A Very Happy Birthday for Me

Except for the 'plus 1 year' impact that birthdays have, they're almost always fun…ESPECIALLY when my wife-2-be is the one responsible for planning.

My birthday often (but not always) coincides with the Christmas break. This was one of those unfortunate years where my b-day signifies the first day back from the Christmas break. This year, Ali asked me to take an additional 3 days of vacation so that we could properly celebrate the big day. Given this request, I was guessing that this birthday may bring a gift that required travel. A million thoughts raced through my mind: Where could it be? Local? Overseas? What would be the attraction? Skiing? Beaches? Overseas? It can't be too extravagant…after all, we've got a wedding to pay for!

Ali's not very good at keeping big secrets, but she did a very good job of keeping this one. The real genius of the surprise came with only 48 hours remaining in my twenties. On Saturday, Ali gave me my first gift: a tourists driving guide to New England. What a great piece of deception?! First, I've wanted to spend more time exploring New England and second, it was a relatively inexpensive gift for us. I won't lie, I was just a little disappointed to think that I had taken off 3 days for a drive through Vermont.

Being officially thrown off the trail, I went to bed a little bitter. With only 24 hours left in my twenties, my luck significantly improved. It started with breakfast in bed. The menu consisted of bacon, eggs, and a pancake message that read, "Pack your bags." No, Vermont and its wonderful cheddar cheese was not the destination…we were Captiva bound!

We landed at Fort Meyers in the wake of climate gate. Without a doubt, this winter has dealt a blow to proponents of the global warming debate. Captiva is 26.3 degrees north latitude. The average high/low temperatures in January are 74/54. While we were there, the temperature did not rise above 54 degrees. Let's just say that it wasn't beach weather. BUT, the temp was still twice as high as the temperatures Boston…and we're not afraid of a little chill. I played golf every day; we walked the beach, found a whole sand dollar, and had drinks on the beach at the Mucky Duck.

   

Captiva is an hour away from the airport at Fort Meyers. Given the distance, we rented a car…but not just any car, Wifey surprised me with a Corvette ZHZ (a.k.a. Lola). One might guess that a Hertz edition 'vette would be a bit lacking in the muscle department, but that just isn't the case. Modern amenities like keyless entry and start are paired with 460 angry horses. Very nice. When you're behind the wheel of that much power every straightaway, corner, and green light begs for the driver to let 'er rip. 0 to 80 is a picnic for Lola. Within 5 minutes of leaving the airport, we found a Saleen Mustang… J 45 minutes later we found a Viper… J I might have to get me one of these. On the return trip to the airport we got caught in traffic next to a mom and her young son. We didn't really understand why he was laughing, smiling, and pointing at us. The mother eventually rolled down the window and told us that he thought our car was Bumble Bee from the Transformers movie. I smiled back at him, winked, and made him promise not to tell anyone.

Harbourside Bar & Grill

By the time we arrived, we were rather tired. We opted to have dinner at the closest restaurant on the resort. I had scallops and Wifey had steak. The scallops were incredible – by far the best scallops that we had during the whole trip.

  

Famous Dave's BBQ

Perhaps the best BBQ of my life – way better than Smokey Pig. I feel like I've graduated to a new level of BBQ and learned new criteria for judging BBQ. The secret? Ask them to show you their trophies. Barbecued shrimp wrapped in bacon is a local attraction in and of itself. By far, Dave's had the best – yeah, they tasted the best but they don't skimp on the quantity either. Ali had a burger with pulled pork and bacon. I had a sampler with beef brisket, pork ribs, and chicken wings.

   

Mucky Duck

We really enjoyed eating and hanging out at the Mucky Duck. We probably had 3 meals there. Our favorite item was a chicken soup that wasn't on the menu. We were at the bar waiting for a table and started talking to the owner. He moved to Captiva (from Boston) a bunch of years ago. He whipped-up a chicken soup for the staff and offered some to us too. It was creamy (but not too creamy) and all around delicious. If you ever find yourself at this restaurant, let it be known that the waitresses like to play jokes on unsuspecting patrons. For example, they squeezed fake ketchup on me and fake-spilled coffee on numerous other suckers. They also have a window on wheels that they put between loud tables. Unfortunately, I don't fully grasp the intention of this prop.

In a weird twist of fate, Momma Dukes was vacationing 10 miles away from us in Sanibel. We weren't able to connect while we were all in FL. It's only now that I realize how dangerous the conversation during Christmas dinner about Mom's FL vacation plans was.

