Still out of breath

I'm trying to get in better shape, so instead of running, today I took a long swim. I guess I always thought swimming was easy and didn't require much physical exertion, but I'm pretty winded after 3 or 4 laps between the bouys. I mainly stayed with the breaststroke and switched it up a bit with what I thought was a backstroke, but now I don't know what the hell it was.

Jay made dinner last night on the grill. He came up with the idea that we should each make up a recipe for something on the grill, and his idea was the first to be cooked: orange vegetable burritos. He roasted sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and carrots on the grill (they had been marinated in a pineapple-y marinade), and then we made black beans and rice and stuffed it all into burrito shells. It came out really good, except the sweet taste of the squash and potatoes is not my favorite, and I felt really bad because I said that to Jay, and I should have just not said anything. So I hope I didn't hurt your feelings too much, sweetie! You did a great job!

Tonight's poker night; maybe I'll not lose tonight. I just gotta play smart and don't play against Josh because he always gets good cards. ::shaking fist:: Damn you, luck of the deck!!

Trial run

Abe and I just went for a run just now. We ran a mile around the Ashland High School track. Well, I walked probably a quarter mile of it, but it still totalled a mile. Plus the walk to and from. Abe was a very good sport about it. He's in much better shape than I am. Must be from when he freaks out and runs maniacally around the house over and over.

Another marry weekend

Yesterday was Mike and Dani's wedding. Jay was the best man. Since the wedding was at 5:00 o'clock, Jay and I had to keep Mike occupied during the day. We all slept over Jay's parents' house the night before, so when we woke up we decided to take a walk to the ArtsFest Beverly. It's an artist-y festival they have downtown. First we stopped by the Atomic Cafe for a cup o' joe. Jay asked me if my friend Justin was still living in Beverly; I said he wasn't. Jay said, "That kid looks just like him!" I turn to see my friend Justin sitting in a booth! I hadn't talked to that kid in ages. Good to see him. Then we walked over to the dollar store and told Mike he could pick out anything he wanted that was $1 and we'd buy it for him. He chose a four-pack of punching balloons. Good choice. We walked around Beverly looking like morons as we punched the hell out of our respective balloons. It was fun. Then we had some lunch at Acapulco's. We ordered a pitcher of margaritas. Mmmmm. Then Mike and Jay played some hoops while I napped. Jay decided it'd be a good idea to make Mike submerge himself in the ocean before he had to get ready for the wedding. The tide was out, so the water was really really shallow really really far out. They were probably a quarter mile out and the water was still only to their knees. But they jumped in anyway. Rocks hurt bare feet.

Then for the wedding, which was held at Hammond Castle. It was a really great wedding. The ceremony was in the great hall, the dinner was outside in the tent, then the dancing was back in the great hall. The castle is right on the ocean, and let me tell you, the view from the ladies' room was breathtaking. Absolutely breathtaking. Jay, being the best man and all, had to make a speech. I knew he was nervous, but you wouldn't know it by the way he delivered it! He did a really great job, and he even made people cry.

Then we went to the Ocean View Hotel to hang out, and we ended up getting a room there. I stayed up way too late and partied with everyone, and I had to get up at 6:00 a.m. for a bridesmaids brunch in Natick. (I won a DJ!) So all in all, it was a really really fun time!

I won a DJ!

Sometimes I hate coming up with subjects

Dennis made a good point about sometimes neglecting to post for extended periods: it's 'cuz there's no pictures to go with the entry. So here is one from Gould's Sugar House. It's a delicous bowl of pickles.

I have the day off today, and am going to go to Filene's with my mom and she's going to help me register for more wedding gifts. I don't know what normal people need in the course of everyday life, so I need a grown-up to guide me. What's flatware? There's TWO types of wine glasses? Serving bowls, schmerving bowls! So I'm very grateful for her help, because otherwise I'd be opening gifts of Real Genius on DVD or something.

