SURPRISE!! - Bonnies Surprise party

WOW WHAT A NIGHT
Once a year of for at least the last 3 years we had had the best time ever surprising one of our really good friends. Why should this year be any different. it was all planned out a small quite dinner with a couple friends. She had no idea what was in store. I was to pick Bonnie up and head over to Kavitha's to pick her up for reservation at 8:00. But when we walked in the door well a bunch of friends jump out. The sweet part about this is like many people Bonnie never has done anything crazy for her b-day. So I think we hit her heart extra good this year. Thanks to all of you who helps make this work. After the surprise the fun just started. We went out to a club dance allot and had a blast then headed to MCy'Ds for a 2am food stop. Now as the legend goes I made fun of how she would be acting at 2am. Lo and behold she remembered this and started a new trend at least among us where we all do this "Grrrr" thingy. Man it was so funny. Well you have to see the shorten down surprise b-day video to understand how funny it was.

Happy B-day Bonnie. I think I have known you for about 2 years now i am for one among many others are proud to have know you as a great friend and someone I have gone and seen many things with including some awesome road trips ( PARIS ) . Thanks for being there for me also all of these years. Cheers :-)

Modernism Art Exhibit at the Corcoran

FONDUE
I went to the Modernism Art Exhibit at the Corcoran last night. This was a big opening for the Corcoran art gallery. These opening are always really nice. Everyone was dressed up all fancy like in nice clothes. Great food and open bar. But my favorite by fare was the Fondue. Yes you heard it right Fondue. They had all of the free Fondue you could eat. I know I should be talking about art here but the Fondue was so good. I dipped the following in chocolate, caramel and even cream

Strawberries
Bananas
Marshmallows
Doughnut holes
Apples
Short cake
Chocolate cookies

Was there more to dip into chocolate yes but that was about all I could eat. i think I downed 2000 calories or more.

THE ART
As for the art I really liked the adding of movies. They played a bunch of films strips of the 1930s from different countries. These films were spread around different rooms as you walk through them. But some of the art did not move me that much. I love to be moved by art. To look at it and have it move something inside of me. Not many of the pieces i saw last night did this. Maybe I was thinking about the god food to much to get into the art. The reason we were all there :-)

Doubt

THE AFTER PARTY
Last night I went to the grand opening of the new Broadway play called "Doubt" in DC. it was a great play. I scored some tickets from my older brother who is now the house manager for the national theater. The play was awesome, i mean really good. But even better was after the play ended we got a little tour of the back office to see the offices where my brother works. We then went to the cast party where we got to hang out with the cast. They had an open bar tons of awesome fancy food and yes deserts that could kill you. It was really fun talking over the show with others drinking wine. Felt like a true night on the town.

MY REVIEW
Doubt written by John Patrick Shanley. The show itself was really well written. Its the first show I ever saw where you think writing was as important as the actors. It was so well written it reminded me of a really good movie but you are seeing it live in front of you. The point of the play is to cast doubt in people, things and actions. To show there is no clear answer to what you think you may know is the truth. Where one person saw one thing someone else may see another. We all think we know the answers in our heads based on what our bias's are and things we grew up with. The play makes you walk away and really think about it long after you left the theater. In fact i am still thinking about it now. Great play John very well done.

Top of the Morning to Ya

SHAMROCK FEST
Oh boy Saturday was a good' old Irish time. I went to the shamrock fest at the RFK stadium and let just saw i had a blast. I mean wow. Lots of people walking around great music and pretty much you ran into friends everywhere you go. I think because of MEETin we have so many people who are in the group over the years that when you go to big festivals you end up just running into people ever where. I will definitely go again next year. Fun times

Love To Ski

Went skiing today with a bunch of friends. Man it was really fun. I have only skied 3 times in my life and ever time i do it I am like i need to do this more. Last year I bought some boots but then lost them. I need to get some boots and skis but i here they run in the $400 range and if i do not go that much not sure its worth it. If I can go more then it would be worth it. Anyways I was able to get some video going down the mountain so check out the video.

