Good morning everyone.
Very nice OP Special One. It sounds like you need a vacation from your vacation!
Also, nice pics welby. It looks and sounds as though you and the **FairyChats ** had a great time together.
I’ll be leaving in less than an hour to take the kids to the doctor for a checkup. The doc will also be doing a follow-up for my son’s bronchitis. Hopefully, the doc will consider him on the road to recovery.
I guess I should dry my hair and put on my face. I’ll see you all later.
Morning all.
Glad to hear it was a good trip Special1. You hit some of my old stomping ground too. I lived near Worcester and Framingham in Westborough, MA, for a year after college. I love love love Boston. But you’re a braver person than I am for driving in EITHER Boston or NYC. It’s trains for me all the way, baby!
We finally got around to checking out the Midtown Global Market on Saturday morning. It’s a bunch of shops and restaurants with food and other items from around the world. We picked up lots of Asian foodstuffs at United Noodle and had African food for lunch. Yum!
Saturday afternoon we met up with one of my coworkers and his wife at the zoo and had a great time, despite it being HOT HOT HOT. I don’t think any of us went home with a sunburn so it’s all good. And we all had dinner at our favorite pizza place.
After being out in the sun and sweating half to death, we wanted to hit the pool when we got home, but no sooner did we walk in the door, than the heavens opened up and it POURED. So no pool. 
We did have quite the wild storms too. Sunday we went for a walk around one of the lakes, and there were trees down everywhere, including across the path! We were awfully glad we weren’t one of the people out there with bikes trying to navigate around all the downed limbs and stuff! Some of the traffic lights are still out this morning. I’m so glad my short commute didn’t involve dealing with any of those!
Coffee without sugar isn’t a good way to start a Monday morning, haze! Hope it gets better after this!
You sure you don’t want to come to Mpls when you’re in Chicago, gt? It’s only an extra 6-7 hour drive!
Nice piccies welby! I’m sure Mooooom will be thrilled you took a picture of her butt. 
Taters posted without her face? How did you see to type???
Ok, back from good deed doin’. In a little while Ima go meet ol’ y’all know who for lunch at the Chinese [del]hog trough[/del] buffet. We gots us a cravin’ for some Chinese type food. Then it’ll be near to time to get ready for my Monday at the brewry.
Later Y’all!
I have a special talent my friend…a special talent.
In about 10 or 15 minutes we’ll be off for the doc. After the doc visit, we’ll stop at Costco. We had let our membership lapse and we miss some of the stuff we could get there. So, I’ll pay my $100.00 bucks to renew and do some shopping while I’m there.
My tummy is strangely gurgly. Oh, that’s right, I haven’t had coffee yet. I’ll have to get some on the way to the doc. That’ll fill me up.
Instigator.
And besides, it wasn’t me, it was Welbywife.
Hi everyone!
Special1, cool holiday! You passed through my old stomping ground as well! I grew up in Whitby. 
If you’d had time, some of us TronnaDopers could have showed you around the city a bit, but if you were visiting relatives, well, that’s more important. :: snif ::
Congratulations on your kids’ citizenship!
Boating with the FairyChats sounds like it was a lot of fun, welby. Pity I can’t go on boats much; I like them and all, but I get seasick very easily. My father never gets seasick; I think he absorbed the entire family’s quota of seasick resistance. But then he was the one in the navy.
Good luck at the doctor’s, Taters!
And now I have to go back to work to throw in all the changes that they told me aboput 15 minutes before I left on Wednesday to go on my long holiday weekend. Why do these things always happen on a Friday? Even if you take your Friday on Wednesday to try to evade them?
Great OP(s), Special1. Sounds like you were traipsing all northern US/southeastern Canadian portions of the continent. Must have been rather fun though, going on a whirlwind tour of a number of cities in several states and provinces. I’ve got my vacation coming up in three weeks – though I don’t really plan to go anywhere outside the city and surrounding areas.
Congrats on the kid’s citizenship, too!
So I had a weird dream over the weekend – the first involving the SDMB. I normally don’t remember most of my dreams – I have to be in just the right mode of sleep for that to happen, and I seem to sleep too deeply the vast majority of the time. Just the same, I ended up accidentally sleeping in on Sunday, and the portion of the morning after my alarm went off and I accidentally dismissed the alarm instead of snoozed it, I fell back to sleep and dreamed. For some reason I found that I had to go somewhere – to work, I think – but I had a great deal of free time on my hands before I had to be there, so I decided to take the scenic route on the local bus. To Greece. Which was, of course, just one city west of me. I didn’t want to do anything there, I just wanted to go there. And I did, just to the Grecian bus terminal. I got off the bus. The shelter was kinda neat, if weird for a bus terminal, because it was a train terminal. Or it looked like it anyway. The buses rested in channels where train tracks ought to be, their wheels half concealed by the channel islands. The station itself was covered with high, curved, windowed ceilings that showed signs of considerable age and carbon buildup from years of vehicle exhaust. I decide I should head back and get to work, so I hop on the bus number that I believe to be the one that will take me back. (The marquees were in a foreign language – not Greek, oddly – so I had to go by the route numbers.) I get on and the bus leaves – and starts heading south. Damn! I think to myself. This is the bus that goes to Turkey! Because, of course, Turkey borders Greece, just one city south. Oh well, I think, knowing I still had plenty of time left and that I could catch a connecting bus heading back into Brampton from a street some distance south that runs through Turkey back into Brampton. I’ll just enjoy the scenery. And I did. It was pretty ordinary scenery – mostly flatland with some trees and power lines and stuff. But it was cool, because it was Turkish flatland with some trees and power lines and stuff! My final thought was, At least it’ll make a funny story for the MMP.
