Weather: Poopie!

What poopie weather! It's icky. But not as icky as Abe getting sick off of too many biscuits. Which is what happened last night... I accidently knocked over a box of Alpo treats, and Abe freaks out and wolfs half the box down in 3.4 seconds. A few hours later, up come the biscuits! And back down they go, as he quickly reingested what he had just regurgitated. Then he got sick again... and again... and again... and again. Icky!

So tonight is my pal Courtney's bachelorette party. I don't know what girls are supposed to do at bachelorette parties, but ... well, I have no 'buts' to speak of. I just don't really know what girls are supposed to do at bachelorette parties... Her wedding is on Sunday, the day that Jay is actually having a bachelor party for our friend Mike.

And that's about it, folks. One of these days we'll get to break in the new grill... hopefully when all the weddings end and things aren't so busy, we'll have a nice backyard party with horseshoes and homebrew and the new grill. We'll see...

We got a grill yesterday

It's a Consumer Reports Best Buy. Sweet! It's got cast-iron grates. Sweet! It's got a side burner. Sweet! It is a fancy-schmancy grill, and we be cookin' all night long.

So much shopping...

Whew! Yesterday sure was a whirlwind of consumerism. Well, partial consumerism, I suppose, if that's even English... but I'll get into that later.


First stop was to get Jay a suit. He needs a suit for Mike and Dani's wedding, in which he is the best man. I think we might also use it for our wedding, too. The last suit he says he owned was a heavy wool one from Sears. He wanted a suit that was on the informal side, something not too heavy, something snazzy. Well, we got helped by a guy named Lenny, and I don't think he liked me all that much, but that's beside the point. Jay bought a suit! They need to do mystery alterations to it (some guy whisked in from a back room, started putting pins all over the suit while it was still on Jay, and whisked back into the back room), so I guess we can pick it up Friday after 6pm. Lenny told me they don't charge for storage (with a hint of sarcasm) when I asked if I was allowed to pick it up for Jay.


Then we went to Target and used one of those scanner guns to register for lots and lots of stuff. We didn't really have any idea what we were doing, but it was fun to point and shoot at the bar codes... We spent a lot of time doing that.

Then we went to Home Depot to register for more stuff. Jay wanted some decent tools, so that's what we registered for, I think. I don't think I was paying attention. Then we went over to the grills and admired big fancy grills.

We realized we really needed a lawnmower and a grill, so we decided to go to Sears and buy at least the lawnmower.

We held off on the grill because it wouldn't fit in the car. I also ran into an old FSCer named Jeff who I remember lived in Horace Mann back in the day. He works at Sears part time, and he actually teaches just a rock's throw away at Ashland High School. Weird.

Then we... what'd we do? Oh, we went to the movies to see Star Wars: Episode III. I thought it was much better than the last two - the acting was a little bit better, I thought, and the action sequences were pretty cool. I still have no idea who anyone is or what the whole plot line is, but at least we saw it in the theaters, right? ...Yeah.

So all in all, a long day. We got our chance to play mega-consumer. That's not a video game, kids.... that's real life.

Gardening

I'll post a picture as soon as I can, but I wanted to post about my little garden. I'm pretty new at this gardening thing even though my dad always had a garden when I was growing up. I'm realizing now that he did most of the work, and I just picked the tomatoes. Oh, if only picking were the most laborious part...

So Jay told me the next door neighbors said the previous homeowners had their garden over next to the spring. I said to myself, "That spot too wet!" And I noticed it wasn't getting any sun after 4:30. So I decided to rip apart the top of the railroad bed and do the garden there. Well, yesterday I realized (after I had mangled the soil) that the railroad bed gets NO sun midday, when the sunlight is at its strongest, and I also notice the spot over next to the spring was drenched in sunlight. So I decide to put the garden there.

There was lots of weeds and thick grass, so I had to rip all that up - it came up in chunks because all the roots were grown together - and then I had to turn the soil. I did that by taking a flat-headed shovel and digging a little square and turning the soil upside down. There were many many ugly earthworms in the soil. I think I chopped lots in half. But they regenerate, so I actually probably ended up doubling the earthworm population in one afternoon...

So now I'm in the middle of planting. I found out I don't have room for two cucumber plants. They look sad, anyway, since I had them in their tiny cardboard pot indoors for about a week. But I have about 12 different tomato plants (mmm!!), 6 green and 6 yellow peppers, a red pepper, some zucchini, some squash, some broccoli, some snow peas, some corn, a hot pepper plant... and I think that's about it. Now we fertilize and wait...

Happy anniversary

So it's May 17th, one year after the legalization of gay marriage in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Happy anniversary to all gay couples who got married. There's a statistic out there that lesbian couples marry twice as much as gay men couples. They interviewed a guy on NPR that said, "We gay men have the same commitment issues as straight men," as an explanation. Which I thought was amusing.

The wedding clothes...

