B-ball Hall of Fame

This past weekend we went to the Basketball Hall of Fame. I will possibly post pictures later, I'm too lazy to right now. It was lots of fun! I'm not nearly as huge a basketball fan as Jay is. Heck, I'm not really much of a basketball fan, at that. But it was cool seeing the history of the sport. I really like all the old stuff they have, like really cool old uniforms and old scoreboards and old basketballs that look like footballs. It's a neat place, if you're at all interested in the sport, and I know Jay really enjoys it.

Then we tried to find a place to grab a bite to eat. We came upon places that I would link to, but I don't want to dirtify your computer. There was a place called "Mardi Gras Gentlemen's Club" whose tagline was "the most beautiful women in the world!" and a place called "Sin City." I don't think I need to say anything else. Needless to say, we went back to eat at the Uno's right next to the Hall of Fame. But hey, if anyone needs a destination for a bachelor party, go to Springfield!

Here's some pics!

me with an old-school Celtics jersey - I think it's made of itchy wool... ouch

Jay tossing the ball into the original basket - a peach basket!

My favorite jersey of all time... the rainbow Nuggets jersey

Jay can jump 9 feet plus! What a man!

I snuck under Bird's arm. Smelly.

Jay loves him.

I tried jumping high, too... could only get to 7 feet... sort of... the kid that kept egging us on helped out immensely.

Town of Ashland trash talkin'

Well, we now have to pay a lot of money to get rid of our trash. Last year the town started charging us a fee per year for trash pickup. Okay, property taxes aren't paying for it anymore... we can deal. Now they are rolling in a new "You Throw Away You Pay" campaign where you have to buy official Town of Ashland trash bags, and they'll ONLY pick those up, along with paying the flat yearly fee.

Pretty handsome, eh? Here's the prices of the bags:
- 14-gallon bags: $3.75 for five bags
- 33-gallon bags: $6.50 for five bags.

Bucka-wha?? Are you shitting me?? Seventy-five cents per bag for the small ones or a buck thirty per bag for the 33-gallon bags! Plus whatever we pay for the yearly trash fee, which I don't even pay attention to because it kind of makes me angry. I pay, I just don't pay attention.

What makes it worse is that we just bought a 90-bag box of trash bags.

I think we used about 5 so far. So we have 85 big black trash bags. Anyone interested? They should have a trash-bag buyback program like they do in Boston for guns. For every 100 trash bags you get a $50 gift certificate to Target. But don't use it on trash bags.

When I went to buy the brightly-hued bags yesterday, the kid at CVS was getting all pissed. He's like, "These are so ridiculously overpriced! We don't get anything for even selling these things! And now we can't even sell regular trash bags!" I was like, "Dude, I know!"

So last night as I prepared dinner, I would walk to throw something out, I saw the bright orange glaring at me, and I thought, Crap, if I throw this away, that's like throwing away .04 cents. So I put all the veggie scraps in a plastic bag, started using a dish towel instead of paper towels for drying off veggies and stuff, and started searching random packaging for the recycling symbol. I think I spent 4 minutes searching on an empty bag of burrito tortillas for a recycling symbol. I didn't find one. They'll now pick up recycling once a week instead of biweekly. And man, we were never good at staying on top of recycling, but now we have to really try hard.

You know, it's weird, we spend money pretty liberally when we go grocery shopping or when we go out to eat, so it's weird that I'm so anal about scrimping and saving money on trash pickup! It comes down to very little money in the long run, but I guess it really is working because I can't stop thinking about how to start composting and how we'll keep on top of recycling everything! So good job, Ashland, for making me obsessed! High five!

Boring post!

Hi. I don't have much to say, but I thought I'd blog a bit and say hi. Went out for drinks last night with Dennis. Good to see you. I had a dream last night about a hot dog in 3D made in Illustrator. Weird. We might be looking into buying a new/used car soon, as Jay's car is a piece of poop and we don't like it and it needs lots of new things and the 'check engine' light will never, ever go off. Ever. I woke up with a bad song in my head. "Ride, Captain ride, upon your mystery ship..." That's the only lyrics I know, but the tune is damn near burned into my brain. I'll try to get the "Reading Rainbow" song in my head. Ah, much better...

