as usual, i am way behind on my weblog entries (in spite of my previous note saying nothing much had happened). well, lots has happened, but there is just not enuf time as usual. here is a sad happening tho:

on 12 mar 2004, the rose inn caught fire and burned down. we had our second wedding celebration there last year. here a some pictures (i am unfortunately reproducing these without permission or attribution because i forgot to note down the photographer’s names):

sad. there was a fire in 2000, but it was localized; this time the building is a complete loss. the owners say they will rebuild, tho. that will certainly take a lot of work.

thursday: after arriving back home from ithaca, we had lentil soup for dinner and then watched brotherhood of the wolf. its kinda a silly french horror/fantasy/action movie, but still entertaining.

friday: amanda and i worked, as usual. lainie, scarlet (amanda’s ob/gyn partner), and erika came over for dinner. as per scarlet’s request, we made wild mushroom risotto, a version of my innumerable stuffed mushrooms, and salad with toasted goat cheese thingies. not bad for a quick dinner in under an hour.

saturday: we had brunch at solid grounds with erika and dave. we actually had not been there in a while. we contemplated going to see matrix revolutions at an imax theatre with erika, but amanda and i had a previous dinner engagement. amanda went shopping with lainie in the afternoon whilst i did some errands and went to the gym.

we went over to scarlet’s place for a pre-thanksgiving dinner. she and her apartmentmate had many many people over… perhaps 20 or more. i have not eaten with that many people in quite a while (excluding my wedding reception perhaps). scarlet is a dreaded fishytarian like myself, but there were many yummy vegetarian foods as well as the obligatory large hunks of meat. after dinner we played a word party game thing whilst listening to 80s records.

sunday: a had a proto migraine for much of the day, but never really developed into a full blown one. amanda was angry that i did not get any stronger drugs from dr. kuntz and that i misrepresented the frequency of my migraines when i saw him last. she was going to take matters into her own hands and get me drugged up. oh, my! just joking.

we had dinner with lainie at the lake effect diner. she is still on her emergency service rotation, so she had to drive the s.m.a.r.t. suv around at all times in case something bad happened. she made good use of the suv by driving over and on the sidewalk to get to the diner.

lainie came back to our place to study/prepare for some presentation whilst amanda studied ob/gyn stuff. she answered a few issues for the poison control center that evening. said in mock horror to amanda and i when we appeared to be ignoring her: “i’m sitting here talking to myself. i thought we were all interested in saving this guys life. am i the only one?” well, now, i understood some stuff had had been rattling off. amanda was more clueful than i, tho, but then she is the doctor (or clinical clerk 3 (cc3) actually. lainie is a more lofty pgy2 (post graduate year 2).

i amused myself with playing a game i picked up the other day: grand theft auto 3. i had heard much about it; mostly about it being a menace to society and whatnot. it is definitely quite the antisocial game, what with the wanton violence and adult themes, but it was not nearly as bad (or violent as some other less criticized games) as i had thought it would be. amanda really liked it, tho. perhaps she gains odd pleasure in mowing down people with her carjacked hummer or smacking into police cars.

monday: amanda was on call/overnight. i worked all day and did laundry, but did not do the usual cleaning since amanda would be cleaning anyway for thanksgiving. it decided to snow like hell that evening. buffalo is the first place that i have been where one gets thunder and lightening with snowstorms. it was very gusty. i took amanda some dinner at the hospital after 10pm; i went later because she had gotten pulled into a couple of c-sections, and she could not get away for dinner. driving was an adventure, but nothing too bad. the wind was strong enough to blow the subaru around even when i was not moving. crazy.

so, the usual life stuff has been going on…. i went back to ithaca, worked, came back to buffalo, worked. amanda is still in her surgery rotation at ecmc. nothing exciting is happening except that it looks to be cooling down here in buffalo (mid 70s). superlative. the summer of relative decadence has really made me very weak in regards to my lifting activities, but over the past couple of weeks i have been trying to ease back into going to the gym regularly. as of today, cardiovascularly, i am in much better shape… it looks like i have regained the level i was at in may. its not to the point i was at when i was bicyling 100-200 miles a week, but its not too shabby.

i have a bunch more wedding pictures to post from the disposable cameras we had on the tables at our wedding reception; i suppose i will get them up asap. as usual, there are gobs of things to do, but i am making progress, so i am hopeful of actually catching up on everything in the weblog.

for now, take a look at this picture:

this picture is actually one of my favorites of amanda; i usually have it sitting on my desk at work. it was taken in danby state forest (at least i think its a state forest), in february 2001, before amanda and i were together. amanda, her coworker at the time tammy, and i were hiking part of the finger lakes trail, and, as one can tell, it was quite snowy, which is why the picture is softly fuzzy. we didn’t have snowshoes, so we just postholed our way about. amanda is wearing my old mec fleece sweatshirt… an old friend of mine that i never get to wear anymore. amanda looks very different in this picture than she does normally.

look where we were on 11 jul 2003:

amanda and i are on yukness mountain. lake o’hara is in the background. you can’t tell from this picture, but shortly amanda will spike a massive fever. hmm, maybe i should finish my trip reports….

eventually, i will get a gallery put up. i also finally know how i am going to reformat the weblog. unfortunately, i have to finish my taxes this weekend first, tho. i am running out of time again! i don’t think the irs will look kindly on another extension.