chris a

October 25, 2003

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While Chris and I goofed around with our cameras,

October 25, 2003

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Heltmets? Check. We had originally planned on driving west to a nearby city called Hania but when we looked more carefully at the map, we realized it was over 75 km away (which is really far by scooter). So we instead decided to head to Balí, a small beach town about 35 km away.

October 25, 2003

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I don't know if you know this, but Greeks drive like crazy people. Wait, that doesn't quite do it justice. More like FUH-HUH-HUH-KING CAH-RAZY PEOPLE! It makes no sense. You walk around Crete and all you see are these chilled out playas all taking it easy, sipping their coffee, taking their four-hour breaks...but all of a sudden, put one of them chilled dudes behind the wheel of a anything with a motor and all of the sudden they've GOT FUCKING PLACES TO BE SO MOVE OR BE KILLED! With that in mind, full-well knowing that renting scooters on a Greek island might lead to an early death, we decided to head to the restaurant across the street and enjoy what might very well be our last meal:

October 25, 2003

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After we finished eating (around 11:30am) we walked back over to the scooter rental place next to our resort only to find this sign on the door "Be Back at 16:00!" The place had opened at 10am and by 11:30 (or maybe 11?) the guy working there needed to take a SIX AND A HALF HOUR BREAK. Greek people hate work like a fat kid hates running. After driving around in a car for awhile (and finding that most of the rental places were closed for the season) we finally found a local guy who was nice enough to have us follow him to a small rental shop he knew of down by the water. We plunked down 14 Euros each and BAM! we all got scooters. Here's Chris posing with his.

October 25, 2003

scooter ↗+

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So. Tired. Must. Sleep. Soon.

October 24, 2003

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Bonus close-up! Still going (albeit slighly more red-faced)! Chris can hold himself like that for like 10 minutes. It's insane.

October 24, 2003

best ↗+
windy ↗+

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After a quick lesson from Chris, Grant wowed us all with his ability to do the "It's Windy!" trick!

October 24, 2003

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After our quick half-time show, we decided to try our luck in one more bar. Upon returning from the bathroom upstairs, Fatty actually managed to capture with his camera the Force Field that was physically preventing all girls from seeing us (nevermind actually letting them get close enough to dance with us). Once he showed us this pic, we knew we'd better just call it a night.

October 24, 2003

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Chris opted for the old "Sure is windy here in Crete!" trick by hanging horizontally from the "Child Molester Zone" sign pole we'd seen earlier.

October 24, 2003

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Not wanting to make me feel bad, Chris was quick to throw down with a quick "See, not only pussies have to hang from window?" show of solidarity. What a fuggin guy, eh?

October 24, 2003

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Around midnight, we finally got motivated enough to all hop into the car and drive into downtown Rethymnon. We sat at an outdoor cafe right on the water, had some coffee and chocolate cake, then around 1am we started roaming the streets looking for some interesting bars or clubs to hit.

October 24, 2003

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Chris "The Greek" Apostalou...

October 24, 2003

crete ↗+

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Live Show gets the thumbsdown! Here's us in the parking lot trying to assess the financial damage. Our four Russian "strippers" managed to fleece the four of us for a grand total of €120 in less than 20 minutes! And we still didn't manage to see any heines! We hopped in the car to drive the remaing 1/4 mile back to our resort, and in the moment of silence after we were finished laughing hysterically at what had just happened we all heard Grant say quietly to himself: "Hmmmmm. A hundred Euros, eh?" Hahahahaha.

October 24, 2003

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On the way back to the car a little after 3am, we found another sidewalk snack shop and decided to get something to eat. We all ended up ordering the Cretan equivalent of (my favorite bo-bo NYC food) the infamous Rosario's "Frankie and Cheese." (special shout out to the Crowley brothers, Dens & J Crowley, who have both frequently use their web pages to expound upon the most excellent deliciousness of this culinary wonder of the Lower East Side)

October 24, 2003

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Chris (being Greek) demonstrates the proper way to wear this "Can I Lick Your Clit?" souvenir from Greece.

October 24, 2003

tongue ↗+
wtf ↗+

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Here we are, four dudes surrounded by nothing but totally hot women from a Greek island who want to have NOTHING TO DO WITH US. Liberia's got nothing on us, THIS is hell on earth.

October 24, 2003

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Being that all the road signs were in Greek, we elected Chris to drive. We packed up the car, busted out the map, and started the 80 kilometer drive from Heraklion to Rethymnon.

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 24, 2003

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"Parliament!"

October 23, 2003

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...and then got the hell off that windy-ass bridge.

