Acquaintance: hey there! R u open to making some xtra cash?
Me: That depends. Momma always taught me not to kill people…
A: Lol so much for the fun part! seriously thought r ya interested n the idea?
M: I don’t know yet – what are you proposing?
A: Near a computer?

And that’s where I knew it was going south.

There are quite a few things wrong with the above conversation, and even more-so with the rest of our little chat. First, I hate “txt short-hand”. HATE-HATE-HATE it! Second, I despise leading questions. The one and only reason I began to entertain the conversation is that I am often asked to help people fix their computer problems and I am often offered cash for the help that I provide (although it’s nearly always refused). Thirdly, I am offended by the inference that I might possibly be interested in a Multi-level Marketing “arrangement”. Do I really look that stupid? (hold your tongue, Champ.)

So if that wasn’t offensive enough, it had to come from someone that I really don’t know all that well, which means that this person doesn’t know ME all that well, either. It’s awful to think that someone would pose as a friend and yet want me to get sucked in to something so miserable as an MLM. No friggin’ way!

I’m not going to list any names of companies that are related to this particular scheme, but a very quick, very brief Google search showed me everything that I would have assumed – the company in question has changed names a ga-jillion times to avoid “anti-pyramid scheme” lawsuits, and yet still claims to be wholesome and helpful to those involved. As if that’s not bad enough, the branch of their scheme that has made its way to me flies under the banner of being “Christian”. Awesome. Prey upon the people that put a huge amount of trust into people that claim to be of similar faith and values. Awesome.

While I’m not trying to be offensive to the person that approached me, please note that I am not interested in any MLM arrangement, nor will I ever entertain the idea of participating in such. I hope that those that instigate these stupid things come to a realization of their mistakes before they approach the Pearly Gates.

A couple of friends of mine wanted to go to Chicago to see their Chinese New Year celebration. One of the guys is from Taiwan, and even though it’s not technically China, he seems to be involved in a large portion of that culture anyway.

Since we were going to make the trek to the big city, we decided to make a whole weekend out of it. And since the New Year parade wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, there was plenty of time for us to fill.

We left town on Saturday morning and drove up to Aurora, which is about an hour west of downtown Chicago. There is a gianormous outlet mall there, so we capitalized on the opportunity to get expensive products (mostly clothing) at largely discounted prices. It was quite interesting, though – some stores would have everything marked down with an additional 60-70% off the lowest price on the tag. But then there were name-brand places, like Sony, Nike, and Adidas to name a few, that only had a small selection of clearance items, with everything else marked at a normal (expensive) price. Anyway, I found enough bargains to keep me satisfied and enjoyed all of the people-watching that I was able to do. And when I say there was plenty of people-watching, I mean that there were TONS of interesting things to see and joke about. People are REALLY weird…

We were supposed to only be at the mall for a couple of hours, but that didn’t happen. We got there just before Noon and didn’t end up leaving until about 5pm. From the mall, we raced into downtown to check in to our hotel, but really got stuck in some nasty traffic. We started to get concerned – checking in to a hotel after 6pm is considered “late,” and some hotels will go ahead and give your room to someone else if you don’t make special effort to have them hold onto it for you. PLUS, we had somewhere to be at 8 and need to clean up and eat dinner beforehand.

Needless to say, we eventually made it to the hotel, the Westin Chicago River North (Amazing!), got checked in extremely quickly (Thank you, online reservations!), did a quick costume change, and headed into the Theater district, to the Bank of America Theater, to be exact. We scored discounted tickets to see “Jersey Boys,” an Off-Broadway production that tells the story of the band The Four Seasons.

I could probably post an ENTIRE blog (not just a post, but a whole blog) about this show. It was simply amazing. I want to point out some of the highlights, though, and I will preface my comments by saying that I was extremely disappointed and the way-too-frequent use of the “F-bomb”.

The BOA Theater is a classic-style theater in an old, old building. It’s extremely gilt, with ornate reliefs and woodwork all throughout the theater. The room itself is about 1.5 times taller than it is wide or deep, so it felt like we were sitting on top of the people in front of us. While this helps to ensure that there aren’t any heads blocking your view, it means that the top row(s) of the top balcony are WAY up there. As this is where our cheap seats were located, I was concerned that I might get a nose-bleed. Even though we were in the way-back, I thought that my view/seat was absolutely stellar.

