This weekend with the Dennison's

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, the weekend is finally over and the incriminating photographs ready to be put onto the web. :slight_smile:

The conspirators:
Falcon
RTFirefly
John Corrado
DCnewsman
SqrlCub

Phil’s Dad and Step-mom (they don’t post here to my knowledge)

The people we were supposed to “help”:
La Peta
Pldennison

Saturday started out early because we expected the Dennisons to get in a little earlier than they did. They hit some nasty traffic on the PA Turnpike to no one’s surprise. So after we met for breakfast at around 10 in the morning and finished up close to noon we went and had the dessert donut at Krispy Kream (however you spell the last part). It was a niec breakfast at the Ranch House and surprisingly cheap for us in the morning.

It was nice to be greeted by RT when we came entered the restaurant. He knew what we looked like thanks to the earlier gathering. Incidently he was also the first person there this time. :slight_smile: RTFirefly was as genuine a nice guy as can be imagined. He was funny, interesting, and can juggle. WOOHOO! Which reminds me, I am still waiting for those Math Journal Titles. hehehe

I had already met everyone else that was at breakfast so I won’t go into it except to say that Falcon is even less of a morning person than I am. She looked so tired and even arrived last.

We called the Dennisons after breakfast and donuts and found out we had about three hours to kill. Yea! For everyone except DC and me, it wouldn’t have been worth it to go home. We only had a 15-20 minute drive everyone else had at least 45 minutes to go. John left to go to the mall. He wanted to be in the AC until we actually started moving things. Everyone else went down to Alexandria to go to the festival there. WEll, the festival cost money and none of us (well, me…I needed to go to a cash machine after breakfast. I was too lazy to go the day before and only had enough for breakfast and donuts.) had money on us or were willing to spend the 8-12 bucks it cost to get in just to be there for an hour or so and only see the overpriced street vendors hocking their gyros and crabcakes. We ended up walking along the waterfront and talking. We sat down in the grass and listened to some homeless man sing with his friends. We could have gotten a free pair of boots that were laying a little ways away from the homeless guy with his summer teeth (summer over here and summer over there) but decided that wouldn’t be in our collective best interest hygenically speaking.

Soon the time passed. Everyone was interesting so the time didn’t seem to be an issue. We loaded up and went to the Dennison’s new apartment. We get there and park. Phil meets us and Peta comes out shortly thereafter with the apartment woman and the lease freshly signed.

We start unloading everything, by this time it is around 3-3:30 and starting to get hot and humid outside. Phil’s dead and wife eventually get there. They were pretty nice. We knew where Phil got his personality and love of baseball from. The Star Wars collection was a little surprising. Especially since it was pretty extensive but not nearly as surprising as his fascination with feather boas and high heel shoes. He has a collection that would make any drag queen envious. :wink: hehehhehe j/k We were unanimous in our opinion about the ice cream cone lamp though. Need I say more.

We eventually finished and were rewarded with pizza, talk, a tape of Phil’s first band (the first song on the demo was alright except I didn’t like the female singer…the other two songs were sung better but the music wasn’t as interesting… Phil warned us about that demo and said that we probably wouldn’t like it. Actually it wasn’t as bad as he led us to believe.), a vinyl (sp?) demo of another of Phil’s bands (we haven’t listened to it yet), and many incriminating photographs of Phil’s personal life. The stuffed animals were too cute. Oh, we also took some evil photographs of John while he was sleeping. We didn’t think we woke him up so this will be a surprise to him when they become available on the web. hehehehehehe

Phil’s stepmom was very nice. She is a native Hawaiian (sp? again) and dispelled many things I had heard about Hawaii from mostly second hand sources. I would like to catch her again sometime and pick at her brain some more. She was a little shy but opened up nicely towards the end of the day.

Any other impressions may freely be added.

HUGS!
Sqrl

2

What happened, guys?! He was holding up pretty well when I left! :wink:

What Sqrl said covers most of it. We ate breakfast at the Ranch House (best breakfast place on US 1 South, and not bad at other times of day either), enjoyed dessert at the Krispy Kreme, had a pleasant time wandering around aimlessly for a couple of hours, revoked Sqrl’s ‘gay license’ on a number of occasions (wish I could remember a good example or two…help me out, y’all), then P&L arrived, and we helped them unload.

