kevinnowak.com

Great Weekend.

We had a great time this weekend with Nick and Juleswho made a visit to see the casa here in NJ.  We only set this up a few weeks back, but ever since it was on the calender we've been excited to have them down. 

  

We don't have too many photos from the weekend...but sure did have a lot of fun.  Friday, after a great dinner here at the house, we met up with Patrick and Kristin, and a number of his friends who were heading roller skating.  I think the last time I laced up some roller skates was down in Murph-dogsbasement back in junior highschool during some of those no-rules hockey games we'd have down there.  It had been a while, but after a few laps around the rink I had my form back.  Much more of a workout than I ever remember too! 

  

    

Below are a few videos we took during the night.  A bunch more can be found on my Vimeo site.  Check them out...

  

After roller skating we were out for a few drinks and didn't get in until waaayy past my bedtime. Haven't stayed up that late in a long while, but well worth it to hang out with N and J and catch up. 

Saturday found us just lounging around the casa and showing them around our neighborhood.  At one point we were sitting around the kitchen table and sifting through some of our wine corks.  kel and I try to keep wine corks from various meals or adventures and write the date and what we did on them.  They're kept in a huge glass vase that has filled up more and more over the years.  It's fun to look through them every once in a while and look back over some great meals, trips, or whatever it was we were doing at that time.  We realized that a lot of them had "dinner with Nick and Jules" on them, so we started to put them aside and count 'em up.  45 in total!  And we added a handful more this weekend!

       

    

Saturday night Pat and Kris joined us again for dinner at a local restaurant we love, Casona!  You can't beat the food at this place and its BYOB!  

    

And there ya have it...our weekend in a nutshell.  N + J shoved off after breakfast so we're just relaxing today, watching the Celtics game, and then settling down to watch the Super Bowl.  I mean, The Big Game.  [I don't want the NFL coming after me.]

 

Casona.

This past weekend Kel's mom Deb was in town, back from Canadia, and treated Kel and I to dinner at a great little spot in the next town over from us called Casona. 

       

     
 

The restaurant is in an old home that has a great outdoor deck and some cool charm on the inside.  All the dishes are Cuban/Latin inspired meaning that many of the items have a good kick to them. 

We were there for Farm Fresh Restaurant Week which is a typical restaurant week that I'm sure you know from your hometown, but the restaurants here were encouraged to use all local produce in their dishes.  The deal is 4 courses for $30...can't beat that.  The best part about this area is that many of the local restaurants are dry, meaning you can BYOB.  Talk about a huge savings on your dinner bill!  We brought a couple bottles of wine and saved a bundle.  Incidentally, I just assumed that people would always bring wine when it says BYOB, but a guy across from us had a cooler filled with beer.  Awesome!

     
 

To start things off I had the martini gazpacho and Kel got the black bean soup...both right on point. 

       

Next up was the appetizer and we both went with the fresh jersey corn on the cob, but of course they do it with that Latin twist and it turned a simple piece of corn on the cob into a spicy little appetizer!

  

For the main course I went with the Vaca Frita [basically steak over polenta] and Kel did the fish tacos.  We of course shared back and forth and both were just amazing.

           

Lastly was the dessert: I did the carrot cake and Kel went with the tres leches.  The perfect way to finish off a perfect meal!

       

Botton line, we both can't wait to get back to this restaurant! 
 

IronMoto Photo.

A few weekends ago we met up with Jackie, Vince and Miss Sophia for dinner at a Japanese hibachi placed called IronMoto.  A little sushi [Californai rolls only for me!] and chicken and scallops on the hibachi hit the spot.  

     
     

     

     

       

And can you think of a better way to finish off a filling meal than chugging a tasty sake-bomb?

Here are some links to a couple HD movies we took while there too. Check'em out. 

Philly Pops.

