The Big DumpTruck

That is all.

Labels: Red_Sox, sports

The cool thing about forgetting something, is that unless you are trying to remember it, you have no idea that you forgot it. In many cases, forgetting something is a blessing, because you probably should not have had the piece of information locked in your head anyway.
Case in point: Tuesday night on the way back from a brutal baseball game (18-13 them, although we should have kicked their butts but what are you going to do. They basically stole home about 12 times on passed balls. Not a fun evening.) and Mr. Dump mentioned that he'd brought up a singer to one of the player's grandfather, who didn't really remember the singer. And I mentioned "what about that other guy...." and completely blanked.
The funny thing is that I could totally picture him. I had the hair and the mustache burned into my brain, but his name, a name I had used about a billion times in the long ago as my humorous go-to guys, had escaped. Couldn't remember it. Mr. Dump couldn't remember it.
This morning, I did a Google search sort of describing him, and I got some false leads, but a name in one of the false leads reminded me of this guy's name, and now it's stuck back in my head again.
Can anyone guess the answer? Here are your clues - you'll have to click this link to get the answer, you buncha cheaters.
1. 70's television commercial star
2. Elvis hair (not "elvish", Elvis)
3. kickin' mustache

Labels: fun, music, quiz

I have reached the alarmed point in the summer...July is almost over, all 500 days of it, and I have not yet done anything X-treme. As you all know, normally by now I have done enough X-treme activities that I am left happy and content for the rest of the year. But I have not jumped off any buildings, ridden any rocket sleds, or roller bladed down an interstate holding on to the back of a semi. None of those things. No being shot out of a cannon, flagpole sitting or being set on fire for a movie stunt. Nothing. I have done the drone-like "go to work" thing and then the "go watch your kid play baseball" thing, but at no point did I wrestle sharks or attach balloons to a lawn chair and to go for a celestial spin.
I feel like the entire month of July was just a waste, and now I'm going to be all mopey because that's a month I'll never ever get back. I completely blew it.

Labels: fun, summer

It's fish stick night at Chez Dump. I can't tell you the last time I had fish sticks. But we're having them tonight, and I think that's great. I'm trying to remember what we would have had in elementary school to go with them. I'd call my sister to ask but I don't think she's home right now. Okay, I know she isn't. So maybe some fruit cup? I don't think we have any fruit cup in the house, but I have some blueberries we bought yesterday. That's a little classy to try to recreate the school cafeteria experience. I just realized that what we need is tater tots, and we don't have any.

I hope to remedy that problem soon.

Junior's baseball team is on a horrible downward spiral. I don't think they are going to win a spot in the tournament playoffs, but hey, at least they're getting a chance to play.

Labels: food, school

You know, all I wanted to do was have a nice quiet evening at home, eating snack foods and trying to figure out the perfect seed songs for Pandora so it will only play songs I adore. I actually have one good list going.

So Suldog tagged me and I'm supposed to respond to this chain letter meme and then drag many of you into it as well. I'm going to be kind of random about who I pick, so don't feel bad if I leave you out. Feel blessed. And please God, no tagsies backsies. I will probably not do this again, because when I figure out how hard it is to find 7 people that I feel comfortable tagging, it makes me feel bad. Don't make me feel bad, people.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog; some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

HERE ARE THE SEVEN FACTS!


1 – I was once the Chief of Police in my town.

I won an essay contest and got to be the Chief of Police. I didn't get to DO anything, of course, but I did get the grand tour of the station, and I got to ride in a cruiser to lunch with the Mayor for a day, my friend Kim, and the Fire Chief for a day, my sister Deb. We RULED! (The next year I won the Mayor for a Day role, but I think the Police Chief gig sounds much less plausible.

2 - I made a video of my gerbils and put it into a digital photo frame on my desk and it plays the video in a loop so that it looks like I have pets in my cubicle.

I think that one doesn't need much clarification

3 - I have made it to age 43 without ever doing recreational drugs of any kind

I'm too afraid of going to jail to ever do anything bad - I've always had an unnatural fear of getting in trouble. I don't like confrontation. It was easier to just avoid the illegal stuff - I had friends who used to smoke pot but they respected my not wanting to, and just never asked.

4 - Nobody has ever been able to teach me to play cribbage.

They have tried, and I don't get it. I'm not stupid, I pick up games quickly, but for some reason I have a massive mental block when it comes to cribbage.

5 - When I ran a BBS back in 1987, there was a secret (!) section of it that contained ASCII porn. That's right, pictures of naked people created using keyboard characters. Racy!!!

My current website doesn't contain any porn. Trust me, I've looked.

6 - When I was a teenager I never wore shorts because I thought everyone was staring at my hairy legs.

