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Sang until almost 3am! Thanks for having us, Frank & Liz!
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I wish we did this once a month.
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...and do live band karaoke singalongs until the wee hours!
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Later that night met up with Chris, Charlene & Hannah to celebrate Grant's birthday in a more low key way.
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Happy 40th, Grant!
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So much fun! I still think this should be turned into at least a quarterly party!
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On Saturday I went out to Frank & Liz's apartment for the TENTH installment of my favorite holiday party of the season: A Very Picarazzi Christmas! (Here's a link to the very first one back in 2005!)
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Met up with this guy...
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Coffee break on our way home.
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Treats and tunes = HOT NEWS!
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A lovely day...
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Chris & Marina.
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We came bearing beers.
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Chris picked Grant and I up and we headed north to Andy & Pepper's house. Dreamcatcher leads the way.
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Our favorite sexpert!
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After the reading, we adjourned around the corner to Milady's (RIP!) for drinks!
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Our groups combined tables and we ordered lots of food.
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Chris, Frank & Nina!
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Chris on the mic!
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Chris and Fatty.
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Chris was wearing some crazy, blinging watch!
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Fast forward two weeks later, and Grant and I went out for some lunch with Chris the Greek and Caesar, who were in town from Washington, DC and Italy respectively.
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Thursday night started out in the East Village. I grabbed a few drinks with Grant, Amanda, Chris the Greek (who was in town from DC) and Eric George.
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...Amanda, Meredith and Chris all went downtown to South Street Seaport to check out "BODIES...The Exhibition."
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The band had planned on having a huge post-show brunch party on Sunday at APT to celelbrate their first gig, but when the gig got cancelled with less than 24 hours notice, no one was sure what to do about the brunch. In the end, the band decided to press-on and have it. Here's Grant, Chris the Greek and Frank!
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Chris on the mic.
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...Sid and Buddy karaoke to meet up with Chris the Greek and Grant.
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Chris enlightened the lingering audience members by accompanying Grant's last somg with some "traditional" Greek dance moves.
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Chris the Greek was up visiting from DC to attend Grant's "Welcome Back from Hell-A" party. Here we are sending him off after some Tuesday morning brunch (which, is one of the finer points of not having a day job).
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Me, David K, Grizza and Chris the Greek.
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Steve Haase (yep, the guy with the fucking sunglasses on his head. At night) and Frank.
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Grant, Grant's lil' hat, Chris, Frank and me.
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At first you thought that this photo was repetitive and not worth including...and then you looked again and noticed Fatty's ridiculous expression in the background and suddenly everything made sense.
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Chris, the Vin, and Emily.
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Then Chris, being the "master of my own body" ninja that he is, destroyed them with him spot-on perfect impression (Well, except for the fact that he's not wearing a little brown dress). And the more we started taking, the shit was so funny that WE almost forgot that we really were taking him to his surprise party.
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John Craven, Fatty, Chris and myself met up with Grant for a lil' birthday dinner at Cafe Gitane in Soho.
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After we finished eating, the plan was for Emma and Lorelei to call and say that we should meet them at the Sunburned Cow, a bar all the way over on Avenue C. We'd try to arrive right at 10pm, and everyone would jump out yell "Surprise!" (hopefully both surprising Grant and scaring the living shit out of him simutaneously).
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Fire up iTunes and here cue up Crüe's "Home Sweet Home." Awww, yeah.
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Here's Chris and Fatty back at my apartment getting ready to head back to their respective homes - so ends our journey.

Between the three of us that had cameras, we managed to take just over 2,000 pictures which I edited down to 21 entries comprised of exactly 790 photos. And so it's with these last few words that I end the European Vacation Series (which is by far, the longest diary project I've ever undertaken). Back to life in NYC!
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I Fatty and Chris managed to sleep most of the last leg of our trip.
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As we scrambled up to the gate we realized that there are probably worse things than being accidentally stranded in Iceland for a day or two.
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With one final pic of the fantasic four, we said goodbye to Grant (who was staying behind in London for another couple of days) and....
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Shuttlebus from the rental car drop-off to the terminal.
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Saturday morning we woke up, double checked our packed bags, thanked Grant's parents for their hospitality, and hit the road for Heathrow.
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Here's another one. This one's my pensive and artsy "I'm acting like the camera's not there, but clearly I must know it is because I'm the one who took the picture" picture. Who's more emo than me? Motherfuck this photo diary nonsense, I'm gonna get me a LiveJournal. (ps - look at the two cutey patooties passed out next to me like little sleeping lambs. Teeheehee.)
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Gassing up our little Vauxhal rental.
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Saturday, Chris was in town and the four of us got together for brunch at 9th Street Market to reminisce about our recent hijinx in Europe.
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The only question I have is how did we not get beat up? Look at us.
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We posed for one last group photo before all going our separate ways. Let's hear it for Halloween 2003. Wooooo!
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Hahahaha. Right before the shutter clicked Grant bombed Chris with a super sneaky "Who does this guy think he is?" pose.
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ESS-EX! C'mon where my nig-noggz at?
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Awww, yeah - check tha setup! Awwww, look how cute Grant's mom is all displaying the food with the boys. (And be forewarned, anybody making remarks about Moms in the comments section will be promptly banned. In the words, of the Wise Fatty, "Dat shit ain' coo'!")
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And then we drove back towards Corringham to the White Lion Pub in Fobbing to meet up Grant's dad and...
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Grant was standoffish at first....
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....ARCADE TIME! (Look at Grant and Chris peeking out in the background. Hahaha).
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After a long-ass day of traveling and layovers, we landed in Heathrow a little past 11pm local time.
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Holy shit. Does this photo even need a caption? Hahahaha.
