Meanderings 2

1. Have you noticed how prizes on game shows haven't at all kept up with the rate of inflation? For example, I can remember watching America's Funniest Home Videos with the mitochondria of talent that is Bob Saget. Each show consisted of the cutest dad getting hit in the balls by his toddler winning ten thousand dollars. This was just a little more than ten years ago. But now, just like everything else, game show prizes have been ultra-supersized. There was no "gradual" increment of money--we all of the sudden jumped from 10K to 1 Million dollars. Just like that. Why didnt we "work" towards the million? There were no shows offering 250 thousand, or even 500 thousand. Soon, one million dollars will seem like nothing, and game shows will have to "up the ante" again. There's an expression Timmycocks can look up on urbandictionary.com

2. Enough already with the cartoons and comedies that make allusions to the fight scenes from The Matrix films, when characters are fighting like normal, and then, all of the sudden, do backwards somersaults into the air, and levitate for a bit, while all the while punching and kicking in slow motion. Do these shows really think they're original? There's nothing funny about kung fu, and I know, since I was round-housed kicked in the face.

3. Do you think Skittles and M&Ms would get along in real life? They have to be related somehow. Would it be like a racist holy-war jihad kind of thing? Or would they live in peace, respecting the other's right to be fruity or chocolaty? If they intermarried, their kids would be like those chocolate oranges that are only sold around Christmas time, and only bought for Yankee swaps.

4. You don't see too many "Baby on Board" signs anymore. Apparently, they're all grown up.

5. What were those signs actually supposed to do? Encourage kidnappers or car-jackings? Prevent accidents? Chances are that if another driver was taking the time to read your dumb sign, he or she was taking their eyes off the road, where they should have been in the first place. And that, kids, is how accidents happen in the first place. Remember this, if nothing else.

Cutting and Stripping

Rain today for a change . . .I had to mow the lawn for the first time in two weeks, and even then, it really didnt need to be cut all that much . . .a huge change from last summer, and even the early spring, when I cut it just about every four days. Things are growing very strange this summer: grass is hardly getting any taller, bushes that ususally flower are not (mountain laurel), and things are blooming later than usual (the lupines, for instance, seemed late)

Amanda cut off all her hair today for her "summer do." I think it looks great--it hilights the complexities of her face . . . .I need mine cut too; I think might is ALMOST at 3/8 of an inch, and I got it cut last in mid May.

"Krazy Karl" dropped in today bearing gifts of red, natural casing hot dogs (a Maine tradition). Also, he started measuring for sheetrock, since we are going to do that together after we get back from Cobscook in a week or so. After I staged one of the greatest cribbage victories of all time, he left, and I began stripping aluminum siding off the house, which was a pleasure to do, since it is so dirty, grimy, and old looking. It will look so nice when the sheetrock is done, since then Amanda can paint it a color like "desert serenade," "orgasmic orange hue," or "twilight passage." I think being a paint namer is something I would undoubtedly be successsful at; how cool would it be to sit in an office all day, looking at different shades of red, blue, and yellow, and peevishly give it eccentric names that make you sound like you were more poetic, introspective, and profound than you actually are. It would be funny if, after the end of the day, the chief paint namer for Behr or Sherwin Williams got into their Hyundai Elantra with no CD player and went home to eat a "Hungry Man" frozen dinner. Alone. By the electric heat. That, would be funny.

STARBUCKS PICK: The wife and I made a trip to Fourbucks this evening, and we HEARTILY recommend the "iced tea lemonade" drink they serve: Passionfruit tea mixed with lemonade. Very refreshing summer drink.

BEER PICK: Redhook's "Sun Rye" seasonal summer brew is outstanding--I am nursing one now, actually, savoring the flavor. Mmm . . .savoring . . . But a delightful wheaty brew with hints of summer citrus undertones (hey, look at me, I am a paint-namer)

WEB SITE PICK: Bustedtees.com has absolutely hilarious t-shirts for sale; looking at them brings me back to "Friday Night Club" in 1995 when Ponticekki, the Reverend, and I would check out shirts at Newbury Comics.

Happy Independence Day!

Our day started by watching some baby birds get fed by their mom and dad. The first picture was us trying to get close enough to them without scaring them off... If you look really closely you can see a little tiny beak, or two or three, peaking out of the birdhouse. We think there are three babies in there and we are glad that they chose to make our birdhouse their home this year!

After a great track workout we came home to finish preparing the food for the cookout at Grandmom and Grandpop's. Jared made "Antwan's special stuffed mushrooms," Amanda made deviled eggs and a strawberry chocolate torte, and Thomas brewed some killer iced tea which we then forgot to bring. We headed over to Tall Trees farm at about 1:00 and had a great time visiting with everyone. Grandmom made the trek outside to eat with us at the picnic table but it was pretty cold and windy. We watched the clouds roll in as we were trying to eat as fast as we could to beat the rain. We had great food - Dad's cole slaw, Mel's pasta salad, Mom's potato salad, and hot dogs, hamburgers and sausages on the grill.

