does anybody know how to ask "do you know what day of the week the garbage truck comes by?" in portuguese? i tried asking the old man sitting on the stoop across the street and just got a blank stare. i then realized that i should've asked it in portuguese. duh!
(it is funny how people who are asked a question in a foreign language respond like catatonic deer staring down an 18-wheeler. it reminded me of when i was in france and was routinely asked things that i had no idea how to answer.)
sorry about the lack of new posts lately. di and i moved into our new home in east providence this weekend. the computer is still in a box somewhere and the cable modem is awaiting a creepy cable guy to invade our home and hook the shit up. pictures of the place will be posted at some point. for the impatient, it's a beige, 2-story cape cod with a master bed, living room, BIG kitchen, bathroom and 2 upstairs offices/studies.
it's been a RILLY RILLY busy week for di and I. we got back last week from mexico, then immediately begin moving out of the apartment in federal hill. for those who don't know, we're moving into a small house we're renting in east providence. it's a little more space and definitely lot more privacy. should be a nice fresh start.
of course, in the meantime, we're spening every spare minute packing boxes and moving junk into the house. i hate moving.
well, it's a moot point now. harriet miers has withdrawn herself from the running for the supreme court. check out here blog....Harriet Miers's Blog!!!.
harriet miers sucks. sorry to talk about a potential supreme court justice that way, but i have to. here's a good story about why her tenure in charge of the dallas bar association really isn't that impressive. the woman has ZIPPY in terms of accomplishments and is utterly undeserving of being on the supreme court whether she's conservative, liberal or anywhere in between. think about it... are truly great legal minds spending their time running the bar association... or are they out arguing important cases?
i have to vent a bit about my beloved eagles....
i got a chance to watch them against the san diego chargers today and i have to say... they sucked. yes, they managed to win 20-17, but their offense has continued to play horribly this season. basically, they only won because their defense is playing better than I've EVER seen an iggles defense play and because of a last-minute special teams play (the blocked kick returned for a touchdown.)
the real problem for this team, though, is the offensive scheme. i have this deep, paranoid belief now that the rest of the league is catching up with andy reid's offense. last season, they were putting up A LOT of points on teams by throwing the ball every down and letting T.O. and westbrook break tackles to make big plays. but this season, those plays just aren't gettng broken and teams are letting an obviously-injured mcnabb throw the easy underneath passes, but forcing him into tough plays on third and fourth down. it's not working. the real problem is the lack of a running game. I think andy reid is very smart, but sometimes he's maybe a little too smart for his own good. he's always thought he could beat the system and outsmart EVERYBODY. well, after the last few weeks, i'm not so sure. i enjoy watching a good runnign game, like the one they had three years ago with duce, westbrook and buckhalter together. i miss that part of the game (the eagles only ran 10 run plays the whole game against SD.)
here are some more photos to enjoy....
my new parents-in-law maxine and george, at the reception
the cake that corinne made. she's looking to do more wedding cakes, too. hire her! now!
di and I at the reception
me being goofy in the hotel room during the honeymoon. i'm now the official spokesman for negra modelo beer... "la crema de la cerveza" as we say in mexico. 
loftus, hoppo and adrienne during the rehearsal dinner at paragon
alexandra, gabe, keagan and loftus at the rehearsal dinner
my aunti barb, me, my mom, keagan and di at the rehearsal dinner
di and adrienne before the wedding 
di and i on our way out of the church looking relieved
the bridesmaids, kristen, alexandra, adrienne and keisha
i finally got around to finishing "white teeth" by zadie smith, mainly thanks to a lot of reading time on the beach. (what's better?) the book is just a masterpiece, plain and simple. she's a crazy talented writer and just puts the most beautiful sentences down on the paper. she kills me. the story is about two families living in a 1980s London suburb... and it spirals out from there. it really ventures deep into topics dealing with immigrants and their loss of identity... it's profound enough to transpire just thatcher-era london.
now that i'm done with that, i'm moving onto "the crying of lot 49" by thomas pynchon. i've already red "mason and dixon" by him. this is NOTHING like that. "crying" reminds me more of the surrealness of samuel beckett (i'm no scholar! believe me. but i did read one of his plays en francais as a student). i also really dug heller and vonnegut, so i'm hoping pynchon will be a tasty treat for me. 
di and i are moving tomorrow morning (actually, just later THIS morning). we're moving into our little single-family house in east providence, just over the river from where we live now. we're SOOOO excited. basically, we wanted to stay in the city, but also have a little more space to ourselves. it's going to be nice not having to worry about making too much noise for the neighbors downstairs for once. i'm even thinking of cranking my bass back up again like in the old days. maybe i'll make myself a little mini music studio in the basement. can't wait.
anyway... we're painting the kitchen in the morning and plan to spend all next week moving our mountains of shit into the house.
also tomorrow night is our friends jay and sharon's engagement party. congratulations you two... welcome to wedding-planning-hell.
well, i just got off work a little while ago. my boss was out, ahem, "sick" today and the news editor, bill, had a day off... leaving me to put the entire paper out by myself. oh, and this was the sat.-sun. edition, the largest paper of the week. i did 16 pages by myself before it was all over. and actually, i was only about an hour past deadline, which isn't that bad, especially considering the circumstances. needless to say, it's not good for your newspaper to have one editor manning the ship. one set of extremely fatigued eyes can let some failry obvious mistakes and typos get by. i actually thought my A1 cover looked pretty good, though, despite the less-than-perfect circumstances.
