Fishkill, NY and food

I am in Fishkill, NY and tired as hell. After spending more than 4 days in one place, I acclimated to being on one time zone. I didn't fall asleep last night till 3 o'clock, seriously. Well, I had a good break and was in Philadelphia last week, and it was pretty standard. I didn't have a chance to hit up Jim's to get a cheesesteak, and have come to the conclusion that going anywhere else doesn't match up. I am trying to eat reasonably healthy being out on the road. My usual diet usually consists of tons of greens or fruit. Usually for lunch I might get a salad from Panera Bread or Ruby Tuesdays. Dude, Ruby Tuesdays salad bar is never-ending. Its sorta like the movie the Never-ending Story, but in salad version. Imagine Atreyu as a carrot. (I realize that is incredibly dumb, but what do you expect?) Subway is a staple as well. Six inch wheat bread with turkey or ham with pepperjack cheese, lettuce, green peppers, salt and pepper, red wine vinegar, brown spicy mustard, and garden salsa sun chips. After describing that, I am hungry. Some of the hotels BER puts me up in have free bananas and apples at the front desk too, so I usually steal one or two of them for mid day snackaroonies. Sometimes, that's all I have for lunch. It saves money and is fairly light. Unless I know of some awesome place to eat like Jim's or Dinosaur BBQ. I figure unless the food is damn good, why put up the money. I made the mistake of recently going to an expensive thai place in the Philadelphia airport. It was a recommendation I shouldn't have taken. It was sub-par, oily, and put a stain on my pants.... no, I didn't crap my shorts, although that would have been funny.... to other people... well not the person sitting next to me on the five and half hour flight home to Seattle....whatever. Well, I wasn't expecting to give you a blog on my road diet but that's apparently what I just gave you. Above are pictured some of my favorite meals around the country. Buffalo wings from the original Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY, In n Out Burger in California, Oyster Shot from Acme House in New Orleans, Crawfish Etouffee from Baton Rouge, and the other picture is for your enjoyment.

My computer is back, and so am I...

Well my computer crapped out on me in Oklahoma City. Mac Store fixed it for free (900 dollar fix) and I am back on the blog. Ill keep it short Omer.... I mean Jason, so I don't waste any of Boeings... I mean McDonnell Douglas's time. Yeaya...

So Oklahoma City, OK was fun (except that computer shit) and I got some good BBQ and saw Where The Wild Things Are. That movie didnt deserve the hype. It was somewhat good, but not monumental good like some people were making it seem. After that, went to Minneapolis, stayed in a killer new Embassy Suites. It was built like 2 months before I got there. Had a first class seat on the airplane home and loved every minute of it, except not getting a portable dvd player. Yea I know! WTF?!?! (I hate that acronym) Yea, I got first class for free and Im complaining. Feel free to kick me in the ass next time ya see me for being a stuck up POS. (I like that acronym)

The next week, I was in Grand Rapids and it was nice as always. Met up with a friend and had dinner at a small bistro. An awesome dinner that included a delicious salad with prosciutto and chicken. The next day we flew to Hot-lanta and stayed in a ghetto Holiday Inn. Usually, chillin at the Holiday Inn is nice, but this time it was not so nice. We left the next day, and went to Mobile, Al. This hotel was a straight up shithole. I could have pissed in the corner of the lobby with people there, and nobody would have looked twice. "Oh, thats normal." "Funny college asshole. Hey, how does my mullet look?" After that, we scurried over to Baton Rouge where we stayed in an Comfort Suites and we went to a place that had AWESOME crawfish etouffee (sp??). I saved half of it for lunch the next day and it was spicy and delicious. Baton Rouge was an alright city. REALLY southern. It also had a massive industrial district that kinda visually over shadowed the fact that the downtown is actually decent. After that, we jumped on a plane and made our way to Memphis. Well, actually itwas West Memphis, which is in Arkansas. Now, I have been to some shitty places, but this place took the cake. The hotel was full of truckers, the rooms smelled like moldy smoke, the restaurant (the only eatery in 5 miles, no joke.....even the front desk guy was like "yea.... theres no where to eat.") had like 5 things on the menu, and so on. Just shiteous. It was pathetic. So I put on the seminar and was unable to see the REAL Memphis cuz we were 20 miles from it and it would have cost a shitload to pay for a taxi to go into town. Next time, rental car fo sho. After that I flew home, got in late, and did laundry, got up, got my computer fixed, had beers and pizza with the roomies. Im in Cherry Hill, NJ right now with another PM and meet up tonight with a couple others to have dinner. For those of you that read this between now and tomorrow, I thought I had a flight that got in super late from Philly, but as it turns out I get in around 9. Not bad. Well I will see ya some time soon. Maybe a new blog post tomorrow. Deuces from Cherry Hill, NJ brahs....

