Recently in Home Life Category

So it's the night before we leave and we've spent the day doing avoidance activities to keep from going to crazy with the wait. It almost might have been better going in and making today my last day...KIDDING, no it wouldn't have. So we mowed the lawn, pulled crab-grass, unloaded all the ripened tomatoes, summer squash, and cucumbers from the garden. Jeff made 17 quarts of sour pickles while I painted the trip around the new windows in the bedroom and then built in some shelving into one of our bedroom closet. And then it was 2pm and we were fucked because all the work for the day was done and it was still only early afternoon on a day where we still can't eat a fucking thing. So I laid down and took a nap on the porch, Jeff viewed internet porn, we went for a walk, played a game of Scrabble, and then settled into watching TV.

This has been the longest day ever. Or at least so far as tomorrow, for as rushed as I feel right now is really going to be more of the same. Heading back into the city first thing in the morning to drop off the car and then back to the apartment to finish packing. Honestly, though, that packing is really just going to be running through all our various lists to make sure we don't forget anything (which I know we will), trying to determine which books to bring along (more weight issues) and do a final decision on what gets checked and what gets carried on (do I really need to carry my harness on?). We'll show up at the air port three hours in advance of our flight, just in case, only to find it's delayed from one to two additional hours. Essentially we'll be up at 6am to run around for a flight that will ultimately not take off until 7 or 8pm. I have a bottle of 30 Valium for just such an occasion. Of course I'm not complaining...I'm just saying that I wish I could fast-forward 24 hours and just get this damn cruise finally started.

But it is finally here and we've reached our goals. Jeff hit his 165lbs on the scale today and I'm at my lowest at 173lbs so even our 32-inch waist pants and shorts are drooping on us. I'll take that as a win, any day. So yay us...we're both entering Jeff's 40th birthday as fit and healthy as we've probably ever been and our eight months of working towards are goals are realized. Amazing.

Off to have a good time.

We celebrated Jeff's 40th with our pre-BGC mani/pedi/waxing. Super gay, I know, but then we are Super Gay and have even upped our Super Gayness with our hair coloring so why not go get a mani/pedi/waxing? Of course, after 13 years together, why not have Jeff spring on me that my semi-Hobbitish feet and toe hair needs to be waxed. WTF? But for him, I'll wax them and did. Not quite a Brazilian, but still, not normal. But now my toes and feet are hairless.

Then it was off to dinner with Nick, Steven, Nikki, Andrew, Andrew, and Scott. Great food, great friends and great conversation. And then a great picture of us to boot. Woot.

Tomorrow is our big day: last spin class pre-big BGC AND last day of work. I might have actually activated my vacation email this afternoon. Maybe.

We've successfully deposited the kitties with Bubbie Charlotte and managed to start Jeff's 40th with a great family party back in Harrisburg. His mom put together a wonderful party for him, surrounding him with loving family with familiar foods from his childhood and just a fantastic sensation of how great 40 is going to be for him. It was a great kick off for this week that will find us in Barcelona by the Saturday when 40 actually hits him. Sure we'll be on a Delta International flight in coach and coming out of a Valium stupor but come on, we have the Big Gay Cruise ahead of us. Woot!

In celebration of probably the gayest thing we've done so far, we decided to jump in with both feet and gay up our hair, me with highlights and Jeff going totally Jean Harlow. It's only now we regret not getting our ears pierced several months ago so we could throw in some cute little hoops to complete our complete reversion to twenty-something twinks, those twenty-something twinks that we never, ever were.

So we're only working until Wednesday this week, then zipping up to the house returning back to the city on Friday to catch our flight. We can't believe it's almost here.

While the cats have determined that sleeping the days away in large open suitcases is a life for spoiled felines, they haven't quite put it together that they're not going on the Big Gay Cruise with us. They are, however, going to Jeff's Mom's in Harrisburg this weekend to spend some quality time with Bubbie Charlotte. We're heading out to Harrisburg this weekend both to deliver the girls but also, really, to start the birthday celebration for Jeff. Since her baby is turning 40, Jeff's Mom wanted a party so we've invited family over to a small brunch on Sunday morning to start the festivities. In all the craziness for the trip, we've both kind of lost sight that next Saturday when we wake in Barcelona, one us is going to be 40 and one of us isn't. It's definitely the way to slide into a new decade and there are no sign of any mid-life crisis surfacing. Ultimately, how bad can 40 be on a ship filled with 2000 gay men and Charo?

Packing continues. Things go in and then back out again as I continue to review my entire travel history and realize EVERY time I've traveled, I've used 1/3 of the stuff I took and have always vowed not to over pack the next time. But isn't this time worthy of over-packing? I have just about everything vacuum packed and separated out, though, and now I'm sorting out what shoes to take.

I'm constantly watching the weather now, trying to determine if crappy weather will delay our flight out of JFK. Of course with Hurricane Dean heading towards the Gulf, it's tough to say when the spin-off storms would make their way up to NYC but I'm assuming about next Friday at 5pm when we're suppose to leave.

This is how I see lucky today.

The Gostomsky-Spitz's (or Spitz-Gostomsky's, depending on who wins the coin flip) are announcing the arrival of our new family member, Nitro, who was adopted yesterday after much fanfare and hard negotiations. Nitro comes to us as yet un-remonikered and while we were leaning towards Penelope or Shavous (sha-VU-us), quite honestly, its butch, manly front side begs something...butch and manly. A shake of the Gay Namerator for appropriate gay male names has thus far turned up Paul Lynne or Liberace, neither which work yet so for now, Nitro is staying Nitro which sounds like a Power Ranger or a Transformer.

Yes the garden is tilled, refreshed, and waiting for stuff. I had myself all worked up into a frenzy because I'd been gone for the past two weekends and was BEHIND! BEHIND! BEHIND! Actually, though, our Zone 4/5 is still a bit cool to put most things out (lettuce and peas, excluded) so I was able to get all the beds prepped in under a few hours, filled with new compost and brand new earthworms added to each one. Pictures of rich brown earth to follow.

The bigger thing this past weekend was our super secret project that we conceived a few months ago. It's too early to say exactly what it is because we're taunting Jeff's Mom about it until she comes visiting for Memorial Day but I thought I'd give an intro picture to whet the appetite.

The beloved Dell I bought four years ago has, for the recent past, been acting up in not-fun ways. It would suddenly stop in the middle of several programs, freeze, then switch over to a blue screen which wasn't exactly the Blue Screen of Death since I could reboot and get everything back on line (note: though now that I look at the picture accompanying the Wiki entry, that's exactly what my screen looks like, so maybe I am getting the BSOD). Annoying but I could live with it. Of course I've been quietly backing up everything onto and external hard drive and burning DVD's to make sure when the system finally craps out, I haven't really lost much. But in the past month, my reboots don't always take on the first or second time and this past weekend, it took me six times to get the reboot to take and the system to start up.

As a last ditch effort, I decided to go ahead and wipe out the hard-drive and reinstall the XP operating system this weekend, so I gathered all my disks and notes from previous OS installs and sat down with a big cup of coffee to have at it...only to be told, succinctly, via a black screen of ass, that damage to one of the partitioned drives wouldn't allow me to reinstall the OS. Fucker. And that was that. My skills at PC-doctoring only go so far and reinstalling an OS is about as far as I go. My only conclusion is that my C: drive is and has been damaged and there is nothing I can do about it. Weighing options and being completely afraid of Windows Vista horror stories (and lets be honest, nothing has been more effective then the I'm a Mac/I'm a PC Apple commercials for scaring the bejeezus out of PC users), Jeff and I are making the switch. We ordered this 20" gorgeous piece of heaven yesterday.

