Photos from Starvonsky's Bar Mitzvah X

This post was written well after the date shown, because I had no reliable Internet access for a week while moving from Newark to Branchburg and then back to Newark.

So I figured it's been long without the pictures from the Bar Mitzvah X celebration - the last time I will see good 'ol Star for a while. He's left for duty, now, and I hope was not deemed unfit by any weight restrictioins. Wish him well as he moves on to another stage in his life.... yadda yadda.







It was a big hoorah!

Starvonsky's Bar Mitzvah X

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of my favorite fabricated celebration: Starvonskey's Bar Mitzvah (pickup saved merch here). Star and his girl Wadsy came over bearing gits of ice cream cake and Japanese booze. We were joined by Sarah T and her friends Dan, Emily, and Freddy. Liz and Leslie celebrated, as well. It was great! I'm so glad I got to see Star before he leaves for miltiary assignment. He leaves for Virginia Monday and the plans are to have him stationed in Korea perhaps by the end of the year. He still believes he might end up in Iraq, but I suppose only time will tell. I mean, his assignment is for Korea at this point.

But at any rate... it was a great time. I will try to remember to put a couple pictures up on this, because they're great!

Nice

This was one of those quizzes where you could easily map the available responses to characters, but I did my best to answer honestly. And this is a good result:


You are Brodie Bruce.

Video game hockey, a comic book store, a great
girl, and the mall. Life is good.

"Look at you! You're the kind of guy who would
beg for sex. I should know, we can smell our
own kind."


Which Kevin Smith character are you (Ultimate Version)?
brought to you by Quizilla

Scary

Found from Rich's blog: mysonpeter

Told by Star and the name of Sarah's future band (which will feature an organ, drums, and bongo?): Douen (or "Dwen"). It's Trinidadian folklore!

Meh. That's all I got. Movie with the ladies!

Yawn

I have been tired all day. Eyes are sunken in. Worked late last night after hanging out with Sarah T for a good many hours... and even that started kind of late. It was really good times, though.

Liz is home from the shore! She's much tanner and was in really great spirits last night... I'm glad she had a good week-plus with the family. Leslie is an aunt now twice-over! Her sister-in-law gave birth to Leslie's second niece over the weekend (or Sunday night?). I'll start organizing some things to be efficiently moved on come the end of the week. I'm gonna head home Friday and then pick up my things and clean out on the way to Ray Street next Wednesday. Hard to believe that the summer is pretty much kaput.

Installation of the software systems on Thursday. And then, undoubtedly massive tweaks and fixes will be required, especially for the unfinished portions. But we'll get the timesheet application live and tested and build the databases on the live server. It will all be good good! And the corporate services group is taking me out to lunch on Thursday to the place of my choice... hmmm... not sure where to go!

I gotta tie up some things and then get out of here and take a nap or something.

Kerry, Eh?

I'm not a fan of our current president. I'm also not a fan of John Kerry. I am very much not a fan of Ralph Nader. This leaves me at a crossroads. Hmm.. what the hell should I do when it comes to November the 2nd? My thoughts on Bush have changed a bit throughout this year - and startlingly for the better. I think better of him, however, in large part because I think less of the "competition" in this election. I like Democratic government. I think it will be good for the economy, jobs, education, and other aspects of American life important to me. I also think we need a change from Bush/Cheney. But I just can't, at this point, choose Kerry/Edwards over that Republican ticket.

I mean, c'mon: I want to vote for Kerry. I've been offering an ear, waiting for him to say something that makes me set on casting that vote for him. The thing about him that irks me to no end is that I just don't know anything about him. I've gone through the Kerry/Edwards website. I've read notes from his campaigners and spoken with many supporters... and I still feel like I don't really know enough about him or how he stands on many key issues.

Read this: Why Kerry Will Lose (read it while adjusting for the fact that it's extremely biased and coming from the right). It's not perfect and I have not verified all of its sources, but it brought up some interesting points. Points interesting enough to force even further questions and confusion upon Kerry.

All I can say is that by this point in time, the democratic candidate could've easily had me lining up to campaign for them. But for some reason, it's Kerry that emerged from the primaries and you know - he just isn't convincing me.

"I don't agree with that in the workplace!"

So this morning I'm sitting at my desk, programming as is the norm. And Jean comes starts going around the second floor throughout all of the corporate services department, luring us to the large conference room. Allright. Whatever. I'm the intern, so I do what they say. When we get inside, there are chips and dips, big drink glasses and tiki mugs, and a frozen-drinks machine swirling dacquri's and pina colada's! Well, virgin, of course, but hell - it was a really nice thing. I suppose it's been a running gag for a few years that when Mike's out (the boss man of the department, VP of Corporate Services and Finance), everyone has been saying they'll be having a beach party complete with drinks and everything. So since Mike was off Friday and today, he thought to rent the drinks machine and buy all sorts of supplies himself so people could celebrate his vacation day.

Very cool. Now we've all got frozen drinks on our desks.

Manfredi and Johnson

"You put two and two together and it adds up four... only it ain't four!"

