The Big DumpTruck

Spent two nights up in Manchester Vermont and got back home last night. I love me some vacation. I'm rather bummed to be home but to be honest, I ran out of cheese money on Tuesday. I will chalk this one up to just being lucky to get away from home at all. And I was thinking of taking The Boy to the beach but now it looks pretty chilly and rainy the next couple of days. That's no fun for anyone.

Actually, I have to go through all the photos and videos now, or it will never get done. But if today is the nicest day remaining this week, shouldn't I "do" something fun and save that for the rainy days? It's 9am, I'd better decide soon!

Labels: Vacation

Went horseback riding with my sister, her kids, their friend and my son. I knew they were going to have to give me a horse to fit my riding experience, so I picked this one. The kids all thought he was awesome. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me have this one. Instead I got something akin to a Clydesdale. I'm pretty sure Domino could have easily plowed the back 40. He knew he had an easy mark on his back and went out of his way to eat everything he saw. "Don't let him eat anything!" Oh, easy for you to say. Domino disagrees with you!

Labels: funny, photos, Vacation

I'm not sure how it happened. I thought I had put June in my purse, next to my wallet and my car keys, but then when I went to look for it, it wasn't there. I checked the counters, but you know, they are a bit messy at my house. I have plenty of bits of this and that on the counter, bags of doggie treats and little boy treats, but no June. As hard as I looked for it, it simply wasn't there.

I looked in the trunk of my car, under the folding chairs, baseball equipment and kites, but there was no sign of June; none at all.

It's as if June up and disappeared on me. I suppose I will just have to get resigned to the idea that June is missing and won't be found, and focus my attention on July. I really don't want to lose July the way I lost June so I'm going to keep closer watch on it. Starting tomorrow, when I take an extra day off to spend some quality time with it. Just me and July, maybe going for a road trip, buying ice cream, listening to some tunes. I think July and I are going to get along really well.

Labels: humor, summer, Vacation

Junior has practice tomorrow. We heard it might snow. You know, people, by Tax Week, we should have all this snow nonsense behind us. [Yes, of course I know it's not unheard of - our Lamaze class was filled with the result of the Unnamed 4/1 Snowstorm of '97. Not us, we were due a couple of weeks after everyone else. I've told you that before. I'm not making it up.]

I have less than a week until I'm on vacation. I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to make it until then before bursting from anticipation and packing-avoidance. You know, the usual.

Labels: Vacation, weather

I have a few days away from work. I don't know if I'll be able to figure out what to do with myself. I would lie to you all and say I'm going to enjoy some Jody-time but you know that's not true. I have a lot of things that I've needed to catch up on, including processing video from Junior's two concerts, continuing cleaning my room (One Bag at a Time(r)).

I think maybe I should take up a new hobby in my five days. I could learn a new language, or maybe learn the hula. I'd rather be in Hawaii for that one though, and five days isn't enough to deal with the jet lag. I'll try to become a new me in the next five days. I'll be sure to introduce myself when I get back.

Labels: fun, Vacation

I am doing the happy happy joy joy dance! 5 more days off in a row! Who doesn't love that?

Labels: holidays, Vacation

Someone pointed out to me this morning that today is the first day of fall. I guess that by now, we've been up to our earballs in fall stuff, so it isn't as much of a shock to the system as it would be to have summer end, say, in August. It's a non-event; we already thought it was fall.

That doesn't make me 100% happy, though. I missed most of summer. Didn't really do anything beach-y or vacation-y, you know, the uber summer vacation stuff. As Junior gets older I do feel a sense of panic that the months are years are passing and by the time I can actually take time off from work to go "do" things with him, he won't want to. You know, he'll be a sullen teenager. Or he'll be out of the house. I'm scared to death of that happening because he's just one of the coolest, funniest people I know, and if I don't have him to hang around with, I'm going to be very very sad. Batman needs Robin, you know? And Mr. Dump won't wear tights.

So ya, the end of summer makes me angry. Damn you, earth, and your tilty nature!

