Mind of Mencia - Stereotype Olympics- Bonus Event

This was the extra part I was talking about.

If you found these funny, you gotta watch Mind of Mencia on Sunday nights, it's always craziness like that, heh.

Mind of Mencia - Stereotype Olympics

Me & Ariana just saw this the other day on Comedy Central and I was lmao. It's wrong on so many levels, but hysterical, so I had to share. Enjoy!

(Oh, actually I just noticed that they don't have the "bonus" event in this video, so I'll try to find that and post it later).

The biggest reason for me to want a PS3 ASAP

Dammit, I didn't think I'd want a PS3 right away (I would probably get a Wii first), but this game (Star Wars: Force Unleashed) may change all that. This is a preview clip, so the gameplay isn't EXACTLY like this, but they tried to base it on this as much as possible. And if that's true... then sign me up! It looks awesome!

Wrapping up the week (watching lots of movies)

This past week was a fairly laid back week with a few small outtings.

On Tuesday I went with Ariana to see the Yankees take on the Seattle Mariners. It wound up just being me & Ariana b/c Christina & Sheila couldn't make it. Might have been for the best for them though, as there was a huge rain delay.

Don't get me wrong though, the game was exciting. The Yanks had been losing the game 4-2 until they tied it in the bottom of the 9th. There was one man on base, and A-Rod was up with two outs and a count of 3-1. But at that point it had been raining a bit and the umpire called for the tarp.

We were annoyed that they couldn't at least let A-Rod finish his at-bat (in hopes he'd hit a game-winning hit and we could go home), but it was coming down pretty hard. We were tempted to leave, but I'm a hardcore fan, and I almost never leave a game before it ends. So me and Ariana were troopers and stuck it out for a two hour rain delay.

Sadly, A-Rod proceeded to strike out as soon as the game restarted. However, we were rewarded in the end when Melky Cabrera led off the 11th inning with a walk-off homerun to give the Yanks the win.

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During the week, I re-watched both Clerks and Pirates of the Caribbean in order to refresh my memory of the movies and psyche myself up for seeing the sequals to each this past weekend.

I went with Ariana to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest on Friday. It was VERY good. It was a little long for my tastes but it was a lot of fun. But as much fun as it was, I still don't get how it broke so many records. I knew the movie had a bit of a following, but I didn't realize it was THAT big.

Then the next day I went with Ariana, Greg & Jessii to see Clerks 2. And oh man, was that movie freakin hilarious. Kevin Smith truly brought the funny with his latest movie. It's about as good of a sequel as anyone could have asked for. Tons of great references that I won't spoil here, but I must say that Randall's riffing on the Lord of the Rings trilogy had me on the floor! There is only ONE trilogy, and it stars Jedi, not hobbits! lol

-And I already filled everyone in about the HDTV, so that's pretty much it in terms of highlights for the week.

God Is Good All The Time!!

... And all the time God is good!

Great news! As soon as I walked into the office this morning, everyone else was already here. My boss, Mr. Martinez was all like "Good morning, actually it's a VERY good morning." and proceeded to tell me that he had just gotten off the phone with Dr. Palais (our main boss) who had spoken with some gov't officials and we found out that our program did well in the competition and will be funded for the upcoming cycle!

The official slate hasn't been released yet, but we apparently have inside sources in both congress and the Federal Dept of Ed and it's for sure. So we don't know if it's for four or five years yet, but at the very least we know we're not closing at the end of August and will be in operation for at LEAST this coming school year.

So I'm very thankful to God, as well as just happy and relieved. It would have been a hard to look for another full time job just as I am about to restart grad school in the fall. I was not looking forward to that prospect, but I prayed a lot that our program would be saved and I had faith, and God answered my prayers.

I'd also like to thank any of you who were supportive during this time and kept me and this situation in your prayers.

I'm just pretty excited at the moment, so I had to share the good news!

I Can't Believe It...

On Saturday, me & Ariana had gone out and when we came back to my place no one was home, but there was food left out to unfreeze. So we figured, maybe my mom and her husband had just stepped out for a few.

Well a few hours passed, and me and Ariana were watching TV when my mom's husband came in the house and called up to me "John-Eric, come down I need help!"

At first we were kind of freaked out, so we ran downstairs and outside, to where Pat and my mom were standing and then my mom was all like "we need your help bringing that in." She then pointed to the back of Pat's truck where there was a huge box. I was like "what on earth is that?"

