The Big DumpTruck

It's gross out. It's the kind of day where you feel like knitting a scarf because you know you're going to need it, possibly later in the day. It's the kind of day where you start to think about things like hot cocoa and fireplaces and how it sucks that your favorite fall fairs only come once a year because in bad weather, you either miss it entirely, or you go but you are miserable and wet and you regret going when your nose starts to run. Is the Bolton Fair worth that? Hmmmm.

I'm kind of in that space right now. It's not actually raining at this moment, but everything is soaking wet with no hope of it drying off. I think it's likely to start raining again at any minute, but I'm not a meteorologist, now, am I? They have not called to cancel Junior's baseball game, so it puts a major cramp in any plans anyway. I liked the first week of fall ball because his game was at 9am. It didn't occur to me when we signed him up that afternoon games would totally screw up my fall fair schedule.

P.S. Added my Twitter feed over there on the right. I wish I could figure out how to make it be any color other than that shade of blue. I may have to use something else to post it, like from Twitter directly. There's a thought. I think it might be time to redesign the whole site anyway...

Labels: baseball, fairs, fall, weather

Look, as of very early this morning, the forecast for the weekend did not look good. I have a problem with that, as there are at least three different things that I want to do this weekend, and not a single one of them involves standing in the rain. I have game 3 of fall ball, it's the Bolton Fair weekend, and also the Ferncol Fair weekend. And you know how much I love me a tour of the cow barn! [Insert obligatory link to the Cow Baby story from 2002.]

But if it's raining, not so much. Bolton won't postpone, I know that. Not sure about Ferncol but I assume they don't either. And they need all the people to come because it funds the extra activities (especially the annual holiday party) for the residents. Plus they have good clam chowdah.

So no rain, okay? I have a lot to do and only 2 days to do it.

Labels: fairs, fall, weather

Someone pointed out to me this morning that today is the first day of fall. I guess that by now, we've been up to our earballs in fall stuff, so it isn't as much of a shock to the system as it would be to have summer end, say, in August. It's a non-event; we already thought it was fall.

That doesn't make me 100% happy, though. I missed most of summer. Didn't really do anything beach-y or vacation-y, you know, the uber summer vacation stuff. As Junior gets older I do feel a sense of panic that the months are years are passing and by the time I can actually take time off from work to go "do" things with him, he won't want to. You know, he'll be a sullen teenager. Or he'll be out of the house. I'm scared to death of that happening because he's just one of the coolest, funniest people I know, and if I don't have him to hang around with, I'm going to be very very sad. Batman needs Robin, you know? And Mr. Dump won't wear tights.

So ya, the end of summer makes me angry. Damn you, earth, and your tilty nature!

Other than that, things are good, thanks for asking. Only a little over a month until the next NaNoWriMo. I think I'm going to do it again. I'm going to guess Christine and Foo are going to avoid talking to me until December 1st so that I won't harass them to sign up.

Labels: autumn, fall, junior, Vacation

Today was the day...Junior picked up the phone all by his lonesome and called my sister to ask her if she wanted to go apple picking. I can't say I was upset, given that I love going apple picking more than I even like eating the apples after I've picked them. As I mentioned on Twitter earlier today, there was an unbelievable bumper crop of apples...more than I've seen in ages. We literally could have filled the bags on just the trees right next to the stand where you traded in your first born for a bag to fill. (Ya, it's more expensive to buy an empty bag you have to fill yourself; on the other hand, my kid personally consumed about a pound of apples while we walked around.

I have a handful of some of the more interesting photos of the day up on flickr...

Labels: autumn, fall, fun

I set up an account on Twitter a little while ago. I've not said very much over there, because I realized that nobody, not even Mr. Dump, had subscribed to my Tweets. I don't feed too badly about it, because I can be frighteningly mundane. However, I have an application on my iPhone that makes it easier for me to keep up with people tweets, and to write my own.

So I'm officially announcing that you can follow my tweets if you want. If you don't, I won't feel very badly. Much.

http://www.twitter.com/bigdumptruck

If any of you are on twitter, leave your name down in the comments to I can find you and add you.

