You Can Never Call Me A Pessimist

This week was rough, but I decided to seek out the positive in it. Day by day:


MONDAY

I woke up with the beesting, fully swollen to the back of my head and not feeling all that spiffy. I decided to stay home and try and sleep it off, but after Laura made a trip to the pharmacy and had a brief yet effective phone conversation with my mother, I was informed I would be checking into the emergency room.

The Upside: I updated my tetanus vaccine and got plastered on benadryl and slept more than I have in years.


TUESDAY

Again, woke swollen and stayed home. But didn't submit to the drowsiness and instead went crazy on the house and tore it apart. Moved the computer desk downstairs, and pulled all the boxes of CDs out of the laundry room. Worked myself into a tizzy making up for the guilt of not going into actual work.

The Upside: After that didn't resolve any of the space issues we decided to finally take the plunge and get a storage space, followed by a birthing class, and on subject found out Gabuk had kittens in the doghouse. Five of them.


WEDNESDAY

Actually Wednesday was okay.


THURSDAY

I was back to work and made a run down to Fuller's, a plater run by two brothers, neither younger than 85, and after he almost killed himself and spilled a 3,500lb skid of steel bars on my foot, all because they use a forklift older than them. In the home stretch on Main Street Strousdburg the load shifted at the light and burst thru the particle board box sliding all over the truck bed. Another couple of inches and bars would've slid right thru a Ford Taurus' window. I spent the next hour picking up each 75lb bar one by one and placing them in a makeshift box. I left work 2 hours late.

The Upside: I got some fresh air and met all of the lunch rush hour of downtiown Stroudsburg and their middle fingers.


FRIDAY

Another anxiety attack when a stack of slideaway stairs cracks thru their wooden skid and I'm still an hour from the plant. A quick tightening and then I learned to drive while looking thru the sideview mirror.

The Upside: I didn't spend a moment in the plant counting shit and I have nothing to do tonight. Burritos & baseball!

35 Hours To Go

The year's ending, and I think everyone knows it. I had some plans to get things done, cross a few things off the new year's to-do list, but I'm guessing it'll all have to wait. I'll just ride the year out, the whole day and a half that's left of it, spend some quality time with my playlist of this years best music and try to assemble them in some kind of order, which will be a joke, but it must be done.

Laura gets home around 6 and I'm guessing tonight will consist of some Wii, a nice salad and maybe room cleaning, but probably cozying up on the couch and taking in as much Office & Sunny In Philadelphia as humanly possible.

Got Dad & Mom & Tyler & Melissa coming over New Year's Day, just gonna sit around and eat and watch football. That's how we do. The menu is coming along, but we'll probably be having to run out last minute for sour cream or something dumb. That also means they'll be bringing over their dogs, which means the cats hide in our bedroom. All of them. They each have their own hiding spot.

Mom & Dad are staying over Friday night and we're gonna do who-knows-what on Saturday, although the weather channel says we'll be snowed in and frozen. Maybe we'll just watch TV all day and I can have my father show me how to fix the washing machine & the fuse box. Maybe we'll teach them how to play Shut the Box. Bring your singles. Maybe we'll play Call of Duty. That'd be pretty awesome, a little modern warfare with Moms & Pops. I guess we should figure out how to play it first. Maybe tonight.

Oh! And her cough was all but extinct last night, so somebody finally got a goodnight's sleep. Good thing. Good things.

Expect some posts concerning all things "best of the year". And expect to learn something.

In The Final Moments Of 2008

2008 is coming to a close. Laura is on her way home from work, a tad early because it's been snowing pretty hard all morning. Mike & Andrea are somewhere between here & Philly, hopefully. When they all arrive we will begin our New Years celebration which will consist of fried foods, alcohol & fireworks in the snow. Could be a disaster.

But in the meantime...

Some Finer Moments Of 2008

• Finding our first home. It was a long, strenuous search, but the second we walked thru the front door we knew this was the place for us. When you know, you know.


• Buying our first home. It was a long, strenuous closing, tying loose ends, having mini panic attacks, dealing with inadequate agents & seemingly hesistant sellers, but in the end the papers were signed and the keys were handed over. Seriously, if not one of the happiest, definitely one of most relieving days of my life.


• Everything that goes along with owning your first home. Cooking in our own kitchen. Burning wood in your own fireplace. Even cleaning your own toilet. Thrilling!


• Giants winning the Super Bowl in the biggest upset in sports history.


• Hot honey chamomile tea with a splash of cream and sugar


• Accidentally and all of the sudden having four new kittens. We haven't totally gotten over losing Abner in the yard, but Alps, Obaldi, Høgni & L'Schtuppe have become amazing additions to the clan. Now if they'd just stop sleeping on our faces.


• Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All. This is the 3rd time I've started this book from its beginning, I kept getting halfway thru and then got busy or lost it to Laura, but this time I am nearly finished, and this book is blowing me away. Could be a life altering moment when I get to the last page, when that seventh veil drops. Oooh so good.


• Trip to Ohio. Going to Lake Eerie, I've never wanted to just stay in the water like that before. I could've swam to Canada. And then working the farm was a rousing experience. And you can't help but be motivated by celebrating someone's 60th year of marriage.