Mills in Mass

It's taken too long for me to write of this, nonetheless, it was one of the best weekends since I've called Boston home. Thanks to D & M for making the trip and to my (awesome) fiancée for doing so much to make the weekend go smoothly.

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I can manage approximately 10 weeks of a standard 15 week semester in conjunction with the day job before it all gets to me. How does it get to me? Foooooood. And this is why meals were the cornerstone of this weekend.

Chinese? Friday dinner. Takeout – although they do have a glorious buffet. Best place in town. UnitedHealth Foundation just released its ranking for healthiest states in these United States. Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire were all in the top 5. States don't make it to the top of this list without making some sacrifices. Chinese food from New England has a distinctly lighter taste than most areas. Kudos to both D & M for giving it a chance.

French? Saturday dinner at Pigalle. Getting there was a challenge. More specifically, it was my challenge. Turns out…there's more than one 75 Charles Street in Boston. In such cases, zip code is very important when entering the destination into the GPS. Fortunately, we were still in Boston when I finally admitted that we had driven to the wrong 75 Charles St. We were only 10 minutes late to dinner. Fiancée and I split the Arugula with Prosciutto appetizer and then went our separate ways for the entre. I had the Duck and she had the (not so) petite Beef Tenderloin and Braised Short Ribs. We were forced to cut dinner short because we had to make our way around the block to get to Blueman. We didn't have time for dessert. I'm pretty sure that I have to take fiancée back for dessert in the future.

Philadelphia? Sunday Lunch. Cheese steaks from Carl's. This is a bit of a divergence from the traditional Philly cheese steak. Not being a native Philadelphian, I am comfortable saying that these are way better. My go-to cheese steak is a small Teriyaki with mayo and mushrooms. Phantom ranked Carl's #8 on the list of top 10 cheese steaks in Bostonia. There are 3 critical factors that make Carl's so good.

1. Diced steak
2. Fresh bread
3. Excellent variety
4. The cheese and additional toppings is evenly mixed throughout the steak (not just gobbed on top).
5. LARGE portions. Did you notice that I only get the small?

I couldn't stop at 3.

American? Twice. Thursday dinner and Saturday lunch. On Thursday we took D & M to Mad Raven. This is one of the places that fiancée and I will miss once we move to Somerville. Good atmosphere. Good food. And we even got a good parking space. It was meant to be. On Saturday, I took D & M into deep Boston so that they would have the opportunity to see Fenway. If you haven't been to Fenway, it's a really cool stadium. We walked around the stadium to give them a feel for how small it is and to point out the green monstah, etc. One of the cool things about Fenway is that there are big sports bars tucked underneath of it. Cask 'n Flagon was under construction so we decided to have lunch at Game On. The waiters/waitresses offered terrible service, but the food is worth writing home about. Fiancée and I watched Clay Buchholz throw a no hitter in 2007 at Game On. …it was against the Orioles.

   

 

     
So that's about it for the food. The other attractions for the weekend included a tour of the oldest car collection in New England at Larz Anderson Museum, Blueman Group at the Charles Playhouse, and a the regular weekend dog walk through Catrock (M's shoes will never be the same).

There is a lot more to be said about this weekend but I realize that this blog post is already too long. Be sure to click through the Mills in Mass photo album on the left hand side for some more details and commentary. It was a terribly rainy weekend but the skies cleared up long enough to offer this sunset on Sunday night.

November Means...

Ah, November.

With each November come the official holiday season, weird rain-snows, and one step closer to graduating…again.  Yup, midterm exams and projects are all behind me leaving only 3 assignments, one final exam (Finance), and one final project (Global Strategy).  My last class is scheduled for December 17^th; the countdown is so on!  …seriously, there’s an 8 ½ x 11 sized countdown on our fridge.

Securitization has been in the dumps for the past year, but bankruptcy has been keeping the legal industry very busy.  Fiancée’s been ultra busy with one specific bankruptcy…you can guess (but I’ll never tell who it is)...which has left me with a handful of stories that no one can substantiate.  For example, the dingo and I ran into a wolf at our local hang out spot, the Paine Estate.  Yeah, a wolf.  But what’s the point of telling the story?  …I have no proof.

Paine estate has been the sight of some interesting recent activity.  While there have been numerous Cameron Diaz sightings in Boston, our tiny town is often overlooked by Hollywood.  Until now (maybe).  During one recent trip to Paine, I was ordered away from the house and back toward the parking lots.  Why?  I’ll let you be the judge:

The Man vs Food show was in Baltimore last week.  They went to Chaps Charcoal Restaurant and sampled some of the sandwiches and raved about the Chaps Pit Beef Sandwich.  Chaps is on Polaski Highway – if anyone’s been, tell me if it’s as good as they made it look on TV.  They also said that the best crabs in town were at OBrycki’s and encouraged viewers to try the Great Steak Challenge at Steak & Main.

Update: We can’t take this one horse town anymore, so we’re leaving!  We just signed a new lease in Somerville (atleast a 7 horse town).

Random Thought:  The Motorola Droid commercials start cool and quickly change into an expensive advertising mistake.

Random Update: The temperature in Rio de Janeiro is 77 degrees.

Running in the Rain

I learned how to do this photo effect last week.  It’s called selective desaturation and is really quite simple.  You don’t even need PhotoShop to pull this off…just a $.99 iPhone App called ColorSplash or perhaps less.  But, to be fair, using a real camera and PhotoShop yields much better quality and flexibility.

Fiancée and I partook in a road race this past weekend.  The Somerville 5k is our favorite race of the year.  Why?  Because this t-shirt is consistently better than any other race’s.  Oh yeah, it’s THAT good: long sleeve, good logo, cool sponsors, and always a new color (it was red this year). 

We’ve signed up (and paid) for this race for the past 3 years but only participated twice.  Due to a minor scheduling error, we missed last year’s race by exactly 24 hours.  We showed up on Sunday instead of Saturday.  To make matters worse, we learned of our mistake when we inquired to some lady who was wearing the ’08 race t-shirt on her way to breakfast.  She thought it was funny.  …I guess that’s what you get when you choose which non-profit to support based on their t-shirt.  Karma!

This year went much smoother.  When race registration opened some 6 weeks prior, fiancée signed us up immediately.  After all, the first 400 registrants get free t-shirts.  Little did we know at the time that we were the first 2 out of ~1000 racers to register!  In addition to free t-shirts, this guaranteed us the #1 and #2 bibs.  This may not be important to most, but we were ecstatic.  In our minds, we had already won.

The weather was terrible.  After we signed in and got the t-shirts, we debated whether or not to stay.  We ultimately opted to go for it.  My ‘conditioning’ must be paying off.  Here’s a picture of me after the ’07 race (top - landscape) and a picture of me as I finish this year’s ’09 race (bottom - portrait).

One of the shows that we watch is called Man vs Food.  It’s classy.  We gathered a new burger idea from last week’s show; instead of a bun, use a crispy cream donut!  The assembly would go something like this:

½ of Crispy Cream Donut

Bacon

Cheese

Patty

½ of Crispy Cream Donut

How awesome does that sound!?

On a slightly more frustrating note.  It’s very difficult to get Redskins coverage up here…unless they’re about ready to lose to the Lions.  Awesome.  Oh well, it’s not the first time that Washington has bailed out Detroit… 

To do, or not to do?

How do you manage your to-do list? 

On any given weekend, I like to have 3 things on my list.    These are usually things that are significant enough for me to require me to block out some time.  Alternately, it’s something that should be done to give myself a fighting chance in the upcoming week.  For example, this weekend a wanted to:

1.    Head to the orchard to formally kick-off the Fall season

2.    Finish reading for Global Strategy and make a dent in the reading for Short Term Finance

3.    Laundry

Funny thing about my lists…they have a mind of their own.  Numbers 1 and 3 were crossed-off by Saturday afternoon leaving only the reading.  I’ve been watching fiancée read her book (‘Unless’ by Carol Shields) for the past day and a half…but I’m yet to make significant progress.  Argh.  Instead, I’ve resorted to mental strategies that make me feel better about the state of my list.  My favorite strategy is to concentrate on the completion percentage:

completion percentage = completed to-do list items / total to-do list items

By Saturday afternoon, my completion percentage was 2 / 3 = 66%.  I knew that I didn’t really feel like reading case studies right now…SO…I added a new item to the list (e.g. vacuum), completed it, and crossed it off.  Once I completed that task, my completion percentage moved from 66% to 3 / 4 = 75%!  PROGRESS!!  If you’re not careful, this strategy can get the better of you.  For example, I am not above adding an item to the list (e.g. exercise) that I’ve ALREADY completed: 4 / 5 = MORE PROGRESS!  By the way, this same technique can be loosely applied to pad investment portfolios at the end of a quarter.

In other news, I really thought Luke was going to pick Malissa in the last episode of More to Love.  Ah, c’est la vie. 

