last weekend my sister came up to visit for easter. she was here from thursday nite through monday afternoon. it was really good to see her, we made dinner on sunday and my buddy mickey came over. his family being in ireland, he had a few invites, but chose to hang out with us. it was really a fun day. a few bottles of wine, fresh guacamole, salsa, chips, beers, veggie platter, all homemade. well not the beer and the wine. i even cooked a ham. we also had steamed asparagus, and then my fav, potaoes boiled, and then put in the fridge, i cut them up, put olive oil on them, rosemary, and fresh squeezed lemon juice, and then BAM into the oven. dinner was a hit i must say. the past two weekends have been kind crazy and involving my ex to a certain extent. ok. so i am trying to get past it, and to some extent it is working. on good friday this U2 cover band played the inn and my sis and i went with a couple friends (brian and megan) they are dating. cool. so we go to the inn and meet up with megan's friends meg and caitlin. well brian says, don't even waste your time with caitlin she has a boyfriend, meg is single, and really cool. ok. so there is flirting going on, and it was actually fun. i was not really conscious of where i was, cause we just hit it off. well while i was chatting up ms meg, my sister had seen that kerri had seen us flriting while she was walking towards us and then turned and walked away. a while later, kerri and her roomate came walking down the balcony area we were in and she was bombed. plastered. she walked right by me without even saying a word. now the actual situation was crazy, there was no reason for her to walk by unless it was just to walk by me. yes i was kinda happy it happened. actually really happy. for the longest time i allowed her to act as she pleased towards me. i had just recently written her a letter, the one i spoke of a while back, but never sent it. so i go about my week, and thursday i went to the inn to have a drink with mickey (he's one of the bartenders) and he informed me that he had gotten into an argument with kerri that evening. i asked if she was drunk and he said he was not sure. so after he told me about the arument i knew she was, because it made no sense. they had been talking about why he broke up with his ex, and that kerri's roomate had a crush on him. well he let that go, and then kerri made a comment that i had wanted us, the 4 of us to go to dinner when we were dating. honestly, i never said that, and i was brought up by her a couple of other times. then she says that mickey makes her second guess herself and that it is rude. of course i get all of this as soon as i get to the bar. the next morning, friday, i get up for work, and my friend julie decides to send me a pic of kerri and i from the mets game last may. in the email it says "here is a pic of you and your ex. don't mean to bum you out, but i thought you might want this. you two always looked so good together." this coming after we talked and she makes the comment that she liked kerri and it is a shame cause she is really beautiful. so that is the semi drama with kerri. on another note, one of my buddies ended up hooking up with one of our friends. now this might not seem interesting or relavent to any of you, but the story is great. ok, so i am out with my friend M. she is a cool chic. really hot, but we's just friends. thats it. one of her friends comes out with all of the people she works with and they have been partying it up pretty good. M and i are just sitting haveing a drink and chatting. her friend joins us and i leave after awhile. her friend being extremely attractive as well. stop and say hi to my buddy on my way home. well the next day said friend calls me up and says i need to talk to you. never a good thing. so i meet him at his other job, the outback, and he lays it on me. i selpt with M. i almost choked on my clam chowder. Now, M is his roomate. so the story goes, he gets home from working at this bar, and M, and her friend are smashed. one of the two girls suggests playing strip poker. so bam, he is playing strip poker with two girls. of course i miss this stuff. well one thing leads to another and then voila, he hooks up with his roomate. i don't know, its a great story. M and I talked about it on friday nite. crazy crazy. i guess its also a lot better if you actually know the people, that lends to the crazyness of the situation. saturday i went to a beer tasting party in brooklyn, the Brazen Head on atlantic ave. it was a pretty good time. we ended up playing the board game operation, so i tried to send jenks a pic text. didn't work so well. hahaha. i like the new look of the site. its spruced up just in time for spring. this weekend is my buddies bachelor party in Atlantic City, of which i cannot attend. too much freakin money. its gonna cost almost 400 dollars, and that before going out, and all of that. just can't swing it right now. i got a repair bill for my watch in the mail, 380 dollars to get fixed. nuts. plus rent is due, and the deliveries have been slow. yeah also not sure what to do on the job front. i might have a gig driving people out to the hamptons from the airports. 200 bucks a trip. apparently people offer you jobs too. my buddies dad has runs a car service. its kind of a 2nd career for him. he is retired. im close with the fam, so we will see. i am just not sure what i want to do, and my birthday is coming up, gonna be 30....actually OUR birthday is coming up, yeah its crazy, jenks and i share a b-day. never knew anyone with the same day. cool shit. well of course it is, two cool people, on a cool day in may. hip hop hooray!!! im out, gotta get some zzzzzzzzzz

spring is here!! yeah!! so happy. we had sunday funday yesterday while watching the masters tournament. i love golf on sundays. it reminds me of my pop (my mom's dad) he would watch golf every sunday while waiting for dinner at my house when i was little. so anyways. picked my roomate up from LaGuardia, then went to lunch at the inn. while we were there a whole group of people rolled in some wearing wigs, others sans wigs, and they were having a mini pub crawl, then off to play kick ball. i love long beach in the spring and summer. winter and fall are nice as well. but right now the flush and energy of spring have filled the air!!!!! i got to see my god daughter and her brother this weekend!! they are so cute. so big!!! i will post pics of them when i get the motivation. my sister is coming up for easter, and we are going to see unforgettable fire, a u2 cover band that is awesome!! we will be drinking copious amounts of booze and rocking out!!

