Sunday, February 2nd 5:06 PM
Backyard
Monday, February 3rd 5:24 PM
Front yard
Monday, February 3, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Friday, January 31, 2014
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
Cheating who?
The "Mom Group" I belong to just posted about a "Biggest Loser" style competition that they are holding. Grand prize looks to be about $100-$150. I briefly considered signing up... but I don't think that wouldn't be fair. Kinda like a recovered GAVegas style card counter joining the neighborhood poker night. That, and the prize money isn't big enough for that kinda effort. But man... add a zero and I'd go all in...
Monday, December 9, 2013
But... why does the unicorn have antlers?
I know everyone has weird dreams... but sometimes mine really take the cake. Like the time I dreamt I nearly got Julie and me and our friends, Christy and Bob, killed for mistakenly booking a vacation with a tour group of outspoken MtF transexuals that was bound for Saudi Arabia (they didn't TELL anybody they were MtF until we got there!!) or the one about my mother-in buying an abandoned hotel for me, Julie and my in-laws, Roy and Rachel, to fix up as her personal vacation destination-- complete with a murderous Russian bel-hop and toxic mold. I'm not sure quite what my brain was trying to sort out in these dreams (at least they weren't nightmares?)... and I'm not sure I want to know.
After 2 days of barely sleeping, I slept like a rock last night and my mind took this opportunity to spin another doozy. Apparently, my paternal grandfather had a hunting lodge in the catskills that no one knew about. Not a ramshackle, wooden board, "NO TRESPASSING" sign kinda shack... the real deal. Stone walls, an epically huge stone fireplace with a bearskin run in front of it... the kind of thing you see advertised at fancy ski resorts or depicted in high-end "ski encounter" pornos (so I hear... ). But no one in the family knew about it. No one but my cousin Mark. Because my grandfather had, for some reason, left the hunting lodge to Mark and Mark just forgot to tell everyone. And even Mark didn't know where it was... he just had a black and white notebook full of GPS coordinates left by my grandfather and one of the thousands of coordinates was the one for the house. So, in my dream, Mark set off in search of the appropriate coordinates with my cousins Patrick, Krista and Megan. They didn't tell anyone else where they were going or why.... they just packed up two unicorns and a camel (to carry their gear, of course) and left. And eventually they found the place... somewhere in the middle of the woods. By the time they find it it has started snowing and there's a few inches of snow on the ground, and Krista and Megan are riding the unicorns. Not surprisingly, it is clear that the shack is booby trapped-- however they are surprised to find that there are fresh footprints all around the area. Which, of course, leads to the logical conclusion (if you are familiar with our family) that my grandfather elaborately faked his own death and is hiding out in the hunting lodge-- probably living off the meat of elk that he strangles with his own two hands and beverages brought in by unmarked Amazon-style delivery drones. So my cousins do the logical thing and disarm the booby traps, hide the camel and the unicorns in the woods, and crawl through the snow, commando style, to peek in the windows. And this is the point in the dream where Julie and I show up... because we just happened to be hiking in the same woods at the same time that all of this is going on.
So Julie and I come walking up around the corner of the lodge and find my cousin Patrick on the roof of the lodge, dressed in a Santa costume with the two unicorns and the camel dressed as reindeer (how'd they get on the roof? I dunno... gonna go with magic) in order to go down the chimney in a ruse to see if it is indeed my grandfather living in the lodge or not, in hopes that, if it is Grandpa, he wouldn't actually shoot Santa. Mark and Krista are hiding under separate windows, crouched down, armed with snowballs (and each snowball has 2 eyes, a carrot nose and a mouth made out of buttons), and Megan is perched very calmly in a tree nearby holding a camera and a mug of hot chocolate.
