The Big DumpTruck

I hope the Great Pumpkin is very good to each and every one of you.

I got a rock.

Oh my goodness, if you live anywhere near Leominster and you haven't visited the haunted house at 190 North Street, you are crazy. A local family has done up their huge back yard into a haunted "house" every year for 10 years...it's amazing! And it's actually free...at they end they collect for MDA and/or the Red Cross, but that's all up to you.

Directions: Drive North on Route 13 toward Lunenburg. At the Kings Corner lights (where the CVS is on the right and the Weathervane is on the left) take a right onto North Street. The haunted yard is about 8 houses down on the right...don't worry, you won't miss it.

I'm sure Witches Woods out at Nashoba Valley Ski Area is great, but it's $22 for an adult and might be a little too scary for the younger ones. This is scary but not too scary. And technically, it's free. So go. I recommend it.

Okay, we're into the stretch, people. If you haven't done it already, it's time to load up on candy to give out for Trick or Treat. And the weather looks good, so there will be plenty 'o kids out and about. So have you gone to the store? What are you giving?

I just read in People Magazine that actor Andy Garcia gives out 10,000 pieces of candy each Halloween. Doesn't that seem excessive to you? Trick or Treating is from 6pm to 8pm or so. Even if we allow an extra hour in whatever town he's in...that's 55 pieces of candy a minute, or almost 1 piece per second. Do they bus kids over to Andy's house and then stand in line for an hour? I'm just not seeing 10,000, no matter how popular you are. And heaven forbid he'd giving out Bit 'O Honey or something pointless like that.

Us, we've got several different items. Of course, Mr. Dump may work his way through one of the bags before Monday night. We have Hot Tamales (his favorite), Nerds, and Sour Patch Kids. I think we'll be a pretty trendy house with that selection, but I don't expect to hand out 10,000 of anything in two hours, unless ten kids show up and I give them 1000 pieces of candy each. Take that, Andy Garcia!

We just had a fire drill/false alarm. 2000 people schlepping out into the driving wind and rain. That was *awesome*! Next time, maybe there can be thunder and lightning and hail the size of baseballs!

Look, I have a long drive to work. 50 minutes or so. Today it is raining, and that means other people are going to park in the garage. I usually park in the garage not for the cover, but because it is the ONLY parking for people who work at my end of the building. We don't have a ton of lots down at the far end of the building the way they do for the middle and other end. The garage is it for me. And other people who never park there take all the spaces.

So when I get behind some schmo going 5 to 10 MPH BELOW the speed limit for most of my commute...I can understand how road rage can make a person do something stupid. I so wanted to rear-end this guy at one point. The speed limit was 50 and he was doing 40. 40! I don't care if it's raining, 10 MPH below the speed limit should be cause for immediate arrest. The road was wet, not covered with ice and snow and dead skunks and potholes. It's a long, straight road. If you are too afraid to drive your widdle Chevy Impala (bah!) closer to the speed limit, keep your fat butt at home. Some of us have someplace to get in the morning, and you are blocking the frigging road.

Grr.

(I wish NaNoWriMo had already started, because that guy would now be having the worst things happen to him on paper...)

Hey, I am very excited! We went to the Boston Museum of Science Halloween Party/Star Wars Exhibit preview and our family won second prize in the costume contest. Well, 2nd prize in the group category. We were, as I may have mentioned, Harry Potter'd up. Junior was KILLER as Harry, I was Hermoine after a growth spurt, and Mr. Dump was a Dementor. He was freaky scary looking with the mask. I believe the pictures they took of us will end up on the Museum's web site.

I am thrilled we decided to dress "the same" this year, because that's the only way we won. Not that Junior wasn't a kick-butt Harry - I think he probably could have won a solo prize.

Here's Junior standing with a few of his close friends. Some of the museum employee [Star Wars] costumes were KILLER. I assume the museum paid for them for the gala they had last night with George Lucas. That was $750 per person. We did not attend that party. Then again, my BIL probably would have given Mr. Lucas $750 worth of opinion on how he screwed up the franchise. So that would have been a good investment.