Labels: time_waster, too_much_info, websites

Had fun at the North Leominster Little League annual banquet last night. It would have been fun anyway, but Junior getting 2 trophies plus a sponsor-supplied City Championship sweatshirt (thanks, Piper Electric!) was really icing on the cake. No, wait, the icing on the cake was winning a $50 Il Forno gift card during the raffle portion of the evening.

Junior had a great year. Can't say what next year will hold - there are a LOT of really good players in his age group, but they can't take the glory of the 2008 season away from him! Hopefully, he won't pull an "Uncle Rico" and spend the rest of his life dwelling on it, though... if I go 4 wheeling with my boyfriend and break something and ask Junior to take care of my grandchildren Napoleon and Kip, you have permission to shake me.



(So that raises the question - what happened to Napoleon and Kip's parents that they were living with their grandmother? Not that it matters - it's still one of the single greatest movies of all time. Somebody go build me a cake or something.)

Labels: baseball, movies

I was over on iTunes looking at the free applications. I like to check at least once a week because there are so darned many new free apps being uploaded. I found one that will auto-generate your pirate, Jedi or stripper name. So that's cool. And the sample screen made me smile because it had Johnny Appleseed on it. We all love us some Johnny Appleseed around here. And then I looked at the 2nd screen shot and it showed even more Johnny Appleseed details! I dropped a note to the guy who created the application to find out if he's a local (or was at any time) because really, how often does ANYONE use Leominster on a sample form?

Screen shot at iTunes (no really, go ahead and look for yourself!)




[Update Sept 12: When I went in to use the application, I discovered that the above info is actually on screen as an example, so it's not only on iTunes, it's in the application. Very amusing to me, "Mad" Patch Ridingcrop aka Diamond Leatherhips aka Laf-Jo Rocfit.]

Labels: itunes, Leominster

From Dump Friend Pia, via email:

"Whatever you give a woman, she's going to multiply. If you give her sperm,
she'll give you a baby.If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you
give her groceries, she'll give you a meal.If you give her a smile, she'll give
you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.
So - if you
give her any crap, you will receive a ton of shit." Author
unknown

I will admit, no matter how many groceries you give me, there is a damned good chance you won't get a meal. But I can give you a written guarantee on the ton of shit.

Labels: funny, quotes

You know, it occurs to me that I have not had to watch an episode of Teletubbies in a good 8 years. I could not tell you if it is even possible to watch an episode if you wanted to. As Martha would say, that's a good thing.

But to this day, it is etched into my brain with the shaky hand of a youth with one of those wood burning kits. Ya, I know, ouch.

I still say "Tinky Winky all full up." It may or may not drive the people forced to live with me crazy. I cannot help this, it's just the way it is. So when it was time to write a post about how I have successfully filled up the hard drive on my laptop, I wrote the title up at the top without a second thought. But that's not true, because I did have a second thought, a little bit later. I left the title the way it was anyway. I'm like that.

So my hard drive is full. Let me just spit that out before my mind wanders any further and you're left wondering what the hell made you read this far. I am trying to burn data to disks before either moving it to the backup drive (I'm anal. I trust nothing, especially an external backup drive). I have successfully given myself 3 whole gigs of free space, which will at least allow me to run the computer without worrying that it will begin to throw fits. I want to be the only thing at my desk throwing fits, doncha know.

Labels: computer_art, stuff, television

Arrrrrrgh. Do I really have to go to work tomorrow? Is there some reason I can stay home? I would really like to extend vacation by, um, 3 months. Okay, not three, just one. One month. It can even be a short month like February (except I don't want the vacation month to BE February, I want it to be right now).

I don't think I'm going to have a good reason to stay home tomorrow. Thank goodness I did laundry yesterday so I would have some clean work pants. Damn, a week of wearing jeans and shorts, all gone.

First day of school tomorrow too. I'm going to go bury my head in a pile of sale pillows from JC Penney. How on earth did Junior get to be a 5th grader?

Labels: sad, Vacation