As we stumble upon this scene, the only thing that seems out of place to me and Julie are the remarkably detailed faces on the snowballs. The plan falls apart when Patrick realizes that there is a fire in the fireplace. Instead he suggests we try the trap door under the house, which just happened to have an illuminated "Entrance" sign hanging over it. After we all got the unicorns and the camel off the roof we regrouped and Mark volunteered to go down into the trap door- but Krista pointed out that all of the footprints around the house had disappeared, so logically, had anyone who was living in it. And it turned out that she was right. So we all went into the hunting lodge and were surprised to find that there was one of those gigantic "Incredible Edibles" bouquets of chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us on the table. We didn't dare touch it for fear it was laced with rat poison.
"Dreams, inconsistent angel things.
Horses bred with star-laced wings.
But it's so hard to make them fly, fly, fly..."
-Sixpence None The Richer
After 2 days of barely sleeping, I slept like a rock last night and my mind took this opportunity to spin another doozy. Apparently, my paternal grandfather had a hunting lodge in the catskills that no one knew about. Not a ramshackle, wooden board, "NO TRESPASSING" sign kinda shack... the real deal. Stone walls, an epically huge stone fireplace with a bearskin run in front of it... the kind of thing you see advertised at fancy ski resorts or depicted in high-end "ski encounter" pornos (so I hear... ). But no one in the family knew about it. No one but my cousin Mark. Because my grandfather had, for some reason, left the hunting lodge to Mark and Mark just forgot to tell everyone. And even Mark didn't know where it was... he just had a black and white notebook full of GPS coordinates left by my grandfather and one of the thousands of coordinates was the one for the house. So, in my dream, Mark set off in search of the appropriate coordinates with my cousins Patrick, Krista and Megan. They didn't tell anyone else where they were going or why.... they just packed up two unicorns and a camel (to carry their gear, of course) and left. And eventually they found the place... somewhere in the middle of the woods. By the time they find it it has started snowing and there's a few inches of snow on the ground, and Krista and Megan are riding the unicorns. Not surprisingly, it is clear that the shack is booby trapped-- however they are surprised to find that there are fresh footprints all around the area. Which, of course, leads to the logical conclusion (if you are familiar with our family) that my grandfather elaborately faked his own death and is hiding out in the hunting lodge-- probably living off the meat of elk that he strangles with his own two hands and beverages brought in by unmarked Amazon-style delivery drones. So my cousins do the logical thing and disarm the booby traps, hide the camel and the unicorns in the woods, and crawl through the snow, commando style, to peek in the windows. And this is the point in the dream where Julie and I show up... because we just happened to be hiking in the same woods at the same time that all of this is going on.
So Julie and I come walking up around the corner of the lodge and find my cousin Patrick on the roof of the lodge, dressed in a Santa costume with the two unicorns and the camel dressed as reindeer (how'd they get on the roof? I dunno... gonna go with magic) in order to go down the chimney in a ruse to see if it is indeed my grandfather living in the lodge or not, in hopes that, if it is Grandpa, he wouldn't actually shoot Santa. Mark and Krista are hiding under separate windows, crouched down, armed with snowballs (and each snowball has 2 eyes, a carrot nose and a mouth made out of buttons), and Megan is perched very calmly in a tree nearby holding a camera and a mug of hot chocolate.
As we stumble upon this scene, the only thing that seems out of place to me and Julie are the remarkably detailed faces on the snowballs. The plan falls apart when Patrick realizes that there is a fire in the fireplace. Instead he suggests we try the trap door under the house, which just happened to have an illuminated "Entrance" sign hanging over it. After we all got the unicorns and the camel off the roof we regrouped and Mark volunteered to go down into the trap door- but Krista pointed out that all of the footprints around the house had disappeared, so logically, had anyone who was living in it. And it turned out that she was right. So we all went into the hunting lodge and were surprised to find that there was one of those gigantic "Incredible Edibles" bouquets of chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us on the table. We didn't dare touch it for fear it was laced with rat poison.
"Dreams, inconsistent angel things.
Horses bred with star-laced wings.
But it's so hard to make them fly, fly, fly..."
-Sixpence None The Richer
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| Yup. This image would have fit right in... |
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