I was so fired up about the whole Army-Navy game that I skipped right over our evening at the Philly Pops last Friday night.  As I posted over the weekend...we started our evening at a great restaurant only a few blocks away from the Kimmel Center called Bliss.  The food was amazing...I had the pan seared scallops and Kel went with the lobster risotto.  Of course we left room for dessert and a cappuccino before making our way to the concert.  If you're looking for a good meal before a show in the theater district of Philly, this is a place worth checking out. 

       

After dinner it was on to the Kimmel to see the Philly Pops.  Kel and I last visited this place back in 2004, not long after it opened, and said we'd love to see a concert there at some point.  Fast forward 5 years and we finally did!  The building itself is beautiful...designed by famous architect Rafael Vinoly.  It's really 2 buildings within a building...within a huge glass roof actually.  The Verizon Hall where the orchestra plays is simply beautiful.  Rich wood and plush draperies are everywhere and the entire hall takes the shape of a violin to help with the acoustics.  And let me tell you...the acoustics are phenomenal in there.  You could hear a pin drop on the stage all the way up in the nosebleeds!

        

check out that fur coat on her!

We had great seats...first row of the balcony which meant we didn't have anyone impeding our view.  At "halftime" we took a walk around to have a look at the rest of the hall. 

     
        

This was our first time going to something like this and I think we're hooked.  The music, the atmosphere, it was all very cool.  Of course the guy sitting next to Kel must not have thought so...he was fast asleep for the entire first half, even snored for while, and then left after intermission.  Just bizarre.  

The show itself had a little bit of everything.  They played all the Christmas classics, some more obscure pieces, they had full chorus, 40 person boys choir, and even some African signers from a local church.  The 2 songs they sung were a real highlight of the night.  Towards the end they did a great sing-a-long where we all got to test out the vocal cords.  It wasn't pretty! 

Anyway, we had a great time and it definitely helped put us into the Christmas spirit!  I think we'll try and go back to some other shows over the course of the year. 

    

New Hampshire and the Library.

We were up in NH not too long ago to visit with Kristin and Ryan for a bit.  Ryan was working over the weekend but he was still able to get away from the hospital long enough to grab dinner with us and chill for a bit.  On a whim we made a last minute reservation at a place called The Way We Cook in Manchvegas that Kel and I saw on TV Diner a while back.  [You can watch the actual review they did here]  Since our table wasn't ready until around 8:30p they did run out of a few dishes, but other than that the place was amazing!  We met one of the owners, Jim, and our waiter was a riot.  He even threw in dessert for us since they had run out of those dishes.  What a guy!

       

               

        

         

         

        

After dinner we stopped at this little arcade and laser tag joint that is right around the corner from thier house.  It was a riot and we of course won some awesome prizes playign skee-ball. 

           

         

        

Last time we were up in NH over the summer Kristin and Ryan were thinking about converting this space that the previous owners used as children's playroom into an office on one side and a library/reading room on the other.  A great uncle [or something like that] had been up to visit and did a sketch for them of some built-in's on a napkin so they showed it to me to see what I thought.  It was bad.  No, it was atrocious.  I felt it was my duty to help out and after only a few hours we had a much better solution.  A few weeks later the carpenter came and below is the final product.  It looks just great with the yellow walls and the white shelves.  Nice color choices guys!

    

      

    

Up next is an island for their kitchen...it's certainly big enough for one, but I guess the original owners just didn't have enough money to put it in when they built the place. 

Of course after Kristin and Ryan saw our Team Photo's with Nick and Jules they wanted to get in on the action too...so we put the new library to good use as well as the dining room they have with no furniture on it and bright red walls that the previous owners painted!

    

    

    

Don't you just love Ryan's authentic Indiana Jones hat?  As you can tell...I've been experimenting a bit with some color/B+W photos.  I think they look kind cool.

  

Weekend Recap.

This weekend was action packed for us and kicked into high gear on Friday evening with my office Christmas dinner.  This year we were at a restaurant called EVOO, not far from our place.  I won't get into too much detail about the nights events other than to say the food was amazing!  Kel had the "Chinese Box" and I went with the "Day Boat Scallops".  Just unreal.  A few photos below of course! 

