I don’t vacation well.  I usually get more excited by sitting at home but rarely do I achieve the To Do List slaying I gun for and I’ve slowly learned that I suck at prioritization until the last minute or when someone else is counting on me.  Joe and I talked of going to Nova Scotia over the summer which slowly turned into a few days at Acadia National Park.  I had an secondary goal of visiting some people and somehow Pat Toye was magically available so he became our Day 1 waypoint.

Joe and I left a spot late around 3:30 PM and shot for the icy north.  Entering NY was an absolute clusterfuck as we tooled along for 20 miles at 10 MPH.  We saw the following:

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And

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Yep, her other car is a broom.  After idling past Scarsdale I fumed at some 200 car pile-up causing the delay when we crested a hill and there the pile-up was.  Not quite 200, but enough to generate a gaper delay that shaved two hours off my life.

We met A.C.E, aka Richard Mercier at Braza, a Brazilian steakhouse in Hartford with the standard gimmick of all food coming from servers with the appropriate meat cut skewered on giant 3-bladed rapiers/sais.  I destroyed a hearty collection of sausages and various meats wrapped in other meats.  I was disappointed to learn that desserts were not served in the same manner and was hoping to see a sword impaling a collection of cheesecakes.

A.C.E mentioned his love of hot wings and brought up some wing joint in Philly with egregiously hot wings.  I began thinking if the hotness would be enhanced by simply using pepper spray on a wing before serving it and thought of starting a business as a pepper spray sommelier for those wanting a more refined tongue-incinerating experience.  Before leaving the restaurant I asked if we’d missed any of the food items to which the host said matter of factly “no, sir.  You ate everything.”  I don’t know in what sense he meant “everything” but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were an airlift from Munich as an emergency restock after I leveled their sausage reserves.

Afterword we hit A.C.E’s house where none of my pictures of his mint-green pool were properly illuminated.  His wife “the Warden” is a wonderful gal and loves to have her picture taken and does an awesome impression of Samara from the Ring.

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A.C.E has a minute computer monitor and I’m not terribly sure how he plays TF2.   I think I’ll start a collection for a real one leading up to his wedding.

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I suppose to a certain extent that was made up for by his much larger DVD collection.

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A collection he rarely gets to peruse for the following reason:

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All my photos of Richard sucked so….

We departed Richard’s home around midnight and arrived at Pat’s Vermont home at 2:00 AM.  Joe and I were immediately struck by the quantity of celestial pinpoints apparently called “stars”.  There are few in Philadelphia and I think we should look into importing them.  We went to bed around 4 AM, about 2 hours after Pat first saying “maybe we should go to sleep soon” and three hours after Joe shared a moment with Pat’s cat.

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I took up residence on an inflatable floor mat and day 1 was done.