Main I've been watching Stalag 17 and there's no help for me, because it started around 2:30 this am and here I am with over an hour to go and a full day of work ahead of me. But I just don't know if I can stop watching this. I need to rent Sunset Blvd. and Network some time, because William Holden is on his way to being my favorite actor of all time and "Stalag" is what I plan to refer to as my favorite movie of all time for quite a while. That does truly mean that I think higher of it than The Usual Suspects, Jaws, all of the Kevin Smith films, Say Anything, and any other movie I've been known to consider my fave.

And of Holden: how does this guy only have three Oscar Nominations? How did he only win once!?

"Curtains would do wonders for this barracks. You will not get them."

Interesting

Shared on a message board (by someone else):

Bluntly happy? I just don't get how anybody could think that. The lyrical content goes from someone begging somebody to never leave them...to someone remembering better times by looking at a picture...to a transvestite with a drug problem...to someone who doesn't want to be where they are...to someone who's not getting any...to someone who's in the midst of a Knock-Down Drag-Out fight...to someone who's looking for something to believe while feeling that he needs more love in his life...to someone who's begging his estranged girlfriend to just smile again, while at the same time struggling with beating her...to someone who wants, er, children...

Well said. Well said. I have to give another listen to find the wife-beating, but well-said. =w= is laying down the rhythm to 12 tracks that are slated for release on their 5th album... which will hopefully be coming this fall or winter. It's been a decent time coming, too, especially since they had a deal to release the 5th record back in January 2003. But all those songs, I believe, are canned now and this stuff being recorded is following a completely different process and will touch on completely different things.

I've always thought that Maladroit, while one of their weaker albums, was a step on the way to a more Pinkerton-like fifth album. All signs seem to lead to a much more emotional album than we've come to expect from Green and Maladroit. I hope this new one sells through the roof to keep the band making emotionally charged music that is responded to with both critical acclaim and commercial success.

Workload

Just finished the presentation of my Payroll and Timetracking software project to the VP and director of HR. There are only some minor modifications left to stick into the system before it reaches an install with the new server next week. A lot of documentation and help materials will be required as it will be frequently used beginning September 1 of this year. It's wonderful to have something you've worked long and hard on get appreciated like my work here has been thus far.

That's the second of the two software systems, though. The performance evaluation system still needs a fair amount of tweaking and adjustments, but we've received approval to continue my employment on a part time basis during the beginning of the fall, to fully document the system and make sure everything is in working and installed order before its usage in January. My hope is that I'll be on for a handful of hours each week during January, as well, to watch over the system and make adjustments as it gets used for the first time. I'm too proud of it to never see it in action!

In other news, I've had an interesting stomach ailment for the first half of this week and have had to work from home a couple of times because of it. I think it's linked to the unexpected introduction of alcohol, however little, over the weekend and the other night. That said, however, I've also just been "feelin' it" since the end of the weekend. I don't know if I exhausted myself with the weekend of rock and some virus took hold or if it's related to rest at all. It's not bad, just a feeling of "funny".... yes, in my tummy.

Ah well.. today's been much better... only the slightest unrest in Stomachland.

Weekend of Rock

Writing a tribute to the family vehicle has actually paid off. It's funny how it all worked out, but this past weekend of rock proved substantially enjoyable, productive, informative, and boundary-breaking. Green Caravan (lyrics here) now has all of its pieces and truly plays hard and fast... but carries that tone of homage I wanted it to. Kaes continually produces good music to build around. It's a good end product always.

It's also been settled (in as much of a sense as it can be) that our new operating title is Monica's Ghost. Your *positive* opinions should be attached to this entry (and you don't need to create an account, just post anonymously, but leave your name in the body of your comment). We now have four original tunes that are fully fleshed out: Colleen Wilcox, You Said You'd Call, Napalm Perfume, and Green Caravan. We further developed our cover of I Like Punk Rock, a tune by classy musician Dibson T. Hoffweiler (of Cheese of Bread and Dibs and Sara fame). We added the goodness that is percussion! Skin-killer H Tizzle Wezg8 was in full force for practice and we've officially removed the patented "Tide Bottles and Notebooks" sound from our repertoire (No worries for you fans of half-assed beats, though, as in acoustic sets it's believed the stripped-down percussion may return). Dr. Grebsickle employed his new strumbox this weekend, as well, adding lots to our electric shreds. To overpower the noise pollution, artistic larynx Tony "Baci-my-galupos" plugged into a new mini-PA. Shredstrer Kaes beefed up his amp (we're headed towards level 11, my friends) and was certainly on the musical arrangement game this weekend. I, as you know, am the bassist... the most underappreciated (and I'm told how deserved that lack of appreciation truly is often) member of the band. I, well, um, played better. Hahaha. I wrote the damn words this time around, so save your criticisms 'till our next single.

That sums up the rock, which began Friday in the PM and last until the late Saturday night hours. We closed out festivities with a visit to "Castle Swam" for the summer wind-down party (it's pretty amazing when how concerned friends will be for you when they see you holding a drink after years of knowing you as a non-drinker) and a late-night trip to the diner with good folk. In between, there was pizza-festing, over-used British accents, a messy living room, fireworks fired in the street, an air rifle, huka smoking, and much laughter. There were guest appearances by security detail Star Gibbs, self-declared "groupies" Jess and Carolyn, the lovely venue hosts Liz and Leslie, and future manager (she just doesn't know it yet) Sarah Taylor.

Thanks to all for the incredible weekend that went by quickly because it was spent in incredible company doing incredible things.