Finally we had Christmas in July - we finally got to exchange presents that we didn't get to in December because of Grandmom's 'vacation' in the hospital. Grandpop made us some 'Merry Christmas' blocks that I'm wicked excited about! And Jared got some Pyrex glass measuring cups. We did get to see fireworks, but from a distance. We could see them flashing in the sky as we drove home down I-95. All in all a great day! ~Amanda

More breezeway/mud room pictures

Check out Thomas, the foreman. He looks like a glazier--sleeping on the job while the other guys do the work . . .

Breezeway Part I

On Monday morning, Thomas’s Uncle Rod came by at about 7:30 to start on the breezeway renovation. McCormack’s Lumber delivered shortly thereafter. Rod and I spent the morning totally demolishing the old, much rotted out breezeway that existed for about 52 years. For its age, the infrastructure was stupendous (unlike the one fascist totalitarian Florida Certified President Bush has created in what used to the democratic United States). Sorry for that.

Anyway, Rod and I were surprised to see just how rotted out some of the floor joists and floor boards were. Some of the pictures reflect that. I am enclosing just about all of the pictures I took during the weeklong renovation, so that out of state family and friends can see. We figured this would be better, rather than emailing them to people.

Derek, Rod’s son, came by late in the morning after Rod and I had much of the demolition done. Then, since skill beyond eating crab rangoon was involved from this point on, I backed off a bit and Rod and Derek took over. They stripped about just the whole breezeway off with the exception of the roof and started from scratch. I, meanwhile, started a nice camp fire/burn pile that went from about 9 am to 7pm, burning everything that could fit in our fire pit. The rest was graciously accepted by the one and only Senor Andresen in his huge burn pile right by the Sebasticook River—so I spent most of day 2 lugging a bunch of rotted old wood over to Winslow so that Amanda the Panda could have her garage bay back (we just threw all the scrap wood where she usually parks).

The only really difficult part of the whole process, so far, was installing the back door. For all you carpentry fans out there, it is important to know that 50 some-odd years ago when the garage and breezeway were added on to the house, they had to build the garage at a higher elevation than the house (for some unknown reason) and they essentially made the floor and the roof slanted TOWARDS the house. SO, we had to level out the floor, which meant that once we got to the footer above the windows, we had about a 3 inch difference from the garage side to the house side. But, I guess any time you add “new” to “old,” you have these issues.

Sorry for being wordy . . .part of why I am writing this much is so we can remember all this when we look at it years later (if the internet is still around . . ha ha). Where we are presently, on Tuesday evening, is that everything is installed except the front door. Also, some finish/touch up needs to be done. Anyone know how to take off aluminum siding?

The second blog posted tonight is just pictures . . .no more text. Happy 4th of July everyone!!!—Jared and Amanda

Jared's Random Meanderings

1. Why does it seem like small Asian men and women are so good at eating? Aren't they are always winning the consumption contests for hot dogs, pies, eggs, and more? And they are so small. What is about their genetic makeup that makes them so conducive to gluttony? To add insult to injury, all the fat guys are seemingly terrible at these eating contests; they probably think they are hot you-know-what strutting up there to the stage, thinking they've got this contest in the bag. Its kind of sad actually--the one sport they have a shot at being actually good at, and some little Asian comes by and humbles them. I dont know what is sadder--this, or the fact that in our culture, this type of activity is considered a sport

2. Life got less fun for me immediately after my mom/aunt/nana/token corpulent lady at family party could no longer say "its okay for him to eat it . . .he's a growing boy." Jeez, was it great to be "growing."

3. Has anyone ever thought of where we get "OKAY" from? I have often wondered about such widely accepted conversational idioms such as this, and "get used to it." But let's think about OKAY or O.K., as its commonly known. Do the O and the K stand for something? Does anyone know? And why are people so lazy that they cannot write the whole word? They have to abbreviate it, and use periods even? Weird.

4. I'm sick of guys with loud Australian accents yelling at me on commercials. Stop it! I don't even know you, and you have no idea how dirty my house or clothes are, or how frustrating it is for me to chop an onion.

5. What ever happened to Neopolitan Ice Cream? They seemed to have a pretty good thing going. It was fun for everyone--three delicious flavors from which to choose . . . an honest attempt to please different people . . .a great introduction to an ADD culture. Two weeks after opening the half gallon, all that would be left would be the strawberry section . . .

Strawberries and Scrabble

Sorry we missed yesterday's post--boy did we hear it from Father Ninja, as well as family. So apparently Amanda and I are not the only ones reading this . . .

Yesterday (Sunday) was spent mostly with the Pelottes. Amanda and Mandy went strawberry picking at McGrath's Farm while Tony and I played Scrabble and Griffin had his nap. I was just about to make a huge triple word score AND take the opportunity to spell TEAT at the same time when the girls came back from picking berries. Amanda picked 6 quarts, so that means next June I will throw away 5 freezer burned quarts. Just kidding. She already made a delicious pie with Mandy, and more pies and jams are to come.

Since we were in China anyway, we went just down the road a mile or so to visit Cindy and Dana out at their camp on China Lake. Amanda enjoyed a strawberry cocktail, I had a Blue Moon White Ale, and then we went on a big fun boat ride and ate deviled eggs with horseradish, which is my favorite way to spend a Sunday afternoon. But seriously, it was great visiting with them for a while--we'll try to get some pictures of Camp Greenlaw on the blog soon, since it is such a beautiful place.