sixers and coast

went to the sixers/blazers game the other night...sixers lost in the last 20 seconds... the game was dope, too, the score was back and forth the whole time...

yesterday we went to the coast and the tilamook creamery... ate amazing ice cream, cheese, fish and chips and saw the breathtaking goonies stones, or whatever you want to call them...

jobs food holidays

had my interview at the 3rd largest comic company and passed on the offer as the finances just weren't there. i was willing to take a cutback, even by $10-$15 K more than I was looking for, but it was a lot less...entry level money... oh well..

selling email and instant messaging archiving/compliance - here i come! it should be an east sell, as it's required by the SEC for my targets. i was told that right after they check references, that they'll be making me an offer.

for the holidays, melenie's mother is here with us and whenever she visits it means tons of great cooking! we all went to my aunt jean's for xmas and chris made homemade eggs benedict. they were the best i've ever had...we brought the latkes, also a side of home-grown blueberries and it was an amazing breakfast. oh, the best part was the Ramos Fizz's! a couple of sleepy hours later and a huge turkey dinner was served...i received some cool gardening tools and seeds, we gave some cool presents too, made kippy a scratching post which she has yet to use, and there's my jewish christmas.

chipolte is the bomb and two blocks away. mission style burritos. sucks there's none back home for my peoples. 55 and rain on and off here.

i want to take this time to give a shout out to my boy tim tizzle who just got engaged. sorry ladies, he's all taken as of last Friday. tim, it's all downhill from here. welcome to a new life of visiting invitation stores, selecting colors of tablecloths, flowers, tons of family arguments and more. look out for the food tasting, though. that part's pretty fun. another congrats on the house. email me the address, i want to google earth it.

more to come....

merry hannukah

and happy christmas. a delightful kwanzaa. latkes for me over jeannie and chris' house today...we're bringing them. mel's mom is here. i have an interview tomorrow and an interview tuesday and i already have one company who called me yesterday to offer me a job. life is grand.

syriana/jobs/snow

did y'all see Syriana?

we peeped it yesterday. pretty good movie...makes the U.S. government look mad shady, too...some parts i was kinda lost and dragged on a bit, but it caught up in the end. all in all a decent movie on a topic normally where much distance is kept...




next up: snow. we got some snow in portland which is kinda nice, but it's getting washed away today with lots of cold rain. we brought a new couch in from goodwill the other night, large and green and nice for $35. borrowed their furniture dolly and rolled it home from 13th st. to 7th st. and two blocks north. see pic to left!



jobs: took the job doing door to door sales and left in a week. not happy with it. too cold. couldn't make a sale. frustrated. interviewing now with a large comic book company for a marketing position, an inside sales position at a high-tech financial software company and two marketing/PR companies. so the future looks bright.

mel's mom is coming on saturday until new year's day. it will definitely be nice to have some company from home. who's next?

we have a dope new webcam and mic so if anybody out there wants to talk, just holla.

drinking lots of coffee and wine and eating better than i have in ages,

paul

flying over mt st. helens and mt. hood

today our super cool new uncle chris took us flying. he has his pilot's license and rents a plane every month or so. well today, we were his guests and he took us flying over mt. st. helen's and mt. hood. it was breathtaking..gorgeous...so incredible that i've decided i want to take some flying lessons. i actually got my first today, as chris let me man the wheel for a little bit! below are pics. also, melenie got a job the other day teaching pre-school, so we both now have jobs!!! more in a couple of days about how my sales job is going...

peace from p-land,

paul and mel

jobs

so i got a job offer yesterday! and i decide to take it, and right as i'm about to call them and tell them i'll take the position, i wake up this morning and have an email in my box from a cool marketing company that would like to interview me tomorrow. and i have a 2nd interview next week... two sales positions and a marketing position... i think i want to get into sales though...the first sales position, i'd be head of this region, by myself, make my own schedule, door to door sales, but with companies, selling internet advertising...a craigslist competitor....decent offer, financially speaking though... not sure about the others though, as they're not on the table yet... i'm about to say yes and test out the waters...you never know, since it's a startup and it could blow up...with me as the first hire...on a side note, i want to give a big ol shout to anybody who provided me with a professional reference!

