The Big DumpTruck

You know, I never had that much of an issue with April in the past. It's a good month. It has 30 days. You know, pretty average, as months go. But damned if this wasn't the coldest, wettest, snowiest April I can remember. I'm all done with April. Hello May!

Labels: weather

Hey, 117 pals, did you all have fun checking out the fog this morning? I had my Powershot in the car with me, and whipped it out in Bolton Flats. Any time I had to stop, I snapped a picture. I uploaded the five best ones to flickr (just use the link under this photo). I have to say, I would have been happy to just have one that I liked. To have five worthy of uploading...that was the prize for the day!

This makes up for yesterday. I got halfway to work before I realized that the dog was still in the car with me. Oh my God, when am I going to learn the benefits of owning a talking dog versus Mr. Silent?

Labels: 117, commute, weather

Are you WATCHING THIS GAME!?!?!?

Holy crap

Holy crap

Holy crap

I like the sweater I'm wearing today, but it's itchy. I don't know why, I guess the material is made out of fiberglass or something. I remember going to The Aunt(r)'s house and she had this big chairs outdoors that would really make your legs itch, especially if you were a kid all sweaty from running around her back yard. Apparently the itchy was because they were fiberglass. I don't blame her for having itchy garden furniture, but what the hell was the manufacturer thinking? Didn't they test them wearing shorts? Was my health ever in danger? Can these chairs be stored in the attic to provide insulation? (Okay, I'm pretty sure she doesn't have the chairs any more, but it paints a funny picture, doesn't it?)

So this sweater is itchy but it was really cheap. I got it on the 70% off rack. But it wasn't the "70% Off all Deadly/Itchy Sweaters" rack. At least not that I noticed.

Labels: clothing, complaints, nothingness

Oh, wait, it is! Man oh man, my fellow Leominster to points-east commuters must have had fun with the 117 portion of the commute like I did. I am guessing that the entire town of Lancaster will be completely under water by tomorrow morning. I wish to God I'd had my camera...the new lake behind the big yellow Thayer Conservatory (or whatever it's called now...I haven't been there since my sister was about 11 years old) made my jaw drop.

The normal "avoid Bolton Flats" route was also closed due to flooding. That's a bad sign. Looking at the alternate, alternate route, that one might be out by tomorrow. Goodbye Lancaster, it was nice knowing you.

Labels: commute, rain, weather

I sent Junior and Mr. Dump out to get some tulips for me on Saturday, to kill time while I was getting my eyes checked. (Some kind of infection, causing sight in my right eye to be blurry, making reading anything a horrific experience.) So when they came back to pick me up they had... a coconut. Oh. Okay. So no tulips, then?

On Easter Sunday, Mr. Dump and The Amazing Bob (shout out to long-time readers there, eh? That's dump material circa 1997!) worked with my dad to get the coconut open. Then The Amazing Bob and I got all the meat out of it. (We later grated it up, put it in the oven with some powdered sugar, mixed it with melted chocolate we got by double-boiling some Hebert's candy bars, making the worst-tasting coconut chocolate treats ever created on the face of the earth. My candy-making aspirations went down the drain, friends).

All of that hard work was so Junior could duplicate the horse galloping noises from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. God, I love that kid.

p.s. Oh, right, you saw tulips in Saturday's actual blog entry, right? I had to go back out with them and buy them myself. For some reason, they never saw the big container of cut tulips.

Labels: comedy, flowers, junior, movies

In case I don't have time to make a decent update, I wanted to wish one and all a happy Easter by showing off the pink tulips I bought myself as an Easter present.

The pale pink ones always remind me of my wedding bouquet, so they are my first choice.

Enough already!

Okay, so New England blogs are probably overfull with the snow pictures today. But that's no reason for me to not share, right?

There's an article in today's Telegram and Gazette that made me double check the date. Apparently Nestle Waters, the kind folks who deliver Poland Springs water right to my doorstep by the case, are looking at some aquifers in Clinton as a potential source for spring water. That's right, I could be paying a premium for water coming from Clinton. I know, I know, Boston drinks Clinton water every day courtesy of the Wachusett Reservoir, but if you see a headline like "Clinton water may join Perrier" bells and sirens sort of go off. I'm just saying.

Of course, this news is offset with the news that Leominster water is not as good as it should be. There's a byproduct of chlorinization called trihalomethanes that may cause an increase of cancer if they are consumed, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. As in, you swim in it, get some steam up your nose when you're cooking with it, or bath in it. Which we all do, or at least should. I'm not sure how to take this report. I'm not going to stop bathing, but this is not a comforting news story.

Labels: Leominster, scary, water

Okay, I know you're all sick to death of ant posts. Well, maybe some of you aren't. So if you are, I promise, the next post I write will be about something else. But this one is not.

Mr. Dump called me with some very important information today. Apparently the ant supply company sent us more ants. More killer ants! It's my dream package! Of course, I'm pretty sure that if we added them to the ant farm they would immediately start a turf war and then all the ants would be dead before morning. They are like that. So I have a few hours to figure out what to do with these things. No freaking way can I release them. That's all I need, is a back yard full of harvester ants [waves to Dave G]. Anyone local to Leominster have an ant farm lacking ants? If you do, post here in the next couple of hours, otherwise, the poor suckers are probably going to have a burial at sea.

Labels: ants, fun

This one is for Karen, who seems to have taken a lot of interest in the level of work we're getting from our new ant friends. This is what they've done after one week. I have to say, it looks far cooler in person than it does in the photo. Whoever invented this blue stuff for ant farms deserves a big pat on the back.

If you go to check out the ant photos on flickr, there are two others for you, Karen. One of them is called Ant Bathroom. Because that's what we think it is.

Labels: ants