The Big DumpTruck

Junior had perfect attendance at school this year...until today. Poor kid has had a low-grade fever since I picked him up last night. It's not like he wasn't going to blow it when we go to Florida in April anyway, but I have to tell you, I can't BELIEVE he hasn't missed a day of school since it started! The last day of January!

What a difference a few years make. Remember, this was the same child who needed ear tubes because he had so many ear infections as a baby (I'll have to find the actual number...I think like a fisherman I keep embellishing. I want to say 23 by the time he was 15 months old, but that seems high. Then again, he had a lot of them. He was my little snot-nosed boy. Still is, actually, but a lot of it is allergies. And we've just been incredibly lucky this year as far as illnesses. Nothing so bad that he had to stay home. But he's home with my mom today until I can get out of work. He did seem better this morning, but he still had a slight fever and you're not supposed to send them to school like that, so I didn't.

Oh, and as a hint of the weather to come, tonight we sign him up for the 2006 Little League season. C'mon, spring!

Skiing Saturday didn't go as well as it had the week before. At Nashoba, the only beginner hills they have are the bunny slopes with tow ropes, so I went up the lift to the intermediate slope where they take the kids taking lessons. Very very steep. Way too steep. And I was having an impossible time controlling my speed. I don't know why this was so much harder than last week, but I felt like my skis were sticking in the snow, so I couldn't turn, etc. etc. etc. Which put me in a panic. Which didn't help me at all.

The trail felt WAY too narrow and too steep for me, so I didn't feel like I could traverse...every time I turned I'd start flying down again, so instead of lazy S's down the mountain, I was going across, then stopping. Back and stopping. No fun. I just felt completely out of control...I hated hated hated it. I made two runs, fell down a total of 5 times, including one slide that made snow go up my back and down my snowpants. I was not a happy camper. (Even less so the next day when every part of my hurt - especially my hips and butt).

I will try to go back to Wachusett in the next week or so, and go on their easy run so I can get my confidence back. I was just not ready for the intermediate trail, and as it stands, I won't be skiing again at Nashoba until I figure out why I was having so many problems. I swear, I did really well the previous Sunday, you can ask Mr. Dump.

I think it's time to come clean with everyone. You have a right to know. It's hard to talk about so I'll say it quick, like ripping off a Spider-Man bandage.

I took up a winter sport.

Don't hate me, okay? I know that my pudgy out-of-shape self has been an inspiration for legions of Dump fans across this great, illegally wire-tapped land of ours. I am famous for my love of curling up by the fire and ignoring anything that requires me to venture outdoors from November through March.

So I apologize.

But I have always been unable to handle peer pressure (okay, that's a lie but go with me here) and I was forced...FORCED...into this. And I didn't hate it. I didn't hate it at all. And I will probably do it again tomorrow.

I took a 1.5 hour ski lesson last Sunday, and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but I did pretty well. [James Frey Embellishment Alert!] And my instructor, an ex-navy seal on a booze bender who's legs were both amputated at the hip, recommended me to the head of the ski team. They made me their captain and at the end of my lesson I participated in a giant slalom competition, where I placed 2nd. I would have placed first, but as I was coming down the hill, a small child was chased out of the crowd by a wild boar, and I had to save her before I could cross the finish line. [End Embellishment.] So it was a good day. Wish me luck tomorrow!

Christine pointed out that yesterday's blog title was right on many different levels, which is true. Today we discuss something that is wrong on many levels. I'll leave it to you to figure out which ones.

Yesterday, at a light, I looked over at the guy next to me and he was watching a workout video in his car while he was driving.

Is there really anything else I could say that would make this any better than what is going through your own head? No. And if the only think you have going through your head is a whistling wind, drop a comment and I'll explain why this is wrong.

Also, when I'm not listening to WXLO (mostly in the morning) I listen to MikeFM (93.7). I get so sick of the repetition of crappy songs on WXLO that I do this for my own sanity. But every once in a while, the whole "Drop a ton of CDs into a computer and press shuffle" gives you something that makes Baby Jesus cry.

