Tamara and Jeremy's Wedding!

What better occasion then this to refresh the Bulogu with some new material! On Saturday September 20th my dear friend and fellow 4754-er Tamara got married to Jeremy who's another good friend. They got married in Corolla, North Carolina. The Americans and Eastcoasters will probably recognize this as one of the towns in the Outer Banks. For those less familiar with that part of the country here's a link with some info from Wikipedia (where else): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Banks

For the occasion Tamara and Jeremy rented a sweet beach house right on the beach. We rented a beach house just a couple of blocks away from the beach with 14 friends (me, Sarah, Chris, Theresa, Melinda, Jason, Ashley, Keith, Jeanette, Tommy, Carrie, Maggie, Mark, and Maggie's brother Phil). Another group of good friends rented another beach house in between our house and Tamara's. And we had some other friends staying in other houses and hotels. One of the things that made the event so fun was having so many friends there to hang out with and share it with. There were some friends that I wish could also have made it (Kazu! Alka baby! and more) but I know that Tamara wanted to keep it manageable so I understand

Without further ado, I'll share some of my favorite pictures from the long weekend, most of which I've shamelessly stolen from other peoples pictures on Facebook. Now that most of us are on fb (Tommy you're weak) it's a great way for us to share and comment on our pictures.

In no particular order:

Rockband. The other house was the Rockband house. It's a great party game. Here we see our own Jeanette on the drums with Ron and Mike. Even I (gasp) sang once, but one of the crowd favorites on the mike was Straubu!

Most days it was a bit too windy/chilly for the beach but Thursday was really quite good beach weather. Though still way too windy to even think about playing volleyball. Messing around with the soccer ball was fun, and frosty beverages always help.


Yeah!

Sweet Tamara dancing face, classic.

I had to give Nicole props. There were some good dancing displays all through the night, but I think her barefoot tap dancing display to some hip hop song had to be tops. I haven't found a picture of the tap dancing itself but this is close enough.

Jason's Oh-dancing face.

Gotta like this one, classic me dance pose, Straub dancing, and Jeremy's brother in law Chris to the right looking at me like wtf?

Haha, sorry J, but this is priceless!!

So is this


Yay, Tamara opened her eyes!!!


And again!

Easy Keith! You know how I know you're not gay? ;)

Group picture of almost everybody in our house.

Cook it up! Our house didn't mess around with the cooking. Props to the chefs Jason with among other things a mean Jasmin coconut and ginger rice, Chris with the money chicken, Ashley with the homemade spaghetti and meatballs which was awesome the first time and great late night drunk food, Sarah with the tasty french toast, and anybody I missed.


We spent a fair amount of time in the driveway in some heated HORSE games. Some classic shots: Jeanette's catch and shoot reverse granny, Ashley's long distance granny, nothing but net, Straub's f-u layup, Jason's ridiculous shot from the porch which was trumped by Keith's even more ridiculous repeat performance of that shot! Below we're in a money 3-3 game which was won 12-10 by 2 jumpers from T-O!

Love this picture

And here's my Oh-dancing face and Sarah's 'help me please!' face!
Straight gangsta Tommy, well done.


You have to loosen up a little for the grindin though.

Would be a great picture if I'd had time to get a haircut!

And what else could I possibly end this blog entry but with this, my current wallpaper on my phone. 4754 baby!

6 minute mile and other stuff

Hello everybody. Yes, it's been a long time since I posted, I know. So here are a couple of tidbits about what's been going on lately.

Last weekend, after Easter mass, I went to brunch with some friends. My friend Melinda is running a marathon this Saturday (crazy girl but yes, I plan to be out there early, some kind of drink in hand) and we got on the topic of running. Somehow, Chris and I challenged ourselves to run a 6 minute mile by his birthday April 25th. That's 10mph on your trusty treadmill for 6 minutes (math is hard). That's not gonna be easy. I got on the treadmill today before playing hoops and I ran for 10 minutes, the last 2 at at 10mph pace, and that was tough enough. I think I can do it, but those are gonna be 6 painful minutes! (I was tired all through hoops after but the yumper was money and we won 3 hard fought games)

On other news I'm typing this on my new shiny laptop. I got myself a dell xps 1330 mostly so I can do exactly what I'm doing now (i.e. online on the couch, beer in hand, basketball on tv). It's also nice to have in the increasing number of places with wifi (like my acura dealership) and it'll be nice to have when traveling (like at the beach house for Tam's wedding).