Fiancée has had two favorite things this week: 1) the E*Trade commercial where the baby calls his golf buddy  a shank-a-potamus and 2) Miley Cirus’s Party in the USA.  In her honor, I’ve added it to the ‘Give it Listen’ section on the left.  Be forewarned… like it or not, it’s really difficult to get out of your head.  It was a hot weekend in New England: NASCAR was in New Hampshire; U2 was in Boston; youth hockey season started; and we had two neighbors move out (yeah!).

…tough weekend for USC, BYU, and the Pats.  On the other hand, hail to the Redskins.

Fiancée just finished her book.  It smells like she's making apple crisp.  ...I better go check it out.

Dear Desk Job

Ah, Labor Day. 

It’s the one day all year when America collectively exalts, “Dear Desk Job, go screw.”  We spent the long weekend in mountain tops of PA quietly nestled at 2000ft above sea level.  You’ve heard of places where the sun don’t shine, right?  Well we had plenty of sun shine, but this is the kind of place that even MapQuest is yet to locate.  It’s awesome up there; cell phones are just video games, XM is a waste of money, and you can forget about GPS.  OK, it’s not THAT Oregon Trail but my point is still valid: it’s great to disconnect and be in a place where the sound of a passing car is infrequent at best.

We brought the dingo with us so we had to stop every 90 minutes to let him decompress.  But once we got there, the yard was all his.  Life is good.  Food plays a major role in our Pennsylvacations.  Check out this diet:

Friday

• Panera: Toasted Cinnamon Crunch Bagel w/ Hazelnut Cream Cheese
• McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger
• Pepperoni and Mushroom Pizza
• Chicken Parm on a bed of rice
• Caramel Cashew ice cream on a waffle cone

Saturday

• Éclairs from Wegman’s
• toast & cheese
• sausage & pepper sub
• fries
• hot dogs & hamburgers

Sunday

• toast & cheese
• éclairs
• mozzarella & portabella sub
• Burger King

…and then wash it all down with coffee, a Heineken, and more Weis’s Black Cherry Soda than any individual should consume.  …It’s probably obvious that the fast food happened on the way to/from PA.  Needless to say, I’m still not functioning properly.

I’m getting back into the swing of things at the office.  I kinda have to because Fall Semester also started up this week.  Global Strategy should be a straight forward class: do the reading, form an opinion, defend your position.  Naturally, Short Term Financial Management will require a bit more work.  The STFM teacher reminds me of Carol Bartz (a lot)…so she’s OK in my book.  It’ll take some serious discipline to keep my motivation ‘up’ for the entire semester.  Interestingly enough, I’m less anxious to conclude the Master’s than I was the Bachelor’s.  

Mmmmm...Millsey-burgers

Random Question: Is it easier to wake up on days that you have to head into the office?  Or days that you don’t have to head into the office?

Hello Millsey-burgers!  I’ve been cooking dinner this week because I’ve got all the time in the world.  I stick to grill food and by that standard, tonight was no different.  However, by every other standard, tonight was the big dance in Cinderella’s castle.  I promised fiancée the meal of her choice tonight and she picked Millsey-burgers.  If you haven’t had opportunity, then you haven’t quite lived yet.  I believe it was Papa John who said, “better ingredients, better pizza, Papa John’s.”  I think he’s onto something, and that’s why I take a similar approach with my burgers.  Only the freshest or best ground beef, garlic, blue cheese, teriyaki glaze, spices, and herbs for these burgers!

I imagine today is the closest that I’ll ever get to a three-a-day again (and I’m OK with that). Comparatively, today’s three-a-day was far more enjoyable than the ones that I recall from college.  I ran a gentle 6k in the morning, hiked with the dingo in the afternoon, and played indoor this evening.  Having run around a competitive soccer field for the majority of my life, I’m surprised that I still have the tolerance to run for exercise.  I always thought that I would graduate to swimming, cycling, or nothing (the later being the most likely result).  To this day, I still like the idea of running 5k’s as long as they have t-shirts and/or chasing a little ball around field with 11 or 21 other aptly conditioned futballers.

Tonight’s soccer game was a big deal because it’s the last game of the regular season AND the last game that I can play this season.  Once school starts, I can’t fit-in the indoor league (bummer).  15 minutes into the game we’re down 3-1 but by half we’ve evened the score.  We ended up winning, 8-4, and I recorded three goals and one assist.  Fortunately, I went out on a positive note.  I haven’t quite grasped that this is my last semester of the Masters.  If all goes well, I will have finished the program in 3.5 years.

More Randomness: At the park today, Jake and I saw a snake and a toad.  He totally ignored both.  What is it about squirrels and rabbits that drive him crazy?