The Great Wall of Shelving

We've had some major updates to our life. As we've told you in a past blog we have a new flat screen TV and are enjoying programming in HD.

In addition to that life altering news we bought some more shelving for the bedroom. Jen went to work and filled it up in 15 minutes. The odd part is that it didn't appear to have made a dent anywhere else.

Jen here...it's not just HD that has changed out life. As I type this we're watching our first ever On Demand show!!! We are so happy to be watching An Idiot Abroad, the Ricky Gervais produced show where his friend Karl Pilkington goes to see the 7 wonders of the world. First stop - the great wall of China. If you aren't familiar with Karl, I highly recommend it. He just found out that there are no doors on the squatting holes in the public rest rooms. He walked in on a restaurant chef doing his business while taking a food order on the phone....don't order the number 2!!

A couple of Lemons....

The painting, not the girls....!

Lisa came to town for a girlie day in Portsmouth. They shopped for things they didn't need, had a beer and enjoyed being together. We miss Lisa.

Meanwhile, I went sledding with my two boys, my two grandkids, and my ex-wife and her husband and kid. Quite the modern family.

Below is Joey getting some sick air (do they still use that term in the X Games?).

Bret gives little Malikai a taste of speed. He did better than I did. I rode down with Wyatte and once again it ended in blood. I cradled him like an egg, fully cognizant of the time he smashed his face after falling off his bike on my watch. We hit a couple of jumps but I thought it all went fabulously safe thanks to my over protectiveness. Nope. He bit his tongue. Blood, tears, guilt. All the things you associate with a good Grandfather.

Gimme Shelter

After 6.5 months of homelessness Stacey and Dave are in their fabulous new condo in Arlington. It was worth the wait - 1600 sq feet of spacious living with an arts & crafts flair. My favorite detail is the chalkboard wall in the entry way (see the words Bike Rack behind them? Chalk!!)

We ate the first of many Arlington dinners at a very cozy Italian restaurant. Conversation topics included Diane's love for the waiter, Stacey's love for the people of India, and Dave's love for the extra large homemade sausage.

Blindly stumbling through the season

The season has been a disappointment for the Ipswich Tigers. They are still winless and lost another close one tonight to Amesbury.

The good news is that Jen and I still manage to have our own good time. Jen is mesmerized by watching cheerleaders. I think if she found herself thrust back into high school like Drew Barrymore in "Never Been Kissed" she would audition for the Cheerios.

She also pointed out number 14 on our team. At each time out, when the team huddled, he kept playing with himself. During one seemingly endless stoppage in play he stretched and pulled his John Thomas like he was using a joystick in a video game.

Thar She Blows!

For Joey's 18th birthday I rented him a guy to snow blow our driveway, sparing him the arduous task of shoveling this heavy dumping.

I was so psyched to flag down Ben as he strolled past the house. I had spent 40 minutes shoveling my steps and a bit of the walkway realizing that this was going to take me half a day.

Ben. Makes me think of the Michael Jackson song.

If you know the song you know that it is about a rat. It was written for the movie of the same name, the follow up to the scary rat story, Willard.

What you may not know was that the song was originally intended for Donny Osmond to sing, but the writer later suggested Michael Jackson sing it.

The song was nominated for an Oscar and 14 year old Michael Jackson sang it at the ceremonies.

My Baby's a Man

At 19 Abner Doubleday invented the rules for baseball.

Gore Vidal wrote his first book.

Get going Joey.

For Joey's 18th birthday we brought him to Agave. We sat at the bar and got him drunk.

(I'm just kidding. That would really bum me out, to find out Joey drinks. Not so much because he's under age and having some beer, but because I would TOTALLY be caught by surprise. He's never given us any signs that he's been experimenting with alcohol.)

After Agave we saw Bret at his job delivering pizza's for The Upper Crust. I love this picture. I get a little emotional thinking about my boys and Jen... all feigning happiness in celebration of Joey turning voting age.