bridges, i've always loved bridges
looking at the arches, cables
the way that they cross rivers,
gullys, whatever they do cross
i've never really been afraid of bridges

seems i've come to one that scares me.
nope not goin over this one.
this bridge, well it means leavin one side behind,
of course, thats what you do when you cross
a bridge, you leave one side for the other

i don't quite know how to get movin.
i still like being on this side, or the edge of
the banks of this side.
i know this side, its nice here.
well it was nice here.
now, its kinda foreign.
i'm all awkward, not myself,
i force a smile, when i really want to
beam from ear to ear, a big grin,
i want to laugh, laugh out loud
i want to talk incessantly,
talk of what i am thinking about, what i am
interested in.
talk like the nite i talked about my little black
notebook, with the graph paper, and the secret
accordian storage pouch in the back cover.

i stand on these banks, at the edge of the bridge
and i look back, back into the gardens,
the woods, the beaches that used to be mine to walk
through, to loll around in, to lay and to sleep
gently.
to smile and laugh, and make love in.
i want to run back to them, you know,
the way a little kid runs, runs so hard
almost like he doesn't know where is running to,
but that he has to run hard to get there.
hair blowing back, fists clenched and arms
pumping away.
feet pounding the ground with ferocity.

i wonder, should i shout?
should i yell back and see who comes to answer?
what if no one does, would that make me leave?

it's not that the other side is not beautiful, i'm sure
it is.
but i just saw so much here, so much potential,
a future.
children, and big green lawns to play in
on summer days
so much love, so many smiles,
i have never really payed much attention to smiles
really i havent, but now, i value them.
i do.
they are the simplest thing, yet so powerful

i seem to start to cross the bridge, get half way
and stop, turn around and come back.
bridges never really scared me before.
this one does.

i work with this guy named cooka, (not like cook in the kitchen, but loong o) not sure if the spelling is right but it sounds like it looks....like cook - a. he is from brazil. really nice guy in the kitchen, he works along side of giovanni, and chano. all three of them characters in their own right. gio calls me eric estrada. its really funny in the morning when i am cold, packing out produce. anyways....while doing deliveries most days myself or the other guy ends up with 50, or 100 dollar bills. In his less than broken english cook-a would ask if i had any 50's or 100's. i didn't ask why, but exchanged the bills for him. this morning i asked one of the guys why he always asked for the big big bills, well he sends the big bills home to his family. it kinda gave me a sense of awe. i mean i know that people do that, work 2 and 3 jobs and send money home to familys abroad. wow well i gotta go, i just got really tired all of a sudden and i will finish this later.

so i am working on this little project that came to me the other day. monday nite i met my friend nicole and her guy john out for drinks, it was her birthday. so we were sitting, drinking, talking and she was telling me about this exhibit that she had seen at the MOMA that afternoon in the city. apparently she goes to an art gallery/museum every year for her birthday. it makes complete sense as she is a brilliant artist. she does her own work, and it is amazing. really really creative.(yeah ok i had a crush a while back. its done, over. artsy girls just interest me) she also did a georgia o'keefe that i even recognized, and i know nothing about art. So anyways. that got me thinking about my first time at the MOMA, i took this girl emily on a first date. she was a art minor in college and i wanted to know if she could explain things to me, yeah just things about art. kinda vague i know, but whatever. well the reason for going to the MOMA, besides the date, was to see the Ansel Adams exhibit. i had never really known anything about him except for the prints you see for sail in poster stores. I had watched the special on him multiple times on PBS during the weeks leading up to the date, so it all worked out. Back to monday nite. i know when i have my birthday that nicole will probably make something cool for me, so i just want to do something nice for her. well i thought of ole' Ansel and figured i would try it out with my own pictures, frame one or two and give them to her. she would appreciate it. i hope at least. well here they are folks. hope you like them and if you have any suggestions, throw something at me.

