feeling older than the bands I saw this weekend

We spent last weekend at a 4-day music festival. Due to my present condition, I was the only sober person in the entire park (and believe me, there were 72 different types of non-sober going on in that place--it was, after all, a hippie fest). There were 2 specific instances in which I felt I might as well have been wearing "mom jeans".

1) I came out of the port-a-potty to find J talking to a cute girl who I soon realized was quite drunk (could it have been when she introduced herself to me twice in a 3-minute span? Hmmm, maybe.) I was starting to get annoyed that J wasn't trying to break off the conversation so we could go back to the show when the girl pulled out a vicodin and announced that it was just what she needed to make her buzz complete. Without thinking about it, I pointed a mom-like finger at her and said "now you be careful, you don't want to drink too much with that." That pretty much ended the conversation, to my embarrassment and relief.

2) We spent a very hot and sunny Saturday afternoon at a smaller beach-side stage watching some local bands. At one point, a girl wandered by, clutching a huge bottle of vodka and telling anyone who would listen that it was her 21st birthday. Not missing an opportunity, J shouted "it's her birthday too!" pointing at me. The girl came over to us and asked if it was my 21st too, to which I had to sadly reply "it's been a long time since my 21st birthday", while feeling my skin get wrinklier and my flab get flabbier. Before she walked away I pulled out the mom-finger again, aiming it towards her vodka bottle and said "now you be careful drinking too much in the sun, it's dangerous!"

I think maybe I embarrassed J a little too, but I don't care since he had the luxury of being under the influence.

I learned 2 very important lessons at the festival:

First, that it is very possible to enjoy a concert while sober. This may seem obvious to some people but when you don't really remember ever doing it before, it's kind of a revelation.

Second, that when you go into a port-a-potty at a festival full of hippies, and you start thinking how lucky you are because the seat is clean and it's equipped with several full rolls of toilet paper, you probably just haven't gotten around to noticing the finger-streaks of shit smeared on the wall.

sex while pregnant

a post-coital conversation...

J: Sorry for the intrusion.

Me: What intrusion?

J: I wasn't talking to you.

do you have to let it linger?

Over the last 2 days, I had some wicked sciatica pain acting up. What was the worst thing about it? Was it the shuffling around the grocery store feeling like a 98-year-old woman in a housecoat? Was it the inability to find a comfortable sitting position? Or perhaps the need to grab onto walls and furniture to get around my house?

No, the worst thing about my back pain was when I let out a really terrible fart and was then forced to stand in its cloud because I couldn't get away fast enough.

A TRUE post-pregnancy-announcement conversation

J's Grandma: So, where are you going to put the baby?

J: If it's ugly, in the attic.



[We kid, people, we kid!]

You and I have witnessed many things, but none as bodacious as what just happened...

At first, they told us it worked like this:


and sometimes like this:


But then, we realized it was more like this:


this:


and--my god!--even this!


One thing's for sure, it all leads to this:


and, if you're lucky, to this:


So yes, you guys are way too smart for me, and I was too terrible a liar to properly deflect your guesses. It is true, I've gone and gotten knocked up. We are due in February.

Kel, lead the way to the NYC maternity shops!

simpsonization

As a long-time Simpsons fan (I mean, who isn't??), I'm pretty excited for the Simpsons movie, and am really hoping it doesn't suck. At any rate, all the movie hype means there's some pretty cool Simpsons-related stuff on the web these days. I just spent the last half hour "Simpsonizing" myself online.

For this one, I went to simpsonizeme.com and uploaded a photo of my face. I was then able to tweak the various features and add a background:



I made this one using an avatar generator on the official Simpsons Movie website:


Have fun!

ridiculous

I try not to post about work for obvious reasons, but sometimes I really can't stand our clients.

You know how adults in Charlie Brown cartoons sound like..."wah wah waaah wah wah waah wa waah"?

Well sometimes our clients ask us to do things and when I hear the request it sounds like "could you just look in your ass real quick and ask the top 7 magical fairies to come out and play Beethoven's 5th on my desk while wearing the latest fashions from Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Lovers clothing line? And oh, I've heard about these things called iPods and I think it might be important for us to know more about them and how they're used. I need your feedback by the end of the day."

purposely cryptic

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, my friends...

What, you haven't seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? What kind of person are you?

Stay tuned...

3 little pigs

If the recent care of my 3 guinea pigs is any indicator of what kind of mother I will turn out to be, I should probably not be allowed to procreate.

For those of you who don't know, I have a history of occasionally acquiring pets on impulse. Usually these are rodents. Pastor Mom and KelBel will certainly remember the days of Lloyd, the pet rat I had in college. Then there was the rabbit I had in grad school for about 2 days before he chewed all the buttons off my remote control and I returned him to the pet store with the excuse that my [non-existent] boyfriend was allergic (I don't think they bought it but they took the rabbit back anyway). I bought a guinea pig named Wilson who died of diarrhea. Then came 2 more rats, which had unfortunately been reared as snake food, not pets, so they weren't very friendly. I had to handle them with leather gloves on.

2 or 3 years ago, I decided I wanted another guinea pig. (At this point, mind you, we already had a dog and 2 cats in the house). So I brought the pig home and started doing all the research I could about guinea pigs. When I found out that they are social animals in the wild and that they are not happy being alone, well I just had to go out and adopt another one, and since the one I wanted was up for adoption with his brother, I couldn't possibly go and separate them, and then there were 3.

I promised J that if he would let me have the pigs, I would be in charge of their care. The first few months I was the ideal pig momma, letting the boys out to play on the floor encircled in a miniature fence and not letting the cages get *too* disgusting. Well, things have gotten a little out of hand. The other day I looked in the cages and thought, oh, did J put little fake palm trees in there for the pigs? Only, when I looked closer, they weren't little fake palm trees. They were mushrooms. Because I hadn't cleaned the cages in like 3 weeks and I guess that's the secret of a successful mushroom farm. Now mind you, my pigs are very healthy (miraculously) and I am not a terrible person, I just got a little behind. I would be beside myself if my negligence ever caused real harm to those animals.

So anyway, yesterday I went to give those cages the most thorough cleaning they've had in months. I thought, hey, it's nice outside, I'll bring the cages outside and let the boys have some time in the grass under their cage tops while I hose down the bases. So, I struggled with both cages down the stairs (they are big cages because, obviously, only the best will do for my pigs!), and headed outside. The 2 pigs in the bigger cage were a little freaked from the bouncing and tilting trip down the stairs. But I went ahead with my plan, which was to put the pigs in the cardboard box that normally serves as a temporary cage while I'm cleaning theirs out, only long enough to remove the wire top from their cage, place it on the grass, and put the pigs back into this great new little pen where they'd be free to eat clover and frolick. Well, the frolicking began a little sooner than I'd anticipated, because those nervous pigs spent about 2 seconds in the cardboard box before jumping right out of it and sprinting in opposite directions. Did I mention that we live in the woods with the wild animals and that we have no fence?

One pig sprinted into the small stretch of trees and bushes that separates our house from the neighbor's; the other sprinted into the ground cover growing around our red maple tree. I went after the one in the woods first, and did he ever give chase! I ran straight through, hunched over and probably yelling, only to emerge on the other side in plain view of our neighbor and the work crew that was doing work in his yard. "Sorry, my guinea pigs are running away!" He laughed, thankfully keeping his dog from running over to help me in my search. I finally managed to peg pig #1 to the ground and snatch him up. I headed back to my yard certain that pig 2 was gone for good, but luckily he had only gotten about a foot into the ground cover and then froze with fear. I was able to pounce on him pretty quickly.