I am just full of despair. One of the big things I live for is the fall. I love everything about it...bringing out the sweaters, the smells, the apples, the pumpkins, mentally getting cozy. But the foliage...the foliage is just what makes New England a place I could never leave.

My favorite trees are the sugar maples because they turn fluorescent orange and red. I mean on FIRE. It's an amazing sight.

Except this year.

Basically, the trees are going straight to brown. They stayed green about 2 weeks longer than usual, and then...nothing. Junior, Mr. Dump and I had to go to a thing up in New Hampshire this morning/early afternoon, and I was psyched to be able to just enjoy the view (as opposed to when I'm commuting, and I tend to keep my eyes on the road). But there was no view. There were yellow leaves, but they weren't even that lovely bright yellow; they were more a mustard color.

I have the guy from San Francisco sitting next to me at work, and I have to explain to him that like the 9 straight days of rain he experienced his first 9 days here ("No, it's not like Seattle here") that the trees are usually so bright and colorful you need protective eyewear. He's really going to think everything he's heard about New England over the years was BS. *sigh*

My car, a 1992 Maxima with 105k miles on it (just a baby!) is acting up. And the local Nissan garage had it for 2 days, and because it didn't act up when they had it on a test drive, they said it drove perfectly, and there were no issues that showed up on their computer. For all of this, and me not having a car for 2 days, they charged me $85. Now I understand that for someone to take the time to drive the car around waiting for it to act up is time that person could be fixing another car. But if you charge me $85, you'd better find something, y'know?

I even gave them a service bulletin from 1993 that seems to be describing the problem exactly. But they didn't want to do the suggested repairs because they couldn't confirm that anything was wrong with the car. There is something wrong with the car, and I am giving you permission to try this repair, knowing that it might not fix the problem but they still wouldn't do it. So I'm out 85 bucks, didn't have a car for 2 days, and the car was acting worse than ever this morning (you little poop, you knew it wasn't the mechanic driving you!) and now I have to find someone else to fix it for me.

Thanks, Nissan dealership!

Okay, can someone here tell me how to speak the following in dog language so my pupster will understand me?

Please stop crapping on the floor. It's not nice. The living room is not your personal toilet. And while we're at it, who taught you to jump over the wall of your pen? You're not supposed to be jumping while the stitches heal. You could get a hernia. We put you in the pen for your own good. Stop escaping in the middle of the night and crapping on the floor. Thank you.

Um, so guess what we've been up to?

Oh, and the link to my nano blog is the same as it was before, even though I haven't written in it for 2 years - you can enjoy walking through the archives while you wait for Nano 2005 to begin. Also, if you are a regular here at the dump (there will be a quiz if you respond to this and I don't know who you are) and would like write access to the nano blog so you can post too - we can make it a group blog! Just let me know in the comments, and I'll contact you offline.

Ya, I'm going to put myself through this yet again.

Oh, he's got the saddest face in the world! I just want to go out and buy him lots of toys and treats and anything else he wants.

The whole cone on the head thing makes me feel so BAD for him! But he won't leave his stitches alone...in fact, I can't tell if he got to them or not. Little poop figured out a way to lick his wounds even with the plastic cone around his head.

We have to put up with this for two weeks? Oy vey...

Here, for your viewing pleasure, a short play I call "Imaginary Conversation Between Man and Dog." You can feel free to act this out in the privacy of your own home.

Mr. Dump: Okay, time to get in the car.
Phantom: Screw you.
Mr. Dump: What? It's time to go to doggie daycare!
Phantom: Screw you.
Mr. Dump: This is because of Monday, isn't it? Don't worry, we're not going to the vet this time.
Phantom: Screw you.
Mr. Dump: Look, we had to have them removed. That guy from the Price is Right said so.
Phantom: Screw you.
Mr. Dump: And we had no idea they were going to pull two of your baby teeth. While you were there.
Phantom: Screw you.
Mr. Dump: We assume it's because your adult teeth were coming in. They don't remove things for no reason.
Phantom: Screw you.
Mr. Dump: And you only have to wear that cone on your head because you won't leave your stitches alone...
Phantom: Screw you.

