Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Super Smart Animal...

In the basement we have some drop ceiling. Almost every night, I hear some kind of animal above scratching or digging at the walls. But I never hear it run around, just a scratching noise. Though, the one night my sister was here...we were watching movie (Rush Hour 3) and heard the most ridiculous noises. Like huge thumps and all kinds of noises you would expect from a small animal running around on the drop ceiling. It was ridiculous, sounded like a small cat or raccoon was above us running all around in the basement.

The next day I told my dad about it and we went to the hardware store to get us a box trap. Never buy a box trap, they're worthless. I'm better off pulling a small tree over with bait, rope, and a stake like they do in the cartoons. I've set the trap several times and the cheese keeps getting consumed and the trap door will be open sometimes and other times it will be closed.

So either the huge animal i heard the other night is gone, and all that is up there are some small mice that can squeeze out of the cage, or we're dealing with some super smart critters that use team work...one holds the door while the other grabs the food...or the animals can walk through walls because it was part of some lab experiment and radiation...

I'm just going to keep setting it every night, I might end up having to put a video camera with a light to see what's going on.
I even set the trap with peanut butter holding the cheese to the plate, but the cheese was just nibbled on and the door closed with no signs of the animal other than the eaten cheese...

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Cookies!

Well, its December again...and that means making cookies and celebrating Christmas. I'm no cookie making all-star, and you can tell that if you witnessed the cookies I made last year, but I stepped it up this year. I've been watching the Food Network non-stop and getting pointers on this tricky art. Okay, maybe I haven't...but I have been watching the Food Network a lot because there is nothing on tv these days...

Every year, the Aunt Janice has all her niece's, their boyfriends, and me over to make cookies. So I can't take all the credit for the amazing cookies below.

I never now which cookie cutter to use...so I just picked the tree, and just made a bunch of those. After getting annoyed with trying to get the cookies onto the cookie sheet...I just pounded a piece of cookie dough with my hand and dropped it onto the baking sheet...

Monday, December 17, 2007

Silly Elder Flowers

Well, Day 6 and i got a gravity reading of 1.010. Racked the wine into the carboy. It seems to be bubbly more than the red that i made. Though it doesn't look very clear right now, hopefully it will start clearing up a little bit within the next 10 days until the next gravity reading. Some how managed to get some elder flowers through the siphon. I still have a good feeling about this batch.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Elder Flowers What What?

Just a little update on the white wine. 5 days have passed, took a sample with the wine thief to check the gravity. Got like a 1.018 reading...not quite ready to rack. Needs to be under 1.010. Bummer, the red only took 5 days to get that low. Hope i don't have to wait too long. The elder flowers are still floating at the top too, which is lame because it gets all over the wine thief.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

The Running Of The Santas

Oh dear, where to begin. Decided to start off the weekend with a Christmas party at Drexel. There were not that many people i knew there and it was mostly dudes, but where there is free beer... Just kind of sipped on a few beers until they broke out some beer pong. Pretty much my favorite game ever. Teamed up with rich and we won 3 games in a row and lost our 4th game. Later we signed up again and won two more...or three. Basically rich and i got pretty hammered, and only one team beat us. Kids from Penn, pretty sure they cheated somehow. So that was my friday...

Saturday was the big day. Running of the Santas, sponsored by Coors Light. Just an excuse to dress up like santa, drink a lot...and, well...drink some more. The game plan was to wake up at 8am, go to a bar in NJ where it was free beer and food from 9-11am, then pay $10 for a bus ride to philly where the rest of the ridiculousness would take place. Pick up the bracelets at noon...get lunch and hit up the other bars until 6pm where the huge party was in a heated tent with a live band and more drunk people.

Unfortunately between me drinking too much friday night and manthan spraining his ankle really badly friday...we didn't start the party at 9am...more like 2pm. Got some mexican food in us and met up with his friend Kat and her girlfriends at their hotel room. We then headed out to get our bracelets. Because of a little miscommunication, manthan and i went to get our wristbands while kat and her friends went to another bar having a little santa shin dig.