One day I heard "My Ding-a-Ling" which amused me. But two nights ago, I heard a duet I didn't know existed and it just made me realize how odd the music-buying public is. It was a Tom Jones doing a duet with the singer from the Cardigans, doing a remake of the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House." Whoa. Once again, I have nothing else to say.

I am going to come clean here and admit that I have become a Wonka Nerds addict. I don't know how it happened. I don't even remember when I first had some, but now, I can't live without them. I like the grape ones the best, but strawberry is good too. The fruit punch and orange ones are not on my list, but lacking all other flavors, I'll eat those. Nerds, Nerds, Nerds. I don't even like to eat candy that much - I can't believe how much I love these things.

Does that make me a bad person?

So basically it's just sugar and flavoring. Ever so good for you. Well, they are good for your soul, so that makes them good. Not so good if you are trying to cut empty calories, but I look at it this way...one or two of the little tiny boxes instead of a bowl of ice cream is probably a good thing.

So remember kids, if you want to suck up to me, Nerds.

The comment spammers are killing me. I can't even begin to tell you what a low ring of hell is reserved for these people. They are the lowest of the low. So I guess I'm going to have to switch my commenting software, because I just can't keep up with the comment spam any more, and every one comes in from a unique IP address, so I can't even block them normally.

*sigh*

So for now, I guess I'm going to have to go with the stuff Blogger provides for free, until I can figure something else out. For those of you using that solution already, do you still get comment spam if you turn it on without the thing where you have to approve all comments?

That means that all the recent comments will be lost. For that, I am truly sorry. Your words of wisdom will live on in my heart.

George Bush wants to get his filthy stinking paws on the records of "our" Google searches....so my idea is to have everyone in the United States, no, the world, spend all day doing searches for things like "Bush is Hitler II" and "Bush is Eroding Your Civil Liberties" and "How does it feel to live in a police state?" and other helpful things. I'd like to get a copy of the final report if we could make this work.

Sure, our dog doesn't shed, and his hair is so soft it makes Miss Clairol jealous, but look at what happens to him in the snow.

This doesn't come off that easily, by the way. We have to submerge him in warm water to melt off the snowballs. Fun.

It's a winter wonderland outside this morning. I'm willing to bet my cheese money that this is a classic "man, we blew it" storm. They were saying 2-6 inches yesterday, and even as late as 6 this morning. Well, I have news for them, there is 6 inches out there right now and it's not supposed to stop until after dinner. And it's that HEAVY stuff. School was cancelled and I was annoyed, because 2-6, what's that over the course of 12 hours? Well, obviously it's waaaay worse than that out there.

Mr. Dump's commute was hellish. It took him an hour to get from Leominster to 495 on Route 2, and then another hour to get to the Chelmsford rest area, where he stopped to clean the windshield and unblock the washer spout thingies. While there he noticed the CBS4 truck doing a live traffic/weather report, and then reporter turned around and pointed at him and then waved, so he waved back while the camera was pointed at him with the light on. So Mr. Dump got to be on television this morning! Hey, it at least made the commute a teeny bit more interesting.

Christine, his commute was about as long as yours, but it was a much further drive, on highways. Ick ick ick, I guess I'm kind of glad I'm stuck at home with the boy, even if it means taking a hit in the paycheck. I don't need a three hour commute each way.

Theo's back on the payroll, and they didn't shout it from the mountaintops! When I went to bed last night only redsoxsoul.com and bostondirtdogs were talking about it. Why? Because they didn't make the announcement through the media, they just put notice up on redsox.com, and figured people could find out at their leisure. When Remdawg didn't even have mention on his site, you know that's a stealth announcement.

I have to say, this is very unlike the front office, the people who held a press conference after someone LEFT the team. This is the biggest news on Yawky way in weeks, maybe months, and they post it after hours and only on their own website.

