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Here's an archive of the introductions from the front page (along with all the comments people left)! Sunday, July 6th, 2008 - RANDOMNESS: I was standing on the corner of 2nd Ave and 12th St. in the East Village with Meredith and Ellen yesterday at 8pm (we'd just gotten out of a a movie), when a white Acura with NJ plates drove past us going east on 12th - the driver, a woman in her mid-twenties, saw me standing on the corner and as she drove by, she leaned her head out the window and screamed "BRIAN YOU PUT ME ON YOUR WEBSITE!" Who are you, Mystery Woman? Kindly identify yourself! (New entries coming veeeeeeery soon! And don't forget to enter the "Most Embarrassing Sex Story" contest down below! Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 - Holy moly! Thanks for all the wonderful congrats about our engagement! I was pleasantly surprised to see that the congratulatory comment count exceeded the comment count for the previous posts' lizard controversy! You guys are the best blog readers ever! Awwwww! After a few hectic couple of weeks, things are finally starting to settle down a bit! There's one new entry down below and I'm working on a few more that I hope to get live sometime in the next week or two. Oh! And next time I post I'll be posting about a CONTEST where you can win PRIZES! Hoooo-boy! I hope you enjoy reading about my Jesus-Theme-Park adventures in Orlando! Monday, May 5th, 2008 - Happy Monday! So check this out: After lunch on Saturday, Meredith and I were walking home and we decided to pop into our local pet store and look at the animals. We were in the back looking at the lizards and we found a tank that had three lizards (all skinks) in it. Two of the skinks were big and colorful, the other skink was smaller and less colorful. Right as we were standing there watching them, one of the big skinks runs all the way across the cage and starts attacking the small skink! At first we thought they were just play-fighting, but then the big skink starting swallowing his friend whole! It was totally shocking. So shocking that I didn't even think to take my camera out until we was half-finished eating him and then I snapped this picture:  Pretty gruesome, right? Brother, you don't even know the half (ha!) of it. So the big guy's almost completely eaten the little guy, he's gotten everything down except the tail which he apparently decides he doesn't like because he clamps his mouth shut and severs the tail off...which upon being severed starts frantically wriggling around in the cage. Check it: The thing wriggled like that for almost 2 minutes before finally running out of juice. A few minutes later, a pet-store employee walked by and we told what we'd witnessed and showed him the video and he was like "Oh, man. I gotta show this to my boss. I keep telling him this is why nobody but me should be allowed to do the lizards! You can't put a little guy like that in with the skinks! What was he thinking?" Anyway, it was pretty crazy. Put Discovery in HD to shame! As promised, down below you'll find three new entries! Monday, April 28th, 2008 - Awwww, yeah! 2007 is in the house! I'm now officially only 14 months behind on this blog! Check back in next week because I've got a whole buncha new entries queued up in the hopper! I hope you enjoy! Monday, April 14th, 2008 - Happy Monday! Two new entries down below which means that I'm done with 2006 and the next entries will be from 2007! I'm only 16 months behind! Hope you get a laugh out of the new pics! More to come soon! Monday, April 7th, 2008 - I'm back from Egypt! Thanks to all those who wrote me with travel suggestions and advice - I ended up having a great time. I spent the first week sight seeing in Cairo and Luxor, and then spent the second half of the vacation scuba diving in Dahab! Down below you'll find two new entries. One of the two new entries is Halloween 2006 which is the official 10 year anniversary of this site (my very first entry was Halloween 1996)! Pretty much the only thing that's changed since back then is that these days I have a way less-awesome haircut! Hahaha. Here's to another ten years of i keep a diary! Oh, and one last thing...I should've posted about this sooner (especially because it's about karaoke) but I'm a bad friend! Sarah's new book came out a few weeks ago and it's awesome. It's a pocket guide book that has hundreds of different lists of karaoke songs to sing. There's pretty much a list of awesome songs for every occasion you can think of!  Head to Amazon and check it out, it's less than $10! POCKET KARAOKE by Sarah Lewitinn  . Hope you enjoy the new entries! I'll try to finish out the year of 2006 by next week! Woooo!
