Lesbian Gingerbread - A Chocolatey and Nostalgic MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Morning, all. It’s another beautiful sunny day. Except it’s supposed to rain later. :frowning: Oh well, I’ll enjoy the sun while I can!

FCM, you probably haven’t seen the construction, then – it’s at the next intersection north of the Aris T Allen exit off 2. Route 2 and Forest, to be exact. The good thing about all the construction is that the left the bank building alone on that block that dates from the or '60s or '70s – it’s shaped kind of like a sailboat as only an architect of that period could imagine one, and it’s so tacky it’s moved into “charming” territory. Next time you travel north, though, FCM, look to your right as you head up Aris T Allen and you’ll probably see all the construction cranes, considering the buildings are on a hill and are already at 14-15 stories in height.

I have lusted after a Dyson for some time, but just as I was finishing fixing up our house in New Orleans to put it on the market, our then-vacuum died and what with moving costs we simply couldn’t afford a Dyson at that point. So I got a Bissell that I lurves almost as much as I suspect I’d lurve a Dyson – it picks up a simply astonishing amount of dirt and hair. When I use it, that is. And it’s going strong after three years. This house is mostly laminate floors, though, except for the bedrooms, so most of the dog hair gets picked up by a broom since the Idiots shed nonstop. I honestly don’t know why they’re not bald. Which I’ve said a thousand times, but is still as true today as it was the first time I said it. Speaking of which, I must take the Idiots out in the back yard and Furminate them. The spring shed is upon us, in clumps!

I guess I’d better go do something constructive. Like get back to work; it’s that time of year, when there’s more work than people to do it, which means there’s lots of $$ to be made. But first I’m going to enjoy some more of the spring sunshine and cool breeze!

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Kai–I hope you posted that halibut and the clam recipes on the blog (or McUne)–they sound delicious.

I love me some clams. Clams, lobster, scallops, squid, octopus, crab… I’m hungry!
Here is my Saturday story to tell:

  1. something interesting happened at 0440. I’m not going to share but it was nice. (this is so weird–how does this happen with a soon to be ex? I keep looking for Candid Camera or some other Gotcha to show up…)

  2. I got up and drove down to the village hall at 0730. I was #17 in line for a rain barrel for $40. All 25 of them were GONE by 0758. The people who got there at 0805 were NOT happy. We now own a 55 gallon rain barrel, to be installed… once it stops raining. Heh.

  3. I plan on cleaning bathrooms and then writing the last paper EVER in grad school. Happy day.

  4. Susan Elizabeth Phillips sucks as an author. Well, her book, Breathing Room, does. The only appropriate function for this book is as firestarter. It was moronic, badly plotted, inconsistently characterized and poorly narrated. Me, I’m all for escapist fiction (fuck personal growth)–but this was like a bad acid trip of Harlequin and chick lit. Gah–I feel unclean having read it–I think my IQ fell a few points.

  5. Am reading Eat, Pray, Love which is much better.

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Hi kai, those recipes sound yum.

Hope you’re able to find a non-evil assistant manager sometime soon, doggio.

I’ve been very very good and spent about 2 hours in the garden. It was supposed to be raining by now, but isn’t.

Haircut coming soon…

Hugs to all…

GT

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waving

I have to get internet at home just to keep up with the MMP!

The settling-in is continuing. I am enjoying my little house. I should have cable by the time I get home, so I will at least have that connection to the world. My cheapie DVD player has been getting a lot of use the last few days.

Otherwise, not much happening. I’m going to go read around the boards for awhile.

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It was low key but pleasant over-all. I spent the first half of the day cleaning the apartment, which actually felt rather satisfying. Then in the afternoon I . . . was naughty, I suppose. (Imagine whatever you please.) In the evening a few friends came over and we had dinner and a few beers.

The proper celebration will actually be tonight - we’re going out for Korean food and drinks afterwards. Yay!

I might go shopping and buy myself something nice today. (Although I hate shopping on Saturdays; too many people!)

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Morning folks. I’m up, gonna caffeinate in a minute.

We’re getting snowed in here. I guess I should get up and shovel the walk, because it’s not slated to stop until… Tuesday. That would be a workout if I waited till them to shovel.

Might go shopping with a friend today. Maybe. I need a few shirts that don’t have stuff on them and look reasonably nice/dressy. I can still wear jeans in the new position afaik, but I need fewer shirts with stuff on them. I have some dressy blouses and such, but not a lot.

I don’t much like Saturday shopping my Haze, for precisely that reason.

