". Or something like that.

Canobie Lake Park will never be the same again.

 
 

Next up: whitewater rafting with the same motley crew. Thank God we have our own personal Bear Grylls.