Who could watch the American Express commercial with Ellen DeGeneres and all the animals and not want a gaggle of penguins greeting them at the elevator. Penguins are cute as fuck.

Now Jeff and I have the inside track on getting a few through his cousin, Aaron, who's a trainer and educator at the Pittsburgh Aviary. See Aaron here with our new pets. We're sure our kitties, Tink and Ding, won't mind.

Because I know everyone cares, this is my current list of things I can check off my list of "to-do's" while on vacation...which doesn't really officially start until the 26th since that would be when I'm suppose to report back to work. So, like, I'm WAY ahead of myself already:

Watched:
Another Gay Movie
The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
Pieces of April
LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version)
LOTR: Two Towers (Disc 1 of Extended Version)
Various HGTV and FoodNetwork shows

Cooked:
Nigella's Mughlai Chicken

Bought:
Enough baking supplies to make several cheesecakes and at least four other unspecified cakes ala "The Cake Mix Doctor".
Two large fennel bulbs to make Ina's Potato Fennel Gratin (but forgot the Gruyeres cheese so I'm fucked right now)
Scallions for something I saw on Nigella Feasts but for which now I can't remember what.
Four books on creating altered books and art journals plus two other novels.
Three pairs of shoes I found at 80% off on Amazon.com while sitting up surfing the internet because I couldn't sleep.

Cleaned:
Both my spice cupboard and the cabinet next to it. I have WAY too many wok oils and wok-related stuff along with several boxes of light brown sugar, 11 packs of taco seasoning, two bottles of fajitas marinade, and a tin of loose Russian black tea.
Clutter on the kitchen table, twice. Still cluttered, tho.

Photographed:
The outside of the house to start sketching the kitchen addition remodeling project that I think we'll be able to afford in seven years.
Myself, making Nigella's Mughlai Chicken

Read:
Various sections of Schott's Almanac 2007
World War Z (M.Jones recommendation)
Sunday NYTimes, Sullivan Co. Record, and NYPost
Country Living, Jan 2007
Better Homes and Gardens, Jan 2007
The Earthly Treasure of Charles and Louisa - Family compendium of addresses and contact info, for accuracy.

Planned:
To clean and organize the rest of the kitchen cabinets as well as the pantry, including refolding all the bath towels.
Finish watching the LOTR trilogy
Ride the bike every day while watching TV or movies. (Jeff believes this is folly and wants to bet money it won't happen)
Unplanned calligraphy project (need to check out all my pens and ink supplies)
Watercolor from the picture on the front of today's Sunday NYTimes

I'm sure many are interested, riveted even, at the what I might be doing with the two weeks of vacation I start this weekend. I'm as riveted as everyone else because I simply don't know. The world of two weeks away from the city, sequestered up at the house is ripe with possibilities. I have so many things I want to do, I don't know how I'll pack them all in, quite frankly. But, knowing myself like I do, I suspect that with an unlimited constellation of possibilities, I'll end up on the couch, a LOT, doing nothing. Much like last year when I not only had a week of vacation to use up but also a week off from school, I ended up on the couch watching the entire series of "Sex In The City" from start to finish in three days straight. I didn't shower or shave or answer the phone, but I did eat a lot of ice-cream and contemplated menstrual cycles, the emotional wasteland of the male species, vaginal orgasms compared to clitoral orgasms (there is a difference!), and bad fashion passed off as hot, hot, hot.

This year could be no different except that now Jeff and I are members of Netflix the universe of possible couch time expands exponentially. I adjusted our membership to start just sending infinite movies so I always have five different things to choose from. Knowing how most hang on my every move and decision, I thought I'd clue everyone to my rental queue over the last breaths of 06 and the first, virginal blush of 07. Don't judge my lack of taste or cultural leanings, haters.

Pieces of April
Another Gay Movie
Love! Valor! Compassion!
Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her
Happy Endings
Lost: Season 1: Disc 1-7
Lost: Season 2: Disc 1-7
Weeds: Season 1: Disc 1-2
Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 1-4
Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.0: Disc 1-3
Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.5: Disc 1-3

And then I might actually cook, paint, quilt, and take a shower.

With all the bird feed we've been hauling in over the last few years, it's no wonder that we've developed quite a thriving little community of critters. This year, we seem to have a group of six or seven chipmunks who spend the days running to and fro, very busy with their own little agendas. If I have bird seed out, they're right on the feeders, filing up their little cheeks and running it back to their burroughs and holes. I guess, because they're not really disturbing my garden, I kind of like the little guys. They're cute and inquisitive and make for an interesting afternoon of watching.

So today, because the little guys have gotten so bold as to eat seed only a few feet from where we usually sit, I wanted to see if I could get one to eat out of my hand. Here's the set up which is how I sat for about an hour, with little piles of seeds leading ultimtely to my hand. Eventually, one of the little guys, who we named, wait for it....Chippy, finally came and found the motherload, a whole palmful of seeds just for him. He'd pack his cheeks, run off to hide them and then come back for more. Jeff was worried that either I'd get rabies or lice from the little thing and/or he'd bite my junk since I was doing this au naturale (as is our typical weekend state of dress). As far as I can tell, neither thing happened (though rabies does have an incubation period).

I can honestly say it was the best spent hour of the weekend.

The news around these parts is all about the flooding of NY, PA, and NJ. 14 people so far have been killed by the Delaware River and surrounding brooks, creeks, and other assorted waterways. For anyone in this area, this is now the third "biggest flood ever" in the last year and a half. The biggest flood before that was in 1955. It's awesome and scary at the same time. Our house, while on the Delaware, is actually up on a hill so we were told that should the river ever crest at our door-step, Philadelphia would be complete submerged. This bring a little hope to us that we won't have to deal with floods but little comfort for the surrounding areas. Most of the roads leading into and out of Barryville are still closed. The Barryville Bridge just opened this morning, after having been closed all of yesterday, forcing Jeff and I to load the cats into a laundry basket and carry them and our stuff across the river and up to our home last night at the end of our commute from the city. I can tell you that walking across a very old, soon-to-be demolished bridge over these raging waters wasn't exactly a picnic
Picture 1 | Picture 2 | Picture 3.

Last night, the never-ending exploration of our relationship took Jeff and me to heights. After eleven years and so many months together, I finally found out where Jeff hides things from me. Not the attic at the house or the wherever it is he stores the cleaning supplies ('cause why the hell would I need to know where the cleaning supplies are stored?) and not even in the dark recesses of his heart where one hides their most personal, secret secrets. No...last night I was able to get a pen, a dollar bill, a penny, AND our wedding band all into the crack of his ass...AT THE SAME TIME. Lord, it's like free storage that travels. Litterally, I was grabbing whatever was laying about and working it into the crack, Janga-style, waiting to see how much I could get in before the whole thing collapsed. I believe Jeff was slightly amused at my ingenuity until I decided all the sudden to go to bed because I was tired, leaving him to fish out the booty. I kept calling from my pre-somnomulent haze, "did you get the penny? Did you find the penny? Don't leave the penny in there." That's when his patience with me ran rather short. Imagine!