         

We were some of the last folks to leave the restaurant so on our way out the wait-staff handed us some loaves of bread for the road.  Kind of odd, but we put ours to good use during dinner on Sunday.

 

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On Saturday I sat down to determine what had been slowing down our 3 year old laptop.  It was getting pretty bad and had essentially become useless since it took so long to do anything.  After speaking with the Dell man he suggested I add some RAM since it was only running with 256mb!  I quickly logged on to crucial.com to figure out what I needed and then shot over to Micro Centerto pick it up.  It's great having that store so close by, but it was absolutely mobbed with MIT nerds and the like who were there for some huge Christmas blow-out sale they were having.  Once I got home with my new 2gb of RAM the install was quick and painless, and afterwards, we've essentially got ourselves a brand new laptop.  Amazing how a $29 investment can make that much of a difference.  I'm just kicking myself that I didn't do it earlier.   

   

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Saturday night Kel and I made an appearance at Jose's for dinner since we hadn't been there in like 2 weeks!  Outrageous, I know.  Our friend "Hey Buddy" was very happy to see me.  After that we decided to actually see a movie at a movie theater.  Something we haven't done since August of 2007, and before that, I can't even remember.  As soon as we walked into the theater we recalled why we always stick with Netflix at home...the place smelled and it was just dirty.  Perhaps it was because we went to the sketchy Fresh Pond cinemas near our apartment, but either way, we'll probably be sticking to the comfort of our own couch for the foreseeable future!  And for those who 'll inevitably ask, we saw Four Christmases.  It was OK, marginal at best. 

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Did everyone here about GW's final surprise visit to Iraq this weekend and the shoe throwing incident that happened during a press conference he was having?  Apparently there was an angry Iraqi reporter in the crowd who took it upon himself to launch a couple size 10's in Bush's direction.  Below is a photo that was taken as the shoe was in mid-flight.  I must admit, Bush sure does have some cat like reflexes! 

    

The video is even better.  Click HERE for that!  The whole thing is actually pretty hilarious but is it just me or are the boys of the Secret Service a bit slow to react?

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Tonight Kel and I decided to change up our usual Italian dishes and try something new for us.  We usually make manicotti or baked ziti, but this time we thought we'd go with stuffed shells.  It's the best of both worlds because you not only get the ricotta cheese that you get with the manicotti, but also the ground beef that you see in the baked ziti.  They turned out really great and we even had some of that bread from Friday night as a side! 

         

  

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For those keen observers here at KN.com, I'm sure you noticed the new photo of me in the right hand corner.  I decided it was time for a little update since the previous photo had been taken on our trip to Montreal in 2006.  Speaking of photos...I decided to check just how many digital photos I actually had here on my external hard drive.  47,387.  Yep.  47,387.  And that's only since December of 2002 when we had our first digital camera.  Imagine if that were film I had to get all them all developed?  I'd be in debt up to my eyeballs! 

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I'm out.

2008 Begins; With a bevy of topics.

Welcome to 2008 my readers [all 3 of you who actually comment].  How are the hangovers this afternoon?...starting to wear off yet?  Our night turned out to be fairly low-key, which is for the best if you ask me. I'm nursing a nasty little head cold still so I wasn't up for too much boozin.  We grabbed a great dinner in Harvard Square with N and J at a relatively new place called Z-Square and it was just amazing.  The food, the atmosphere, everything was on point.  We even met the owner who was sitting at the table just beside us and chatted with him for a few minutes.  His last name escapes me right now, but it starts with a Z and he introduced himself as "Blank Z-blank. I'm the "Z" in Z-Square".  What a great tag line right?  I think I'm going to introduce myself from now on as "Kevin Nowak, the K and N in kevinnowak.com".  Watch out!

After we had our fill at dinner we made our way back to N and J's place in Arlington to chill with a few more of their friends and ring in the new year.  A few games, some champagne and before we knew it the ball was on its way down. 

            

Shortly after midnight we got a call from Murph and Gowdy ,who were just down the street, saying they were en route.  Although we only got to hang for a few hours it was great to see both of them. 

