Brian

So Close to Winter Sealed

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Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailA few weeks ago my friend Brian and I headed back up to camp to get the Soffit and Facia in place to seal up the addition on our camp for the winter.  We made some excellent progress on Saturday with the soffit started on the front and finished on the end.  However; Sunday we ran into some nasty weather and what should have only been a few hours worth of work turned into an entire day of sloppy wet mess working right under the overhang dropping a full 12×26+ square area of water right on our faces the entire day.  It was fantastic.

Brian was a trooper though and we toughed it out, managing to get everything installed except the last 2 pieces where the addition meets the existing roof. The rain wasn’t letting up and those pieces need a bit of measuring and figuring, not to mention a larger piece of tin than what we had.

It’s coming along nicely though, and I think I’ll be back up there soon to finish ‘er off.  Provided we get some decent weather (not rainy, cold or snow I can handle) the rest shouldn’t take more than a couple hours solo or not.

I’m hoping maybe my dad will be able to make the next trip just to look things over, but we’ll see.

A Wedding Toast

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Congrats Brian and Kelley! What a great wedding/party. EVERYONE had tons of fun, from the golf carts to watching you striptease for Kelley on the dance floor… Love it!

The Best man speech I gave at my buddy Brian’s wedding yesterday:

Ladies and gentlemen. It takes a strong and intelligent man to realize his dreams and achieve his goals in life and love. A man not afraid to live life to its fullest and embrace what is truly important. But enough about me… I’m here to talk about Brian and Kelley.

I’ve known Brian most of my life. We lived just a few miles apart. That might sound like a lot, but in Marion it’s really only like 3 houses. Later we were college roommates so naturally I know a lot about Brian, most of which is not appropriate for this type of setting so I’ll try to keep it clean.

Once Brian had a car Jeff and I never left his side. Mostly because we needed a ride. The first time we went out, we made it maybe a mile down the street, when the hood flys up like that scene in Tommy Boy and all I can hear is Brian yelling “That’s not good! That’s not good!” No Brian, it wasn’t. I could go on and on about Brian’s automobile misshaps and hijinks:

Like the multiple times he left his beat up Chevy S10 in the CarShow parking lot with the hood popped like some show car while he put in an 8hr shift at Burger King.

Or the time he was driving down a country road in that same S10 and a deer hit HIM.

Or the time he decided it was a good idea to drive THROUGH a construction zone with potholes FEET deep & his headlights off so as not to arouse suspicion. Probably one of the scariest moments in my life..

Or the time I had to take over driving on my first day with a drivers-license because Brian had been pulled over for speeding (again) and was too nervous to drive any further.

Or the time he told me he didn’t want to buy a sporty car like the Subaru STI because he didn’t need to go fast, he wanted luxury, so he went out and bought BMW’s ROADSTER.

But I’m not going to talk about any of that, because I’m supposed to tell you about what a great guy Brian is and tell you about all his magnificent qualities. Brian is Dedicated, Kind, Funny and… what’s this one? … Sorry man, I never could read your writing.

Brian is one of the funniest guys you’ll ever meet, and he has no shame, literally… I don’t know any other guy that is excited to get cat calls while dressed up as Britney spears, wearing his sister’s skirt and a wig walking down Monroe ave.

He’s up for anything, which is exactly how he got so lucky with Kelley. Kelley, I don’t think forcing him to ride the bull for 8 seconds before he’s allowed to talk to you was ever going to stop him. One time he took his pants off in the middle of a bar and traded them with a girl wearing a skirt just so she’d ride the bull.

Brian, Some of us still don’t know how you did it, but you’re a lucky guy and somehow you tricked Kelley into marrying you. She’s beautiful, smart, funny, warm, loving and caring, and she deserves a good husband. Thank God you married her before she found one.

Kelley, it’s funny how history repeats itself isn’t it? 20 some years ago your Mother and Father were putting you to bed with a dummy…and now it’s happening all over again

All kidding aside though, I’m Ecstatic for you guys. I want to thank you both for having me be part of your special day. I know Brian couldn’t be happier, I see it in his face every time he looks at Kelley.

So if everyone could raise their glasses in a toast… To Brian and Kelley,

May you have love, health & wealth; but most importantly, may you have the time together to enjoy them all.

Falling Brook – Moving In

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Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailWow! Last weekend was an insanely hectic few days.� Not only was our daughter Delilah born but we also moved into a new house.� We’re finally settling back into normalcy, well… as normal as it can be with a 1week old baby and a new house.