Fin

We didn't have soccer yesterday. I had a feeling that would be the case, given that by the time they played the third games of the day after 10 days of rain, it would have been the mudbowl out there. 50mph wind gusts would have just added to the fun. I think part of the decision to call was just to save the sod. They have 4 fields, and our in-town league plays three games in each field on Sunday, 12:30, 1:30 and 2:30. So you've got all the parents with chairs, etc., the siblings running around, plus the little team members running around. The grass would have been destroyed. I don't know how much it costs to reseed, but I think it wise to just let the field dry out, y'know?

So we went pumpkin picking. Before I left the house for my sister's, I thought "I'll be it will be muddy" so I packed boots. Junior has those good rubber rain boots. I need to get a pair of those. Because 5 of us went out into basically a pumpkin swamp. There was 2-3 inches of standing water in places, and where there wasn't water, there was mud. You'd step on land that looked fine, and sink 5 or so inches in, and water would gush over your shoe. My hiking boots, it turns out, are not waterproof. I was a soaking mess. The mud tried to rip off my boots and almost succeeded. And then there were the winds...so you can imagine we looked fantastic by the time we left. And then we noticed a bunch of people picking pumpkins on the hill behind where you pay. You know, a hill where the water would run off so it probably wasn't muddy.
"Why didn't you tell us we could go up there and not down to the "lake"?"
"Oh, all the big pumpkins are down there."

I don't recall telling anyone we were looking for big pumpkins! Sigh.

(The plus side to all of this was walking through the mud was a good workout, plus I stole a brand new pair of socks from my sister. Win-Win!

p.s. Phantom is having his jingle bells removed right now. I can't tell you how guilty I feel. But not as guilty as I would if he knocked up some other dog. He was getting cozy with a basset hound at doggie daycare. I do not want to see a litter of bassetpoo (Cockahound?) puppies.

I'm done being damp, okay? Just done. A guy started work the week, transplanted from California. Having a discussion with him about places to visit, etc, I realized he thought this weather was typical for us. He thought Merrimack NH was the Seattle of the East, because it had been rainy and disgusting ever since he arrived last weekend. I don't know if I was successful in my efforts to tell him that it really was very very unusual to have such miserable weather this many days in a row. I suppose he won't believe me until it actually stops being so gross out.

I heard we might get very heavy winds tomorrow. Given how saturated the ground is (walking on the front yard was like mucking about in quicksand) if we do have 50mph wind gusts, I wouldn't park my car under any big trees...unless you went that flattened pancake look.

I heard the big news that Apple is introducing an iPod that plays video. Wow, is that ever going to piss off all the people who jumped on the bandwagon and bought iPod Nanos in the past couple of weeks. And it isn't like everyone knew this was coming...if you can believe it, as late as October 6th there was a big article in CNet not to hold your breath waiting for such a thing. I guess we can all breath now, huh?

Of course, what ticks me off (again) is that the video you'll be able to download for $1.99 from iTunes will only be playable on your computer or on the special iPod. So my Archos, which plays video, won't be able to play it. So even if I am willing to spend the money to download something, screw me for not having the fancy new $400 iPod. Well, see, my Archos is not just a player, it's a recorder. So I can record TV shows and movies just by plugging the damned thing into the television.

Between me, the husband, and three kids, I've already invested about $800 in various iPods, not to mention accessories. I'm not going to drop another $400 when I have a perfectly lovely Archos, which does the job, thank you very much, just because you want to be all proprietary with your videos. I will probably be wrong, but I think this isn't going to be the blowout that the iTunes music files were/are.