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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We all ended up oversleeping and had to rush out of the door so as not to be late meeting up with Grant's parents, grandmother (Pam!) and (hot) sister, Gemma in Covent Garden. Grant was freaking out the whole ride in. He was like "We can't be late! My dad'll kill us!"

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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Chris (being a ninja and all) out of the blue decided to climb the giant, bronze lion statue. Evenutally (with much more difficulty) the rest of us managed to climb up there with him, but I can't find the picture of all four us up there (which is a good thing because a picture of the four of us snuggled up riding a lion statue would be so gay that if I posted it on the world wide net there'd be a risk that it could cause a chain reaction and turn the entire world gay).

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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...the center emergency row! Let's hear it for extra leg room. Awww, yeah.

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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...and grabbed the train to Heathrow to catch our 10:20pm flight and kick off the next leg of the trip: Crete!

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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...a huge Cretan man that looked like a bizarro "Ogre Version" of our good friend Ross Martin. Not willing to let him escape undocumented, we dispatched Chris (who speaks fluent Greek) to tell the giant Ross-Ogre (R'ogre, if you will) that he looked just like a friend of ours and would he mind posing for a picture. There was an uncomfortably long pause as he pondered our request (which I spent fearing he was about to crush all of our heads like grapes) but instead he gave a polite nod and posed for this fantastic pic.

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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Chris the Greek coldlamps on the Greek Street lamp.

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

climb ↗+

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...and a light schhhhnack.

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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After that, we hopped back onto the tube, headed back to Charlene's flat...

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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Hi, we're tourists.

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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Grammy Pammy, Fatty and Chris.

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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Then it was back to more sightseeing. Clark: "Look kids! Big Ben!"

european vacation part 6: sightseeing with the stoddards .

October 23, 2003

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Our schtick was apparently so convincing that they even seated us in one of the cool private rooms in the back (that we ended up sharing with Tony Chambers, the Creative Director for Wallpaper Magazine. Oooooooooh! Fancy!)

October 22, 2003

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London being London, it started raining just a few minutes after we got off the tube. We looked around for umbrellas and these were the only ones we could find. "Haaaaaaaaaaaay!"

October 22, 2003

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Fatty grabbed this pic of us too busy eating to look up. (Oh, and Charlene was with us too but for some reason she's hiding in all these pics!).

October 22, 2003

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Reunited! Grant had been in LA working on a TV show and we hadn't seen him in about a month. He arrived in London in the morning and woke our asses up. We showered, got dressed, and headed around the corner to a "builder's diner" right around the corner from her flat and we all ordered...

October 22, 2003

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Dani & Chris.

October 22, 2003

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I'm guessing this had to be a Van Halen song? (Check out Fatty pretending to play his guitar around Grant like he's in a Poison video. Hahaha.).

October 22, 2003

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Yes, Hallelujah! It's raining men!

October 22, 2003

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Charlene doing her impression of the guy who let us in.

October 22, 2003

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Group shot.

October 22, 2003

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After dinner, we stayed in Soho and upon Charlene's suggestion, decided to see if we could talk our way into the Kingly Club (which is this private, uber-exclusive, membership-only club that had only opened a few days ago). The rest of the group hung back and Charlene and I headed for the door to attempt to crash the club.

October 22, 2003

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So in the course of shooting the shit with Tony Chambers, it came up that we had wanted to sing karaoke that night but that the only place that we knew of had already closed. Tony leaned in close and in a conspirital tone told us about a private, karaoke speakeasy he knew of that operated afterhours on the second floor of a tiny, nearby sushi bar. After promising we'd keep it secret, he disclosed to us the location. (Looking back, he was probably just totally psyched to have our loud, American, clearly NOT VIP-asses out of his little private, members only backroom!)

October 22, 2003

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After a nap and some tea, we all met up later that night for pre-dinner drinks at a bar called The Social. L to R: Grant, Danni, Chris, Kate (I think), Layla, Fatty, Charlene and Grant Morris.

October 22, 2003

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Then Chris rolled his hat up into a leeeetle beret and started wandering the streets asking for directions in a feminine, French accent. I almost shit myself as Londoners elected to tromp through puddles rather than going near him and risking any type of interaction.

October 22, 2003

umbrella ↗+

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Unless I can see the words on the monitor, I have no idea what anybody's singing in any of these pictures - so I'm just going to make it up. Here's Chris singing "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M.

October 22, 2003

karaoke ↗+

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Chris and Grant posing in front of "the Orchard" sign. (They met back in 1999 when they both worked at The Orchard record label).