Yep. I can officially call myself an addict. All things considered though it did kinda make a funny (or at least odd) story for the MMP. Just not quite for the same reason.
On the über-geek tip, someone apparently hacked up a version of Windows Mobile 6 for the Dell Axim X50v. Being that I was running Windows Mobile 5 and it was freakin’ buggy and unstable, I couldn’t wait to try it out. And it works! Not only that, it works better than WM5 did! Woohoo! (For those that don’t know – which is likely all of you – Dell stopped making PDAs, and they’ll never be releasing Windows Mobile 6; heck, they had to be arm-twisted just to release patch upgrades for their existing WM5 to fix horrendous bugs that were in it on the X50v!) I am now happy using my PDA again, because I haven’t had to reset due to a completely random, unattended bug mucking up the works, or because it “forgot” a scheduled event like my morning alarm… thank Og.
Okay. Enough geeking. Time to STFU and GBTW.
Nice MMP! I also like Friendly’s a lot–the one on the way to Cape Cod from Providence is especially nice. Beats any Denny’s hands down.
Congrats on the citizenship–I am curious to know where all those there ferrin kidlets would belong, if not to us Amurrikens. Outer Mongolia? Luxembourg? Cambodia? Santa’s Workshop on the North Pole? Mars? Inquiring minds wanna know.
I think it’s nice out today–or nicer than it has been in a loooonnnngg time. I am not sure and don’t want to commit myself. It seems less humid, but I may not be completely awake yet.
I got up twice to see the damned Pleides, but no go-too much cloud cover. Also, once outside, I realized I had no idea which direction to look. Duh…
Hi, hi, hi! Lots of fun pictures in this week’s MMP! I’m glad you had a nice trip, special1 – and the Welbys and the FairyChats too! I was diggin on those backward Rs and stuff. 
Today was the first day of school and of course it must be documented! Another angle
I had in-laws all weekend which, while a lot of fun and we had a great time, it was exhausting. So it’s more of a Monday than usual, here.
Oooooh. Now I get it. That’s what the whole missing cows thing was about, wasn’t it? It was like some secret message. Are you like a spy or something? But I’m on to you now. I’ll be looking for missing cow symbols everywhere now.
Haze, sorry you’re not feeling well. Sending some get well thoughts your way.
welby, nice pics! I didn’t see FCM’s butt, but then again, I wasn’t looking for it. 
Taters, good luck on the kids’ check-up.
taxi, what’s African food? I’ve never had African food before. Like what were the names of the dishes you had for lunch?
Special1 explained this before he left. Apparently, we’re “strangers” he’s meeting on the internet, so no meeting in real life. We’re not strange, are we? Well, not all of us. . . all the time, anyway.
Yeah, time to get back to Greece. Interesting dream. All you Mumpers are olympic-style dreamers, it seems.
Libby is off the respirator! The doctor says her vital signs are good, so she’ll be moving to a room later today! I didn’t go up yesterday because I wasn’t feeling well, so I’ll go up this afternoon.
Aww! First day of school! How I miss the adrenaline. It’s so much more exciting as a student than as a teacher.
SCL, so glad to hear that Libby is feeling better!
Thanks for the concern, Roo. I’m actually feeling a little better now. It’s weird - teaching always gives me such a high.
gt, what do you want to eat while you’re here? Chicago pizza?
Mindfield, that’s an interesting dream. For the good of the MMP, you should have more of them. 
I had a funny moment today when the head teacher walked into the classroom holding eval forms - right when I was telling my students about Japanese tentacle porn. Don’t ask.
Today I’m dragging my brother around to make sure he signs up for his fall classes and then to look for a suitable studio for his lazy ass. Hopefully it will all go well.
I’m so pleased to see the photos of the SailDope you guys had. I read FCM’s report of it in her LJ (don’t worry, she spoke highly of you :D) this morning.
This weekend I took the train from San Diego to Santa Barbara. And back. In the same day. It was a long day. But the few hours of laughter and friendship was worth it. But now I need a nap.
Ragweed is blooming. That is all.
achoo
StG
scout posted! WOOHOO!!!
Snakes that’s great about Libby!!! YAAAAAAAAAAY!!!
Lunch was good. Now I’m chillin’ til it’s time to get ready for work. Gray pocket tshirt and blue jeans today. It’s not near as hot as last week. Only 95 Amurrkin right now. It’s practically Autumn I tells ya!
