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Looking Forward to Rain

This is going to sound silly, but I’m kind of looking forward to tomorrow’s icky weather. When it’s nice in the fall, I have this uncontrollable urge to go to things. That means for weeks I don’t get anything done in the house. Things like napping, playing Toontown, catching up on all the stuff on the Tivo, napping. You know, the important things that you earn by putting in 40 long ones every week.

So instead of going on apple cider runs and pretending I can take decent foliage photos with my crappy camera (yes, I’ve decided my camera is crappy, but I’m stuck with it, so we’ll just agree to not talk about it), I’m going to be trapped in the house.

If I had bothered to find a chimney sweep, maybe we could crank open a fake log. But I’m a little nervous about setting my house on fire. I am a poor judge of creosote, you see. Plus, in the past none of the chimney sweep companies would even return my calls. That totally sucks. Well, maybe we’ll light a candle and just put it in the fireplace. Would that work?

Only a couple of days until we start writing the NaNoWriMo novel. Still time for you to join us over at Http://nanowrimo.bigbadwords.com. You want to write a novel, don’t you?

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Web Sites Up and Running

I think I finally fixed my broken template(s) and have Big Bad Words up and running at http://www.bigbadwords.com. There isn’t much content there, but hey, I got the broken templates fixed, you ingrates!

Also, the NaNoWriMo 2006 blog is in full swing, and we even have guest contributors!
http://nanowrimo.bigbadwords.com is the place to be.

If you are Nano-ing and meet the following criteria, you can sign on as a site contributor and get your own page for your novel! Criteria – you must be at least one of the following:

  • Someone I know in real life
  • An invisible friend who lives in my computer (Hi Reid and Christine!)
  • Someone from the Leominster area
  • Someone who sends me presents

Easy? Easy! See you there! (Oh, and you can blogroll the nano site so you know when someone has updated it. There’s also an option to add a Yahoo notification, which is cool.)

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Taking a Brief Whalom Park Break

Okay, I can’t take a break from talking about Whalom Park without pointing out that my aunt is the best aunt on the planet. I’m sorry that you all will be crying yourselves to sleep tonight, but that’s just the way the buggy bounces.

Do you know WHY my aunt is the greatest aunt on the planet? Because she reads my blog. And sometimes she comments, although not recently. And then she comes over to my house in the middle of the day to leave me a present. A PRESENT! I LOVE PRESENTS!

And do you know what she gave me? Here is what the note said:
“Jody, I got these in an auction. Thought you should have them.”

Inside the bag where goodies from Whalom Park. Two ice cream sundae dishes, a coffee mug celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Flying Comet (1940-2000), a skee-ball coupon and a magnet. I mean, holy cow, can you even think of a more thoughtful gift on the PLANET? I cannot. She rocks. So this year we declare Tuesday October 31st “The Aunt Day”. It helps that it’s her birthday, of course. So I want you to all make sure you look extra special next Tuesday when we wish her a happy birthday.

Oh, so what was I going to say? Oh, ya, a complaint. Have any of you played the Spyro video games? I think they are fantastic, he’s too cute, the games are family friendly, blah blah blah. So Spyro hangs out with a firefly named Sparx. In all the other games Sparx speaks with the dragonfly equivalent of the Charlie Brown Adults. Bzzz bzzzz bzzzzz bzzzzz. Cute.

There’s a new Spyro game, and Sparx speaks. And his voice is done by….David Spade. I can’t even begin to tell you how awful this decision was.

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When Does it Become an Obsession

I know my current obsession will wear off eventually, but right now I am spending a LOT of time looking at web sites that somehow have reference to “Whalom Park.” I think this is one of the stages of mourning, isn’t it? (The other stage is wondering why my site isn’t anywhere near the top 5 results pages if you google for Whalom Park. I’m insulted. No, not really.)

I think he’s concerned about me. He probably should be, but what can you do? I may not have mentioned that Junior and I went to the Whalom driving range to hit a bucket of balls on Columbus Day. As always, we drove by the park and I took a mental inventory of how things looked. It appeared to me that there may have been some activity, but nothing specific. Things looked as they had for most of the past year. As we rounded the corner past the roller rink, I looked up at the boarded windows, and told him (again?) that was where I learned to roller skate with my Brownie troop. I can still picture the inside as it was the last time I saw it, probably in high school.

Imagine my shock when I heard that the next day it was torn down. Not weeks later, the next day. I hope my brain had film loaded in it, because that’s the last mental picture I get to take. We drove past the building again a few days later and it was 7/8 down. So much for that.

No, I haven’t driven by the park since they took down the Roller Coaster. I want to, but I don’t want to. You know?

Here are pictures from August 2000, our last trip to the park. Junior (blue shirt) and his cousin hit the kiddie rides. Had I only known it was the last-last trip, I would have taken MANY more pictures.

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Tag, You’re It

A news story out of Attleboro quoted a mom with the same last name as me. I proceeded to get email from friends all over the planet who saw the article on CNN and wanted to know if I was related to that mom. http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2006/10/18/features/feature37.txt

The story, about an Attleboro elementary school banning tag at recess, is another one of those “fear of being sued” things. I made sure to tell all my friends I am pro-playground.

Yesterday I got a call from the person in charge of Junior’s aftercare program telling me that he’d gotten a gash on his head while…wait for it….playing tag.

The timing and irony of the whole thing could not be creepier. And no, I’m not going to sue. The school is not responsible for making sure my kid looks where he’s going. And he’s fine, no stitches, but I don’t think he’ll try to duck under that particular piece of playground equipment again.

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