Thursday, March 13th, 2008 - First off, I finally got around to fixing my RSS feed! If you look over there on the right, you'll see a new RSS icon and you can even sign up to get notified of updates via email! Go on and subscribe! Second, wow! Thanks to everyone who emailed and left comments with vacation suggestions! I came really close to buying a ticket to Peru, but Meredith really wants to see Machu Picchu so I figured I'd wait on that until we can go there together! I ended up buying a ticket to Egypt! I leave Sunday morning and I'll be gone for 13 days! Egypt ended up winning out because it was relatively inexpensive to fly there, cheap to travel in, and there's a TON of stuff to see and do, plus there's even some great diving sites. And the best part is, I have a layover in Abu Dhabi on the way back to NYC so I might get to see Bernadette, Philip and Faisal! If you live in Egypt or know anyone fun who lives in Egypt, email me and say hi! It'd be great to have someone to meet up with for dinner or something! Third, Tara's IM to me last night about Lucy, Tara's four year-old daughter: Tara: Lucy is obsessed with Star Wars now and she insists on being called "Tiny Darth."" she won't even answer to Lucy anymore Me: that makes me LOL so hard Me: tiny darth Me: hahahahaha Tara: it is cute but SO annoying too haha Tara: she wants a star wars bday Tara: and a millenium falcon Tara: she has a lightsaber but she just started playing with it. she was afraid that it was going to cut off her arm Tara: like we would give her a real one hahaha Tara: They have a darth vader costume at target but i don't know if she will wear it. she gets embarrassed so easily Tara: she is really weird. Me: does everyone call her tiny darth? like your mom and stuff? Tara: yeah, and even her teachers at school Tara: all of her Valentine's cards at preschool said "to: tiny darth" Tara: she sings the darth vader song when she walks into places Me: i am literally cackling in front of my keyboard Sooooo funny! If you're interested in helping to support Down below, you'll find two new entries! I hope you like them! Monday, March 10th, 2008 - Wow, it's been a crazy couple of weeks for me! I resigned from Meetup this past Friday. I'd only been there a few short months, but another opportunity came up that I think will be a much better fit for me and as much as I hated to leave Meetup, it was something I had to do! The good news is, I have a few weeks off before I start my new job and I'm planning a trip somewhere! Meredith can't come (grad school) and I don't know anyone else who can take off on such short notice, so it looks like I'll be traveling out alone again. I'm thinking either Egypt, Peru (Machu Picchu!) or maybe Morocco! So if you live in one of those places and would be willing to play tour guide (or offer up a couch for a night or two!), please leave me a comment or shoot me an email (brianbattjer AT gmail.com)! Also feel free to suggest other awesome places that I should think about checking out. Big new update this week! PROMISE! Sunday, February 24th, 2008 - Down below you'll find just one new entry! There are more on the way, but I wanted to post second half of our trip to Grand Cayman (because Joe's going there with his wife on Tuesday and because he asked so nicely). Feel free to email me if you have any questions, Joe! Monday, February 18th, 2008 - 41 comments? 78 comments? Who knew that "i keep a diary" readers were so political? Color me surprised! Down below you'll find two brand new entries (and hopefully I'll publish a few more next week!). I hope you enjoy them! Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 - It's super-Tuesday, y'all! Make sure to vote! Update coming soon! Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 - Wow, who would thunk my little ol' comment about wanting to maybe live somewhere else for a while would spark so many comments? Thanks for all the great feedback, I think this was the first time I ever mentioned anything political on this site, so it was probably a shock to any readers out there who have never met me in person and didn't know that I was a lefty, pinko windbag. ;) Who knows if we'll actually end up moving, I was just putting the feelers out there, because if a sweet-ass job opportunity dropped in my lap and I was able to spend a year or two out of the US (and maybe even get dual citizenship in the EU) that'd be suh-weet! Anyway, thanks again for all the comments, it was nice to read so many different views. (Even if you most of you were wrong! FAIL!) Hahaha. Down below you'll find three brand new entries with nary a political rant! Enjoy! Monday, January 21st, 2008 - Happy Monday! See? I'm trying my hardest to at least publish every other week! In doing the latest batch of entries, I realized I'd mislabeled two folders and so I've gone back and added them in their proper chronological order. Any chance anyone from Scandanavia reads this site? Meredith and I have been pretty bummed out about the