time is on my side

This very day last year I was in Dublin, Ireland with a great group of friends. Lizzie, Bill, Chaz, Geeble and myself flew from Philadelphia to Dublin and met up with Jim Stem (who was on leave from Iraq), Sull (she flew over from philly as well) and Michelle, Courtney and Dove (they were all studying abroad in Rome).









Twas a long flight to Ireland, but when we finally got there we were all itching for a Guinness. After meeting up with each other, some of us having not seen a friend, let alone a large group of friends for over 5 months and the others for just a few, it was a nice little reunion, and it was only obvious that we should go to a pub immediately... Even if it was 9:30 in the morning. And to the pub we went. First round was on Bildo. It was something he's always talked about long before any of us realized we'd be meeting up at a pub in Ireland. He always promised he would buy the first round of beers for whoever was with him on his first trip to the mother land.

I was two or three beers in when I did my first shot of Jameson and Jimmy Boy decided to violently shake me. It was 10:30AM, Friday morning, on the 16th of November in 2007 when I first puked my guts up in Ireland. All I remember thinking was "Well, that's just great." Next thing I knew I was drinking another Guinness to cure my illness.

The first couple of days in Dublin are still a blur. I remember visiting the Guinness Brewery and the Jameson Distillery. The distillery was where I got to hang out with my two true loves.










My best friend & sister, Michelle, and my companion & cheer-me-upper, Jameson Irish Whiskey.

When walking upon the "gates of heaven" we all stood back to allow Bildo have his moment of glory. It was as if Christ himself appeared.







Bildo dropped to his knees and kissed the ground in front of him. He truly was experiencing his version of heaven on earth.




One thing Michelle & I always talked about is how we'd eventually go our separate ways in life. No matter where we ended up we always thought it would be super cool to meet up in Dublin for a cold pint. We finally made a dream come true. And we didn't just meet up for one cold pint... we had a trail of cold pints waiting for us!

There's more to this story, so, stay tuned.

big me to talk about it

Well, it's been quite some time. Apologies to those who like reading this to pass those boring moments during your days.


Phillies finally won! 2008 World Champions! I'm not sad that I'm so far from home either. Think about it... in twenty years when I'm telling my kids about my first World Series I get to say that I was living in Hawaii. I think that's pretty awesome.

In other awesome news, Obama! I'm pretty stoked to be able to say I voted for the first black president of the united states. Sorry McCain:















I originally took off 3 days of work because I was going to try to fly home for the series, but that didn't work out as planned. I ended up having a great long weekend here though. We did some major grillin', watched the Phillies win, lose & win win win, drank some beers and relaxed.

Last Monday was supposed to be Dan's last day on Maui for a good while. I figured with him out of the house I'd get to cook Erik a nice dinner, only Dan ended up crashing it! It was really no big deal. I actually offered him to crash it. Besides, look how delicious everything ended up looking:

I started dinner with a fresh salad with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, & peppers. And I cooked chicken parmesan. I made my own sauce with a bunch of veggies & garlic. Everything turned out perfectly. As you can see, Dan was happy:

Erik totally ruined dinner because he had gotten bit by a small doggie earlier that afternoon. Apparently his boo-boo hurt so much he wanted the doctor to look at it that night. Luckily for him, Hawaii is free of rabies.

On Tuesday Erik & I drove the back roads to Lahaina. We stopped to check out this crazy blowhole. Every time the ocean crashed into the shore it looked like a geiser was shooting out of the ground. It was really cool looking. We didn't bring a camera down to get a shot though. We also saw this huge giraffe!

Erik has more pictures on his camera, but he hasn't uploaded them yet.


In other events, my manager and I wanted to split a burger from Jack In The Box because they're so huge. Unfortunately we didn't have a knife to cut it. However, when you mix my brain cells with Maile's braincells this is what you get:


I've been working 9 days straight as of right now & I'm really tired. Oh, before I go, I know some of you are wondering who Erik is and what he looks like. He's an alcoholic pilot & he looks like this: