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 Well, my outdated laptop doesn't have internet access, and I left the external disk drive in Lowell.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.

Recycling, here we come!

I had the day off today, as I am a nonessential state employee and all nonessential state employees in the eastern-most courts had the day off. So I ran some errands.

I cashed some checks, prepared a slow cooker soup, ran to the insurance agency, got Jay an oil change, faxed some documents, and I actually went down to the Ashland DPW and picked up some recycling bins.

Now, I've never EVER recycled anything in my life. The closest environmentally conscious thing I've done is rip apart six-pack plastic holders so that sea-faring birds don't get their necks caught in them. As if really helps... So I feel very good about myself that I made that first step towards a better tomorrow. Now the real key will be to actually USE the bins. Baby steps, is what I say. Baby steps.

Pics of the big snowstorm

How much snow did you get? We got lots here in Ashland. It accumulated about a foot before we even went to bed last night, which freaked me out. I had dreams last night about shoveling the driveway with trash bags on my feet and legs because I don't have boots or snowpants. I actually did shovel a bit with grocery bags on my feet, but they didn't help at all since the snow was up to my knees.

Our first homeowner malady

(Well, besides the huge lake that appears in our backyard when it rains.)
On Thursday morning, I had just finished showering and was sauntering downstairs to the laundry to find nylons for myself. I noticed there was lots and lots of water in the corner of the basement, right by the bulkhead. Oh, no! I thought. Rainwater must be leaking in through the damn bulkhead! But I noticed water dripping from above. I look up, and there I see the end of a PVC pipe with lots of wet hair hanging from it, and the pipe that should be attached below it is just off to the side, unattached. It was the bathtub drain pipe! So I realized that all this water that pooled in the corner of the basement is Erin shower water. Which shouldn't be icky, but it icked me out.



Flash to the present: I was on my way downstairs right after I wrote that last part to take pictures of the pipe to post. Alas, there was much more water in the basement than had been even when the Erin shower water was there!!! Could it beeee? Could this basement REALLY be flooding?? So we just finished cleaning up THAT mess. We still can't really figure out what happened... there was lots of snow melt yesterday with some rain, and yes, the huge lake in our backyard was the worst it had ever been... but the basement flooding? That's the worst. So we'll keep an eye on it. Waaaaa waaaaa...

Ah, homeownership.

By the way, here's some really crappy night shots of the lake in our backyard.

We finally got our internet up and running

Thanks, Matt, for setting it up!

I now proudly post this next picture. It should go with the post entitled "A Dog with a Job."

the dead mousie is in a plastic trash bag, which is why he's surrounded by white. you could imagine he is surrounded by puffy white clouds in heaven... but it's just plastic, people.

Corner Pub rulz!

Last night, Matt, Jay, and I went down to the Corner Pub for some Celtics action. (We were getting cable TV at the house, then suddenly we weren't.) The Corner Pub is the home of the 'personal pitcher', a fantastic invention. You get a wee pitcher of beer for yourself, and it holds about two glasses. It's great. Decent pizza, too. For all you Jaigermeister fans out there, they also have Jaiger on tap right next to the Red Bull fridge. I guess they have dollar drafts of Pabst. Weee! I think we've found the Worthen of the Ashland. (I think we all know what the Worthen of the Clinton is...)