kevinnowak.com

Happy Halloween.

Trick...or Treat?

  

Happy Halloween everyone! 

The Twitter.

So I've transitioned away from Facebook and am now a card carying Twitter'er.  Facebook was getting old very fast and the constant changes annoyed the heck out of me...so I jumped ship. 

I like Twitter much better because  not only can you keep tabs on friends and family, but also various events happening around town and around the world.

So...follow me at @kevinrnowak  and get over to Twitter asap.  It's the place to be!

New Music.

I haven't bought any new tunes in a long while but I decided to pick up the LMFAO disc as well as the new Coldplay album yesterday. 

Talk about two totally different sounds! 

Bumper.

  

Amazing what a little fender bender can do, ha?  $600 bucks to replace this entire bumper and the light!

Kel got rear-ended by a little old lady the other day.  They were both stopped and she reached for something on the floor and her foot slipped off the brake...so she pretty much rolled into Kelly.  $600 bucks!  Obviously her insurance is going to cover this, but the pain-in-the-ass part is that now we've got to drop it off, get a rental, pick it up...just a hassle. 

They need to go back to the days of steel bumpers!

Beantown Visit.

Kel had to be up in NYC and Boston last week for work...so I picked her up Monday evening in NYC and we then drove up to my folks place in Norfy for the night. 

While Kel went off to work on the train Tuesday morning I set off on filling up the ol' social dance-card. I started things off with a quick breakfast at Bob's in Millis with Margy and Bob-dog.  I ran some errands with Margy and then made my way towards Beantown with a quick stop in Newton for a coffee with my buddy and former co-worker, Paul.  Always great to catch up with him.

I finally got over to Erin and Matt's house just as Erin and Kelly were getting back from work. While Matt was out getting new recruits, Erin, Kelly, and I hit up the All Seasons restaurant in DTM.  Downtown Malden!  Apparently Erin and Kelly go to this place for dinner every time she's up.  Pretty damn good too!

Working from my home base in Malden on Wednesday I grabbed lunch with Nicky C over near his new office in Cambridge. Later that afternoon I met up with Kel and her old boss at work before we made our way over to his place in Back Bay for dinner with his wife.  I haven't seen them in a few years so it was really great to spend some time with them. 

On Thursday I had lunch over on Boylston Street with AC Delco. Great little sandwich shop near the Common!  After that I stopped by Kel's office to say hello and meet a few people before heading back to Malden to load up so that Kel and I could get on the road back to NJ by around 4p,

A whirlwind trip for sure...and I wasn't even working like Kelly was!

Google It.

How many times a day do you hear someone say "Google it"? Like a hundred, right? You'll be talking with a buddy about how many points so-and-so had in last nights game and he'll inevitably chime in with an "I'll Google it real quick".

Well I'm going to let you all in a little secret here real quick. I've never "Google'd" anything in my life! That's right folks, the cat is outta the bag!

I'm a Yahoo guy from way-back-when. Probably since the first time I set foot on-line back 1995 using Netscape Navigator as a web browser...and I haven't looked back! It's not that I don't like Google, as I'm sure its a great search engine, but it's just so bland. Nothing on the homepage except some catchy little logo they change every few days. Yahoo's where it's at. You open up the page and it's a wealth of information. News, sports, it's all right there in a quick and easy format. Most of the time I open it up with the intent of looking something up and then I find myself reading an interesting news story. You don't get that with Google.

And in terms of search engine results I just did a few test searches on both sites and they each returned essentially the same results. So I don't buy that argument that one is better than the other.

I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority on the Yahoo vs Google debate but for my money Yahoo is by far the best site to bookmark as your homepage.

Apple-palooza

Not the Steve Job's type of apple...the kind you eat.  We got a bunch of apples this past weekend at a local farm so I decided to put them to good use.  First up, my famous apple pie. 

  

Ohhhh the goodness.  Homemade crust and all!  Of course my secret; don't peel the apples.  The skin is the best part..why would you peel them like they say to do in pretty much every single apple pie recipe out there?  Not on my watch!

     

50 minutes later and I cut myself the first slice and paired it with a tall glass of milk.  Nothing more American than that.  Oh...I was watching the ALCS on tv too!  Apple pie and baseball. 

     

Lucky for me, Kelly doesn't like apple pie, so I get to enjoy every last piece of this guy.  [I know...you're rolling your eyes.  "Who doesn't like apple pie?" you're asking.  Apple pie, pizza, hamburgers, ice cream, I could go on.  I don't know how she even calls herself an American!]

In any event...the pie was delicious.  Eat your heart out Jackie Devers!  [I think that only 2 people are going to get that joke]

 

I also tried my hand at some apple pop-tartsthat I saw a friend mention online the other day.  Hey...we had plenty of apples!  Check these guys out...

  

They took a long time, and I made one hell of a mess in the kitchen, but they turned out great!  

   

     

Shoot me an email if you want either of these recipes!

 

The Lions.

No, not the ones from Detriot...I'm talking about the ones that used to guard our front steps.  We've been wanting to get rid of them for a while, so I finally did this past weekend.  Instead of dropping them on Patrick's front yard in the cover of darness though, we decided to keep them and just move them around back to guard those steps. 

  

Here they are...keeping watch over my freshly painted steps!

Ironman.

2.4 mile swim, 100 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run.  Some call that insane, and some call that thier job!  Ironman distance triathlons are certainly nothing to shake a stick at.   

My good buddy Tim O'Donnell is one of those guys who calls this race his job and he's got a pretty good chance to win the entire thing this Saturday in Kona.  [And his lady friend is the defending women's champion...quite the athletic couple!] 

The race will  be on TV sometime in like December, but you can follow it live on the internet this Saturday at Ironman Live.  I believe they start around 6-6:30am local time, so about noon here on the east coast.  Be sure to get some snacks cause they'll be racing for about 8 or 9 hours! 

Go fast T-dogger!

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Post Race Update:  Well...things didn't go too well in Kona for Tim.  Details are still a bit sketchy coming back from the insland, but we know that at some point during the bike he got very sick and was forced to abandon the race before the run.  So not an ideal outcome, but certainly some valuable experience to put under his belt for 2012!  

His lady friend, Mirinda Carfrae, on the other hand, had another great showing.  She was the 2011 winner so she had a lot of pressure to repeat and she raced very well, but it just wasn't enough.  She finished 2nd in one of the closest women's races in years. 

 

Credit Card Offers.

We get a lot of credit card offers here at the house.  And I mean a lot of them!  So many that I've decided keep track of them for an entire month.  Below is a scan of the first one that came this month and my plan is to tally them up and post the total at the end. 

  

Let's see how much in postage and printing the credit card companies spend on trying to get new customers!