Other than that, things are good, thanks for asking. Only a little over a month until the next NaNoWriMo. I think I'm going to do it again. I'm going to guess Christine and Foo are going to avoid talking to me until December 1st so that I won't harass them to sign up.

Labels: autumn, fall, junior, Vacation

Arrrrrrgh. Do I really have to go to work tomorrow? Is there some reason I can stay home? I would really like to extend vacation by, um, 3 months. Okay, not three, just one. One month. It can even be a short month like February (except I don't want the vacation month to BE February, I want it to be right now).

I don't think I'm going to have a good reason to stay home tomorrow. Thank goodness I did laundry yesterday so I would have some clean work pants. Damn, a week of wearing jeans and shorts, all gone.

First day of school tomorrow too. I'm going to go bury my head in a pile of sale pillows from JC Penney. How on earth did Junior get to be a 5th grader?

Labels: sad, Vacation

Yesterday, Mr. Dump, Junior and I took a field trip to Rockport MA, one of my favorite places in the universe. We went to just have a nice, no pressure day, just to walk around, maybe get some chowdah and an ice cream, and take a few photos.

I met a guy who is now my new best friend. We did the whole "check out the equipment to see if we're Canon or Nikon (or whatever) people" and saw we both had Canon stuff. He had this magnificent lens on a tripod, and I was walking around with my 17-40, not the greatest lens for taking distance shots. It turns out his lens beat out my 40 10 fold...he had a 100-400mm lens. Niiiice. The cool thing was that he asked if I wanted to attach my camera to his lens to take a few shots. He showed me how his tripod worked (damn, I can't even afford his tripod, never mind the rest of his equipment!) and let me take the photo you see above. I can honestly say I had no idea there was a lighthouse within eyeshot of the end of Bareskin Neck...I don't think I had ever really spotted it before, and I certainly didn't have the fire power to take a decent photo of it.

So thank you, kind stranger! If I'm ever in the same position as you, being the one with the really good lens when a fellow Canon-ite comes by, I will let them try out my cool lens so they can tell their friends how awesome I am.

p.s If you are in the Rockport area looking for a meal with a view, I HIGHLY recommend the Blacksmith Shop, which is a block or two up (to the right) of the parking lot (the one with the town offices). I don't think a ton of people walk up that far, because the place was fairly empty, but we literally had one of the most amazing views I have ever had from a restaurant. I had a fantatic lobster/pasta dish, and the two boys both had caesar salads - Junior had his with shrimp, and Mr. Dump went with the chicken. All our meals were fantastic, but really, the meal was the amazing part. If you go to my flickr photostream (click the link on my name below the photo) you can see were we were sitting right on the edge of a deck. I will eventually upload the photo I took of the view with the iPhone. Fantastic.

Labels: restaurants, Vacation

Photo take today at Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth NH, as Mr. Dump made every effort on the planet to give me a typical touristy vacation day. They have some old-fashioned toys available for today's modern child to try out. Junior was VERY taken with rolling a hoop and trying to get the little wooden ball into the cup. (Shades of Stewie Griffin, anyone?)

He was also very taken with the Jacob's Ladder toy. Seriously, we were amused by how much he loved these hundred + year-old toys. I could trade in a bunch of his video games and buy some little wooden toys. I'll bet that would go over really well.

Actually, this is a kid whose most valuable possession is a beat-to-hell blue plastic bat. So wooden toys might be good.

Please note the blinding sunlight in this photo (actually screwed up most of my photos so I have to add fill light in post-processing). After we grabbed a traditional Irish Pub [late] lunch at Molly Malone's (Mr. Dump had bangers and mash, nuff said.) we headed home - into the worst thunderstorm so far this summer. And that's saying something. I'm waiting for the power to go off.

Labels: fun, junior, Vacation

I am still going through the 900 or so photos we took when we were in Disney last month. It's slow going. I have picked few more to post on flickr, but this is my favorite one from the batch.