I left the pigs outside in the grass while their cage bottoms dried. The one pig who actually behaved himself enjoyed eating clover and frolicking. The other 2 sat huddled in the corner in fear. I hope they learned their lesson, that living in a cage with mushrooms growing in it sure beats running around as potential hawk food.

Friday Four (unfashionably late)

I was tagged by Pastor Mom but unfortunately didn't know about it until today. Better late than never, right??

Four jobs I've had:

-Receptionist at a tanning salon
-Bouncer at a bar in Greencastle, IN
-Graduate research assistant in a biology lab (in other words, grad student)
-Medical writer

Four movies I can watch over and over and over:

-Monty Python's Holy Grail
-Monty Python's Life of Brian
-The Princess Bride
-This is Spinal Tap

Four places I've lived:

-Greencastle, Indiana
-Urbana, Illinois
-Paris, France
-Connecticut (small enough that it doesn't matter what city!)

Four places I've vacationed:

-Belize
-Hawaii
-Maine
-Italy

Four of my favorite dishes:

-Stuffed spinach pizza (from Chicago)
-Cheese enchiladas
-Stuffed shells made by my mom
-General Tso's chicken

Four sites I visit daily:

-PerezHilton.com
-Go Fug Yourself
-Blogger
-comcast.net

Four places I would rather be right now:

-Belize
-in the forest, anywhere
-on an African safari
-on a secluded tropical island

I'm not going to tag anybody seeing as it's no longer Friday :)

alarming finding

The mullet seems to be making a comeback among the Spanish youth. Only it tends to be of the mini-mullet variety, typically curly, and often with the sides shaved. So, basically a broad faux-hawk/curly mini-mullet combo.

Folks, it wasn't pretty.

adios amigos

They're shipping me off to Barcelona for a few days to attend a conference, so I'll be MIA for the rest of the week, as I have this silly policy of not logging into blogger from my work computer...

So wish me sun, tapas, and sangria, and I will promise not to wet my pants in the street like the last time I visited Barcelona.

Hasta luego!

and you thought you were weird?

My mother-in-law, never having had any daughters until I came along, is fond of picking up little trinkets here and there for me. Things not appropriate for sons, like jewelry and flip flops and scented hand lotion. Recently, I was the lucky recipient of this handy gadget:
Yes, I'll admit it, I like to tweeze, and these tweezers actually have a little built-in LED light so you can locate each and every stray hair.

But I never should have stuck those things into my belly button, as it resulted in a half-hour ordeal of viewing things I never knew were in there, and then attempting to find the proper implements to remove them while still managing to keep the lighted tweezers in place to pry open and illuminate my little belly cavern. I finally gave up when I realized I was at risk for hurting myself, and besides, who's ever going to rate the area one inch into my belly button for cleanliness? Besides me, that is.

Last night I saw Ween in concert. They played a ton of stuff, including "Piss Up a Rope", "Voodoo Lady," "Spinal Meningitis," "Waving My Dick in the Wind" and "The HIV Song" (to which the only lyrics are: HIV! AIDS!). Needless to say, it was awesome.

And this afternoon? At the moment I am watching "Krush Groove", the days-in-the-lives dramatization of the early days of rap, featuring Shiela E, LL Kool J, and Run DMC and produced by Russell Simmons. This movie has some of the best outfits ever (and just now as the credits roll I see that the Beastie Boys were in there somewhere?? My god, I will have to watch this again sometime). And up next? "Breakin' 2, Electric Boogaloo." It's gonna take a lot to get me out of the house.

At least no one can ever accuse me of not enjoying a little variety.

I will randomly click on BlogHer links more often

Have you heard of the BlogHer network? I don't know a ton about it, but I think I'll find out. Today I had one of those random clicks...you know the ones...those times you're done checking your email and your regular blogs and you just want that one more blurb to read before you log off and actually get any work done? And anyway, it led me to this nice, interesting little post about arranged marriages and then I was, of course, reading the comments and in one of the comments the author of the original blurb wrote:

I want to mention here that I am neutral to the system, as long as I have a choice. Arranged marriage doesn't feel alien even to many of us who haven't played by its rules. If I hadn't found my husband when I did, I may have agreed to go through the process, as long as I had a say in it.

It's similar to choosing the clothes I wear. I love wearing saris and other Indian dresses. I don't think wearing jeans is liberating simply because that's what my sisters in the West wear. But the sari will start feeling oppressive if I don't have the freedom to wear jeans.

And wow. I just really liked that last part.

Go here to read the whole thing.
And here to get to the author's entire blog page.

a propos

I can't wait to see this movie. I had to post this clip after my experience yesterday. Seeing as we just moved to the area, I hadn't yet found a primary care doctor. So when the fourth day of high fever rolled around, I ended up at the only local walk-in clinic available, which happens to technically be an emergency department. They submitted to our insurance, but I am just waiting to find out how much we will owe when they deny the claim. All I wanted to do was see a doctor because I was sick. I shouldn't have had to spend an hour on the internet trying to figure out which provider was in-network or how to find out before the visit whether or not the insurance company was going to pay.

Anyway, Michael Moore's 'Sicko' comes out June 29th and has earned a lot of praise already, from both sides of the aisle. I hope you'll go see it.

sicko

I've been running a fever for 2 days now. I only have the energy to write this right now because I pumped myself full of acetaminophen which has brought the fever down temporarily and stopped my muscles (mostly) from feeling like they've been invaded by a tiny battalion of vicious hermit crabs.

Yesterday for lunch I ate potato salad out of a plastic baggie. This morning I had leftover cake for breakfast, a cupcake for lunch, and chips and dip as an afternoon snack. Apparently I cannot be bothered with nutrition at a time like this. I haven't had much of an appetite anyway, so I figured I was justified in eating whatever I wanted, as it's better than not eating at all, right?

This afternoon I had a violent case of the chills--even my fingertips went numb, which I thought was odd, considering I had a temperature of 102. This episode was immediately followed by a sweat that soaked through my nightgown. I'm pretty sure I don't have malaria but with the number of mosquitoes we've had around here lately, I wouldn't be surprised.

---

Update: I wrote the above yesterday and I still feel like shit. Still having massive chills (we're talking about episodes an hour long) followed by massive sweating. I don't particularly mind not having to work but I don't enjoy the feeling of wanting to crawl out of my skin. Plus I have slight hypochondriacal tendencies so I've already googled West Nile Virus to see if I have it. J suggested Lyme disease, so I'll have to look that up next. Send me some healthy vibes, please!

no good deed goes unpunished

Poor Jay. I thought I was doing a nice thing, sending her a little good luck charm from Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo in New Orleans. Well, I guess Madame Laveau knows the extent of my non-belief in any kind of religion, voodoo included, because she went and put some kind of stalker-attracting hex on that thing. [Yes, I realize the blatant contradiction within that last sentence...] Check out Jay's blog to read the hilarious yet frightening results (the hilarity part mostly comes from the fact that Jay is an awesome writer, another reason to check her out if you haven't already).

Her story made me think of something that happened to me when I first started grad school. I had just moved into my first "place of my own"...in an apartment complex off-campus. Because parking on campus was ridiculously expensive, I was relieved to find out that there was a bus line that stopped right in front of my apartment complex and went straight to the building where I worked. One day that first fall of school, I was on my way back to my apartment when a man on the bus struck up a conversation with me. Despite the fact that I was not the least bit interested in continuing any kind of relationship with this guy, casual or otherwise, he managed to wrangle my phone number from me. (Was he just that persuasive or was I just that much of an idiot? Probably a bit of both). As a further testament to my stupidity, when I went to exit the bus and he asked "do you live in those apartments?" I believe I told him that yes, I did. (I am cringing thinking about how DUMB I was!) He responded by telling me that he lived across the street, and pointed at a complex of buildings that I had been wondering about. They were clearly not apartments, but I hadn't seen a clear sign so I wasn't sure what they were.