on another note, westbrooks out for the season and the birds had the worst game ever on monday night. hey, at least it snowed in philly though,right?

gmail

Gmail is down right now and it's pissing me off!!! also, 2nd interview this morning went well, i think, for a sales position at a new website similar to craigslist. melenie and i roasted a chicken with tons of veggies and it came out amazing. p!

pics for monday.

pork chops

i like pork chops better than steaks these days... man if you cook up a really good bone-in pork chop, it's like eating a piece of nonkosher heaven. my forefathers would kill me.

last night i made such an amazing meal. pork chops with braised pears, roasted garlic and chive mashed potatoes and sauteed zucchini. first, take a bulb of garlic and chop the bottom off (the flat side). drizzle open cloves with some olive oil. put the top back on and wrap in tin foil. pop in the oven at 400 degrees. now rub two fat chops with some brown sugar, garlic salt, black pepper and rosemary. let that marinate for awhile. slice up some potatoes and boil for about 20 minutes. crack a beer. pan fry the pork chops in bacon grease (my new thing is cooking anything in bacon grease. i save it in a glass jar in my fridge). after about two minutes on each side on high, add some chicken stock, some beer, sliced pear, a little bit of strawberry jam, and let it simmer. back to the potatoes. drain when fork tender. place in a big bowl. add a couple tablespoons of butter and some milk or cream. chop up some chives. check on your garlic. it usually takes about 30-60 minutes for the garlic to be perfect. i know this is a wide range, but i sometimes up the temp to speed it up. check on it. when it's a light brown color, take it out and just squeeze the cloves into the potatoes. add some salt and pepper and mash them all up! flip the chops. smell that amazing aroma! lastly, drizzle some olive oil, add chopped garlic and sliced onion in a pan. when onion is translucent, throw some sliced zuchinni in and toss around a little bit. i'm digging my veggies just heated up a tiny bit these days. they retain more nutrients like that. so just like a minute or two on each side is good for me. voila! now serve like so: potatoes on one quarter of the plate. pork chop on top of 1/2 of potatoes. sauce with lots of pears on top of chop and taters. zuchinni on other side of plate.

mangia!

ps - another interview today for a sales position with a dot com similar to craigslist.

pinot noir wine tasting..

gorgeous sunday afternoon here in portland, oregon. cloudy at times, then sunny at times...on and off.... take a wine tasting trip with jean and chris and dylan and collin and geoff stone and grandma stone... go out to yamhill county... pinot noir wine tasting... a short drive from portland, and a long way from home...

ever been wine tasting in napa valley or sonoma, north of san francisco? same thing, but here the specialty is PINOT NOIR, the BEST WINE EVER!!! if you haven't, you are MISSING OUT!!! picturesque vineyards and rolling hills, blue skies, succulent grapes, tasty blue cheese or maybe tillamook extra sharp chedda cheese! a nice rosemary cracker, some sopresseta! UMM! then let me tell you about these yamhill county pinot noirs... domaine drouhin , rex hill, ponzi, arrow summit... man, those blackberries, bing cherries, peppery, spicy, ummmm!

decent chardonnays too..

go out and get yourself some pinot noir from oregon tonight, get some nice cheese, some chocolate, some apples or something and think of your old pals paul and mel...

peace from p-land...

all settled in...

well we're all settled in... got the downstairs all hooked up, it's nice and comfy, lighting a fire almost every night, cable's all hooked up, cable modem, etc... all the beautiful kitchen gadgets are in place, being tested...wedding thank you notes have begun getting the pen placed firmly upon the red paper... still hunting for jobs, but at least the market isn't slowing down..i see great jobs everyday appearing on craigslist... EVERYONE rocks craigslist out here..for everything...

our neighborhood's great too...mexican, ethiopian, japanese, thai, pizza, breweries, coffee joints, a huge mall with an ice skating rink and movie theatre, parks, dollar store, supermarket, everything's just a short walk away!!!

we miss philly though, that's for sure, but this is pretty cool..seems like a great place to live...looking for waiter jobs in the meantime until I nail a PR/marketing job...also looking for some freelance PR gigs...