Even though we had to move the closing date due to little miss Lilah’s early arrival we were fortunate enough to get the sellers to agree to an early possession.� 7am last Saturday I left Rachel and her mother at the hospital so I could get the move underway and so we could be all set by discharge time (which I convinced the nurses to do LATE in the day).

I did the final walk-through at 8am, picked up the 26′ U-Haul truck at 9 (no I’ve never driven something that big before) and we had the move under way by 10am.� At the new house a little after noon with the truck and my father’s snowmobile trailer fully loaded.� Completely unloaded by 1:30pm.� Not too shabby.

Couldn’t have possibly done it without all the help.� Thanks George, Dale, Brian, Ryan, Mike,Cory, Bill, Chris, Eric.

During the whole process I made the following time-lapse.� There are big gaps because well… I was busy.

Shorts (The Bar) – Rick Rolled

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My buddy Charles was in town this past weekend for his birthday and we were out and about in Fairport NY.  Everyone was a little toasted by the end of the night and Brian and Charles took advantage of the empty bar at Shorts to subject everyone to a little of of their finest Karaoke.

It’s worth a look (and a listen) because it really is quite atrocious, as all good Karaoke should be.

BBQ with Cake

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For my birthday Rachel organized a surprise party by tricking me into a dinner at Dinosaur BBQ.  It was a load of fun and completely unexpected.  It was my first surprise party and I’d call it a success.

To top off the great BBQ dinner at Dinosaur Rachel got everybody together for the Cake concert.  Cake is one of my favorite bands and she had been making excuses for why we weren’t able to go.  When I opened my birthday card at dinner and found 2 tickets for the concert I was ecstatic.  The concert was better than I could imagine.  Cake turns out to be one of those bands that sounds just as good if not better live than on their pre-recorded music.

An awesome birthday thanks to the worlds best wife.

And yes, I know this post is 2 months late.  Sue me.

Friend Quotes

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Continuing with the quote theme, the following is a list of quotes from my friends, last updated in 2002.  Some are funny, some are just weird.  Sorry.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing has been added or made up. Names have not been changed. Screw the innocent.

Eating a Wegmans Cream filled donut is like an orgasm in your mouth.
~Brian

Randy: but I think I’m actually going to make money on the deal 🙂
Anthony: lol
Randy: they already gave me $270
Anthony: With you involved I’d be disappointed if you didn’t

The thing that drives us in life is coincidentally.. death. Without mortality, humanity would never strive to make things better for ourselves and more importantly for our children
~Brian

Partying without you 2 (Randy & Brian) is like sex without the ass slapping
~Tim

Jen from store 82: not that I have even come close to proving my thesis
Jen from store 82: because I don’t even understand my thesis

Randy: Yeah they’re gonna know we had a women navigator cause we’re late.
Anthony: Yeah but they’ll know she wasn’t in the drivers seat cause we actually got here.

If she and I were the last two members of the human race, stranded on an island; I’d rather **** in the ocean and hope to inseminate a fish than **** her.
~Jeff

my balls are like dynamite, wanna bang
~Jeff

Be careful in the winter this summer
~Rachel

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. my teammate wrote a class, I wrote a class.
they interacted but they didn’t. I adapted and he didn’t. I was right, he was wrong. I won he lost.
~Random CS student

freeman is becoming a non-exister. I say let it fly. it can’t hurt us, only him.
~Matteo

if somebody washes that kid before the next class I’ll give him a cookie….
~Lars

Brian: btw Zack is gay

Don’t criticize someone until You’ve walked a mile in their shoes, that way, when u criticize them you’ll be a mile away and you’ll have their shoes!

There are 10 types of people in this world; those who understand binary, and those who do not.
~Tim

Randy: hey
Auto response from Anthony: off takin pic’s of my cocker 😛

There is a priest, a rabbi, and a golf pro and they all come up to this lake. Priest goes, “Bless this lake”, Rabbi goes Mimpf Minshkoosh Mincki which means, “Bless this lake”. The golf pro walks up and goes, “Wheres my ball”. And the lesson of this story, “The Devil took the ball and the lake”. No really…there is still no point to this “joke”
~Rob