Well, I found out what those buildings were that night...when the guy from the bus called me and told me that he had been in prison (for nothing that was really his fault, of course), and that he was currently living in a halfway house, where he was permitted to have a job but had to be back by curfew. Great, not only was I unknowingly living across the street from a halfway house full of ex-cons, but now one of the residents was sweet on me AND knew my phone number and where I lived. I don't know how I did it, but I did manage to blow the guy off successfully. I probably just stopped answering the phone (or maybe that was when I decided that caller ID would be a really great thing to have?). I do know that I didn't ride the bus for a LONG time after that.

Of course a year or two later I was semi-stalked by the drunk garbageman who moved into the apartment above mine, but that's a story for another time.

imaginary pictures

Since returning from The Big Easy, I haven't had a chance to upload my pictures...so I thought I'd give you some verbal descriptions of my time there (also, I don't have pics of some of the very best bits)!

Imagine:

1) Two married couples in their 40's--possibly swapping wives for the night, in the audience at a blues show. Both women had blonde 80's poodle hair and kept disappearing into the bathroom for long periods of time. At first we thought, coke? But then after one trip they returned with a third poodly blonde and we thought--recruiting for some kind of little orgy? As you might guess, we spent the entire show watching these people rather than the musicians on stage. Blondie #1 (fake tits almost spilling out) proceeded to get more and more intoxicated as she and Blondie #2 (tall & horsey-faced) groped each other to the great delight of the 2 men. Blondie #1's man did a lot of ass groping, even sticking his hand right into her pants a number of times. The Poodle Girls followed us into the bathroom at one point, where I was sure I would find out more about what their group was up to. Unfortunately, the only action I got to witness in the bathroom was Horsey-Face holding Fake Tits up and leading her into the stall to puke. Post-puke, the action in the audience got even better, as Fake Tits demonstrated her love of licking Horsey-Face's armpit (NOT accidentally, I can assure you), and Fake Tits' man continually poured water into her mouth, grabbing her chin for stability. Whatever their plans were for later, I'm pretty sure nobody was sober enough to make them happen.

2) Things are in full swing on Bourbon Street as we stroll past tranny hookers and bachelorette party groups. Just as we pass some street blockades, some drunk guy lets go of his stomach contents about 2 feet from the cops on duty. They ignore him completely, and he just keeps on drinking.

3) At Jazz Fest, we spot a guy wearing a shirt we'd chuckled at the day before in a gift shop: it had a large picture of a rooster and said "Ask me about my cock." He was spending his day at the Fest roaming with a sharpie marker, asking women to sign the shirt. By the time we saw him a second time, he was passing through the area where we were sitting waiting to hear John Mayer play, seeking out new autographs, though the shirt was getting full of comments. I started reading some of them--some women had played along, while others were obviously more half-hearted in their efforts. I was thinking about what I might write if asked, when a girl seated nearby unknowingly took up my mission. She signed the back of his shirt with "I checked--it's tiny!"

4) This one can't be communicated in a picture anyway...our last night in town, after a day spent drinking at Jazz Fest in the 90-degree heat, we had a huge dinner at Paul Prudhomme's restaurant, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen. We scored a great table on the balcony, and enjoyed wonderful food while a little brass group played traditional N'Awlins music on the street below. After dinner, we were all too full and too tired to go do any more drinking, so we retired to our rooms. J and I were sharing a room with my aunt, and [because other activities were off-limits in this situation] we decided to rent a movie. It was after 2 am when the movie ended and we finally turned out the lights. Perhaps as one last compliment to the chef before going to sleep, J let out a huge, long, loud fart. Just as the fart came to its conclusion, we heard a perfectly-timed "woo hoo!" from a reveler on the streets below. I guess there's always something to celebrate on Bourbon Street.

poll

So, J and I have been invited to some kind of fancy dinner thing with his parents tonight. I love getting dressed up, but almost every nice dress I own is SOOOO 10 or 15 pounds ago. So here's the dilemma...do I wear:

-the cute dress from the plus-size store that I just wore to a work meeting on Tuesday (provides ample coverage but I'm a little bored of it at the moment and because I wear it to work things, does not seem very sexy to me right now)

-a very hot number that shows off the curves (one of those black lace over tan fabric types...sizzling!), but that is dangerous in terms of displaying a belly pooch once I consume any type of food or drink

-an even hotter chiffon tiger print dress that is flowy enough to eliminate any stomach worries, has total cleavage exposure (which, if you were wondering, is a plus in my book), but is just snug enough around the top to create a bit of back fat overflow behind the arms

--a burlap sack

What's a girl to do?

I'm off to New Orleans for a few days of drunken revelrie, music, gumbo and voodoo. Not necessarily in that order...

queen of procrastination

Yesterday's procrastination techniques included several outdoor excursions to see what's blooming. Can you blame me?



I mean, it sure beats what I end up doing when I'm stuck inside:

it's so nice to be needed.

[to me, with sarcasm]: "I'm so glad you came home..."

[and then, on a serious note]: "Well, I am glad you came home. I was hungry."

I hear the secrets that you keep...

...when you're talking in your sleep.

Saturday night we went to our friend Crysanthemum's birthday party, and of course I consumed a good amount of wine. After sleeping through the hour-long drive home, I pretty much crawled right into bed when we got back into the house.

I must've managed to get into an interesting state of sleep by the time J came up to bed, because as he was fiddling with his new iPod alarm clock I asked him, apparently very clearly, "What kind of expertise in abstract patterns do you need right now"?

Thank god he had the sense to write my question down. This is the first time any sleep-talking on my part has been documented, and I was as puzzled by the content of my ramblings as J was. The funniest part to me was that the next day he was telling me about this with the expectation that I might be able to explain what the hell I'd been talking about.

Goodbye Kurt.

"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be."

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors of all time, and he passed away yesterday. I think it's time for me to go back and re-read his books. If you've never read any Vonnegut, you don't know what you're missing. Click here and enjoy.

I love you but now you must die.

I really, really like bugs. I enjoy looking under rocks to see what kind of bugs I might find. In most cases, if I find a spider in the house, I am more likely to catch it and release it outdoors than to squash it (exceptions: if it's night and the spider is in my bedroom, or if it is in the shower with me). As a kid, I dug up worms and twirled them around the axles of my upside-down plastic shopping cart to play "worm circus". I once caught a praying mantis and kept it in a cage. I don't freak out when a bee is flying near me in the yard.

There are only a couple of bugs that I actively dislike. Silverfish, because they are just gross, and earwigs because they are both gross and scary. To me, the worst horror movie ever would involve an invasion of giant earwigs. In our old house last year, we had a big earwig problem and I was thoroughly creeped out.

Now, because I am a geeky scientist and also a bug lover, I happen to be really

fascinated by social insects, and ants are some of my favorites. A lone ant can do some pretty cool stuff, but as a group, an ant colony is capable of amazing things. Leaf cutter ants are probably my personal favorite--they forage for leaves, which they bring back to their nests not to eat, but to use as a medium for growing fungus, which they do eat. This means that leaf-cutter ants have developed agriculture--they actively grow their own food. Pretty neat.

