Friends

Several of us rented a huge, beautiful home in Hermosa Beach, CA to celebrate New Year's and the Rose Bowl trip.  Joe, Elena, Rob, Theresia, Beth, and myself (with special guest appearances from Uncle Lar).  This house was amazing with three bedrooms, leather couches, a pool table, large TV, and a hot tub on the roof!  The granite island in the kitchen was bigger than my bed.  Joe and Elena used to live in Hermosa so they showed us around and we had a blast.  It was the best New Year's ever!  Parking at the Rose Bowl is not very efficient with 1-lane of traffic but we eventually got on the golf course (yes, we parked ON the course).  We had a quick tailgate as traffic slowed us down.  After some munchies, we had a 4 beer walk to the Rose Bowl (well, I had 4 M lites).  Along the way, we negotiated the lanyard and ticket holder guy from $10 to $5, that was fun.

It is a well-designed stadium and looks beautiful.  The B2 bomber flyover was silent until it kicked on the engines, that was amazing!  The 1st quarter looked like it was going to be a good, close game.  Then, Penn State had all kinds of penalties, which is unusual, and breakdowns in the secondary, to allow a huge 2nd quarter for USC.  Their fans, players, and even coaches were getting so cocky.  I have lost respect for Pete Carroll because he hoisted a ball in the air and was jumping up and down, leading his team.  That is a lack of class, in my opinion.  When I coach, I never act like that.  He seems like a politician, very polished in his speeches but on the field, he shows his true cocky colors.  Most of the fans seemed cool and respectful.  One young guy right in front of us was obnoxious, wearing $300 designer sunglasses, and I really did want to knock him out.  Penn State made a solid comeback in the 2nd half but it was not enough.  We had a long walk back in the dark (those damn balloons are hard to see).  Back at the van we drank some more to let traffic thin out.

Friday night we decided to do a bar tour of Hermosa.  Man, it was awesome!  We went to some of Joe's and Elena's old favorite pubs.  Two of them were Boston/New England bars and I rubbed it in Theresia's face (silly NY fan).  We all gave the mechanical bull a shot, which they kick the guys off pretty quickly.  The ladies made great efforts!  The tour was a great success and so was the entire vacation in California.  Perfect!

Ang, Joe, and I are in process of creating a Wiki for bar and restaurant reviews. Click here!

Friday night my flight was delayed 2 hours but I eventually arrived at BWI after a very bumpy approach.  Rob picked me up and we drank some beers and watched a lot of TV.  Some Three Sheets, King of Queens, and the movie MASH.  There are a lot of great one-liners in MASH and it is just a great movie.

Saturday we watched GameDay and then the Penn State at Indiana game.  PSU barely squeaked it out but they looked ok for the most part.  Time to get ready for Ohio State at home!

At night we went to Ryan's and Erin's for their Murder Mystery party.  Rob was one of the characters, a senator, who's new employee was murdered (who happened to be his daughter).  It ended up being his niece to get inheritance money.  Some people were hard core about solving the thing, I was more inclined to hang out and talk to people but was not crazy about it.  It was a good party and we got to see the Red Sox win Game 6 of the ALCS!

Corey and I put together an awesome group of guys for a RV trip to Penn State for good drinking, tailgating, and football. There is only one rule in the RV: no #2s. Thursday I drove Brett and I from work to Cambridge to pick up Corey, Ross, and Chris. We picked Eric up along the Mass Pike. I drove half of the way into New York, just beyond the Newburgh bridge. The guys were drinking and playing cards while Brett DJed with his MP3 player. At the gas stop, I bought a Molson XXX 24 oz can and took some Jim Beam out of the bottle. That got me started being happy when my driving shift was over. After a lot of Red Bull, Brett got us to Penn State safely. We were one of the early RVs to arrive.

The trip to DC was a blast!  Rob and I embibed a lot in preparation for surprising Ryan for his 30th birthday party.  Thursday we were at the Old Dominion Brewhouse at the DC Convention Center (Taneen's triathalon club event).  Friday we went to Dogfish Head Alehouse for lunch.  We went to the National Cathedral and saw Darth Vader's face on one of the towers, it was really cool!  On the way back we stopped at The Irish Inn at Glen Echo for a pint.

Ryan and Travis met us at Rob's where we took the long bus ride and then Metro into DC.  We got off at Dupont Circle and went to the Brickskeller for some worldly beers.  I wanted to hit Cafe Citron because Taneen recommended their Mojitos, which were awesome.  Then, on to Big Hunt, a divey/college bar which is a good time.  Then we traveled on to Cleveland Park and found Uptown Tavern where we had a quick bite of food and played nudie photo hunt (which was running Linux, haha).  We ended at Ireland's Four Fields where a solo man was playing guitar and singing good Irish tunes.  We got him to play American Pie for our traditional sing-along.

Saturday we hung out at Rob's until Erin had the place ready to go.  Lots of family and friends were there as we hung out all day drinking and eating, it was fun.  Props to Erin for hosting a great party!  She even had margarita and rum runner machines!  The best drink was the "half and half," a summer blend of margarita and rum runner.  We played quoits and ordered Dominos late-night.  Good times!

We did more sun-bathing and whiffle ball in the street then on the beach. We found this hole-in-the-wall seafood restaurant which no one knows about and it was pretty good. They had horseradish and oyster crackers on the table. I loved that! Corey's grandmother has this Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas book which I will be getting soon

We went out to look for a bar. One place had a lot of young people and a $15 cover charge, so we passed. Then we found the Port Hole, a local dive. Eric and I had a new drink we invented: 3 Wisemen and a Mexican (apparently we did not invent it after all; it is really called 4 Horsemen).

Corey, Katie, Eric, and I went to Surf City, NJ on Long Beach Island to stay at Corey's grandmother's house for the weekend. We did a lot of sun-bathing because they do not allow ball-playing until 5 pm (what a crock!). The weather was perfect all weekend. We played whiffle ball homerun derby in the street and then on the beach after 5. We had yummy pizza for dinner.

After an afternoon's round of golf with the work crew, I took Mom to Wellesley to meet Angela for dinner.  She picked out this cute restaurant with an upscale but not snooty feel to it.  The food was awesome; we started with asparagus, beets, and ricotta.  I had the gnocchi which was really good.  We also split a bottle of wine!  Then, we walked to an ice cream shop and had a really tasty dessert.