• Getting out to a Mets game before they tore Shea down, and even tho they lost pretty miserably, it was still pretty frigin sweet.


• The Dark Knight. Are you kidding me? I've seen this thing like 8 times already. Even bought the DVD and I don't buy DVDs (anymore). I can't wait to see what happens next.


• Lost. We are still deciding whether we will watch week to week for season 5 or wait til it comes out on DVD next Christmas. We don't like waiting.


• Teaching Guardsmen in London. Nicest group of kids I've taught in a long while, keeps us dreaming about the big move. We'll see how 2009 goes.

Thing I'm Looking Forward To In 2009

• Tom Robbins new novel B Is For Beer.


• new music from Animal Collective, Ben Kweller, Sholi, Neko Case, Morrissey, Antony & the Johnsons, M. Ward, Psychic Ills, Loney Dear, Andrew Bird, The Decemberists & PJ Harvey, woo!


• investing $$$ in our house in the form of a new expanded kitchen, relocated bathroom, a spacious food pantry and a luxurious mudroom


• getting out to a concert


• an Emerald Marquis reunion


• heading back to the UK to teach again, possibly with a travel companion

Groggy

I had a large grapefruit, a few cream cheese cookies & a mug of gingerbread spice tea for breakfast. I brought the garbage out to the street and took after the cats. Now I'm sitting down trying to gather my thoughts, ready to put up a few posts from the past few days. We've been busy and I've been a little too out of it to get on here and write about anything.

Preview:

This Week In Photos

Not Dead Yet

Oh heavens! Where have we been? Hopefully we haven't lost too many of you in this extended unintended hiatus we've taken from si blog. We just got a new computer after the old one decided to explode or implode or replode, something about the "click of death" I dunno. But we got this one up and going. Nothing on it. No music. No photos. No nothing. So it may take just a few days to get her up and running. Good news is, we're still in the house and the unloading process went relatively smooth. Cats have moved in. Only a few boxes left. Crap is everywhere tho. Trying to remedy that before I go back on tour. Yes I have to go back, but just for two swift weeks.

So quick summary...

• Fran started a new job as assistant manager of the most successful branch in NJ
• I did a month straight at spring training, a feat never before attempted, and for good reason
• Fran turned 22. I came home and surprised her
• I locked us out of the house on my very first try
• I bought a lawnmower
• Fran bought Pabst Blue Ribbon
• we painted that hideous fluorescent room
• I unintentionally, but still viciously ripped out a nest of napping baby birdlings and flung them to the ground (and on top of Fran) from our second floor balcony
• I completely gutted and redesigned the interior of our outdoor storage unit, only to destroy it again a few short days later
• I've rediscovered my love for microwave burritos
• we emptied the POD and 90% of the stuff we had at my parents' in Jackson
• the house is a mess, every room

That's it for now. As soon as the rest of the computer comes (today I think) I will get moving on some new photos (there are tons) and we can rekindle our blogging relationships. This new monitor has a webcam so who knows, maybe you'll be seeing some video of us. Probably not tho.

This Week Gave Me A Headache

It's been a stressful week. Things started off great. Exciting mixed with a giant sigh of relief. Then they got crazy, followed by moments of nerve-rattling paranoia. Then came bliss. That was nice for a day or so. But today... today was frustration, confusion, desperation & finally determination. Oh and apple pie. So right now, right now I think it's just exhaustion. Tomorrow will definitely be something completely new I'm sure.

I'm sure.

At least the Mets took 2 out of 3 over the Phillies.

2007 Recap

How to sum up a year? Not an easy thing, nor is it something you can do by writing or reading a silly post on an equally silly blog, but nonetheless, here it is, and there you are.

2007! Lot's happened. To start, I overcame my extreme hatred for water. For some reason I just didn't care for it, in any form. But now, I drink like 5 glasses a day. I actually went swimming (not in a public pool I ain't crazy). I went kayaking, I went on a boat, I went tubing and spent more than my fair share of afternoons strolling along a beach. And I'd like to announce that I now shower daily as opposed to bi-weekly. Look...






You want some figures? Ok how about the number 9. That's the number of ice cream cakes we ate. Next year we're going for double digits.


We visited 19 states. That's actually kinda low.

But Fran rode 2 motorcycles.



We watched all 53 episodes of Arrested Development, for the third and definitely not the last time.

We saw 21 bands.
We climbed 4 mountains, saw 3 plays, and moved twice (I can't put up photos for all this, we'll be here all day). We took 22,071 photos & uploaded 58,256 songs to iTunes.

We got married once.


Let's see what else. We toured an ice cram plant. Dream come true. We went house hunting, pumpkin picking, tree cutting, leaf peeping, wine tasting, road tripping, antiquing, flea marketing, whale watching, I finally got Fran into NYC during Christmastime, one of my alltime favorite things to do, ever anywhere. We also got (re-)acclimated with sports, mainly MLB & NFL. Look out for my fantasy leagues in the '08.

Not bad for a year. It's barely noon tho so we still got like 12 hours.