Getting into the swing of spring

This past weekend was a long weekend of too much partying, indeed. Partying's fun, no doubt, but there's always a little bit of the doldrums when reality hits and you have to go back to work.

I counted down the days until our wedding: 94. I went one lame step further and actually listed each day of the countdown on each calendar day in my PDA. I know, I know, I'm lame. But as I was getting to like 10, 9, 8 days before the wedding, I started getting nervous! If I'm getting nervous over putting stupid text in my PDA, imagine what I'll be like when it actually IS 10, 9, 8 days before the wedding. I think the main reason I was nervous is not because I'm nervous to marry Jay; I'm nervous because I don't know what the hell I'm doing in regards to the wedding. But we've got more plans nailed down, which is good...


So it's 94 days before the wedding - I plan on joining the Y and getting in shape. I'm going to stop smoking and cut down on drinking and get in shape. Hopefully. I did a mile and a half on the elliptical machine yesterday. Guess I should actually figure out what I'm doing exactly before I go back... Any exercise suggestions are more than welcome! I'd like to mainly lose my gut, but also build more muscle tone in my arms. Y'know, so I can look good on the beach. And fit into my dress.

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.

So I mean to update this every day

I mean to, really, but sometimes the Blogger site is bogged down and takes to long to publish stuff, so I get bored and just go to a different site. Maybe it's the ADD. Maybe not... but it probably is.

Tonight we went to Jodi and Felix's place and watched the first Celtics playoff game on their HDTV. (I'd put links in to various other sites that I think would be relevant, but I'm too lazy.) So anyway, it was a hell of a lot of fun to see everybody, and we had a great time!

Maybe tomorrow, if the weather clears up a bit, we'll find a nice place to hike or something. We'll just have to see. So that's my lame-o post for the day. Hopefully the Blogger site will decide to actually publish it.

Marathon Monday... a success?

Well, I had a great time this past weekend! I hope everyone who showed up had a great time, too. Sunday we had a nice get-together, from afternoon through the evening. Thanks to Bri for bringing the firewood. Dennis ended up spending the night (which was the original plan for all guests, but I guess some people have "jobs" they have to "work" at...)

Monday morning, the road wasn't closed, from what I could tell, until past 10 am. So note to self for next year's party - people, take the day off and show up on Monday at around 8 or 9 am! Anyways, we went down to the end of Indian Spring Road and watched the beginning of the race, and watched the thousands of people run on by, we cheered them on, and it was good. Then we walked back to the house to watch more of the race from our old railroad bed, and little did we know that we'd have a great view of a very popular pee spot: our neighbor's pine trees.

I know I shouldn't post something like that, but how can I resist? Sorry, dude, whoever you are.

Then later on, me, Jay, Tony, Greg, and Dennis all hung out, played horsehoes, had some beer, hung around the fire, and it was good. So we had a great time!

Keggin' the beer, workin' it, workin' it.

Well, it's Sunday. The day before the Marathon. Do you know what that means? Hopefully it means people will show up here at 8 Indian Spring Road today and eat our food and drink our beer! We really didn't get much cleaning or home-preparation done yesterday (we just shopped), so I have to get my a-s-s in gear to get everything all nice and clean for our guests. But first, I have to of course keg the very special batch of Indian Spring Ale.

It is called such because after you cook the wort, it's still wicked hot and stays as such for a long time, like a baked potato. So in order to pitch the yeast, it has to cool down to about 65 degrees. I can never think of ways to cool it down, but Jay suggested I put the bucket in the spring in the backyard. Brilliant!

If you read this and you don't show up, I'll be mad. Mad little Erin!

Fun weekend stuff - weee!

What a jam-packed weekend! On Saturday, Jay's parents came over with a reciprocating saw in order to cut up the old carpet that we had ripped up and thrown downstairs the first day we moved in. My picture's blurry because I had it on the close-up setting without realizing it.

We also went to a great little shop called The Vin Bin in Marlborough. It's a bread, wine, cheese, and beer shop - what more do you need for sustinence? They have the most deeeeelicious roasted tomatoes - to die for, kids! So we got some bread, some beer, some tasty dips and spreads, and brought it home to eat. After that, I helped to break up some more construction debris and burn it.