October 22, 2003

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In order to get from the parking lot to the actual building that surrounds the spa, you have to walk this long path that cuts through piles of lava rock.

October 21, 2003

me ↗+

At this point not only were we ridiculously over tired, we were drunk taboot. We pleaded for Charlene to take us home and put us to bed.

October 21, 2003

GRANT! It was one thing for Lil' Buddy to miss out on Iceland, but a free, surprise concert of his favorite live band? That was just too much.

October 21, 2003

Chris and me. (Oh yeah, and this is an ACDC concert so prepare yourself to see nothing but tongues and "metal horns" in the rest of these pics. Sorry, I don't make the rules, I just follow them).

October 21, 2003

Fatty and Chris waiting for the tube.Me and Charlene. We hopped the tube from Charlene's place (the Caledonian Road stop)...

October 21, 2003

...who just a few seconds later met us outside to hook us up with free tickets...

October 21, 2003

Charlene called her friend Layla (who works for the company that promotes Carling Beer)...

October 21, 2003

7:54pm: We arrived at Heathrow totally cracked out. We were so tired that we decided that we were going to tell Charlene that we were up for maybe grabbing one drink but then after that we needed to get some sleep. (Time Elapsed With Only 15 minutes of Sleep: 28h 24m)

October 21, 2003

fatty ↗+
me ↗+

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Chris-san practices his crane kick.

October 21, 2003

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Oh, and it was really windy.

October 21, 2003

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Here's the entrance to the spa. The spa is this huge, brand new building that surrounds the 16,000 sqaure foot swimming lagoon.

October 21, 2003

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10:45am: When we had driven into Reykjavik earlier that morning the darkness had hidden the alieness of the Icelandic countryside. In the daylight, it was absolutely breathtaking. Rocky fields made up of lava rock covered in electric green moss stretched in all directions. We were so blown away that we eventually decided to pull over and take some pictures. (Time Elapsed With No Sleep: 20h 15m).

October 21, 2003

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Chris and The Fatty.

October 21, 2003

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Fatty and Chris walking back down to our car.

October 21, 2003

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Look at our cold, red, saltwater-irritated faces. Ouchie.

October 21, 2003

fatty ↗+
me ↗+

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We returned the rental car, made it through customs and headed to the cafeteria to grab something to eat and drink five liters of water each.

October 21, 2003

airport ↗+

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After the museum, Smari remembered that he'd only put a few minutes of time in the meter back at the Tjorn, because he'd only been planning on being there for a few minutes. So we all headed back to the Tjorn.

October 21, 2003

fatty ↗+

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Then Smari took us to the Hallgrimskirkja church, the tallest building in the city.

October 21, 2003

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Chris and Smari's son (who's name I forgot!)

October 21, 2003

baby ↗+

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I should also at this point tell you all that we carried Fatty's rad little MiniDV video camera with us throughout the entire trip and we ended up shooting just over 14 hours of tape (which I'm in the process of editing into a full-length video diary). Over the next few months I'll be posting some of the choice clips from it. Woo.

October 21, 2003

fatty ↗+

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8:02am (yep, still dark). We made it to downtown Reykjavik (the world's northernmost capital) and parked our teeny-tiny Eurocar in a public lot near the Tjörn, which is a big, man-made lake in the center of the oldest part of town.

We didn't manage to get a picture of him, but on the walk over to the Tjörn, this thirty-something year-old guy, who had what looked like a giant lobotomy scar running horizontally across his forehead, ran up to us and said "Where are you from?" in perfect English. "New York City," we told him. "Oh, yeah? What do you do?" Me: "I work at a software company." He then leaned in really close towards my face and asked, "A SOFTware company, or a softWARE company?" Then cackled maniacally and ran away.

October 21, 2003

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Here's Chris and I trying our best to not look cold for a photo. We didn't want to pack a whole bunch of winter clothers that we'd only be using for a half-day in Iceland so all we had with us to fend of the 4°C temperatures (about 39°F) were our light jackets.

October 21, 2003

me ↗+
iceland ↗+

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...without any problems...

October 21, 2003

airport ↗+

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...and then the realization that we were actually IN ICELAND hit us. Iceland! Oh, snap.

October 21, 2003

fatty ↗+
me ↗+

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Miraculously, he managed to avoid getting a ticket (but he did accidentally lock himself out of the car...Doh!). We thanked him for the tour (it's still one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for me - so Smari, if you read this, thanks again!) and then told him that we were thinking about checking out the Blue Lagoon on the way back to catch our flight but that the lady at the rental car place had seemed underwhelmed when we asked her about it. Smari told us "Fuck that lady. If there's only one thing you could see in Iceland, it should be the Blue Lagoon. Don't miss it. Go there now." That settled it. We bid Smari farewell, and headed for Grindavik.