I have dark, lush arm and leg hair. I'm apparently devolving back into an ape. Lucky me. Even when I shave, I feel like you can see it. Even though you probably can't. But I refused to wear shorts because of it.

7 - Even though I own a dog upon whom the sun rises and sets, I don't like any other dogs.

Other people: I don't like your dog. I LOVE my dog, but he's extraordinary. Yours is not. He is dirty and smelly and he's just a stupid dog. Even when I'm standing with my dog right next to you, I don't like your dog, I only like mine. I'm sorry, I'm just not a dog person. I'm actually afraid of dogs, although I've gotten much better. A growling dog used to reduce me to a sobbing mess.


***********************************************************

So those are my random facts. I'm sure I mentioned some of them here already. I left out a couple of juicy ones because, well, I have relatives who read my website.

I have to go leave them comments telling them they are tagged, but I'm going to go with

Christine

Reid

Bunnythefoo

Chuck

Mr. Crunchy

Mr. Dump

Jennie

Labels: me, Meme, memories

My son had a sleepover here last night and all he got me was a short video movie he made with his friend. The file is stored over at flickr (they do video now too) and I think MAYBE you can download this one to watch on your iPod. I'm not sure if it will let everyone, or just me because it's in my account. Actually, can someone let me know? If you can't, I can try to upload the M4V version here with a link. Because I know you want to watch this daily on your iPod or iPhone. I know I do.

Labels: flickr, junior, outer space, video

Everyone out there is posting stuff about iPhone applications, so I thought I should do the same because if you know me, you know I like to be completely and utterly trendy. It's almost a genetic thing. That and my need to wear comfortable shoes. Now I can already hear you saying "but Jody, the need to be completely trendy and the need to wear comfortable shoes cancel each other out!" You know, for some people, that would be true. But I can be completely trendy AND wear comfortable shoes and they do NOT cancel each other out. That's how awesome I am.

So here is my pick for the absolute best free iPhone app. The runners-up, More Cowbell and SimStapler, were very worthy opponents. I'm guessing tens of thousands of people out there did not know they needed an iPhone application that allowed them to make a cowbell sound, followed by Christopher Walken saying "I need more cowbell".

As for SimStapler, well, where else can you go if you have an urgent need to pretend to staple something? Nowhere I tell you! SimStapler does it all! It pretends to staple, and keeps count of how many pretend staples you've done! Perfect!

But to get all serious, the true winner here, in the "I can't believe it's free" category, is AOL Radio. All kidding aside, this app (which I've run on Mr. Dump's 1st generation iPhone so it doesn't need the 3G) gives you access to dozens of radio stations, to listen to live over your iPhone. There are some custom AOL set up stations (comedy, trance, and my favorites, One Hit Wonders and All 80s.) If you hear something you like, you can mark it as a favorite and/or go pull it up in AOL Music (where you can learn more about the song/artist) or iTunes to buy it. You can set favorite stations to find them quickly. And big bonus, it carries some terrestrial local stations, so you can listen to WBCN anywhere.

There are some limitations if you aren't on wifi or 3g, according to the iTunes site, but don't let that stop you. If you have an iPhone and haven't grabbed AOL Radio, go do it now.

Labels: fun, iPhone, music

Hey, if you're over on Facebook, feel free to join the Fans of the Big DumpTruck group (do a search people - I want you to put some effort into this, okay? That will prove your fan-dom.)

I cannot pretend that we'll end up with as many members as, say, the Fans of High School Musical or Obama, but we can certainly break into double digits, right?

Okay, you slackers, here is a link to the group.

Labels: friends, websites

Okay, I didn't lose macaroni salad, exactly, but I did create a whole post about macaroni salad, and when I went to view BDT, there was no mention of macaroni salad anywhere. Not even a whiff of it. So what, now I have to type it in again? That's a lot of work just to dazzle you guys with nonsense. Let's not even count the minutes spent pressing the spell check button and correcting all the errors.

I believe I started off by mentioning that Junior's baseball team won their second game last night with a more reasonable 7-5 final score. Not that 28-4 wasn't fun. Except it wasn't, really. Last night's game was really fun to watch because the teams were so evenly matched. Quite frankly, I was shocked that we won. Based on the first couple of innings, we didn't, but we really pulled it together at the end.

So the macaroni part of the message was related to me bitching about the weather predicted for this weekend. I hate hot and humid (which should not be news to anyone here) and I said I would probably only leave the house to grill burgers and dogs. And then I asked you all to post your favorite/best/easiest macaroni (aka pasta) salad because I adore macaroni salad and I think it should be required any time you fire up the grill to have a giant bowl of pasta salad available.