And then on Sunday we took a trip out to Purgatory Chasm State Reservation, which is a really neat place if you haven't been. There was a free-runner (or a person we believed to be one) who kept pouncing off rocks, scaling up them, and nearly running into us a number of times. He was strange. We also saw 13-year-old kids cussing up a storm and sharing cigarettes. I wanted to kick their asses.

Then Sunday night we had Dennis and Josh over, had grilled dinner for the 6th night in a row, had a fire for the 6th night in a row, and it was lots and lots of fun.

Man, I love the warmer weather

We had Dennis and Erik over last night, and Cuddy showed up for a bit, too. We had horseshoes, LED frisbee throwing...
we had firewood

we had homebrew

we had smores

we had hot dogs on the fire

and it was a blast. I still have to find a firewood supplier, as we will probably be having a backyard fire most every night.

And I'm also very excited for the Marathon Monday action that is soon to happen -- yay, Pat and Kate are showing up, too! (I just checked the good ol' Evite...) I would like to have good homebrew to serve, and that gingerbread beer is just too much of a spicy thing to actually enjoy, so I found a recipe that only takes 7 days to ferment and I plan on making it today and having it ready for kegging. It's just a simple little pale ale that most people should like. God bless the outdoors!

Outdoor fun has begun

Wednesday night we officially kicked off Indian Spring party season with a few friends and a cheesy 1'x1' charcoal grill doubling as a fireplace. We had Dennis, Matt, and Tony over, and we had a blast! There was grilling, horseshoes, and a cheesy tiki torch.

Last night Jay bought a very very nice outdoor fireplace (a real one), and we put it together and enjoyed a small fire.

So hopefully every Friday that it's nice out, we'll have some peeps over and be grilling and playing horseshoes and drinking beer and watching fire. I've got to find a way to get access to large amounts of firewood, though...

Genius!

I had a brilliant idea about a new business - a company that sells all different kinds of things for people with ADD! I had the idea as I was rifling through my messy purse trying to find my lip balm, and I thought, "A purse with specially designed compartments for things I use most often would be great!" Then I thought, "A car console specially designed to hold things and trash for me would be great!" And I started thinking, products designed especially for an individual to keep them more organized on a day-to-day basis would be something I would be interested in buying. And I have ADD! So hell, why not create a company that sells things like that? (Okay, I know there's tons of organization products out there, but people with ADD can't track them down. Okay, at least I can't track them down.)

Hey, I thought it was a good idea!

Oh, the ongoing woes of homeownership

So the basement flood? It's pretty bad. Jay's been at work pretty much non-stop for the past week and a half, I've been making tons of phone calls trying to figure out who's responsible for the basement being broken, and neither of us have gotten much sleep. The trench that they dug to put the sewer pipe in was, from what I can surmise, done completely wrong. Nobody (not the town, the previous homeowner, or the contractor who put the pipe in) wants to take responsibility, which REALLY gets to me. I just wish people wouldn't lie, cheat, and point fingers at the other guy.


In other news, I started my job in Marlboro today. Commute = sweet; Job atmosphere = not so sweet. I must look like I'm a 12-year-old special needs kid, because anything I requested or said was replied with by a blank stare and a silence, and then a continuation of some other conversation. Ah, well... if my job was the only thing on my mind, I'd be really upset about it. At this point, I don't give a rat's ass. Speaking of rodents, I found a dead mouse floating in the flood! ::activate gag reflex here::