Come one, come all. The porch is open. The first nap of 2006 has been napped, actually twice on Sunday, and it was fine. Summer begins.

I'll tell you what is simply and utterly divine: Bach's "Air on the G String" Overture (Suite) No.3 in D Major. It just makes me want to put on a pair of ice-skates and do a lay-back spin. Gorgeous.

Wow...I'm totally into this "free time" thing. A walk through Central Park last night, good dinner on the UWS, yummy alcoholic "Cafe Lalo Super Shake" aftewards and home by 7:30!! Then an evening of pleasure reading. My God! I'm going to get so fucking fat now.

Of course I'm always looking for diversions and there are so few legitimate ones at that. But this morning I found PandaCam at the National Zoo trained on Mei Xiang and her new cub, Tai Shan. I love me some bears.

The NY Post ran an article today about our neck of the woods in Upstate NY. Literally, our little cottage is located just around the river bend in the picture that accompanies the article. Pretty cool and that is exactly what our area looks like this time of year.

http://www.nypost.com/travel/54142.htm

Hmmm....dog days of summer. Let's finally do what we've always threatend and open up the house to a LOT of family all at the same time. Food for DAYS!! Fun, fun, fun then more food. Go see the pictures.

Anyone around these parts knows that my Aunt Pam always wanders around the blog and adds her two cents worth which is a fair representation of who she is: wonderful, articulate, thoughtful, compassionate, and plain fun. She's always been my biggest cheerleader even when I didn't think I deserved cheering and was a rock during Mom's illness and death for us all. She's been blessed in many ways, especially in the last few years when grandchildren started appearing. In the last month, she's gone from one super grandson to now four super grandsons. She and her partner have had a longevity in their relationship beyond what most could hope for.

Today Aunt Pam is starting a whole new life. She retired from her job after something-something years and is looking forward to the next newest part of her life starting. For me, just wishing her well pales in comparison to how great and wonderful I hope the next span of her days will be for her and her family.

Congratulations on leaving the proletariate workforce and getting on with the good stuff, Pam!

Two weeks ago as I was racheting up my anxiety level and trying to make myself feel better about all the outside stuff I wasn't going to be able to accomplish this year, I thought the very least I could do would be to fertilize the grass to bring that healthy, verdant glow of summer to the house. I was able to get a liberal application on right before it rained and then feeling as though I'd done something good, I promptly forgot about it to make room for P/E ratios and bond valuations.

Then last weekend Jeff and I jetted back to Ohio for Cousin Ben's wedding where we got to squeeze on Neice Allison, meet new Cousin Cole, and have a group picture taken which meant the grass got left to its own devices while we were gone. This is what we came back to yesterday.

I had a whole vacation entry written up but then somehow I just got SUPER lazy and thought posting the picture would be better but you know, I'm such a whore for guilt, so thanks, Max.

I have absolutely no shame in admitting Jeff and I are totally cruise people. We took our second cruise this past week, down to the Caribbean this time and it was spectacular. Not only was the weather beautiful and warm and the islands hospitable and interesting, the actual cruise was perfect. There is nothing like being pampered and coddled to within an inch of your life all with booze and food you can eat. People can poo-poo cruises as old-people vacations but honestly, it's the most bang for a buck that someone can get. We're already planning our Alaskan cruise for next year after graduation.

Weirdly, the vacation ended on a very strange turn. On the flight home from Puerto Rico, I answered a call for any medical personnel as they thought someone was having a heart attack. Not much to do on a plane and we were close enough to NYC to not have to divert but still, it was a weird way to close the week...I thought. On the way from our house back to the city the following day, a guy was killed on a motorcycle just minutes before we got there. Since we were one of the first on the scene, I had to try to do something but with an amputated leg stuck to the guardrail, it was pretty much too late. So then I thought THAT was a weirdish way to finish the vacation.

But wait.

Being true to my pledge not to check work emails until I got back to work on Monday morning, I spend the first few hours on Monday sorting and reading and then came to the email from my sister-in-law. Oh, by the way, Grandma died last week while you were on the cruise so hope you're checking your emails. It was weird to have completely missed my Grandmother's death and her funeral but as my Dad said when I finally called him, there wasn't anything I could have done from the cruise and so I can appreciate that. I do feel like my little grandma had an amazing last two years of her life (strangely since my grandfather passed away) where she got amazing care and attention but could live at home and do the things she loved so I'm glad she had that kind of happiness.

Ultimately, even with all that weird stuff at the end, it was still a good vacation. Good to be away from work and school, good to spend some great time with Jeff and his parents who joined us on the cruise. We also upgraded our beaten silver rings we'd bought back on our first anniversary to white gold bands cut with sapphires the color of the Caribbean waters so we felt like it was a meaningful trip for our 10th anniversary.

That was fun.

Boil the man for five to seven minutes at a temperature of 103-degrees until all traces of winter blahs are gone.

We were back up to the house after a few weekends of being away and it was the perfect winter day today; cool but not bitterly frigid, light flurries falling without a sound, a warm fire going in the living room. I'd planned to spend the day working on my last economics paper due next week but instead, Jeff offered a morning of skiing so we suited up and spent the morning on the slopes of Big Bear, our little local mountain perfect for those of us still beginners. We skied until it was taking us longer to ride the lift back to the top of the mountain then it was to do the run and then came home and hoped in the hottub, boiling us and our 30-something, out of shape joints. And all the sayings about hottubing in the dead of winter are true: it's a horny thing. We had to race back into the house to finish our dirty monkey love in front of the fire and then did the most manish thing I think I've ever done, we both rolled over and fell asleep on the floor, naked and happy, fire-warmed, and content. Of course the lesson learned is: after a 1/2 post-coital nap, spread eagle on a hard floor, our 30-something, out of shape bodies do not make for an easy return to the living and active. We were like humpty-dumptys, rolling from side to side trying to pick up enough momentum to actually lift ourselves up. All in all, the perfect winter day.

I’ve unexpectedly found myself upstate for the rest of the week with absolutely nothing to do following the rather insistent wishes of my boss to take some time off. Boo hoo, poor me, I know. Classes are done until late next week, quilting class doesn’t start until February, MS Project class doesn’t start until March, and the four books I ordered from Amazon are being delivered to my office since I was expecting to be there this week. I did haul the 782-page “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” up with me but even as good as it is, I can only take a few chapters of early 19th century British dialect before my mind starts wandering. I’ve even read all my comics for the month, picking up some new titles (the New Avengers#1 is excellent, the JLA: Classified sucks the donkey) to try prolonging the comic fan-boy ecstasy. What to do, what to do? Trouble lurks in the dark parts of a man’s heart, as I understand it.

As predicted, the combination of a shitty cell-reception in the heart of this fortress-like apartment in conjunction with picking up the cable remote several times to replay a missed conversation on the TV, has led us to purchase a bare-bones phone line from a large telecom company for the sole purpose of being able to use the new Series 2 Tivo we purchased. For anyone counting, that's 3 separate Tivo's we boys now own, two for our home and one for the apartment. Thank God for the multi-user plan which discounts multiple DVR's on an account. It’s a sad statement of our lives that we can’t have a TV that isn’t tied to a Tivo but I’m sorry, we’re just futurists that way.

