A few days ago, Hilly, freshly posting blog posts on her new online digs, asked many of us to submit a phrase or wish for her post for Dave’s birthday. Here’s what I said:

• “The only way to complete the ultimate experience of attending a Depeche Mode concert is to have Dave there with you. Happy Birthday, Dave and thanks for making Dave Lake City 3 the best so far.”

Which is totally true. And here’s your proof:

All of us are happy because Dave is there

See, I only speak the truth.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAVE

Crash landed – photo by renagerie

Avitaween is one of the premier annual blogging events [the other one I've been to is TequilaCon] and this was my first time attending.

As you can see from the first photos, my wife and I attended this event as penguins. Think “March Of The Penguins” with alcohol and other invaders.

“I don’t need a fish.. I need a drink” – photo by renagerie

“Beam Me Up, Mindy” – photo by renagerie

The party was a huge success, with Adam doing so much to put it all together. I can’t thank him enough for the great job and massive effort he went through. Also, there were so many cool people there – some of which I hadn’t met before. I’ve previously posted a photo of meeting Hilly for the first time, but I also got to meet Becky – hellohahanarf. Becky and I have been wanting to meet for some time. And we finally did.

Look at how happy we are now that we’ve met.. well, we’ve both had alcohol, too

And of course, I got to meet up with Dave from Blogography again. Always a pleasure to meet up with the King of the PRB.

King.. meet Penguin.

The Best of the Rest

Adam also had a wall of photos of people’s vacation photos with “reported sightings” This is the one I sent in of Reba and I at Rockefeller Center in NYC.

Who knew that the aliens had invaded NYC. Never seen that before

Click here to view the Alien Sighting photo set.

And for those that want to see all photos, here’s the entire Flickr photo stream for Avitaween ’09

Can’t wait for next year.

UPDATE

Always dapper and ready for a photo op in the studio

As Adam pointed out in the comments, there were studio photos that were taken during the Avitaween party. Here’s the link to the entire set of studio photos.

* I might be off by a few years

Happy Birthday, Hilly

Good thing she was 21 at Avitable’s party…

Every year during Memorial Day weekend, the weather is a mixed bag of some sunshine and heat, but mostly clouds and colder rain – and even sometimes snow [that was two years ago, which was quite the shock]. So it’s hard to get into the season when you are stuck indoors for most of the weekend. Which is good that I took this week off from doing an episode of Scooter Sunday.

Of course, being stuck indoors isn’t all that bad. I can always find a good number of things to do to take my mind off missing the sun and warmth of the outdoors. So with this post, I give you a list of what I’ve done and what I am planning on doing this extended weekend, both inside and outside.

Mac Upgrade

My wife’s Mac mini G4 has never been rebuilt in the over four years we’ve had it. I used it for a year before she inherited it. It came with Mac OSX Panther 10.3, but I did an in-place upgrade to Tiger 10.4 which it’s been running since. But the past few weeks, she’s been complaining how slow it’s gotten. So I decided it was time to blow it away and start fresh with Leopard 10.5. It took most of the day, with me walking by it and clicking here and there, waiting the almost 4 hours for it to backup 50gb of data, but by 9pm last night, she had her computer back and it was noticeably faster. Always good to have a new older computer [and a wife that's not complaining]

Firepit

Most of the day on Saturday was actually decent. Some clouds during the day, but the sun was able to peak through enough to enjoy a shirtless day outside.

My wife has been talking about using our old garden area for something and she suggested we build one of those firepits. We’ve looked at the pre-made kind you buy at the home improvement stores, but never really liked any of them. So we decided to build our own.

It wasn’t hard. About an hour of digging and shaping the area and fitting in bricks. Of course it’s not done yet, but the start to it is looking pretty good. Just need to find some more bricks and by the middle of June, we’ll have us a nice pit that we can sit around at night.

TV Shows

A great show…. Terminated *sniff*

I’ve gotten so bad at keeping up on the TV shows this season. I had to learn from Karl’s radio show and blog that both Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Reaper had been canceled. WTF? I loved those shows, even though I hardly made time to watch them this past season. So maybe I’m partially to blame for them being canceled [sorry Ray Wise and Summer Glau].

I watch a majority of my TV shows either online via Hulu.com or by means of downloading them from the various locations on the interwebs. So what better way to get caught up on my favorite shows than to download them to my iPod and watch them as I lounge around the rest of this weekend. Hello, season enders.

[More TV Plugs: It's a good thing there are others out there that still watch a good amount of TV. Hilly's a television maven and wants to know what your favorite TV shows are. And Miss Britt's Buy-Her blog posts her 6 favorite TV shows available on DVD.]

Drink

Just because the weather is sucky, that doesn’t stop me from imbibing. Since Friday night, I’ve done my share of putting back a few adult beverages like dirty martinis, Red Bull/vodkas and gin & tonics. Tonight, we are having some friends over for a BBQ and I will get out the ingredients for making mojitos. I may have to make a few practice ones before, just to make sure I remember how to make them.

Movies

While I still subscribe to Netflix [we are down to the 1-out-at-a-time plan], I also am still just as bad about watching and returning movies at a moderate pace. We’ve had “Australia” sitting in its red and white envelope for almost two months now. I want to watch it and so does my wife, but we are down to one TV in the house [we sold our remaining tube-based TV at the yard sale last week] and when the granddaughter comes over, it’s Cartoon Network or Nick or Disney blaring from our HDTV.

And going to the theater isn’t any better. We’ve been wanting to see “Star Trek” since it came out two weeks ago. My wife promises me we are going on Monday, but I’m not holding my breath.

Have A Great Weekend

So there you have it. Stuff I have planned for this weekend. Some of it I’ve already done, some I’m planning on doing and some of it may end up not happening at all. But I will do my best to try and fill my time doing stuff instead of sulking about the lack of sun and warmth. Because why waste a three-day weekend. Hope all of you won’t waste yours either. Enjoy!

Actually, I had this whole thing planned on how I would incorporate Hawaii into Snackie Sunday but you know what? He’s not even there anymore! Nope, he’s flying back home from a wonderful vacation, probably stuck in an airplane with whiny passengers and crying babies. That got me thinking about a trip that I have coming up in a couple of days and how much I loathe flying. It’s not that I’m scared of it or anything like that…I just hate being stuffed into a hot box with people I don’t know for hours on end.

With that said, it’s time for…..

WHEN FLYING, DO YOU PREFER AISLE, WINDOW, OR CENTER SEAT?

I know it would seem that NOBODY would pick the center seat however I do have a friend who has this enormous fear of flying and she prefers being in the middle because it makes her feel safe. Hey, one man’s “safe” is another’s “claustrophobic”, right? I totally prefer the window seat even though I have a bladder the size of a pea. I think that the window seat affords a little more room to scrunch (or cower) away from the other passengers and besides, I love the view. There’s nothing better than flying into a city and looking at it from above before you land!

Anydoodle, your turn! What’s your preference and why?

Marty Mankins Kisses.
Hilly

Snowy Sunday Ep. 015 from Marty Mankins on Vimeo.

YouTube Users – No video upload this week. Because I used a WMG artist [Collective Soul], they stripped the audio out. They are getting good at this, as it was only minutes after it was uploaded that I got the “Content Matched” message. I promptly deleted the video. I apologize for this inconvenience.

No Snowy Sunday for Two Weeks

Well, at least not from me. I leave on Friday for Hawaii. But I’m not leaving you post-less while I’m gone. I have lined up some great guest bloggers who will be providing you with some good, clean, wholesome entertainment sinfully and carnally-pleasing blog posts. Here’s the line up:

• March 8th – Karl from Secondhand Tryptophan
• March 9th [week of] – Catherine from Seventh Notebook
• March 15th – Hilly from Snackie’s World

Plus, while I’m in Hawaii, I plan on doing a couple of short posts with some photos and a quick blurb telling you all what a great time I’m having. Yes, I’m nice like that.

See you later on this week.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY

original image found on an E-Card over at Allrecipes.com

Ok, now that I got that out of the way, let me continue.

I have to admit something here. I’m pretty neutral when it comes to Valentine’s Day. There’s the enormous amount of commercial ties to the day that make you feel like a loser if you are not spending endless amount of money on your significant other. There’s the pressure of getting just the right gift or doing the right things to make the day an effigy of success for your relationship. There’s the concern for making sure the right bouquet or floral arrangement is delivered to your partner’s work so that he/she can show it off to others, as a sign to the rest of the world that the person they are in a relationship with at least thought of them on the one day that matters.

I hate those pressures. They seem so superficial to me. External layers to keep you out of the doghouse one day a year. Don’t get me wrong. I do those things and have done those things. But they are not what makes up a relationship.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post. Loving someone else requires you love yourself.

When Hilly posted her Self Love post the other day, I have to admit that the first thing that crossed my mind had more to do with products like these or web sites like this to help you fulfill your own personal satisfactions [WARNING: NSFW links]. But then I read her post again and saw item #2:

• “You’re gonna post that banner and then tell us all something that you really like love about yourself (thus, the “self-love” portion of our program).”

Let’s see… banner posted. Check.

What do I love about myself?

I actually had to think about this one for a bit. Not that there’s things that don’t instantly come to mind like making people laugh, trying my best to be patient and being a responsible member of society. Those are things I love about myself. But I think the one thing that I really love about myself is that I can feel comfortable in a relationship with another person that sees the qualities I don’t see. The things that I’m critical about myself that my partner doesn’t see as negative.

And that’s where I do a bit of not only self love, but self re-evaluating of knowing that I’m alright. I’m a good person and my life matters to not just others, but to myself as well.

So go celebrate the day, with someone you like or love, or with just yourself.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to run. I’ve got to go find that perfect gift.

Thanks, Hilly

NOTE: original graphic found here