I would just like to point out that my family was basically trying to run their little feet off back to the hotel while I was attempting to take a decent photo of Spaceship Earth, my favorite "thing" in all of Walt Disney World. Sure, Cinderella's Castle is great, but if I could put Spaceship Earth in my front yard I would so do it. I think I'd need a bigger front yard, however.

Have I mentioned recently how much I absolutely love the lens I got (as a very early Christmas present) to take with me to Florida? It's fantastic. I love it. I wish I'd gotten it the day I got the camera.

Labels: Disney, photos, Vacation

Do you know how much I love you people? In 2004 my family watched the Sox win the world series from Walt Disney World. So we decided to do our part and go to WDW again so that the Sox could win the Series again this year. I am a giver.

I forgot my phone charger so I haven't been able to keep you up to date - I would have told you earlier but I was afraid you pranksters would TP my house.

I will be able to read all my mail and do a better update on Wednesday when we get back. We're off to the Magic Kingdom to see if they decorated with Red Sox balloons like it was the last time.

Labels: Red_Sox, Vacation

I haven't uploaded any more of the 700 or so photos I took last week because, interestingly, the hard drive on my Mac became full. That causes two problems. I can't burn DVDs without having buffer space on the hard drive (a 4.7 gig DVD needs 4.7 gig on the hard drive, etc.) and moving things off the hard drive messes with LightRooms head, because it can't find files it previously imported. Oh, and you need buffer space on the hard drive to edit photos, too.

I picked up a 500gig external drive at Best Buy for $119 yesterday (tax free, on sale) and I'm moving things off the Mac hard drive slowly but surely. Actually, I have no idea how I filled up the hard drive that quickly. I mean, other than something simple like shooting approximately 10gig of photos in a week. Not counting all the photos I took before last week. Hmmm.

So while we wait for me to go through the rest of the photos, I'll take a moment to give quality feedback about last night's showing of Grease on Nickelodeon. I liked that movie a lot when it came out a million years ago. It hardly even bothered me that high school senior Rizzo was played by a 34 year old woman. Hell, Olivia Newton John was 29. John Travolta was 24. But that's not my complaint. My complaint (no, not the fact that "You're the One That I Want" is now stuck in my head) is all the smoking. This movie used smoking to show that the characters were "bad" and "cool" all at the same time. You know Danny's a bad-ass when school starts because he turns around from talking to three middle-aged high school girls and there's a butt hanging off his lower lip. I wanted Junior to watch this movie because I remembered it one way. But his first comment was "Why are they smoking?" Sure, it's set in 1959, and maybe smoking was actually allowed on campus back then, but good Lord, even Sandy pulls on a butt (amateurishly) in the final carnival scene to show that she's no longer a goodie-two-shoes. What the hell? And now that I'm an old lady myself, what the hell is wrong with being a goodie-two-shoes? Why can't we keep the Pollyanna version of Sandy and the lettermen sweater version of Danny at the end?

I still like the movie, and other than that (and the Rizzo pregnancy scare) it is a fun movie with good songs. And it's fun to show the boy what High School Musical was based on. But with someone smoking in literally EVERY scene of this movie, I'm questioning if it belonged on the Nick at Night lineup at 8pm. Call me a prude, but it was a bit much, even for me.

Labels: laptop, movies, Vacation

Okay, I'm not that bad. Well, I did throw my arm across my forehead like a 1930s movie star when I saw how much laundry I have to do, the lack of food in the fridge, and the fact that the upstairs toilet doesn't want to flush. You know, all the goodness of home!

I'm pulling the final vacation photos off the cards right now. We stopped for lunch in Sandwich (heh) and Mr. Dump requested water view dining, which over the course of the week cost the 7 of us approximately $400 for two meals (including a lunch where two of us had tuna melts), so you know I was a little apprehensive.

We were headed for a place we ate lunch at in 2005, but we spotted "Seafood Sams" in the same area and decided that would be a much cheaper choice. And it was. Food was pretty good (clam strips and FANTASTIC ONION RINGS) with a view of the channel, so we saw boats going by, including a tugboat hauling ass and a very large ship that we couldn't figure out for the life of us. It looked like it had HVAC stuff on the deck, so we decided it was full of frozen fish. We have no idea if we were right, but who is going to tell us it wasn't?

Mr. Dump let me take a bunch of photos in the marina and on the canal, thus ending my vacation with a little photo shoot that actually made me feel happy because it meant that my day included something other than packing and driving home.

On the canal I spotted a ginormous yacht...I mean, words don't do this thing justice. I made sure I got a picture with the name of it so I could look it up. I'm on the website right now, looking at the photos of the interior, and it's enough to make you ill with envy. The funny thing was that this yacht was towing a boat that most of us could never afford. Sort of like a million dollar motor home towing a BMW behind it. So here is my photo of the yacht, along with the link to the info about her.

Labels: boats, photos, Vacation

We're staring down the end of vacation now, and I'm starting to get depressed. I don't want this to end. I don't think we've done everything we wanted to. I don't ant to go back to my routine. Shocking, of course, given how fabulous this house and the location and the ocean and the tacky gift shops are. Who wants to leave that behind? I'm typing this on the deck, rootbeer at my side, looking out at the tide coming in and the sun going down. The sky is glorious (photos to follow, maybe later tonight or tomorrow) and if you know me at all, you know how much I love a glorious sky. Clouds fascinate me, sunsets thrill me. I have both tonight. I don't want to go home, because I can't see the sun setting on the ocean from my house, damn the luck!

Sorry, I didn't mean to rant. I know a lot of people who didn't get to go to the beach this week, and I know I should just keep my woe-is-me good fortune to myself. But I'm still really sad that the week is winding down. I want to start all over from the beginning, damn it!

Labels: beach, summer, sunset, Vacation

The place we're staying is surrounded by killer rabbits. At least, that's what we call them. Actually, now we call them the No Trespassing Rabbits because obviously they don't care for our signs and warnings.

So far we've seen a ton of rabbits, a doe, and a fox. Deb thought there was a fishercat sort of growling in the tall grass near the house, but we don't have a visual confirmation on that. It definitely wasn't a rabbit. Well, it could have been a killer rabbit, I suppose.

Last night we had a pouring rainstorm (we estimated about an inch of rain based on what was inside a large plastic bin we had out on the deck and had emptied earlier in the day. This morning it's just dank and foggy and we all feel completely wet. They say there will be sun later today, but it may rain again. That's okay, we haven't been to a Christmas Tree Shop yet, plus we still need to find some pirate ships that will actually float in the water. You know, the life of a vacationing 9-year-old is a busy one.

[More pictures uploaded, including another version of the sun behind clouds photo from Sunday]

Labels: fun, photos, Vacation

Hello everybody! It's day two here at the Cape, but the photo I'm sharing was from day one. Your best bet for following along with us on vacation is to keep an eye on my Flickr page, because I'll be uploading photos every day but I won't be posting all of them on the Big DumpTruck.

Yesterday the humidity followed us down to the Cape, and it was just gross-sticky, but today it's GAW-JUSS down here. The kids and my BIL and Sister went for a bike ride, and I took a walk down to one of the little beaches where I got fantastic photos last year. This morning there were too many boats to get a good shot (I'll take what I can get, if I'm stuck with the 2005 photos, that's okay) but I found a little field with all these amazing flowers in them!

Labels: photos, Vacation

Packing to go on vacation = fun and exciting because the whole vacation is just a week of possibilities waiting on the golden horizon.

Packing to come home = sucks.

We are doing the former. In a week, we do the latter. I will have my laptop with me to pull photos off my camera, and apparently the house has wifi, so you may just have something to read/look at over the course of the week, depending on how often I pull out the laptop.

I know you're going to miss me, so I'm going to remind you of a game I rediscovered (via a bookmark I made of it) so that you can keep busy. Idle minds being the devil's workshop and all.
http://rfshq.com/forum/games/virus2.swf

Labels: fun, link, Vacation

Sheesh, this is taking forever! I'll be good, though.

