Greater Satellites

Well, this is a long time coming, but I figure it’s better late than never. First and foremost, I’d like to extend the deepest thanks to my lady, Jackie, for being my designated driver and putting up with my completely-sloshed ass on the way home and well into the following day. Definitely wouldn’t had such a great time without you there!

Whiskey Tango was the place and the time was around 9PM when I did my first shot (a Jolly Rancher) with Jackie and Denise, followed very shortly thereafter by a Vodka Cranberry. I was pretty determined to stick to clear liquors all night, but those false hopes were disbanded when I switched over to Long Island Iced Teas. I guess it’s better to stick to what I remember and that is the following:

• My first shot with D and Jackie
• The ensuing Vodka Cranberry
• Jon’s Long Island Iced Tea For me
• Playing some pool with the fellas
• Catching up with everyone, mingling as best I could
• Jager Bomb #1
• Long Island Iced Tea #2
• Jager Bomb #2
• …..

So yeah, this marks the first time I’ve ever drank so much that I blacked certain parts of my night out. Not exactly responsible behavior, but I had a good time and I’ve pretty sure everyone did as well. It was great getting back out with all the friends in the context of a large group. Due to schedules and generally just “growing up”, I think it happens a little less than I’d like, but if we did it once, we can certainly do it again. Midnight summer BBQs anyone?Thanks to all that came out and even to those who tried but couldn’t come out. Who said 23 is just another year?

Here are just a few other names of people you might know who share the same birthday as me…

• Christian Bale (actor, kind of like me sometimes)
• Phil Collins (drummer, kind of like me sometimes)
• Gene Hackman (awesome, kind of like me sometimes)

And then there are some not-so-notable people who also share the same day of birth:

• Andy Milonakis (possible rapist)
• Wilmer Valderrama (possible terrorist)
• Dick Cheney (possible destroyer of the world)

In this instance, the good definitely outweighs the bad. Yessss

If I said I was still recovering from last night as I type this, I wouldn’t be doing last night any justice.

Yesterday started around 12AM when I let Jackie open her present, the ear-orgasm-inducing Bose SoundDock. She let out a shriek of glee as she opened it and assaulted me with a barrage of hugs and kisses to show her appreciation. We went to bed shortly thereafter and the day began around 11AM. I made her a breakfast of home fries (and nothing else… her request) while I had a cheese omelet.

Upon cleaning up the dishes and getting dressed, we went to Lauren’s house up near Willow Grove so that the birthday girl and her best friend could get their hair cut.  We were in and out of there surprisingly quick, and after dropping Lauren off at home we went to Best Buy to surprise Christopher (Jackie’s cousin).  Jackie ended up buying 20th anniversary edition of The Monster Squad, which we’re currently watching, and the 25th anniversary edition of Halloween (I’m so proud of her).

After all of that excitement, we came back to her house and took a short nap in anticipation of the festivities to come.  We almost ended up going to Cherry Hill to hit up some new threads, but decided to swing by my house to grab some new clothes and whatnots.  We arrived back at Jackie’s around 8-ish, showered and got all sexied up, and rolled out to Cavanaugh’s River Deck. It was a great time and we were joined by the likes of: Sylvia, Paul, Dorothy, Peter, Polish Adam, Adam, Bob, and Mark.  Everyone was thoroughly thrashed by the end of the night and fun was had by all.  If I can gather up all of the pictures, I’ll post them in a Flickr photo stream.  We left at last call and ended up going to bed around 4am.  It was a great time.

Today was spent recovering.  Lots of naps, Powerade, and fast food.  I had a great weekend and I’m pretty sure Jackie did as well.

It’s hard to know where to begin after leaving off writing for so long. My initial intentions for getting this domain set up was basically so I could have my own place to blog but ever recently I’ve either shirked the task or just downright did not have enough time. Well let’s hope I can change that all around. I’m trying my best to post at least once a week for the rest of the year. Call it a late New Year’s Resolution. Let’s get this recap under way…

Since last I blogged, a little over a month ago, quite a bit has happened. Nothing huge, but all things worth mentioning for memory’s sake: Two one-month-increment anniversaries on the road to the big one year, first small vacation with the lady, Jimmy Buffet concert with Denise, a promotion at work, some minor construction in the room area, and not to mention Jackie’s birthday tomorrow. Come with me on this journey…

