condo

our offer on the condo was accepted and so i guess we bought a condo!??!?

it is located here.

it looks like this:

we close/settlement in about 2 weeks. we will move between mid next month and the end of the month...

the show flight of the concords on HBO is hilarious!

oregon strawberries and ranier cherries are so ripe and delicious right now.

peas.

gmat/condo

retook the gmat today, brought my score up 70 pts to a 550! good news, good news. also made an offer on a condo we really dig, for only $150k in a dope up and coming neighborhood!

tall lilys

we've got some tall lilys in our yard...

its been a while...

let's see what's new with us...well, we've been house-hunting exhaustingly over the past 2 weeks, going out almost every night looking at condos to purchase...we're still not sure exactly what we want though and finally realized howw stressful this can be whhen push comes to shove...for example, when you're sitting in the realtor's office going through the 50 page sale agreement with the pen in your hand, initialing everythign and at the last minute, ask what's up with the other property, then see that that one came back on the market at 10G's lower than what it was before, but it's still not necessarily in the your budget...or is it? hmmm....

after the past 2 weeks we've developed a way more knowledgable perspective on things though, and are gonna just chill and keep an eye out online but not go look at anything else unless we aboslutely love what we see online...we're gonna focus on school tests right now...I have to retake the GMATs because my math score was sub-par, and pretty much, same with mel, she has to retake the math portion of her PRAXIS test also... so we'll be studying the next month or so...

our cousin out here, Dylan, is graduating high school tongiht, so congrats to him, we're off to his graduation ceremony in an hour or so....

my plants are looking nice right now, especially the strawberry's and mel's HUGE lilys...pic to come...they tower over us...

early shout out to my mom turning 50 next weekend and tim-t turning 30 on the same day...

im thinking about driving to either Glacier or Yellowstone National Park this summer...which do y'all thnk would be doper? both are around an 11 hour drive...

• Glacier
• Yellowstone

full sail beer

slamming new full sail brew out. check the 6 pack pics. house hunting this past week, looking for a spot for $150,000. checking out both condos and single homes...still torn between which one we want...also trying to finish up my grad school application essays...thats whats new, thats the deal. peas out, pauly pecans.

gmat; game of real life

took the test yesterday morning, bright and early. i didnt even hit my personal minimum that i wanted to, so im pretty disapointed...we'll see if its enough to make it into business school, i have a couple of options here in portland, though i really only want to get into 1 school - PSU, portland state university...

other than that, played a cool board game over this couple's house last night called "the game of real life" - http://www.gameofreallife.com/ . check the board out below. some hippy took 6 yrs to develop this and sells it at the portland saturday market, which is like a huge flea market every saturday downtown...

raw egg

after a lot of studying for the gmat, me and these crazy culinary student neighbors nathan and jason drank down a raw egg, hatched by a local chicken that a chef-teacher raises at their school...

farmers market, philly/portland/orlando

its been a month since i last posted, so sorry to all my faithful readers.... life has been good to us recently... won a sales contest for being the number one salesman for january through march so got to go to orlando for a few days for a nice conference, made a bunch of good leads, chilled by the pool for awhile, got to golf which was cool. eat and drink great food, good wine with my boss.

melenie resigned from being a pre-school teacher, and has a new opportunity with a non-profit and is concentrating on grad school. she got to fly down to LA earlier this week to interview for the job, though she will work from home in portland. things are looking good for her there.

we flew back to philly for Tim-T's wedding to Alisha, and also for a ceremony for my nan Hannah. the wedding was great, the ceremony was very nice and we had a blast overall. it was great to see all our friends and family. my pop mel gave us some awesome family recipes and a cool willie the worm mumsic box he hand-carved. had my moms awesome brisket which i helped her make, and got to chill w/ a ton of people. peace to travellin matt, my brother in law home for a few weeks as well in philly who brought me a ton of cool shrts from thailand... tim-t - congrats homeboy and have a blast in hawaii. bj, alex and evan - have fun with your girls moving in. dont kill each other. cook for them every once in awhile. bring flowers every once in awhile. dont forget to lift the seat when pissing. bean - tell your girl to pace herself next time. mom and dad - love yas.