The saddest thing and the dirtiest secret that isn't much talked about (until after the purchase, that is) is that Tivo, unless you buy the $1200 DirectTV with HD capability model, doesn't work with high definition TV, just like the one we just bought for the apartment. Homosayswhat? Seriously. So I spend the day emailing Max, Great Giver Of All Good Tivo, complaining and looking for help. The support forums on tivo.com help only in the way that allows me to understand that there might be a cable work-around that would at most allow the Tivo to function on all non-HD channels. But then what's the point. This evening's two hour time-slip (those hours when I get to the apartment from work to the time I would have gotten home had we driven to the country like in the old days) was spent matching up A/V cables and S-cables and reconfiguring audio in to audio out, from cable box to Tivo to TV. Not something I particularly adept at but which, none the less, has to get done and it's the one thing I can figure out, eventually. And I did and now we're ready to go except our land line isn't turned on yet. Next week I'm going to figure out how to cable the Tivo into the wireless network (an oxymoron I still don't understand myself)and utilize the desktop features promised with the Series 2 model.

UPDATE: Never mind about that online networking business. Apparently the Series 2 doesn't support my Linksys G router. Fuckers. I hate technology.

My other brother, the one who doesn't look like some bear-cub porno star, has finally gone and done what most of my family, including my dead mother, had hoped he would eventually do: he and his wife have had a baby. This is quite an event since he'd professed to not wanting children for just about forever. His wife whom we love, love, love has now proven, without a doubt, how smart she really is since she'd been saying from the beginning of the no-baby situation, "just wait and see". Sometimes the men in my family, and I include myself in this statement, just need to be told what we really want and need.

My mother had so wanted to see Mitch and Sarah with a baby, just as she so wanted to see Matt and Nicole's Hayden who was still unborn when she died that spring. It would be easy to get depressed over her missing this joyous event but I truly believe she knew that a baby was eminent for Mitch and that makes me feel not so inclined to be blue. It would also be easy to get caught into some quasi-religious, fuzzy, sentimental feeling that maybe she was reincarnated into the new baby but I don't have any belief or faith in that at all. It's easier for me to think of the joy of the new baby and leave it at that. I'm sure my mother knows what she knows which is to say, probably more than any of us here and I'm content with my faith in that.

So we're welcoming little Allison Amber into the family who have been so patient and excited for her blessed arrival, safe and sound.

Got my Weatherbug Freeze Warning for Sullivan County all day yesterday during work but honestly, anyone who lives up there would have long ago brought in and covered any plantings in danger from frost. But...

Freeze Warning my ASS. We walked out to the truck this morning with a God-damn half-inch of SNOW all over the ground. Not just a light dusting but an honest to God coating of it. Be warned, Winter comes.

When Jeff and I walked out of the Hershey Hotel last night at 2am after the wedding of one of his oldest friends, we were overcome with the wafting, heavy smell of chocolate. It hits you hard and makes your nose burn. I asked Jeff if the Hershey factory purposely pumps aromatic chocolate into the air as some kind of weird, addictive PR stunt. He said it was just the factory, no malicious intent intended. But it's like subliminal olfactory advertising and my God if I didn't want to just sit down and eat the fourteen Hershey bars I had in my pockets from the wedding. I did wake this morning with something brown smeared all over my fingers. Coulda been chocolate or coulda been poo so I opted just to wash it off and not ask questions. I hate those kind-of-dark, unsure post-wedding nights. One could easily have foretold the kind of night it was going to be because of all the pics on the digicam today, this was the best one. I mean...could my deer-caught-in-headlights look that is usually so adorable be any more ridiculous?

One of the bridesmaids (of which Jeff was one) kept asking me at the reception about the humor quotient of our relationship.
"Is he always funny?" she asked. Having several glasses of Woodbridge Shiraz at my disposal, my usually social-phobic stammering had mellowed to an adorable, affected wink and slur.
"Oh yes, he's always making me laugh," I replied with a wink and a click out of the side of my mouth.
"But are you laughing at him or laughing with him? Usually I'm just laughing at [my husband]," she continued on.
I squared myself up. "No...he's a laugh a minute. Seriously, nothing's funnier then when we're laying on the couch and he cuts the biggest, loudest, stinkiest fart in the middle of some really sad, dramatic TV show. He really has the most innate sense of inappropriate timing. It's fucking hilarious."
She was honestly just speechless and couldn't decide if I was kidding or making small talk (for the record, I was making inappropriate, wine-fuelled, small talk because, as I've warned everyone before, I just have no good social skills, especially when I'm dressed in a tux surrounded by juiced Republicans). We were basically left alone for the rest of the evening after that which was just fine.

November's Housewarming Groove Tracks:

1. Ain't No Sunshine (Groove Corporation Remix)...Stryke
2. Tyron ... Erykah Badu: Live
3. Ocean Drive (Original Album Mix) ...Madison Park
4. My Lover's Gone ...Dido
5. Fade Into You ...Mazzy Star
6. Ordinary World ... Kurt Nilsen
7. I'll Be There (Soul Mekanik Remix) ... Weekend Players
8. Honey ... Venus Hum
9. Glory Box ... Portishead
10. Feelin' Good (Joe Claussel Remix) ... Nina Simone
11. The Great Escape (Carmen Rizzo Mix) ... BT

As we're packing up the house, mounds of stuff are growing in various corners; odd conglomerates of toilet bowl cleaner and pencils in one pile, an old knife set and a litter box in another. We're nothing if not list-makers, however organizing those lists into functional, helpful pieces of organization are something else. As an idea or thought strikes, we rush to find it and then throw it on the To Go pile. Eventually it'll all work out...probably as soon as we get into the apartment and have a large mound of stuff that we keep having to climb over to get anywhere else in the place.

The thing is, we're not taking anything from the house that is leaving it in deficit. This is all extra stuff we've been collecting for the last three years but don't use. Why we have a second something of everything is best left for Jeff to explain. He would also be able to talk about the thirteen Air Wick Harmonization refills we have unfortunately stashed in the closet since we've now stopped using them as of yesterday, based on several forwarded emails heralding the potential fire hazard in plug-in air fresheners.

Then we got home last night to find the cats laying in the living room, rolling to and fro over the acre of Meowy-Wowwie cat nip spread all over the living room carpet from a bag that had been unceremoniously taken from the To Go pile and chewed open.
"It's rehab time for the cats," I said as the Dyson successfully picked up ever last flake of the stuff in a single pass.
"Nothing but cheap cat-nip 'ho's...willing to do anything for their next cat-nip fix," Jeff replied.
"They're so going to suffocate us in the new apartment while we sleep."
"Probably."

I remember back in the day when Jeff and I moved from the city, I made mention to Sparky how we were going to utilize and capitalize on all the time spent in the commute to and from the city. Four hours each day to discuss politics, listen to books-on-tape, learn a new language, and just really live. Sparky, in his practical cynicism gave it a week before the commute became four hours of a lot less utilization and capitalization. He was right. It became obvious the only way to sustain a two hour-one way commute was for one of us to sleep through most of it, so our daily routine settled into me driving in the mornings into the city while Jeff slept for most of the ride and in the evenings, I'd sleep from the GWB until the Port Jervis exit off I-84. About the most political thing we've done so far is buy an XM satellite radio to listen to CNN and music from the 70's. Neither of us speaks a new language though my goy-yiddish continues to expand but only because I frequently mutter, 'Oy' under my breath from sheer exasperation at other drivers or the weather or the the back up at the tolls getting into the city.