Now, appreciating ants in the wild is one thing, but nobody likes it when they invade your home. Last year in the old house, on top of the earwigs, we also dealt with a minor ant problem after my brother-in-law and his friends watched the house and left chex mix crumbs all over the living room. They were those small black ants, and a few of those little poison baits took care of them.

Currently, in our new house, we are facing a new vermin problem: carpenter ants: They are a problem for me for a different reason than they would probably be bothersome to other people...I really don't like killing them but I don't like having them crawl around in my dishwasher or in my cupboards. In case you didn't realize, these ants are pretty big. So to me, squishing one of them is almost like squishing a toad. They really are more like little animals to me than they are bugs. Maybe it's the way they sit and groom themselves like cats, or they cute way they carry big food crumbs or their dead friends around, but I really feel bad when I have to hear their little bodies go "pop" beneath my thumb and a paper towel.

I've put the poison baits out, but they haven't seemed to have had much of an effect. So I keep on squishing and cringing to myself. I did discover that squirting them with Simple Green or my Lysol kitchen cleaner also kills them, but they do flail around a little before they die. Today I got so frustrated when one crawled around while I was heating up my soup that I took the pot off the stove and shook the ant onto the burner. It seemed to do the trick pretty quickly, but I felt kind of sadistic about it.

The good news is that I just read something that suggested they are more of a nuisance than anything (an exterminator's ad made it sound like they would eat your house) so we certainly won't have to resort to fogging the house or doing anything so nasty. I *have* always wanted an ant farm, after all...

I am not making this up, I swear.

Last night I caught him masturbating on the La-Z-Boy...AGAIN! I will have to check the blanket for stains. I felt bad interrupting him--I mean, you should have seen the look of dopey pleasure on his face.

At first I wasn't sure what he was doing, I thought maybe something was wrong with him. But the second time I caught him, I decided to check more closely and, sure enough, his arousal was physically evident.

I googled the problem, and they say this can be an obsessive-compulsive kind of thing and that sometimes medication helps. But I figure, as long as it's not hurting anybody (and not leaving stains on the crocheted blanket we received as a wedding gift--he really seems to like that blanket A LOT), then what's the harm?

Could you deny this sweet face a few moments of carnal pleasure?

Part of me really does enjoy being domestic. I don't really mind making J's lunch in the morning--if nothing else, it ensures that I get up in time to have a few moments to myself after he leaves and before I start work.

But sometimes you just have to make sure he really appreciates that sandwich you got up early to make...and that everyone at his office knows what's up too.

time for a photo update!

[Click on any photo to see a larger version]

With so many trees outside our windows, you might guess that we get lots of birds around here. We get bluejays, woodpeckers, tufted titmice, and chickadees. But so far, I'm most excited about our resident pair of cardinals. I see at least the male pretty much every day, and I'm convinced that they're nesting beneath my forsythia bush. Here's a shot of the male. Isn't he handsome?? (His lady friend is pretty cute too!)

Speaking of birds, when I first saw these tracks, I thought we had landed in Jurassic park (the round ones are dog prints):

But, it was only a rafter (yes, that's the actual term!) of wild turkeys:

Betcha didn't know that turkeys can fly, did ya? Here they are, up in the trees at dusk (that's about all the flying they do, as far as I know...getting up into their roosts for the night). They seem to like the tall trees just behind the house. See that one in the middle near the bottom? That one's on his way up.


Of course, there are the deer:

We finally had some warm weather yesterday, so I took a walk down to the stream:

One of my favorite things about the property is that there's MOSS EVERYWHERE. Moss is one of my favorite things in the world.

Anybody know much about plants? I found a few of these popping up near the stream, and am very excited to find out what they are:

Finally, here's a birthday shout-out to Miss Loki, who turned 12 this week. Here she is in our den/kitchen (see our new kitchen table in the back? notice the lack of cat hair on the sofa? I am compelled to take pictures whenever I clean now, because things never stay that way for long).

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I spent all of last week out of town on business. A few notes from the road:

-I have become WAY too accustomed to my telecommuter habit of wearing sweats and slippers to work. One full day in a suit and heels and I was literally hobbling back to my room at the end of the night.

-I love that almost all public restrooms now have those paper toilet covers. Nothing worse than sitting in someone else's splatter (of course it's always the squatters who are too afraid to let their ass cheeks touch a potentially dirty toilet seat that end up leaving the seats covered in piss drops).

-At one hotel, every time I called room service or the front desk or whatever from my room, they addressed me by name. I thought this was a really nice touch, until I let my alcoholic friend crash in the room with me after a night out and she puked in the bed. At that point I was really longing for anonymity.

-On a related note, flying with a hangover sucks.

upon returning from another business trip

he: "I'm sad when you're gone."

she: "You're probably just sad because I'm not there to make your lunch and your coffee and wash out your thermos for you in the morning and so you have to rush around like crazy before work and it throws off your whole day."

he: "Well, no, when you're not here I do all that before I go to bed."

change of address

For the last 2 years, I have been updating our collective address book by scratching out old addresses and adding new ones to our original wedding guest list, fully intending all along to get them all uploaded into one computer...because I have 3 different computers with different address books, and the only place all of those addresses ever resided together was on theknot.com. I have downloaded our invite list from theknot.com at least 3 different times since the wedding.

This past holiday season, we sent out an insane amount of cards...working of course off of one of my ridiculous crossed-out-scrawled-on address list printouts. After the holidays were said and done, I updated the list with new addresses received on cards, and made a note of who sent cards to us. Since I did all the cards myself, I resolved squarely to do far less next year. I only got about halfway through entering my mess of a list into my laptop when it was time to pack up the house for the move...

So you can see where this is going, right? I finally got around to designing some lovely change of address postcards...they're nice and glossy and have a picture of the house, and they came in the mail a few days ago. So last night I fought my way through the usual straightjacket of procrastination and went to start addressing the cards.

Only...I can't find my hideous scrawled-upon-beat-up address list! I remember purposely putting it someplace where I knew it would be easy to find after the move. Apparently that's a sure-fire way to lose things, because for the life of me I have no idea where this thing is. It's even in a bright red folder, this much I know.

I can find the centerpiece from our wedding head table (the one that almost burned the reception hall down). I know exactly where I've stored the collection of Cabbage Patch Dolls I had as a kid, and if you asked me to show you the bag full of baby things that J's aunt has already bought for us (even though we have no kids and I'm not pregnant)? Right this way.

I know that list will turn up eventually. It's probably right next to something else really important, like J's autographed poster of Ronnie James Dio. Or his baggie of wisdom teeth.

the things you learn...

Today I had occasion to speak with our insurance agent about our homeowner's policy. While I had him on the phone, I thought it'd be a good time to ask about coverage for some of our more valuable possessions--namely, the computers and cameras. Here's what I learned:

We could get comprehensive coverage for the cameras that would cover loss or damage, except that caused by:

1) Nuclear holocaust (his exact words)
2) Chewing or gnawing by vermin

Damn, there goes my plan to capture a mushroom cloud on film while a rat dangles from my zoom lens.

a room with a view

As promised, here are some pictures of the new house...

Now this is what I call "fine dining"!


This is a bit of the tiny chunk of our property that could reasonably be called a "yard".


The cats agree: we sure get a lot of snow up here. Good thing for these wide windowsills to watch all the action.


At least one of us has a car that can get us in and out of this place! Shortly after J left, I called a plow to come make me an escape route. We later found out from our (very nice) neighbors that the retiree who used to live here always shoveled the driveway himself. All 400 sloping feet of it. Hmmph. Some of us have jobs, you know.