I don't know if it's officially Beef Stroganoff Week...my calendar only mentions Columbus Day and Yom Kippur (have an easy fast, everyone). But Sunday I made homemade beef stroganoff. (It was good, but not as good as the last time I made it. I suspect part of the problem was using fat-free beef broth instead of good old American fat-full broth. And the cut of meat, while good, wasn't the same was the one we used the last time. Shame on us for trying to cut fat and expense from our meal!)

Then Monday, the hot entree in our cafeteria was beef stroganoff. And Mr. Dump just emailed me to say that it was the entree in his cafeteria today. What are the odds? You could literally go months without even thinking about it, and this week it's being shoved down our throats.

Mr. Dump said his work stroganoff was nasty. So I win the cook-off! Go me!

In honor of the holiday, I will eat foods native to Columbus, Ohio today. I should probably try to figure out why there's a whole holiday honoring a midwestern city, but hey, who am I to judge? What's that, you say? It's not honoring Columbus, Ohio? Well what the hell! Just for that, I'm going to work instead of taking the day off.

Oh all right. I had to go to work anyway. Junior had the day off, and Mr. Dump is staying home with him. Phantom thought that was great, and to show his appreciation, he crapped all over the hearth. Mmmm. Doggie diarrhea on brick. I am thanking God, Allah, Mother Nature and anyone else who wants to be thanked that it wasn't my job to clean it up.

We also saw the Wallace and Gromit movie on Saturday. Great movie, I loved it. I'd say parts might be a little scary if the kiddies are skittish or younger than 5 or so. Nothing bad happens, but there's a guy threatening to kill bunnies with a gun, etc. etc. And of course, the scariness of the unseen until they reveal the Wererabbit. So fresh from the glow of seeing this movie, I read with horror that all the Aardman archives were destroyed by fire last night/today. Oh my goodness, that is so completely heartbreaking. Nick Park was wonderfully philosophical about it, I hope that were I in a similar situation, I would be the same way. It's just sad to think that they lost everything, the entire history of the company, and Wallace and Gromit (all the sets, the characters, the awards, everything). You've gotta shake your head when you read that one phone call tells them they had the #1 movie in America over the weekend (our showing, by the way, at the Solomon Pond Mall? Completely sold out), and the next phone call is that they've lost everything that was stored in the warehouse that burned. (Let that be a lesson...never keep everything in one place. When I make backups from my computer, I take copies and store them in my drawer at work.)

Anyhoo...time to dip into the Red Cross fund for the Pakistan earthquake victims. Good God, I cannot fathom that amount of death and destruction.

I wish I'd had my camera this morning on the drive in to work. There were two places that I wanted to stop and take a picture. One was of this house with about 15-20 wild turkeys in the front yard. (I think they were wild turkeys. Coulda been turkey buzzards, I suppose. I was going by at a pretty good clip, so I couldn't stare into their beady little eyes to try to determine what they were.)

The other was of this really huge, nicely shaped maple tree. All green, except for this little clump of maybe 5 or 6 leaves that had turned red. It was just so funny, seeing a big green tree with this spot of red. You know by Monday, when I'm driving by again, there will be more than that one clump. But it looked great and I'm mad at myself for not having the camera. Not that I have a lot of free time in the morning to just pull off the road and start snapping pictures.

Oh, and to celebrate Friday, here's a recent picture of Phantom. He gets his jingle bells removed in a week and a half...don't tell him, though, we want it to be a surprise.

Before I forget, the best part of last night's game happened in my living room, when Junior referred to Tek as "the C Captain." Okay, so for the rest of the night, we called him the Sea Captain. Cause, you know, he's the captain and he has the C on his uniform. Get it? Get it? I need a drawing of him piloting a boat of some kind now.

And hats off to Edgah, by the by, for showing up and getting busy. He gets a lot of crap from Red Sox Nation (Hey, Bill, wanna see our RSN card? We paid for it and got it in the mail, dude!) but he was in tip-top shape last night.

