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I've been looking at the real estate listings in Maine out of curiosity, and as soon as I saw this place I wanted to move back home SO BAD. Not that I could afford that place, mind you. But still.
High: Umm...
Low: My good friend Heather is moving away. My darling, we'll always have the internet!
Brushing up on my math skills so I can test out of some classes.
This little guy is the cutest thing ever (scroll down).
"Now I know y'all wantin' that 808, can you feel that B-A-S-S bass."
I'm happy, dammit!
And that's about as exciting as the weekend got.
Families are weird, dynamic things.
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March 11, 2004
Good -n- Plenty
I am here to report out on a fabulous weekend. There was romance! Adventure! Digging in the dirt! All of the elements that make for a good weekend. Most weekends, in my experience, are usually of the sort that I kind of have to stop and think on a Monday morning, when someone asks, "What did you do this weekend?". Last weekend, however, was worthy of some water-cooler conversation. You know, if that sort of thing happened around AcronymCo. Which it doesn't.
Anyway. I got home a bit early from work on Friday and managed to clean almost the entire house before Calvin got home. Gotta do it when the mood strikes, right? Marie went off on a 10-day road trip with her mother (which isn't the fabulous part, just so ya know). Her mom's fiance is a professional mover, and Marie and her mom were accompanying him on a job, and making a stop off in Ohio to visit some relatives. After sending her off (flustered, because she left packing to the very last second and left her mom's fiance waiting for her in his truck for a bit), Calvin and I went to Iguana Mack's (our new favorite place, $2.00 beers!) for dinner and drinks. I had a FABULOUS (third time I've used the word in two paragraphs... I'll stop now) salad made with an unlikely combination of ingredients (bleu cheese crumbles, walnuts, lime-cilantro vinaigrette, and some other mysterious things), and Calvin had a monstrous pot-roast sandwich. And we hung out, and talked, and sat quietly, and grumbled a bit at the Harley owners who parked their bikes on the sidewalk directly behind us, and left them running for a good LONG time while they prepared to depart.
We got home a bit after nine, and discovered a voicemail from my friend Dani, who was entreating us to go along with her and her husband on a day ski-trip up to Snowbowl. Our stuff was still gathered together from our trip to Sunrise, so preparation was just a matter of setting the alarm for the UNGODLY hour of 3:50 a.m., and chucking the duffel bag containing our gear into the back of the truck.
Gah. I hate getting up early on weekends, and I even FURTHER hate getting up on a weekend earlier than I normally would during the week. Even for the sake of skiing. The moon was full and bright in the sky, and my mind did a bit of protesting at seeing it on the morning side of the clock. We met Dani and Jon at their house, and Calvin lead the way on the freeway while I dozed. He was in a VERY good mood and kept acting like a goofball, saying "hi baby!" in that voice of his every now and then to jerk me awake so I could ooh and aah at the scenery and the moon and the misty mountains before nodding off again. I don't mean that to sound like he was being mean - very much the opposite. It was funny.
We hit Flagstaff at around 8:00 and made a beeline for the nearest Denny's. I fortified myself on their sausage platter (over easy eggs! hashbrowns! coffee coffee coffee!!!) and finally started to wake up. Dani and Jon haven't skied much, so we chatted about what they should expect with the gear and the lifts and the whatnot. Dani was terribly grown up, reading excerpts from the paper out loud over breakfast, when all the rest of us wanted to do was giggle and be crude. Be grateful that I don't get any more specific than that.
Jockeying for ski gear and lift tickets is always the biggest pain in the ass about skiing. But Snowbowl has it pretty well organized, and if you're renting your gear from them, you can get your lift ticket at the same time. Such execution of logic in any public thing always shocks the hell out of me, when it happens. I don't know why, I guess I just expect everything to be tedious and long and stupidly organized, and when it isn't I'm surprised. At any rate, we were on the slopes a little after nine, leaving Dani and Jon to the bunny slope while Calvin and I warmed up on a good, long green run. The run converged with the bunny slope toward the bottom, and we checked back in with Dani and Jon to see how they were doing. After a couple more runs down the bunny slope, they were ready to join us on the greens. We spent the morning hanging out there, then skied over to another lift that serviced blue runs. Dani and Jon planted themselves at the lodge to take a break, while Calvin and I got a couple of runs in.
Calvin biffed on one run, looking back (never look behind you while skiing!) to see where I was, and face-planting when his ski hit a rut. Then I took a spill at the bottom of the run, directly under the lift (of course!), when I hit a choppy spot at a turn that I wasn't expecting. But other than that, he and I escaped injury-free. Except for the MASSIVE sunburns on our faces that we discovered when we got home. I'm peeling like a freak as I type this.
Dani and Jon were ready to hit it again, after lunch. They decided they'd done enough fiddling around on the greens, and joined us for some blue trails. The first run was a little tough for them, but they got the hang of things in short order. Jon and Calvin split from us a couple of times, leaving Dani and I to take our time on the trails of our choosing. It really was a beautiful day, with over a foot of fresh powder, and a bright blue sky providing a dramatic backdrop against the snowy peaks.
We finished up the day with a pitcher of beer at the lodge (of course!), then Calvin and I headed back toward home, and Dani and Jon booked a hotel room to spend the night.