Dont piss of southerners....

I was in Nashville, TN yesterday and began the morning pretty relaxed. A few people strolled into my seminar, around 7 or 8 and I signed them in and everything was going great. Then the shit-storm arrived. I was expecting 86 people for this seminar but ended up with 104. This room was already at max capacity and I had nowhere to put these people. I literally had to put chairs behind the speaker and around the trash cans and squeeze people in any way I can. As people are signing in, there are others who haven't paid and even more people who just aren't registered but have paid. On top of that I have people coming out of the room telling me there are no more seats, people leaving because of the lack of space and a speaker who looks like she wants to rip my head off because she has to use the hotels sound system which requires she carries around a hand held microphone all day. God I love BER. They send me out into the ditches so that I can have over 100 people creating a tornado around me while I look like I don't know what the fuck Im doing. Oh man, these southerners were pissed. WHERES MY BOOK!? I WAS TOLD THAT I WAS SIGNED UP!! WHOS IN CHARGE HERE?! I am redneck. After telling the fat southern men and women to go into a diabetic coma and shut the fuck up, and after fixing the sound system that the hotel had NO IDEA how to fix, things finally got underway. After my week of having two speakers and yesterdays shit-show, I am honestly not cheery over my decision to do this job again. After the seminar ended and everyone gave shitty seminar scores to us, I left. I got in a cab. Went to Nashville airport. Was stopped at security for a half hour because I had 9 volt batteries in my case. Fuck them. Crashed in the Delta Lounge. Boarded the plane. Flew to Dallas. Arrived in DFW. Got to a La Quinta by taxi service. I hate La Quinta. Its 945 by the time I get in my room. I wanted to workout. FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKK. Whatev.

I reported the problem, and of course the company acts like I didn't troubleshoot the situation well enough. Doing this of course while sitting back in Seattle in an office,

behind their little desks with their clothes in THEIR drawers, and THEIR showers to get into, and THEIR beds to sleep in at night and see THEIR friends and not babysit not only one, but TWO people at times. I swear to god, whose requests can sometimes be short of wiping their asses. Anyways... this is what I signed a contract for and should have understood when I did another year right? Not really. I guess I didnt imagine that I would be this bitter this soon with all thes changes that occured. Oooooookay. Breathe in buddy. Whining done.

I fly to Oklahoma City tonight, and hope to see the Oklahoma City Bombing memorial. Heard its pretty powerful. Maybe Ill get some good BBQ there too. Well deuces from Dallas, TX yall.

A fuckin massive eclair....oh and Arizona, Michigan, Washington, Texas, Ohio.....

Well someone has brought it to my attention that although some of my posts can be a bit entertaining, he wishes they would be shorter so as not to waste his companies time. Soooooo this will be my last 'long' post. I will try my best to make them more frequent and a little shorter. If you have a problem with this take it up with the man who told me. Lets call him..... Homer......no wait.....Gomer....how about Jason. Yea Jason Burstein. Anyways..... I am currently in Nashville Tennessee in a Hilton Garden Inn flipping channels back and forth from The Man in the Iron Mask to Hitch. I love Hilton Garden Inns. mostly because when you check in, they have warm cookies waiting for you at the front desk that i mow through. Its awesome. Soo, when I last posted I was in St. Louis whining about the ghost piano above my meeting room. After that seminar, I flew to Phoenix right after that and had an amazing cab driver who used to be a New York Police detective. Every other word out of his mouth was either 'rat-bastard', shithead, pussyface, or motherfucker. He was hilarious and had the thickest New York accent I have ever heard. We had a quick seminar and drove to the airport where I arrived in Seattle around 8 on Thursday night. This next segment I will call a "shitstorm" of traveling down to San Antonio to see the WSU game and spend a night on the riverwalk for Halloween. After flying home from Phoenix, I had dinner with Steve, and repacked my luggage. After a pointless day in the office, a coworker and I headed to the airport, but en route got a call from our company saying we wont make it to San Antonio till the next day around 2 or 3. We said fuck that. Get us as close to San Antonio as ya can and we will drive the rest. So we flew into Houston, and drive to San Antonio, arriving at 130 in the morning. By this time, everybody was drunk and Hillary and I were tired as hell. We woke up in the morning went to the football game (miserable) and later that night went to the riverwalk to party it up. It was great. I really enjoyed the riverwalk. I could have stayed a couple more days down there and felt like it was worth my time. After a total of 30 hours in San Antonio, I bounced to Singh-Singh-nasty, Ohio. (Cincinnati)...yea, Im an idiot.