today was another day tripper kind of day, that is until the rain ended the trip prematurely. so i went looking for Jack Kerouac's house in Northport. Its a tiny village on the north shore of long island that was established in 1626, or 1646, can't remember what the sign said. anyways. the plan was to walk around, take pics, go to the book store, used mostly, the antiques shop, the used record store (don't have a record player but i love looking at old records) stop in at Gunther's (the bar Kerouac used to get plastered at) and come home. So i hop in the car and shoot out there. He actually lived in the village north of northport out on eaton's neck and the village he lived in is call Asharoken, its after the tribe of Indians who lived there. a lot of the names down here have Indian origin, and they are none to easy to pronounce at first. well i guess that is no different than Cheektowaga. i love hearing people from out of town try to pronounce that. i will talk more about accents and pronunciations in a bit. anyways. back to the excursion. i get to this park/beach after having past Kerouac's address because some chic was tailgating me and there was no shoulder to pull off on to. i got a bunch of awesome pics, but then it started raining so i had to pack it in and come home. on the way back though i did get a bunch of good pics while driving. i held the camera on the steering wheel and took pics like that. so some are tilted oddly, thats cause i was turning duh. haha. i plan on going back this summer. i would like to get a bike, park somewhere and ride all over. it would be much easier to cover a lot of ground and that way you can stop wherever or whenever and take pics or rest. the area reminds me, or is similar to what i think new england is like (i say that because i have never been to new england but have a notion as to what it is like due to my imagination and what i have read in books and seen in movies) really rocky, nothing like the ocean beaches here on the south shore. all of the little communities are very sea living oriented. i believe the sound is a tidal water, and i think that means it is part fresh part salt water. anyways. i was out a couple weeks ago for happy hour and i was talking to my friend lynn about words, entymology i guess you could say. origins, terms, accents and pronunciation. it was really interesting. terms like eavesdropping, loose cannon, stuff like that. well i was explaining how i have the vhs tape from CBC that is on the topic of the canadian accent and how it has a lot to do with the loyalists from the american middle colonies who fled the revolutionary war, and how the brits brought over scotsmen to try and combat the yankee sound its really quite interesting, i have to find it and watch it again. my dad had taped it for me years ago. well now that i have rambled enough i am going to post those pics for yous guys and gals. hope you enjoy.

these are pics of sag harbour, the beach on dune road in the hamptons where all of the friggin insanely rich people live, and my room. the old pic is of my great great grandfather on the locomotive he was the engineer on. the bar, murphs tavern (the red door pic and on) was built in 1790. the beams and floors are hand hewn. original lumber. the place is awesome. the wood on the bar is so worn that it has a soft feel to it. enjoy. oh wow, didn't even realize it was my 100th POST!!!!! ding ding ding ding, *bells*, whistles, streamers, horns, confetti, YAY!!!!!

First i'd like to say happy birthday Matthew. hope you have a great day, and the party is brilliant!

I hope everyone had a great st Patrick's day. my sister came up from jersey and we went out in long beach, couldn't make it into the city because of work. it ended up being a really fun nite. saw the pat macguire band open up for 39 mariner and then just partied it up. it was awesome. spoke to kerri and then some. yeah we made out a little bit, in the bar. i know, i know, making out in a bar....but..it started as a kiss good bye, as she was going to do shots with her friends and i was going to go downstairs. then i don't know what happened. of course it was great, but i had not sent the letter yet so now it may seem odd. oh well don't really care, gonna send it anyways.

on the job front, the bank hired someone internally. LUCKY (napoleon dynamite voice) yeah not really. there is also no wiggle room in relation to compensation. and the base salary is totally unacceptable, especially for living down here. i understand that the bankers make money on commission from selling financial products, and meeting branch and individual goals, but come on.

i am on this big kick for wanting to plan a vacation. i really really want to go away some where. and with someone. i am finally going to apply for my passport this week. i know i have said that before, but i do procratinate if you have not noticed that already. shit my signal just went so now i am going to copy and paste this so i don't lose the whole damn post. i love technology. haha.. well today is a wasted day. its a day filled with anxious wanderings in my head. trying to figure out how to really start moving forward in all aspects. go on vactaion, start saving and investing. THis is a continuation as i had to copy and paste this from earlier. went to dinner with mickey at the saloon, it was great food too. i had the irish beef stew and he had sheppards pie. my sis had some of her griled chicken wrap and brought the rest home. after dinner we sat around and talked about home and high school and growing up and all of that. we were supposed to go out tonite to a party, but my sis fell asleep. so now i am online at 2 in the morning. i really wanted to go out to my buddy's party and then back to the saloon for a few drinks as my friend sara mongahan is bartending and she is such a cutie. she stopped by our table at dinner to chat it up a bit. lovely lovely girl. anyways. oh yeah i uploaded all of the photos i have yet to post for you viewing enjoyment. talk to you all later.

i wrote this tonite while listening to one of my friends play "open mic" and drinking some white ale. it is in honour of one of our own giving birth to a healthy baby boy.


And to you was given the gift of life

the warmth of the sun as he lay sleeping on your chest

the draw of the tides when he is not in your arms

the wonder of the change of seasons as he grows before your very eyes..





i have to work on it some more, but think that sums up my view on birth. its a beautiful thing, well at least when it is done happening. :)