Really funny and bizarre story from this morning.  Kel and I dipped out to a local joint to get some breakfast around 11ish and then went over to the grocery store afterward. We pull into the lot and who's car do we see there, yep, N and J.  They had only made it as far as the produce section so we met up with them and shopped away.  Pretty funny that we both hit up the grocery store at the same time.  Well as I'm in the checkout line I get a picture text from Murph with a photo of my car in the parking lot.  Turns out he and Gowdy were there too.  Talk about freaky.

Some odds and ends on my mind: 

- I just flipped on the tube and I'm watching this NHL game that is being played outside today in Buffalo.  It's snowing like the dickens out but these guys are playing hockey like we used to do in the old days on the pond behind Mores' house.  They call it the annual Winter Classic and it's played at a big outdoor stadium every New Years Day. Now I'm not a big hockey fan by any means, but this is a good take.  They have to resurface the ice practically every 5 minutes because so much snow is building up.

- Today marks the official end of the "Big Dig" here in Beantown.  By now you've most likely driven through it or at least heard all about it.  You know, the Central Artery/3rd Harbor Tunnel project that started out at $2.5billion and ballooned to over $14billion and even caused a woman her life.  The contract expires today and it's officially over.  There is still some work to be done on the new parks that replace where the elevated road was, and those should be done in the summer of 08.  At some point this spring I plan to head down there and take some photos.  I took some about 5 years ago and I'd like to revisit the same spots and see how much better it is now.  While the project had its problems and cost overruns, it has dramatically changed Boston, and for the better.  You can make it to the airport in no time flat now and by sinking the highway the city is left with acres and acres of parks in the heart of the downtown. 

-  Ironically I was reading an article this afternoon on Boston.com that talked about a proposal to close down a 5 mile stretch of Storrow Drive here in town on Sunday mornings starting this spring.  It would be similar to what they do on this side of the river here in Cambridge on Memorial Drive.  I can't think of a better way to get people out and about and down to the rivers edge.  The program is wildly successful here in Cambridge and I can't imagine that it would be well received in Boston.

-  Lastly...tis the season for engagements I guess.   Longtime friend Matty popped the question to his lady friend Tracy a few weeks back out in Cali.  We've only met Tracy once but she seems like a great girl and must be on the fast track to sainthood if she can handle living with Matty. Bless her sole!  Not sure when the wedding will actually be, but lord only knows what kind of party that kid is planning!   The other big one is blogger, photographer, kn.com commenter, and my grad school roommate, MWP.  I think they actually both popped the question on the very same day.  How about that!  Congrats to both of them...and to the little ladies.      

Well my friends, time to go finish up an album from Deb and Steve's wedding.  We're using some software from MyPublisher.  I'll let you know how the final product turns out.

Rose "dud" Diner

Rosebud Diner, 381 Summer Street, Somerville, MA  website

03 June 2006 - A typical rainy Saturday morning, Kel and I had slept in a bit and wanted a hearty breakfast to start the day off right.  We ran through our mental roladex of usual breakfast joints, and then one of us suggested the Rosebud Diner, we'd never been.  I'm not sure why we had never been, long lines outside, who knows?  After waiting in the back of the place, almost in the kitchen, we were seated at the counter.  That only lasted about 20 seconds because of the cold draft coming from the wide open front door.  They did move us into a booth that had opened up, so we were thankful for that.  Generally the waitstaff was a bit rough around the edges, but it is a diner, so I suppose that is to be expected.  Our food was average, not bad, not good, certainly nothing to write home about.  As I alluded to before, it was cold and rainy outside that day and the windows of this place were sealed up with tin foil?  Not sure how that really works, but it sure didn't add anything to the cramped atmosphere.    Overall, I can't say that I was really impressed with this place, especially with all the hype it gets. 

So there you have it...I'd say the Rosebud Diner gets a 5 on a scale of 1-10.  If you've been to the Rosebud, which I'm sure many of you have, let me know your thoughts down in the comments.