See that brown blob up there on the hill? That's our house, as seen from the woods. Bet we won't be able to see it from there once some leaves start popping!


And about where I was standing in that photo--that's where I saw, from my office window, not 1 or 2, but about 12(!) deer (I'm calling it our "herd") stroll by yesterday afternoon. I love this place!

you know you've moved to the country when:

-The first thing you receive in your mailbox is a card from the postal service that contains the heading "Rural Delivery".

-You're heading out to your first dinner out "in town" (trying to make it there before they close at 9 PM!), when you pass by a building with a parking lot full of cars and wonder, wow? what's going on *there* on a Wednesday night? And then you realize, it's a church.

-When passing by said church, you and your spouse speculate on what these good townspeople would think of you should the postman ever reveal to them the contents of your mail. (I read it for the articles, really!)

-At your big dinner out "in town", country songs are in regular rotation in the background music.

-After a big snow (like the one we had last night) you feel absolutely trapped in your own home until you are able to locate someone who is willing to come plow your 400 ft sloping driveway, because your compact car will never make it back up the hill should you leave the house with the driveway unplowed.

-You call to order a pizza from only pizza place in town, and the phone number is 555-8181. 10 minutes later, you have no heat or hot water and need to call the local repairman. His number is 555-8282.

-The local paper (delivered free to all residents on Fridays) contains full pages listing activities for senior citizens, numerous articles on church-related activities in the various towns (e.g. "Chicken Supper at Methodist Church"), an ad for a Christian summer camp, and...get ready for it...I am NOT making this up...a Jazzercise ad.

we did it!

Greetings from our new house in the woods! We're still living out of boxes, but we have cable, internet access, a couch to sit on, and the number for the only pizza joint in town. What more could you need? It's definitely going to be a while before we're all unpacked...

So, I'm hoping it's not just because I've been off work for almost a week, but living in this house feels like being on vacation. There's just something about this place that has made us feel really relaxed. I guess the view of the woods makes up for the interior maze of boxes.

The recent snow has allowed us to take note of some of the other inhabitants of our property--we've seen rabbit tracks, bird tracks, and some cat-like tracks that could be a raccoon or a fox (whatever it was, it left paw prints on J's windshield the other night!). We have a male cardinal in residence who has a lovely singing voice.

Last night my brother-in-law came up to see the house for the first time, and we took him on a mini night hike down to our stream. It was the first time we'd walked down into the woods since moving in. During the hike, we came across the first concrete evidence of deer on the property...hoof tracks leading down to and across the stream and criss-crossed over some other trails. Apparently we weren't the only ones trying to track the deer--there were some dog-like paw prints following the same path as the deer tracks. Coyote? Very possibly. Needless to say, as exhilarating as the discovery of the tracks was, I did get a little spooked when I heard rustling in the woods, even though it was probably just the wind.

I still can't believe this place is OURS!

Not a snowflake in sight all winter, and now all hell is set to break loose over Connecticut...just as it's time for me and J to haul an insane amount of crap over to our new digs! Wish us luck...

I'll be out of sight for a few days as we will be in transition, but I'm sure I'll have lots to share when I get back. Thanks for laughing with me through the major stress of the last few days!

what happens when your in-laws get to paw through your things

When I'm facing a big task, I tend to get into making lists. In preparation for the move, I had written out a list of "manageable" tasks, listed by room, on a legal-sized piece of paper. Somewhere along the line, this list got tacked up in the kitchen. Today, I noticed several of our moving helpers taking a glance at the list, and started to worry about whether I'd written anything I wouldn't want family looking at. So when I saw that my brother-in-law seemed to be reading the entire list line by line, I got up to tear it off the wall.

"I have to make sure I didn't write anything embarrassing on that," I said, totally giving myself away.

He pointed at an item listed under "Bedroom". "You mean like 'Pack goodies'?"

Um, yeah. Like that.

moving sucks, part II

OK, calm down. Just breathe. It's gonna be alright. They're going to locate your new address and snake their sneaky little wires in there and you are going to continue to be able to download celebrity gossip news and dirty craigslist postings at the sweet, sweet lightning speeds you have grown so deliciously accustomed to.

"I'm showing that we do service that area, but I'm not so sure about that house." This is what the 3rd Comcast customer service agent I had the pleasure of interacting with today told me. Surprisingly, this was the most reassuring thing I'd heard from them so far. I mean, it's better than "you're going to have to find another provider up there", which is what the first agent told me. The potential repercussions are beyond me. First, I would have to change not one, but TWO, email addresses. Second, I have seen what Cablevision has to offer and I fart in their general direction. No "On Demand" exercise programs? No...well I don't know what else they're missing but I am sure I would not like their service. Comcast is like Jordache in the 80's; Cablevision is like Jordache today. I am a cable snob.

I won't even begin to speculate on why our particular house would be showing up as unserviceable. I like to be serviced; my new house should be equally obliging. Maybe a Comcast tech once got spooked by a ghost on the property? Or...oooh! Maybe a chupacabra! Bigfoot! The Loch Ness monster! We do have a lot of room for hiding up there.

Comcast, if you're reading this, picture me on my knees before you. I am begging you, please! Let me keep my PowerBoost and my digital cable with exercise programs and late-night HBO specials On Demand. Just because I want to go live in the woods doesn't mean I want to stop sucking at the teat of corporate television or reduce myself to ordering...gasp!...DSL service. Call me back, Comcast. You don't have to play games with me--I won't think you're desperate if you don't wait a few days. I know you have others, but I think you feel the same way about me as I do about you. We need each other. I don't think I can live without you. Just stay with me, Comcast. I'll even let you do, you know, that *thing* we talked about that one time after all that wine? Please, Comcast, I know I can make you happy forever.

Love,
Kat E

moving sucks, part I

You know how people are always saying "I'm NEVER moving again"? That's because moving sucks. My living room is an obstacle course of full boxes, half-full boxes, empty boxes, trash bags and darting cats. My coffee table is littered with (more) crap (than usual). And amongst all this, there's no way any actual routine cleaning is getting done.

On the positive side, J is sorting through his many, MANY boxes of possessions, trying his best to find things he can actually bear to part with. So this weekend, we shared many laughs (in between the even more numerous moments in which one of us nearly assassinated the other) over old diaries, photos, and other mementos. A few highlights:

--I found my diary from freshman year of high school, in which I spend pages discussing my huge crush on a boy whose hair is "long in the back, but not too long, because that would be ugly". I have a feeling I'll be sharing a few of these entries with you all eventually.

--J dug out his old prom photos, in which he sports hair that is, um, pretty darn long in the back, and a white tux (also short in the front, long in the back, like the hair) with a peach cummerbund to match his date's huge peach lace-and-frill covered dress. He's so lucky to have found me instead ;)

--At one point, J barged into the bathroom, where I was washing my hands, and announced "dry your hands, I have something cool to show you but be sure your hands are dry first." So I dried my hands, and at his instruction (which I'll probably seldom follow in the future), closed my eyes and opened my hands. When I opened my eyes I saw that I was holding a handful of teeth. NOT cute, innocent baby teeth. No, these were his Big, Ugly, Adult, WISDOM TEETH. Not exactly what I was expecting. However, I will admit that this was much less traumatic then the time he showed me the rubber-banded remains of that long-in-the-back part of his former hairstyle, which he had for some UNGODLY reason kept in a box since he cut it off. I'm pretty sure I insisted that we could reminisce over his long lost mullet just fine by looking at pictures of it; and so it found its way to the dump, where it probably got covered in toxic waste and is now roaming the Northeast attaching itself to unsuspecting victims.