The set design was impeccable. It was very versatile in the ways that they were able to use the same main set to create every scene. With only minor furniture-type items being move on and off set, they were able to create a street corner, a stage, a television studio, a recording studio, a bar/nightclub, an apartment,… and without much verbal explanation it was easily possible to know what the setting was. The ways that they used lights and shadows was dumbfounding. One in particular was a type of background they used a few times – there were two versions, but it was basically the silhouette of a cityscape with an ever-changing sunset illuminating it from behind. But it didn’t look tacky – it REALLY looked like a progressing sunset. Amazing.

I can’t say that I expected anything short of awesome in the acting department, but they definitely didn’t disappoint. These people are professional stage performers, so I anticipated that they would be one-cue and in-character throughout the show, and they were. While I am not familiar with the current line-up of Broadway performers, it seemed like the casting was perfect. The parts were very well done.

The music was extraordinary. There was a live pit, but they weren’t always in a “pit” – they were part of the show at various times, so they were as much of the cast as any others. And when I say the music was amazing, I am 100% including the vocals. I caught the lead off-pitch once. Once. In the whole show. It was a 2.5 hour-long show. Amazing. The Four Seasons was similar to a boy-band in the sense that they performed with four-part harmonies in a large majority of their songs. On stage, these were incredible. You may be familiar with some of their songs – “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, “Walk Like a Man”, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, and the list goes on and on. If you can recall any of these, you may note that the lead singer had a very high-pitched, very distinct voice. Well, the lead on stage was just as distinct and absolutely awesome. His range was out of this world, and it didn’t come across as hokey or “faked” in any way. The other singers were just as amazing, though, and I don’t want to down-play their performances in any way… but the lead really did make the show.

One of my friends grew up with this music, and at intermission he was telling me about how he can remember hearing some of the songs played on the radio as “new” while he sat and talked with his sisters at home when he was in high school. Yes, that dates him rather accurately, but that made the show even better in his eyes. I was SO incredibly glad that I had the chance to see the show – I hesitated when it was first proposed as part of our trip, mainly because I had never heard of it, but I can’t imagine passing it up now that I know how awesome it is. I still cringe when I think about the foul language, but yeah… Wow. Amazing.

Now, the rest of the trip was just as fun, but it really wasn’t as exciting as the first part. We did a LOT of window shopping through various parts of the city, we went to an Asian food market (oh – my – gosh – there is some WEIRD food out there…), we sat and talked for hours over meals, etc. Oh yeah, and there was also the Chinese New Year parade – the whole reason for the trip!

One of the aforementioned meals went a bit long, and then we had to wait for the train, and then we had to walk to the parade route… and so we actually only saw the last minute or two of the parade. We were all a bit disappointed, but by the time we actually got there we knew that we weren’t going to see much. So, since we were in Chinatown, we went ahead and perused that part of the city. This meant more people watching for me, and I did go ahead and snap a few pictures as well. Peoria doesn’t exactly have a lot of Asian-inspired architecture, so I was fascinated by some of the buildings. I’m sure there are more ornate and intricate buildings in Asia itself, but I still enjoyed looking at it.

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before (and it will surely become its own post if it’s not here already…), but I really, really enjoy good conversation. This trip was jam-packed full of good conversation, so there wasn’t really a chance for me to get bored or for me to want to come home. I had an amazing time throughout the weekend, and I’m so glad that I have friends that I don’t get tired of talking to. Thanks a million, guys!

Yesterday was the day that I got to experience Cedar Point. Amazing.

It takes about two hours to drive from Columbus to Sandusky, and we rented a 15-passenger van to get our group up to the park. There were actually 19 of us, so there was another car in the caravan for the trip. I was in the party bus, as we called it, and there were plenty of laughs to go around. There were two girls sitting right behind me that had SO much energy that they kept the rest of us fully entertained for the whole drive, and then still for the rest of the day and the drive home. I laughed really hard almost the entire way to and from the park.

So once we got to the park, we took a group picture and headed off to the rollercoasters. The Millenium Force was the first on our list, as it is one of the rides that gives Cedar Point its popularity. Millenium Force was a fun ride, but it’s not exactly the type of ride that I gets me excited. It’s made of steel, but it doesn’t have any flips. But, it does start off with a 310-foot drop at 80-degrees. Quite impressive.

Next up was a series of rides, which included the Mantis (fun!) and the Magnum XL-200 (way fun!). The Mantis has lots of flips and corkscrews, which is TOTALLY my cup o’ tea, and the Magnum is WAY more exciting than it looks from the ground. And, in fact, when I got into the car for the Magnum, I totally expected it to be a really tame ride. Boy, I was (pleasantly) suprised!