mels friend kristy had her baby! congrats to her and alan and little erica anne!

back in portland. spring is here. it's amazing. farmers market today was awesome. we copped a vanilla honey latte, some fiddlehead ferns, maiitake mushrooms, french breakfast radishes, tomato seedlings, lemon basil, thai basil, arugula, awesome organic sausage (country sage, italian, sweet potato and andouille). mel got some peonie flowers.

last night we saw douglas coupland's first movie, "everything's gone green" - pretty dope. nice to see vancouver in a movie, it looks awesome, i want to go back there... cool movie about feeling guilty from slight corruption, not being happy w/ being middle class, photography, the lottery and being in your late 20's.

new pics from wine tasting in dundee

i added some new pics from when unc jay visited and we went wine tasting in dundee, OR.... click on link below from my post the other day w/ thee pics...

Kurt Vonnegut, 84, dies in Manhattan

one of my favorite authors passed away tonight...

Kurt Vonnegut, 84, dies in Manhattan

unc jay visit

uncle jay arrived a few days ago to visit for the long easter weekend...he got here on friday around dinner time and i bbq'd up a leg of lamb...i used alton brown's recipe, marinated it w/ mint leaves (from my garden), mustard, red wine, salt, pepper and garlic.... next day, went to the falls, a fish hatchery and hood river.... dinner at clark lewis for some awesome, local organic foods... halibut, radishes, scallops, mussels, pork, rock fish and squid w/ pasta... drinks at doug fir, mcmenamins, and more....saturday off to cannon beach / indian beach, for cool climbiing on the rocks, awesome seafood: fish and chips, dungeness crab, razor clams, etc... wached 10 commandments at night....sturgeon fishing today! we caught about 4-5 fish, only 1 keeper, though, a 42 incher. sturgeon are living dinosaurs...they haven;t changed in 20 million years, they are bottom feeders, relatives of sharks, CRAZY looking, and taste pretty decent....the guide cleaned it for us - they are really different than most fish....i baked some and fried some up for dinner tonight...new sopranos (slow), and new entourage tonight (pretty decent)...off to voodoo doughnuts later...off to some wine tasting and to visit jeannie and chris tomorrow...next week off to a conference in orlando for work, then week after off to philly...

check out a bunch of pics over the past few days right here:

uncle jay visit 4-8-07

picture test from the celly

test 1, 2 whatup from the cells

what's going on?

whatch'all been up to? me - downloading movies like pan's labrynth and 300 @ rlslog.net and burning dvds. helping melenie study for the Praxis test (like the SATs for teachers. reading "long way down" by nick hornby and "freakonomics" by steve levitt and steve dubner. making sales at work. looking into getting my MBA degree and starting to study for the GMAT test to apply to grad school...thinking of going to Portland State, the other PSU...they have a great business school

spring is here. its nice out and everything' blooming...my uncle jay is coming in a week. im still cooking like crazy.

getting excited to come back to philly for a few days next month. looking forward to it. eating healthy. talk to yall soon, stay cool.

pauly

dvd burner

fiinally copped a dvd burner for my home PC and it took me a few days, lots of frustration, rage, taking the cover of the computer on and off 10 times, plugging and unplugging everything 20 times, etc, but i finally got it working! movies dlizzoaded and burned so far: rocky balboa, blood diamond, borat, hannibal, music and lyrics, pursuit of happiness and the holiday...

watching rocky as we speak...dope scenes of philly...

google text msgs/SMS - INSANE technology!!!

this is CRAZY! you can text message/SMS any question to google and it text msgs you back in like 2 seconds with the answer: weather, directions, money conversion, stock quotes, movie listings, dictionary!??! it's nuts!

try it out...seriously...send a txt msg to GOOGLE, or 466453 and type "pizza 97212" or "sushi 19147" or "philadelphia, pa to portland, or" or "10 yen to usd"

heres a link for more info

Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum / bizarre foods / morocco

im dying to go here, and hopefully will be this october...