after the wedding reception, di and i stayed the night at la dolce villa, a boutique hotel near where we live. it wa a really nice room... very modern. at 5 a.m. the next morning, keagan and my dad drove us up to logan aiport to fly to puerto vallarta. by 2 p.m. we were in mexico. when we arrived in our room at the resort (dreams puerto vallarta), we were greeted with this...
a few minutes later they brought up a chilled bottle of champagne for us! wow. the room was nice. nothing fancy... but the best part was the view of the beach.
the resort was pretty nice. we went kayaking along the coast and jet-skiing, which was great. the waves were pretty big, too, so i got to do some boogie-boarding. mostly though, we just sat around on the beach or by one of the pools and drank pina coladas and margeritas all day long. the resort was all-inclusive, so they just bring you drinks all day long. plus you can order room service and they'll bring you up whatever you want to eat or drink in your room. had them deliver me bottles of negra modelo... it was great!
mexico was wonderful. di was a little more ambivalent about it, but i love the people and really loved the food. one of the best parts of the trip, i think, was when we went into town to sightsee. di ended up buying an oil painting from a local artist...
here's a bunch of shots from the reception....
that's dionne's sisters simone, adrienne and keisha just before the reception started
di and i during the reception. we did get to actually eat some of the food. my veal marsala was just great.
my bro keagan and i during the reception
here's the whole family, with di and i in the middle
so then we went to the reception...
we had it at via roma, a smallish reception hall on atwells avenue, here in providence. it was absolutely wonderful. the location worked out so well. the food was great. the drinks were great. the service was great. ffor di and i, it was really our first chance to relax a little.
here's us cutting the wedding cake, which was done by our friend corrine tesson, a pastry chef. (anyone else in the providence/fall river area looking for a wedding cake should hire her!).....anyway.........
now for the ceremony...
overall, it went really well. everyone liked father bocchino, who is sorta not your typical parish priest. anyway, i was so nervous i could barely sit still beforehand. then when di and her father made their way down the aisle, i'll admit, it was a little tough to hold it together. 
now we get to the wedding day. we all woke like a bunch of hung-over deadbeats that morning. calabro, one of my groomsmen, still wasn't in providence! his flight the night before had been cancelled and he didn't end up arriving at my house until 3 hours before the ceremony. we all hung out at my place. we all put on our tuxes, but the weather was getting kinda hot. the funniest shit was when calabro puts his tux on and just starts sweating his BALLS off in the tux. i mean, he looked like he just dove in a pool with his suit on. it was hilarious. he eventually towelled down and i gave him a wife beater to put on, which must've helped. and no, john, i don't need that wife beater back. it's cool.
a little while later, loftus mixed us all some pre-wedding ceremony libations... you know, to take the edge off. well, his special recipe, the alaskan thunderfuck (yes, that's the name) was just scary. i don't want to know what he put in that shaker.
i'll continue this little story shortly...
the headband mafia is up in this piece! as you can see, we had a great time friday night at the rehearsal dinner. we all met up at paragon on thayer street for a nice meal, and best of all, an open bar. i got each of my groomsmen a gift: soccer shirts and matching headbands. di thought they would hate the gifts, but i thought they went over well. anyway, the dinner was great. paragon's atmosphere was just excellent and the drinks were top-notch. oh and afterward we somehow managed to stumble over to a couple of bars in my neighborhood. yes, i felt like the death when i woke up the next morning on my wedding day.
di's friend kristen (one of the bridesmaids, in fact) took some good wedding/reception shots and posted them at her blog, Miss Kristen. nice, k.
hi everyone,
sorry it took me so long to post anything on here. i haven't forgotten about you, believe me. there will be MUCH, MUCH more to come about the wedding and honeymoon, including lots of photos...
first things first... i want to thank our parents, mark and marilyn and maxine and george... for not only raising us, but shelling out a small fortune to make sure our wedding and honeymoon were special. we don't take your contributions lightly.
second... thank you to my groomsmen aka "the headband mafia" -- the best man keagan aka "osama bin keagan", john h. aka "hoppo," aka "dj john hopkinz", anton aka "dr. giggles" (we don't really have a nickname for him yet, but we're workin' on it), loftus aka "the lobster" and john c. aka "calabs," aka "lattimer."
yes, we have a positvely bushian love of nicknames around here... all we need is someone named pootie-poot.
anyway, di and i are still gathering all of the billions of digital photos from the rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception and honeymoon. in the meantime, here's a nice shot that di's sister keisha took of us during the reception...
di posted a list of reasons why she loves the mook she's marrying on sat. it's nice list. although i've NEVER gotten anywhere near 90% of jeopardy questions right.
i can't wait until this whole wedding thing is friggin over! this sucks so bad. there are just too many twists and turns and last minute problems to deal with. now we found out that the reception can't start until almost 2 friggin hours after the ceremony. great. can i skip the ceremony and reception and just hop on the plane to mexico with di?
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