Recap of the weekend

Now that my butt cheeks have healed from sitting on a few too many couches, I thought I'd say that we had a very nice weekend. Of course, Thursday was Thanksgiving. Then Friday we went to Bri and Kerry's for their Thanks Again party - as always, a great time. Friday night saw Jay cheering on Ricky D at the TD Banknorth Gaaahden. Saturday we went out looking at new couches - Jay and I are getting each other furniture for Christmas instead of gifts, 'cuz we sort of need new furniture. Luckily, we have the same taste when it comes to shopping for couches - it has to look decent, but it has to be super squishy and comfy.

So today, unfortunately, Jay's not feeling too well (much like Pat - hope you're feeling better, Pat!). I just wanted to say that I don't like the recent weather. It seems like the weekends are either rainy or cold, and then the weekdays are nice and sunny and warm. OR the warm days are rainy and the cold days are sunny. For instance:

Weekday: Warm, but rainy!

Weekend: Sunny, but cold!

Couch shopping and its repercussions

Quick post here: today we went looking at couches, and so we sat down in lots and lots of different ones. Now my butt is all chafed, and it literally feels like someone scraped medium-grit sandpaper on my butt for an hour or so. Jay thinks I'm weird. But man does it hurt!!

Post-Thanksgiving post (redundant?)

Hey, I love Thanksgiving, I love the stuffing, I love the turkey, I love the side dishes... but I wouldn't love washing the dishes. Haha, can you tell I just left my mom and dad to clean all these dishes?? Man, I suck!!

How was everyone's Thanksgivin'? We had dinner at my parents' house and got to hang out with my nephew - I'm scared of babies, but he's a cutie and I got to burp him a lot - and then today we went to Bri and Kerry's for Thanks Again, which seemed much more low-key than other Thanks Again parties. If you don't know what Thanks Again is, it's the day after Thanksgiving party where people bring any leftovers they have and Bri fries up some whole turkeys. If you haven't had fried turkey, your arteries haven't lived. So delicious... so crispy... so tender... oh, so fried.... mmmmmm.

Oh, so Thanksgivin's over, it was a bunch o' fun, and now we have to do the holiday shopping. Thankfully, my immediate family is doing the 'Secret Santa' thing where we all pick a person to buy for, instead of trying to buy a gift for all six of them. But we're still going to get the baby a gift, namely some Celtics clothes. Jay noticed that Mason has lots of Red Sox and Patriots baby clothes, and now we want him to represent all the Boston teams. Especially the C's. I said we should get him some New England Revolution gear (shout out to Dennis!), but Jay wasn't very excited about that....

Turkey turkey turkey

Well, here Jay and I are at my parents' house out in the WB (West Brookfield, not the TV station), and it's snowing, and the aroma of roasting turkey is in the air, and I'm in the middle of fixing a veggies and dip platter. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone - I hope everyone has a great meal and a great time with whomever you spend it with.

Last night we got to go out to Ye Olde Tavern, the ONLY bar in my hometown, where every townie congregates on the eve of Thanksgiving. I saw a few guys from my high school class (no, none of them were boyfriends; I didn't have boyfriends in high school because I was too interested in marching band), I saw a few people from the class one year behind me, and there was also a girl fight on the dance floor. Woo! It got really crowded and really surreal, so Jay and I got the heck out of there.

And here we are on Thanksgiving morn. I got to set the table. I have to go finish making veggies and dip now. (I get distracted. Look, a turkey!!)

The Publick House

I took Jay out to a place called The Publick House in Brookline last night. We found out about the place on The Phantom Gourmet, which is becoming a source of weekend entertainment for us lately. They said that this restaurant had a great macaroni and cheese, which happens to be Jay's favorite thing in the world. And plus they have like 27 beers on draft and many more I can't count in bottles. So we drove on into Brookline and got to the place at 4:00. I didn't know they don't open the kitchen until 5:00. Not to worry, though - we just sat ourselves down in the corner and got a beer. Jay picked out a throne chair. Seriously. It was this really uncomfortable wooden chair with a very high back that had intricate carvings in it. He loved it. When dinner time came along, Jay ordered the mac and cheese, and asked our server for some add-on advice: should he get asparagus and caramelized onions and add an extra artisanal cheese? Heck, why not?? He ate the whole thing, so I'm assuming he liked it a lot. We had a great time at this place! The workers were friendly, the service was great, the atmosphere was fun - not too loud that you couldn't hear yourself speak, the food was good and the beer was great.

