To kick off my first blog on the dining scene I’m going to review a restaurant /bar I went to last night called The Glenwood located off of Glenwood Ave. in Atlanta. I met 4 other people there for a late night dinner around 10:00pm, which by that time the bar scene was in full swing. We were lucky enough to get a booth, which was private considering how busy the place was. The beer list was extensive, but since I wasn’t there for drinks I couldn’t tell you how good any of them were. From what I hear, the beer selection is the main attraction of The Glenwood.
I was brave enough to order a Cheese Steak sandwich, which in the normal bar environment it would be best not to order cheese on anything. The food didn’t take too long to come out, and once it arrived I didn’t regret the choice of ordering a Cheese Steak at a bar. The food wasn’t too greasy, and these cheese tasted fresh and complimented the steak perfectly. The problem with the sandwich was that a Cheese Steak is supposed to be a little greasy, instead it tasted dry. I downed a whole lot of Diet Coke to help me finish the over cooked steak sandwich.
The highlight of The Glenwood was the service. One of the girls at our table ordered onion rings which were overflowing on the plate. Since our fries weren’t nearly so impressive the cook brought us out a bowl full of fries to share without us making any mention of the lack of fries. I don’t know how many times our super nice waitress filled up my Diet Coke, but it must have been at least five times. She was right on top of things, and always very friendly. When it came time for the check she gave us a check together instead of splitting it, then we had to figure out how much each of us wanted to pay. I thought that was a bit awkward, but aside from that she was great.
If friends wanted to go back to The Glenwood for the beer I would certainly go along, but it wasn’t the sort of place that I’d frequent for the food. I imagine that if we arrived earlier in the evening it would have been much better but at 10:00pm the food was dry and bland. The environment was nice, though a bit too loud for my taste. Atlanta isn’t smoke free, however there weren’t too many people smoking inside which made it comfortable.
]]>So far I’m really not that addicted; between starting a new relationship and work I don’t have as much time as is required to get addicted to a game. I’m just glad I didn’t pick this up during my Christmas vacation. So my druid is now level 8, two more levels and he’ll be able to show up on my FaceBook profile.
Speaking of that I recently joined facebook.com. For those interested, my name is Tom Bohan in the Atlanta, GA network. Thats about all the updates I have time for this morning. It’s time to get ready for work now!
]]>A winter festival was traditionally the most popular festival of the year in many cultures. Reasons included less agricultural work needing to be done during the winter, as well as people expecting longer days and shorter nights after the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. In part, the Christmas celebration was created by the early Church in order to entice pagan Romans to convert to Christianity without losing their own winter celebrations. Certain prominent gods and goddesses of other religions in the region had their birthdays celebrated on December 25, including Ishtar, Sol Invictus and Mithras.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas
If you know me then you know me then you know I’m very interested in religion but don’t believe in any specific religion. I was raised Christian however I lost my faith early on. It wasn’t due to any traumatic event like many people; instead I lost my faith because I stopped believing things without sufficient evidence. Growing up I was the type of kid that wanted to know everything. I’d ask many random questions to understand the world better, and would never settle for an answer without an explanation.
However, I never questioned the existence of god as a child. It was as real to me as gravity or that two plus two equaled four. That is until I met Santa. You see to me Santa was not a social figure, he was closely tied to my understanding of God. This is because Santa could do special things beyond the abilities of a normal man; he must be blessed by God. However as a child you hear rumors about Santa not being real, so I decided I need to prove it once and for all. When I discovered that ‘Santa’ was actually my mother getting up late I began questioning religion. Of course since I was young at the time I didn’t realize I was questioning religion, however looking back on it I see that Christmas as the moment I lost my ability to believe without reason.
You see Santa has all of these special abilities which fly in the face of reason (flying reindeer, going down chimneys, being able to visit more than a house a second). As a child I knew this was not possible, but I believed it anyway because society was so convinced it was true. This is much like the existence of god, I know that saving animal species by putting them on a boat while the world is flooded will not work. However God made it work in the face of reason. But once you require proof to believe in God you have lost your faith, because religion is not something that can be proven. It requires a leap of faith, the same leap that was required to believe in Santa is required to believe on God. For me not only the belief in Santa was broken, but the entire idea of believing in something without reason was destroyed.