our cat's chilling. melenie's chilling. thanksgiving's coming up...going to jeanie and chris' brother's house, should be interesting going to a new family's house for turkeyday... we're bringing some satay...hope everyone has fun over jay's or wherever you're going...also have a fun black friday, don't shop too hard.

did anybody see maria carey at the american music awards?!?! damn, she looked fine!!!!

until next time,

pauly

Portland

Out in Portland now, actually Newberg, Oregon. Mel and I are staying with the amazingly caring Stone family, cousins of my Aunt Alicia (happy bday aunt lish!). The Stone's are incredible cooks, funny as can be, cool as hell and have like 100 cats. Chris is building a plane in his shed and Jean is busy growing zucchini the size of Philadelphia.

Mel and I found the perfect spot - a gorgeous two bedroom townhouse in the Historic Irvington district of Portland. It has a fireplace, washer and dryer, dishwasher, microwave, huge fridge and a cool little back porch with soil to garden and a little shed. The neighborhood is awesome, we can walk to everything/anything we want right on Broadway. There's neighborhood Japanese, Ethiopian and Thai restaurants, diners, pizza joints, brewerys, coffee joints, supermarket, a huge mall (Llyod Center) and more...Plus, we're 7 blocks from the broadway bridge, so we can walk/bike to downtown any time we want.. Furthermore, since lloyd is so close, we can hop on public transit for free, since it's part of fareless square!

the only thing neither of us has yet is a job! so i'm looking like crazy. please let me know if anybody hears of any open public relations or high end sales positions in Portland.

Peace from Newberg,

Pauly

honeymoon and wedding.

sorry it's been a minute since my last post, but life is hectic. the wedding on october 1st was great. email me for a link to the pics if we're cool and you haven't seen them yet. life leading up to the wedding was nuts, you never know how much trouble one of those things really is. no fun at all planning it as there are constant battles between famlies and what each person desires. the end product is a great time, though.

our honeymoon was amazing. we were supposed to go to bali and hong kong, but the night of our wedding, bali got bombed. this put a slight damper on things during our "getting ready" time, but we soon forgot about it until the next day. we still were planning on visiting hong kong but also wanted a beach portion of the trip, so we looked at guam, sanya on hainan island in china and the philippines. we were seriously considering sanya, until we looked on cnn and saw it just got hit by a major typhoon! first a terrorist attack and then a typhoon. we also shortly realized we would need to acquire a visa well in advance, so that was out of the question. i was a little bugged about the muslim population in the philippines, but our friend meca convinced me that boracay island in the philippines would be amazing. melenie's father also always spoke of retiring there, so it seemed like an ideal place. it mainly was, to be honest with you, besides some rubbish washing up in the morning waters. the water was clear aqua/blue/green and the sand was as fine as baby powder. the island's food specialty was garlic rice and garlicky/butter seafood. here's a few pics, but visit my flickr page to the right for more:
















hong kong was incredible also! a chinese country colonized and owned by britain for 100 years, it currently is operating under two systems. in 1997, britain gave the islands back to china and china agreed to keep it under "both systems" for fifty years. we'll see about that, though. hong kong is like new york but it seems like millions more people, even way more crowded, but much cleaner! public transportation is extremely easy to use, so it's great for getting around. the subway is sparking clean at all hours. great food can be purchased really cheap anywhere you look, but you will also see advertising at every glance of the eye. we also got to go to china for a daytrip. communist china REALLY does have giant, brainwashing billboards that read slogans such as: "empy talk is wasteful. work is efficient" and "time is money. work is prosperous." really weird. here's a couple more pics of the hong kong scenery (cool stores and 80's style, but check the flickr page for more:













