How awesome is this??
To be fair, my Russian friend tells me the vodka it contains is not the best [to paraphrase his strong opinion], and I tend to trust this guy's opinions on vodka, but you have to admit the bottle is frickin' AWESOME.
Something tells me that most of it is bought just for the bottle alone...
A busy Saturday: a BBQ for the newest members of the Santa Clara County Fire Department's Volunteer Division, an honor that Will put in over a year-and-a-half of time to get. He gets sworn in a few weeks from now, but they had the barbeque a bit early...a good meet-n-greet for current and new members of the department. An awesome group of people, hung out with his other fellow "new guys", met a bunch of the firefighters and other volunteers, heard stories, got to know the Chief a little. All in all, an awesome day, followed up by hours of playing Civiliation IV with Will [danger, danger!! Time sink!! Danger!].
Sunday was literally a day of rest for me. Frickin' introversion killed me...I had an awesome time Saturday, but apparently it drained me [and my resources were already a bit low, so I was screwed]. Slept really well, got up, watched some Winnie the Pooh while curled up on the couch with Will...and fell asleep. Woke up a little later, he got up to get ready, I was going to shower...and I fell asleep. Woke up, found Will playing Civilization IV, so plopped down behind him to watch him play and conquer the world at Ghandi's expense...and I fell asleep.
Apparently I needed some sleep. >.<
Finally made the time to get these up and online...as promised, pics and details of an awesome July 4th weekend, with many thanks to Will and Nate. [click on pics to see the larger version]
Friday was chilling and indulging in doing nothing much at all [ahhhh....bliss]. Saturday was wandering, meandering, do what we feel like, including finally making a trip to the Hiller Aviation Museum by the San Carlos airport.
A cool place, very plane-nerdy, lots of hands-on stuff, including a Blue Angels F-18 cockpit you can climb into, and a 747 engine and the front half of the plane that you can explore [holy carp, those things are *huge*]. Pretty cool place, pretty fun time...glad we went.
We spent Sunday afternoon [the 5th] with Nate...he very graciously volunteered to fly us around as he logged some of the required hours for his license.
Nate was awesome...answered all my questions thoroughly and patiently, took us on an awesome loop south along the coast, basically following Highway 1 over Santa Cruz, towards Monterey.
As we neared the Monterey airport [KMRY], we saw four F-16s parked off the taxiway...and just as we pulled the plane up and parked it, they took off one after the other right in front of us [quite literally...we were parked facing the runway, so we got a front row seat to the fun].
That was amazing...the power, the RRUMMMMBBBLLEEE as they went nearly vertical directly in front of us, feeling the bass in your bones. Utter, utter awesome-sauce.
More awesomeness...being that close to them, watching them take off directly ahead of us, giggling at the tower telling us very calmly to "be aware that there are two F-18s taking off ahead of you, so there will be turbulence from the jetwash", loving that a little Cessna was taking off right behind frickin' military jets. Can I use the word 'awesome' again???
Thank you, Nate. Any time you need an excuse to go flying, I'm happy to give you one.
Donated blood today...learned the interesting fact that a pint of blood weighs about 17.5 ounces. A whole frickin' pound. Who knew??
Heh...I called it. This showed up in my inbox a bit ago:
"After announcing back in February that Nine Inch Nails' round of dates
with Jane's Addiction would be the band's last U.S. tour, Trent Reznor
now says he's not quite ready to call it quits."
Somehow I knew it wasn't going to be their last tour... <grin>
Good weekend, though it ended on an icky note. Much relaxing and chilling and movie watching; went to Hiller Aviation Museum and played in a Blue Angels' cockpit and a 747 engine [pics to come]. Kept the aviation theme going with an awesome flight with Will and Pilot Nate, flying around and about and generally south, landing at the Monterey airport for lunch. Four F-16s took off just after we got there, and we got to watch from the side of the runway [words can't describe just how amazing that was]. Two F-18s were ahead of us on the runway as we left, so we got to see them take off from a pilot's eye view...loved the tower warning us about possible turbulence from their engines.
It got ickier after that...something I ate didn't agree with me [we suspect the fish and chips, since Will was suffering too]. Unhappy innards, restless stuck-at-home sick day, but a very sweet and patient man to share it all with [gee, lucky him]. Back at work today...not really feeling better, but have too much to do to lose another day [darn it].
With luck, I'll get some pictures of the good stuff posted soon...