But we've persevered, regardless. Most who know we drive such distances daily for our jobs just shake their head, but we've done it for the last three years, surmounting multiple commutes throughout the winters that have stretched upwards to 6 hours, getting us home in time for bed only to have to be up the next morning at 4am to hit the road back to the city. We've done this almost without thought because it was important for us to get settled into Bashert and our lives outside the city, to take advantage of a mortgage and a regular life that isn't so hustle-bustle and draining like it is in Manhattan.

It was the winter last year that finally did us in. Our hair is graying from the thought of having to drive through one more NY winter so we started talking last summer about getting a winter sublet back in the city, to be able to crash a few days during the week and as is our way, we've evolved that idea into signing a year's lease this morning for an affordable one-bedroom in East Harlem to have a city crash pad for the week. All the sudden we're back in the city though our home will always be up in the country. And for as much as I've spouted off to people after moving out of the city years ago about how I don't miss I thing, I'd be lying to say we're both not excited to be back, to have four hours a day for ourselves to do with as we wish. I'm scheduling quilting classes and Jeff's looking for a gym membership and all the sudden, our world seems a little bit brighter and a little bit more livable. We're definitely moving forward by getting back to the city.

How is it possible that an eye-brow waxing can hurt more than a 5cm trichofolliculoma being cut out of your cheek? I really want to know.

Not to be outdone by all those special people down south who've been through two, maybe three hurricanes, I now have an Ivan-related adventure brewing up here in Barryville. Not since the Great Pumpkin Flood of 1915 has this area been so deluged with overflowing rivers and streams from the rainfall. From all the rain getting dumped on us over the past few days, the Delaware River has swollen to record levels, currently up 20 feet and expecting to crest another 10 feet higher by tomorrow morning. It was so sudden and unexpected that the huge cranes being used to build our new bridge between Barryville and Shahola, PA were completely submerged by this morning before the contractors could get out to move them back off the shore. They've declared our county and those surrounding us disaster areas and are starting forced evacuations of the residents living lower and closer to the river. Fortuitously, Jeff and I purchased a home well up on a hillside, far enough away from the temperamental river and now only just need to go help neighbors rather than ourselves.

For Jeff and my part, we spent the morning helping a friend's 89-year old mother move all her earthly possessions from her ground-level floor to the upper levels of her home as she sits on the river and is expecting the worse. She was showing us the water and silt marks on her furniture from the last time the river had flooded her place, back in 1955.

Honestly, I'm just lazy enough to have a week off between classes and not once pick up the blog. I'd like to say it was all the hurricane business but obviously, we only got (and are currently getting) sloppy seconds so who cares, really?

For anyone having to suffer through my bitching and moaning about the horror of Marketing 551, thanks. My in depth analysis of a big pharma company ended up being close to 30 pages of what can only be assessed as pure drivel and with no baring on the actual state of marketing at that company, but somehow I got an A, regardless. When I say my B.S. in Nursing stands for Bull Shit, that just ain't no lie. Yet the 4.0 continues so who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth. I'm starting into my statistics class this week and for being math-retarded, I'm looking forward to it. I do encounter stats on a day to day basis in clinical research so I'm treating it like puke on my shoes back in my patient care days: it just happens and you go along with it.

I found out the really large, gross zit on my cheek that had the tuft of white hair springing from it for the past six months is actually a rare, aberrant dermatological phenomenon. As my dead mother had a fist-sized amount of her muscles and tissues on her back removed 30 years ago for malignant melanoma, I wasn't too hesitant to go get it checked out. Unfortunately for Jeff, who is the picker-popper of all aberrant dermatological phenomenon in Bashert, this thing, which could express copious amounts of pustulant exudate daily when prompted, needed to come off so I had it dug out last week and took some stitches to the mug. Just a little trichofolliculoma, but still, who wants to look like you have big zit on your face when it's really nothing of the sort. Apparently as I'm now of an adult age, my skin is rebelling and I'm getting old-man skin tags and stuff all over the place so I'm having periodical derm-excision on my face over the next six weeks for all my little bumps and discolorations. Not as much fun as a dermibrasion, fruit-acid peel, or botox, but I gotta do the foundation work before I go for the pretty stuff.

Walking around with a stitched face is always fun. Mostly when asked, I told people Jeff was beating the shit out of me and honestly, some people didn't act too surprised. I don't know if that says more about Jeff's capacity for spousal correction or my capacity to drive someone to it.

Lunch-time conversation today:
All the co-workers gathers around the conference room, wolfing down BurgerKing, telling me Jeff and I need to have a kid because we'd make great dads.
Them: "But whose sperm would it be? Yours or Jeff's? It should be yours. It should definitely be yours."
Me: "I don't know...all our sperm tastes the same to me anyway."
Them: "..."
Then the conversation migrated to me explaining where the girls could find their boyfriend's prostates. I'm nothing if not a teacher of life.

As I’ve procrastinated the summer away and fell short in the creativity department, there have been no invitations to my own national convention where I’m going to re-nominate myself for four more years of me, me, me.

As part of my own national convention, I’ve taken the week off of work to stay well away from NYC, the RNC, and all those other pesky letters. I was also boycotting NBC and the Olympics but they’ve timed themselves to finish just as my week was beginning so I can go back to just not watching TV rather than making a non-political political statement in saying I’m boycotting them.

Worst Job EVER Award: Whoever those poor, Greek schmucks were who had to ‘plant’ over 100,000 stalks of wheat in that “Follow The Yellow Brick Road” spiral at the closing ceremonies last night, only to have them mowed down in the space of about one minute. I mean, were they high? It must symbolize all those weird throwing sports where you know the athlete has been practicing all day, every day, for the last four years only to get up and have about five seconds of Olympic glory as he throws something…and then it’s over. Four years of practicing for that? 100-man hours to plant wheat that’s going to be trampled in ten seconds? WTF? But I’m boycotting the whole thing so what do I know?

The real reason I took off this week, besides trying to avoid being dead center in a terrorist attack, is that I have a mondo marketing audit paper due next week. And I’m a procrastinator, remember? I love how I’ve called up every marketing person I know to really, loudly bitch and moan about how miserable and torturous my marketing class is this term. I try to insert, without judgment or malice regarding their chosen profession, my complete disdain for marketing, reiterating my general belief over and over that marketing is total bullshit only to have them agree with me.

As I’m off work and home alone for most of the day this week, my current dress consists of new cotton boxer shorts from WalMart® in a size, according to the packet, four sizes bigger than what I wear in a comfortable jean but which, if they were any smaller, would compete for that leather jock Jeff bought me for my 26th birthday back when I had a 28-inch waist. Of course the fly is permanently open and my dick keeps flopping out but as it’s just me, I’m feeling OK about it, even though I'll end up sewing them closed eventually. I did manage to actually shower today as a way of trying not to be the schlub I’m going to end up being by late Wednesday afternoon, however the 100% humidity we’re currently toiling under has made my attempted personal hygiene inconsequential at best. Even the kitties are getting skittish around me, unsure as to what I’m doing home, why I have a moist, flustered appearance, or why I’m interrupting their afternoon naps, especially Tink who, unbeknownst to us, sleeps the afternoon away on top of the TV cabinet behind the center speaker, in the 8-inch space between the top of the cabinet and the ceiling. To say she was un-amused at my rousting attempts with the jingle stick, trying to coax her to come down and play would be…rather understated.