But then as I got close I realized that it was a Sony flat screen 40 inch HDTV!!!!

My jaw dropped to the floor! My mom had been talking for YEARS about getting a big screen tv. I remember her telling me and Jenny while I was still back in college that one day she'd use her tax refund to buy one. We were psyched about it and anxiously awaited it, but gave up after about 2-3 years of nothing.

By this point, I figured I wouldn't have a flat screen tv in my house until I moved out and got my own. But my mom truly shocked us with this purchase (her being notoriously "thrifty" and all).

So yeah, we just set it up yesterday. And we tested it out by watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on DVD. The colors on it looked absolutely beautiful. The extra HD channels looked pretty nice too, especially Sportcenter and YES (the colors of the baseball fields and everything on them really stand out).

So I'm pretty excited. I can't wait to try out some video games on my playstation or something. That'll be sweet. There are certain movies I'd like to watch on it also (Star Wars, LotR, The Matrix, etc) spring to mind.

I'l probably still spend most of my TV watching time in my room, b/c of the DVR, but I might be tempted to get one for downstairs also, so we'll see.

Fun-filled Weekend

Well I just had another weekend full of kid-like fun.

On Friday, me, Ariana, Greg and Alan went to Six Flags Great Adventure. I had a coupon from the Daily News that got us all in for only $20.06 each. Plus me and Ariana got a "Flash Pass," which allowed us to basically not have to wait inline for hours.

We got to the park fairly early (around 11am) and didn't leave til like just before 8pm. So we got to go on a good amount of rides and stuff.

The first ride we went on was the teacups. Now you may be thinking "so what, who cares if you went on the teacups? Tell us about the coasters!" Well, you see the teacups were basically on par with the coasters b/c Alan was the one steering our cups. The man has been working out, so he sent our cup spinning so fast, the cyntrifical force was sticking us to the ends of the cup. It was insane. At the end of the day, we went back to the teacups, but this time I didn't get on and just watched and took pics. There was a group of about 3 dudes in a cup near the one our group was in that basically had the same idea as Alan, so it was just really amusing to watch b/c as the ride is going you see most of the teacups just spinning around all nice, while there are 2 cups which are going in tornado-like speeds. It was pretty funny.

-As for the other rides we went on, we got to go on: the Spongebob 3D ride (what? it was fun! lol), a space shuttle attack game (that we had to pay for, but it was pretty fun, and we were only 500 points shy of beating the top score of the day), Kingda-Ka (more on that one later), Bumper cars, the Superman Ride, Nitro, Batman, the Movietown Water Effect, the flying swings (for relaxation) and we also paid to do the Go-Karts.

-Thankfully, we had gotten the Flash Pass otherwise we would not have even been able to do HALF of that list, b/c the park was pretty full that day. Heck, the wait for Kingda-Ka alone was TWO AND A HALF HOURS!

Speaking of Kingda-Ka... omg, what an INSANE ride!! I don't know if any of you have seen this thing before, but it's the scariest looking thing. It's a super-short ride (it probably lasts for barely 15 seconds) but oh man, what a heart-pounding 15 seconds!

If you haven't seen what the ride looks like, basically, you start off on a short runway, then the ride operator says "heads back, arms in, and LAUNCH!" and the ride zooms out from 0-120mph in like 3 seconds as it heads up to what basically looks like an upside down "U" (oh but it is not as simple as a "U" b/c there are twists on it both going up AND down).

Thank god, we had the Flashpass, b/c not only would it have been insane to wait 2 and a half hours to get on a 15 second ride (I would not have done it otherwise, but still), but waiting on a line basically would have given me time to actually think about what I was about to do and I might have chickened out. As it stood, with the pass, we basically got on the ride immediately, so I had no time to think about anything. We did have a few moments to let what was about to happen sink in after we were strapped into the ride though. And I think by the look on Ariana's face as we were getting ready to go, that she may have opted out of the ride if she had time to think as well.

But oh man, as scary as it looked, it was freakin awesome. Like I said, it's very short, so I wouldn't waste my time on a 2 and a half hour ride, but if you go, buy yourself a flash pass and get on this ride!

Edit: I found a pic of the ride so you could all see. On the site I also found a description which states that the coaster is 456 ft high (just so you have an idea how high that is, there are airplane lights at the top of the thing to make sure planes don't crash into it, lol) and does go from 0-128 mph in less than 4 seconds. As I said... it's sick.-And like I mentioned before, we got on a bunch of rides, so it was a really fun outting altogether.