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...we arrived safely and without incident (save a slight yelling match between Grant and the rest of the passengers in the car who politely asked him if he would "SLOW THE FUCK DOWN SO DON'T HYDROPLANE OFF THE ROAD AND DIE FOR FUCK'S SAKE!") at Grant's parent's home and celebrated with some stiff drinks...
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...Chris managed to regain his composure and display his Greek Mac like a true Greek MACK. Awwww, yeah.
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The GREEK MAC! That's right. Two lamb patties in a pita with lettuce, tomato and tahini. After the initial surprise of the Greek Mac wore off...
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Despite all of my SUSPICIOUS CAMERA ACTIVITY I somehow managed to make it aboard the plane. Wait, where's the Fatty?
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We bid our lovely condo a fond farewell and piled into our sweet, lil' rental one last time.
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Once in the airport, we grabbed a quick slice...
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With a fistfulla cone, we bid a last fond-farewell to Rethymnon.
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Being that we were leaving Crete in the morning to head back to the UK, we decided to take one more trip into Rethymnon to walk around and get some ice cream.
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...a kick to it. Hooo-ah!
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Not completely happy with the shaky, hand-held quality of the previous "Scootering" footage we'd shot a few days earlier, Chris strapped the camera to the back of my bike so we could film our mountainous ascent on the coastal backroads. (I'll get around to posting clips of this someday. Don't worry, with the exception of Grant trying to brain we while I'm squatting down and talking to the bike-mounted cam, you're really not missing much).
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After fucking around for too long in Bali, we ended up having to make the 35 minute trip back to our condo at dusk (freezing our asses off the whole way). After dropping the bikes off and picking up our car, we headed to a nearby restaurant for an early dinner.
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Then Chris had an idea!
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More dangerous, high speed scooter hijinx for the benefit of the camera.
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Chris. Hahahahah.
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This photo should give you some perspective on the size of the main room you descend into. It was breath-taking.
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Chris raising tha roof.
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...I claimed I wanted to get a picture of these three on their way down, but it was really just my sneaky was of getting them to go first in case there were any ScoobyDoo-esque villians waiting below.
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We were the ONLY tourists there making the experience of descending down into them even creepier.
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Fatty, Grant and Chris.
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Once quick CHiPs-inspired coldlamp with the scooter...
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Same with tha Grizza.
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Twenty minutes later, and down at the bottom of the mountain we just ridden over, we stopped again to warm our hands.
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These tiny pics really don't do the mountains in the background justice. Click here to open a hi-res version in a new window.
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A small chapel off to the side of the Monestary tells the story (which I grabbed a rehash of from this site):

"The Greek freedom fighters would register their displeasure with the Turks (normally some Turks would be discovered dead) and the Turks would show their displeasure by killing everyone in a town or village. In 1866 around 1,000 Cretens took refuge in the Monastery fearing Turkish retribution. The people, which did include several freedom fighters, held out for two days before the 12,0000 Turks laying siege were able to rupture the walls. However, instead of surrendering the abbot (a local hero) and the people inside decided to ignite the gun powder in the powder keg room. 829 of the Cretens died. It is said anywhere from 100 to 1000 Turks were killed in the explosion."
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The four of us read this truly amazing story and reflected upon it for a few minutes...
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We saddled back up on our HOGGZ and hit the road. We only managed to get about 1/4 mile when Grant, who was leading the pack, slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road hysterically laughing and pointing...
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Seasoned veterans at this point in the trip, we even managed to drink our raki without so much as a grimmace. Opa! Opa!
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Hahahaha. Check out Chris trying to feed him a potato bigger than his head.
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If you look closely, you can just barely see Grant peeking out between me and Fatty.
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Awww, who's better than Chris, huh?
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After a few songs I gave up and headed back to our table on the sidelines to coldlamp with my boys.
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Here's Fatty, Grant and Chris upon arrival - quasi-drunk from dinner and already in awe of the stupid amounts of hot Greek women. (Make sure to look at all three of their priceless expressions).
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Looky, looky! What's going on here in this picture? After Grant was done giving her the "See, aren't we fun guys?" photo review, she quickly cozied up to tha Grizza.
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We chatted Michael up for a few minutes and after we'd established a rapport, I asked him if I had any shot with his cute friend and he replied (please make sure you read the next sentence in your best Balki from "Perfect Strangers" voice) "Don' be ree-deek-you-los!"
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Throwing down for the cam.
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After the girls were done telling us about their travels, Grant took Fatty's cam and gave them a run down of our trip thus far.
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Here's Chris reacting to "the new" Grant.
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Yaaaaay, Amstel.
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With bellies full of steak and heads full of raki, we decided to hit the town in search of some girls (to frighten them with our BREAFFFF).
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With the leather-panted Gunther giving us the stinkeye from across the table we took a view pictures more pics without her in the background to try to throw him off our perv trail. By the way, ever notice how stuff like Coke, ketchup and McDonalds always taste not-so-great overseas? Well with beer, it works the other way around. The beer we are drinking is Amstel. (not Amstel light, regular Amstel) Maybe it was the crisp sea breeze or the abundance of badobnkadonk butts out there but it was hands down one of the best beers I've ever had.
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And then a group shot. HA HA HA HA. Notice in the background you can see the chick's equally-attractive German boyfriend totally catching on to what we were up too. Das gig ist up, ja?
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We walked around town for awhile and eventually managed to find the steak joint. After we'd been seated, we noticed a heartbreakingly attractive German woman sitting at a nearby table and all of a sudden Grant wants to take a picture of Chris reading a menu.
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The camera never lies. That's why the picture is blurred. But turn down a complimentary digestif in Greece and you might get your ass handed to you along with the check. Looks like we have some shots to drink. Oh well, here's to minimal liver damage.