On Sunday we hosted my friend Dave Doyle's surprise retirement party at our house. His ex-wife and daughters planned it all and thought that by having it at our house he would have no idea. We told him we were having a barbeque. Needless to say he was totally freakin' surprised when all his friends and family jumped out and yelled surprise! from behind our garage.

I invited my co-workers (e:jim) and (e:enknot) and their signfy-os - sorry everyone else but this was a family affair and not an estrip party - sorry (e:leetee)

This video says it all. In Dave's his daughter Erin gives a speech about his commitment to their family and what an awesome dad, dave is. It might make you cry if you are the emotional type.



Dave Doyle and his daughters Erin and Crescent


Dave Doyle's daughters and wife Lynn - who organized the party


Dave Doyle and his retirement cake


The cake gave everyone smurf tongues


Dave got a GPS navigation system - so now we won't get lost on trips anymore. I guess (e:terry) is out of a job.


Everyone looking for basra


(e:enknot) and megan and the almost ready baby ?


(e:enknot) and (e:matthew)


(e:jim) and (e:james)


We got our chiminea going and burned the rest of october surprise debris


Making Faces

Unfortunately, at the very same time I got sick. I think it has to do with going to the Dr. McClurr, my dentist over on West Utica last wednesday. The last time I visited that dentist I got sick afterwards too. The same thing happend to Nameless Bitch who also went there. Maybe its just coincidence. I think I will try another dentist next time. In fact the lazy dentist did not even show up for the appointment which was scheduled for 8:30 so instead I only saw the hygenist and I had to reschedule for the dentist. The hygenist kept telling me I needed braces. I am so over that after the visit to the orthodontist they recommended last time (e:paul,37587) .

I hate being sick in the summer. It really sucks. My throat and sinuses are all swollen and I have a massive headache, blah.

In order to feel better I made myself some clam and crab soup. I am really seafood obsessed. At the coop they have frozen baby clams for $2.99 a pack. They are quite tasty and make a great addition to soup and are quite pretty.





I think it is much better to eat the abby clams because compared to say cherry stone clams, the meat is about the same size, but the shell is tiny. And who needs all that extra shell to discard.


There is this really pretty beetle that is killing all our hollyhocks. They eat all the leaves, to the point where the hollyhocks didn't bother flowering this year.




My mother send my fur-E wallet back to me. I am using it as my normal waller now.


(e:terry) and I met (e:enknot) and megan for lunch on friday at Brodo. I had one of their yummy italian sausage focaccia pizzas.



It was good but I was so jealous of meagan who got the shrimp salad.


Afterwards I got a cinco from Spot. It is quite possibly the tastiest drink I ever had.


This weekend someone also stole of the people who works at the church's bike. Another girl who works there saw saw black dude leaning on the girls bike with his hand behind him. She didn't realize however, that he was cutting the chain. I found the chain aroudn the corner. Goes to show you that chain type locks are useless.


At 2:30am (e:oda) showed up on friday night to give her friend a tour of the house and hang out. I thought the days of 2:30 am visits were over now. I took this picture of our fireplace then.

Flowers from a wonderful boyfriend.

I love my brand new 4GB 256MB vid Santa Rosa 2.4ghz powerbook but it is also cooking my legs. I have decided I simply need to stop touching it to my lap as I am getting lapburn. So much for laptop. At least 90% of the time I am using it at one desk or another.



I looked more closely into the mobile mail processing and realized that apple was weirdly encoding some mail and that I had a typo where I typed $email->delete when I meant to type $email->deleted, oops.

It was a great day for computing for me, wrote some major enhancements for the surebert toolkit and framework and they came out with a skype client for my nokia n800 along with flash player 9. Not to mention that it now takes up to 16GB of external memory.

Unfortunately, the built-in video camera on the n800 takes about as quality a picture as my gameboy color camera attachment did. It is much better in the light.



On a really good note, my Nikon s7c camera arrived back in the mail after repairs today but I wasn't there to pick it up. I am going to work from home tomorrow morning until it shows up because it says I have to sign for delivery and i seriously don't think I could handle living without it much more.

That question is "not going to face this government," Bush said, chuckling slightly at a news conference with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "because we made up our mind. We've made that part clear. It'll face future governments. There will be future opportunities for people to say, 'Well, it's not worth it. Let's just retreat.' "

Since then, nearly 700 more American soldiers have died in a war that has now lasted more than four years, lost the lives of more than 3,600 U.S. troops, cost $10 billion a month -- and cost Republicans control of the House and Senate.

I love how it costs 10 billion dollars a month. I wish it was better phrased top money was transfered from the people to a select group of mega corporations. I am sure some of it is for the troops but a whole heck of a lot of it is for war machinery and infrastructure, which results in big companies getting richer and the American People losing money that could otherwise pay for a fucking hell of a lot of services. Imagine if our government had an additional 10 billion to spend on domestic programs.

I can't wait to read about how terrible Bush was in history books. Unfortunately, I will be one of those people that children ask why I didn't do anything about it.