I'm dying to hear what the unwashed masses are saying - I assume by the time I get to work work will be getting around.

I bought a pack of gum at lunch and was just looking at the label. It's Trident Crystal Frost Freshmint Flavor, for those of you who want to follow along at home.

The gum is made with Xylitol, which is a great name for a villian in a sci-fi movie. I assume this is the sweetener used to make the gum "sugar free" but I haven't looked it up. Right under that, it says "Not a low calorie food."

I never thought of gum as a food because I don't swallow it. Not on purpose, anyway. So without that disclaimer, would people go on a "Trident diet?" I was thinking that maybe there is something about it that makes it a high calorie food without the sweetener, but it says it's got less than 5 calories "per serving." I fear looking on the web to see if there are people with eating disorders out there going on a sugarfree gum diet, so I'm not going to look. Given the choice, I'd rather go on the pickle diet that I previously mentioned (0 calories eachie!) because I think pickles are more filling than gum.

But that's just me.

Holy cow, scary wind! Scary destructive wind! I hope the lack of leaves makes it harder for the wind to blow over a tree in my yard, but I guess I'll find out when I get home.

We lost power here at work for about 30-40 minutes, so that was exciting. I assume it was wind-related but I suppose someone could have run into a pole. They haven't actually told us why it was out.

But other than that, it's 50+ degrees outside and that's just how I like my January. Junior's ski lesson last Saturday was postponed because of the weather (i.e. rain and 50 degrees equal slushy foggy conditions that aren't particularly safe when you have 7 year olds careening down a mountain. Those trees are just hiding in the fog waiting for one of the little buggers to wander by.) Looking ahead, I see we're due for 50 degrees all week. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that it doesn't sound good for skiing this coming weekend, but I could be wrong. If today's rain doesn't melt everything, that is. It doesn't look like it's going below freezing at night, so they won't be able to make snow either. Tough winter to own a ski resort.

Let's see, what else do you need to be told? Hmmm. Nope, I've got nuthin.

Oh wait, yes I do. New Red Sox blog over in the blogroll. www.redsoxsoul.com Cause you know you can't wait for spring training.

I love that word - Interweb. It goes in the same mental pile as "waitron."

In the "well, small world but you already knew that" department, I went to my yahoo home page, upon which I have several feeds and news from various sourses. One of my modules is a list of "Leominster News" via a feed at Topix.net. It's not the most accurate module, and half the time I can't figure out why the links are even there, but yet, I leave it. Today there was one and I clicked on it and was surprised to go to a blog. And the blog entry in question refers to a "Christine from Leominster". And I poked around a little and realized that yes, it's our Leominster Christine. And to close the loop, I am not writing about the site that wrote about Christine, who is a regular here. Now it will be her turn to write about me, if I'm following this correctly.

You know, just when I started to get over the whole Spears-Federline media frenzy pregnancy, we're faced with a few more pregnancies that will keep People Magazine in overdrive in 2006. Angelina Jolie. The Tom Cruise Spawn. Gwen Stefani. And now Gwyneth Paltrow is pregnant again. Will our pain and suffering never end? We may as well just face the facts now - the clear winner in this horse race is going to be the Jolie-Pitt pregnancy. You won't be able to shake a dead sheep without seeing a photo of Angie. The Cruise Spawn won't get that kind of coverage because Angie is way more interesting to people than Katie or Gwen. Now if it was Tom vs. Brad with a big baby belly, I'd put my money on Tom because everyone likes watching that train wreck. Gwyneth is "been there done that" until she names the baby something odd. Again.

Related to this idiocy is the bigger idiocy of the local paper running a front page story about how local people feel about the Jolie-Pitt thing. Are you kidding me? Are you out of your minds? There is NOTHING ELSE going on in this area that you can write about? I can yammer about it here on my website because I AM NOT A FREAKING NEWSPAPER. That's it. I am so done with them. Whoever edits that paper should just turn in whatever brain cells are still rattling around.