With regard to something else I discovered during this hellish moving process: I would just like to say that I love the fact that J and I have at least 2 giant Rubbermaid bins labeled "Costumes".

Swiss shards

Super-brief photo summary of 4 days spent in Switzerland, most of which time was spent indoors, working:

Flew into Zurich. After clearing customs (Swiss customs was surprisingly...barely noticeable?), my next order of business was to board the next available train to Geneva. I was able to snap some photos during my 10-minute wait:

When I got to my hotel in Geneva, my room wasn't ready yet. I stepped outside to capture the snowscape. Apparently, I'd gotten there just in time, as Switzerland (like most of the US), hadn't seen much snow at all this season. It was snowing when I landed, and for a day everything looked like this:

This was the view from my room:

Also seen from my room, this apartment building seems to have a lovely garden terrace on the roof--notice the trees growing through the space in the roof?

Before I got too motion sick, I was able to take a few snaps from the train, en route from Geneva back to Zurich after my meeting:

As my flight home didn't leave until the next day, I was able to spend a couple of hours in downtown Zurich:

I wasn't overly thrilled with Zurich, but I did get a good fondue dinner there at this restaurant (apparently it's the place to go for fondue...which you'd think would be around every Swiss corner, but I can assure you it is decidedly not):

And, the view along the river after dark was just lovely:

Many thanks to J for the fabulous new point-and-shoot, which makes taking great travel photos a snap.

tidbits

A few things:

-Switzerland went well. I remember more French than I thought, which was completely useless in Zurich, where everyone spoke German. J promised that we can learn German together. He's got some tapes. But I actually spent most of the trip in Geneva, where French is the norm. I ate truffles for the first time, and also some cheese that completely reinforced the origins of the question "who cut the cheese?!" I brought back Toblerone, and Swiss Army Knives made of chocolate. And a windchime (it had a nice sound; I prefer unusual souvenirs).

-I am a pushover. Got a call from a recruiter today and he probably could have gotten me to tell him my weight if he'd asked. Nevermind that I am not at all interested in looking for another job right now. He was dangling offers of a position with more responsibility; I was frank and said that was something I wasn't necessarily looking for more of at the moment.

-Our mortgage was approved. So was the mortgage of the folks who are buying our house. 2 weeks to wooded bliss! Free pizza and beer if you help us unload the trucks :)

it's a go!

I'm happy to announce that we are on track to move to the woods next month! The sale of our current house is all lined up, and our offer has been accepted on the new house. We are trying to finalize the closing date--we are hoping to get 4 weeks but we may have to be out of here as early as 2 weeks from now. Here are some pictures of the new place.

The front:

The back:

Living/Dining room:

Room adjacent to kitchen, overlooking our 13 acres of woods:

Obviously, that's not our stuff in the house (it's actually vacant now but those pics were from the listing). I can't wait to be there in spring when all the flowering trees bloom, and of course in fall, when we will have an awesome view of our very own New England foliage.

chocolate and cheese and giant knives with lots of blades and things

One of the perks of my job is that I sometimes get to travel to neat cities and stay in very nice hotels. For the first time in the 3 years that I've been in this profession, I am finally being sent overseas for a work trip! Destination: Switzerland.

Although I love to travel, I'm a little nervous because I have to fly into one city, and then take the train to another city and then a cab to my hotel...all by myself. Here's the problem--how do you know what language any given person in Switzerland speaks? German and French are 2 of the official languages, Italian is another. English is not. Luckily, at one point in my life, I was nearly fluent in French. Here's why I hesitate to rely on my French: when faced with the fact that I will have to navigate the Swiss train system on my own, I tried to think of the French word for "train". For the life of me, I could not remember it. I looked it up online. It is "train".

I know I should not be nervous...in fact, I already know I will have 100 times more confidence than that day almost exactly 12 years ago, when I arrived in Paris--alone--to spend a semester living there. It was a crisp early morning in January, and I was still recovering from New Year's Eve. I had 6 months worth of clothes (mostly black and grey so I could fit in with the Parisians). I got into a cab and tried to pronounce the address of my apartment...knowing I would butcher it I simultaneously handed the cabbie a scrap of paper where I had written it down. I was tired, and nervous, and so excited. I'd never lived in an apartment before, and here I was, about to do it, in PARIS! We finally pulled up at the building. It was so "French". I was delighted. Then I met the concierge, who gave me the nastiest look as I tried desperately to explain to her who I was. Of course she spoke absolutely no English (or maybe she was just pretending)...I remember distinctly trying to carefully pronounce "Je suis une etudiante Americaine..." (as if she would not immediately realize I was an American...the French can *smell* us, I am convinced). After much deliberation, she finally handed me a key and showed me to the apartment--through 2 courtyards and up 5 or 6 flights of stairs. Did I mention I had 6 months worth of things with me? I spent that first day wandering the neighborhood. I think I even went into a store that sold phones because I couldn't figure out how to use the payphone to call home with my calling card. My roommate (and now best girlfriend) SV showed up the next day, so we tackled the rest of the basic necessities together, but I will never forget the nervous, exhausted, exhilaration I felt that first day alone in Paris.

Well, that was an unexpected stream of conciousness. I honestly didn't sit down intending to write about that. But you know what, I feel much better about showing up alone in Switzerland now! J, I wish you could be there with me. I swear I will get your ass to Europe before I turn too much more of your hair gray.

So anyway, have any of you been to Switzerland? In what language do I need to ask for my 4-foot Toblerone and Giant Swiss Army Knife? Should I ask people, in French, if they speak English? I hate to be the ignoramous who just starts rambling in English in a foreign country as if everyone is supposed to understand it. And on a serious note, if you have any recommendations for Must-See things in Zurich or Geneva (keeping in mind I'll only have 1 day in each city), I'm all ears!

an update

for those who may be wondering:

We are hoping to really start buttoning things up with the house deal sometime this weekend. Basically, if you haven't done it before, the sale of a house involves several steps--and until the "closing" is complete, your house isn't really sold. We made it through the first step, which was the home inspection. The buyers looked over the report and decided not to ask us to fix anything (which is good, because we pretty much told them, "look, we're giving you a great price, but you're getting the place as-is". The next step is the appraisal. In our case, our buyers are getting a government loan, so there are some contingencies in place that you may not have to deal with in the case of a conventional loan. Because the government is granting the loan, they want to make sure there are no major problems with the property before they approve the loan. We had to sign a statement agreeing that our buyers had the right to walk away from the deal if the house does not appraise for at or above the sale price. In addition, the government may require certain repairs to be made before they'll approve the loan. So right now, we are simply waiting to hear the results of the appraisal that was done last weekend. We were hoping to have heard earlier this week, but the process is taking longer than we expected.

Once we get the news on the appraisal (assuming all is good), we will move forward at blazing speed in terms of getting a contract together on the house we want to buy. (Lever, it's not in Maine! It's still here in CT, about 45 minutes from where we live now).

So keep your fingers crossed for us (or, if you're Catholic, pray to that wacky St. Joseph guy). Here's hoping I have another--more exciting--update within a few days...

just needs the old John Hancocks...

Looks like we're finally selling our house :) By February I could be hiking in my own 13 acres of woods...

RIP: James Brown

Dear Godfather of Soul, even though you had some "issues" with domestic violence, your contribution to the American music landscape will be remembered always.