The benefit to having some extra time this week is that my unjustified, unapproved spree through my Amazon wishlist last week netted me a cadre of good reading, which I’ve decided I’m doing, regardless of how much marketing text I have yet to read or audit left to write. In the space of a day, I’d devoured and extremely enjoyed Alice Hoffman’s new endeavor, Blackbird House, which rivals her other favorites of mine, Practical Magic, and The Probable Future. Next up is Life of Pi, and then onto The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, followed by The Lives of Shadows, and City of Saints & Madmen, which came as a referral when I was looking for a new tome by Mark Danielewski who wrote House of Leaves some years back but who hasn’t written shit since, unfortunately.

So come to my convention this week. I’ll cook awesome, Americanized Indian fare for you, culled from the September issue of MS Living and ply you with cheap, carbonated apple cider-flavored soda (WalMart® special along with the cotton boxers) while we try to question buying the new Bjork album simply because her hair looks like a jellyfish and she’s spilling boobage out over her corset.

As is the usual case about me, I typically trail behind the rest of the world in some way, spiritually, economically, socially, sexually, by a range of years. Socially, I always feel about three to four years behind everyone else and when I get particular 'ah-ha' moments, it's quickly followed by a realization that everyone was there way before me. I don't utterly fall apart about it, but it does take the glow of self-realization and actualization down a notch.

As everyone and their brother know, I've come into gaming late in my life. I certainly don't have the time, money, or energy to compete with those pesky 13-year olds so prevalent on the systems now, but I'm comfortable that I've found a unique little niche for my OCD superhero fetish and have something to occupy myself now that I've given up TV. Little did I realize when I purchased my very new, very expensive desktop last year (thanks, Mom!) that a sub-standard, proletariat video card had been installed. I only found out after a first round of games I'd been purchased last spring failed to load or display correctly. I couldn't even find the product on the company website, it was so obscure. I have no doubt that video card was the technological equivalent to generic Cheerios®, all bland and packaged in a white box with plain black, block lettering spelling out: substandard video card.

So while my current game, City of Heroes, did load and while I can play it in its immersed 3D environment, I kept getting warnings that I needed to upgrade my video card drivers, which I did, to no discernible effect. Then I started asking around about upgrading video cards and what that would entail and how one goes about doing it. I got a lot of mythology and some very wrong answers about having to simultaneously upgrade my system memory at some astronomical cost but eventually, with some research on the net and basic trust in my own skills, I set out to upgrade. The real question I should have been asking myself was why, other than to play those other games, would I upgrade since CoH plays fine? I dunno, honestly. I imagined a cleaner, crisper, smoother, transitioned page and 3D graphics that really blow me away. But I didn’t have anything to base how bad my current graphics were behaving, so my logical assumption, and the basic theory I apply to the rest of the world is, it’s always, always better somewhere else or with some other product or some other service or some other person than with what I have right now. It’s total the-grass-is-always-greener mentality but it’s driven me into situations at times that validate that assumption and so I go on. How Jeff and I have remained together after almost 10 years with that as my guiding force escapes me.

As my recent history can attest, I don't know much about the world of computers but I know enough to be very dangerous to myself and to anyone who thinks I know about computers (Hi Nikki!). I knew enough to know that video cards can be upgraded and my research pointed me, finally, to the Radeon® 9600XT series of accelerators. Honestly, I wouldn’t know whether that card was any better or any worse or any more worth the money than any other card but its statistics looked impressive. I’m taking a marketing class right now and am fully aware of the significance and impact of using meaningless, unverifiable stats in zingy graph charts to unduly influence the stupid and simple. The price, of course, was outrageous too, especially when I think that there is no way to quantify any perceived benefit from the old card to this one. The only way it could even come close to being cost-effective would be if the characters popped off the screen and gave me a free-hand job any time I logged on. But I bought it anyway, pessimistically relived that I could return the damn thing if it didn’t work or more likely, I couldn’t get it installed correctly.

The caveat with me and computer systems are, I have no training, formal or otherwise. I do some reading and try to apply my intuitive powers of understanding regarding whatever I’m trying to figure out. I generally understand the depth and breadth of computer knowledge to be so deep and wide that I, as a health care professional and supposed ‘people person’, have no hopes of understanding or applying anything I read or learn about computers in any discernible way. That being said, I have, on occasion, opened the system to do upgrades. On my old system, I read up on memory upgrades and successfully double my capacity and running environment. This was back in the day when I was so scared about static electric discharge that I stripped down naked and worked on it on the bare wood floor of our apartment, hoping the anxiety-produced sweat wouldn’t bead up on my forehead and drop onto the motherboard, shorting it out.

So I open AMBR the other night, locate the old card, remove it (after having removed the drivers first since, uncharacteristically, I’d read the directions first) and replaced it with the new Radeon® card. It snapped in just perfectly but when I went to hook up the auxiliary power supply (as every manual on the product I’d read indicated I needed to), there was no place to plug it in. I searched the board over and over again but honestly, that four-pronged male to female connection just didn’t exist. So again the pessimism prompted me to just finish up, close the casing and be done with it. If I had to revert to the old card and drivers, nothing really lost and I’ve lived with bruised ego from these kinds of blind jaunts into areas I have no conceivable business messing around in enough to know it doesn’t mean I’m anything but just stupid. I can live with that.

The short of the story is, the system whirred into life, the drivers were installed and there were no preemptive warnings about a failed card. It installed and apparently worked without any conflicts. I was anxious to boot up CoH (cause I was, by that time, totally into getting a free hand job) and see the wonderment that this totally unnecessary, extravagant, guilt-ridden purchase would bring forth. What I found was, my current, favorite character, The Yellow Hanky, was not yellow but blue. Not sad blue, but blue blue…like a blue blueberry. His skin tone was that off. Strange because the rest of the characters were blue also but the surrounding environment was completely normal. Defeated, I logged off, booted the computer off and went to bed, frustrated and with blue balls, hoping AMBR just needed a good nights sleep and everything would be ok in the morning. And it was, initially. The characters were normal colored the next time I logged on but other than that, the 3D environment seemed very similar, if not exactly, like before the new card. No new details jumped out at me, no new renderings or smoothness that I could see. Nothing. And then my character started turning magenta. Seriously. I watched as the skin tone color faded to magenta and then, again, turned blue. I was about to boot down again and just give up, take out the card, and get my refund when I noticed that in the game, it had become night time and a thought dawned on me. So I waited patiently as the night environment progressed in its ten minute cycle as it does, and as the new day’s sun broke over the edge of the city, my skin color faded from blue to yellow and finally back to normal. My very new, very expensive video card now supported the correct chronological lighting caused by day versus night in the game, something that I didn’t even know existed in the gaming environment.

I can honestly say there is no way that that single, identifiable upgrade in game quality is worth the price of the card. The fact that the card installed without any trouble or without me having a blood-gushing stroke makes me feel better in some, indescribable way. I didn’t have to starve this week to afford this card because that would have pissed me off and honestly, these experiences of mucking around in the actual system make me more confident (and thus, more likely to really fuck something up) that I can do these kinds of things successfully and not everyone can say that. So while I’m still years behind those pesky 13-year olds who could have done this with one eye on the TV and the other playing the game, I’m a little bit better for it, overall.