also - some comments about hong kong food...we tried a set meal at peking garden one night in causeway bay. very good food and good service. we had shark's fin soup, fried prawns with chili sauce, pork sliced as thin as bacon over rice noodles, peking duck and a cool desert with squishy jellybean like balls stuffed with peanuts in cold rice wine soup. washed down with some tsing tao beer. great meal. also had an amazing szechuan meal at red pepper! orange beef as thin and crispy as can be with lots of peppers. imagine beef as crispy as potato chips mixed with beef jerky. tried fried pigeon at the same meal, reminiscent of quail. great fried rice there also and very tasty string beans with fried minced pork and ginger. best meal there, probably. on the street scene, imagine your typical hot dog vendors, but selling thebest dumplings, wontons, sausage, octapus, etc. little fast food joints everywhere selling cool things like noodles in a plastic bag, pick your sauce, pick your meats, pick your veggies (octapus with seaweed miso and giner sauce on spinach noodles for $1 is extremely nice!) also tons and tons of little noodle soup and congee soup shops. if you've never had congee, it's highly recommended. i've had it many times when melenie is sick and her mom makes it for her, or we order out for it. in thai they call it juk soup. it's rice soup with a chicken broth base, but it should have lots of ginger and garlic in it and pulled pork or ground pork. add an egg, some vinegar, soy and chili and it's an awesome breakfast or the asian version of chicken soup when you have a cold. what else? great dim sum and tea!!! we went to luk yu teahouse, where the rich go for tea. there's an extremely proper science to drinking tea. i'll go into it some other time, because i rather talk about the chu siu bao, or bbq pork steamed buns. amazing. har gow - shrimp dumplings, amazing. little crepes stuffed with mango, incredible. let's see...what else...ok, when you sit down at any restaurant in hong kong, big or small, you immediately are served tea. they try to conserve paper, so there are no napkins at the table unless it's a really nice joint. they do not give you water unless you ask. chopsticks, spoons, toothpics, vinegar, soy, white pepper and chili sauce are on every table. some pics, but flickr for more:














i think that's it for now. my body is still adjusting to the time so i went to bed at 8 or 9 last night and woke up at 5. we're moving to portland in one week so i'll have to readjust again. no jobs, no apartment. a fantastic woman whom i've yet to meet, my aunt alicia's cousin, jean (my new auntie jean) is letting us stay with her for a week or so until we find an apartment. good night. or morning. it's 6 am now.

desert

check some dope pics out of red rock canyon in vegas:

michael moore...

Friday, September 2, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there, done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com <http://www.michaelmoore.com>

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them <http://www.bringthemhomenowtour.org/userdata_display.php?modin=50> before they get to DC on September 21st.

portland/san fran/vegas trip

crazy ass week and a half long trip....

portland: amazing city, would love to live there, hope i get a job there, but the san fran market is looking better. its like they built a city right in the middle of an amazing evergreen forest. peep the pics at my flickr jawn:
http://flickr.com/photos/55869668@N00/?saved=1


















san fran: amazing city as always..the job search went better there..this one spot, bite offers 5 paid vacay weeks a year! amazing... peep some new san fran pics and word to stink n mecs:














lastly vegas: awesome bachelor party. word to all my friends and family who came and especially to a-weeze for putting it together! pics of the squizad:

nervous

i'm nervous as FUCK! I have 9 interviews scheduled beginning this Friday for a week in San FRan and Portland! Shout to Stink and Mec for letting us crash their next week when we visit Frisco....so nervous...one of my interviews is even at this lady's house for brunch on Sunday with her family! Mel's coming too....so nervous....

unwind time in vegas should be all that though afterwards!!!

late.

Thanks to Grant for pointing this awesome Mark Morford column out about the death of the american city and cookie cutter chain stores/restaurant-lined strip malls all across the country...

Bring out yer dead - plague is already here....

Birds

Damn, the birds ate a dillz last night...

Tizzle?

word, Tim T's coming back to Philly? That sucks...right as I'm bouncing...I was hoping for the BBR reunion!

sunday

it's hot as balls in my apartment today...seriously, i highly recommend NOT ever living in a third floor apartment....heat truly does rise and it seems like all the heat in philadelphia got together and decided to rise into my apartment for a cocktail party...even in our room with the AC, it's burning...i think the heat this weekend picked up some kryptonite and is using it against my AC....

on another note, mel's mom stopped by and brought us som tum and bbq chicken and sticky rice and thai bef jerky and then some bubble tea and coconut rice too...saved us...

might meet my cousins jill and pablo for a quick drink tonight, they're in town....entourage is on though...

bj dissed me twice now to go looking for tuxes. punk.

saw wedding crashers yesterday...pure comedy...fucking hilarious..vince vaughn really is king of this shit and will farrel tears it up too with a quick roll on the ground so damn funny cameo...

i suck at pool.

good bye.

oh, flickr is a dope site.

alex

look at my cousin alex, he's the fucking man, chillin with wes craven and reese witherspoon in LA..getting flown around the county for 96.5...

wow...

my friend and client, dave robinson from philly's recycling office, was fired effective immediately and is being indicted for misuse of $13,000 of the city's money to throw a retirement party for his boss. thing is, this was in 2000 when he first started the new job and his boss told him to do it... furthermore, he's a good guy and i'm all choked up today... man...the inquirer wrote a good article but the daily painted him like such a dick...