Patience is:
-letting that driver in front of you go slow without pulling up to the side of him and swearing at him (actually…its usually a her).
-learning to slow it down once in a while in this fast paced society.
-just waiting for her to happen.
-expecting to be disappointed and growing on it.
-realizing how short life is and accepting what you are doing with life.
-finding a target “her” and realizing its still out of reach.
-hearing someone out before you panic
-taking a chance
-is life
-is reading this whole thing and adding your own instance of choice.
~Rob

Fighting for Peace is like Screwing for Virginity
~Anthony

Sometimes I wish I was you…
So I could have sex with me
~Lindsay – AIM Profile

Elena: poor canada
Randy: truer words have never been spoken

Randy: dork
Auto response from Corey: Randy is a dork!
Randy: hey thats not cool I didnt even talk to you yet
Auto response from Corey: yes randy is still a dork

but you were all about boobs your senior yeat
~Randy

Yeah…perhaps…I don’t think so… I don’t know.
~Randy

Matteo: did you hear about the new S-Box??? It’s great. Even better than the real thing. Yep. Microsoft teamed up with Satan to create a hybrid video game system that will make you scream. The X-box hasn’t been doing good and a new IMPROVED game system should change that statisic. I just saw a commerical yesterday for it and it was so funny. Satan was marketing it and had a little boy playing with a few of the games. Here’s a few that I can remember. Satan vs. Jesus, Hitlers final solution, Angel wars, and my favorite Terrorist Air 666!!! All great titles that will make this the greatest game experience you’ll ever see. Konard from Gamestop gave it 8 fingers up!!! He is preordering 3 of them. Stocking stuffers I guess. Well, thats about all. It’s going to be HOT!!!

My chaps are lipped.
~Rachel

make sure the munchkins put some rocks in their pockets tomorrow,
we don’t want them blowing away
~Liz

a true wise man does not play leap frog with a unicorn.
~Brian

Randy: dork
Mary Beth: am i giving you a huge…….?!
Randy: ?
Mary Beth: lolllllllll
Mary Beth: wrong screen!!!!!!

Randy: so what the hell do you want anyway?
Liz: I want you to lick Brian’s foot
Liz: that what I want

A Whole lot of nothin….
~Rachel

SmarterChild: Whatcha laughing about?
Randy Aldrich: your face
SmarterChild: Yeah? I think you’re the one with the funny face.

So it’s easy to understand and it’s understandable.
~Kristy

The Cloverfield Case

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Rachel and I saw Cloverfield on Friday. It wasn’t planned, in fact I didn’t have a whole lot of desire to see it at least not until I heard everyone’s reaction. That being said my friend Brian called and begged us to go (read: asked if I want to see it) so naturally I didn’t want to disappoint.

Cloverfield was awesome. I thought the hand held cameras would distract you from the storyline and takeaway from the overall movie. It had the exact opposite effect. The movie simply couldn’t have worked as a regularly filmed movie, at least not successfully. The reason it worked so well is the home movie added a very personal touch. In the beginning you laughed with the characters and in the end you cried with them all because you felt you were watching your best friend’s Youtube video. The movie also portrays our current generations desire to document everything and J. J. Abrams doesn’t hide that this was part of his motivation for the movie style.

I haven’t been a fan of a movie’s ending in quite a while but Cloverfield’s ending is the only way I can imagine it. That’s not to say it doesn’t leave you with a sense of ‘WTF’ and ‘damn I hope they don’t make a sequal’ but it works regardless.

If you haven’t seen the trailer I’ve embedded it for your viewing pleasure below.

[ifilm]2913955[/ifilm]

Melted Banana Hand – Rocking out with Rock Band

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Rock BandWhen Rock Band came out a few weeks ago I was excited to try it out. Luckily my good friend Brian bought it and invited me to try it out. Ever since we’ve been meeting once a week as Melted Banana Hand. My impressions?

It’s more of a game than any of the Guitar Hero’s. Rather than a playing a list of songs and then being done, the idea is that you tour as a band. You will end up playing the same songs more than once but that’s ok because of how it’s done. Instead of finishing a song, your objectives are finishing a set list or finishing a venue. Because of the structure of the game it is also able to incorporate downloaded songs into the game itself rather than just adding it to a list of playable songs in quick play mode like in Guitar Hero.

The Guitar is only O-K. It looks great and I love the addition of the lower fret buttons I just wish they were used more. The game doesn’t force you to use them it simply increases the bonus you get when applicable. It would add even more depth to the game if it were to force you to use the lower frets during solos.

Solos are new to the game. For guitar this simply means added points and most likely faster sections with more notes. For drums this means you can play anything you’d like, which means a lot of fun. For vocals you can say anything you’d like. The solos in the game create a new and very dynamic musical environment.

The drums are impossibly hard. The guitar in Guitar Hero wasn’t easy to begin with but with some practice it got much better and was completely playable on hard. The drums on Rock Band are a completely different story. It’s hard on easy and insanely impossible on medium. Anything beyond that is just crazy talk.

Melted Banana Hand is still meeting once a week and the vocals are always up for grabs considering my friend Brian and I can’t at all. If you’re interested just let me know and I’m sure we can find a spot for you.

Happy 80th Grandpa Heath!

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Grandpa Heaths SurpriseSaturday we went to Grandpa Heath’s 80th Birthday surprise party. It was awesome because he has relatives all over the country who were able to make it, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Massachusetts and even Hawaii. It’s very rare that they all get together in one place and its even more rare that he doesn’t know its happening. You could see the joy on his face as he entered the door and saw all these family members from distance places. I’ve met most of the immediate family (Rachel’s uncles and aunts) but there were several that I hadn’t and lots of cousins that I had not met before.

I had the chance to meet Rachel’s uncle Brian, for the first time, who lives in Texas with his wife Carolyn and daughter Kristin. I’m very glad I did, They’re neat people and we got to spend even more time with them on Sunday. Brian owns a paint contracting business near Dallas/Ft Worth. I offered to let him stay busy painting our dining room while they were in town but he declined. C’mon man we’re family now!

I had the pleasure of meeting two more distant relatives, Rachel’s father’s nephews, Matt and Dan. Matt has a house in Hawaii and offered to let us stay (although he assured us he would not guide us around, he draws the line there) the next time we go. That’s fine Matt, we’ll be happy to hire a tour guide with the money we saved staying with you! As it turns out Dan is very much into Genealogy and we got talking about Rachel’s family tree. Apparently he has traced their tree back to a revolutionary war soldier. That means Rachel can join the daughters of the revolution! Not quite sure what that gets her besides a plaque and probably a lot of junk mail though… We traded E-mail addresses and Dan agreed to send us the tree, I agreed to get it into Geni which I’m trying to get all our family to use and I strongly recommend it for those of you who haven’t yet.

I was also able to see some relatives whom I’d met before but hadn’t seen in a while. Among these was Rachel’s cousin Becky, who was pregnant with her second child, Cheyenne, the last time I had met her. This time around she had the third child, Desmond, with her. They were very energetic which meant they probably slept like a log that night and I’m sure Becky is thankful for that.

Flag and PlaqueTowards the end of the day Grandpa Heath opened all of his wonderful gifts and Matt, whom I had met earlier, presented Him with an American Flag which had been ceremoniously flown over the USS Arizona memorial in his name on September 11, 2007. It also came with a plaque with a military seal providing documentation that it was indeed flown over the memorial in his name at the time and date noted. It was all very moving because Grandpa Heath long ago served in the Navy during World War II until his responsibilities at home had called him back. The USS Arizona memorial had always held a special place in his heart but he hasn’t yet had the chance to visit it. I’m sure the flag and plaque will be long remembered by him as well as the rest of his family who was there to witness the gift.

A great event and I wish there were more like it.

Thank you Everyone!

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

One and a half years of planning, four months of frenzy, a one day celebration and 2 weeks of relaxation… We did it!

Life as a married couple has been good to us so far. We’d just like to say a final thanks to everyone who made our wedding the most beautiful and blissful day a couple could wish for. Not to mention all the fun we had! We couldn’t ask for a better start to a long happy life together.

Special thanks go out to:

The Parents, without your love and support we wouldn’t have been able to do it at all

The Bridal Party Consisting of:

  • Lisa Jordan – Maid of Honor
  • Anthony Ventura – Best Man
  • Lisa Day
  • Miriam Cortez
  • Tess Hey
  • Jennifer Lehr
  • Brian Wilson
  • Charles Rich
  • Michael Heath
  • George Heath Jr

Claire Masten for her touching reading from 1st Corinthians

Elizabeth Fino-Radin from The Starry Strings Quartet for the beautiful violin

Annette Dragon for all the beautiful photography

Whirlin’ Disc DJ for getting everyone on the dance floor

Mike from The Burgundy Basin for making sure everything went smoothly

Phaedra Andalora from Liberty Travel for putting together our Honeymoon