I never got that eye of newt, so I never got my brew made and sent out to the Red Sox. Of course, my potion was going to be for pitching, and it turns out that maybe what I needed was a "don't let the ball roll past you" potion. My bad.

What are the Boston area bloggers going to talk about if the season ends in a night or two? My God, football is only played weekly. Baseball gives us a reason to bitch and moan and scream and cry on an almost daily basis.

I just noticed that my watch was a day late, because there were only 30 days in September. But I'm not complaining...it's WAY better than my old Timex "let's show 32 through 39 and 00 as valid dates" watch. This one, a Christmas gift from mom and dad last year, is my first "nice" watch (a Citizen) in probably 20 years. One day off, I can handle.

Juniorism of the week: Well, it happened a few weeks ago, but my sister didn't tell me about it until we went out for her birthday/girl's night out on Tuesday. Apparently one evening when they were watching him for us for a couple of house, the Amazing Bob built one of his patented "cooking fires" and the kids were going to do marshmallows. Deb has actually spear thingies she uses, but the kids wanted sticks. Bob told Junior not to head over to a certain area because it was full of poison ivy. Junior's response, with hand raised in a stop-sign kind of thing: "Don't worry Uncle Bob, I'm good at science."

He then proceeded to come back over to the fire with a perfectly useless "stick" that was actually more like a floppy poison ivy vine covered with leaves. Oh ya, he's good at science. I will note for the jury that the reason I didn't hear this story until Tuesday was because they didn't want to say anything and were waiting for me to tell them that he'd "somehow" gotten poison ivy on his hands. Which he never did. It was evasive maneuver #16 - "Don't tell them you broke the lamp until they notice the lamp is broken..."

I think it's time to pull out the big black kettle, put on my way cool kinda sparkley black cape and my big witches hat. No, not for dressing up for Halloween. I think it's time to create some sort of magic brew to kick the Red Sox Pitching up a notch.

Good Lord, people, how much are we paying you to throw the ball over the plate in some sort of unhittable manner? That's what I thought.

I don't actually have a recipe for improving pitching, but it must involve eye of newt, which seems to be ubiquitous in witch recipes. It must be the salt and pepper of caldron cooking. I can probably come up with spider webs, looking up at the light fixture in my hallway. Eek. Gotta dust that puppy. Not the real puppy, the light fixture, silly. Where is your head?

So then the question is, do I avoid watching the game today. I think maybe I will, if at all possible. Then again, living with Mr. Dump, it's not possible.

Not tater tots, silly. I mean the children. The two boys and the girl. Well, not the short boy - he's too fussy and hates fizzy drinks.

I got my step-kids to drink Moxie over the weekend. I know, you're thinking to yourself, "Moxie, didn't they stop making that during WW1?" No. No they did not. They still make it, and the Coca-Cola company distributes it. They had it on the menu at the place that used to be called the Time-Less Diner up in Merrimack NH, which is now Joe's something-or-other under new management. (Anyone know what happened with that, by the way?)

Their take? Nasty nasty nasty aftertaste. You drink it and think it's kind of got a root beer undertone, and then, after you swallow, the burning aftertaste kicks in. Gah.

I'm such a good step-mom.

Okay, so I said I'd tell you what I was up to this weekend. I was knitting! I made me a wearable yarn-based garment! Woo! Go me!

See, I told you I can't be trusted to go shopping, and not with my step-daughter. We got some round loom thingies and a ton of yarn and set to work. I got obsessive and finished mine. Now I'm working on a scarf for Mr. Dump, and then I'll try a hat. Or a bookmark.

I had so much to tell you, but it seems Blogger is down. So I don't know
if you'll even see this until they are back up. The scary thing is that
I may have been down all weekend and I never noticed. The mesage says
they're down for scheduled maintenance from like 4:30 to 5:30pm. So
that's at least 17 hours ago.

If I had noticed they were down, I would have updated by hand. Can't do
that from work.