United States lately and we'd love to move to country where the majority our income won't be spent on devices that kill brown people (or any people for that matter). So if you live somewhere awesome (Norway and Denmark, I'm looking at you!) and know of any computer-related jobs where speaking English is a plus, please email me (brianbattjer AT google's email site .com). Thanks! Hope you enjoy the two new entries! Sunday, January 6th, 2008 - Holy shit! It's 2008! Happy New Year, everyone! Sorry I haven't updated lately. I had a real solid streak of steady updates, but then I got sick and ended up spending most of December sick in bed. I got a cold that turned into the flu that turned into bronchitis. It got so bad that I didn't even get to see my family for the holidays because I was too sick to take the train out to NJ! Boo! I'm finally all better and I'm happy to be posting two brand new entries! More on the way soon (assuming I can manage to stay germ-free!) I hope you enjoy 'em! Monday, December 10th, 2007 - Happy Monday again! I'm trying to update at least once every two weeks...so in keeping with that, I managed to eek out two new entries down below! One of the new entries is about when I sang in a karaoke competition and while I was working on that entry, it reminded me of a time just a few weeks ago when I was out at karaoke with Posh Tony and he brought me up on stage with him to sing a duet of Easy Lover by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey (from Earth, Wind & Fire). Anyway, I ended up getting Easy Lover stuck in my head which led me to look up the video on YouTube (which I then proceed to watch 10 times in a row). Not only is it a WAY better song than I remembered, I can't believe how badly it made me want to be best friends with Phil Collins! I'm so not even joking. Who knew the whitest guy ever has so much soul? Watch it now. If this shit doesn't brighten your mood, nothing will! Monday, November 26th, 2007 - Happy Monday! I start my new job today and I wanted to make sure I posted some new entries before I get all caught up in first week craziness! Down below you'll find four new entries! And that's not all! In addition to the new entries, I'm launching the beta version of a photo-tagging system that I wrote! If you look on the right-hand side of all the entries from 2006, you'll notice there's now a list of tags featured in each entry! If you click on a tag-link, it'll launch a new window showing you all the photos (only from 2006) that have been tagged with that word! So be sure to click on a few tags and let me know what you think! (So far my favorite tags are laugh, jump, tongue, and yes, alright, boobs!). Fun! Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 - Hey, hey, hey! Check it out: Three brand new entries down below and more on the way soon! Meredith and I moved into a new apartment and we're busy unpacking, but I'm all done with my old job and I've got a few weeks off before I start my new one (at Meetup.com) so as long as the unpacking continues to go smoothly, I should have some time to post more entries soon! Does anyone that reads this belong to any Meetup groups? If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the company! Shoot me an email or just leave a comment! Hope you enjoy the new entries! Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 - Happy Halloween Everyone! (I still haven't figured out what I'm going to be! If you've got any good costume ideas, leave a comment!). Three new entries down below! More coming soon! Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 - Happy Tuesday! See? What did I tell you about this fancy new "hassle-free" publishing system? Less work for me means more entries for you! Just four days later and I'm back to post three more entries (which you'll find down below). By the way, remember how I mentioned I was laid up in bed sick? It was because I got a staph infection ON MY FACE! Apparently, everyone always has the bacteria that causes these infections, Staphylococcus aureus, living on their skin at all times. But if you get a cut or a pimple or something and the staph gets into it, it can get serious pretty quickly - which is exactly what happened to me. I went to bed on Wednesday night feeling like I was getting a pimple on my right nostril, and then I woke up on Thursday morning it was evening bigger and REALLY starting to hurt. By around noon on Thursday, I was feeling like I had a fever, so I left early and went to the doctors. My doctor knew what it was and prescribed me antibiotics, but told me that "The meds could take up to 48 hours to work. And your face is going to get a lot worse in that time before it starts to get better." I didn't think much of his words at the time, but when I woke up on Friday morning and my face looked like this:  I took them to heart. Anyway, today's Tuesday, and