Highlights of the weekend…
My new Timbuk2 bag arrived on Friday, just in time for me to get it to the person who does our embroidery. When I went over to the Timbuk2 store after work to get it, they asked me if I wanted a bag. For my bag. Ummm… It’s a messenger bag, built to shrug off all manner of abuse, and they thought I might want to carry it home in another bag.
Site build started on Saturday for the Faire. Amazingly, we have all four of our buildings standing. Not so amazingly, there are about two dozen achy people now.
Last night, we arrived at home and were soon to be serenaded by the garage band that moved in at the end of the block. They kept playing some riff over and over and over again. DH finally had enough and called the sheriff. This is not the first time we’ve had to do this - when they first moved in, the first thing they did after taking the truck back to U-Haul was set up the drums. One of the times tha I’d called, the dispatcher asked if I could turn down the radio. I said “No, that’s what I’m calling you about, and they’re five houses away!”
The weird thing was that a deputy shows up at our door last night, with a hand on her holster. And another deputy peeks around from the edge of the garage. :eek: We soon sort out that there was another call about the noise and the other caller dialed 911 (we dialed the non-emergency number) said something to the effect of “It’s frakking noisy here, I need a cop!” and hangs up before being cleared by the 911 operator to hang up.* Addresses get muddled with the multiple calls for the same issue, so we get more attention than we anticipated. Fortunately, we needed to do nothing to persuade them to re-aim their attention to the band - the deputy that was at our door said she could hear them in her car with the windows up and the dispatch radio squawking away.
I love mondays. Seriously. I like reading the MMP, and I always have mondays off. One week I work wed-sun, next week only thurs fri, so I always have monday off, unless Im doing overtime or a shift exchange. So I slept in too late, much to the consternation of foolieboy, and then got up and made pancakes. Im still frying them, and running down here to post in between batches…yummmy
Its a good thing I worked this weekend or I would have got in a lot of trouble. The camp was sold, I got some money and I could have been quite irresponsible… but no, I had to work. That being said I had oh about 4 times my normal limit of alcohol units on Friday night, knowing full well I worked Saturday morning. (Normally Im a two beers happy three beers drunk kinda girl… you do the math…)
I went to work and amazingly functioned, albeit with a lot of extra checks and lots of… can you see if this is right. On my lunch 90 minutes I went home and slept. Felt a lot better after that. 38 is not 18 no matter what I try to believe.
Sunday I went shopping, bought a vaccuum cleaner that really sucks…in a good way… and a bunch of clothes for foolieboy. Not back-to-school clothes, since it will be first going to school for him…starting second week of september. Also went to LUSH, bought me some Karma soap and Karma Kream, and well, now im getting sick of the smell cause its a bit overpowering… next time I will not layer on the soap the shampoo the lotion…one at a time!
anyway have to go flip pancakes.
Good afternoon, everyone. I’ve been gone from the MMP for a while; part of it is because I work in the evenings and on weekends (and thus must get all my house craziness done during the week), and part of it is because I didn’t have much to contribute or much time to read the MMP.
I start classes on the 27th, and I’m getting internet set up in the house within the next week or so to make sure that I can get my classwork done. (Mostly online classes-- yay for library school!) My mom is visiting this week and will probably buy us some much needed extra things for the house. (Dad visited last month and did some of that as well, but it was mostly things from Costco and the stuff we needed to make sure that he had a bed to sleep in [well, an air mattress to sleep on, that is] while he stayed here.) While she’s here, she’s going to meet Acid Lamp’s parents and do a little touristy shopping stuff.
I’m applying to more and more library jobs, despite the fact that I know that it’s mostly a futile effort. The library system I’m applying to has a lot of openings, but they mostly hire through the “you gotta know someone who works here who can vouch for you” system of finding new employees. I got one interview when I first got here, and the job was given to someone transferring from one branch to another, and I’m hoping if I put in enough applications to the closest branches, I’ll get another interview and possibly a job. I applied to the local school system to be a librarian’s assistant or something, but their application is not designed for asking for that specific type of thing. I haven’t heard back from them, but bureaucratic systems tend to be tough to get into. After I start up class and meet the professor who’s teaching the “blended” class that’s in the area, maybe I can get her to give me some suggestions or vouch for me with the local library branches. Getting a job in the library system is a lot tougher, as it seems that even volunteering in this area will get you absolutely nowhere.
Great OP, Noone Special, and congratulations on getting your kids’ citizenship status taken care of. It sounds like you had an exciting weekend touring Boston and New York.
SCL, it’s good to hear that Libby’s getting better. Can someone fill me in on what happened?
Haze, I’ve been caught discussing worse things, but not by an instructor.
Lush stuff is INTENSE. I used to use their Honey I Washed the Kids soap and the entire bathroom smelled like honey and vanilla. Mmmmm. (My brother always complained that it made the bathroom smell too “girly.”)
Chicken something and goat something. Here’s a link to the restaurant’s website, but it needs plugins that I don’t have here at work so I have no idea if there’s a menu or anything interesting on the website or not.
Cute kids, Ellen!