also, has anybody watched the bizarre foods show on food network yet, with andrew zimmern? dude went to morroco (which i might take mel to for her 30th bday) and it looked awesome...andrew got down though! dude ate everything, every part of the lamb (down to the eyeball, pancreas, etc..)...then ate some crazy rotted meat w/ eggs...he almost puked though...he was the real deal, he didnt fake like he liked it... here's the link to the show: http://travel.discovery.com/tv/bizarre-foods/bizarre-foods.html

my current favorite song

silversun pickups "lazy eye"

things

saw two flicks recently: departed and stranger than fiction. both super banging.

departed won the coveted best flick of the year and many other awards. incredible cast, very tragic/shakespearan flick. definitely an awesome movie, highly recommended.

stranger than fiction, starring will farrel: to me, was equally dope, but in a totally different category. will farrel still cracks me up when trying to be serious. dustin hoffman plays another psychologist, very similar to his role in i heart huckabees, which i absolutely fucking love. jake gyllenhals sister is in stranger than fiction too, and is pretty cute in it...this flick is highly recommended as well.

finished another coupland book, my third in like 2 mos - jpod. jpod is based in vancouver, about a group of cubiclemates that work at a videogame company. they discuss pop culture, traffic illegal immigrants from hong kong, the mom grows high grade weed, they take a short trip to china, and discuss everyday mundane life. its a funny, fresh read.

im growing a beard until tim's wedding. i might roll to the old south philly italian barber for a fresh shave w/ a true blade again like i did before my wedding.

i made some matzah ball soup the other day. the secret is most definitely a TON of fresh dill.

statistics blows. i've been helping melenie a little bit with this class and i absolutely hate it. i somehow got out of it, i think by taking the harder route for computer science, which involved calc 1,2, & 3, but for some reason, stats seems harder right now...ughhh

i want a nintendo wii. REALLY BAD. check out this cooking game they have:

jazzy jeff in thailand / past wk

here's a pic from december i've been meaning to post of mel and i, my brother travellin' matt, and philly's dj jazzy jeff... here we're in MBK mall in bangkok, the dopest spot to shop in the world for everything and anything...


what else has been up? short, but yet somehow long week...mel's been sick...ive been stressing at work over this huge sale. saw the shins the other night which was dope...copped my plane tix to come home to philly...did my taxes and owe a bunch of $ from when i was doing freelance PR last year. tim tizzle's wedding's coming up in april...copped our tix to go home..made the best egg salad ever the other night...checked out this cool neighborhood out here, multnomah village, last weekend, pretty rad...what else...mel's work schedule is changing soon so she can spend more time on grad school...she'll be working 7am-2pm soon, starting in like 2 wks i think...friday night and im helping her w/ some statistics problems...ughhh...

my man pots and pans...

so lets see whats been cracking this past week...

went to omaha, nebraska on friday for a HUGE sales presentation...it went well...brought back some of these nice rib eye/prime ribs:

bought this book also in omaha on the plane ride home and crushed about 150 pages of it on the ride: Chuck Palahniuk's "Lullaby" ... so far = super banging..

i had this really nice Polo wool/cashmere, long black overcoat to wear over suits in the cold months...some lady sitting in the row in front of me had one too from portland to denver...we both had ours in the same overhead compartment...now, i have hers and she has mine...anne klein, size 14. a large lady... this sucks, i loved that coat...united lost and found gets me nowhere...

happy chinese new year this coming week and also happy valentine's day...

i need to cop my tix to come home to philly in april for tim's wedding...next paycheck...

did anybody see Pan's Labyrinth? i think we might go see it tonight... check the trailer here... check the reviews here...

i stepped on a nail yesterday while helping my neighbor move some wood from the house he's fixing up...which i want to buy..if inly i had half a mill...its worth about 750K though, so i should see what i can do... that aside though, i cant tell you the last time i hd a tetnus shot...so i went to the hospital last night for one..always a fun way to spend a saturday night....then came home, drank about 5-6 small glasses of port, watched jungle feaver and passed out...

we've got the shins concert coming up next week... here's their latest video that you may or may not have seen already:



talk to yall next week...this sale is huge by the way, so i will keep yall up to date...

p