FOR THE WIN! As soon as this image showed up on my camera, we both started chortling and we came dangerously close to awakening our new friends and had to run down the street before our heads exploded with laughter. OMG, I'm crying with laughter right now while I type this. Holy shit, was it funny. (By the way, this is totally the right move in this situation. When I've passed out drunk in a car, I've always made sure to snap a photo of myself before passing out. Hahaha.)
Awww, nappy-nap time! Nothing is funnier than trying to be really quiet around sleeping people that you're kind of fucking with and after I took this photo we were both laughing hysterically but also trying to be as silent as possible.
Check out the truck parked right outside of the bar! I asked Leigh and Karen to strike sexy, slutty-girls-in-an-automotive-calendar poses and this is what they came up with. YES!
Check out the totally legit interlocking hand-grib on the bar. This ain't no joke, sheeee-it. Also, please note Nicole's expression as she summons the extra bit of power necessary to TAKE HIM OVER THE TOP! UNNNGGGGHHHH!
Hahaha. TRICK SHOT! I also love how this photo makes her look like she only has one leg. (I'm writing this two years later and she's married with a baby! Congrats, Nicole!)
Apparently, unbeknown to us, earlier in the day, someone had climbed the other side of the NYT building and this was the SECOND free-climber to scale the same building in a several-hour span!
Awwww, yeah! About 20 nail-biting minutes into the last match, we were trying to silently creep through the woods to track down the other team when we fell into an ambush! I threw the last grenade, snapped this rad photo, and then a couple seconds later the smoke provided a dense enough cover that allowed a couple of us to right-flank our ambushers! AWESOME!
Before the match started, I made sure I had the last of my TACTICAL SMOKE GRENADES handy. I'd used the other three I'd purchased in the heat of other battles, but I was so completely absorbed in the games that I didn't want to take photos and risk getting killed. But the smoke grenades were so awesome that I was determined to document me using the last one in an actual paintball-combat scenario!
Wait, HUH??? What kind of hillbilly, bait and switch, invite you to play paintball and then rape you in the woods with a hose (apparently) kind of shit is this?
Before she could answer, I got down on knee and popped the big one! She was so surprised that at first she didn't say anything. She just kept looking around totally surprised trying to process what was happening.
Meredith out of nowhere: CANDY BRA NOM NOM NOM! Hahaha. I love Gurj's expression in this photo so much. It's totally due to the fact that Meredith is FULL ON cupping her entire right boob and it makes me LOL every time I look at it.
Then it was time for rides! Check out how beautiful the rides there are! These rides make me so nostalgic. They are the same rides that were on all the Jersey Shore pier amusement parks we used to go to when we were little.
On Sunday morning I told Meredith I was having brunch with some former co-workers that were in town visiting, but I was really secretly meeting up with Amanda, Scott and Leigh to go shopping FOR AN ENGAGEMENT RING! Oh, snap!
That's right! After four years of dating, I decided that I was going to surprise Meredith and ask her to marry me at Sarah Lewitinn's Memorial Day BBQ; it was the fourth anniversary of the very same party that Meredith asked me out on our first date in 2004!
Walking Leigh back to her apartment, we passed this awesome sign for a psychic. Leigh was in the midst of doing an impression of the lady on the sign and saying something and this is the result.
I also love how the whole time all this nugget-eating is going on, Leigh's calling and texting people in Jenny's phone at 4:40am trying to figure out where her apartment is.
Turns out that these were plates from the buffet at the MSG after party. Jenny had taken a whole bunch of food from the buffet, put it between two glass plates, wrapped it in a napkin and put it in her purse. But the napkin had come undone...
It's after 4am at this point, and in the midst of Leigh and Sarah getting ready to pack up their stuff, Jenny ran into the dj booth and started busting out her cans again!
Oh, and then upon exiting the dj booth, she started doing doing a little "private show" for our good friend THE LURKER, whose patience finally paid off!
After lunch on Saturday, Meredith and I were walking home and we decided to pop into our local pet store and look at the animals. We were in the back looking at the lizards and we found a tank that had three lizards (all skinks) in it. Two of the skinks were big and colorful, the other skink was smaller and less colorful. Right as we were standing there watching them, one of the big skinks runs all the way across the cage and starts attacking the small skink!
