The Big DumpTruck

I like Junior - he's a funny kid. I don't know what I'd do if I was stuck with a kid who didn't have a good sense of humor. And by good, I mean one that amuses me, personally.

This may not translate as well as I'd like, because it was part of a larger conversation, and you have to know about the kinds of snacks that parents buy for their kids these days. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of Fruit Roll-ups or Froot-by-the-Foot this is going to whoosh past you, granny.

I admitted publicly that I like pudding skin. Mr. Dump started to propose a method of exposing as many sides of the pudding as possible so that you could get a LOT of pudding skin out of one cup of pudding. And then Junior suggested Pudding Skin by the Foot. Well, that did it for me. The concept of a long strip of pudding skin that you unfold to eat brought me to tears.

But looking back, I don't think I'd buy it. Because part of the beauty of the whole fruit roll-up product is that it doesn't require refrigeration. If you leave pudding skin out, you'll really have pudding jerky, and I don't know if I'm ready for that.

Labels: food, junior, snacks

I have a headache right now, and it won't go away. I don't believe it's anything that will kill me, so that's good. I don't have time to die right now. I have lots of things to do and to see. One of the the things I need to see is the office in my rear view mirror. [ba-dum-bum]

I put seventy dollars worth of gas in my car today. And I am actually nervous about it lasting until next week. This weekend we will be keeping any and all road trips to a minimum, I can tell you that. It had literally been years since I've had to worry about buying gas. I don't like to have to worry about it. I can definitely see the appeal of buying one of those very fuel-efficient little micro machines - at one point in time my 22mpg sounded pretty decent to me, for a mini van, but now I want at least twice that. But I'm not in a position to buy a car right at the moment, not when mine is running well, etc. etc.

Sorry, I shouldn't bitch. There are people dying in cyclones, earthquakes, crane collapses, train accidents and the like. That would be worse than paying $4 a gallon for gas.

Labels: complaints, gas

We're all pretty resigned to the fact that she's gone, even though Beth mentioned below that she found a hamster a week after it was lost. I've received offline feedback that once they get out, you don't find them until you tear down walls to remodel the bathroom. I have decided to not mention this tidbit to Junior, as he's still sad about the whole thing. That reminds me, note to self: don't leave a photo of Izzy up on your computer screen if your son walks up behind you and notices it.

Junior has decided that he would like to replace Izzy with gerbils. From everything I've read, they are an excellent choice, don't need to be cleaned as often (Izzy was a poop and pee machine, I tell you. But she always peed in the same place. We referred to that corner as "the bathroom".) and they aren't nocturnal. SOLD. Junior needs pets he can interact with while he's awake, and I need pets that won't run on a wheel all night long. Good Lord, her fat ass would make the wheel thump on the floor of the tank and there were many nights someone would have to get up and just pull the damned thing out of the tank.

But she was cute, so that made up for it.

But Beth, based on your comment, we'll be going through the hamper in great detail this evening.

Labels: Izzy, pets

Remember a few months ago when those criminals escaped from jail after digging an escape route in the cell and covering up the hole with a racy pinup photos? Well little did we know that Miss Izzy would take her cue from New Jersey fugitives and make a run for it this weekend.
I can only blame myself for her escape – we tried out a new wheel (in our endless effort to get a quiet one) and I think it was stable enough for her to get on top of it because of all the bedding underneath making the wheel hard to spin. In the morning Mr. Dump and I were congratulating each other on finding a wheel that did not squeak all night. That's when I noticed that her house, which usually has the door blocked with bedding, was free and clear. The equivalent of an unmade bed. And I could see inside but I couldn't see Izzy. And I started to panic.
Izzy left at some point during the night, and sadly, despite spending literally ALL DAY Memorial Day looking for her, calling her name and putting out her favorite treats, we pretty much have to assume she's not going to be coming back. The dog never found a trace of her (i.e. never acted like he smelled anything hamster-related). There were no tell-tale turdlets anywhere to be found. The weather was pretty darned warm the past two days, and without a steady water supply, I'm feeling like she signed her own fate when she leaped from the tank.
So, goodbye Izzy. I feel really horrible about losing you, even though I did nothing to encourage it, nor did I want you to break Junior's heart that way. Junior, by the way, still holds out hope that we may find Izzy. Mr. Dump suggested the time-honored tradition of replacing the pet with an exact replica, but I'd rather Junior face the fact that Izzy is gone, and decide for himself if he wants to get another hamster, or perhaps go with something less nocturnal this time around. It's not like I don't have all the toys, a brand new bag of bedding, brand new wheel, and brand new bag of food available.
I can tell you that we will re-visit the whole top of the tank security measures.

