Category Archives: Friends

Rebecca, the big green monster

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(this post has nothing to do with the Red Sox or Fenway Park)

Peter and I had dinner on Friday with my long, lost childhood friend, ***Laura Finizio|http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Laura_Finizio*** and her brand new fiance, Johnny. I’d say it’s been 7ish years since we’ve seen each other, but we have kept in touch through IM and email. The four of us met at our local Applebees and had a nice dinner… it was great to catch up and chat. A good time was had by all.

The jealousy comes into play when you hear what Laura and Johnny are up to. Both have left their unsatisfying jobs in Maryland, have bought an RV trailer and a truck and are spending a year driving around the US of A. Man o Man do I wish I had the guts/confidence/money/time to do that! They have plans to stop along the way and work in exchange for lodging and food… and are sure to meet a ton of cool people along the way.

I have been lucky enough to have traveled quite a bit in my life, but a trip like this would really take the cake. Someday….someday!

Biggs Stuff

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Last night I had the pleasure of driving down to Hyannis to help Jeremy and Angela kick start their website design. I had given them some homework, and they had started to come up with ideas for the site – colors, layout, content, etc. I gave them a few pointers, answered some questions, and gave them more homework. They have registered a really clever domain name which I can’t wait to post on our blog, but their site isn’t quite ready for prime time yet… so it will have to wait.

I spent 2.5 hours driving down to Hyannis, 3 hours there, and another 2 hours driving back – almost the same amount of time as a normal day at work. But you know what? When I’m doing something I love — helping people with technology, and hanging out with good friends — it really doesn’t matter. I’ll drive as far as I have to drive. It helps that the drive down to Cape Cod is actually pretty nice. Except for the part where I sat in traffic underneath the city of Boston for almost 40 minutes. True, I did paint a rosy picture of the tunnel in the driving video… but it isn’t always like that!

Contact Contest

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I was looking up some information in my Yahoo! address book this morning, when I noticed a little ad to the side of the page – “Enter the Address Book Sweepstakes”. Intrigued, I clicked through. Apparently, Yahoo! is running a contest where if you add at least three new people to your Address Book, you will be entered for a chance to win one of three adventure vacations. So I thought I’d sign up, because hey, who wouldn’t want a free vacation?
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Arr, Shipwreck!

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On Saturday, Becky and I had Jeremy and Angela over for dinner. We haven’t seen too much of them recently, since Jeremy has been working crazy hours for Back-to-School season at Staples, so it was good to hang out, talk, and catch up.

Since Becky was at work for most of the day, I was in charge of preparing a meal for dinner. I’ll freely admit that Becky has a much greater knack for cooking than I, so she is usually the one to prepare our meals. But, I was determined to cook something yummy, so I turned to the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook. Crock pot recipes are great, of course, since you just prepare the ingredients, put them in, set the timer, and “Forget it”. Yep.

The recipe I selected was called “Shipwreck”. To be quite honest, I selected it mostly because the name sounded interesting. 🙂 We had most of the ingredients, and I went out and got the others that we didn’t have. I put it all together as directed, and when I served it later that night, the consensus was “Yum!” I have to say that it didn’t look so appealing, but after we tasted it, it was quickly consumed.

Anyway, here is the recipe, along with some notes from me:

qqq|Shipwreck

Makes 8 servings We got 6, but probably because I used fewer potatoes

Ingredients:
1 lb. ground beef, browned
4-5 potatoes, cut in French-fry-like strips I only used three potatoes here, 4-5 just seemed like too much. But you could probably use more. Some sort of potato-slicing device would probably make this easier.
1-2 onions, chopped
16-oz. can light red kidney beans, drained
1/4 lb. Velveeta cheese, cubed Next time I’ll probably use more cheese.
10 3/4-oz. can tomato soup
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
butter

1. Layer in slow cooker in this order: ground beef, potatoes, onions, kidney beans, and cheese.
2. Pour soup over top.
3. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Dot with butter.
5. Cover.
6. Cook on Low 6-8 hours.
7. Serve to hungry and delighted guests!|qqq

All in all, it was a successful first attempt at crock pot cookery for yours truly!