Hahaha. These two girls were the other people on our team of six that we'd just met. They had never done body shots and couldn't stop giggling at the prospect. The girl in green went first and opted to try the "cleavage pour" method of receiving a body shot! Hahaha. Soooo good!
A little before 5pm, our team that had split up into groups in order to maximize the number of things we could collect, reconvened at Taco Chulo in order to rack up some big points! The item in question? "10 Points for a team member doing tequila shot at taco chulo (+5 for each additional TM. +5 for body shots)" We, of course, all opted to go for the extra 30 points and do body shots! I requested 6 shots of the absolute shittiest and cheapest tequila they had and the bartender proudly held up this bottle of LOS GENERALES! Hahah. Perfect!
Hahaha. On my flight back to NYC from Abu Dhabi I sat next a restless, grumpy older man from somewhere in Africa. He couldn't seem to get to sleep and opted to eschew the airline-provided sleepmask in favor of dramatically re-throwing a huge blanket over his head and sighing EVERY TWENTY MINUTES FOR THE ENTIRE FOURTEEN-HOUR FLIGHT. Hahaha. Here's me giving him very worst stinkeye after he elbow-jostled me awake for the TENTH TIME!
People would bottleneck up at some of the particularly steep parts and it gave me time to snap some pics that I think give a better perspective of the climb down.
I made it to the very summit with about 20 minutes to spare before sunrise. It was amazing to watch the bruised, purple sky slowly light up with pinks and yellows.
...other friends! Hahaha. I forget this guy's name, but he was hilarious. He was like one of the few guys in the town who was super into bodybuilding and was excited to have someone puny like me to flex-down next to. This photo makes me laugh every time I look at it.
I found a small table by myself, ordered a pizza and a big frosty mug of beer and was reading a book when these three characters came over and asked me if I wanted to join them! Who could say no to that? From L to R: My new friends Thomas, Maria and Mohamed!
Maria was from Sweden and approached me because she pegged me for a fellow Swede. She was a self-proclaimed "cougar" who came to Egypt on vacation after a terrible divorce, met Mohamed and fell in love and they'd been together for a couple years. They explained to me that they were working on getting Mohamed a visa so he could live in Sweden, but that everyone was skeptical about their love and thought it was some kind of scam to get a visa!
Check out what the rest of Luxor looks like! The "touristy" parts of town and the waterfront esplanade are all very modern. But the vast majority of the town looks like this! Dirt roads and chaos!
While most of the site is "open-air," a few of the smaller, enclosed temple's roofs have survived and you can go inside them and get a sense of what the other rooms felt like when they also had roofs.
There were sections of the temple where every single supporting column had a huge statue in front of it! Check out the guy walking in front providing scale!
Here's me saying goodbye to Ahmed after we got back to my hotel around 4pm! This guy was the best! Despite only knowing a few words in each others' language, we managed to talk all day for an eight-hour road trip. Thanks again for driving, Ahmed!
And just in case you're not convinced that he's a badass yet, Ramses II name in Greek is Ozymandias, which means he's also the inspiration for Adrian Veidt's character in WATCHMEN!
Here's a picture of our descent into the burial chamber via a secret shaft that's hidden in the side of the pyramid! The shaftway is only 3' tall, 4' wide and goes down for over 200 feet at a 27-degree angle. I only took this one picture because it was such hard work hunching my way down the shaft in the crazy-heat!
..and here's the view from the plane! It's crazy when you look out an airplane window and you're like "Oh yeah, I recognize that from looking at THE GLOBE."
Dude, you gotta love the Fatty! Check him out here doing the old "I will shoot you with METAL!" move that he probably saw Billy Sheehan do in a Mr. Big DVD box set that he probably totally owns. Hahaha. SOOO GOOD!
Lani saw what was going on and wasn't about to miss out on all the hot MAN-MILK action. (The best part is how Lani's delicately squeezing with her thumb and forefinger. Hahaha).
After you're done laughing at this photo, make sure you look at Niki's right ass-cheek - the shutter was clicked right at the moment of smack-impact and you can see the shockwave traveling across her bum!
On Tuesday night I went out to dinner with two of my most favorite former co-workers ever, Mike & Court. This picture makes me so happy. Our "one after dinner drink" quickly turned to five and then six. And then things got ugly.