For some reason, we got bored of riding all of the rides that started with “m,” so we made our way over to the Gemini, a wooden rollercoaster with some attitude. Again, the up-and-down rides aren’t so exciting to me, so the Gemini was just okay. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t exactly my favorite.

After relaxing on a few of the tamer rides, the Iron Dragon and Whiches’ Wheel, we started to hit-up all of the really exciting rides. I don’t recall the order, but here are the three:

Raptor: TONS of fun. It’s similar to the Batman rides at Six Flags, so you sit in a seat with a harness over your shoulders, but your feet get to dangle throughout the ride. It spins, flips, winds, drops, and races through it’s course. I loved it!

Top Thrill Dragster: Not exactly my favorite, but I don’t know that I’ll ever again go 140+ miles per hour in such a short period of time. And by “short,” I mean that I hit that in just a couple seconds at the beginning of this ride. It’s supposed to give riders the experience of drag racing, but then they take go ahead and make the track go straight up and then straight back down before slowing to a stop. It was definitely something that I won’t forget any time soon.

Maverick: This ride won an award for the best rollercoaster in the year 2007. It was incredible. I don’t even know how to begin describing it ’cause I’m still excited about it. It was SOOO much fun.

So, overall, the trip was a complete sucess. The park rocks, and the people wer tons of fun. Now if I can only get past this stupid sunburn…

For your viewing pleasure, here are a couple of videos from Cedar Point. You can watch these and other similar vids from the Cedar Point website, which is where the above links will take you.

Maverick:
 

 

Top Thrill:

Well, that’s because I knew that it was going to be a good time.

After hurrying to get laundry done after my luggage arrived, I jumped into the car and started booking it for Ohio. And, even though I was suffering from “baby bladder,” I still managed to make it to Columbus in about six hours. My hostess said that it should take just over six, and Google Maps said it should be about five and a half, so I think that I did okay overall. The way there was mostly uneventful – I talked on the phone, listened to music, yelled at crappy drivers, and shot dirty looks at people that I had to pass on the right-hand side. I did encounter a bit of rain, but that only lasted for about a mile, so it wasn’t anything to report on.

The first item of business was to attend a surprise birthday party for a guy named John (or perhaps Jon, I have no idea). Although I had never met the guy before, I found it to be an enjoyable time. I was able to meet a handful of peeps from this area and discovered that the people here, for the most part, are extremely lively and entertaining.

After chillin’ at the birthday boy’s house for a bit, and after eating more than my share of made-from-scratch strawberry shortcake, we headed out to sample Columbus’ very best pizza at a dive called Hound Dogs. Aside from cars being towed (that’s another story) it was a fun night. The pizza doesn’t compare to Arturo’s, but that’s’ only because it was a different kind of pizza entirely. It was definitely delicious in it’s own right.

The next day was Sunday, which meant that we got up and went to church at the crack of dawn. I realize that I get to the church building in P-town by 9am, but it really seemed to be quite a bit earlier than that when we arrived today at 9am. I must have just been a bit tired still from the excitement the night before, but it took quite a bit of effort to stay upright and alert through the whole thing. As with the birthday party, I found more people that are extremely lively and full of energy/fun, which is really different from people back home. Since I’m accustomed to people that are a bit more low-key, I think it would take me a while to adjust to the people here. That’s not to say that the people here are any worse or better, but it’s just different. Fun, funny, and exciting, but still different.

After church was a full-on chill-out session. We sat around the house, watched a couple movies, watched some telly, dozed in and out, and just relaxed. It was beautiful outside, so we decided to go play in a nearby park. It was more than just a city park – it was like a huge STATE park, with trails, large grassy areas, swing sets, and so much more. We were planning to enjoy the swings, so we found a set that wasn’t in use and claimed it as our own. I don’t remember the last time I swung on a swing, but it was just as fun as I remember. Ahhhh, Childhood: how I fondly remember thee.

On Monday, we took it easy and didn’t get ready to leave the house until about 10:30, which was also very relaxing. We went around to some kitschy-type shopping spots to find gifts for friends and family and then went to a place called The Book Loft. This was a book store, but to the EXTREME! It was an old house that had undergone much expansion to the point that they had 32 rooms of books. The entire place was filled with books. And by “filled,” I mean that I could barely walk through the place because the shelves were so close together. It was quite a site to see.