Rip Izzy

Izzy, 2008-2008

Labels: Izzy, pets, sad

Junior [okay, really, me] is responsible for selling a box of candy bars for Little League. So I brought the box into work, because really, how many candy bars have I bought over the years?

Every day I put a new sign on the box, showing off my mad sales skillz. For two days I touted them has "health bars" [mental health, silly!] and Jon Lester's Secret Weapon. Today, I posted the following sign. I'll let you know which was the most effective.

Labels: gnomes, humor, junior

This was a story about a parrot that was able to provide the authorities it's name and address. Keen eyes at CNN.com missed the typo shown here.

I like the twist on the lost parent, because that's a trick used to keep a lost kid calm. You don't say the kid is lost, you say the parent is lost.

Labels: humor, News

[*Updated to fix the broken links*]

I rule. I now have the Mr. Deity theme song as my ringtone, just like Mr. Deity does (except when he has Elton John's "The Bitch is Back").

"Who is Mr. Deity?" you ask?

Mr. Deity may be the greatest thing since sliced bread. If you really want a behind the scenes look at what it's like to be The Deity and to create the heavens and earth and whether or not we're really supposed to take Sundays off, you should hike over to the Mr. Deity site and either watch the copies there or download the podcast to take it with you wherever you go on your video-enabled iPod.

I'm still floored that something this good is available for free.

Labels: fun, humor, link, video

The thing about living in New England is that you're never really that far from the ocean. And if you've had to run an errand to the Apple Store in Salem NH, you're REALLY not that far from the ocean. So we took a detour out to Hampton Beach. It was fairly bustling, considering it's still the middle of May. There were plenty of people sitting on the beach, some in bathing suits, even though it wasn't all that warm. Perhaps they were visiting from Antarctica and considered it to be blistering hot?

We intended to park at the Hampton State Park and walk on the rocks, but apparently there was some kind of mega tow truck show or something. These are the tow trucks that you see pulling fire engines and dumptrucks, the kind that make you really wonder what kind of gas mileage they get. Anyhoo, they filled the ENTIRE parking lot, so we had to go down to the lots near the bathrooms and stuff.

At North beach there were a TON of people surfing. Not that there was anything too special about the waves, but it's been kind of crappy so I think people where just happy to get the heck out of the house.

I know I was!

Labels: beach, junior, photos

Today is a good day. Many good things happened in history on this day. 11 years ago on this day I had dinner in the Houston airport. 14 years ago on this day I visited Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth NH. 15 years ago on this day we started a 10 day vacation at Walt Disney World.

See how great a day this is?

Oh the Disney thing? It was our honeymoon.

*smooches* to Mister Dump for 15 great (and interesting) years! (And they said I'd kill you in your sleep it wouldn't last!! Ha! See how little they knew?)

Labels: happy, holidays

We rode to and from Junior's baseball game in Mr. Dump's car. He parks on the right side of the driveway. That means I have to get out of the car on the edge of the driveway near the holly bush. Tonight, the holly bush was alive with bumbly bees, the big fuzzy wuzzy ones. When I say alive, I mean the bush sounded like it was vibrating. Lots of buzzing. So I tried to be brave and take some bee pictures, which is relatively had to do at dusk, when you need to slow down the lens for the light, and the bees aren't standing still or posing where you want them to.

It also doesn't work as well when you don't have a macro lens. I'm going to make sure I have a macro lens in my basket over at Amazon. And if anyone wants me to take more bee photos for them, they can buy me a lens. See, it's easy!

Labels: photos

This is the poem I got for Mother's day this year. I did not expect a poem, but I was very happy to get it. It was written on a piece of foamy stuff with a magnet on the back so I can keep it on the fridge.

I started to write my mom a poem but it was not as good as this one so I just gave up altogether. I can honestly say that nobody has ever, ever, written me a better poem than this one, and I doubt they ever will.

My Mother's Day Poem, by Junior

My mom appreciates Mike Lowell
But I hope I make her complete
Without me there could be a hole
My mom appreciates Mike Lowell

We work together like some moles
But she also makes my heart beat
My mom appreciates Mike Lowell
But I hope I make her complete.

Labels: junior, love, Mike Lowell, poetry, Red_Sox

Yesterday was Mother's Day here in the United States. (Hey, I have at least one international reader that will admit to it, so let me just pretend I'm I web sensation the world over, would you?) I got my mother's day present earlier (some high quality headphones for my iPod to do a better job of blocking out stray conversations at work) and certainly wasn't expecting anything on Sunday.