SKI VIDEO

Philly and Chili

Philly In the Hizoues

Wow what a week I had. It all started out at 12pm on Friday. I got off work early to head up to Philly to hang out with Philly Mike and my boy Willi and his girl. The short story is I got to Philly at 4pm hung out with Janet and John ( my host family for the night ) who I had never met before this trip. We headed to happy hour at about 6pm to meet up with the crew. From there with chilled until 10 and then went to this club that had some awesome hip hop sounds. After that at about 2ish we headed to go eat at a dinner ( Philly cheese ) then off to bed at about 3am. Woke up at 12 and got on the road to back to DC for an event I had ( Chili cook off ) at 5pm. From the cook off we went to a bar in old town afterwards and well did not end up getting home until am. What a trip. I met at least 50 new people in one weekend. It was crazy. But so worth it. So glad I got to hang with Philly Mike and everyone. You guys are such an awesome city. Open hearts and open minds. I did get to mingle with the group and there were many new members. I find it so cool to talk to new members and see the different types of people who come and give meetin a chance. One lady told me how sad she was before she found meetin and met some of her best friends. It so amazing to me that I here this same story no matter what city I go to. People all over this country are just looking for others to connect with and share a beer and just be out of there house. Its so great that we can help them do this and more. Mike and crew are performing a service in philly that is touching many peoples lives. I hope they know how much people appreciate all of this hard work.

John and Janet
These two kids were awesome. Huge shout out for letting me crash at there place first off. But it was great to hang out with these two for a while and get to talk to them. I never met them before and yet I have felt like I knew them pretty well. Janet a very smart gal who has done so much in so little time. John this guy is a great building , creator and artist. I can tell by looking at the construction he has done on his house. He definitely has a knack for building. They are only 22 and 23 and yet they have bought there own house and really have there life planned out. Much props to you guys you keep it up.

Videos below of the journey. You can see how fun the club was in Philly. Great music :-) great dancing

"Meeps" is a combination word, combining "MEETin", a proper noun, with "peeps", a regular noun.

PHILLY TRIP





CHILI COOK OFF
all i can say is wow look at the video. So much food so good so fun. Thi was my 4th chili cook off and the best :-)

My Heroes

My heroes

I read a thread a while back that said "who was your favorite hero". I thought about this for a while. Everyone on this planet has heroes. People they admire and want to be like. I think as humans we are very social creatures. We learn how to act toward people and how to socialize with people based on our surroundings and our biggest teachers our family. So I wanted to devote this post to who my heroes are. I broke it down to people in public ( history ) and people in private ( my family )

PUBLIC

By fare my number one public hero is Martin Luther King. He waged a cause knowing how it would end his life. He talked about something no one talks about today but still is worth talking about as much as anything. Brining people together from all walks of life. Martin knew that he would die for what he believe in ye he still kept on fighting. He was a man who brought a national together against hate. To change hate into love I think is a very hard thing to do. All you have to do is look at all videos of the marches and the dogs to see what he was up against. He never gave up and never sank to there level. How could someone being punched down so much over and over keep his head high. One reason i beelive he did this was he understood people only hated because they were raised to hate. Because they were shown this as little kids. he knew he could change this and today we can now see he was right. His dreams lives on and on and only gets brighter each passing year.

A couple other hero's to me.

1) WWII solders. These men and woman were very brave. Storming a beach with bullets flying at you from every direction. When you watch a movie about this you wonder what would i do if that was me. How could I be that brave. What would have come of the world if WWII was lost? Would we still have any kind of freedom if it were not for these people who stood up and defended us. Thank god we do not have to find out.
2) George Washington. - One thing I think was remarkable about George Washington was that after he was finished being president he left office and let someone else take over. This may seem like no big deal but it set a tone for this country an the word that about the transfer of power. My dad once told me yours leadership skills are not proven why you are doing the job, its proven by how well everything runs after you leave.

To me a hero is not someone who has nothing to lose stands up but someone who has everything to lose and still stands up.

FAMILY

My Mom
There is so much I love about my mom I could write all day but the one thing I learned and love that I got from her was the kill of the deal. I learned from my mom how to get a good deal and make it better. My mom can bargain and negotiate better then anyone i ever met. I am always shocked by the deals she makes. She is a truly good business woman. I received allot of my business savvy from her.

My Dad
I love my dads kindness. My dad is someone who would give his last shirt on his back to you if he saw you needed it. He always loves to help people. I remember as a kid having homeless people come to the door asking for my dad by name for money because he would always give it to them. Evan when he does not have he gives. He has showed me allot about giving to doing good.

