San Francisco Here I Come

Work brought me to San Francisco this week and I was able to catch a Giants game on Monday night. The investment bank we were meeting on Tuesday hosted a group from Control4 - the seats were fantastic (10 rows up between home plate and the home team dugout). The Phillies starting pitcher was Roy Halladay who didn't live up to his best arm in the majors status. The Giants hit him hard and often and won the game 5-1.


Ryan Howard from the Phillies signed a 5 year $125 mm contract extension earlier in the day and celebrated it by going 0-4. You'd expect at least a single from a guy whose now making $150,000 per game.

Ripley's Believe it Or Not Museum

With a couple of hours of free time I visited the "Ripley's Believe it or Not", Museum on 42nd Street. As you can see from the pictures below, most of the stuff is macabre, but pretty fascinating. This is a real cross section of a human head. After being hung for murder, this criminal's head was cut in two so that it could be studied.

One of the larger exhibit rooms was filed with all sorts of medieval torture devices. Heretics were put in this contraption which was closed and strategically placed spikes did in the unfortunate participant.

This head below was the preserved skull of a deceased husband. His wife was expected to wear her husbands head on a necklace as a sign respect for the departed.

All of these items were recovered from the stomach of a man-eating shark. Notice the two swim suits, a five pound metal anchor, shovel, and horseshoe. The horseshoe had previously been attached to a donkey that fell victim to the shark.

The picture below is of a section of the Berlin Wall.

Ripley was fascinated by headhunters who decapitated their victims, removed the skull and then shrunk the skin and remaining parts of the head. There was a nice collection of heads, this one coming from a Caucasian whose misfortune it was to run into these unruly natives.

The pistol below is one of two derringer pistols John Wilkes Booth took with him to assassinate President Lincoln. It was found at the scene of the shooting and for a long time was assumed to be the murder weapon. Ballistics later determined that the actual weapon used to kill the president was an identical weapon found on his possession when he was captured.

The World Largest Hersey Bar

After my last trip to New York, I told Tyson about the existence of a 5 pound candy bar at the Hershey's store on Times Square. He thought I should bring one home and wanted a picture as proof that I had purchased one. The fine print on the wrapper says, "If you eat all of this, just like the candy bar, you're but won't fit in a chair."

For dinner I went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Darren would have been in heaven looking at all of the Rock memorabilia including guitars and clothing from the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Gene Simmons (picture of guitar below), etc.

There hasn't been anything too exciting to report. It was rainy this evening so I spent the last four hours in my hotel room working.

Back in New York

An opportunity for some training needed to keep my CPA license has brought me back to New York. My flight landed around 3:00 pm so I was able to walk around the city for a couple of hour this evening. It is a completely different city in the summer compared to the winter when I was last here. I found this NY Yankees apparel store which Kristi and Tyson would absolutely love. To prove my love for them, I purchased some Yankees gear for them.

I had dinner at the ESPN Zone. With four hockey playoff matches, two NBA playoff games and the Mets in action - all on the unbelievable number of big screen TVs - it was a sports lovers dream.

Check out the crazy long, purple finger nails that this lady walking down the street had. I'll bet she doesn't do much keyboarding.

Newest Member of Redsox Nation

Our family loves baseball. We've had some great times together attending games in person. Dining on a ball park dog and enjoying a beautiful summer evening borders on heavenly. While we agree on our love for baseball, we are polar opposites when it comes to our favorite team. I am a life long fan of the Boston Redsox. Kristi and Tyson on the other hand prefer pin-stripes and swear allegiance to George Steinbrener and the New York Yankees. You can imagine how thrilled I was to capture this picture of Kristi. I think she looks good in red.

Last year I offered Tyson $100 to cheer for my beloved Sox and he flat out rejected my offer. This year I upped the amount to $200 and his response was, "Do I have to cheer for them in the playoffs too?"

Camping

Tyson and I joined the scouts from our ward on a recent campout to the sand dunes. While it was a little cold (okay a lot cold at night) we had a great time tumbling down the dunes and shooting off rockets that the scouts had built during a recent activity.

Tyson is on pace to be our our only Eagle Scout. He loves camping and has already earned his 1st Class. He goes to his first summer camp this year.

The boys brought sno-boards and rode them down the dunes.