save for a lil' crusty scab on my right nostril where this whole mess started, my face is pretty much back to normal. I hope you like the new entries down below! Saturday, October 20th, 2007 - Okay! Sorry for the month-long radio silence! I've been hard at work writing a custom publishing system for this site. (And since I'm a C- PHP programmer at best, it took me a lot longer than I thought it would!). Anyway, after almost 10 long years of cranking out these entries in frame-based(!!!) HTML-templates that were written by me in the mid-nineties when I was first learning HTML, I'm happy to report that going forward, all of the new entries will be dynamic! This is probably only exciting to me because it means that I no longer have to go through all the bullshit of hand-coding each entry and manually updating everything! So now that this site is pretty much "hassle free" for me, I'll try to start updating more frequently! There are two new entries down below and I'll try to publish a few more in the next few days (because I'm currently sick as a dog and don't anticipate I'll feel up to doing much else for the next few days). I hope you like them! Monday, September 24th, 2007 - Happy Monday, Everyone! I've been hard at work the last few nights and I've managed to crank out 6 new entries which you'll find down below. I even managed to finish posting all the pics from 2005! So next time I update this site, you'll be seeing pics from 2006 *GASP!* This site is now only 22 months behind - that's the most-current it's been in years! Gooooo, me! I'll keep on trying to crank 'em out and get even more caught up. In the meantime, I hope you like the SIX NEW ENTRIES down below! Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 - Today is sort of a bummer of an anniversary for most New Yorkers so I figured I'd try to do my part to help lighten peoples' day by posting some new entries of my life from almost two years ago! (I know, I know - this blog is really far behind. But whatever, it's more fun for me to write about stuff and reminisce about it than it is to try to post about stuff that just happened. It's like memory lane!). Anyway, it's been a while since I last posted because Meredith and I went away on a month-long vacation! We spent 5 days in the United Arab Emirates staying with our friends Bernadette (who I met online through this site!!!) and her fiance Philip in Dubai and then with Meredith's friend Faisal in Abu Dhabi! After our layover in the UAE, we flew to Thailand and spend the rest of the month island hopping, and scuba diving! I started loading some of our pics onto my Flickr but here's a few of my faves as a sneak peek!  I finally got to meet Bernadette and her fiance Phil in person! We have a lot of friends in common, and one day Bernadette Googled the name of one of our mutual friend's names and came across this site. Anyway, we started IMming, quickly became online friends and had a running joke "If you're ever in my town, you've got a place to stay!" So when Meredith and I were booking our tickets to Thailand, I saw that if we flew on Emirates Airlines, we could layover in Dubai. Bernadette and Phil made good on their offer and were hands down the best hosts we'd ever had the pleasure of staying with. Thanks guys!  Bernadette works for one of the wealthiest families in the UAE and I got to go to his palace and see the cheetahs that he raises in his backyard to give as gifts to the other sheiks. (He looks ferocious, but he's actually only yawning in this photo. Hahah).  We went undie-swimming in the water right at the foot of the famous Burj Al Arab. (We were going to go skinny dipping but at the last minute Bernadette made us realize that it probably wasn't such a smart idea. While the UAE is pretty progressive, it's still a Muslim country and stuff like that doesn't fly so well - especially if you're caught doing it with a girl who has a Muslim last name like Bern does).  We also go to go skiing indoors (!!!) at Ski Dubai. I've wanted to do this for years and it was totally as nutso as I always had dreamed it would be.  I also got to try on some local clothes, thanks to Faisal who hooked me up with some of his duds.  Here's me and Faisal cold-pimping in our dishdashas (the white robe-like garment) and keffiyehs (the traditional Arab headdress) on the grounds of his house in Abu Dhabi.  Then in Thailand, I got to spend some quality time with my good buddy Jeremy whom I hadn't seen in 11 years (because he's been traveling in India and setting up schools in Thailand)!  And lastly, here's a pic of Meredith and I doing some river tubing in the rain down in Khao Sok National Park. (I just wanted to post a few of my faves. I took over 2,000 pics so you can expect a multi-parter covering the whole trip sometime in the year 2009. Hahaha). |
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