I’ll follow the order that I listed them above just to keep everything nice and tidy, which puts us at the 8th and 9th month anniversary days. In case you didn’t know the day is the 15th of every month. How I remember is pretty cheap, but it serves it’s purpose as my personal mnemonic device. For those of you who’ve seen V For Vendetta, the day Jackie and I officially started going out was the fifteenth of November, so I modified it to say “Remember, remember, the fifteenth of November” and since then I have not forgotten. We’re usually pretty chill about out anniversary dates, as they’ve been pretty variable throughout the week (only a few have fallen on a party night [read: Friday or Saturday]). We usually just relax and watch a movie, have some dinner, and enjoy each other’s company. Two nights ago I bought dinner from Bennigans, gave Jackie a card (I’m such a sap sometimes), and we just relaxed watching some TV and playing around on the computer. Last night we also got together and celebrated Jackie’s birthday a few days early because her parents are leaving for a week of partying in the mountains (it’s their anniversary). It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows her that she had a Superman cake (for the 2nd consecutive year, if I’m not mistaken), which I’ll have pictures of soon enough. After the commotion died down and most of her family left or went to sleep we watching Employee Of the Month, laughed a bit at that, and then called it a night. As I was leaving her house two big motherfuckin raccoons ran by my legs about 2 feet from where I was standing. I’m actually not sure if they were big raccoons or not because that’s the first time I’ve ever seen one that close, but they were the size of small dogs and looked mean as hell. I’m just realizing this is my second run in with a wild animal I’ve never seen up close before in the past month, because when we went on vacation to Promised Land State Park…

…We ran into a big ass BEAR! There were two, actually, one cute cub which I snapped a picture of and a shit-yourself-big mama bear. Needless to say, well all slept in our cars that night. Let’s back up just a moment to the start of it… I had Jury Duty on the day we planned to leave (July 13th). I wanted to have that shit wrapped up way earlier that week, but things happen and Jackie and I didn’t end up leaving for the State Park until well after 6 (it may have even been 7). Regardless, we start trekking up there in her car blasting through traffic and listening to some tunes. We got a little lot lost but it’s all fun because we pretty much rule and made a great time out of it. By the time 11pm rolled around and we still weren’t where we needed to be we called Denise to let her know we’re hotel-ing it up. Turns out we were about 30-45 minutes off course, and we still needed to set up a tent, eat, and eventually get some sleep. We drove right in to a Best Western and shacked up for the evening. We hit the bar downstairs and had a few drinks. Jackie actually only had part of a 7&7, mainly because, well, it’s a fuckin 7&7. After that we went back up to our room and eventually went to sleep. Camping rules.

The next morning we awoke, showered, and rolled out shortly before 11. We bought a map, got our bearings, filled up the gas tank, and bounced our way to the state park. It was a nice ride through a variety of quaint little neighborhoods that you’d think only existed in movies. It was a great day to drive and just be outside in general… We arrived at the State Park shortly after noon. We set up our tent in record time and were surprised at how spacious it is. Made some lunch and just loafed around for a bit until we decided to play some volleyball and toss the disc around for a bit. Volleyball went ok… I’m not too good at it, but always willing to try again (on the sand of the beach, maybe?). After Volleyball Denise and I played frisbee for a bit while Jackie and Kathy talked, took pictures, and took in the scenery. Denise phone was stolen (naggers!), and that was the beginning of the end of that trip. When we got back to the camp site, we cooked up some delicious dinner (burgers and dogs, the American way) and tried to get comfortable. I found it difficult to do so up there between the bugs and lack of seating (bench vs. rock vs. ground). After making smores, one of our neighbors told us there was a bear cub in a tree on his site. We checked it over to verify he wasn’t bullshitting us and boom, bear cub. Now I’ve heard, along with everyone else camping, that wherever baby goes, mommy is sure to follow. We didn’t see mommy right away, because she was hiding from us (which in retrospect is kind of funny, considering she was like an 800 pound black bear… how do you hide?). We were all pretty spooked and it wasn’t until our fire died that mommy came out to play. After seeing that big MF’er, we decided to regroup and take some action. I intended to run right into the bear and skewer it with a plastic fork a la Troy, but everyone said stuff like “It’s a bear, you will die” etcetera, etcetera so I decided instead to just wrap up our food as best we could and head for the safety of glass and metal… the cars. Jackie, Denise, and I slept in Jackie’s car and Kathy slept in hers (only Asians could possibly sleep comfortably in Hondas).