After a break for lunch, we went to a mall to wander some more and to see Hancock. Hancock is an interesting movie, to say the least, and I was entertained. I can’t say that it was my favorite movie, but it was decent enough. As the previews imply, it is much different than any other superhero movie out there, and I’m not convinced that it was necessarily a good thing. But it’s good enought that I would sit through it again if my peeps wanted to see it. We finished off the day with some more chillin’ at the pad, and ended up watching more TV and a movie: Transformers. Again, not the greatest movie in the world, but it was interesting.

Well, tomorrow we’re heading off to Sandusky, Ohio, to experience Cedar Point. I’m really stoked, as it’s been a few years since I’ve been on ANY rollercoasters. And if that wasn’t enough, Cedar Point is one the the premier theme parks when it comes to rollercoaster goodness. I hope I get at least some sleep tonight so that I have enough energy to have fun tomorrow!

Dinner with Scott

Scott was previously my dad’s boss during the last handful of years that we were living in California. Even though I was only about 9 years old the last time that I saw him, I remeber being incredibly impressed by him as a whole. He wrote me a personal letter congratulating me on my baptism at the age of 8, which really meant a lot to me.

Well, I hadn’t talked to Scott directly in more than 15 years, but I have always wanted to know him as an adult. Last year, I visited our office in NYC, and my dad was a bit disturbed that I didn’t think to make arrangements to have dinner with Scott. However, I didn’t even think that it would be sensible for him to travel from his home in New Jersey into the city just to have dinner, so I didn’t even ask Scott. This year was going to be different.

I found Scott’s company website back in April, but couldn’t find any direct contact information for him. I could only find a “Contact Us” link. I sent in a brief email asking that it be passed to Scott so that I could be in contact with him. His response, which was much more immediate than I dreamed possible, was extremely exciting. He wanted me to call him as soon as possible, and we exchanged emails to arrange such. Later that week, we talked on the phone for about an hour and determined that it wouldn’t be any trouble for him to meet me in the city for dinner while I was there.

From the time of the phone call until Thursday night, we traded emails back and forth, during which I discovered that he is a budding artist/sculptor and musician and that he is even more awesome than I remember from way-back-when. Oh, and we made all of the arrangements for getting together in the city.

Since I was travelling with my best friend, he and I met Scott for dinner Thursday night. Scott met us at our hotel, and we walked a few blocks to a little tavern/microbrewery/chophouse. We sat and ate dinner and enjoyed really entertaining, satisfying, and facinating conversation. I am SOO glad that I had a chance to get together with Scott.

I really want to write more about Scott, but I’m opting to do so later in a separate post. I gotta get back to the details of my trip!

Concerts in the City

While we were at the NYC office, one of our coworkers mentioned that there are typically concerts at Bryant Park on Friday mornings at about 7am (EDT). Well, James and I aren’t going to turn down a free concert, so we decided to get details. We stopped by the concierge desk at the hotel, and the gal there told us that there were actually TWO concerts scheduled for Friday morning. One was Coldplay up at Rockafeller Plaza (on The Today Show?), and the other was Maroon 5 at Bryant Park (for the CBS morning show, whatever the heck it’s called).

Seriously?! Maroon 5 and Coldplay?! I couldn’t believe that we would be able to see two free concerts of two bands that are both quite good. I’m not a HUGE fan of Maroon 5, but I was excited to try to see them perform.

Both venues were relatively close to the hotel, so we decided to go try to watch Coldplay first, and then we would listen to a bit of Maroon 5 on the way back to the hotel. (We were checking out and flying out later that morning.)

So, we woke up terribly early and headed off to Rockafeller to see Coldplay. I was amazed that I could work up a sweat from WALKING at 6:30 in the morning, but I sure did. It wasn’t even that hot…. I’m just weird. When we got to Rockafeller, it was nuts. Wait, it was Nuts with a capital N. There were people EVERYwhere, and there were NYPD officers trying to direct traffic, both foot and automobile. So while that was crazy, that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that the band was only playing when it was time for them to be on TV. So, they would play a song, and then there would be 20 minutes of standing in the sun until they were ready to play again. AND, on top of that, the performance area was so small that the sound wasn’t that great. So, the “Coldplay concert” wasn’t all that we hoped for.

From behind the stage:

From the front of the stage:

We decided to walk back towards the hotel, which took us by Bryant Park for the Maroon 5 concert. Needless to say, the venue was larger and much more open, but we didn’t have time to stand there and wait for the next cue for them to play. We didn’t get to hear any Maroon 5.

Oh well, we tried. It would have been REALLY awesome if would have gone better, so it was worth it.