I also bought myself an 80gb Zune. Shockingly this is my first mp3 player. I spend a lot of time on a computer so it's usually not that hard to get accesss to music, but now I have my whole music collection easily accessible. Nice to have at work when Pandora gets old and since I only had a small subset on my work computer, and it's nice the few times I don't have a computer handy, like when I'm taking the metro to go spend 10 hours in a bar watching hoops.

Which brings me to my last topic. March Madness, an official Camargo holiday weekend. Just as long as Thanksgiving, less turkey, more beer and wings and much more tv. This year it fell on Easter weekend which was really unfortunate. Still, I did manage to watch a whole lot of hoops. My beloved Big Red who made the tournament for the first time in 20 years got crushed by Stanford. They needed to make some shots to make Stanford nervous but they shot horribly in the first half and the closest it got was 15-12in the first half. If they can make it back next year hopefully they won't have the "first-time-in-the-tournament" jitters. There were some other fantastic games though. Both Davidson games were awesome to watch. Stephen Curry is the shit. His father was a phenomenal pure shooter in the NBA and S. Curry put in 2 absolutely remarkable performances. His teamates held their own too. I hope they can win a couple more. The Western Kentucky an San Diego buzzer beaters in the first round were also fantastic. I'm looking forward to the Sweet 16 games starting again tomorrow. CPBG here I come!

Ok, almost time for Wednesday cards. Peace.

Clairvoyant Belize Bartender?

The other day Jeremy and I were talking about being engaged (YIKES) and we remembered this story from Belize:

So there was an 18-year-old bartender there who had a huge crush on me (he told me he was 23, btw. :)) His name was Deon. Anyway, I wouldn't hook up with him and his heart was broken (of course). And so even though nothing had yet happened with Jeremy, I remember Deon saying, "You and Jeremy better invite me to your wedding." Ha! Who knew!?! He did apparently. :)

Ghetto recipes

Tamara, I think I mentioned that I had some new tricks up my sleave. Here's one to go with the long list of shit I made up ;)

Note: Lately, Fabian "recipes" are easier to follow if you have easy access to a Trader Joe's.

Ingredients:
1) One warm piece of naan bread. If you don't know what that is, what the hell is wrong with you?
2) Some fresh spinach
3) 2 hard-boiled eggs
4) Rosemary ham (or just ham will do)
5) fresh chives
6) olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper

Slice up the eggs, the ham, and the chives.

Add the spinach to the naan. Pour some olive oil. Don't be shy, that shit is good for you. Put the eggs on top. Add the spinach and the chives, and the red pepper, salt and pepper. Pour yourself a glass of wine, knock yourself out.

Though it's really quite a shame to put this down in recipe format since I just wing it pretty much every time, but you get the idea.

Breaking Radio Silence

Sorry Fab. You are right - we have been slackers. I definitely want to hear what is up with the rest of the 4754 ers. Jnet - maybe you could post some pics of your place... and Kazu - how about some pics of Shuhei's wedding?

As for me, things have been crazy. My job has been insane due to the passage of a transportation bill last year, generating over $300 million annually in funding for transportation in Northern Virginia. It is good stuff, but it has made my job overwhelming for almost a year now. And my bosses know it, so I MIGHT get help with that in JULY... *sigh*.

I did get a job offer from another agency, and some interest from a consulting firm. Both were really tempting, but in the end I managed to negotiate a promotion and a raise at my current job. Even that was frustrating, since I had to really fight for it. Why is it that people outside the organization can recognize that I am doing a good job, and my bosses verbally tell me that all the time, yet they struggle to put their money where their mouth is?

Meanwhile, do I really want to be doing this anymore? I am good at it, but does that mean I should be DOING it? What I really want to do is have my own show on food network... or at least be a world renowned cookbook author.... Hmmm... maybe I will work on that over the holidays (in my spare time). :)

The OTHER thing that has been keeping me really busy is that Jeremy and I have been renovating our house - mainly the kitchen and living room. It has been an adventure for sure, but it is definitely coming along. Here are the latest pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/thelastfc/2029KitchenRenoPrettyMuchDone?authkey=zcF-DFZK0Eg

We still have some painting and adding of drawer pulls in the kitchen, but we are getting there.

So that is it for now - I promise to be better Fab. :)

T

Radio Silence???

Where, oh where have my 4745'ers all gone??? It's been over 2 months, and no posts :(

J$, last I heard it was early Sept and you were going to Italy for a wedding, you had a brand new digital camera and promised lots of pictures. You gotta share!

Kazu, what's the word? How was Shuhei's wedding?

Tamara, now that supposedly "House Tamara" is gone, you should put up some pictures of the place.

Tommy, stop working so hard! And none of this yearly birthday blues.

Tera, I saw you on Facebook. How's the NY?

As for me not too much is new. Here are some random things:

1) Went out to the left coast not too long ago for my boy Jon's wedding. Got to hang out with some of my college boys most of the weekend and it was pretty chill.

2) I have yet to score in my outdoor soccer league. Grr... I had a pretty good shot on goal last night, but I didn't have much of an angle and the goalie made a good save, I still should have put it away. I'm getting in better running shape though. The other day I ran 3 miles in about 25 mins, with a couple serious hills and the first 5 mins running at a slower warm up pace. For me that's pretty good.

3) Next week looks like a typical week. Monday night, vball playoffs, Weds poker, Thurs soccer playoffs. And I'm missing out on a $100 poker tournament and indoor soccer game on Monday night. I don't have enough nights!

4) I'm about to go meet up with Smith at some Dog Fish Alehouse for food and beers. Considering I went out for drinks Monday night and Thurs night after vball and soccer that's a pretty social week for me!

Ok, that's all for now. I don't expect much of a response, but it was worth a shot!

So sick...

So tonight I was watching the first episode of the new season of High Stakes poker. They usually play $300-$600 No Limit Holdem and I think the minimum buyin is 100K. But these guys are such degenerate gamblers that they need more action, so they all decided that the first person to win a hand with 7-2 would get $500 from everybody else at the table. Phil Helmuth and Mike Matusow are at the table and after the first televised hand they're already at it. Mike picks up kings in early position and raises to $1800, everybody folds to Phil who has 7-2 of course and raises to $7000 in the big blind. The other guys are actually talking about, when Phil raises, Esfandiari says "I love it, you don't know if he has aces or seven deuce!". Mike just calls. The flop is Q-J-6. Phil checks and Mike checks behind him. Not sure why he didn't re-raise pre-flop and why he doesn't bet on the flop. The turn is an 8, and Phil bets 17K. Mike flat calls. The river is a 6. Phil takes his time, looks over at Mike's stack a couple of times (he's got about 65K left). Keep in mind that these guys were just talking shit to each other. Phil finally bets 4oK with seven deuce!! Mike goes in the tank, and he just couldn't believe that Phil would make a big bluff on the river, and he folds the Kings face up! Phil of course shows his hand to collect from the group.

It was so sick. I just know I couldn't pull that kind of stone cold bluff myself. Not with people talking about it during the hand and with that kind of money. I don't like the way Mike played the hand, and it's easy to say that he had an easy call on the river, but it was just a sick hand. Unfortunately, it did help to keep Phil's ridculous ego in check!

So my original post ended with the previous paragraph, but I had to add to it for reasons that will become obvious. At this particular table there were 2 unknowns (at least from me). Rich amateurs getting in the game. On one of the last hands, one of them picks up 7-2 of spades and raises to $2100. The other one picks up, yup, you guessed it, pocket kings! This hand was also sick, but for different reasons. The dude with the kings raises to 10K. The 7-2 guy re-raises to $37K! The kings call. The flop comes K-4-k! And the pot is already 75K. The kings check, and 72 bets 30K. 72 is wearing a fancy watch and the kings asks him how much his watch costs, prolly trying to throw him off and then calls the 30K. The turn is a 10 and the kings checks, and 72 bets 50K! The pot is now 185K... The quads raises to 100K and 72 finally folds. That seven deuce rule cost him about 100K all in the hopes of winning $3500! So sick...