Really though, I've been trying to recognize little moments in life when things are really good. Making sure I pay attention to them in the moment. This was one of them.

"I had to hand it to the kid. He could be enthusiastic about a truly crap present." Name the movie this quote is from.

We're ready for our close up

In honor of the Oscar nominations coming out today, Petey and I decided to dust off our tiaras and start writing our acceptance speeches. Bill is at Joey's basketball game so I had to take my own photo....that means lots of bloopers.

And the Oscar goes to....Petey and Jen for their performance in "The Jen and Bill Experience".

This will be the second year that the race for best picture includes 10 films. I don't see this as any kind of improvement. In fact, it really makes some of the other races moot - for instance, Toy Story 3 is nominated for best picture and for best animated picture. If its the only animated film nominated for best picture, doesn't that imply that it is the best animated picture? Ditto best foreign film. It's nonsensical.

Of course I'm really looking forward to the Oscars because that is when Laura and Jim come home. We are rolling out the red carpet for you!

Oscar Quiz:

If Jeff Bridges wins this year for True Grit, he will be the third actor to win two years in a row. Who were the other two?

Randy Newman seems to be nominated every year for best song. How many nominations has he really had? How many wins?

Inter-NOT

This is a picture of our dysfunctional modem. We are practically off the grid here at 11 Atwood and panic has ensued. Fortunately for our five followers, Laura has given me the password to suck her internet waves across the street and into my computer. Disaster averted for now - but I'm relying on that renaissance man of yesterday to sort this all out and deliver me back to the welcoming cocoon of the world wide web.

This fiasco is probably even more difficult to handle after our boozy night last night. Bill and I went to "A Winter's Tale" in Portsmouth - a storytelling event at a little club called the Red Door. I didn't know going into it that they didn't serve food and so by 8:00 I realized that pouring any more alcohol into my empty stomach was going to result in a story of my own. We ditched the second half and went out to dinner at the Green Monkey but the damage was done (and we did a little more while we were at it). Winter's Tale - B+. The Red Door Sangria - A! Looking forward to the February event after a big plate of pasta.

Renaissance Man

There are many sides to Bill - one moment he is a super HR generalist, firing people with such skill that they thank him for the opportunity to be canned by a master, the next he is playing with his grandchildren pretending his finger is an electric knife. Today he showed us two more sides to his many faceted personality: The Handy Man and the GQ Man of Style.

I can't even look at this picture without hearing the guitar riffs of ZZ Top - "Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man...."

Unfortunately he had to get slicked up for a wake for the father of one of his childhood friends. I've left instructions with Bill for no sad funeral home events after I die. Hand out my organs, dose me with lighter fluid, and toss on a match. We read in the Globe Magazine today that Andre Dubus III built his own father's casket. Bill is going to store my ashes in a teapot and knit me a cozy (again - he is so versatile!)

PS if I'm dead, don't drink the tea at Bill's house

HI!

Beer, wine, shrimp, kettle corn and Lindsey Lohan movies. Didi came, she saw, she conquered.

Parent Trap, Mean Girls, The Holiday.

What do Dennis Quaid and Cameron Diaz have in common?

They have the largest mouths of anyone I've ever seen.

Jen just saw me type this and put her entire fist in her mouth. I'm sickened, yet somehow proud.

I was totally on fire

Filled in for Max Weinberg last week. Bruce is really a good dude. A regular guy. His wife is a bit of a ..... well, it's a family blog so I can't use those words here.

Bruce quiz - name the songs that contain the following lyrics:

1) Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul

2) Roy Orbison singing for the lonely Hey that's me and I want you only

3) Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote

4) Late at night I'm takin' you home I say I wanna stay, you say you wanna be alone

Velcro + Eighties Rock = Fun

We had 3 generations of MacKays in the house for pizza night. And since we don't really have a lot of toys, we have to make our own fun. What could be more fun than little cut out heads on velcro? All our friends and blog followers were there.

We concluded the night with some head banging music from Bon Jovi.