Last night I got really annoyed. Guy who I dated the other week? Well we still talk but we haven’t gone out again and I think I’ll just let him down nicely because though I like him there is not much of a spark there and he’s got a habit that falls right on top of my pet peeve. He keeps calling Velociraptor by a diminutive of his given name, one that we do not use and that I TOLD him we do not use. You call him that and he’d ignore you because that is not him. My Grandpa went by the diminutive, but I prefer the full name. And it’s not like it’s some horribly complicated name. It’s two syllables. It’s nice he asks after my son y’know, but when he constantly uses a name that is not his it ticks me off.

Eh I’m going to go get coffee.

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Oh, oh, oh–our pediatrician (who is the coolest guy from New Zealand) used to do that to #1 son. #1 sons’ name is Robert. ROBERT. ROBERT. Rob, if you must.

He called him Robbie. Gah. My fingers can barely type it. Ack, yuck, fingernails on a chalkboard screamy stabbies. <shudders>
I (after 3 checkups and being told casually) had to stop him, LOOK at him and say, “it’s ROBERT”. He must have gotten it, because he’s been Rob ever since.

Definitely a deal breaker, that one.
I have wasted 2 hours online. Must go clean bathrooms now.

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Whew - break time! We left the house shortly after I posted to have breakfast. Then we ran by Lowe’s for assorted stuff, and got home shortly after 9 to do what we had to do with our respective assorted stuff.

I got azalea food, general plant food, some impatiens, and 2 azaleas. **FCD ** got some stuff to work on the boat - he’s in ManLand making sawdust and stuff. :smiley: I started out by digging up some of the smaller azaleas in the back and side yards to plant out front - all told, I moved 6, plus planted the 2 I bought. I trimmed back a couple of the larger azaleas - they were a bit leggy, so I’m hoping they’ll fill out some more now.

While digging holes for the azaleas, I had to move several hostas, and I decided to transplant all of the daylilies from that garden since they didn’t get enough sun to bloom. I also removed the peony because it needs more sun. While digging, I unearthed a long, squarshed, corroded metal pipe-like object - **FCD ** thinks it might have been an old downspout. It was buried maybe 3" down - I have no idea how the Easts planted as much as they did there and never hit it or thought to remove it. Anyway, it’s removed.

Then I went to the hill by the end if the driveway - that’s where I wanted to daylilies to go. But first I had to remove the poison ivy that got me several months ago when I was planting bulbs. Donning gloves and using a claw and a trash bag, I think I got all the sprouts and roots. I immediately came in and scrubbed my hands and arms. Then I planted the peony and all of the daylilies, fed everything out there, including the coneflower I put out there last week, and I’ve got the sprinkler going right now to get it all set in.

And once I’ve rested a bit, I’m going out to rake up the stuff I pulled out when I was planting the azaleas - I’ll load it into the wagon and haul it to the back yard. I also have a few weeds to yank out of the front bed. Then I quit, I think. It’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow, which should make all the new plants happy.

My old sneaks are well and truly dead. They force my heels to slide to the side and it hurts to walk, so they’re for the trash. I’ll just finish my gardening in flipflops.

**MamaTigs ** - now that you mention it, I do recall seeing cranes farther up 2 when I turned off, and I know precisely which cool bank building you mean! So that’s where Target will live. I always thought it odd that WalMart doesn’t have a presence in Annapolis. Maybe they’re not wanted??

Well, this isn’t getting weeds yanked. Nor is it planting my impatiens. Back to the dirt…

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Lunch is et. Need to do a bit of clean up, then it’s off to the art museum.

Back later…

GT

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Must share this. Last week I put in a stop delivery order with the postal service from Apr 30 - May 6. We haven’t gotten any mail for 3 days. We *never * go 3 days without mail. So I called the Mechanicsville post office and yes, they have all my mail, and yes, my stop order does, in fact, say April 30. The nice man said, “We’ll get it to you somehow.”

Guess they need to raise stamp prices again… :rolleyes:

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Yup, that’s the spot, FCM. I’ve often wondered about the Wal-Mart thing, too; I guess Annapolis thinks too highly of itself or something? The town does have a bit of snootiness about it occasionally. [/understatement] But hey, if Target is moving in, can Wal-Mart be far behind? Or maybe they don’t want to compete with the actually clean, nice, big, fairly new KMart that’s just down the road. Who knows.