But the day was not over yet, b/c as soon as I had dropped off Alan and Greg, me and Ariana had to run home to get ready to head right back out and go to Gaetano's going away gathering over at James Joyce (a bar up near White Plains).

We arrived late (around 11:30pm) but we stayed until the guest of honor himself left. Lots of people showed up and the place was pretty cool (maybe a bit loud to carry on a good convo, but fun nonetheless). We even ran into Joey D and Jay Brown there, who were chilling with their own crew. So we chatted with them for a bit.

But yeah, after the party was over, we headed back b/c we had another long day ahead of us that we had been looking forward to.

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So we arrived at the Museum of Natural History around 2:30pm to meet up with everyone for the big Scavenger Hunt for Athena & Ashley's birthdays. We split our group into three teams. There was (correct me if I got this wrong, but I know I'm in the ballpark) "the greeks and the lone latino" which consisted of Henry, Athena, and 3 of her friends whose names escape me. Then there was the team of Gaetano, Kristen, Goombah and Adam. I forget what they wound up calling themselves, but we kept joking the entire time they should call themselves "Team Cripple" or "Team Gimp" b/c Adam was in a wheelchair for the event (due to his messed up ankle). The final team consisted of myself, Ariana, Jordan, Maryann and one of the b-day girls- Ashley. We were known effectionately as "Team Awesome."

The hunt itself was a ton of fun. Basically you have an hour and a half to complete a question sheet of 31 questions. Each group starts at a different question (so that way people don't follow each other and try to steal to many answers) and you run around the museum trying to solve the clues. And when I say "run" I mean literally RUN. We were seriously knocking over little kids and old people the entire time, it was kind of mean but funny. Like when kids were standing in front of displays, reading and educating themselves, we'd be behind them all like "move out of our way! we need to see that!!" and punt them 50 yards out of our way. (Ok ok, maybe that last part was an exaggeration, but we WOULD get annoyed with the kids in our way, lol).

In the end Team Awesome did really well- tying for 3rd place (there were probably about 10 teams playing altogether). Henry's team wound up winning though (boo!), lol.

After the museum we went over to La Vela restaurant for some good Italian food and following that we took the short walk over to Jake's Dilemna, which was a bar I had heard tons about in the past but had never went to. The place was actually really cool, and had a foozeball table! So we got a bunch of games in on that, while the rest of our crew either chilled in the lounge in the back or played pool. They had a beer pong table stationed in the back that we were all tempted to play, but it was taken over by another group. That was probably for the best though... I remember how crazy that game could get, lol.

So we were at the bar for awhile, just chilling, and telling a few stories, especially remembering a few to embarass Henry, lol. But we started to all get kinda tired fairly early (a little before midnight). So we all headed home, and luckily Joe & Patty were awsome enough to give us a ride back to the Bronx so we didn't have to take the tain.

They dropped us off at Ariana's place and since it wasn't all that late yet, Ariana's dad and lady-friend were still up. So we played a few games of dominoes with them. Now I hadn't played dominos since I was pretty young and neither had Ariana, so her dad and his ladyfriend kicked our asses pretty much every game. By the end I started to remember things and we were able to get at least a few victories, but overall we got our butts handed to us, lol. It was a fun time though.

And yeah, that was pretty much it, activities-wise at least. But as you have seen it was a pretty jam-packed weekend. So much so that I wasn't able to get up for work on Monday, so I called out for the day. I wound up just vegging out most of the day, watching Clerks on DVD to psyche me up to see Clerks 2 this weekend. I also swung by Fordham to lend my DVD of Eurotrip to Henry so he could see it before his trip to Greece (he had to know the possible dangers of going to a nude beach, lol).

It was funny though, b/c I actually ran into a co-worker AND my boss as I was walking out of Thebaud from giving the DVD to Henry. That was kind of awkward considering I had called out sick, but whatever, I have plenty of days to use. So I even waved and walked up and said hi, and everything was good. It was just kinda funny.

And now it's just back to the grind at work. Thankfully the weekend is almost here again. I'm hoping to see Clerks 2 at New Roc and maybe catch a few other movies (still need to see Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean and I also wanna see My Super Ex-Girlfriend), so we'll see how many of those I can get out of the way.

My week off

Well I already mentioned some of the stuff I did on my week off in my last post (Yanks vs Mets, Superman Returns, renting DVD's, etc), but that was just the first part of the week.