But Junior wrote me a poem (I will share it tomorrow, because I don't remember it verbatim and I want to make sure I don't miss a thing) and gave me a little pot with seeds planted in it. I believe the flowers will be marigolds, but he was calling it something else, so we'll see.

We packed up and headed out to Newport to meet up with my brother-in-law and his wife who were up here taking their belated honeymoon. And my new sister-in-law presented me with my "other" Mothers Day Present: salt. I got salt for mother's day! I'll bet nobody else out there can say that!!! I got salt hand-carried all the way from Houston! And I'm beside myself thrilled!

You see, we eat at Bertucci's a lot, and they have Cefalu Sea Salt grinders on the table, and I love this salt more than many many things in my life. Every time we go there (a couple of times a month) I threaten to steal the salt off the table, because we have never been able to find it for sale anywhere. Apparently, Mr. Dump wrote down the name and phone number of the import company and did a ton of footwork to try to track it down. The company would only sell it by the case but apparently there's a liquor store chain in Houston that carries it, and he somehow convinced my SIL to wait in line for 40 minutes (!) to buy me 5 shakers of Cefalu salt (she also bought one for herself). And they gave it to me yesterday and I was bouncing with happiness! No longer do I need to fight the urge to steal!

This is darned tasty salt. It's hard to explain how salt can taste good, but it just tastes, well, salty. It's 100x better than anything you pour out of a round box into a shaker, and you grind it yourself with the built in grinder-top. The bottle says it's imported from Sicily, 100% natural, made only by the Sea and the Sun. Maybe it's the sun that makes it extra good. I recommend that you all go to Bertucci's and try some.

So yes, I got salt for mother's day. And I couldn't be happier.

Labels: food, gifts, happy, holidays

Saw this at the mall last night when I was running an errand. Hard to tell if it was coming or going, but I assume it's up for the Mother's Day crowd.

For the record, I do not want to go to a mall parking lot carnival for Mother's Day. Sure, I'm a fan of mall parking lot carnivals in general, but not for Mother's Day. Those are for Father's Day.

Labels: fun, holidays, photos, weather

I need a cable to hook up a peripheral to my Mac, and so I went to Best Buy to look for one. (I bought one last year, according to Amazon which tells you on what date you ordered something even if it was a jillion years ago, but I couldn't tell you where it is to save my life.)

They had two. One was 52 bucks (uh, no thanks, I saw them for ten bucks on Amazon) and the other was 32. Junior told me to just get the $32 one (I had a $5 coupon, but still...) but the guy who found it for me pointed out that the reason it was so expensive was because it was fourteen feet long. Okay, picture a laptop, and picture something you want to connect to it, like, say, a camera. Do you have any need at all for a 14 foot cable? Because I don't.

So I don't have a cable yet, but I hear you can get one on Amazon for $10, and the only problem is that it disappears into the void at your house after a while.

Labels: shopping

It's my official 2nd day of being an Utter Wonder Hall of Famer. Things are still going exceedingly well in the Hall of Famer department. I had no idea what it was like to be a Hall of Famer, I mean, it's like all of a sudden my life was converted to HD when it used to be just normal regular TV. You don't really know what you're missing until you get that HD TV, and then you scorn the people who are still living with the technology of the 60s and 70s.

That's what it's like being me.

I highly recommend you all become Hall of Famers so that we can start getting together on the 2nd Wednesday of the month for a luncheon. (That's a good word, isn't it? Luncheon. Not just a sandwich and a drink, it's a luncheon, because special people don't just eat lunch. They attend luncheons.

One of you will have to be the guest speaker, though, because I'm going to be busy trying to eat my lunch. Luncheon. Sorry, still not used to all this.

Labels: famous, food, happy, nothingness

Okay, all the cool kids probably knew this, but I'm a Hall of Famer. I'm a rock star. I'm a goodness-to-gracious web celeb. CMonks added me to his Hall of Fame over at Utter Wonder today.

This is the moment I've been dreaming of ever since I realized that you can't be Miss America if you are older than 30 and have been married for 15 years. Well, I hit 15 years in 2 weeks, but you get my point.

I said to myself, "Self, if you can't be Miss America, or be one of the kids who gets to be on the box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, you could at least be in the Hall of Fame at Utter Wonder because he has absolutely no requirements other than that you ask. And I can do that! I'm a good asker!"

So there I am.

And for the record, I do like dolphins. They are cool. Not as cool as rhinos, but hey, what is?

Labels: award, fun, websites