SubscribeA photo from our little Maine getaway – three cousins on Marginal Way.
The Big DumpTruck
Throwing Little Thought Pebbles at Your Windshield Since 1996
Tag: Vacation
Mini Vacation Over So Soon?
Spent two nights up in Manchester Vermont and got back home last night. I love me some vacation. I’m rather bummed to be home but to be honest, I ran out of cheese money on Tuesday. I will chalk this one up to just being lucky to get away from home at all. And I was thinking of taking The Boy to the beach but now it looks pretty chilly and rainy the next couple of days. That’s no fun for anyone.
Actually, I have to go through all the photos and videos now, or it will never get done. But if today is the nicest day remaining this week, shouldn’t I “do” something fun and save that for the rainy days? It’s 9am, I’d better decide soon!
The Horse I Wanted
Went horseback riding with my sister, her kids, their friend and my son. I knew they were going to have to give me a horse to fit my riding experience, so I picked this one. The kids all thought he was awesome. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me have this one. Instead I got something akin to a Clydesdale. I’m pretty sure Domino could have easily plowed the back 40. He knew he had an easy mark on his back and went out of his way to eat everything he saw. “Don’t let him eat anything!” Oh, easy for you to say. Domino disagrees with you!
I Seem to Have Misplaced June
I’m not sure how it happened. I thought I had put June in my purse, next to my wallet and my car keys, but then when I went to look for it, it wasn’t there. I checked the counters, but you know, they are a bit messy at my house. I have plenty of bits of this and that on the counter, bags of doggie treats and little boy treats, but no June. As hard as I looked for it, it simply wasn’t there.
I looked in the trunk of my car, under the folding chairs, baseball equipment and kites, but there was no sign of June; none at all.
It’s as if June up and disappeared on me. I suppose I will just have to get resigned to the idea that June is missing and won’t be found, and focus my attention on July. I really don’t want to lose July the way I lost June so I’m going to keep closer watch on it. Starting tomorrow, when I take an extra day off to spend some quality time with it. Just me and July, maybe going for a road trip, buying ice cream, listening to some tunes. I think July and I are going to get along really well.
Worst Reason to Cancel Baseball Practice
Junior has practice tomorrow. We heard it might snow. You know, people, by Tax Week, we should have all this snow nonsense behind us. [Yes, of course I know it's not unheard of - our Lamaze class was filled with the result of the Unnamed 4/1 Snowstorm of '97. Not us, we were due a couple of weeks after everyone else. I've told you that before. I'm not making it up.]
I have less than a week until I’m on vacation. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to make it until then before bursting from anticipation and packing-avoidance. You know, the usual.
Five Days of "Me" Time
I have a few days away from work. I don’t know if I’ll be able to figure out what to do with myself. I would lie to you all and say I’m going to enjoy some Jody-time but you know that’s not true. I have a lot of things that I’ve needed to catch up on, including processing video from Junior’s two concerts, continuing cleaning my room (One Bag at a Time(r)).
I think maybe I should take up a new hobby in my five days. I could learn a new language, or maybe learn the hula. I’d rather be in Hawaii for that one though, and five days isn’t enough to deal with the jet lag. I’ll try to become a new me in the next five days. I’ll be sure to introduce myself when I get back.
Doing the "Day Off" Dance. Thrice.
I am doing the happy happy joy joy dance! 5 more days off in a row! Who doesn’t love that?
First Day of Fall
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.
End of Vacation Panic
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?
How to Be My New Best Friend
Yesterday, Mr. Dump, Junior and I took a field trip to Rockport MA, one of my favorite places in the universe. We went to just have a nice, no pressure day, just to walk around, maybe get some chowdah and an ice cream, and take a few photos.
I met a guy who is now my new best friend. We did the whole “check out the equipment to see if we’re Canon or Nikon (or whatever) people” and saw we both had Canon stuff. He had this magnificent lens on a tripod, and I was walking around with my 17-40, not the greatest lens for taking distance shots. It turns out his lens beat out my 40 10 fold…he had a 100-400mm lens. Niiiice. The cool thing was that he asked if I wanted to attach my camera to his lens to take a few shots. He showed me how his tripod worked (damn, I can’t even afford his tripod, never mind the rest of his equipment!) and let me take the photo you see above. I can honestly say I had no idea there was a lighthouse within eyeshot of the end of Bareskin Neck…I don’t think I had ever really spotted it before, and I certainly didn’t have the fire power to take a decent photo of it.
So thank you, kind stranger! If I’m ever in the same position as you, being the one with the really good lens when a fellow Canon-ite comes by, I will let them try out my cool lens so they can tell their friends how awesome I am.
p.s If you are in the Rockport area looking for a meal with a view, I HIGHLY recommend the Blacksmith Shop, which is a block or two up (to the right) of the parking lot (the one with the town offices). I don’t think a ton of people walk up that far, because the place was fairly empty, but we literally had one of the most amazing views I have ever had from a restaurant. I had a fantatic lobster/pasta dish, and the two boys both had caesar salads – Junior had his with shrimp, and Mr. Dump went with the chicken. All our meals were fantastic, but really, the meal was the amazing part. If you go to my flickr photostream (click the link on my name below the photo) you can see were we were sitting right on the edge of a deck. I will eventually upload the photo I took of the view with the iPhone. Fantastic.
