Allie

Current Obsessions

I both love and hate the fact that I am an obsessive person. On one hand, I'm able to learn things very quickly. I'll just sit and study until I figure it out. On the other hand, if I like a cd or tv show, I'll watch it to death.

Current Obsessions:

X Files: I bought season 1 because it was $15 at Best Buy. I am now addicted and have bought the first five. Plus...I'm extremely excited for the new movie coming out this summer.

The Big Bang Theory: Comes on Monday night around 7 on CBS. Very...very funny show.

CSS Mastery: Very good book for advanced CSS.

Sony has a new touch screen digital camera that I love. The thing rocks. The irritating thing about cameras is that every six months, they become obsolete.

Current Obsessions

Obsession #1

Back to the Future Trilogy.

...It had been a couple years since I'd watched these movies. I forgot how damn good they really are. These are easily my favorite movies of all time. There are so many things in the movies that I never picked up on. When Marty finally arrives back in 1985 in the third movie, I never noticed that "Clayton Ravine" had been renamed to "Eastwood Ravine". When I was very young...I battled my brother...turns out I was wrong. In the second movie, there is a scene where alternate Biff in 1985 says to Marty, "You wanna take a poke at me?". I was convinced that instead of "poke", he said "f%&#". I don't know why I thought that; it wouldn't have made any sense.

Obsession #2

Mario Galaxy

...In a word...incredible. Buy the Wii for this game! It is the highest reviewed game of all time.

Obsession #3

ASP.NET. I spend way too much of my time reading these books. I have a strange attraction to it though.

Design 1

The Office - Fun Run

There was nothing funnier than seeing Andy's shirt with the blood all over the nipples area in the new episode of The Office - "Fun Run".

Mandy Moore

I never thought I'd say this - but I think I'm gonna buy Mandy Moore's new cd. It is very different than her older stuff...it has heart. The cd was produced by John Alagia - who has produced many of my favorite artists. Download "Nothing That You Are" and listen to it in the car late one night. That girl is angry at someone! But, it is a great song.

Now, to regain my manhood, "The Razor's Edge" has been in my cd player the last couple weeks. I hadn't listened to it in some time. I forgot how damn good that cd is. Half of those songs give me goosebumps every time I listen.

Cinco De Mayo

We're all meeting to celebrate mom's birthday at Cinco de Mayo tonight. Be there.

Saw Bourne Ultimatum last night. Pretty good...some of the fight scenes are just crazy.

Sorting By "Random"

I had been trying to figure out a way to sort the pictures that I have in a database randomly. I knew that you could choose to order them according to a specific id in ascending or descending order. But, I did not know that you could simply use the code "Order By NEWID()" in the select statement to accomplish this. As a result, I ended up with the following:

itemtemplate
asp:label runat="server" id="lblPics" text='<%# Eval("Pictures") %>'>
asp:label
itemtemplate

...and then use the sql select command,

SELECT [Pictures] FROM [My_Photos] Order By NEWID()


...pretty cool.

Roma

Buona Sera raggazzi!

This is Signora Allison. I am writing once again to break the monotony. Rome is really very lovely. Today, we decided to go to Piazza di Spagna. Great place! Lots of old buildings ( Villa di Medici....Damon-I think you are missing an "i" at the end of your last name.) We passed the Spanish Steps and didn't even know it...But, we later went back and had a look a them. Not very spectacular...but most of the monuments are like that. You spend all day trying to find them and when you do they are cool for about 5 minutes...then you are looking for the next must-see building or statue. We took a long walk up the street and through a park. We saw Harry Potter again. I know, I know...but it is such a good movie and we needed somewhere to to cool down and rest from all the walking...it is easily over 100 degrees here most of the day and we walk an average of 5-7 miles a day. We also went shopping...alot! In between the very expensive stores like D&G, Versace, and Prada, there were cheaper stores. I know I drove Jeff crazy with my store hopping. I love one store I discovered in Paris and found here called Zara. I bought a couple of cute things. Yet, Jeff never spends tons of money. But, today I changed that. I persuaded him to buy something very expensive. =)
We have five nights left here. It is amazing it went by so quickly. ( 6 planes in three weeks) Jeff and I don't want it to end, but are both homesick for our animals and our families. We have learned to navigate the cities well and have had a bunch of luck sometimes( four star hotels) and other times we have had no luck(walking 4 miles in the middle of nowhere with the sun beating down on us and cars whizzing by--just hoping we are going in the right direction).

See you soon- We love you all!

Hi, From Rome

Allie and I are now in our second hotel in Rome. The first was crazy nice. After staying in two unsatisfying hotels, we needed something nice. So...we went to Priceline (which has been great to us for all of the trip) and found a great hotel. The great thing about Priceline is that when you book through them, they try to get you the nicest room possible for any given hotel. As a result, we were given one of the executive suites. To give you an idea, the room had a minibar, a dishwasher, modern decor, jacuzzi, etc.

Seeing the Colosseum is so surreal. You begin to speculate how many thousands of people have died inside those walls.

We'll go to see the Vatican on Monday - where Allie will have to read a few paragraphs describing how she must dress in order to enter. Men can wear whatever they want...women cannot. For some reason, this pleases me.

On our time off, I'm trying to get my Design site finished. I'm about 75% of the way there.

I haven't been able to post as much...so here are a few quick notes

• Space Mountain 2.0 Rocked


• Everyone picks their nose in public here


• Harry Potter 5 was amazing.


• Answers.Yahoo.Com has saved my butt many times lately


• Allie is becoming obsessed with Star Trek: Voyager. How adorable.


• We got to watch a loudmouth Oriental woman argue with one of the street vendors over the price of a purse. "It's not real" ...she said in a very oriental way. "Why you want charge that much?"


• It is way way hot in Rome


• I didn't love Milan that much


• More English speaking folk in Rome than anywhere else (besides London losers!).

Long Wait

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Internet is mucho expensive. I can't post any pictures right now because I'm using the crappy tv internet in the hotel. The last few days were pretty rough. ...Lots of traveling and lots of mistakes. I'll go into more detail when I'm on my own computer. Right now, we are in a beautiful hotel in central Rome. Because we booked through Priceline, we were able to get an executive suite without even knowing it. Yesterday completely sucked! Today rocks. Bye

Disneyland Paris

This place is great. Although it isn't as big as Disney World Orlando, many of the rides are much better. Space Mountain: Mission 2 is twice as good as the original. Pirates of the Caribbean is much better too.

We're actually in a very nice room with a deck. We've only spent half a day at the park so far, but we love it. I really wish Zach could be here to experience it. He is at the perfect age for these parks. Maybe this Christmas *hint hint*

After tomorrow, we'll go see the new Harry Potter and then we're off to Milano.



"The Treat Of Choice At Disneyland Paris"






"Allie in front of a skull."





"Allie's 25 Euro Steak."

Louvre and Disneyland Paris

We went to the Louvre today. That place is stressfully large. It is almost impossible to take it all in in one day. We were able to see 'The Mona Lisa', 'Madonna of the Rocks', and a bunch of statues that I can't remember the names of. I was especially interested in visiting some of the mummies. We ate at a quaint Italian restaurant tonight and are leaving for Disneyland Paris tomorrow morning. If they have internet access available, I will make another posting then.

Last night, I got screwed into buying Allie a rose. Not to say that I wouldn't do it naturally if I had the choice. My problem is that I had no choice but to do so. Let me explain:

A couple nights ago, Allie and I went to a nice restaurant. An Italian - we'll call him Demarko - came to the table...took a longer than desired look at Allie....and then held up a few roses for me to buy for her. At this point, if I said no, I would look like a loser boyfriend and a bastard at the same time. I told him one (by holding up one finger) rose. He then says, "Not three?". I responded with, "No...just one."

When we finished eating dinner, a second Italian joined in on admiring Allie. His name was probably Demarko too.

So how was I supposed to enjoy dinner knowing that I got conned into buying a rose from two Italians named Demarko? They're lucky that I didn't show them my biceps.

Updates

I'm spending 20 euros a day to write these damn updates - so enjoy them! That's an order.

I'll catch you guys up on the last few days. We've been having a great time - while walking about 7-8 miles a day. I think Allie has been getting sick of me lately. On more than one occasion, she has told me to get on the wrong subway. She said it was a mistake, but I'm sure that she was calculating.

The night before we left London, we went to see "The Lord of the Rings" - the play. It is the most expensive play ever made. We were amazed by the grandeur of the place. At the halfway point, all of the orcs come out into the audience and scare the females. These guys were HUGE. One of the orcs took a personal liking to Allie.

We've seen most of the main attractions in Paris. Notre Dame was beyond amazing. I am going to post some video of that in an hour when the video finished uploading. We accidentally stumbled upon the Louvre today...but we'll actually go inside tomorrow. Unfortunately, Tom Hanks was no where to be found. I heard the words "Davinci Code" about five times in the short time that we were walking around the building. I'm sure the workers there get pissed off. They have some of the most amazing art work ever created - but all that the people want to see is where Tom Hanks stood at the very end of the movie.

On the way back to our hotel today, we came to a beautiful church surrounded by people with cameras. Something was definitely happening, but we couldn't figure out what. It was definitely celebrity related. We deduced that it must be related to an American celebrity and some sort of wedding. After a bit of waiting, we found out that we were at Eva Longoria and some dude's wedding. Ciao.