Papa Tigs and I both are suffering from the Don’t Wannas today. He’s entitled, especially considering what a fun week (not) he had this week, with half the government descending on his hospital; they do get far more than their share of bigwigs, to put it mildly. In a truly insane move, the main lobby of the hospital, which is probably 150 feet by 150 feet, gets completely emptied when the Prez stops by. I’m talking removing all the furniture, the partitions, everything. Just so the man can walk through. You know, one can carry this “security” business too far…

You’ve got me hungry for seafood, too, kai! But that’s okay, because we’re going to have something equally as good this weekend – Papa Tigs finally broke down and got a new grill since our old one has been inoperative since we moved back here in 2005, and he got some hot dogs from the Amish market. Best hot dogs in the world, and when I say that, I do not lie. The Amish really keep things covered, too – Papa Tigs stops by each Thursday on his way home for dairy products, meats, etc., and this week the milk jugs have “kosher for Passover” stamped on the lid. :smiley: The Amish are certainly a practical people.

They also sell the most amazingly delicious homemade chicken pies – not a preservative or other chemical to be seen in them, just chicken and vegetables inside a heavenly homemade pie crust – and this week one customer asked the young Amish woman if the pie would keep for 4-5 days since he was going out of town. She looked utterly confused and said, “I don’t know, I’ve never seen them last more than two days before being eaten.” Hee! Papa Tigs was able to reassure the guy; he also brings home one pie each week that we eat on the night when he really, really doesn’t want to even think about cooking. It’s the best instant delicious dinner ever.

I"m babbling, aren’t I? Okay, back to work.

ETA: First on the page! Yessss! <triumphal fist pump>

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Huh. I just saw on Driving Husband’s livejournal that his little sister brought home a skunk to dissect.

I am never ever going over there again.

His little sister is 22. I think.

She’s dissecting a skunk?

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I would’ve loved to, but I spent most of yesterday in frackin’ airports.

Apparently, someone figured it would be cost-effective to fly me in and out of Montreal for a 2 hour presentation, rather than running it by teleconference. I need to figure out who that someone is, so I can smack them for ruining a perfectly lovely day by forcing me to wake up at 5am and waste a good part of my day in and around airplanes.

After spending another glorious two hours in rush hour traffic coming home from the airport, I managed to slap together a dinner of leftovers and was asleep by 9pm, when I’d much rather have found a patio and a pitcher of beer. Blargh.

At least it’s still nice today… maybe I’ll throw on a bikini and shock the neighbours by lying on the front lawn (the backyard is too shady for proper sunbathing). :smiley: Then again, maybe I’ll just go do some gardening and have a Stern Talk with the lawn about playing in the flower beds again.

In other news, our new dishwasher has arrived and was installed by two very efficient men. It’s shiny. It’s uber-quiet. It has a separate cutlery tray. SQUEEEE! Now, I’ll just have to wait impatiently until it’s full of dishes so we can begin the inaugural wash cycle.

Happy belated burfday, Haze!

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Finally back from our trek … whew… what a long morning! But I got what I wanted from Trader Joe’s and then did the grocery shopping and didn’t overspend (well, I did a bit, but not too badly). On the way home, though, I had an unusual experience! At one transfer point, my daughter got off the bus before me to go get us some sandwiches, while I rode to the next stop, and made my way to the next bus stop. Except I didn’t quite get there. There was a -huge- nest of wasps in a tree right at the bus stop, and two guys were attempting to take the nest down! :eek: OMG, I couldn’t believe it - neither of them appeared to be wearing any sort of protective gloves, and one had his hands right on the nest!!! They were able to cut the branch with the nest on it and then slid the nest into a large bag and left. Naturally, they left a lot of angry bees behind! It was awful, but a bus came and my daughter and I hopped on, leaving the bees behind, thankfully.

Whew! :slight_smile:

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For your viewing pleasure (or not - you don’t have to look): What I’ve been doing today. I’m done. It’s about time to hit the shower, I think. But I’m pleased with the progress.

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mails self to kai

How do you really feel about it? :stuck_out_tongue:

Just swept off the driveway for the first time since the pollen started falling. Now have blister between thumb and first finger. Ow.

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I ain’t HazMat certified yet.

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I indulged in a new top today, what with it being my birthday and all. The color is not one I usually wear, but here it is.

I’m not really a pink person, but I do like this particular shade.

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Um, that’s pink? From here it looks neon orange. I must get my eyes checked.

Anyway, the important thing is you look great!
blisters are owies. I cleaned one bathroom and took a nap. What can I say? Early, early morning sex makes me tired. <need wicked smiley here>

Hyacinths, daffodils, scabiosa, chinodoxa and the magnolia are all in bloom. My yard is purty! More daffs coming, with tulips and Virginia bluebells. Yay.
I need to work on my paper. Don’t tell swampus. kthnxbye.

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It’s actually a coral pink. Maybe this is closer to its actual color.

Well, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who’s been naughty. :stuck_out_tongue:

I bought two other tops as well, but too lazy to take more pics. I’ll show 'em off at some stage.