I also requested recipes that were mayo based because I'm in search of the macaroni salad of my childhood, and while I "get" dumping a bottle of italian dressing on cooked macaroni, that's not what I'm looking for. Even though that's sort of how I'm kick starting the request:

1 pound cooked rotini
1 green pepper, diced
1-2 tablespoons of light mayo
1 bottle of Wishbone Russian dressing (MUST BE WISHBONE. It's dark red in the bottle)

Mix up the rotini and pepper with the mayo to sort of coat the pasta. This will help the russian dressing stick. Stir in the bottle of Wishbone Russian Dressing. Cool in fridge. Re-stir before serving. This dish is even better after it sits. Even Mr. Dump likes this one.

Labels: baseball, cooking, weather

Junior, who was selected to play on one of the Jimmy Fund 10 Year old teams from North Leominster played against one of the Leominster American teams last night. Final score? 28-4. It was a horrible, crushing win. At the top of the 6th the score was 28-0. The parents on both teams were completely subdued - even our kids noticed that their parents were no longer cheering for them. We all just wanted the whole thing to be over. Hey, we've been there at a game where our kids were stepped on like that. What I don't get is why the don't FORCE a mercy rule (if you're up by more than 10 runs after the 4th, the game is considered complete) or an inning run limit (normal season is 4 runs except for the 6th [final] inning). I thought I read on the District tournament site that there was a 5 fun limit. I guess that before the game the managers of the two teams playing get to decide if they want to enforce the limit and the mercy rule, and both managers agreed to play without one.

By the fifth inning, several of us were wondering if we should offer them a second chance to call the game, as their players just seemed so horribly sad and crushed, and as parents, we just didn't want to continue to torture them.

You know it's bad when we all started to applaud them whenever they got an out, just because we were happy for them. Totally involuntary reaction at that point.

So yes, we were very excited for the win, but nobody wants to see that kind of blowout, unless it's the Red Sox against the Yankees.

Labels: baseball, junior

I apologize for the missing blog posts. I was, uh....passed out from being closed up in a room with too much writing on the white boards. Which is not entirely untrue. I was closed up in a room, and there was too much writing, but most of it was on those ginormous Post-It Flip Charts.

Note to the white board marker people: There is no need to add scent to these things. The black marker doesn't smell like chocolate mint. Please just stop it.

So the other day I thought of a "truth" that I figured nobody would buy. Those are the good ones, aren't they? The problem is coming up with the other truth and the lie, enough to make them all sound plausible. Ready? Here we go.

1. I own four pair of green pants.
2. The song listed as having the most plays on my iPod is "Banjo Boy".
3. My boss's boss squeezed my "squishy stress dog" so hard it exploded on him, covering him with pink liquid.

Labels: fun, lies

I'm such a sap. This is the kind of thing that makes my husband laugh at me, which is why I cannot watch Field of Dreams with him any more. It doesn't matter how many times I watch it, I always cry.

This is a link to a video of two guys a the lion they raised from a cub until they released him into the wild. This video is 40 years old, put to a modern soundtrack - you can watch without sound. Very safe for work unless you're the kind of person who cries watching Magic Kingdom commercials when the kids see Mickey for the first time. Ya, that's me too.

Labels: happy, holy_crap, video

Yes, yes indeed, gas hit a new high today. Thank you CNN. Did you not hear what I said yesterday? Am I just whistling into the wind over here? Sheesh, it's like a girl can't change the world just by writing about it and posting it to her website. I have 60-100 hits a day, are you telling me that one of those is NOT CNN? AP? The Leominster Champion? Sheesh.
Speaking of the Leominster Champion and champions in general, Junior's minor league team, Piper Electric, won the playoffs (North Leominster Little League) on Saturday, so their team will get to go to the cities in August. He's been playing baseball in that league for 5 or 6 years now (I keep losing count) and this is the first time his team has been this good. It was a really great group of kids who were a pleasure to watch. The team we beat, Valliere's, was a worthy opponent and my personal choice for the team to win if we couldn't.
I took a team photo after the game and gave copies to the three coaches. The sister of one of the coaches also took pictures that afternoon, and there's a 50/50 chance that the one I gave them will make the paper. I don't know which paper, but I'll let you know if it does.
p.s. This is kind of a test for people who actually read all the way to the end of one of my posts. I recently signed on with FaceBook. I don't really want to post my info out there for the universe to find, because I do like some level of privacy. If folks who also have a website "advertise" that they are on Facebook, how do you do it? Did you create a separate account for your website readers? Or did you find that people don't necessarily friend you even when you make the info readily available?p.p.s. At least one person from my blogroll sent me a note saying that she's in Facebook, but apparently she's got a hidden profile because I cannot find her to add her.

Labels: baseball, junior, websites