So yesterday, if you can freakin' believe it, I actually purchased a wedding dress. Yes, a real dress that I am going to wear at my wedding. Me? Dress up? Noo! But yes, I found one that I love. Everyone was saying, "Oh, you'll know the right dress when you see yourself in it!" But every dress I had tried on was just okay. I didn't really 'fall in love' with any of them, so I just listened to everyone else's input on the dresses they liked. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be wearing a dress that was pretty, but that I didn't really like all that much. I was prepared to settle for a wedding dress.

Well, I went shopping once again yesterday with my mom and my sister, and I forget if it was me or the lady helping us who picked out the dress (I hadn't tried it on before), and on the hanger it looked pretty and stuff, but that whole weird put-it-on-and-you know-it's-the-dress-for-you thing happened.

Here it is!



Isn't it great?? I'm so excited!

So the wedding planning is in motion, even though there's only a few months until it happens. We're in the process of booking a photographer, a DJ, and picking out a cake. I'm actually getting a little excited now! Hopefully it'll be as fun as I think it'll be.

Steak

Sunday night, Dennis was kind enough to invite me to the movies with him to see Sin City, which was very entertaining. Thanks, D! I especially liked the gun-toting whores. Anyway, earlier in the day I had taken a steak out of the freezer with the idea that I would cook myself a steak for dinner, something I haven't done in oh-so-long. (You see, I decided to cook myself a steak because Jay is away. Jay's a vegetarian, so I usually cook veggie-friendly foods, i.e. not steak.) But when I got home, I really wasn't all that hungry, and it was getting late. But the steak was already thawed. I can't just throw it back in the freezer, can I? From what I read in Real Simple, hell no! "Ah, hell," I said to myself, "I'll just cook it and eat it tomorrow!"

Well, I put the oven on broil, sprinkle some salt and pepper on the steak, and toss it on the broiler. "Boy that steak looks good," I think to myself. So I put it in the oven. It gives off a delightful aroma... so I decide to eat the damn thing. I figure I'll just eat half and save the other half for the next day. Ooooh, should I cook some vegetables, too? Oh, sure! Zucchini and summer squash! Fresh tomatoes, too, just for the hell of it. So I end up eating the whole thing, all the veggies, and the tomatoes, too. I guess I know how people with eating disorders feel... I wasn't even hungry, but I couldn't stop eating.

I had a few scraps of fat left that I didn't want to feed Abe because he's susceptible to puke fits. So I threw the scraps in the trash can, which just resulted in Abe shaking and whining next to the trash can, trying to will the scraps into his mouth by dancing on his hind legs and licking his chops. It didn't work.


Oh, by the way, my best bud Laura has some of her textile creations for sale at this website: Plain Mabel. I guess it's a lady in Northampton, MA, that sells handmade funky things. Here's Laura's creation, Mr. Beardsley!

A post, a post, a post about... nuthin' much

Well, it has been a long time since I posted. And I have no excuse for that. Actually, I think an excuse would be that I haven't had interesting pictures to post lately, and what fun is a blog unless it has pictures? Yes, yes, I linked that last little phrase to Dennis's blog, which is always interesting because he always posts with a picture. And I like his pictures, I do. I like how he posts one with every blog entry.

So anyway, nothing much has been going on here at Indian Spring. Jay's been working very hard at his job, and it's getting more and more stressful for him. Hopefully either things will slow down and he can just go to work and do his job and come home and not worry, or he'll get laid off and get sweet unemployment benefits, or he'll find a much better job with much better hours and much better pay somewhere much better. Or he could, as the current plan goes, stay at this job for another year or two for the experience. Weee. It's just so damn uncanny the differences between our two jobs: Erin doesn't really do anything at work; Jay does everything and thensome and has to stay late and doesn't have enough time to finish things... Erin hates being bored and would love nothing better than to be at a busy workplace; Jay hates the pace of his job and yearns for moments of boredom... We should pull a Freaky Friday and switch bodies and get to be at each other's job for the day.

Speaking of Mr. Jay, he just left to go on another business trip to Kentucky. He's going to a big industrial building that exploded to take video so he can do a very big 3D animation of it. So I'm here alone for the next few days, and will have to find things to occupy my easily bored mind... like posting on my blog!

So it's Mother's Day, too, and I have to say I hate Google's interpretation of the occasion that they have on their home page today.

It reminds me of Shannon Scott's tattoo. ::shudders::

Oh, I also was reminiscing about my old employee days at Monstermoving.com, and was trying to remember all my ex-coworkers' names. They all pretty much sucked, as they were all very superficial idiots, but there was one lady who was really down-to-earth and nice, and I found her email address in a card she had given me, so I emailed her out of the blue. She responded saying that everybody in authority positions at Monstermoving got canned and the company got bought out by Monster. ...Okay, that's not that exciting, but it was good to hear from her I guess.

Okay. Now I'm rambling. I'm gonna go cook myself some nonvegetarian foods, like steak.