**Weekends are for flooding and gay weddings**

Where to start? I'll start from now. I arrived home around 11:00 a.m., and Jay informed me the basement flooded. (I'll get to where I was arriving from later.) So he's been working his ass off on this 3D bridge animation (can't go into too much details, knowwhatimean?), which he thought was deadlined on Friday. Apparently the lawyers who requested the animation want more, so Jay's at work now haggling with them. So he might be at work another 80+ hours this week... but I digress. He's at work right now, his brain already fried from work and Abe's illness, so I told him I'd take care of everything with the flood. And I'm trying, man! I'm really trying! I've got fans blowing, ShopVacs sucking, and the plastic cover of a mini file box as a squeegie. I have no idea where exactly the water's coming from, but I'm leaning towards the sewer. (Ewwww...) I ShopVac'd all the area around where the sewer pipe is, it was all nice and not flooded, and I just checked over there again and there's lots more water. ::sigh::
<

And I arrived home at 11 this morning after I attended my friend Patrick's wedding last night, which also happened to be my very first gay wedding. It was in Boston (I'll punch whoever else gets married in Boston, all right, folks?), and it took me an extra half hour to find the freakin' place, but the ceremony thankfully hadn't started when I got there. I got a video camera thrust into my hands from someone, so I was the instant videographer. The ceremony was really nice, and they had a cocktail reception after that. It was great to see my old pals from college. One dark stain on the thing: one of the busboys was INSANE. He yelled at Cuddy, then laughed at me, and when I confronted him about him laughing at me, he pretended to be my buddy. I think he was drunk. Then we had extended discussions -- okay, arguments -- about if we were going to the afterparty. But first I had to find my damn car. Boston Common Garage can bite me! I couldn't find my way out, no less find my way back to where my car was. Luckily, Saint Anthony represented, and I found the good ol' Altima. In the meantime, the afterparty had been moved to 4 different locations, and we had no idea what was happening next. Apparently they decided on the Club Cafe, I somehow found a kick-ass parking spot (no, really kick-ass, man), and we only stayed for a drink. Actually, not even a whole drink; Cuddy and Kerry had fallen soldiers! I bought the round, so I tried swigging them, but damn if I didn't have my own Sam Adams to finish. Then we found our way to Hong Kong Restaurant, (me having to piss like a racehorse all the while) where apparently they have "the best" Chinese food. Not true, folks! Nasty nasty nasty. Ewwww. And some huge black guy reminicent of Lance Romance from FSC came over and said he just wanted to talk to "Jennifer"... I just looked at him and said, "Buddy, there's no Jennifer sitting at this table." Then to Cuddy's apartment where we crashed and slept. I drove one of my friends to Lawrence. Then I came home. To a flood.

Was that the longest post ever? Am I trying to procrastinate on finishing ShopVaccing? Yeah. You knows it.

Almost a week without posting??

Dang nabbit! Must have been a boring week.

I finally FINALLY bottled my beer yesterday. I had the day off, so I decided I'd at least try to be useful. No, I didn't clean (well, I cleaned the computer room but then messed it up when I bottled the beer); and no, I didn't run errands. I bottled 52 bottles of gingerbread spice beer.

I forgot how great it feels to actually brew your own beer and watch it go from a bucket into bottles and cap the bottles, and then you have over 50 bottles of YOUR OWN BEER! Weeeeee! (I like beer.) So Marathon Monday party will be spiced with the sweet smell of cloves and cinnamon and molasses ('cuz that's what in the beer).

However, when I was bottling, I did cap a bottle too harshly...


In other news, Abe got sick last night :( I think he ate too much Boston Market sandwich bits ('cuz I'm a messy eater), and we also gave him lots of biscuits. So he puked all over the bed, the rug, my coat... doh! I still think he's feeling under the weather. Poor Abe!

Happy Easter

Well, it's Easter Sunday, and since I stopped going to church years ago and my religiosity has waned, Easter really isn't any different than any other day, other than I know that more stores than usual are closed. And that yesterday, any place where anyone could shop was friggin' packed. It's also a time of birthdays - happy birthday to Matt, my brother Dave, and his wife, Shannon.

