Saturday, August 20, 2011

Aaaah...Saturday


It's 7:30 on Saturday morning, and I'm sitting up at Honda North in either Danvers or Topsfield waiting to have my oil changed and my tires rotated. There is a little snack bar here so I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, which is so good that I wish I had some tomato soup. I used to come up to this neck of the woods all the time, so when I got my car in November, Danvers was very convenient. Now I don't come up here anymore, so it's kind of a pain in the ass. Doesn't matter. Before my current car, I bought my last two Hondas at Herb Chambers, and I'd probably drive to NJ for service before going back there. I like Honda North much better.

Before heading up here this morning, Thor and I went for our ususal walk around the neighborhood. We encountered something that Thor had never seen before, and we can add another item to the list of things that he's afraid of: shopping carts. Some of the other funny things he's afraid of are umbrellas, balloons, tv tables, and those big exercise balls. For a dog that's as big as he is, you'd think he'd be embarrassed to be such a baby. There are three beautiful pointer puppies in my neighborhood that have been out with their owners on walks the last week or two. One is brown, one is black and one is all over gray and white speckled. Their mother is all black as well. Whenever we see them, Thor cries because he wants to go meet them, but I thought it would be wise to wait until they were at least a little bigger before The Moose went over and overwhelmed them. How happy were we this Wednesday when we were able to go say hello?? They are SOOO cute. They are 10 weeks old and their owners are trying to socialize them by having them meet as many dogs and people as possible. Thor is very well socialized w/ other dogs. He goes on walks with his friends every day, and goes to doggie day care one day per week. He did so well with the puppies! He was very gentle and didn't get excited at all. Now if only I could keep him gentle and calm IN the house, I think we'd be on to something.

Next Monday, the 29th, I was scheduled to have the molds done for my Invisalign braces. I would've had my first set of straighteners as soon as I returned from Italy, and in six or seven months, my teeth would've been back in their original locations where they belong. That was the plan. Sadly, I cracked one of my teeth, and I'm about to enter the nightmare zone. I thought I had either chipped a tooth or a filling. I could feel it with my tongue, and it was sensitive to sweet and cold. As time went on (a day or so; not months or years) it became hard to chew on that side, and I have to breathe through my mouth because of the sensitivity to the cold air passing over the tooth. I made an emergency trip to the dentist on Thursday, and was told that I had sheared off part of the tooth and it can't be fixed with a filling. The pain was so bad that they had to turn off the air conditioning so that they could get the x-ray. It turns out that the tooth is cracked and I need another crown. Tuesday morning I'm going in for the prep work on the tooth and the temporary crown. Fun. (Now normally I'd just be annoyed about the situation, pissed about the money and uncomforable and inconvenienced by the sensitivity and pain of the tooth. What's REALLY getting to me is that I can't have my molds done. This pushes back my Invisalign project by at least two months.) At the emergency visit, they put bonder over the defect in the tooth, but it fell off last night when I was brushing my teeth. I guess it's mind over matter until Tuesday at 9AM.

I can see that they just finished my tires, so I think I'm nearly done here. I'll pick this up when I get back home.



So I'm thinking about changing the name/theme of my blog. It's not really about knitting anymore, because I haven't knit anything in months. Until the last couple weeks I hadn't written anything because I was spending so much time with the dog. I'd rather not have it just be about the dog though, either. I don't know. Just a thought. I do have one additional thing to mention about Moose Puppy. Yesterday I stopped by Petco to get the cats a bag of food. I generally grab Thor a chew toy when I'm in there because he goes through them so fast. When I go home, I offered him the new toy, and I plastic milk carton. Which do you think he chose?

Wow. I have Animal Planet playing while I write this, and I just saw the coolest product: an exercise wheel for cats. It seemed like it might be an interesting thing for Munchie and Tubby, so I just checked it out online. Holy Smokes! $800 for a giant hamster wheel. On second thought, no thank you...Tubby will just have to remain tubby.