In Cincinnati, I began a week of having 2 speakers for a week. Its a new deal that BER is doing so they can save money. Both my speakers were great. Super nice and fun to talk to and easy to get along with. It makes the process 10X easier if they are like that. I have been to Cincinnati before, and like every other time, it was uneventful. I thought maybe this time I would show up and maybe Singh-Singh-Nasty didnt suck ass. Oh well. Anyways, from there we made our way to Columbus, Oh where we went to a Man vs Food restaurant called Schmidts Sausage House. It was good. They had MASSIVE eclairs and I got one. (pictured above)

****Quick Side Note: I dont remember the ending to The Man in the Iron Mask being so shitty. My opinion of this movie has changed completely. What a bum out.

.....So this Schmidts place had awesome German food. Great sausages and killer potatoes. After Columbus, Oh, We went to Toledo, Oh. Now, I have been to some pretty depressed towns around America, but this place was pretty bad. It was a big town, but NOBODY was there. All these high rise building, absolutely vacant. It was ridiculous. Kirsten Varg, a BER coworker and friend was in town and we decided to walk out into "town" to get lunch. We didnt walk far before somebody was smoking weed in a bus stop and we got nagged for change. It seems the town was inhabited..... by homeless people. I was wrong. This town had been hit by the failing auto industry. Its only 30 miles from Detroit. Alright alright, enough depression talk. After depression town, we headed to Grand Rapids, MI which I love. Its an awesome city and BER always puts me up in a nice hotel. There is also a restaurant called The Pita House that has the best gyros and kabobs outside of Santorinis in Kirkland. There is a picture of it above. Grand Rapids has an amazing downtown with a river running through it, and clean streets. I have blogged about how much I like this place, but will go ahead and gush some more. After Grand Rapids, we made our way to Detroit and stayed in a remodeled Raddison. It was nice.

After the seminar in Detroit, I made my way to the airport to catch a flight to Washington DC where I would meet up with My friend Omer/Jason and Eric Bleeker. I flew into Baltimore around 730 and we were staying in the Intercontinental right downtown. We had some food at Chicago restaurant Uno, and had some beers. We went out in an area called Power plant that was filled with ho and d-bags and proceeded to p-tay down. We woke up in the morning feeling feeling and looking like bags of shit and drove down to Washington DC. We hung out at Erics place for a bit but then made our way into the city to see some sights. We passed by the Arlington National Cemetery, went to the National cathedral, and drove through a street where most of the embassies were. The different tastes and stylings these embassies had were interesting. Some of them were just townhomes, but others were like mansions and victorian estates. We later went out to an area called Adams Morgan, which I guess is typically know for being the place where everyone only comes out of the bars to puke there brains out and then go back in to have another brew. There are also a couple pizza restaurants around that area, that compete to have the biggest pizza slices. There are some picture of how big they are. Not only were these pizza slices stupid big, but they were good. Well after a second night of redonk a donkey punch antics, we woke up and went to a place called Old Emmets for brunch. It was delicious. Great food, great atmosphere, and HUGE restaurant. After that I boarded a plane and have headed here to Nashville, TN. The next few days will be easy and I look forward to it. I will be blogging shorter entries and more frequently hopefully, and will keep ya updated on everything, Well Im tired people and need to go to bed. Hope all of you are livin the dream. Deuces from Nashville homies....