We woke up around 6AM, packed everything up, and rolled out. We hit Perkins on the way out and I bought breakfast because everyone looked like they needed a pick-me-up, and then started rolling home. We arrived home in the early afternoon and dispersed. Total vacation time: 3 days, 2 nights. Total time Jackie and Andrew actually camped: 0. One night in a hotel, one night sleeping in the car. We rock.

The next big event was the Jimmy Buffet concert. There’s not much to say about it other than the fact that it was fantastic. I had a blast and got wrecked off of Landshark Lager (a thumbs up in my book) and huge frosty Margaritas. We were successfully able to sneak alcohol in and although I saw two separate instances of man-wang, I saw enough sets of boobies for it not to be considered a gay concert. Jimmy is good people in my book.

Another short but noteworthy mention is my raise/promotion at work. I won’t go in to salary details on here because I’m not trying to be braggadocios about what I make, but let’s just say I received a little over $2 more per hour and I’m in a position to have as many as one person working directly beneath me. Fun times, indeed.

I tore my wall apart two weekends ago and put up some new awesome shelves to store my books, CD/DVD media, and random crap that I didn’t want in my desk. This past weekend I also bought a new desk chair that’s no less than 114% more comfortable than the old one. What does all of this mean for raising my at-home computing productivity? Nada. But it certainly does look nice.

Last, but certainly not by any stretch of the imagination least, is Jackie’s B-day tomorrow. Now I can’t really re-cap it since it didn’t happen yet and I don’t own a flux capacitor, but it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s going to be one hell of a good time. There will be pictures, oh yes, there will be pictures documenting the whole evening and I’m totally looking forward to it. Last year at Jackie’s birthday was the first time we actually truly hung out and I started grasping just how awesome she really is. One might say that was the night that kick started it all, so it’s kind of a warm and fuzzy feeling for me being out with her again, a year later, only playing a better role in her life. The role of boyfriend extraordinaire (her words, not mine [ok, they were my words]). Look forward to more blogs over the coming weeks so I don’t have to write long diatribes like this any friggin more.

I woke up yesterday, did a couple phone interviews, sent out some applications, and then decided to trek up to the Northeast part of the city to look for a particular DVD for a particular someone. Alas, I couldn’t find it, but I wasn’t downtrodden. I proceeded to stop by Excel Fuel Service (bad website, I know) to see Jackie and dad. I was delivering a copy of Superman Returns to Jackie because I, hmm, acquired it a month before its slated DVD release date and thought she would appreciate the gesture (she did, I’m fairly sure). I talked to dad briefly about school and financial aid, told him about the research I’ve been doing, and asked him for some under the table work if he had any. Turns out he does and I’ll be cleaning the fleet of trucks every other weekend or so until I can afford my new phone. Shouldn’t take long at the current Ed Gormley rates. I’m hoping to get a new Smartphone like a Blackberry Pearl or maybe a T-Mobile Dash. I would definitely hold out for a couple more months if a certain phone were to hit the market…

Either way, I arrived home around 7pm and immediately got sucked into watching Halloween 4. I really think the Halloween movies are unrivaled as far as the “lunatic, undying serial killer” genre goes. Shortly after 8pm and, conincidentally, after Halloween 4 I traipsed (that’s right, traipsed) up to Kathy’s house for her little party get-together. I knew mostly everyone there, some better than others. There was food and drink (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) available to all so I pretty much set my sights on and devastated a whole bottle of Gin and Juice. As the party wound down we decided to hit the bowling alley. I did a shot of Bombay (?) Gin with Rich and ::drum roll:: Jon. It was deelish. Soon after, bowling we a-went!

I was fooling around for the first game, trying to perfect my spin. It went poorly. I think I topped out with a score of about 43, which is not too good. However, I knuckled down and really pulled myself together for the second game, which I ended up winning with a score of 154. That put the time at 11:30pm and everyone had work and things to do the following day, so everyone departed. Denise and I ended up watching all of Crash (a gift from Kathy along with I ♥ Huckabees). Denise was pretty trashed, to say the least. She fell asleep midway through the movie and ended up waking up while the credits were rolling and said “I missed the heart of the movie.” I thought it was hilarious, but maybe you had to be there. Overall, I think Denise had a lot of fun on her Halloween-y birthday.