Yesterday, Jay and I spent the day at his place of employment. He is very busy working on an animation, so I came in to help him get more mundane tasks done. I got to "process inspection photos". Wee! And right now I'm helping him "burn copies of the inspection photos". Wee! Actually, it's a lot of sitting and waiting for the computer to do its thing, so I decided I'd update my blog. I'll be driving out to my parents' for dinner (why do people eat dinner on holidays at like 1:00?), and hopefully I'll get to hang out with Laura who is in town for the weekend.

And this next week will be my last week commuting to may different courthouses (i.e., Lowell, Cambridge, Salem, Lawrence...)! I am finally getting put permanently in a courthouse. After over a year of not having any office to prepare my transcripts in, I'm being assigned to the new superior court session in Marlboro. [insert heavenly sound here] I don't actually know how LONG the Marlboro session will be there (three months? a year? three years??), but at least I won't be called every morning to go to a different courthouse.

So happy Easter, everyone, and eat lots of ham.

Things I did today

Well, Jay's flight finally came in... at 3:13 a.m. We ended up getting home about 4:30am, and I had to get up for work at 5:30. So I called in sick because I felt like a pile of poop. So I had a day off to get stuff done! I slept for most of the morning, though... but here's what else I accomplished:

I took Abe to get his nails clipped, because them things was like daggers! The girl who clipped his nails wanted to keep him. I wouldn't let her.

I went to an auto body shop to get another appraisal for my still-broken side mirror. Yes, it got sideswiped in October, and yes, I still haven't gotten it fixed. But sadly, I don't think there's any way around the $500 deductible. ::shaking fist:: Damn you, insurance!

And because my mirror has been broken for so long, my inspection sticker eventually expired in December, and I still hadn't gotten it renewed. I knew it wasn't going to pass, and I didn't know when I would be getting the mirror fixed, yadda yadda... so I procrastinated. Until today! I finally got my car inspected. It passed with flying colors, until it failed because it has no side-view mirror. Doh! But now I have sixty days to get it reinspected, and hopefully within those sixty days I'll find a nice auto body shop to fix my car.

Oh where, oh where has my fiance gone?

Jay's on his way back tonight, and his flight's delayed over three hours. Stupid snow! So I gots to pick him up at the airport because Logan Express doesn't go after midnight. Stupid schedule! We'll see how I manage the Big Dig in snow at 2am with minimal snooze time. I guess Jay's trip was a bit stressful, but I'm sure he'll go into detail on his Maya blog. I think you should visit there anyway, because he has a good rendition of him on an accident inspection.

Update on Friday's events

See Friday's post if you haven't to see how my printer wasn't working.
Now my printer's working.
Yep, it's printing things I tell it to print.
Don't know whyyy... don't know whyyy...
No, I'm serious, I don't know whyyyyyyy...

Quick recap of my dream

Had a dream that I wanted to kidnap and/or kill a very popular person (was he a rock star? don't know!), and I knew he drove a car with a Woodrow Wilson bumper sticker on it, or so I thought. I wanted to steal his car, so I eventually found it in a parking lot (no Wilson bumper sticker). The key was in it, don't know why... So I started driving, but it was a stick shift and I have no idea how to drive those. So I just ignored the clutch, which I know comes into play somewhere, and I don't even think the car was on so I was just lurching forward slowly ready to get hit by oncoming traffic. I finally started the car, and just told myself I'd stay in first, because that's what I thought the car was in. I ended up slamming into a snow bank and calling my mom for help, but she was mad at me because I made her buy CDs for Jay, so I was like, "Fine! I don't need your help!" I was pissed! Then somewhere in the dream I was in my friend from high school Cassie's house, and her bedroom overlooked beautiful cherry trees and cow pastures. I said, this is lovely! And she said, yeah, but there's a cow guillotine right in your line of sight. Right as she said that, I saw a cow's head get lopped off. It was kind of funny, because the scenery was so nice, and then you see a cow guillotine.

Now I have to get to work...

Best of Craig's List

I talked to Mikko today, and he suggested I go see an entry on the Best of Craig's List, specifically, an entry called "NO SEX TONIGHT!" from some time in February. Well, I read that, and it was funny, and I also looked through some of the other entries, and I just love the randomness and scathingness of them. Thanks, Mikko, for pointing that out, because it's great.