James Brown has now been added to my husband's running tally of musicians I have seen in concert that died shortly after I attended their concerts. Other names on this list include:

-Stevie Ray Vaughan (I was at his last concert; that night he died when his helicopter crashed into the ski hill at Alpine Valley)
-Jerry Garcia (I was at the last Grateful Dead show)
-Lou Rawls (died within a few months of us seeing him perform at Mohegan Sun Casino)

We saw James Brown maybe 3 years ago, so I'm thinking I'm not connected to his death. You may also note that Bob Dylan, Jon Bon Jovi, Crosby/Stills/Nash/Young, Ronnie James Dio, Vince Neil, and Eric Clapton are all still alive, despite my having seen them in concert, some of these as many as 15 years ago!

However, if it is true that I can kill artists merely by attending their concerts, I will need tickets to the following shows immediately: Clay Aiken, Nelly Furtado, Aaron Neville (who I already saw once but apparently my death mojo wasn't working that night), Paris Hilton, Toby Keith, Celine Dion...

Have great sex, help change the world

This year, I've vowed to mark the Winter Solstice with some sort of ritual. So, there I was, looking for ideas online, when I came across the GlobalOrgasm website. That's right, these folks want people across the globe to participate in a massive "synchronized global orgasm", at the time of the upcoming Winter Solstice (Dec 22). During and after orgasm, participants are asked to concentrate their thoughts on world peace. The idea is to create a huge surge of positive human energy in an effort to combat the high levels of aggression and violence present around the world today. I'll be the first to admit that the science behind the GlobalOrgasm project is certainly less than solid, but I'm happy to be a guinea pig in this experiment. See their blog for more.

PMS Book Review

I just finished this wonderful book:

And now, because I have PMS, I am totally choked up and sad and happy all at once. Actually, the book was so good that I probably would have cried regardless of the PMS...but that's enough talk about PMS.

"The Time Traveler's Wife", by Audrey Niffenegger, is a beautiful, crushing, uplifting, artistic, heart-rending tale of true love, with a highly original science-fiction twist. I can barely write any more about it as I am starting to get that "about-to-cry" headache again. All I can say is, read this book. You won't regret it (unless you also have PMS when you get to the end, in which case you may end up sobbing into a box of double-stuff oreos while wondering who would play Henry when the book is made into a movie and whether you would get to see him naked or not, and whether or not you would even want to, depending on how the filmmakers decide to handle the ending).

Merry Christmahannukwaanzaka to you!

With the house situation still in limbo, I've distracted myself with holiday decorating. I wasn't particularly eager to do it this year, having been enjoying the relative sparseness of a staged-for-sale home.

I should mention here that if it were possible to make a living in the clutter production trade, J would be CEO of the world's largest clutter-producing corporation. We can go from "showing-perfect" to "just-ransacked" in a matter of seconds. I keep trying to come up with creative organizational strategies that will help J reduce his clutter output, but haven't been completely successful. In an effort to eliminate his sea of post-its and torn scraps of paper (covered with phone numbers, website addresses, concert dates, movies to watch, CDs to buy, random calculations, etc), I bought him a PDA. The inside cover of the PDA is now covered with post-its. You see what I'm up against.

To get back on track, it's beginning to look pretty festive at our house. Which brings me to my next point. According to this article:

Americans are ready to put "Merry Christmas" back into holiday shopping, a new poll shows.

The majority of Americans surveyed - 95% - said they were not offended by a "Merry Christmas" greeting in stores, according to a poll by Zogby International.

However, 32% of respondents said they took offense at "Happy Holidays," the religiously neutral alternative promoted over the last few years as inclusive and inoffensive.

I actually take the Zogby polls, and I happened to take this one. I was among the 95% of Americans who is not offended by having a store clerk (or anyone for that matter) wish me a "Merry Christmas." Interestingly, the poll results confirmed a general sense I was getting, which was that my saying "Happy Holidays" is actually considered offensive by quite a few people. Yes, I celebrate Christmas, in the sense that I gather with family for food and the exchanging of gifts on Christmas day. But I am not actually celebrating Christmas as in celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In fact, for me the Winter Solstice will probably be the most spiritual day of the holiday season. Humans were celebrating during the yuletide season long before Christ was born, and it's not like I have to remind any of you where the vast majority of so-called Christmas decorations originated.

But back to the point. If you are a Christian and want to wish others a "Merry Christmas," by all means, go right ahead. By the same token, allow those of us who don't quite agree that "Jesus is the reason for the season", to wish you "Happy Holidays", without taking it as some sort of slam on Christianity. When I wish someone "Happy Holidays", it is because I sincerely hope that they will be able to spend happy times with friends and loved ones during the coming weeks, sharing in whatever traditions they choose to celebrate with each other. I fear that too many people, when they say "Merry Christmas", are really saying "Screw you, liberal heathens"...which I'm fairly sure was the real emotion behind the "tell the ACLU 'Merry Christmas'" scheme. (The ACLU has never filed any kind of anti-'Merry Christmas' lawsuit, by the way.)

So, how do I express myself this holiday season without offending? "Happy Holidays" is obviously risky, and "Happy Winter Solstice"--if the recipient even understands what that means--is just too new-agey and pagan for my taste. I think I'm going to follow J's lead and go with a good old "Happy Festivus".

another house update: thanks Ned Flanders?

So, we got an offer on the house this weekend. It was pretty low. We're in the midst of negotiations. We want everything to work out but we also don't want to give away our house for a steal.

Thank god I'm not buying a house by myself--I would be a total pushover. J tends more heavily toward stubborness, so I think we balance each other out well.

Hopefully all this will be a done deal soon!

buy our motherf***ing house

So here's the latest: we have a contract signed on our dream house, contingent upon the sale of our current home. We have even had the "new" house inspected, to the tune of about $700. So now there's more than potential disappointment on the line--we're talking cash here!

We had somebody come look at our house last week. Apparently they've now narrowed their search down to 2 or 3 homes, of which ours is one. They are coming back to see it again this weekend. A very good sign. Someone new is also supposed to be coming to take a look at the place tomorrow. So we are poised for things to move forward. I just knew that burying that Ned Flanders figurine in the houseplant would be the solution! I never did say anything special when I buried it, so let me make a public attempt here and now:

Hi-diddly-ho there, prospective home buyers! This charming cape has much to offer. Newly refinished wood flooring, a cheerful color scheme, lots of natural lighting, and the back closet barely smells like dead mouse anymore. Just about every room in the house has been blessed via Bacchanalian ritual, and you'll enjoy sorting through all the crap that we plan on leaving in the basement. And just so you know, we've never had any problems from the neighbors or from the previous owner, who died in the driveway. You won't mind if we dig up a few of the plants before we leave, will you? Okely-dokely then, do we have a deal?

the midwestern indoctrination continues

This year J was lucky enough to get the week of Thanksgiving off from work, so we road-tripped it from the east coast all the way back to Illinois to spend the week with my family. J is a brave man. Now, I've taken him back to my homeland before, so he knows all about the flatness, and the corn, and did I mention the flatness? This time he was lucky enough to be able to spend some time in downtown Chicago, but there was still something missing from his midwestern experience: he had never eaten at Steak & Shake.

What better meal to have the night before Thanksgiving than a big old Steak & Shake Frisco melt (the platter, of course) and a giant sippable sundae shake? That's what we thought, too.

After ravenously devouring everything on our table, we sat back to reflect on the experience. J turned to me and said, patting his belly, "Ugh, I feel like an engorged tick!"

My mother's jaw dropped open, and she fixed her eyes on us. "WHAT did he just say?!"

