Pumpkin Carving

When I was younger Halloween was a big thing. Running around and getting candy was like heaven. I never ate candy during the year, so when Halloween came around and I did actually get to eat candy, it made it that much more joyous. As I got older fewer and fewer houses in my neighborhood were giving out candy and I turned to being one of those mischievous teens that dishes up tricks. Of course, I was terribly bad at it; I always felt guilty about doing anything to peoples' houses and lawns. Of course, I feel differently now, but of course I don't have any desire to get candy from my neighbors now. I do miss the spirit of Halloween, though, which is even more nonexistant in the city where kids trick or treat within their apartment buildings and Halloween parties take place prior to Halloween. In light of all this I was very pleased to get the chance to participate in some Halloween festivities. Last friday my friend Rob and I went to a pumpkin carving party held by one of his friends. The party had a number of families present with their children, all of whom were carving pumpkins. On such short notice, it was pretty hard to find a good-size pumpkin, but I got a good-looking small one and managed to carve it up pretty well. The kids at the party all thought it was great. There's something adorable about little guys pretending to be wickedly bad.

Sexy (Birthday) Party

In celebration of all that is glorious (poker, my 28th birthday, Stewie), I decided to hold a Sexy Party at my apartment Friday night. The night started off a bit slow with my calling Mike, only to find out he was moving inches per hour trying to get through the Lincoln Tunnel. Apparently this was not the best plan for entering Manhattan on a Friday night (who knew?), but his call to Matt for suggestions went unanswered (Matt did call back telling him that the Tunnel was probably not the best plan, but by then Mike was in a Gridlock). Amazingly though, Mike made great time overall and arrived before 8 pm (scheduled start time). Erich and Steven arrived shortly thereafter and then Chris and Bonnie. We held out a few minutes so Matt and Emily could arrive and get in the first game. Initially, I did pretty well in this game despite mediocre pocket cards. I think I actually doubled my chips by mid-game, but then Lauren arrived with awesome cupcakes and then Steve from LI showed up (it wasn't a 4 hour drive from MD like Mike made, but still, a one hour drive is nothing to scoff at...and neither was the Game Stop birthday gift he gave me).

My roomates Patrick and Ilya showed up for some socializing/beer and that completed the party. With everyone now in house, things got bumpin' and the temperature started to rise - literally. You see, my apartment building is a climate nightmare. Whoever designed it, created a building that traps in heat like gangbusters. In the summer it's sweltering. In the winter, it's still sweltering. With 10+ people in my apartment common room, it got hot real fast. Can you believe we had the air conditioner on even though it was 49 degrees out? Can you believe it didn't help?

With the temperature rising and 1/3 of the original Poker group out of the game (and starting up a game of Taboo), things got real ugly. There was lots of distraction, lots of joking, and lots of Taboo guesses like "Hayden's Mom!" I rapidly lost focus with the game I was playing and was staying in on hands like Q/7 off suit. The blinds were also really high at this point (because we wanted to make another game happen) and I wasn't prepared with how to handle this. So, I lost all my chips and moved on to the Taboo. Rather than have teams we just took turns having one person read the clues and let everyone guess. This resulted in a multitude of guesses that were raunchy and at my expense. I can't possibly list them here, but let's just say the funnies exchange ended in a reference to D.P. - to which Matt's girlfirend had to ask, "What's that?"

When it got late things wound down as people had to do various things before the witching hour, so we lost most of the gang. Still, we got in one last game of hold'em with a bit of a lower buy-in...thank God. I was dealt crap the entire game (7/2, Q/4, 6/3, 10/2, etc.). The blinds still raised every round and I simply couldn't keep up. The board wasn't giving me anything and people were pulling pocket pairs so that was that. At least Mike won that game, which in retrospect was particularly nice seeing as parking at the Chelsea Piers parking lot for soccer (what we did Sunday night) cost him $7.50 an hour.

So, Friday was a first for me. It was the first time I had a party where a large number fo my friends, many of whom didn't know each other, got together. It was great fun and my only regret is that I couldn't get all my local friends to make it (Dan and Greg were sick) and all my gaming friends from around the country. Had all of friends been there, that would have been unbelievably fun (nevermind that we would have had to carry people out on stretchers from heat exhaustion).