In other Indian Spring news, Jay and Abe and I took another walk at Ashland State Park. Usually we go to the dam and turn around. Well, we decided we'd walk all the way around the reservior. It doesn't look too big when you first walk into the park. But then when you go to the other side and start walking, it's like three times as big as you thought. And the trails go right by the shore, and the shore likes to jut inland a hell of a lot a hell of a lot of the time. So I heard someone say it's about 3 miles around, but it felt like 5. It was a nice walk, no doubt, but lots of it was icy and lots of it was muddy, and it was just a lot longer than I expected.

Then we went to John Harvard's and had beer and really tasty foods. We were going to go to John Stone's and have beer and cheese, but they looked closed (although I don't think they were). John Harvard's is good, man. The beer is always great, and the food is always great! I've never had anything I didn't like there. Very tasty.

Thirdly, wish Jay luck as he goes on a crazy accident inspection in Pennsylvania. He's flying out Tuesday and coming back Wednesday. He'll be working on the project probably nonstop for the next few weeks. Yay, work!

My dilemma

Sheesh! I took the day off today thinking I would be recoving from too much corned beef and cabbage, but instead I spent the whole day up until now running around like a long-tail cat in a room full of rockers. ?? I had to do an expedited transcript, no big deal. I typed it all out yesterday, so all that was left for me to do was print it. Well, when I hit Cntl+P, nothing happened. So I waited... and I tried again. The printer info window said that the document printed with no errors, only nothing was coming out of my printer. I really don't know how computers and the like work, so I had no idea what the problem was. The guy that wanted the transcript was showing up in two hours at our house, and I couldn't print!

So I remained calm. I figured I'd just email the file to my mom and drive out there to print it. Well, my outdated laptop doesn't have internet access, and I left the external disk drive in Lowell. (Yes, the computer doesn't have an internal disk drive.) Soooo... I would just call the guy that wants the transcript, tell him I need a few more hours. But then I couldn't find my PDA, and his phone number was on it! So now I'm like, what the --??? Luckily, after freaking out for about 20 minutes and trying to remember where my PDA was, I found it in my coat pocket. I called the guy, got some more time.

But now what to do? I figured I need to get the file onto a disk and print it out somewhere else. Staples, maybe? So I go there and ask if they can print WordPerfect documents. The girl didn't think they could... so I bought a $60 disk drive anyway, hoping it would come in handy along the way.

Then, genius struck. Dennis can help me! Hopefully! So I drive to Alpha Graphics, print shop of the future, and explain my situation. Everyone was in awe of my laptop with Windows 95 and WordPerfect 10. It's old! So after some borrowing of his disk drive, some downloading of driver software, some trial-and-error attempts to open the file in another format, Dennis says we should save the files as PDFs and they'll print. And they did! I was so excited. Dennis and Erik, you're my heroes. Thank you guys.

Now I'm still waiting for the guy to call me back so I can give him his damn transcript that wasn't worth my time to prepare. Doh!

Marathon Monday... a bust?

So no one has affirmatively responded that they are going to come to our Marathon Monday Slumber Party. ::sad face:: I guess it's tough for people to get Monday off. They should all pretend they live on Rt. 135 and tell their bosses, "Sorry, can't make it in that day." Then they should come over Sunday night and eat tasty foods and play horseshoes and drink beer and then wake up Monday morning and I'll cook them breakfast and then we'll watch the marathon. Yeah! ...No? ::sigh::

When the lights go down in the city

An Indian Spring guide to supplies for a blackout:

A and B: Scented candles. Preferably, cinnamon spice and fresh cotton, or two other scents that, when mixed, makes one dizzy.
C: Wine and wine glasses. Preferably, red wine that stains your teeth.
D: A flashlight. Preferably, you'll forget you had it, and only retrieve it about 20 minutes into the blackout.
E: Monopoly.