Joey and I know how to rock!!

Shine your moon

It was a beautiful full moon tonight.

This is one of our favorite houses on Federal Street

The full moon made me think of one of my favorite kids books, Goodnight Moon.

Which made me want to make a list; a list of my favorite kids books.

These are the first ones that come to mind. I'm missing some, I'm sure.

3 Maidens

Disaster. Can't find the cord to the camera, so I had to take a picture using the Mac Photo Booth.

I neon-ized a picture of me.

I'm upstairs watching t.v. on our new HD television set. Jen can't tell the difference between t.v. and HD t.v.

She has the girls over tonight to watch British period piece t.v. (not in HD).

I don't know how it came up but we started talking about having a different name.

I told Denise she looked like a Stella to me and she liked it. I was told I have to rename Jen and Christin now.

For Christin I'm going with Bella. It has a nice tone and it rhymes with Stella.

Unfortunately for Jen she is stuck with Citronella.

She's My Little Back Hoe .... You Don't Know What I Got

I almost bought one of these little sidewalk backhoes so we could get out of our driveway without getting stuck but two things happened. It started raining and some of the snow is disappearing. And the town FINALLY came down our street with the big backhoe to clean up our street.

I still think I would look cool in one of these little bad boys.

(Jen doesn't think the title of my blog post will spark anything with our readers (reader?). Please prove her wrong.)

The collapse of a Boston Marriage

If anything happened to me Jen and Laura wouldn't blink before they formed a Boston Marriage.

A Boston Marriage is the term used for two woman living together, who are financially independent of any man. It need not be a sexual arrangement.

But I think they would be in trouble. I'm not sure Laura would play with Petey and the monkeys. That would spell doom for their arrangement.

Bill is in a rut

Someone who lives on Atwood Street has angered the City authorities. There is no other explanation of why our street looks like this. Up and down Newburyport the other streets have been plowed and traffic flows freely and happily. So far Bill has come to the aid of two neighbors spinning their tires in the six inches of smush - Mary (famous for her early morning walks of shame in the same clothes she went out in the night before) and Laura (back for a week from sunny California and bereft of her New England driving skills).

Meanwhile, back in #11 - Bill contemplates the sink. Is there a photo brewing?

Jen nightmare #237

No one shows at the Newburyport Lit Fest because Jen let Vickie choose the venues for the author readings.

You can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me

Years ago we said we don't want television in the bedroom. I pushed Jen into putting a little t.v. the size of a toaster because I wanted to watch ESPN in bed. The television sits on a small card catalogue which sits on a small humidor. It's a pathetic setup. So Jen and I went on a mission today in search of a new piece of furniture which will hold our future new television.

Before we did we gave Laura's cat a pill. Shamu spit it out and ran around the house while we chased her.

Our trip to find furniture was a failure, but we cut our losses and went for beer in the South End

(I'm sneaking in another Sink Series picture. Jen told me "You are not posting another sink picture", which made me want to post another sink series picture.)

Brendan Frasier's Best Work!

One of the stars of the hit Family Comedy "Furry Vengeance" came to watch Joey play ball. Haley Sabino, my buddy Randy's daughter, was an extra in a Brendan Frasier/Brooke Shields movie filmed partially in Topsfield. Haley is a smart kid with alot going for her. Therefore she knows enough never to mention that she was part of this piece of filming excrement.

Speaking of excrement, Joey's basketball team lost by 20 tonight to run their record to 0 - 9. Randy and I are angry. (We weren't angry at the way the game was going, we were angry because someone mentioned "Furry Vengeance".

Edamame is good for you

Within 10 minutes of going outside to shovel yesterday afternoon I crippled myself. I spent the day today working at home with various packages of frozen vegetables down my pants. I'm looking forward to the day when I can walk upright again.

One Upper

Every dork can walk around and take lovely snow pictures. Big flippin' deal.

But will anyone else have a picture of their car made to look like a monkey?

I don't think so.....