"Tick, mom, with a 'T'! He said he feels like an engorged TICK."

(P.S. You may have noticed the new look of the blog, and the new title. This is because I switched over to Blogger beta where I can actually understand what I'm doing when I edit the blog. Hope you don't mind the changes, but I bore easily. It's a wonder I kept it the same for so long!)

tidbits

ONE
It's on its way...my new Macbook Pro, that is! If pigs in shit are really as happy as we're made to think, then call me Porky and roll me in a cow pattie. I've used Macs in the past, but never for personal use, so I am beyond excited.

TWO
We have made an offer on a house (contigent upon the sale of our house, though luckily the sellers are being nice enough to give us plenty of time; that wouldn't stop them, however, from taking another offer if it came along). But anyway, we are signing the official contract on Thursday. It's a rockin' house, a 1978 contemporary on 13.5 wooded acres. We're very excited about it, but I'm maintaining a realistic perspective. The market for selling our house is terrible, and a major employer just announced it was leaving our town. So things aren't poised to improve anytime soon. In lieu of burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the yard, I plan to devise a similar ritual involving a small, plastic Ned Flanders figurine...

THREE
To Jennifer: You commented recently asking what we went to Belize for, and I tried to reply to your comment but Blogger was being screwy and it didn't take and I was too lazy to get around to it again. But what I wanted to say was that more stories and pictures from this Belize trip are forthcoming, pending the arrival of the Macbook, but that in the meantime, I thought you might be most interested in something we did there last year. We visited a cave called Actun Tunichil Muknal (Cave of the Crystal Sepulchre). To enter the cave, you must swim about 100 ft, and you remain in water ranging from ankle- to chest-deep for about 80% of the tour. There are no guardrails, no installed lighting. When you get to the part with the artifacts (after climbing a large, near-vertical ladder and squiggling your way through some pretty small tunnel-like areas), you walk in your socks and are careful not to step on pottery fragments. Or areas of crystallized bone. Visitors won't be able to experience the cave like this for long. It was an amazing experience!

my first time (you betta Belize it!)

When we visited Belize for the first time last year, I was aware of its stature as one of the world's top sites for scuba diving. But with all the time and expense involved with planning a wedding, I wasn't able to get dive certified in time for the trip (J has been certified for years). Turned out not to matter too much--we stayed on an island where good snorkeling could be had right off the beach, and J had a cold and wouldn't have been able to dive anyhow.

But when we decided to return to Belize earlier this year, I was determined to be able to dive there and see what all the fuss was about. I completed the first half of a PADI Open Water Diver course (classroom and pool sessions) in one weekend here in CT. While the rest of the suckers in my class would complete the open water portion of the certification in a Pennsylvania quarry, I headed down to the warm waters of Belize, referral in hand.

To complete my Open Water Diver certification, I would have to do 4 dives in 2 days. When we arrived on Caye Caulker, we stopped by the Belize Diving Service office to shore up our plans for the next day's dives. The weather had been overcast and rainy since we'd been in Belize, but we were told that they'd probably still be going out the next day, and to show up around 9 am.

The next morning, I was nervous. Diving sounded like a lot of fun, and I was excited to explore life under the sea, but it's an activity not without its very real dangers. On top of that, my anxiety was increased because of the fact that I had lied about one small item on my medical form, and had been advised not to dive by my neurologist but decided to take my chances (I'll save the details for another post, but in the meantime don't be alarmed...it's a migraine-related problem).

So anyway, having demonstrated that I knew how to assemble my gear, we (me, some other referral students, as well as a group of certified divers) got on the boat and headed off to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, about a 40 minute boat ride. The sky was still darkish, and there was intermittent rain. The water was choppy, and most everyone on the boat was keeping an eye on the horizon in an effort to ward off seasickness. Until recently, I have been immune to any kind of motion sickness. Maybe it's related to the onset of the migraine problem, but I've noticed that I'm a bit more sensitive to it these days. So needless to say, I was trying really hard to hold it together on the boat. I'd been assured that any seasickness would disappear once I got under the water, so I geared up and fell backwards over the side of the boat, ready for my first dive experience.

We descended slowly, but the abundance of the sea life was immediately apparent. Fish were everywhere, we didn't have to go very deep to see beautiful coral formations, and we even saw a group of nurse sharks. The problem was, I still felt pretty damned queasy. I had not been instructed on the finer points of retching underwater while trying to breathe from a tank, and I really didn't want to find out how well that would work. I breathed as calmly and steadily as possible, and tried to enjoy my first dive.

After about 35 minutes, we made our way to the surface, and within seconds of my head hitting air, the contents of my stomach were being gobbled up by a group of fish who had quickly found their way to my special floating buffet. J came up below me, so he got a nice view of this scene. A few more hurls in the rough water, and I got back into the boat. We had to wait an hour before diving again, an hour which I spent sitting silently, trying to calm my stomach. After one more fish-feeding session over the side of the boat, it was time to dive again. I felt better during the second dive than during the first, but once again, upon hitting the surface, the heaving began. This time, there wasn't much left...nothing the fish were particularly interested in, anyway.

We returned to the island around 3:30, and I didn't feel normal again until about 8 that night. Determined to finish my certification, I loaded up on Dramamine and showed up at the dive shop again the next morning. The other students were impressed at my tenacity and resilience, but no way was I going home with the damn thing half-finished (no quarry dives for me!).

The second day of diving was a completely different experience. We had better weather (and thus no choppy boat ride), and I think Dramamine is a miracle drug (I'd never tried it before). Unlike the end of the first day, by the end of the second I was already thinking about when I'd get to dive again.

Just call me Jacqueline Cousteau:


*Note: The whole crew at Belize Diving Service, including my instructor Ines, were awesome, and I would highly recommend them if you're ever on Caye Caulker and want to dive.

you betta Belize it!

Returned late last night from a too-short return trip to Belize. I'll have stories and a few pictures to share over the next day or so, but first I wanted to share my excitement over a few pieces of news that broke just as we returned to the States:

1. Democrats take back the House, and may still yet gain control of the Senate, depending on the outcome in Virginia. We were glued to CNN at the Miami aiport last night, and again at home from about 2 to 4 am, and again upon waking this morning. I kind of missed being around for the full coverage, but I'm not sorry I missed the final week of campaign ads. (We'd already voted absentee weeks ago, no worries!) I hope the rest of the world can really see now that the American people are as fed up with this administration as they are. I just hope the election results amount to something, and that we can really see some big changes being made. Yes, we've got to change course in Iraq, but it's equally important that we fix healthcare and education here at home, and, yeah, raising the minimum wage would be nice too.

2. Britney files for divorce from K-Fed!! Here's where you can see that I'm a well-rounded person with a wide array of interests. I'm the first to admit that I enjoy some celeb gossip now and then, and I have to say I really had given up hope on Britney (not that I ever held her in especially high regard). But ever since she married that idiot, I just figured she was more comfortable reverting to her "country" (as she puts it) ways, popping out babies, eating Cheetos and putting up with all kinds of shit from a loser husband who was just milking her for everything he could get. But now she's actually leaving him, and now I can take solace in the fact that even the most seemingly hopeless cases can grow a spine and walk away from that kind of crap, maybe even with a little bit of dignity.

3. Back to the important stuff. Rumsfeld FINALLY resigned today, and it's about friggin' time. Seems to me they were waiting for the election results to make the final decision, because you know the Dems are going to launch some big bad investigations now, and Rummy doesn't want to be around to take the heat directly. If only we could get rid of Cheney and impeach Bush...but I'll take what I can get for now.