Last Monday, Ariana wanted to go to the beach, but it being the day before 4th of July, we figured it'd be insane, so she then came up with the idea to just have a picnic at Fordham. So we brought our fold out chairs and blankets and chilled on Eddie's parade. I took a walk around the campus and went to the gym after as well. We had also planned on going to the pool but they were having lessons for kids and it was full, so we had to put that plan on hold. It was still a nice day in all though.

Then the next day was the fourth of July. Originally, the gang was supposed to go to a park for a BBQ but those plans fell through and we had to change things up. We decided to meet later on and go to the Chart House over in Dobbs Ferry for dinner. But I was still in the mood for a BBQ, so my mom and Pat actually did one anyways, and we invited my grandparents over for some good food.

We then met up with the rest of the crew to go to the Chart House. It was a pretty nice place. We got our table outside and the weather was great. The restaurant is right on the river so we had a really nice view and were able to see the fireworks that night fairly close up (since they had a local show also). So all in all it was a fun night.

The next two-three days I pretty much just vegged out. I bummed around my house, cleaned my room, watched lots of DVR, etc.

Then Saturday rolled around and the fun kicked back into high gear. We were invited by Kristen to her birthday party at the Castle Family Fun Center over in Chester, NY.

I drove up there with Ariana, Goombah, Jordan & Maryann and we met up with almost the entire crew (there were 19 of us altogether).

The theme of the night was pretty much, "you're never too old to act like a kid" and boy did we live up to that theme. We started the day with a round of mini-golf. My team was me, Ariana, Maryann & Jordan. Now I hadn't played mini-golf in years, so it took me awhile to get used to it, so I was seriously sucking at first. But then a few holes in, I got the hang of it and started to kick serious butt, scoring 2's for a bunch of holes. I even got a hole in one in the 17th hole (go me!). It was close all around b/c Ariana also scored a hole in one earlier in the game (at a hole that was a lot more difficult than the one I made in) and Jordan & Maryann were not far behind either, but I stuck it out and was able to claim victory by 1 point over Ariana in the end.

We then had what basically amounted to a pizza party, with soda, ice cream and even goodie bags (with balloons, poppers, etc). I felt like I was 10 again, it was great.

Then we headed over to the go-karts. It was a decent size track and I believe they were the gas-powered karts too (with the lawn-mower engines). I did pretty well for myself, passing a bunch of people (which I was happy about since I started towards the rear of the line). Even Ariana did decent, which I was very proud about, since she doesn't even have her license yet.

So yeah, the go-karts were a lot of fun. I just wished we had stopped over by the supermarket first to pick up some bananas or other items to throw at each other a la Mario Kart, lol. (And oh yeah, the theme from the game was running in my head the entire time I was driving, lol).

After go-karts, we were also given a few free tokens to play in the arcade. A few of us decided to make a World Cup of Air Hockey while we were there with 8 participants. This is how the brackets broke down:

Round 1:

Henry (Dominican Republic) vs Gaetano (Italy)

Goombah (Italy) vs Jordan (mixed I guess, I don't know which country he declared himself)

Me (Puerto Rico) vs Athena (Greece)

Ariana (PR) vs Maryann (PR)

-Gaetano, Jordan, Myself and Ariana won our respective matches to set up Round 2. I'm stealing my line back from Henry in declaring it was "the battle of the couples"-

Gaetano vs Jordan

Me vs Ariana

-Gaetano defeated Jordan, and I defeated Ariana to set up the Italy vs Puerto Rico finals. Both of us were tired from playing straight matches, but I was on a roll and winning 4-2 when Gaetano "accidentally" tripped over and unplugged the power cord to both the air hockey machines.

We were able to get replacement tokens and set the score back to 4-2, but by that time all my momentum was gone and Gaetano came back to win the final 7-5. Those tricky Italians! I was screwed I tell you!

(Whatever, I'll let him have that victory as a gift since he's leaving us for awhile, but I will have my revenge!!)

And that was pretty much the end of the night. Oh, but the best part I forgot to mention- all that only cost $16!! It was such a great deal. I wish it was closer, but even still, it's a place to definitely keep in mind for the future. Good times...

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The next day was pretty laid back. I went to church, and afterwards I watched the actual World Cup final at my grandparents place. It was a pretty good game, which Italy won in a shootout 5-3. After the game I was tempted to swing by either Morris Park or Arthur Ave since I KNEW there would probably be some massive celebration. In the end I didn't go, but I wish I had after I had two seperate people tell me that they did go and it was insane, but lots of fun. Oh well.