It wasn’t nearly as much stuff as I was afraid of - they had a 24-foot truck, and while the floor was all filled up, they hadn’t piled stuff very high in most places, so they had less stuff than I could’ve packed into a 14-footer. (It turns out that they did some serious weeding-out on their furniture before the move.) However, they’ve read a few books along the way, and they didn’t throw away many of them before the move! Good thing they rented a dolly…:slight_smile:

We didn’t exactly hustle through the unloading; after all, it was a hot day, and we took plenty of breaks to drink beer and shoot the breeze. We admired Phil’s array of Star Wars memorabilia and his stuffed animals; we leafed through Leigh-Anne’s portfolio and Phil’s baby book, looking for good blackmail quotes in the latter.

I had a great time talking with Phil’s dad and stepmom; he’d been stationed at Fort Belvoir four times during his Army career, beginning in 1963, and my family moved to the Mt. Vernon area in 1960, so when we were driving up Rt. 1 to guide Phil back to where he had to drop off the truck, we missed a turn because we were gabbing about what used to be where, thirty years ago. (I know - I don’t look like a geezer!)

Phil would probably like to forget about that drive; we goofed up a couple of times, and wound up having to do a couple of U-turns, which was much more difficult for Phil in the truck than it was for us in the car. I hope he’s forgiven me for my part in that!

Anyhow…Phil and Leigh-Anne, it was great to finally meet you both, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of you! Phil, I’ll send you an email about Go-Go’s et al…my wife may want to come along, too. Sqrl, I’ll dig you out some math article titles that will make your head spin…and let’s bring along some beanbags, tennis balls, or something this weekend, and maybe we can practice our passes!

3

And John learns an important fact:

Never fall asleep amongst fellow Dopers. No matter how early you got up, no matter how much stuff you’ve carried through the blazing heat on a Code Red Air day, never let your guard down.

Here’s the link where you might see where my manhood was stripped.

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/araerie/movein.htm

Bastards.
But a good, if exhausting, time was had by all. My apologies for not going down to the waterfront with y’all, but I figured that if I was going to spend a few hours moving heavy objects in the hot summer sun, it’d be best to spend the previous few hours reading “Foxtrot” in the cool air-conditioning of the local Waldenbooks. Given the colorful crowd y’all ran into, I suspect you got the better of the deal, not even including the “Model Search USA” that was going on in the mall when I arrived.

4

Yeah, Phil died. Didn’t you hear? After he saw the photos of his stuffed animals on the web with his name attached to them he shouted, “KERMIE! You promised you wouldn’t tell!” He then collapsed clutching Kermit as close as he could.

Sqrl thinks about looking above to see if he has anything to edit but decides against it. I love my typos and thay (hehehe thay) love me.

We couldn’t think of anything else to do to you while you were sleeping John. I particularly liked the pink Carebear. If Peta had a faery wand and wings, we would have found a way to put those on you first. :wink: heheheheh

HUGS!
Sqrl

5

Yes, pictures are posted on my site. And thanks Sqrl…I already stated I am NOT a morning person. Hence why I’m glad for flextime.

And pretty much everything has been said that happened, so I’ll just add a few tidbits. RT, I think one of the times Sqrl’s gay license was revoked was when Mark told us Sqrl has NO fashion sense. Hence, we revoked the license.

However, we DID find out I’m 90% gay. Why, you ask? I wear Birkenstocks a LOT to work, and I love the Indigo Girls. However, that whole boyfriend thing prevents me from getting that last 10%. :slight_smile:

6

Thank you for the words and wonderful pictures of the Farm Raising. I laughed until I could scarsely breathe at poor John Corrado surrounded by Phil’s stuffed animals!

Looking forward to seeing the majority of you guys next weekend! WOO!

Yer pal,
Satan

I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Two months, three days, 18 hours, 8 minutes and 9 seconds.
2590 cigarettes not smoked, saving $323.78.
Life saved: 1 week, 1 day, 23 hours, 50 minutes.

7

I was scared when I saw the truck Phil was driving (did I hear something about a little accident with one of the truck tires and a car?). Luckily it wasn’t too bad…not much furniture (bed, dresser, TV and futon were the biggest/heaviest). But the Dennison’s have saved more memorabilia from their short lives so far than others do in a lifetime. (Old receipts from presents they bought former beaus; Phil’s extensive collection of stuffed animals, Star Wars, Disney videos; the pin from his broken ankle; the crutches from the same accident; books to fill 5 DC libraries…) I almost think they had to throw away most of the furniture to bring all the boxes.

However, we weren’t able to get a picture of Phil’s shiny white ass to go with Satan’s and Omni’s.

Look out Raleigh, most of us will see you Friday night!! :slight_smile: