mattlary's weblog

I got my wisdom teeth out Friday- I wrote a very long graphic post about it, but I didn’t post it because I’m sure nobody wants that much information. So to make a long story short; it was pretty rough because I had a deeply impacted tooth that needed to be dug/drilled/squeezed/cut out. The other ones came out with no issues; just yanking and cracking. If it weren’t for the impacted one, I probably would have had little or no pain from the whole thing. Today I’m doing much better- I even decided to try to stop taking the pain killers because they make me dizzy.  The other thing worth mentioning is that I opted to go with gas rather than complete sedation- it was less money, and I was a bit worried about the potential complications of being put under.  It worked out well- I was completely aware of what was going on but didn’t care one bit .

Anyway, Calin has been pampering me all weekend, so that’s been nice, and I should be able to return to work tomorrow and start eating solid food sometime soon too!

Saranac Octoberfest has to be my favorite beer in the world; I saw that it was out so I picked some up for the season. Calin and I are also looking forwad to mulled apple cider, Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Cinnamon Sugar donuts… I love the Fall.

In other news, I had to go to the dentist today for my first ever filling- people at work had trouble believing that I had never had a cavity. Next I need to have my wisdom teeth removed; that’s gonna be rough.

Not much else here; we’re going across the state this weekend to visit family and to see Tony Campolo speak in Utica. I also need to let my parents and brother borrow LOST Season 2 so they can catch up in time for season 3; everyone is starting to get all hyped up about the upcoming season at work- a few of us are going to try to get some LOST parties together for the new episodes, let me know if you’re interested!

Calin and I had our vacation this week; we went to the Finger Lakes with her Family to visit wineries, then on Saturday we took a bus trip to see the Yankees play the Blue Jays in Toronto.

Most of the wineries we toured were around Keuka Lake, plus we hit a few near Seneca Lake. I think the best wine we tasted was at Ravines Wine Cellars on Keuka Lake. Their Dry Reisling was the first New York wine to get a 90 rating in Wine Enthusiast, and their other wines were really good too.

Most of the wineries were really good; this one just really stood out in my mind- I wanted to buy everything I tasted there, but unfortunately, their wine was also pretty expensive. Anyway, we ended up buying 10 bottles during our trip, which made our wine cooler happy. My brother will be pleased.

Our Toronto trip was a bus tour through work; it was a really long ride, but well worth it- the only downside to the whole thing was that it was raining, so they had to keep the roof closed. It seemed to clear up later, but they still didn’t open it. I couldn’t believe how high the resolution was on their scoreboard/videoscreen. I couldn’t find out for sure, but I think they use LEDs rather than the big jumbotron bulbs, so the picture is really crisp and bright. I took a picture of it that you can see here.

The game itself was good, the yankees held out and won, a lot of Yankees fans were booing A-Rod; I guess he hasn’t been doing well lately (he certainly wasn’t last night).  One of the older guys on the bus said, “A-Rods really carrying his weight… Ugh- I’m going home and taking some asprin”

Anyway, you can see pictures from the Finger Lakes here, and from Toronto here.

In case you haven’t heard already; Calin had to have an appendectomy on Friday; it was quite an ordeal because the doctors couldn’t definitively determine if she had appendicitis, so they decided to just take it out and have a look around. Turns out that it wasn’t appendicitis, but we’re glad they took it out because it would have been bad if they left it and found out they were wrong.

Calin is up and about now, she’s not 100% better yet, but she’s feeling a lot better than she did this weekend.

I’ve been at Thomson West for a week now and things are going well; lots of good people there, and the environment is great. They have Starbucks coffee in the cafeteria, and free coffee and tea everywhere.

Like most jobs I’ve had, it’s really interesting here- Thomson West does legal publishing, and the areas where I’ll be working in deal with the online version of their legal publications. I haven’t come across any weird laws or anything, but I will be able to absorb some of the ins and outs of the legal system and legal research. Someone recommended that I look at this site to get an idea of how everything fits together; it’s a funny and interesting read.

I was going to post a picture of the building I work in, but I couldn’t really find one I like- I’ll try to take some pictures next week and post them. For the impatient, here’s a picture of the building (on the right) with the Aqueduct and Genesee river in view, and here’s a closeup of the statue of Mercury on top.

I was getting a lot of Spam comments held for moderation, so I installed something to help deter robots.  When you leave a comment, you will be required to enter some text presented in an image.

Let me know if it causes any problems!

Last week I was offered a job at Thomson West as a Software Engineer and I accepted it! I start on January 30th. I’m pretty excited although I’ll miss Red Oak a lot.

I’ve been searching for a way for people to subscribe to my site and get updates via email; I finally got a plugin installed that will allow people to subscribe directly from the site! To get e-mail updates, click here and fill out the form. It will send you a confirmation, and then you should recieve updates as I post to the site!

If you want to take it a bit further, visit bloglines. Bloglines aggregates all of the sites you keep up on on one page- I use it to watch all sorts of stuff. To see what I subscribe to, look here.

Check back soon; I’ll be posting big news tomorrow!

No More Ferry

Wow; it’s been a long time since I wrote a post- A lot has been going on lately; Calin and I went to my parents’ house for Christmas Eve, and then went to her parents’ house for Christmas day; we had a good time with our families.

For New Years Eve Calin and I just stayed in and had a mini LOST marathon- A few weeks ago we rented Season One and watched all of that, and we decided to buy the first episodes of season 2 on iTunes and catch up. It’s an awesome show- I can’t wait for the next few episodes.