UPDATE THIRTEEN MINUTES LATER: Now I have "The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain" stuck in my head. Don't know why. Oh, Audrey Hepburn/Julie Andrews...

It's sure gonna be a hot one!

I think I know the key to successful blogging. I define successful blogging as a blog that your friends and family enjoy visiting every day and that elicits insightful discussion amongst them. I'm sure, you know, those "other" kinds of blogs (like the political ones, ones with commentary on, what, world news and such) have completely different criteria, but I'm just talking about little old blogs like mine or Pat and Kate's or Dennis's.

The key(s) is/are: (1) To post about something not too personal, but something lots of people can relate to, like a movie you've just seen; (2) To stick to that one point and not go off on a tangent; (3) Links help, just 'cause they're fun!

I don't follow these three criteria, and for that, I apologize. I tend to just post about what Jay and I have been up to, and I don't post all that often, so my posts tend to cram a bunch of info in with no theme throughout. But hey, that's the way I work, so deal.

CASE IN POINT: Jay got back from his Bailey Boys Weekend and was sick with the same thing I had. We both spent the rest of the week recovering. We're slowly getting back to 100 percent, but we're still not there yet.

We ALMOST flooded with all the rain that's been coming down, but no water actually came into the basement. The cement covering the sewer pipe just got very damp and wet.

Last night we went to Blockbuster and rented Grizzly Man, a documentary that takes the footage of a psuedo-bear expert who lived with grizzly bears in Alaska for 13 summers and edits it into a documentary about the guy - the guy and his girlfriend were mauled and killed by a bear. That's the kicker. We thought it was a really good movie - it's a fascinating look at a man that's a bit delusional but with good intentions, and you kind of get mad at him for being such an idealist and having such delusions about nature, but he's not such a bad guy - he just really, really loves animals, but still, nature is nature and you can't think wild animals actually have human feelings, because hell, they'll kill you if they're hungry.

And today we're going disc golfing, I think. I'm very proud to say that we planned ahead and bought beer yesterday - ah, planning for the future! The earmark of human evolution! Not sure what's going on for the rest of the weekend, with Father's Day and all... I know we'll be putting in the AC soon, though, since it's going to be super muggy and hot.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Fever all through the night

Dammit, I'm sick! I woke up this morning with a sore throat (thought it was because I left the fan on low even though I hate the fan, but Jay sleeps with it on so now I find the sound comforting), but my sore throat wouldn't go away. Then I got a headache, then body aches, and now I just feel icky. I haven't been sick in a really long time (except for when I got cold sores, but that wasn't really sickness, that was just grossness). I'm not used to it. I bought myself some chicken noodle soup from Friendly's, which is my favorite kind. I know, it's Friendly's, you wouldn't think it's good, but boy, is it ever. Try it next time you're sick. So I'm just going to chill out with the pup tonight on the couch, maybe watch some TV, and hit the sack early.

On a side note, I found my glasses! They were lost in the house for a few weeks. They had fallen into a storage box that Jay put downstairs. I know this is real important stuff, guys.

Another side note: here's a pic of babies. Jackson (my mom's cousin's daughter's son - whew!), Mason (my nephew - he's the cutest!), and Matthew (my mom's cousin's daughter's son [not the same cousin]). Mason's only a month older than Matthew, and he's so much bigger.

Comedy is funny

So Friday night, me, Jay, Erik, Matt, and Lisa went to see Cuddy in the Lowell Comedy Festival. A troupe that she's a part of, The City That Sleeps, performed upstairs at the Old Court. The first two groups, eh, mildly funny. But The City That Sleeps was hilarious - they did a mix of sketches and films, and it was very, very good stuff. If you go to their website, you can click on "Menino for President" at the bottom of the homepage and you can see a very funny film. They have other films up there, too.

We ended up going to Sangria's afterwards, always a great place for a cheap beer and some townie amusement. I love random mediocre bands that play at bars - I think they know about 14 chords, and you can play a lot of standard rock tunes with those chords. If I could sing, I could be in a mediocre townie band... oh, wait, those guys can't sing anyway, so I guess I COULD be in a mediocre townie band!