Hours have gone by since the entry above. Since it didn't rain today, I decided that it was the perfect day for my least favorite thing: working on the house. My front porch faces east. Because Winthrop is a tiny strip of land surrounded by water, it is often damp/humid here. Because the front porch is covered, it doesn't get blasted by the sun like the sides facing south and west, so the paint has grown mildew in some areas. Improving the curb appeal of the porch (excluding the ceiling) is a three step process: bleach and scrub the mildew, paint a coat of Kilz, and then at least one coat of the exterior paint that is on the rest of the house. I did the bleaching, scrubbing, and hosing down today. I'm beat and I smell like Clorox. Hopefully it will be warm and dry for the next few days so that the wood dries out enough to paint. When I paint, I'll be sure to post pictures.

That's it for now...thanks for reading.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Finally...Wireless





Last year at this time, I was doing blog postings two or three times per week. I had established a routine, and had assembled a small group of loyal readers (led by my mother - Hi Mom), who seemed to find me amusing and interesting enough to read on a regular basis. Then Thor came in February, and I haven't really had much time to write anything since. I got into the habit of spending my evenings with Moose Puppy, and our activities didn't included me sitting upstairs at the computer. I've been meaning to get a wireless router, but it never seems to be at the top of my list when I'm doing errands. Since it happens to be tax-free weekend here in MA, G and I tacked a few extra destinations on our usual Saturday errand route - one of which was Best Buy to get the router. I hooked it up without any difficulty at all, and now all of my problems are solved. (Well, that's a total lie. All of my problems are not solved, but I digress...) I can write on my netbook while keeping the pooch company downstairs.

Right now I'm sitting on his sofa watching The King's Speech while Thor (taking up 3/4 of the sofa) is alternating between chomping on his bone and snoozing. Did you ever notice that Colin Firth always has actors from Pride & Predudice in his films? Just a side note. Okay. Now, for something totally different, The Royal Tenenbaums is the current film selection. I should be able to type faster since I don't have to concentrate on the film as much and plus, Wes Anderson rocks the house.

Last weekend I went up to Wingaersheek Beach to spend some time w/ my dear friend E and her family. E is one of my two best friends from college. I used to visit her at her family's summer home during college, but I hadn't been there in years. It was so beautiful; exactly as I remember. I'm not really much of a beach person, (and I never take my ghostly white, nordic skin out in the sunlight) so the fact that it was raining last week was perfect beach weather for me. When I got there, I found out that we were going clamming. What fun!! (My mother is from Philadelphia, and in the summers when I was little, we used to go to the Jersey shore with our cousins for vacation. The older six of us were all born within 34 months, so we were all basically the same age. Somebody told us how to find quahogs, and so we used to dig for them. When we'd find them, we'd smash them on the hard sand, dig out the clam and throw it up to the seagulls. I remember sometimes the seagulls would miss and the clams would land on people sunbathing on the beach. Now, I'm sure it's hard to imagine me ripping a raw clam out of its shell and throwing up to a seagull, but I did. Great fun for kids.)


When we went out last week it was pouring, so no one else was on the beach. We got off to kind of a slow start because they have to be 5" to be keepers, but things picked up when the tide started to come back in. We ended up with tons. It took E's brother R close to two hours to clean them all. Then E made stuffed clams w/ onion, garlic, salt pork, tabasco, the ground clams and bread crumbs. I generally don't eat fish or shellfish, but I did have half of a stuffed clam.

During the time that I wasn't writing or posting pictures, there was a black crowned night heron baby that was growing up in my biggest tree. Check him out:



This first photo was taken in June. I have these birds every year, and this is the youngest one I've ever seen.







This was taken in July, and he or she had grown into a very handsome teenager.







This was taken just a couple days ago. He's sleeping, but you can see that he's getting big. I think he's full grown at this point, but you can tell by the feathers that he's a juvenile. If he were an adult, he'd be primarily white with some gray and a black head. For more on these birds, check out this link.

During my post last Saturday, I was complaining about the mystery mammal who has been eating all my zucchini flowers. When I was at E's I asked her mother if she knew how I could get varmints to leave the zucchini flowers alone. Her answer was absolutely brilliant. Forget the zucchinis; pick the flowers, dip them in egg, roll them in flour and fry them. Check out a picture of last night's dinner: Fried zucchini flowers at 2:00.


That's pretty much it for today. I'll think of something interesting to write about and post again sometime this week.