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joe’s journal

📅 December 2013

the Burning of the British

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On my way home from work, I stopped at this huge bonfire I saw at Silo City. Today is the 200th anniversary of Buffalo being burned by the British. Today we're burning british stuff including a book of British royals. Sorry @mike.

I looked it up later and it's pretty crazy. When the British attacked, everyone in Buffalo and Black Rock tried to flee to Williamsville. Anone who stuck around got shot, including a Mrs. Lovejoy who insisted on staying to protect her dresses. They even came back on January 1st to shoot anyone who came back.

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The story of the burning

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Sick :(

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@xandra, @paul and I are all sick. I feel super achey and tired while Paul and Alex have terrible coughs and fevers. Paul and I napped half the afternoon away with crazy dreams. Mine involved bike routes, estrip, falling off rocks into the ocean, and college friends coming in for Paula's doughnuts. Weird.

@terry was amazing and made us a delicious vegetable soup. I wonder if we just are a week late to what he caught last week. I hope it doesn't get worse, I don't want to take a day off and new years is two days away.

It's time for bed again, this can only help.
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Edit for @tinypliny : Paul told me you can change your post's background color! For future reference you just need a valid HTML color or color hex value in between like
[bgcolor]#1E90FF[ /bgcolor]
included in the post!
[bgcolor]#1E90FF[/bgcolor]

Shopping and Quacks

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Today @paul and I went to go shopping with @mike and @libertad out on the Boulevard, at Trader Joe's, Feel Rite and Michaels. We stopped at Michael's first to get the new years ball before heading to Feel Rite. Mike had to use his insurance card Supermarket Sweep money which ended up being a fiasco.

Feel Rite is kind of crazy to me because while they do sell a lot of good health products, they also sell a lot of bullshit supplements and therapies that are useless at best and outright harmful at worse. Some of the natural herbs and food have been scientifically proven to be useful and I consider traditional medicine. But the vitamins/cleanses and homeopathy section drive me crazy. The worst part to me is they seem to all appeal to some anti-traditional medicine sentiment. Sure, a few doctors may have a vested interest in profiting off you, but not most and they have typically have peer reviewed science behind them. Why would these snake oil salesmen be any better in that sense, when all they have are their own crazy specious claims? Water with herbs in the parts per billion having any sort of efficacy? I doubt it. Doesn't this undercut the credibility of a health store? Maybe its just buyer beware. So many studies about these products are available online now. If you can't even look it up on your phone like Paul I consider it your own fault. I always like to visit when it comes to quackery.

Then we ate at Red Pepper. I got the tofu stir fry with rice noodles which was really good. Last stop was Trader Joe's before we headed home. We failed to kick the candy addiction. The penguin gummies are amazing.

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The Boulevard looks so rough these days. Maybe its just winter being ugly. A lot of run down vacant buildings and even a boarded up house.
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Ying's moved into his ex wife's KCafe after his fiasco.

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@mike thought this was to kick a candy addiction. Yeast infection might be worse, lol.






Wegmans Organic Smooth Almond Butter

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The first of the nut butters from @paul.

I never had almond butter before because usually it costs so much. I think this might make me less of a cheapskate because this is the best nut butter I've ever had. It is just almonds, no sugar but but still tastes kind of sweet. The texture is gritty but in a good way. I opened it yesterday and it's already half gone. A+ 5 stars would buy again.

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Pumpkin Moving

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The giant $38 dollar pumpkin is finallunoff the porch. After @mike squashed the air out last week it it started leaking a river of pumpkin blood down the porch. We finally decided to move it since it was thawing. @paul rolled it down the stairs then we moved it back to the compost pile. our hands smelled like rotting pumpkin.

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Old friends and Founding Fathers

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@terry and I met up with Emily, Kevin, Lindsay, Tim and Kyle at Founding Fathers last night. It was the first time I've actually seen Kyle in such a long time even though Ive been at her house a bunch since then. Of course I needed the nachos.

After we headed to Brick Bar for a bit. We ran into a couple of people we haven't seen in a real long time - Emily D. and Andrea. I can't decide if it was awkward or not because its been so long. Emily D. used to be my one of mu best friends but there was a lot of drama with the whole group abd her liking me, and I haven't seen her since. I think the last time we hung out was after freshman year of college.

Lindsay wanted to head to Chocolate Bar but we headed back in pretty early.

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Ice skating at Rotary Rink

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Yesterday @paul, @terry and @mike went out to ice skate at the Rotary rink in Fountain Plaza. I don't think any of us had been ice skating in a while.
Skating was super tough with the loose skates and rough ice, but I think we figured it out by the end. Paul tied his laces around the back which made the skates way tighter.

Terry was super good at ice skating just like roller skating. He was was even doing circles by the end (no triple lutzes though sorry).

I'd definitely go again but maybe with skates from somewhere else since these were beat up and so gross (the rental place smelled awful) and smoother ice. Maybe MLK splash pad when its open for skating?

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Woof

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They're so ridiculously cute.

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Invites at Cathode

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Last night @paul, @xandra and I went out to Cathode while @terry had game night with @heidi, @Dianne, Barb and Cara. We headed out after Alex made us watch this crazy body modification show off TLC (I'll have to post about that later).
We tried to invite tons of people to new years at Cathode but everyone seemed to be just home for break. We did get invited to church though.

I didn't take too many pictures. Paul and I saw the worlds smallest butt while we there on this guy named Frankie - it was so crazy.

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This guy had an insanely big beard. Paul hated his shoes.

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Random but I heard this song on Terry's pandora the other day and I can't stop listening to it. It reminds me of spring, it's sounds happy. The video is awesome - almost everything in it is a literal interpretation of English idioms.


Arduino and WS2801 LEDs

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The other day, @paul and I spent an hour trying to get the WS2801 LEDs working with the Arduino. They kept glowing on one LED, either full brightness or red and green. We thought it might have been library we used or the LEDs being defective, but it turns out there is an input and output side of the strand and we had it reversed. I seriously can't believe we missed that. Now they're working, fully addressable and ridiculously bright. For future reference - make sure you're always inputting into the right hole.

Side note these LEDs outgas so bad they make me sick.

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