Yes, we lost power for about an hour and a half last night, which was actually pretty exciting. About an hour before the lights went out, I thought to myself, "This snow's really heavy; I bet this is the kind of snow that'd rip down power lines." Jay also thought earlier in the day, "We're going to lose power." Lo and behold, we did. Lots of strange coincidences actually happened yesterday... 1) there's a tree in our backyard with two trunks that look like they're hugging, and Jay and I both noticed it for the first time yesterday and we both thought, "That looks like us!" 2) that snowman we built eventually fell over, but we both looked out the window about 20 second before it did, and we both saw it collapse; 3) during Monopoly, Jay rolled doubles probably 85 percent of the time.

Okay, when I write it out, it doesn't seem like a lot, but it was, and it was weird!

Snowman mania!

Well, it's snowing again, and it's the weekend. What, pray tell, can one do when it snows? Build a huge freakin' snowman! Jay did most of the work, as when you compound 16 cubic feet of snow into a dense ball, it weighs a hell of a lot. I mean, I could get into the whole volume = width x height thing, if that even is a real equation, but just take my word for it. It was heavy. We raided the storage shed that's full of random stuff left behind by the previous homeowners (stuff like a Heineken wooden shoe), and Jay found pinwheels, so he put them on as eyes. They spin! Weeee!! Spinny eyes! So this is our snowman, and he's big.

iPod my photo

If you go to iPodmyphoto.com, if you give them $20 and a photo, they'll "iPod-ize" it to make it look like an iPod ad. Cheesy!

I know Photoshop to some degree. You can do this, too, people! Granted, I only spent about 5 minutes on my version, but I think it's pretty kick-ass.

Day off!

I have the day off today, because I have a doctor's appointment at 3:00 but didn't want to waste 80+ miles on my car to go to work for a half-day. So I have weird issues with days off. I feel like I should be really productive and clean and do laundry and all that crazy domestic stuff. (We all know I hate that crap.) But I'm also feeling like I should get some typing done, because I'm home and can get work done. But then the third part of me (the lazy part) wants to go sleep more and eat lots of food. We'll see which prevails. (So far the lazy part's winning. I've been sitting at the computer for an hour.)

So to mirror Kate's comment, I can't freakin' wait until warmer weather! What the hell are you supposed to do outside when it's 25 degrees and windy? There's snow everywhere so you can't just go romping round unless you want to get all... snowy and stuff. ::sigh:: We did go for a walk yesterday, however, until it got too windy and we turned back. That was good. I just want to be able to hang out outside.

I saw an ad for Target's Sean Conway outdoor stuff in Real Simple and really wanted an outdoor dining area. Maybe I'll try to plan out one on my day off...

I was hungry

I tried on wedding dresses yesterday, and my mom and Jay's mom (the two Bonnies) and my sister Jenn came with me. It was REALLY weird for me to be trying on such pretty dresses, because I think the fanciest dress I've really ever worn was my prom dress, which was ridiculously pink and lacy because I thought it was funny. Everyone says that when you try on the dress you end up wearing, you just KNOW it's the one. Well, I don't think I'll feel like that about any dress, because I'm not into that kind of stuff! I'm not very good at being girly, I'm realizing...

So anyway, I didn't have time to eat beforehand because I didn't plan well, and we all know that Boris, my tapeworm, rears his ugly head mostly all the time. So I was very very hungry and started to get dizzy. Jay was in the area, so he was sweet enough to pick me up a snacker sandwich from KFC, but geez, I was in a store with lots of really expensive dresses and couldn't just eat it out in the open! So I hid in the dressing room and ate it. The dressing room smelled like fried chicken. I hope the lady helping me out didn't smell it.

The enigma of blogging

So thanks to everyone who showed up for Jay's party this past Saturday! We had a great time. Don't forget to remember our Boston Marathon party on Sunday, April 17th into Marathon Monday, April 18th.