Poor Country Farm Boy

I went to a poetry slam this Monday and there was this native American Chief who got up and spoke. He talked about people on the Indian reservation and how bad conditions where there. he talked about the cold and hunger. This made me think of my childhood. I grew up on a farm until age 13. When I say farm maybe you could say it was more like a commune because we lived on this farm with other families. The condition would be considered bad to anyone living in a city. I mean I met some poor kids in my life like friends in high school who grew up in the projects and they had allot more then I ever had as a kid. We had no running water, no electricity no TV and not allot of food. My mom was on welfare and lived of of about $350 a month I believe. We never went Hungary to many times but I have felt the sting of an empty stomach. Our diets consisted of mostly rice and oatmeal cooked on an open fire. Not sure if you have ever had oatmeal cooked on an open fire in a cast-iron pan but take my word for it there was allot of black stuff in the food and it did not taste good. We did not have sugar or anything to make it taste better. I remember as a kid me and my good friend ( Matt ) would walk 5 miles to town and collect cans and trade them in for 50 cents and buy some sugar. I am sure my mom never knew about this but yes sugar can go along way with the same old oat meal day after day. To us a dinner with hot dogs was a luxury. However we did not know we were that poor. We did not know what this meant. Later on in life when I saw kids who were growing up in the projects killing them selves for a pare of shoes or money to buy a car or gold rings I never understood this. I always said to myself who cares if you are poor. Family friends and having something to eat was all you needed. But yet kid after kid would pull a trigger for money. I never understood this and even now after being a self made person who could pretty much retire and stop working, being able to have anything I want I still never buy anything that outrageous or try to show off by buying expensive things. I have a theory on this. if you are poor and do not know what you are missing you do not care. Its only when you are poor and see others around you with more then you that you start to care. When I was a kid, super poor I never was un-happy or felt bad about being poor. So money can not buy you happiness. But it can make you happy in the short turn spending it on something cool I guess. But that is short lived compared to friends and family.

THE POOR THEORY
When you grow up poor you either do one of two things. When you get out of being poor you either spend ever cent you have trying to make up for the fact that you were poor. Trying to hide being poor. Buying nice cares and anything else nice. Never having money in the bank. Always spending it. or you do like me and save and invest it with because some where in the back of your mind you are afraid to be poor again. its like my dad once told me he always has to have a full refrigerator because because as kids they never had anything in the refrig and having it empty makes him feel really bad. my pops always grew up very poor in va beach. His dad who I never knew was in the navy. As a little kid this was me. Always afraid of not having anything again. I thank my mom for this gift however because everything I have. All of the great things I can buy I truly enjoy ever minute of it all. Some people would grow up being so rich and never truly understanding this or truly feeling lucky. I feel lucky ever day of my life for the luck I have had.

WHY I HATE FISH
Ok people always ask me why I hate fish it belongs in the country boy blog post. In California they have a place near the rivers called fish hatcheries. Basically the government take salmon and pulls the eggs out and gives the fish away so they can bread more fish and put them back into the wild. Well my mom had us wait in life to get the free fish. As kids we would each hold a place in line. Get as much fish as you could get. I have vivid memories of cleaning the fish with my hands in the extremely cold weather. Hands so cold I could not feel them. We canned the fish with out any flavoring. Oh my got I can taste it still. So bad not fit for a human. Maybe it was the way we cooked it maybe it was just because there was no seasoning but it was nasty. I used to not like rice for a long time also but man who can stay mad at rice :-)

( photos - me digging a ditch with my older bro in the back ground. we worked from sun up to sun down. Very hard labor. First thing in the morning going to fetch water a good hike away in the oh so bitter cold. yes I am very dirty in the photo we did not have showers so we often were extremely dirty. )

So many childhood stories I will have to write more as i can think of them.

London Baby Here They Come

I am crazy silly siked today. I just found out that all of our friends from London are coming to the US to visit us. I had the pleasure of meeting most of the people coming on my London/Paris trip last year. We were also able to move the yearly anniversary party to this day so this means Philly Mike and others can visit them all at one time. One of the sweetest things to me about this site is the ability to meet people in fare off countries and have them show you around and then when they visit you, you get the pleasure of showing them around. its like spreading the love around all over the country. Being able to do good deeds for people and showing them your culture and communities. So lets look at how closed we really all do live together.

MEETin Spreading good deeds
Here is one example I love. One friend of ours Huy from MEETinBoise ( well he is a friend now since we met him in London ) was flying to Paris for the convention. He was in a bike accident before he left from Boise. I guess in flight to Paris his leg started to act up. he had to go to the hospital when he landed. Some of the MEETinParis people , people he never met in his life came to the hospital only after Huys girl friend post on the message he was stuck in the hospital. The hanged out with him in the hospital. How cool is that you go to a city and country to never met anyone and people come and visit you. When we arrived from DC my friend Charann had her credit card stopped. Our new friend ( Xavier ) from Paris not only brought us to his home to call for free America he also brought us to an awesome French restaurant in his area that was sooo good. When Xavier visited DC I repaid the favor by taking him to a personal tour of George Washington's house a very hard to find tourist attraction to find if you are visiting from out of town with out a car. Also when we went to Portland a few months ago Huy who since moved to MEETinSeattle now drove us to see some awesome nature sites in Portland. my point being is we are a very small world. This shows just how connected we really are. The borders are slowly going away and Good deeds always come back to you :-)

So if you ever travel be sure to stop by your local MEETin you never know what awesome new friends you may meet.