Which brings me to my next suggestion: Jay and I decided that for his birthday in February, we're going to have a mac & cheese cookoff! Everybody you meet has a different recipe for this comfort-food dish, and Jay wants to try them all. No details are set in stone - I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that this February will be mac & cheese-rific.

One year ago

So I was looking through our digital pictures, and looking at ones from about a year ago revealed that this was about the time we were in the middle of getting the house. It's strange, I feel like for the first time in my life that I actually have stability and can actually remember things like where I lived last year and what was going on. In the past it's been like life moved and changed way too quickly to actually put roots down and have an idea of where you'd be in 6 months. Ah, philosophising...

So yeah. Looking at my trusty PDA, I see that we put an offer down on the house on November 3rd, 2004. We went to a Celtics game on November 5th. We applied for a mortgage on November 16th. I brewed my delightfully clovey gingerbread beer on November 21st (ew, it's a year old! but it certainly has mellowed...). And I also have a note on December 2nd that says my sweater smells like poop. Well, then... Here's some pics from November 13th, 2004, a year ago from last week when we had a 70-degree day:




So anyway, it's strange to look back one year and remember what was going on. I certainly don't remember two years ago or three years ago... I see people in court saying, "Oh, I've been working there for 9 years come this February," and I have no idea how people remember stuff like that! I don't even remember when I started WORKING in court! And it's only like 2 or 3 years ago! Maybe this will be the turning point, who knows.

UPDATE: Regarding the recent post where I had my first roadkill incident (yeah, I killed a racoon with my car), I was reminiscing through the posts over at my old blog, "Erin Talkin', ye-a," and came upon this post from June 17, 2004. Animals should fear me!!

Midweek post

So we're still getting used to Abe having a nice haircut. I swear, he seems like a much more pleasant dog! It's weird. He's all clean and neatly trimmed, and he seems much better behaved. Jay bought him a new octopus toy the day he got his grooming done, and the thing's probably a bit bigger than him and with 6 more legs. Abe was scared of Wally (yes, we name Abe's toys - what?) because Wally was bigger than Abe, but just yesterday he embraced the new toy and started to bring to toy up to our laps and growl at us because we were too close to it. Abe's a weird dog.

Nothing much else going on... my new session in Worcester is going to have lots and lots of crazy trials going on, which is exciting, yet mildly scary seeing as how it's all criminal stuff. Jay's away at the Celtics game now -- well, he's actually on his way home at this point... the C's had a really bad game, unfortunately, but they showed a great shot of the Get Buckets Brigade in the 3rd where Jay was standing on the back of the seat in front of him. Good stuff.

Is everyone excited for Thanksgiving?? I love turkey!

groovy pic

I just killed a racoon!

My first roadkill experience, and wow, it sucked! Well, I guess they'd all suck... but anyway, I was just driving back from the Oriental House with my Chinese food, and right before the Mobil station on the way back, I looked down very quickly to change the station on the radio when I saw something out of the cornerest of corners of my eye, and that something was a flick of movement in front of my car. My front tires, and soon after, my back tires both hit something pretty substantial. Doh!! I turned my car around in the hopes I hadn't just blatantly killed someone's cat or dog... and as I drive my car back and flash my high beams, I see the still-flickering reflection in the eyes of a big racoon laying motionless on its back. I totally killed a big racoon. Thank God it wasn't someone's cat!

On a side note, Jay killed a possum with the same exact car pretty much in the same exact spot not but a week ago... animals should learn to not play in the road near the gas station.

Too much work

So it's silly, but I find it difficult to keep up the whole blogging thing. (A) I have to find something interesting to write about, (B) I have to find pics that correspond, and (C) I just really don't have the attention span to accomplish all that!

So anyway, this past week entailed Jay going to Celtics games (watch him on Fox Sports Net, you'll see the Get Buckets Brigade I guarantee!), me being moved to the Worcester courthouse, and Abe getting a haircut. I am going to focus on Abe getting a haircut.

Before:

after:

Wowsers!! It's two different dogs, pictures taken on the same day!! No kidding, I'm laughing my ass off at how different he looks. Oh, but he's a cutie pie...

Party?

We might have some peeps over around 2:30/3:00 on Saturday - it's gonna be nice and I want to grill! Let me know if you're interested.