Where was I going with this? I don't remember. I'm in a daze ever since reading the news that CMonks met a Danish woman named Trinka playing Blokus and moved to Køgehoffenborg Denmark to live with her and her three stepsisters in a home overrun with mutton but lacking a television set. I have, as he said, broken into a million little pieces. I certainly hope he's not putting any fiction on his completely non-fiction website. If he says he obtains food by running over sheep with a jeep, who am I to question his honesty. As Oprah would say, that would be much ado about nothing.

It's all about lies this week, isn't it? Arlen Spector lies about receiving Ted Kennedy's letter, Alito lies about knowing he was a member of CAP at Princeton. (Dude, don't put anything on your resume that you may not want to come up in the future. And don't join an organization without at least checking to see if the prime directive is bigoted. Okay?) And then we have my favorite, the fray about James Frey. Oprah's pal couldn't sell his book as fiction so he called it non-fiction and made a kazillion dollars.

It occurs to me that there are plenty of things I could say in print that any number of people could probably refute. And if I got a lot of money and fame from saying it, you'd bet they would. If I said that I was once the Mayor of Leominster, I'm sure people would jump up and say something. They'd be wrong, because I was once Mayor of Leominster, but they'd still jump up and down. (See, I won an essay contest to be Mayor for a Day in high school. I was also the chief of police for a day, and the vice principal for a day. Man, I should have entered some REAL essay contests with that track record). But I have the certificate somewhere that says I was mayor, and there is probably some written record at city hall or the high school.

So you need to know that the book I'm writing, the one that you're all going to buy? It's going to be non-fiction. But it's not 100% true and I would never say it was. There will be some fiction in it. I will be proud of that fiction. This is not going to be my biography, because I'm just not that interesting. And apparently, neither was Mr. Frey.

A huge hit! Even Junior had some of the meat, and he said it was great. This is a big complement from my little pasta eater. Mr. Dump said it tasted exactly like his mom's old recipe, even though it's not made the same way. Who knew?

I'm looking forward to tonight's leftovers. Leftovers rock. Not as much as having a crockpot full of hot food waiting for me when I walked through the door last night, let me tell you.

The recipe gathering is going well. Right now I have 10. One of them came from Friend of the Dump Cindy, who says she's been reading for years even though I have never heard from her before. The nerve!

Okay, so here's my potroast recipe, for anyone who cares. I'm sure it's the same as everyone else's.

Dumptruck Pot Roast
2lb pot roast
1 can low fat/low salt cream of mushroom soup
1 can of beef broth
½ cup red wine
5 or 6 medium potatoes, quartered
carrots (I used the bag of baby carrots)
half an onion, sliced
garlic salt

Put the veggies on the bottom of the crock pot, and put the roast on top of them. Sprinkle meat with garlic salt and add soups and wine. Cook on low 8-10 hours.

Note: You can put the potatoes in halfway through cooking if you want them more “al dente”. I work all day so I don’t have that option. The other “issue” is that the potatoes absorbed the red color from the wine, so they tasted fine but looked odd. If this is a problem, you could use white wine (or no wine) but the “sauce” won’t be as dark.

According to www.disneyworld.com, it's only 100 days until my vacation. Yes, that's right, we're venturing south again this year. Once more, we'll be a "magical gathering" group. I don't know if I'm going to have t-shirts made up. I'll have to talk to the rest of the crew to find out if they're interested. We did get a lot of attention, though, which is always nice. That's because our group is called the "Monorail Breakfast Club" and Disney cast members who saw the t-shirt always had a comment. Prince Charming was talking to us at the Princess dinner at the Grand Floridian and said that he knew most everything about his "kingdom" but did not know they served breakfast on the monorail. (They don't. And you aren't supposed to eat on it. We called ourselves that after our first planning session, when Mr. Dump said he wanted to stay at one of the monorail hotels (Contemporary) and my dad said he didn't care where we stayed as long as they had breakfast. Even the people on the phones at Disney got a giggle out of our group name. I think they are tired of people going with "Smith Party" or whatever. If you can't sprinkle your life with creative, fun stuff, why bother living, really.