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/12343625.htm
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/12345282.htm

fri-mon backwards

mon: Called out yesterday. went bowling with rich and mel. broke 100 2 games, scrubed it up the first game, though. looked through mel's shower stuff. ate at casino deli in the Neast. had the most blazing cabbage soup with short ribs...some challah bread...amazing pickles. scrumptious..been going to that spot since i was like 2.

sun: mel's shower. dropped off, picked up. lots of gifts cramping my sardine can ass apartment. saw coldplay. one of the dopest performances ever, they really are brilliant.

sat: started drinking at 1. stopped at about 1. fat tuesday slurpie jawns, the dive, phils game, genos, o vietnamese hoagies and 1/2 a sausage and peppers. phils crushed the brewers. played pool.

fri: i dont remember. oh not much. dropped car off, cost $311 for wheel cylinders (takes brake fluid to rear brakes) and then passed inspection. wanna buy a 96' ford contour? also went to bj's corner bar, drank some buds, went to the house where mel is house sitting. watched curb your enthusiasm on comcast on demand, 3 episodes. i love larry david, he's fucking hilarious.

more later. p!

friday!

fuck yeah, it's friday. no plans tonight except drop car off to get inspected, which im dreading. need to have it inspected to sell it though... maybe phils game tomorrow w. tim and bean and bernard... sunday is coldplay! hells yeah...

work

it was announced today that south korean scientists cloned a dog.

crazy shit... picked up a plaque today for the PR I did for the north philly aztecs football team. good kids.

rockin the radio80s station on itunes all day today...really good shit..playing all the old new wave bangers and lots of bangers i never heard yet..

p!

Scallops

i love scallops.

Here's a searing question about scallops

My Adidas hit me!

Adidas to buy Reebok....

heuvos

my huevos are mucho caliente. leftovers for dinner. bored again, online. mel is housesitting. we might crash at their house tonight. AC blasting, hbo on demand...might catch up on the wire or curb your enthusiasm...need to fix my brakes...word to bj for offering his assistance tomorrow night. word to tommy gunns for the gift certificates for supplying bj with grub to help me, but word to me for doing pr to get the gift certs. word to word. late.

Scientists puzzle over oddities along Pacific coast

budakkan

good dinner last night at budakkan for melenie's bday...sake, sing-ha beer, lychee martinis, wasabi mashed, scallops with pineapple, duck and portabella potstickers, sea bass, good veggies and more...with a nice chocolate sorbet with a sparkler in it for dessert. good meal. $150 all together, though..but you gotta ball to have fun..

i'm writing this to myself, i know....at work though, so it's good self expression. bj, i need your help with putting brakes on my car....how the fuck am i gonna sell it with no AC and no inspection? sheesh...

our PR presentation today at work went well.

i need breakfast. lunch today at reading terms with tommy gunns dude. collect some luchini and gift certificates. use $ to pay for car inspection. peace.

new phone

im bout to cop one...gotta start rocking picture blogs...

post 1

So here's my first blogpost.

I used to have a journal in college called Paul's Boutique. This will be quite similar. I'm getting married and moving, so this will be a cool way for people to keep up with me...

testing 1,2...

al gore's new Current TV is up and running. i might try to catch some at lunch. www.current.tv is the site.

all i can think about is moving. so excited to bounce to the left coast. portland, oregon, it's looking like.

i made some good thai food yesterday. som tum and bitter melon soup.

its mel's bday today. 27. happy bday! i wrote her the dopest poem, titled "The Empress" and printed on nice paper and framed it. also dinner tonight.

bored at work. again.

later. maybe after lunch.