It makes me sad that it gets dark shortly after 5pm now. Seriously, it does.

As wise person once said a great place to start is at the beginning, so I will follow that sagely advice and do just that:

Friday: Woke up pretty early (10 am, hah) and checked the internets for jobs and things. Shortly thereafter we turned the heat on for the first time and found that there was a big leak in one of the pipes. Awesome! So we called the plumber and waited for him to come out and fix things up so my room doesn’t have a foot of standing water on the floor. That was taken care of around 12:30, and shortly thereafter I left for Jackie’s house. I was running a little late (as usual) but, luckily, she was too. We arrived at her house separately but almost simultaneously and talked for a bit while she gathered her clothes/costumes and got ready to roll. Come 1:15 we hit the ground running, bound for Pottstown. We met up with Jackie’s sister Christa at Wal Mart as they finished up some last minute party shopping. She’s very nice, and I had a feeling from just looking at her that I knew her type. Don’t take that as a negative thing, she’s a very nice person and quite tenacious. We got back to her house and did some decorating (I did the webs outside, thank you Spider Man) and began readying the foods and whatnots. People started rolling in around 8-ish in full costume and everyone looked great (one person in particular looked very yummy). Anywho, Christa and Mike’s friends were funny and very sociable. A little later Brigette and Vinny showed up and the four of us broke off for the remainder of the evening just drinking, talking, and joking around. As the night wound down people started leaving and eventually we all found a place to sleep. Jackie and I talked for a while before we went to bed and I told her some things that I wanted her to know. I won’t go into the details here, but it ended up quite well (no, not like that, perv). Slumber happened around 2 or 3am, I believe.

Saturday: Slept late at Christa’s house (later than everyone else, at least) and eventually left there around 1:45 for Philly. Ran into some traffic on the way home so it took a little over an hour to arrive back. Jackie and I said our goodbyes and I jumped head first into the awkward situation I like to call family get-togethers. The occasion was a suprise 80th birthday party for my grandmom. People started showing up around 2pm and the surprise happened at 3pm. Grandma was very happy and overall she appreciated the fact that, quite literally, almost everyone made it out. We had family over that I’ve never even met before. Cousins that I’m seeing for the first time. Uncles and aunts that I don’t know the names of. I’m not saying all of this for any reason other than setting up how many people were in my house… we have a very big family. At some point I decided to show my cousin Kenny the video I did by the name of Friends. He REALLY liked it and decided (drunkenly) it would be a good idea to tell my family to come watch it too. Now, these are people who, for all intents and purposes, don’t know me. Now they’re all excited to see Andrew’s “funny video”. The abridged version sounds something like this: my entire family watched it and every time I passed through the living room where a majority of the guests were, I overhear things like “There’s the Longshaft!” and “Can I be a Longshaft too?” For some reason, it was a little much for me so I did a couple shots of some really bad Canadian whiskey and continued drinking my beers. That made things better. Most of the family was gone by 10pm and I knew Marek was in town so I gave him a call. Denise, Marek, Kenny, Kristen (Kenny’s wife), and I ended up hanging out and drinking much more. We started a game of Ultimate Yahtzee around 1am and finished (with me winning) close to 2am. 2am then became 1am again because we had to turn the clocks back. Kenny left after the game, Denise went to be shortly after, Marek and I chilled for about another hour and then I booted his ass out. I went to bed shortly after the second 2am.

Sunday: Slept very late due to a relatively large headache. I wonder why? Anyway, some family stopped back over to drink more of our alcohol and eat more of our food (savages, I know) throughout the afternoon. A little after 6pm we departed for the Bates Motel up in Glen Mills. Unfortunately Jackie couldn’t make it, but it was fun group nonetheless: Denise, Ian, Kathy, Rich, and I. The lines weren’t too bad and we ventured through the corn maze, braved our way through the haunted house, and sat on the edge of our seats for the hayride. All of it was good and I’m not too proud to admit that I jumped a few times. Got back just before midnight when I started writing this and am now finishing close to 5AM because I got caught up talking to Denise, taking a shower, and watching a Friday the 13th marathon.

After this weekend, despite a little awkwardness with the fam, I can say that I haven’t been this happy in a long time. Thanks to any and all involved.