A full picture collection from this event can be found at http://singleh.shutterfly.com

Two Stars

I unexpectedly had this weekend free to myself with nothing in particular to do. I was pretty excited about this as it hasn't happened in a while. I decided to head to Neutral Ground on Saturday and actually play some Magic. They had a release event which I played in, but being the first time I've seen the cards (I missed the PreRelease because of Nashville) I lost repeatedly. I dropped out early and BDM needed another body to complete his 6-man Ravnica draft, so I stepped up. I didn't know what I was doing and this was pretty evident to onlookers. I believe the comment was, "Why does your deck suck so much?" Well, that set the stage for some really sad news. I found out that my Level 3 DCI judge mentor got laid off from work. Given that there are zero pharmaceutical jobs in the NYC area it means that come 2006 he won't be around anymore. I've been judging under him for nearly 6 years now and it's because of him that I've been able to be as good as I am. I've been thinking about testing for Level 3 for quite some time, but always put it off; we already had a NY Level 3. So, things are almost certainly going to change. I don't know if the TO will bring in a new Level 3 from another state or if I'll head judge more PTQs, but regardless, I appears I can't sit back with my feet up anymore - maybe this is life's way of saying that I need to step up to the plate.

On the work front, I've been laboring tirelessly in an attempt to get the Specific Aims, Introduction, and Preliminary Data sections of my Thesis Proposal in an acceptable form. It has to be in NIH grant form, which was a first for me and explains why it's been so hard. Well, today I got the lastest version back from my advisor with only a few stylistic changes! In addition, the introductory paragraph got a "Fantastic!" and two stars (which is a lot coming from my advisor). I spoke with him later about it and he said that it was excellent and it was great to read - it gave him goosebumps. Go me!

Bean Town

Continuing (and ending) my coverage of visits to cities I hate, is a synopsis of my visit to Bean Town (aka Boston). I've never been a fan of Boston, so when my friend Trevor said I should visit because he'd be at Wizard World Boston (a comic and toy convention), I was reluctant. However, when Triple G (Greg) said he'd be going up with a rental car, well, I caved in. How could I pass up an opportunity to spend a weekend with my friends?

The drive up to Boston was spectacular and I think Triple G and I made it in like 3.5 hours. The plan was to pick Trevor up at the airport, but unfortunately there was some confusion as to when he was landing, so we abandoned the airport in search of the original hotel we were to stay in. This hotel was found to be too far away from the convention center, but Trevor's product was still being shipped there (supposedly). It turns out it didn't go there, so we headed back to the airport to pick Trevor up. Our trip to the hotel emphasized reason #1 I hate Boston - ungodly, unjustifiable traffic. We've got traffic problems in NYC, but nothing like this. Later that evening we come to reason #2 - the Boston Red Sox. It seems like everybody in the city is a Red Sox fan. Why is that? Sure there are a lot of Yankees and Mets fans in NYC, but you'll see plenty of people wearing other team hats too. Not true in Boston. Well, there was this one kid wearing Yankees attire, but we agreed that he probably lost a bet.

Since Trevor and Triple G were occupied most of the time with promoting FMA, I had plenty of time to tour the convention hall. As you'd expect, it's mostly about nerds and geeks wandering around and buying comics and toys for their collections. I used to be the epitome of this culture when I was younger, but now, not so much. I find myself selling a lot of my collectibles because the prospect of having to move all I've accumulated is downright scary. At any rate, you have to love the intelligence of marketing in the comic industry. If you know your consumers are nerdy guys that can't get dates, what better way to promote your product than to have hot girls in skimpy outfits by your booth. I took a picture of two of them at the request of Triple G and then got scolded by him for not capturing what was (or wasn't) below their waistline. Now I know.

After a hard day's work at the convention, Triple G, Trevor, myself and one of the other volunteers decided to go to Harvard Square for dinner Saturday night. For some reason we couldn't drive there (the reson being that the local Boston volunteer didn't know how to get there by car), so we took the T. That is, we took it after waiting like 30 minutes. You see, at the JFK stop, the red line forks. The way it's designed, you have to choose a platform to wait on and hope that the next train arrives on the one you are on. Well, needless to say we chose poorly - reason #3 I hate Boston. We did eventually get to Harvard Square which had people loitering everywhere. We soon found out that it was because every restaurant had a wait for seating (reason #5 I hate Boston). After sitting down and running out of a restaurant that was way too expensive, we settled on Bertucci's. Like the pros we are we ordered way too much food, but it was darn good so no complaints there.

All in all it was a good weekend. I may not like Boston a whole lot, but at least it's better than Nashville...mostly.