Good Lord. I just wrote out a birthday card for Jeff from the kitties. That's totally, totally wrong, even though it's done with love. And to make it more wrong, if that's even possible, I made little kitty prints next to their names. SA-WRONG!

Jeff as the Good Uncle – and because he got the ‘creative gene’ - has been working on designing the invitation’s for his nieces Bat Mitzvah in January. He came up with a novel idea of giving CD’s with music selections as the actual invitation. The quandary was coming up with a CD that suited the three identified groups being invited: the niece’s peer group, his brother and sister-in-law’s age range, and the grandparent’s age range. We settled on developing three different, age-appropriate CD’s of music, each from its own era, to reflect the different groups.

It’s obvious as the age range gets older, the music gets slower and more quiet. I’m finding that about describes the current direction of my aging, as it were. Not old, per say, but getting there.

So not being hip to what kids are listening to these days, we made a cursory attempt at the top 10 listing on MTV’s TRL and other well-known compilation lists. We quickly became discouraged at the complete lack on our parts of being able to identify or acknowledge knowing any performer or group on those lists so turned, inevitably, to the niece, for guidance on the music she liked and would want included on her CD. She rattled off a list of what to me sounded like the various protein building blocks of DNA and other assorted, confusing musical groups that weren’t even on the top-10 lists we’d discounted. So Jeff took the evening and sorted through the list, downloading snippets to preview to get a sense of what we had to work with.

The conversation between us the next day entailed how we’ve migrated out of the cool, hip uncles into the realm of those parent-types who say parenty-things, the same parenty-things we told ourselves we’d never say.

“That’s what they call music these days? I don’t know what kids are listening to these days but it’s dirty. There wasn’t one song on that list that wasn’t explicitly graphic or degradating or racist. I fear for our future.”

We’ve seriously become those people, so now the niece gets a nice CD of appropriate dance tunes culled from our respective histories of gay-circuit party fare where everyone danced in unhinged ecstasy, avoiding the holes and fallouts of over-excited inhibitions.

Yes, that's me in the header pic mowing grass on Little Red last night. I hate Little Red, not because it cuts my mowing time from an hour and something down to just under 25 minutes, but rather because I'm so consistantly dissatisfied with the cut of the mow (uneven) and the undistributed clumps of thatch that I have to rake afterwards (as IF, Mary), that I'd just as soon go back to my faithful push-mower with its elegant, parallel, perfectly straight cutting pattern. Unfortunately, as I said, it cuts the mow-time down considerably which you can't hardly argue.

That being said, as I'm alone this weekend with Jeff out of town, I'm going to sneak out again tomorrow and push mow it because I'm neurotic enough to be unable to stop thinking about how much I hate the cut. Diagnosis: Verdant Lawn Neurosis. They can't even begin to think of how to make meds for this.

We have a routine, Jeff and I, on Friday nights for the commute up from the city, back to our home along the river. We stop in Middletown, appropriately about a half-way point between us and the city, and do our homo shopping at Lowe’s and Wal-Mart, sometimes venturing to Bed, Bath, & Beyond and the Rag Shop. Then we typically treat ourselves to some fine dining at Wendy’s and head home, truck stuffed with more crap we don’t really need but we’re happy and that’s a good way to end a week and start a weekend. On the off chance we’re tired of Wendy’s, there is a Burger King at the second exit for Middletown (a two-exit town? I know….we’re progressive that way) but on our last occasion to visit there, their utter lack of anything resembling service pissed us both off enough to absolutely swear them off. Forever. And that’s serious.

“Fuckers. We’re never going in there again,” we ranted.
“Never. Ever. Again….and we MEAN it,” we continued.

And so it’s been for the last few months, that we’ll bypass that particular BK with all their shitty service and lazy wait staff , and go directly to Wendy’s or the comic-book store which happens to be close. It’s been working out fine for us in all respects and somewhere, deep in our hearts, we feel our lack of patronage of that Burger King will ultimately contribute to the demise of the franchise and we’ll be vindicated.

Tonight, on the way home, we did our Middletown circuit and stopped for some Wendy’s Biggy Sized Number 2’s but by the time we got on the highway for the last 45-minutes of the ride home, Jeff was shifting uncomfortably and I knew what it was. Let’s say Jeff’s stomach doesn’t do grease well. At all. In fact, we call it, for lack of a better term….um….explosive diarrhea. We’re often lucky to get a warning salvo that means we better find some facilities, pronto. Of course being caught between exit 3 and 4 on I-84 presents its own unique coordination problems. Except tonight.

“Get off on Exit 3. I’m going to go shit at that fucking Burger King we hate.”

“Good idea. In fact, don’t even use the toilet…just blow it over the stall. Show them what bad customer service is all about,” I said. I have a thing about customer service, as in, I expect it. Don’t fuck me over with shitty customer service or I’ll get shitty all over you right back…or at the very least, import someone who can. Literally.

So I dropped him off and zipped over to the comic store to pick up the new issue of the JLA mini-series, Identity Crisis, and drove back to get him.

When he got back in car, paler and lighter, to be sure, I inquired as to the appropriateness of stopping at the Hated BK.

“This was TOTALLY the right thing to do,” he said. Not only do I feel better, but I feel better. Which really, what more can you ask?

After waiting and waiting for an eternity, I'm officially on vacation today for the next two weeks. As if the timing couldn't be better, I'm also on a two week break between classes at school which makes the time that much sweeter. Because for the last few years we've thrown all our vacation energy and moolah towards the house, this year Jeff and I are going with his parents on a cruise up the East Coast to Halifax, Nova Scotia and St. John. We're all a-skitter about it.

The cruise was advertised as, "If you like all-night dancing and the singles scene then this cruise isn't for you, but if you like ball-room dancing and bridge, then come aboard!!!" Seriously. Three exclamation points as if to underscore the AWESOME fun of ball-room dancing and bridge. Thankfully there will be casinos out of port. We know going in the average age of the passengers is somewhat beyond honkin’ old and that we're very likely to be the youngest ones on board...and undoubtedly the gayest, which is fine because you know, everyone likes the gays so we're setting out to be the most popular "fella's" on the boat this time. We're hoping some of the people go home to their families and mention they met the nicest boys on the boat thereby allowing Jeff and me to do our small part in winning over the morals of mainstream, Middle America without really having to go get married as a political statement…which we’re not, even though we’re going to trolling through Boston. Thanks Mit!!!

Of course even though it's Memorial Day weekend and June is almost here (see: Summer), because we're going north into Canada country, it's going to be a chilly 10-degrees celcius (F = [1.8888 x C] + 32), meaning I'm packing sweaters, if it can be believed while the "Crack Whore" t-shirt I received as a gift from a friend who picked one up at "Jerry Springer: The Opera" in London is being left behind as I'm trying to tone down that rah-rah-rah-party boy image. AS IF. That's an "as if" as in, "AS IF I WAS EVER THE KIND OF PARTY BOY WHO COULD WHERE A CRACK WHORE T-SHIRT." No need to stroke out the senior citizens this go-round, I think.

Anyway, I'm going to try to film kibbles-n-bits of the trip to splice together one of those shorty movies for the website that all the cool kids are doing these days so we'll see. In the meantime, all bloggers passing through our verdant hamlet this week are welcome to use the hot-tub as it'll just be sitting there begging for bodies. Just remember, please no spooge in the tub and you KNOW what I’m sayin’; that's why we're having the deck built up around it. Enjoy.