Holiday Revels

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We headed out to Townsend yesterday for the Lee family’s annual Labor Day Pool Party/Cook Out. The weather, surprising, turned out quite nicely. Warm sun, warmish pool, and cool air in the evening made for a very pleasant day. It was great to see people that we haven’t seen in several months or even since last year’s party! A special note…Congratulations to Zach and Andrea on thier upcoming nuptials!! The photos are ***online|http://gallery.prwdot.org/labor_day_04***, and you can also check out some of ***last year’s photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/labor_day_03?page=3***.

ppp|  |ppp

(Those pics were carried over from Peter’s post, which has been deleted since it was pretty much the same thing Becky posted about – our first ever blogging collision!)

In addition to the fantastic company there was some very yummy food. Geoff and Deanna brought a dip made from peanut butter and fluff and I’m not sure what else. We dipped graham crackers and chocolate in it…YUMM! I’m going to have to get the recipe. I made cheese balls wiith Wheat Thins crackers. I thought they turned out pretty well. The recipe is as follows 🙂

qqq|Pineapple Cheese Balls

2 pkgs of Neufachatel Cream Cheese
1 8oz can of Crushed Pineapple (drained)
1/4 cup chopped Green Pepper
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 Teaspon of Seasoned Salt
2ish cups of Chopped nuts

Cream the Cream Cheese until soft and mix in the pineapple. Mix, mix, mix… and then add the peppers, onions, salt and 1 cup of the chopped nuts. Chill. Form the mixture in to two balls and roll in remaining nuts. Chill until serving (you may want to bring it to room temp before setting out)

Serve with crackers or sliced veggies. Enjoy!|qqq

Fare-Will

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My hostee, fellow Apple fan, and friend ***Will Farnham|http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/*** is leaving for Japan to fulfill a one-year contract with the ***JET Programme|http://www.jetprogramme.org/***. Drop by his ***blog entry|http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/001906.html*** and wish him farewell!

News Bites

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Wednesday, May 19: I gave a presentation to the ***MacWoburn|http://www.macwoburn.org/*** Macintosh User Group on “Blogging With The Mac.” The presentation went well, and the attendees had some good questions about blogging in general, as well as the Mac OS applications I had reviewed in the process of preparing for the meeting. For those who couldn’t attend, I have a complete website available which details the essence of the presentation. It includes reviews of six different Mac OS X blogging applications, and you can find it ***here|http://prwdot.org/blogging/***.

Saturday, May 22: Becky and I went down to Hyannis to visit Jeremy and Angela. We had a delicious dinner and then went out to get some ice cream at the opening night of ***Four Seas Ice Cream|http://www.fourseasicecream.com/*** in Centerville. I had peanut butter chocolate chip, while Becky had a pink-colored mint chip. Yum!

I brought along a couple video tapes so that Jeremy and I could continue our regular viewing of ***The Shield|http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/the_shield/***. We’ve been getting together to watch it since its debut in March of 2002 on FX. It’s admittedly quite an intense show (“too intense for network television”), but we’re strangely fascinated with it, along with millions of other viewers. If you haven’t been following the series, it’s probably a bit too late to tune in now, unless you buy the DVD’s and try to catch up.

Upcoming: We’re going to be out of town for the next three weekends, which should be fun. Two of them involve ***Martha’s Vineyard|http://www.mvy.com/***, and one involves ***New Jersey|http://www.state.nj.us/***. We are also planning a road trip to ***Ohio|http://www.ohiotourism.com/home.asp***, later this summer, to see my family, with a side trip to “***camp out|http://www.niagarakoa.net/***” at ***Niagara Falls|http://www.infoniagara.com/***. (Note the quotes around camp out… though we may be sleeping in a tent, it’s far from roughing it.)

In the meantime, it’s ***business|http://www.christianbook.com/*** as usual for me, and for Becky her new job with ***SPNEA|http://www.spnea.org/*** will be starting soon! If you haven’t already, stop by her entry a couple of posts down from this one and leave her a note! 🙂

Mr. and Mrs. Biggs!

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Becky and I are back from the Cape. We had a great time being involved in Jeremy and Angela’s wedding, and the wedding itself was a great success. We may write a more detailed entry later, but for now I just wanted to let everyone know that the photos from my camera are online (I say ‘from my camera’ because I didn’t take all of them… credit goes to various other people who took photos while I was otherwise occupied):

***Jeremy and Angela’s Wedding|http://gallery.prwdot.org/jeremy_and_angela?page=1***

Photos cover the span of time from when I arrived on the Cape Thursday night to when we left the cape Sunday afternoon. Enjoy the photos, and watch for more details later! 🙂