October 21, 2003

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After we got our money all squared away, we headed over to Hertz and rented a car. We told the woman at the counter that we only had a few hours and we asked her if, besides Reykjavik, there was anything that we should be sure not to miss in the short time we had. She was like "Eh, not really." So we were like, "What about that Blue Lagoon place? We saw video about it on the plane and it looked amazing! Is that worth checking out?" Once again we were met with a tepid "Eh, it's ok" and a shrug. (We wrote off her lethargy as an effect of the less than four hours of sunshine Iceland receives during its winter days).

October 21, 2003

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7:25am: Lost. We were right on target until the highway we were on turned into this crazy-ass rotary that shot us off in the wrong direction. We stopped at a gas station for directions, but nobody there spoke enough English to be helpful - so we hunkered down with the map and tried to figure it out. (Check out Fatty's priceless "We're lost" expression).

October 21, 2003

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6:40am (local time and still pitch black out). We spent the hour-long drive into Reykjavik betting on what time the sun would rise. Price Is Right rules in effect: the one who managed to come closest, without going over would be declared the winner. It was then agreed upon that the winner would get to make out with Gemma, Grant's hot little sister, (mmmmmm....Gemma) when we stopped at Grant's parent's house in Essex on the last leg of our trip. But then we all remembered that Gemma had a boyfriend. (Booooo).

October 21, 2003

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We spent our cab ride discussing tricks and traps we could employ to scare the crap out of Grant and capture it on tape.

October 20, 2003

fatty ↗+
taxi ↗+

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And look, I even managed to figure out how to take a half-decent pic of myself, which was no easy task, because it's a big, heavy, digital SLR that you have to hold with a side-grip. (Which is why I've got that weird "looks like I'm pooping" expression on my face.)

October 20, 2003

me ↗+

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T-minus 3h 50 minutes until arrival.

October 20, 2003

airplane ↗+

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8:30pm: We got our boarding call. Here's Fatty's picture of me...

October 20, 2003

me ↗+
airport ↗+

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Here's three portraits I took playing around with my cam. Chris (not so good, was getting used to some of the manual settings).

October 20, 2003

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Chris uses Fatty's inflatable neck pillow to do his impression of a Greek Orthodox priest. (He's so going to hell now).

October 20, 2003

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We breezed through security and made it to our gate just a little past 6pm (which gave us just over 2 hours to kill). We grabbed a snack in the cafeteria, read a bit and (what else?) goofed out and took pictures. (Chris and I had both just gotten new cameras so we spent a lot of time familiarizing ourselves with how to use them.

October 20, 2003

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Boarding.

October 20, 2003

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...taking a picture of him. Hi, we're dorks.

October 20, 2003

fatty ↗+

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Before getting in the cab, we neurotically checked to make sure we had our passports with us for the 11th time. You know, just in case one of us had somehow managed to loose it on the 25ft trek from Fatty's apartment to the street.

October 20, 2003

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Chris got to Fatty's around 3:45pm. We spent the next half an hour going through all of our checklists and making sure that we had everything we needed.

October 20, 2003

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4:13pm: Outside of Fatty's apartment, bags all packed and double-checked we coldlamped for one last photo before hailing a cab.

October 20, 2003

fatty ↗+
me ↗+

Later in the afternoon, we met up with Chris back at Fatty's and ran through our "Things To Pack For Vacation" checklist. Here's Chris on Fatty's back porch getting ready to have the eargasm of a lifetime.

the day before vacation

October 16, 2003

penis ↗+

Hahaha.

the day before vacation

October 16, 2003

After dinner we all went back to my place to take a nap. Everyone fell asleep except me (damn you, coffee at dinner!). Chris fell asleep on the couch and I woke him up by throwing my roommate's cat, Herman, on him. (Yet more animal abuse).

June 28, 2003

Saturday night Grant made reservations for the Über-fancy restaurant, Suba. The food was so pretty, that our entries all merritted us all posing with them.

June 28, 2003

Here's Chris (doing his impression of Robin Williams) and me giving mad props to our deep-friend cinamonny-doughnut thingy that was filled with chocolate and so kicked all the other desserts' palsy asses.

June 28, 2003

me ↗+
dessert ↗+

Here's Chris with his roasted duck breast (served with puree avocado and grilled sea scallops).