Anyway, we decided to trot around Lowell in the rain trying to figure out what to do next. Jay, Erik, and I ended up over at Cobblestones for the afterparty. Jay made friends with a nice townie lady with 4 teeth named Kathy whose husband had fallen asleep so she snuck out to go drinking. My kinda lady. We hung around there for a few beers, and then ended up at the hotel where the performers were staying at. Cuddy was kind enough to let me and Jay crash in her hotel room. We stayed up very late and Cuddy had to get up early to get her hair done in Framingham.

And today Jay left super early this morning to go on his annual Bailey Boys Weekend, a.k.a. Father/Son Weekend (I prefer the former, only because the latter sounds a little like a Hallmark card). We spent last night preparing delicious foods for his trip, packing up a bunch of stuff, and doing laundry. Quality time! He'll be gone until Tuesday. They go up to Warren Island in Maine. They kayak out then sleep in hammocks. Sounds good to me! I guess they have prisoners chop firewood there, so there's tons and tons of free firewood you can use. I smell bonfire.

Today I get to go to my mom's cousin's daughter's baby's christening. (?) I have a very large family, and some of these people I don't really know, and my mom's cousin's daughter is one of those people. I went to the baby shower, so I guess I should go to the christening. Then later on I'm going back to my hometown to visit Laura who's home from Chicago, and she's having a little BBQ at her parents house. Should be a good day.

The weather's beautiful! Everyone should stop reading this post and go outside and do something! I mowed the lawn this morning! Fun shit, man!!

Lowell Comedy Festival

Details are mildly sketchy, but from what I can gather, the specific show that Cuddy's going to be in is actually at 9:30, but she's part of a bigger group of people that begin performing at 8:00. I think we'll probably try to be there for the show starting at 8:00.
Click here for some details. It'll be fun!

Cuddy's funny

Cuddy has a comedy show tomorrow night in Lowell at the Lowell Comedy Festival. Anyone want to go? I'll post more about it tonight.

Spelling?

We just watched the spelling bee on TV, which was pretty interesting. I have to wonder how smart these kids are beyond knowing origins of prefixes and countries of origin and whatnot... They should have a "one word, two word, hyphenated" contest where kids have to figure out if words like "backyard" or "streetlight" is one word, two words, or hyphenated. I have lots of trouble figuring those things out.

I've heard the word "xenophobia" and its derivations (correct usage of a word?) many times recently, mostly (okay, exclusively) on NPR/WBUR. I've never, ever heard that word used in any new story or conversation or anywhere else, and they've been using it like it's going out of style on NPR. Which made me feel stupid, because hell, I didn't know what it meant. So I looked it up in the dictionary I won back in high school for being a good English student (it's a funny dictionary, because it brags about being the best dictionary for the 1990s), and now I know what it means. I thought it meant something much more complicated... but I guess it's just fear of foreign things, such as people or cultures. Woo wee, so exciting...

Also, Dennis and other polker folks were wondering where the term "cold turkey" came from, and from two of my court-reporter reference books, I found two different explanations. One had something to do with cold turkey being a bland meal without side dishes, and one had to do with "talking cold turkey," like talking about something in a blunt way. And both references were pretty believable and trustworthy, but I have to go with the latter, since I can't really wrap my head around the concept of the whole bland meal thing. It just didn't make any sense, for God's sake. Come on!

Quick post before I brush my teeth

Played poker last night for the first time in a while and lost... but it was okay because I came home and out in the backyard there were a bunch of lightning bugs, and that made me happy.

I have a new collapsable hat! Did I write about this yet? I lost my red one last summer to the Ashland reservoir at the state park, but Jay's parents spied one at Target recently. It has flowers on it. Jay bought me two. Jay surprised me by stealthily forcing me to go to Target and I was all, "Why the crap are we here?" And then he found them. Weee!!

Why is it that when I try to post a quick post I keep hitting all the wrong letters and I have to keep hitting the backspace key almost every other character?? Oh, such keyboard problems...