Archive for July, 2008
- The Lovely Suse and the Lovely Tess were down in Connecticut on Friday and Saturday, so I had the place to myself. I spent Friday night on the sofa being a lazy man, which I haven’t done in months. Of course, this was my one chance to sleep as late as I want and enjoy the peace and quiet. And what time did I wake up on Saturday morning? 6:15AM. Seriously. I was wide awake and so was George, so we got up. By 9:00am, I had done laundry, washed my car, and cleaned out the fridge. I spent the next 2 hours doing yardwork. Nice and relaxing, right? Well, these are the things that I can’t get done when everyone else is around, so it was nice to be able to do all of those things that I’ve been meaning to do for weeks. Oh well. I don’t need much sleep anyways. Ironically, the Lovely Tess slept until 8:00am that morning.
- I’m wearing seersucker pants today.
- We hit up the SOWA Open Market on Sunday. Man, it’s been a while since we’ve been downtown. It’s sort of sad. I guess that’s what happens when you turn into boring suburban parents.
- The Lovely Tess is officially walking. It’s sort of a Frankenstein-looking stumble, but she somehow manages to stay balanced. She’s also officially in the “drunken college student” phase. She stumbles around, throws stuff around, makes a huge mess everywhere she goes, yells and screams, and gives big slopppy kisses.
- At work one day last week, all of a sudden, honey started dripping on my desk. What the hell? Well, I have a bottle of honey flipped upside down on a shelf that I’ve had up there for months. For some reason, the humidiy must have gotten to the point to where the cap shifted slightly, and a stream of honey started flowing out of it. Weird.
- For any of you Mac users who would like to still run Windows for various things but don’t want to run Boot Camp or shell out the bucks for something like Parallels, give VirtualBox a try. I installed both Vista and XP using it last week and it works like a charm. And it’s free. Not that I’ve really needed it for anything, but it’s nice to know that it’s there if I need it.
- Without fail, when it decides to rain when I’m grilling, it always turns into a torrential downpour just as I need to take everything off the grill. I think I’ve finally figured out how to do it, with the big golf umbrella in one hand and the tongs in the other. I’m able to keep the plate and the grill under cover, take everything off, turn off the grill, and then head back inside. Of course, that doesn’t keeep my feet from getting sopping wet and muddy.
Monday, Jul 21st, 2008
Categories: 2007
- Is there anything worse than waking up in the morning and thinking that it’s Friday morning and then realizing that it’s actually Monday morning? I don’t think so. I also had just had a dream that I was using stolen/phony credit cards and that Don Cheadle was chasing me. Weird.
- I never thought it would come to this. We promised each other that we would never become these types of people. We’ve gone off the recycling deep-end. We’re washing and reusing plastic ziplock bags. Holy moly. OK, not all bags, but just the ones that we’re using to store our produce from our CSA. Before we put things in the fridge, we put everything in large 1-gallon bags so that they don’t wilt. It seemed a little hipocritical to use all of these bags every week and then throw them out, so I started rinsing them off and reusing them. So sue me.
- Do you have fruit fly problems? Here’s an easy solution that we’ve called into action recently and it works like a charm. Honestly, I feel no remorse watching those little buggers frantically trying to swim out of the vinegar in the bottom of the glass.
- It’s as if toddlers are somehow wired to like Sesame Street. We’ve held off from letting the Lovely Tess watch any TV or DVD’s, but there are times of desperation when she’s completely lost her mind and you need something to settle her down and occupy her for a few minutes. Streaming Sesame Street to the rescue. She quiets down and starts watching with us and peace returns to the house. I’m guessing that this is a very slippery slope that we’ve started down.
- We grilled up some whole sardines on Saturday night. If you can get past the 40,000 bones that those little suckers have, them’s some good eats.
- We had a very white-trash Saturday afternoon in the backyard. The Lovely Tess played in the kiddie pool in just a diaper while the Lovely Suse and I sat in lawn chairs, picked weeds, and ate freeze-pops. It was awesome. Until the Lovely Tess’s diaper exploded from being so full of liquid. Who knew that there was gel in there?
- There’s nothing better than when the power goes out at work. Dozens of engineers are forced to talk to one another with nothing else to do.
- I haven’t worn socks (except for working out) in about 2 months.