This is when the first lemon occurred, the website said that if you purchased your ticket ahead of time the line would be shorter than the cash line. Of course when we were there, we had to wait 30 minutes in line to get the wristbands while people that paid day of didn't have to wait in line at all. So i paid a $2.80 convenience just to stand in the cold.

Here you can see the fun line...














After finally getting the wristbands, headed over to Finnigan's Wake to get our drink on.














Here is Manthan, Kat, and her friends.














After about an hour and a half at Finnigan's, headed back to Mcfadden's for the party. Now Kat and her friends had to wait in line to get wristbands while manthan and i could go straight in and party it up. There were some pretty ridiculous costumes. An estimated 5,000 fools in crazy christmas costumes. One guy was dressed as a giant dradle, a bunny, some reindeer, elves, scooby-doo in a santa suit, the grinch...it just goes on.

Of course manthan wanted a picture with the dradle guy.

















The Band.














The first porta-potty i used..














The girl in green was being hit on by 40 year olds...














The place was so crowded, getting beer spilled on me the whole time...and getting pushed around constantly.














Here is the tequila girl, she was going down the bar pour shots of tequila down the everyone's throats during the 'tequila' song...of course the song was 30 seconds long and she didn't even get half way down the bar...i wanted some free booze!















Manthan "dancing".














Of course, the girls took over the men's bathroom. Man this gurl is so classy...














Of course guys and relieve themselves anywhere, so thats just what they did. Nothing like peeing up hill in some bushes...





























dancing?














Later in the night, the girl managing the coats looked a little lonely so manthan decided to talk to her. After a few minutes she had to go to the bathroom asking manthan to 'cover' for her. Who does that? Asking someone that doesn't work there to cover for them. I guess she wasn't too crazy about her job. Manthan being the nice guy he was decided to take over. Returned some coats to people and racked two coats for $6. Of course one of the beer girls got word of this and called in some staff and 'bouncers'...manthan got yelled at of course "you can't be here!"...so that was the second lemon of the night.

































Kat's friend that came later that she said was single but wasn't. At least her b/f was cool. I wonder what that guy was looking at in the background...

































































For some reason i wasn't allowed to dance on the bar...:'(














This is what happens when manthan has my camera, takes random pictures of people he doesn't even know the names of.


















Random girl trying to talk a bouncer into letting her dance on the table...or something.














Can't be a called a party until someone gets kicked out of the bar. Manthan managed to get himself kicked out. Tried to make me leave to, but we basically spent 20 bones for cover to be there. Something about shots, paying for them, not paying for them...then finally paying for them, then getting kicked out. But he didn't really get kicked out, just took his wristband, stayed for like another hour afterwards and kept drinking.














I lost count of my drinks after 9 of them...around midnight (i know thats early, but we've been out since 2pm!) we made our way into china town to get some greasy food into our systems. Of course all the places i knew of were closed, and ended up walking into a typical shady chinese restuarant. There was one other party there, with like 15 people having a great discussion about politics while also being drunk. Then a crazy bum would come in every once and awhile and rap for the girls. Something like, "What's you're name? Heather? In Greece it means..." and he would spit rhymes for a couple minutes...i'm sure he raps for all the girls he meets...sad thing was it was kind of good...he probably uses the same lines every time.




























manthan not eating his food.














Crazy bum rapper...














Pretty much what my vision was by the time we left to go home.














Of course after our late dinner, while walking home it was raining...We made it back to Kat's hotel room, and of course i'm the one that gets to sleep on the floor. i feel like my liver is failing...won't be drinking for awhile. Well, until Christmas...

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Bubbles!

Who couldn't watch this for hours?!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Too Bright!

Looking back behind my house a little ways, there is this massive house that has been built. It has 5 garages. It also has like a quarter of a mile long drive way and a guest house that's probably just as big as your average house.

Rumors have it that the owner of this house is the "Philadelphia Porn King" that owns club Risque. I wish I owned a club and buy newly built houses in ridiculous locations...

Anyway, to make sure that he or anyone that would drive there at night can see the ridiculously long driveway to the house at night...they put up light posts like every 20 feet. They then decided to put in bulbs with a million watts...

Now when you look out behind my house, it doesn't look like a house with a couple lights on....it looks like a small city.

Couldn't get a picture in focus...