Hey, that book I talk about below? The author really really hates Disney. Like, REALLY hates them. So now I'm sort of on the fence about recommending the book. Okay, I'm still enjoying the book but I think Mr. Anti-Disney ("Too bad that inferno is now burning up the whole Sunshine State" - said in reference to the spark that ignited Disney's theme park flame.)

So the point I'd like to make to the author is that if it weren't for the major attractions in Orlando, most of these roadside oddities would suffer from a large lack of visitors. Instead, people like me planning a trip down to see the mouse will buy his book to look for other places to visit while I'm down there. Do you really think a family from Massachusetts would plan an entire trip to see the Indian River Citrus Museum?

Labels: florida, travel, Vacation

I'm the kind of person who finds planning a vacation as relaxing and enjoyable as going on one. Maybe more so, because when you are planning, everything and anything is possible, there are no lines or bugs or heat, no need to pull out the credit card every fifteen minutes, no maps to read or refold. I love trying to pick just the right hotel at just the right location. I could spend hours on travel websites looking at the interiors of hotel rooms. I'm smart enough to know that if a hotel's website only shows closeups of the pillows on the bed or the bedside table, the room is probably the size of a small dog.

So every time we go to Florida (and sometimes even when we aren't going) I am in planning mode times 12. I get books. I read websites (lots of them) and my favorite email newsletter from allearsnet.com (If you enjoy Disney and don't get this weekly newsletters, your Tuesdays are a cold and dank place I don't want to be.) Remember, one of my photos is on their website (scroll all the way down - the last photo on the page is mine.)

This time around, Mr. Dump asked to be the planner guy, and I said yes. So my role has been greatly reduced. I only got one updated guide (I'm saving all my old ones...some day we'll read and look at the pictures and say "oh my gosh, it hasn't been like that for 10 years!"). But I also got a book called Oddball Florida: A Guide to Some Really Strange Places (Oddball series). It's really really good and now I want to take a trip to Florida and just hit all these awful tourist attractions! By the way, my new favorite street name comes from the location of the Water Ski Hall of Fame and Museum - it is located on Holy Cow Road in Polk City. Holy Cow Road! I want to live on Holy Cow Road!

So that's all I have to say today. I'm still killing time. I can tell you, I won't be finishing the Oddball Florida book in the next few days.

Labels: florida, fun, photos, Vacation, wierd

[This is a good test to see if my sister is paying attention.]

The other day we were at the new Best Buy in Leominster and I found a "bargain" video set that I bought to bring on our trip to the Cape with my sister's family. The last time we went down, in 2005, I brought down two collections of movies - 13 hours of 1950s and 60s Monster movies and another set of 13 hours of Sci Fi movies from the same era. That's some damned good entertainment. The boys became enamored of Gamera and some of the Sci Fi movies. One that comes to mind has the astronauts stepping outside of the spaceship with nothing to tether them to it, they just hover on the outside like they are standing on the ledge of a tall building.

This time I'm going to be bringing down 3 hours and 50 minutes of Classic Commercials. Oh ya, it's going to be a hot time in the old Cape House in August!

Labels: commercials, movies, summer, Vacation

Stupid Fenway tickets. Stupid waiting rooms and sold out games. Stupid not ever being able to take Junior to a Red Sox game yet, and he's nine.

So you know what? We picked up 3 tickets to a Sox/Orioles game IN Baltimore for September. Got onto their site, picked the game (9/8)...bing bang boom, done. So that's going to be a mini-vacation for us. I am going to find a fancy-pants hotel with a fantastic view, and I will get to enjoy a game in one of the parks I have ALWAYS wanted to visit. I am actually far more excited about this than I would be if I picked up 3 tickets for a home game.

If the step-kids are reading, sorry we didn't get 5 tickets. I'll have to owe you one...

Labels: Red_Sox, Vacation