Fiery sunset on the Martian dunes or just our new bedroom art?

As Jeff and I's pact to not tell his parents lasted all of two days, I can now publically discuss our first (and God-willing last) winter accident of the season last week. While it was raining last Tuesday down in the city, we crossed that imaginary northern territories line somewhere in Harriman and by the time we were almost home Tuesday night, all roads leading to our house were covered with a fine, powdery snow that had yet to be salted or scrapped. As we were just harassing the overtly, neurotic cautiousness of Jeff's in-absenta mother who'd prefer we just stay home as to drive in anything less than a 80-degree sunny day, we hit that inevitable patch of slickness that sent us first fish-tailing then ultimately into a spin off the road, slamming us into what seemed like a very old, very huge, heavy tree but which turned out to be nothing more then an out of the way scrub sapling. Unfortunately, it still caved in the passenger-side door and back panel of our Explorer. Thankfully, neither of us were hurt (mostly because we went off into the ditch and woods on the right-hand side rather than to the left through on-coming traffic and over the very long, deep ravine beside the river) and I think it warrants mentioning as we were fish-tailing and spinning, my thoughts didn't turn to all the things I hadn't done yet nor mimicking Max's EXACT thoughts about getting killed before seeing Return of the King, bur rather a calm inquisitiveness and curiousness about what was going to happen next. I'd like to think this how I'm going to approach whatever end may be in store for me rather than some desperate, whimpering squeal of a little girl. Regardless, since both of us are fine the point is moot. So our truck is out of commission for a while getting repaired and we have a rental truck that doesn't have XM satellite radio in it but it is going to alleviate the 3000 miles we would have put on our vehicles this month so it's a small trade-off for the next month, I suppose.

A cool, new, all-in-one universal remote that even works on a DirectTV with TiVo receiver? Say it ain't so! SO!!! Of course I was skeptical but we bought it anyway and for God's sakes, it actually WORKS. Well, on everything but the Yamaha DVD player which for the life of me, I can't figure out, but regardless, the fact that it integrates the TV, the audio receiver, and the TiVo is enough for me so that basket of remotes can now be put away.

Even though we only have about a 1/2 acre of lawn which we've dutifully mowed with a push mower for the last two years, Jeff has from day one dreamed of a riding lawn mower. I've mowed enough grass in my childhood to know our little place doesn't really warrant a riding mower but with the upcoming wood-splitting weekends where we need to haul wood around, we finally decided that we could get multiple uses out of a riding mower with a hitch and trailer so last night we stopped off at Sears for their end of the season sales and on Saturday when I get back from Orlando, this will be waiting for me. Right now, we're arguing over the name. Jeff thinks we should call it ‘Dundelay’ but since that's what I named the pig hanging on our bathroom wall, I'm leaning towards some kind of Finnish/Swedish Olympic Female gold-medalist name like 'Greta'. Discuss.

With nothing better to do in our lives then sit around and apply for home equity lines of credit, we opted to spend the summer free-balling whilst playing in the dirt. It's always a comfort to leave the homestead at 4:30am looking like this (only darker because, you know, it's 4:30 in the morning) and coming home at 6:30 to find your forest, for which you often just only see the trees, has been robbed and left looking like this. Not to bitch and moan too much because we did order the new driveway, it's just that girls need some notice. If it wasn't for the total hot sex daddy running the show, I might feel less generous about making coffee and Danish for the workers in the morning.

And wouldn't you know it, the day the excavators come to clear out several decades worth of brush and rubble, ignored scrub trees and trash which have been piling up against our old stone wall, a freakishly large thunderstorm blows through Barryville this evening and downs a huge limb hanging precariously over our house right onto the kitchen porch. Why, if it hadn't been for me being firmly ensconced on the sofa about 30 feet away, watching the TiVo'd Project Greenlight from last night, I would have been crushed . Luckily, the Great Garden Gnome, Alaska, was on duty and his kind short-person magic not only keeps the petunias vibrantly magenta, but also shelters the compost-giver and gentle waterer (which is me, kittens).

Remember when bubbles were all it took to make a perfect day?

To help pass the time in my ongoing Wednesday Grand Jury outings, I started picking up the local Upper Deleware River Valley newspaper, The Times Herald Record. It's basically a recap of all the national paper's news with a few bits of local interest thrown in. Definitely not worth a subscription, but it'll do in a pinch for a read. What I came to find myself drawn too, though, was the crossword puzzle. I'm too embarrassed to ever do the NY Times crosswords, even in private, as I have no skill in trying to figure out all those retarded, inane clues that often don't have anything to do with the answer or if they do, I'm simply to uneducated and socially inept to know it. I realize that is suppose to be part of the fun of crosswords but it isn't for me. Since I'm a visual person, almost a fontiphiliac, I like seeing neat rows of letters lined up, with words intersecting along various axis. Basically, I'd just like the answers so I could fill them into the nice neat puzzle. But what I have on Wednesday's is a blank puzzle with the same difficult, confusing questions and no answer key until Thursday so I try my best, going through all the questions first for the answers I know which usually can range anywhere between four and ten and then plugging along trying to figure out the rest. It's a particularly painful test of my patience as I don't have much of that to begin with. Case in point, I'm blogging about it instead of trying to figure out the last five words on today's puzzle. I'm so furious right now, a level of emotion I usually reserve for my unwieldy CSS coding blunders or stupid assholes in the service industry, I've taken to using Google, dictionary.com, and thesaurus.com just to try and cheat my way to completion. I have no compunction about utilizing the Internet in this way as that is what it's there for. Had I not, I would not have known 37-across "erstwhile Peruvian" was "I-N-C-A" thereby completely fucking up 22-down "describe" which I though was "L-I-S-T" but is now "L-_-S-N", a veritable impossibility. Just to worsen my already dark mood, the online crossword puzzle at the Times Herald-Record for today isn't even the same fucking puzzle.

I've known for a while something is going on, though I couldn't quite put my finger on it; couldn't quite give it a name. Well, I still don't have a name for it, but I know what it is; I've been here before. Ten years ago or there about, fresh out of school, living on my own in a huge empty loft in the burned out shell of a dying downtown in St. Louis, I slept my way through most of the fall and winter, subsisting on Cream of Wheat and Ballatore. It just so happened that the loft shared the same block with the hot gay dance club, Fallout (or 'falldown' when it got to late), and being 24 and single, I should have been working hard to ruin my reputation. But I sat in that loft on weekend nights, in the low-haze of candles shrouded in blue glass and watched the comings and goings of all the fun people through my blinds before I'd crawl back to my pallet-style futon and sleep for another 36 hours. When I finally left St. Louis (with my Mom saying, "honey, you just need to do something and get out of there") the following Spring, I'd lost 25 pounds that I really couldn't afford to lose and looked stretched and worn down. Of course at my very worst, the sack of skin dragging around all the broken pieces I was got my ass to New York to heal myself in all it's delusional grandeur -and by heal I mean, be really, horribly, carnally available. And that's when the Love Monkey met me and took my pieces home with him.

And so I'm starting to feel there again. When I bought the box of Cream of Wheat this weekend to help quench the overriding desire for wall-paper paste, Jeff looked at me and just gave me the, "you can't be serious" look. I bought it anyway.