This time we're trying out the Animal Kingdom Lodge. My sister's family stayed there before and had nothing but good things to say about it. I have been down there enough, and know I'll be going again, that I really didn't care where we stayed. My preference was probably the Contemporary, but only because I really adore the convenience of the monorail being right there. But it's also more expensive, and we're taking the step-kids this time around, so AKL was slightly more affordable. Sure, we could have stayed offsite or at a lower level hotel, but
a)I didn't want to and
b)it's harder to fit 5 in a room at lower level hotels.

So where was I going with this? Oh, right...100 days. That doesn't seem like a very long time, does it?

Oh, and for the mundane crowd, today I have a pot roast in the crock pot. I'll let you know how it turns out. (I am gathering crock pot recipes from friends and putting them in a document that I'll make available on this site. If you have a recipe that you love, preferably one you have modified so that you can really claim it as your own, drop me an email. I'm actually thinking of including these recipes throughout the "book" that I'm putting together, so see, you can be published and that way you'll buy even more copies of the book. [See Bill?])

If the guy calling WXLO is to be believed, Noah Wylie owns a house in Leominster. I will admit I'm not sure I believe this. Look, I like Leominster. I have lived here almost my whole life (aside from college, I've lived briefly in 2 other towns).

But I wouldn't live here if I could afford to step up to something a little more upscale. So no, I don't think Mr. Wylie would choose Leominster. Lunenburg even, I would believe. But Leominster?

You mean I haven't posted anything since Thursday? Shame on me. Well, I can put part of the blame on me trying to be tidy at home. In an effort to make the house presentable so the family could come over to sing Happy Birthday to Junior, I put away my laptop and all it's various appendages, and I still haven't taken it back out of the bag. So actually, I had a lovely computer-free weekend, which is shockingly unusual for me. So sorry, I'll try to never let it happen again.

Yes, Junior is now 8. I resisted the urge to pull out his birth video and force him to listen to my screaming. I did that once (well, we fast forwarded past the bad audio...that's all there was until he popped out, and by popped I mean "took his sweet time seeing as he was shoulder breech (facing left) and 8 pounds 12 ounces and he didn't really have a burning urge to exit") and he was more than a little distraught. Heh.

His "party" this year was for 10 family members to go to the Hibachi grill at Chopsticks in Leominster. MMmmmmmmm. A great time was had by all. And to top it off, a crushing win by the Pats on Saturday night. No wonder I had no need to entertain myself with the computer.

I will be pulling it back out this week, so don't you fret. I started noodling around again with a book idea. Not a big "On sale everywhere" thing but maybe something a small press would pick up. And each and every one of you who promises to buy a copy will be mentioned by name in the book, just so you'll have to buy multiple copies so that you can give them to people and say "Look, here is my name in print! I am somebody!" I should be in marketing, don't you think?

I am getting a new pen! Okay, this is a little less mundane than normal, because it is a hand-made pen and the friend who made it let me pick out the wood and sent me pictures of the whole process. Because that's what geeks do for each other.

I have taken the pictures and created a little web page for you. If you like them, and want your own, he's building a store on Etsy (eBay for crafters). I know he has one up there right now, but I'm guessing there will be many more. If he sells enough of them, he can buy his own lathe so that he doesn't have to go to the woodworker's shop to use/rent theirs.

I have another friend who is selling handmade jewelry on Etsy. I had no idea I had such talented friends.