****

And that was pretty much it. I'm now back at work and fairly bored, but at least I know we have another fun weekend coming up ahead, with our Six Flags trip as well as Athena & Ashley's Scavenger Hunt b-day party. Good times ahead!

Great quote

David told me he heard this from one of his uncles (who I also know). It's kind of creepy when you think about it, but also freakin funny:

"16 year olds are like the farm system in baseball. You scout and keep track of them, and then once they are fully developed you call them up."

Lightsaber Training!!!

Ok, so who's gonna learn with me??? LOL

(I'm sort of serious...)

Check out the video though, it doesn't seem that hard. You can see more videos like this on the NY Jedi myspace page.

End of June (in a very large nutshell)

I keep falling into the habit of catching up with my blog only to fall behind again within a few days/weeks. I hate doing that b/c then I have to make these mega long posts instead of a bunch of shorter posts. So I apologize for that. I'll try for both my sake and yours to be better about that in the future.

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Guess I should start out back over on June 14th (I actually have mentioned stuff we've done after this, I'm just backtracking over some stuff I've skipped over). That day we took the Middle School students in the Academic Talent Search Program to see Beauty & The Beast on Broadway. It was a cute show, but in the end there were a lot of kids absent so we wound up having extra tix left over. Luckily, they don't really go to waste as you can use them for future showings, so my boss actually gave me two of the tickets, so now I can take Ariana to see it for free. So that was pretty cool. Then later that night I went to the Yankees vs Cleveland Indians game, which the Yanks won 6-1. So all in all it was a pretty cool day.

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I wound up getting this sweet coupon deal in the mail from Blockbuster where I could get unlimited DVDs for the month for only $2.49 each. I decided to take advantage of it, as we have not gotten the whole 99 cent deal from Hollywood video this year (it's usually around Dec/Jan). So over the past few weeks I rented and watched L4yer Cake, Grandma's Boy, Chicken Little, Unleashed, Kicking & Screaming, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo, The Ringer, and National Lampoon's Adam & Eve (def not anywhere near as good as Van Wilder, which is what I was hoping it'd be in the vein of).

Most of the movies were entertaining. Believe it or not, I thought the worst one of the bunch was L4yer Cake (and not Deuce Bigalow, which wasn't as funny as the first, but still had some amusing scenes). Unleashed was actually pretty damn cool and I may be tempted to buy it later on if I catch it in a $10 or under sale. Oh, and to anyone who loves video games (maybe a bit too much), Grandma's Boy is pretty hysterical. You should def give it a look.

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Speaking of movies, I have gone to see only two in the theater this past month. I went to see Nacho Libre with the crew a few weeks back. It was amusing, but I'm not the biggest fan of the director of Napolean Dynamite's style (I'm probably one of the few people who did not like Napolean Dynamite it seems).

Then just this past week I went with a bunch of my buddies from church to see Superman Returns on the 3D IMAX over at New Roc City. That movie was pretty cool. I only wish there was more action (cuz heck, you wait all these years to make a new Superman movie, and with all the new technology out there, we don't get any huge "Neo vs Agent Smith" type fights??? Boo, I say!). I also wasn't thrilled with the Superman as Christ symbology. The heck is that about? They don't use that in the comics to the best of my knowledge... But other than those minor gripes, it was a fun movie.

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So the World Cup was this month. Now I've never been into soccer at all. I just didn't get it. Although I must admit, my general knowledge of soccer came from the "Homer gets a gun" episode of the Simpsons- "Wing passes to Center! Center passes it to wing! Wing passes it back to Center! Center holds it... holds it... holds it..."

And it didn't help that in the few seconds where I have flipped by ACTUAL games on TV I saw stuff like that.

But Ariana got me into the World Cup. The first game I saw was Ghana vs Czech Republic, and that was a very good game. I enjoyed it so much, that we watched almost all of the USA vs Italy game that followed.

I then continued to follow it whenever I could. My co-workers were all pretty into it, so whenever work was slow, they'd call security to open up the student lounge next door to us and we'd go in and out of there to watch the games on the TV.

