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.