Hey everyone, tomorrow night the brother of local Friend-of-the-Dump Sally Cragin is going to be on The Office! Don't forget to set your Tivo/DVR/VCR/whathaveyou so you can watch for him! Details on his appearance are here: http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/entertainment/ci_3353703

Most interesting thing I learned from all the local press is that Steve Carell used to go to the Wallace Civic Center to play hockey games. How cool is that? I LERVE Steve Carell!

My baby turns 8 on Friday. Do you know how big 8 is? Do you? Do you? Pretty soon he's not going to want my smooches anymore. It's not going to be a pretty site the day that happens. Luckily, he's a sweetheart who loves me so much that he DOES still smooch me and will hold my hand in a parking lot. Cause he's the best boy there is.

8.

Who came up with that idea?

Okay, Leominster Christine, you can mock my Carol of the Bells all you want. But listen to this and tell me that C.O.T.B. is a bad song.

http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000471.php

(I link to the site that links to the song, because I love The Sneeze and he has some potential background information.)

Another day to sit around hoovering up anything edible in sight. You know, I wasn't looking forward to going back to work after the long weekend, but I was looking forward to getting paid for being there. Two days off in one week equals a HUGE hit in my paycheck. I can only do so much work from home, maybe squeezing out 2 or 3 hours. The rest is a hit to my bottom line. And all the Christmas candy will be a hit to my bottom.

In good news, I get to have leftovers for lunch today. In Dumptruck Crockpot Adventures, yesterday I made a whole chicken. And it was gooooooood. The most amazing thing to me was the chicken stock I ended up with. I have NEVER made chicken stock this flavorful and dark and wonderful. I'm beside myself just thinking about how I should use it. Well, to be honest, I have to admit that I want to heat up half of it, add back some chicken and some pasta and have myself a bowl of soup. But I almost feel like I shouldn't "waste" it that way, that I should keep it to use in recipes. It's that amazing. I suppose I can always do this again, of course. It's not like it was an expensive meal.

The recipe, for those wondering, is below. It's sort of modified from my cookbook, because I am using a 5 quart crockpot and was trying to make the best use to that space.

1 whole 1.5 pound chicken, rinsed and dried
1/2 of one large onion, thickly sliced
3 pieces of celery (3 stalks?), chopped in 1-inch pieces
approx 3 sliced carrots (I used what was left of a bag of carrot sticks, so this is a guess).
1/2 cup of white wine (I used a pinot)

Put the veggies on the bottom of the crock pot
Put the chicken on top of the veggies
pour the wine on top of the chicken
cook on low for 7-8 hours.

(We cooked it for 8 hours, but I think that was meant for a larger chicken (2-3 pounds)). The 1.5 pounder fit very well in my crock pot, and I should have reduced the cooking time a little, but it wasn't like it was tough and overcooked...it was just impossible to remove from the crockpot because every single piece of meat fell off the bones. I was laughing like a fool trying to get this thing out of the crock pot...it fell into 5 pieces before I even lifted it 2 inches up.)

I didn't measure but there has to be about 2 cups of stock, which is like some made science experiment (How to turn half a cup of liquid into two cups of liquid, after skimming off most of the fat). I assume much of it is from the celery and onion.

So for those of you old hats with cooking stuff like this or using a crock pot, you are probably rolling your eyes, but I am a complete newbie when it comes to this stuff, and it thrills me that I'm actually cooking really delish stuff with hardly any work. That is my kind of cooking. I leave the heavy lifting to the restaurant chefs, my friends.

There's an episode of Scooby Doo on. Or maybe it's a movie. Either way, I have to tell you, Shaggy sounds very very old. If it's Casey Kasem, I'd worry. Maybe it isn't, maybe it's just someone trying to simulated Casey's voice. Either way, it sounds like the person doing the voice forgot to put his teeth in. I can't really explain it...I'm going to have to record some of it for you. Let me figure out how.

Okay, it's Scooby Doo, Where's My Mummy. And according to IMDB, it is Casey. Whoa.

Oh, in other news, I have a new canine nephew, named Cooper. He's a labradoodle. Wanna see him?