I know that there are many reasons why people stop believing in God, but I know I can’t be the only one that was foiled by my belief in Santa. I wonder if the decline of Christianity is in part a result of the commercialization of Christmas. In truth Christmas adds nothing to the belief in God, we listen to stories of the birth of Christ, which didn’t even happen on this sacred day. We don’t ever talk about the moral ideas Jesus brought to us later in his life, which it seems should be the focus of the church. If people can believe in Jesus as a prophet first it would set a foundation for belief in Jesus as the Son of God.
Of course it is already too late for me, I will continue to question everything in life. I just wonder why the church thinks that it is important to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, instead of as the social holiday it is.
]]>I really don’t feel all that into blogging right now actually… its been a long day and I need to unwind someway. The problem is that I’d like to take a nice long warm bath, but at the same time I want some social interaction because I haven’t had any all day. So since taking the laptop into the bath tub might not be the greatest idea I need to think of something else to do.
Also, for those that haven’t already had to listen to me complain… Candace and I aren’t dating anymore. I just can’t keep going back and worth with someone… way too emotionally draining for me. Oh well, on to better things…
]]>thursday was a rainy thanksgiving day. i initially had intended to go on a hike, but with the ground being so wet i thought better of it. instead i stayed home and reorganized my stereo equipment. i got everything onto one stand (including the tv) so i could move the other stand to the bedroom. this gave me so much more room and really helped to open up the living room a bit. besides a little cleaning and reorganization i didn’t do too much during the day. in the evening i went to a co-workers home. i got to meet some new people, one of which is a researcher for cnn. it was very fun to talk to interesting new people, and of course the food was wonderful. i brought the wii over to his place to entertain the kids that were there. it was a pretty big hit, and i think that in the end some of the adults wished they had tried it out.
on black friday i had a wonderful time with work. we had someone causing issues for us and it occupied way too much of the day. between monitoring the logs i did manage to take a two hour hike during which i got to talk to candace’s daughter on IM (via my phone). she is such a sweet little girl; she even told me she loved me which was very awesome! it certainly made me smile.
the work problems continued into saturday with a new problem. i discover late saturday night that our site was partially down and we were never notified via email. it was very frustrating, but i ended up getting it back up quickly. unfortunately i spent half the day today in meetings discussing the aftermath and what we can do to detect problems earlier.
because i was up wayyyyyy late last night (4:30am) chatting on the phone i am dead tired now. i think i’m going to go sit in front of the tv and watch heroes (hopefully i can stay awake). i’ll try to update this more frequently. i’m going shopping in augusta tomorrow so that should be exciting. i’ve never been there before. lets hope its a good time!
]]>To those I haven’t talked to already, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
]]>So its all hooked up but since I’m working I haven’t taken the opportunity to watch a movie on it yet. I’ve been meaning to finish watching Sicko, so that’s my plan for tonight. Though now that I’m thinking about it I’m really kinda ‘blah’ about watching a movie. I’ve been feeling really lonely today, despite talking to Candace for longer than usual. I guess when I talked to her every night for 3 hours or more I was so over stimulated with her company that I didn’t need anyone else. Now that we only talk occasionally, and rarely about anything beyond how our day was, I feel like I need more social interaction. I suppose that is normal, most people don’t just get so involved with one person that they ignore everyone else.
On top of not talking to Candace so much I worked from home today. Most people would consider that a nice perk, while it does mean I eat a lot healthier it also means that I miss out on any social interaction for the day. So the only person I saw today was the FedEx guy. How sad is that? I will get over it, but I really should use my loneliness to motivate myself to make some new friends. Honestly, Candace has a daughter and lives with her family. She has other obligations, and I just have me. I really need to get my own social life under control if I want the chance at a relationship.
I could go to the gym and get a membership - that might be a good way to make friends. The problem is that I tend to not get along well with other guys. Drinking and sports aren’t for me, and those are the two ways guys tend to relate to each other. Not all guys of course, but probably the kinds of guys I’d meet at a gym. Making friends with girls also doesn’t work because I always feel unless they are married or engaged that they think I’m looking for a booty call. I don’t know, social interactions are difficult for me. I just over think things too much.
That said, I’m going to stop over thinking things and get me a drink of water…
]]>i even resisted the temptation of watching the Heroes episode i missed instead of working out. go me! now i just need to keep up with it.
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