The ride home seemed freakishly long, even though it was only 2 1/2 hours. Traffic was stupid (well, a couple of drivers within the traffic were stupid - the bird was exchanged a few times), and my position in the truck stuck me in full blaze of the sun all the way back home. I hate that I'm at a height that the sunshade frequently doesn't help me out. I'm always too low, and the sun hits me directly in the eyes no matter what I do. I started feeling pretty darned unwell, feeling that all my senses were extra sensitive (the road noise was too loud, the sun was too hot, I couldn't get comfortable) but as soon as I got home and hopped in the shower and drank a long cool glass of water (Calvin was so nice to me, he handed me the glass as I was stepping out of the shower), I was feeling much better.
Calvin and I decided to head off to Teakwoods for dinner. And proceeded to be bothered for almost the entire time by the family that was sitting in the booth next to us. The parents did nothing but glare around - at each other, at their kids, at the wait staff - and the children (a boy of about three and a girl of about five) were jumping up and down on the seats and hollering. And I don't mean just briefly. I mean for the entire. time. Jumping up and down on the seats like they were trampolines, and yelling. And turning around in the booth and staring at us. And dangling Daddy's car keys over into our booth. And climbing up on the back of the seat so that we were sure that at any moment, a small body would be landing in our food. Now, I'm all about letting kids be kids, but I'm ALSO all about ensuring that kids are well behaved in public. It got so bad that Calvin and I - originally sitting on the side of the booth adjacent to them - got up and moved to the other side of the table. The mother glared at us. So we glared back. I mean, come on. There's a limit to how much understanding we're mandated to have. Glaring at us like *we* were the rude ones. Honestly.
They eventually left, and we were able to enjoy the remainder of our meal in relative peace (relative considering the fact that this is a peanut-shells-on-the-floor, music-blaring, sports-tv-showing kind of place). I was well and truly drooping by the time we got home, so I thought I'd take a little nap. I made Calvin pinkie-swear that he would wake me up in an hour. And he says that he tried, several times. But the next thing I knew, it was 9:00 on Sunday morning.
Oops. Sorry, Calvin.
Sunday we were all about Home Depot and yardwork. We bought snapdragons, an ice plant, and some shrubby thing to replace some of the dead things in our back yard. We pruned our little hearts out, and pulled weeds. We bought a hedge trimmer! I can fire the landscapers! And Calvin put some hooks on the wall so we could tie back our creeping vines and try to convince them to go in a direction that we dictate, rather than all over the ground, which seems to be their inclination. We hung a hummingbird feeder, though they haven't found it yet. The cat will be thrilled, trapped behind the window with such a temptation mere feet away. We cleaned out the grill and re-christened it with Calvin's fabulous hamburgers. Calvin installed some blinds we'd purchased for the french doors in the living room. Finally, we soaked in the hot tub and surveyed our handi-work.
But! We weren't done there! Not at all, because the next day found us BACK at Home Depot, this time for some ground cover for the front yard, flowers and containers and soil for a couple of color pots, a new tree for the back yard, and a ceiling fan for the living room. I planted the color pots while Calvin messed with the front yard landscaping, then planted the tree in the back yard while he planted the ground cover in the front. I told him that if all the stuff that I planted dies, he gets to plant the next round of victims.
Throughout the weekend, we heard from Marie a couple of times. She seems to be having a good time, though we're thinking that the novelty of sleeping in truck stops will wear off by the end of the week. We also heard from Michael a couple of times, who had his wisdom teeth removed and was remarkably difficult to understand over the phone. Anthony has three teeth and is quite mobile, but we have no EVIDENCE of that because nobody ever sends PICTURES or VIDEO.
I don't know why I'm bothering with the attempt at guilt. I don't think they read anymore. But, hey, it's worth a shot.
We're in mad nesting mode because of the lovely weather (although it was over ninety a couple of days in a row, and I didn't handle that crap at all well). I brought Dani home at lunchtime on Tuesday, where Calvin met us for grilled cheese sandwiches and some relaxing out on the patio before heading back out to work. Then, on Wednesday I worked from home in the afternoon, setting my laptop up on the patio table and enjoying the surroundings, much improved over the atmosphere of my cubicle. Last night I watched a couple of movies (Mona Lisa Smile and Under the Tuscan Sun - both were pretty good, though I enjoyed the latter more than the former - Tuscany appeals to me greatly and some day I shall visit it), enjoying the lack of glare on the TV that the installation of the new blinds provides, while Calvin channel surfed in the bedroom (chick flicks - feh!).
Which brings us to today, and a round of tedium at work followed by a HORRIFFIC (I'm anticipating) day tomorrow, where I have to participate in this thing called a "Face-to-Face" (quaintly AcronymCo-ized to "F2F"). A F2F is defined as a cluster-f#!k where a bunch of people get together to try to organize a project but just end up trying to delegate all the tasks onto (me) another person. There are spreadsheets and flowcharts and schedules and tedium and caffeine and I hate this and oh shoot me now. Nine hours of this. Because they're providing lunch so we can work straight through. On a FRIDAY. Sigh.
I'll be making a beeline for Iguana Macks after that, Calvin willing, to start the weekend off right.
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