( photo from MEETinLONDON happy hour we went to while in London - lots of new friends were met :-)

Public Art, Private Parts

I went to an art exhibit this weekend of a very good friend of mine I could say she is almost like a sister to me and B-dog a brother. You got to love extended family. But Ming is a fantastic artist with a wonderful soul. She is the first person I ever met in MEETin and in some ways Ming and Jamie are like my two MEETin sisters. B-dog also is a great artist and he made the movie. Check the video below if you want to see it. its really awesome. Anyways just wanted to say on here how proud I am of you guys and your work. You are true art lovers and you truly stuck to it and never gave up on your art. its a hard business to make it in so a huge congrads for keeping it real. I used to be an artist back in the day but now my art is building web pages. I know that sounds funny "web pages art" but i kind of see it that way :-) Art is simply a form of expression right. lol

( Photos Ming on left BBrandon on right )

Video of Mings work below


Another one of B-s movies below

Up In The Club

H2O
Ok I went out dancing in the club on Friday night. A place called H2O in dc here. I am not a big fan of this place. Last time I went to H2O I brought 275 of my friends hehe no I am not joking. Its a cool place but the guys are super aggressive here. Every single second you feel like your friends are being grabbed. Last time I was at the place I was trying to keep them off my one friends and literally had to block dudes hands from grabbing her ass to the point where he grabbed my hand. I felt like saying "how do you do sir" as if we were shaking. Anyways Friday was not as bad but one of the ladies with us definitely had to tell a guy off pretty much once ever 5 minutes or so. This was extremely funny. It was like watching them all line up to ask her out and she had to keep saying I am not here for a date just to dance.

Love to Dance

I truly do love to dance. I have never felt so alive then when I am dancing in the club with some good friends and some awesome music. I mean its almost like a high. I think this comes from when I was a kid I grew up in a mostly black area of San Francisco ( Fillmore area and HP [ Hunters Point ] School distract ). I used to go to the school dances and get down. This is one reason I love to throw big parties. I mean where else can you get a bunch of your friends all on the dance floor at the same time. I love that. Like at all of the big parties I throw dancing is just going to happen. We will always get the dance floor heated up every time. Let face it at big parties you can catch up with your friends a little but dancing is what's its all about. Anyways we did make it out of H2O. I think my friend Christine is going to drag me to out dancing again before I can catch my breath. I tell she is an awesome dancer and never seems to stop. I guess allot of the people I hang with really love dancing. Bonnie, Anji, Kavitha, Charann my brother Willi and Jay we all like to get up on the floor sooner or later and if we have not done it for a while you can get after the next happy hour we will be "UP IN THE CLUB" :-)

The Plane Goes Down

Our parents had it so much easier. They fell in love with someone they got married and live together forever. Real love, True love.

Our generation we hide our feeling and do not know how to love. We walk away from love because we are so scared of it. We are so scared of it that we feel we will fail so we never open up or event try.

================================================
I'm leaving your town again love
But I'm over the quilt that you've spinning
And I'm up in the air, so baby hell yeah
Oh honey I can see your house from here
If the plane goes down, damn
I'll remember where the love was found
If the plane goes down, damn

You keep me high minded
You get me high

Flax seeds, well they tear me open
And supposedly you can crawl right through me
Taste these teeth please
And undress me from these sweaters better hurry
Cause I'm keeping upward bound now
Oh maybe I'll build my house in your cloud
Here I'm tumbling for you
Stumbling through the work that I have to do
Don't mean to harm you

By leaving your town again love
But I'm over the ground that you've been spinning
But I'm up in the air, said baby hell yeah
Oh honey I can see your house from here
If the plane goes down, damn
I'll remember where the love was found
If the plane goes down, damn
I'll remember where the love was found
If the plane goes down, damn
Well I'll remember where the love was found
If the plane goes down, damn

Who do you
Think you are, are, are, are
To keep me so oh cold, cold
You keep me high minded
You keep me high minded

You get me high minded
You get me high

By JASON MRAZ