The Big DumpTruck

We didn’t have soccer yesterday. I had a feeling that would be the case, given that by the time they played the third games of the day after 10 days of rain, it would have been the mudbowl out there. 50mph wind gusts would have just added to the fun. I think part of the decision to call was just to save the sod. They have 4 fields, and our in-town league plays three games in each field on Sunday, 12:30, 1:30 and 2:30. So you’ve got all the parents with chairs, etc., the siblings running around, plus the little team members running around. The grass would have been destroyed. I don’t know how much it costs to reseed, but I think it wise to just let the field dry out, y’know?

So we went pumpkin picking. Before I left the house for my sister’s, I thought “I’ll be it will be muddy” so I packed boots. Junior has those good rubber rain boots. I need to get a pair of those. Because 5 of us went out into basically a pumpkin swamp. There was 2-3 inches of standing water in places, and where there wasn’t water, there was mud. You’d step on land that looked fine, and sink 5 or so inches in, and water would gush over your shoe. My hiking boots, it turns out, are not waterproof. I was a soaking mess. The mud tried to rip off my boots and almost succeeded. And then there were the winds…so you can imagine we looked fantastic by the time we left. And then we noticed a bunch of people picking pumpkins on the hill behind where you pay. You know, a hill where the water would run off so it probably wasn’t muddy.
“Why didn’t you tell us we could go up there and not down to the “lake”?”
“Oh, all the big pumpkins are down there.”

I don’t recall telling anyone we were looking for big pumpkins! Sigh.

(The plus side to all of this was walking through the mud was a good workout, plus I stole a brand new pair of socks from my sister. Win-Win!

p.s. Phantom is having his jingle bells removed right now. I can’t tell you how guilty I feel. But not as guilty as I would if he knocked up some other dog. He was getting cozy with a basset hound at doggie daycare. I do not want to see a litter of bassetpoo (Cockahound?) puppies.

I’m done being damp, okay? Just done. A guy started work the week, transplanted from California. Having a discussion with him about places to visit, etc, I realized he thought this weather was typical for us. He thought Merrimack NH was the Seattle of the East, because it had been rainy and disgusting ever since he arrived last weekend. I don’t know if I was successful in my efforts to tell him that it really was very very unusual to have such miserable weather this many days in a row. I suppose he won’t believe me until it actually stops being so gross out.

I heard we might get very heavy winds tomorrow. Given how saturated the ground is (walking on the front yard was like mucking about in quicksand) if we do have 50mph wind gusts, I wouldn’t park my car under any big trees…unless you went that flattened pancake look.

I heard the big news that Apple is introducing an iPod that plays video. Wow, is that ever going to piss off all the people who jumped on the bandwagon and bought iPod Nanos in the past couple of weeks. And it isn’t like everyone knew this was coming…if you can believe it, as late as October 6th there was a big article in CNet not to hold your breath waiting for such a thing. I guess we can all breath now, huh?

Of course, what ticks me off (again) is that the video you’ll be able to download for $1.99 from iTunes will only be playable on your computer or on the special iPod. So my Archos, which plays video, won’t be able to play it. So even if I am willing to spend the money to download something, screw me for not having the fancy new $400 iPod. Well, see, my Archos is not just a player, it’s a recorder. So I can record TV shows and movies just by plugging the damned thing into the television.

Between me, the husband, and three kids, I’ve already invested about $800 in various iPods, not to mention accessories. I’m not going to drop another $400 when I have a perfectly lovely Archos, which does the job, thank you very much, just because you want to be all proprietary with your videos. I will probably be wrong, but I think this isn’t going to be the blowout that the iTunes music files were/are.

I don’t know if it’s officially Beef Stroganoff Week…my calendar only mentions Columbus Day and Yom Kippur (have an easy fast, everyone). But Sunday I made homemade beef stroganoff. (It was good, but not as good as the last time I made it. I suspect part of the problem was using fat-free beef broth instead of good old American fat-full broth. And the cut of meat, while good, wasn’t the same was the one we used the last time. Shame on us for trying to cut fat and expense from our meal!)

Then Monday, the hot entree in our cafeteria was beef stroganoff. And Mr. Dump just emailed me to say that it was the entree in his cafeteria today. What are the odds? You could literally go months without even thinking about it, and this week it’s being shoved down our throats.

Mr. Dump said his work stroganoff was nasty. So I win the cook-off! Go me!

In honor of the holiday, I will eat foods native to Columbus, Ohio today. I should probably try to figure out why there’s a whole holiday honoring a midwestern city, but hey, who am I to judge? What’s that, you say? It’s not honoring Columbus, Ohio? Well what the hell! Just for that, I’m going to work instead of taking the day off.

Oh all right. I had to go to work anyway. Junior had the day off, and Mr. Dump is staying home with him. Phantom thought that was great, and to show his appreciation, he crapped all over the hearth. Mmmm. Doggie diarrhea on brick. I am thanking God, Allah, Mother Nature and anyone else who wants to be thanked that it wasn’t my job to clean it up.

We also saw the Wallace and Gromit movie on Saturday. Great movie, I loved it. I’d say parts might be a little scary if the kiddies are skittish or younger than 5 or so. Nothing bad happens, but there’s a guy threatening to kill bunnies with a gun, etc. etc. And of course, the scariness of the unseen until they reveal the Wererabbit. So fresh from the glow of seeing this movie, I read with horror that all the Aardman archives were destroyed by fire last night/today. Oh my goodness, that is so completely heartbreaking. Nick Park was wonderfully philosophical about it, I hope that were I in a similar situation, I would be the same way. It’s just sad to think that they lost everything, the entire history of the company, and Wallace and Gromit (all the sets, the characters, the awards, everything). You’ve gotta shake your head when you read that one phone call tells them they had the #1 movie in America over the weekend (our showing, by the way, at the Solomon Pond Mall? Completely sold out), and the next phone call is that they’ve lost everything that was stored in the warehouse that burned. (Let that be a lesson…never keep everything in one place. When I make backups from my computer, I take copies and store them in my drawer at work.)

Anyhoo…time to dip into the Red Cross fund for the Pakistan earthquake victims. Good God, I cannot fathom that amount of death and destruction.