The Big DumpTruck

Senator Craig says he has a wide stance, and that's why when he sits on the toilet in a men's room, his foot goes all the way under the door and touches the foot of the person sitting next to him.

I have to tell you, I tried to do this at work (the other stall was empty) and I almost fell off the toilet.

I am starting to think that maybe, just maybe, Senator [as of this minute] Craig may just be creating what we at the Dump House like to call "a story." Every once in a while Junior tries to pass off a story to cover up whatever he is doing/has done and my standard response is "do I look stupid to you?" That's the point where he comes clean.

I'm thinking that I should start writing outright lies about my life. You know, to spice things up. And if anyone calls me on it, I'll explain it's because I have a wide stance.

Labels: bathroom, junior, News, politics

(You young people might not catch this reference. So I think maybe I could call this post "Am I Being Punked?")

Yesterday was one of those days. Mr. Dump had an appointment for a small surgical procedure, and I had an appointment with my doctor. I also had Junior (I have him again today...last two days before school starts so no more camp). I used up a tank of gas just driving around from appointment to appointment yesterday. Junior got an invite to his friend's house, but she lives in Gardner, so that was 20+ minutes each way. What was great, though, is that it meant someone was watching him while I was in my appointment.

After Mr. Dump was out of recovery and I settled him back in at home, I went back to Gardner to get Junior. We decided to stop at the Hannaford at Twin City Mall on the way home to get something for dinner. While standing with my cart trying to think of the other things I wanted to buy (iced tea and potato rolls) a guy was standing about 6 feet to my right. I catch some activity out of the corner of my eye and see...a copy handcuffing him. Nothing was being said, it was all very quiet. I quickly made sure Junior was still standing behind me (and wasn't planning to scoot around the cart over to where this was happening. I could feel my blood pressure go up 20 points. I made eye contact with a couple of people standing in the 12 items or less line (which is what we were standing near) and we all had this "Are you kidding me?" look on our faces.

I can honestly say I have never stood that close to someone being arrested. I mean, to the point that I felt like I was assisting the cop...that's how close they were to me. Junior kind of took the whole thing in stride, like this stuff happens all the time. Maybe I should ask more questions about what goes on a summer camp!

Labels: errands, junior, odd, shopping

Sorry for the lack of posting. Did you notice? I was giving myself a little break from the computer, and when you do that, well, all hell breaks loose.

I could blame it on the Red Sox sweeping the White Sox in grand style. I mean really, if we can't win 30-3 in one game, we could have four 10+ games in a row. I'm okay with that, really I am. If you're looking for more in-depth analysis, of course, I defer to my resident expert over at Red Sox Soul. I'm just a back seat driver when it comes to this stuff.

School starts this week, and I think we're more nervous and excited about it than Junior is. He's moving to the LEAP program at the newly re-designed Southeast Math and Science Elementary school. We're bummed about leaving JA and all his best friends there, but I think this is going to be an amazing year for him. One way or another.

Labels: junior, Red_Sox, school

Earlier this summer we promised Junior we would rent a convertible and just drive it around for the day, thus getting that need to feel the wind in our hair and bugs in our teeth right out of our systems.

So Sunday we went up to the Manchester Airport and rented this Mustang for the day - total price approx. $125. (If you decide to do this near you, the new rules say you have to either have return flight information or a utility bill in order to use a debit card. Just FYI.)

We took the car over to Maine for the day - it was a big chilly at first, especially driving on the highway, but by the time we got to Kittery it really started warming up. And because we have a new TomTom navigation system, we decided to just drive on any road that looked interesting, knowing that we'd be able to plug in Jane (we call our TomTom the same thing my brother-in-law calls his - Jane is the voice they use) and she'd get us home no matter how "lost" we were. It really makes road trips MUCH more interesting. In fact, we took a road we'd never been on (route 103) and stumbled upon Fort McClary, a fantastic, fabulous find. See my flickr photostream for some cool shots taken at the Fort.

Labels: car, fun, photos, weekend

I have to open a ticket with my hosting company because for some reason, I cannot change the setting on the server that allows me to tell it to delete mail after I download it to my pop3 account. In summary, my mailbox was full with messages that I had read months ago.

Grrr.

Labels: mail

When we saw it raining with the sun out last night, Junior and I hopped in the van and rushed up to to a high, clear spot - in our neighborhood, that's the Orchard Hills Park parking lot. Sure enough, God wanted us to shop at Best Buy so badly he gave us a double rainbow leading us there.

Labels: photos, rain, rainbow, shopping

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

We're on the road to the Cape and my first official "Vacation" photo was
of an ice cream man at the drive up at McDonalds. You just *know*
vacation will rock when that's how it starts!

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

You can have my 100 Calorie Lorna Doone shortbread cookie crisps when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.

What you have here are animal crackers for grownups, people. Do you hear me? 100 calorie packs of sweet, buttery goodness.

Go. You can thank me later.

Labels: food, happy