But even though I've been slightly converted into a soccer fan (I liked the World Cup, I doubt I'll watch much, if any soccer elsewhere until the next one), I can still understand why it isn't huge in the US. I think it's PARTLY b/c of the same reason hockey has fallen off with the US in recent years. Almost the whole game could go by without anything happening! Who wants to watch 90 mins of a game only to end in a 0-0 tie?? Even though I personally was appreciating the game to a point, even I would get frustrated at times and yell at my TV all like "someone just freakin score already!!"

So I can only imagine how most of the rest of America is. Just look at the rest of our popular sports- something is always happening in football. Even if you aren't scoring, you are moving the ball up, or being pushed back. Lots of constant action, this is why football has become America's favorite sport (not mine, but the majority of the US). Then look at Basketball- tons of point scoring all over the place! People love to see it! Even baseball rarely goes a full 9 innings tied at zero. There is always something happening. But even then, look at how the popularity of baseball has taken a decline in recent years. It's still the number 2 sport in the nation, but it doesn't have the same following it did even 20 years ago. So I feel one big thing is there are no ties in any of those sports! The games go until someone wins and it never comes down to free-throw shooting, field goal kicking or a homerun derby (whereas tied soccer games ultimately are decided in a shootout).

Americans are very much into the "give it to me, and give it to me NOW" mentality. Which is why I don't think soccer will ever be anything more than the number four sport in the United States. There are other reasons I believe this will be so, but I won't bore you with those. Like I said, I was recently converted, I thought the World Cup was fun, but it won't take America by storm anytime in our lifetimes.

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I went to only my second concert of the year the other week! I went to see AFI at the Roseland Ballroom on June 22nd. I went with Ariana and we basically showed up late on purpose (to miss any crappy opening bands) so we just got to see AFI.

It was a pretty cool show as they played stuff mostly from the last 2 albums (which is good, b/c that's the only stuff I know for the most part). But they also did play Total Immortal (which was made famous by the Offspring, but it is AFI's song), so that had me psyched.

But yeah, it's been a slow concert year, I can't wait until my next show (which unless anything comes around beforehand, will be the Living End in August).

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But while I may not be going to a lot of concerts, I have been able to go to a bunch of Yankee games. I have an 8 game season pass, plus I got tix for 2 extra games (vs the Mets and the Red Sox in Sept). Just last week I went to two games. First was Yankees vs Braves. I went with David and Henry (cuz Ariana had school work, Sheila had a b-day party, and Christina was MIA). The game wasn't great (we had freakin Jaret Wright pitching, and the Yanks lost 5-2) but we were highly amused when we saw a dude a few rows ahead of us with a "Jews for Jeter" t-shirt, that had a bunch of guys (including us) in our section, cracking up. We even made the kid stand up so we could take pics on our camera phones. Sadly those pics did not come out well, but Henry was able to find a pic of the shirt online, which you can see below:

And speaking of t-shirts, while walking back to my car after the game, we passed some guys selling some funny Yankee shirts and they had the Darth Vader "Evil Empire" shirt I have been looking for for quite some time. I bought it immediately and was very happy with my purchase.

I actually wound up wearing it to the Yankees vs Mets game we had last Saturday. Sadly the Yanks also lost that game, by a score of 8-3 (although thankfully the Yanks came back the next night to slaughter the Mets, to prevent a season series loss). Too bad they couldn't do that for OUR game though. Oh well...

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I don't recall if I've mentioned it in a previous post of not, but I had purchased a novel based on the TV show- 24 a few weeks back. I finished reading it the other week, and it was actually really good. It totally read just like the show. It was called "Trojan Horse" in case any of you are interested in picking it up.

I enjoyed it so much that last week, while at Barnes & Noble I picked up another 24 novel- called Veto Power. I haven't started to read it yet, but if it's as good as the other novel, it should be a solid read.

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The only kind of annoying thing to happen to me over the past few weeks was that I was called for Jury Duty the last week of June. I was called in on the Wed. They tried to pick me for a murder-2 trial, but it was gonna run a few weeks long, and when I explained I had vacation coming up, the judge was really cool and dismissed me.

Then the good news got even better as they called a bunch of potential jurors into a room shortly after that (myself included) and dismissed us from Jury Duty entirely, after only one day! I'm guessing it was b/c we had the Fourth of July week coming up and there weren't a lot of cases scheduled to start soon, so they didn't need as many jurors. But whatever the reason I was just psyched that I didn't have to waste 3 (or more) days there.

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And like I mentioned above, I had vacation this past week, which was nice. The week FLEW by though! But actually I think I will blog about this week's events in another post, just to break things up. So I'll be back soon.