So Alley Party's blog has been stagnant, as has my yet-to-be-updated Erin Talkin' Ye-a blog, and even this blog isn't all that excitement-worthy. Maybe it's something about winter that makes me not want to spend the time blogging... or it just be ADD. I'll go with the latter.

I shouldn't say the winter weather makes blogging stagnant; far from the truth, Dennis's blog, Pat and Kate's blog, and Jay's new blog are updated frequently with very interesting content. I just don't possess the attention span to stick to the same subject, find cool websites to link to, and post pictures to link to.

Has anyone seen my keys?

Party

Happy birthday to Jay

Yesterday was Jay's birthday, and he turned 27. I keep thinking I'm 27, too, but I'm not. I made Jay a veggie lasagna. Turns out that Kate made Pat lasagna for his birthday. There must be something about lasagna that screams "birthday meal." I was also going to make a pineapple upside down cake, but ran into many obstacles. First, as I was perusing the internet for recipes, there were just too many recipes. I didn't know which one to pick! So I chose one, and as I was copying down the recipe, I said, "Eeeeeeeeee, too hard!" Then at the grocery store, I decided I'd just pick up a box of pound cake mix and some pineapples. Crose enough! But when I went to add the milk into the mix, I realized the milk went bad. I felt like the guy in the song "Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain."

But I made some kick-ass bruschetta, which made me happy.

So nothing too exciting has been going on at Indian Spring... We are, however, having a little party on Saturday for Jay. Feel free to come along if I know you. (Although I don't think many people I don't know would ever even read this. But maybe.)

Valentine's cheese

I made a cheese platter for Jay for valentine's day, because he really likes cheese. My plan was to go to the Cheese Shop of Concord on Monday (Valentine's Day) to get the freshest, best cheese. But they're closed on Mondays. (Nice way to plan ahead, Reardon.) So I ended up just going to Bread and Circus, and I asked the nice man behind the cheese wheels how to make a cheese platter, and he just picked out five kinds and handed them to me. Okay, then! But Jay seemed to like it.

p.s. Go see Jay's new Blog! It's at www.jasonrbailey.blogspot.com. It's called Mayaloge.

Strange footprints...

As Jay and I were taking our little dog Abe for a walk in the backyard the other day, I noticed that there were footprints in the snow that went out to the little spring that runs through the yard. I asked Jay if he had walked out there for something, and he said no... and I certainly hadn't trekked through the snow over there for any reason. Upon further inspection, it looks like some random trespasser came on our property from the road, walked to the spring, took a bunch of leaves and sticks out of the grate, removed the grate from the plastic irrigation pipe, and walked off. Hmmm... I don't know if it's some angry neighbor whose yard floods because of our negligence to the spring, or if it was someone from the DPW. Don't know!

The floor! The floor!

Some pics of the new kitchen floor! We're still working on it. Jay's doing a great job with it!


Abe got in on the action, too. (Actually, he just got jealous that Jay was paying more attention to vinyl tile than him.)

Recent news

Happy birthday, Pat!

The recycling thing actually worked. I saved cans and glass jars and cardboard, and I put them all in the bin as best I could, and the nice men in big trucks who take all that stuff actually took it and left an empty bin! We're very proud.

Jay's been recently working on putting down a new kitchen floor. Fancy, you say; yes, but we found a sneaky way around ripping up the old linoleum:

Ooo, that's nice. Jay's dad suggested we not rip up the old two (yes, two) layers of linoleum and try to level out the floor ourselves; he suggested this stuff that's like wood but it's not, and you just nail it down on top of the old stuff in order to make a nice smooth clean surface for the vinyl stick-down tiles we got. Brilliant!


Jay finished putting all the wood-material stuff down, so probably this weekend we'll put down the tiles. So exciting!

Also, we've finally started sort of planning the wedding (don't you love how much I say "sort of" and "kind of"?)... This morning (Sat.) me and Jay and Chris Cuddy are headed to the Sturbridge Host Hotel to check out the accommodations and maybe set up a wedding. Weeee! Sort of.