- Just got back from three days on Nantucket. Let’s just say that it was a much more successful vacation than the last one. That’s not to say that any vacation with a one year old is relaxing, but we all had fun, got some sun and sand and got away from things for a little bit. The Lovely Tess got to play with our friends’ 100 pound Great Pyrenees, although he wasn’t always such a willing participant. And I got to play handyman for a few days as I tend to do out there. This visit, I sharpened their knives, fixed one of the oven burners that wouldn’t light, sharpened a branch trimmer, and fixed their sticking sliding screen door. Between that and us cooking for them, I think we’re their favorite houseguests.
- We finally have a finished bathroom. Hey, it only took six weeks, but between issues with the insurance companies, scheduling problems with the contractors, and finally the week it took to complete the work, our house is finally back to normal.
- Along with the finished bathroom, we finally have a working oven again. After a service call to get the thing repaired, the service guy told me what part needed to be replaced and said that it would be cheaper for me to do it myself (as I had already replaced another part in the same area). I ordered the part, it came the next day, and five minutes later, we had a working oven, good as new.
- I finished up two more classes last week, and of course, my next two classes started this week. No rest for the weary.
- I used to love going to be beach and lying out and frying in the sun and getting all tan. Man, that was stupid. Now, I’m all about the shade. Sunblock, hats, umbrellas are what it’s all about now. I’d prefer not getting skin cancer, thanks.
- The Lovely Suse and I finally broke our curse and were able to go out to dinner together by ourselves. The last two or three times we’ve tried, one of us has come down with some sort of terrible stomach bug. Maybe the curse has been lifted finally?
- Our tomato plants are just a couple of weeks away from deluging us with a torrent of fruit. Some of the plants are as tall as me and they’re already weighted down with tons of young tomatoes. Our basil plants are a couple of feet tall, the rest of our herbs are doing great, and even our zucchini plants are doing ok. I think some fried zucchini blossoms are in our near future.
- The only celebrity we saw on the island was Harry Connick Jr., who happens to be on my list of Guys I Would Want to Be. I bet he lives a very nice life.
- How was everyone’s long holiday weekend? Ours was pretty sucky.
- After weeks of scheduling problems and insurance issues, the work on our bathroom finally began this weekend. Sweet, right? Well sure, in theory. But consider your house being turned into a construction zone with a one year old and a nosy dog. We basically sequestered ourselves in the kitchen or stayed out of the house as much as possible. These types of projects never seem to go smoothly for us, and this has been no exception. It took a couple of attempts to install our new living room ceiling fan correctly (an unrelated side project), and the bathroom fan and light were put in the wrong spot. Oh, did I mention that we’ve been without a shower for a couple of days? Yeah, that’s sweet. At this point, the ceiling has been put up, the fan installed correctly, and there’s a nice smooth new coat of plaster on the walls. Now all that’s left is sanding and painting, which will, of course, create a gigantic mess. Sufficed to say, we don’t do well while our house is in chaos.
- The Lovely Tess got to spend the night at her grandparents house, which left us with a night all to ourselves. We figured a nice evening of dinner and a movie would be the plan, but it got too late in the day to try to do both (we had to wait around for the workers to finish up for the day), so we settled on just dinner. We hopped over to The Hungry Mother to eat at the bar and as soon as we ordered our food, I started feeling really sick. So sick that I knew that if I took a bite of food, it would be bad news for everyone. So rather than try to power through it (like I did for my birthday dinner), I let the Lovely Suse eat what she could and then we headed home. I have no idea where it came from, but it lasted through most of yesterday as well. The thought of almost all food made me nauseous, but strangely the one thing that didn’t was blueberry muffins. Seriously weird, right? All I ate yesterday was a blueberry muffin, a nectarine, and slice of dry toast. Thankfully, I’m feeling better today.
- I’m loving the new ceiling fan in our living room. We’ve barely used the air conditioning in the house all summer, and this just makes it that much easier to stay cool. Quite lovely.
- For the second year in a row, we both fell asleep during the 4th of July fireworks. Is it just me, or were they especially boring this year? Country music and opera just doesn’t quite cut it for me. They seriously peaked about 5 years ago when then first instroduced the smiley face and peace sign fireworks. Now, it’s just the same thing year after year, just with crappier music.
- Oh, the oven? Yeah, still broken. After replacing the main control board, it still doesn’t work. I’m throwing in the towel and calling in a repairman. Yes, I can admit defeat. I could just keep ordering parts until I find what’s broken, but I’ve run out of patience with it.
- Congrats to Ianqui and Super-G on the birth of their son, Yo! (names have been changed to protect the innocent).
- Due to my illness, this was the first Sunday in years that I didn’t make chicken. A Sunday without chicken is like Chanukkah without the latkes. Boo.
