Dinner with the Authors

We strapped on the food bag with the authors tonight. We won nothing at the auction - which is probably for the best since Bill still hasn't shot the round of golf he won last year! - and ate dinner with the stellar company of Denise and her mom, Anita.

For the record, I think this is yet another good photo of Denise taken by Bill. "I bring out the best in Denise" says Mr. MacKay.

Bill and I ended the night with Drew and his friend Greg and Kip and Lee. Greg and Lee are authors and were interesting until I found out Kips job 9the guy in black at the left of the photo). He works for SESAME STREET. Doesn't that sound like the coolest job on earth?? He works with muppets!!

Meanwhile, Vicki and Bill left the party for a much needed smoke.

Tomorrow is action packed and ends at Andre's party. Tune in!

The best part of the festival...the sandwich boards

After 363 days of planning, the 2011 festival is here. And we couldn't have pulled it off without handy Bill and his staple gun.

Meanwhile, my day was filled with last minute author cancellations, car service requests, dinner attire questions and even a lunch order I need to fill on Saturday. Is it Sunday yet?

PS I don't think we updated our few followers about Stacey's baby's name....Nathanial Raymond Manfredini. (aka Nate)

His putter bores me

Bill got up at 4:30am for a 6:00 tee time with the boys at work.

He told the girls all about his round.

They were not impressed.

not quite a fair trade off

Went for drinks after work with the Sales VP's at Moonstones. Moonstones is a really good restaurant in a really crappy town. It's like if you lived in Vidor, Texas (strong KKK presence) and decided to open a Louis Vuitton boutique.

One of the perks of the job is to hang with a VP from Wisconsin, a VP from Golden Colorado and a VP from Toronto and learn what makes them tick. They learn nothing from me other than the definition of "merkin" and other totally inane information.

Those were simpler times

Didi is quite a tomato.

I tried to find some nicknames involving the word tomato. I went to that vault of credible slang, The Urban Dictionary. Good God, that site is basically a place where people can make up profane graffiti.

A couple of the watered down examples included:

* Tomato - A sexy curvacious woman, usually dressed in a manner that invites men to try and F*** her

* Tomatoes - A pair of very nice big juicy boobs

They got worse from there. Much worse.

But in the true spirit of the 1940's, old-timey meaning of "tomato", Didi, you're quite a tomato.

Jen and Bill - role models to another generation

A traditional Easter Sunday in NBPT. Wyatte and Malikai participated in the age old colored foam golf ball hunt. (Our neighbors had the grandkids over and had an egg hunt. Eggs...weird.)

Then we gave the kids tattoos. Each got to choose three tats. Both boys chose scantily clad women tattoos.

(That kind of makes sense if you go with the belief that the name Easter derives from Eostre, the goddess of Spring. It's Spring... those chicks on the tattoo could be called goddesses.... )

You can see Malikai's in the picture below. Wyatte decided to have his put on his hip. It's about 4 inches long, which basically covers half his body.

The best part about being Grandparents is the opportunity to mess with your family for the second time.

Cool can't be bought on Amazon

A couple of months ago Jennie said I should wear more ties. I saw a celebrity rocking the cowl neck button up sweater and tie on the cover of my Cigar Aficionado magazine and thought I'd copy it.

Unfortunately, the celebrity was Matthew McConaughey. Not quite a role model I'd ever want to emulate. The dude rarely showers.

It was like the time I saw Johnny Depp sporting a bunch of necklaces and went out and got a half dozen beaded necklaces to look cool. (I don't think he showers much either)

I think the moral of this tale is that I couldn't be cool no matter what fashion statement I copied.

U Dub!!

Today is a momentous day - Joey is officially enrolled at University of Washington in Seattle! The family celebrated by making W shapes. (I feel like we should be dressed as a cop, an Indian, a cowboy, and a construction worker.)

It's a boy!!!!!!!

Stacey and Dave became parents yesterday!!! Baby Boy Manfredini (name to be determined) came into the world sometime on April 20th. I called the hospital but they didn't have hospital phone service in their room - and since Stacey NEVER picks up her cell phone (why even have one??) I didn't get to talk to her to get details. Our blogger audience will just have to wait.

However, we still need our picture of the day. Look back a few posts and you will see that we never have food in the house. This is me picking up crispy duck and jasmine rice at the Thai place down the street. Another red letter night at 11 Atwood.

Congratulations Stacey and Dave!!! The blogosphere anxiously awaits a name and photo.

No longer looking forward to 50

Had lunch with Lamyoung, Greg and Peter. After seeing this picture Peter nailed me with "who's that pretty girl with her Grandfather". I have to give it to him, it was well played. It hurt, but it was well played.

no such thing as a free dinner

I had a work function with the Partner Alliance team tonight. I sat with the girls because and I made sure we didn't talk much about business. They guys on the other end talked about boring stories of customers and sales reps. We talked about boob jobs and ripped pants and executives dressing in drag.

Waxing about taxing

Taxes are due today. The post office was relatively quiet considering.

It made me think about some of the local businesses and their tax returns.

The restaurant below is a sketchy Sushi and Thai restaurant in Salisbury. I can envision the accountant telling the owners that they cannot deduct the cost of their dog as an expense, only to change his mind when he realizes they serve dog on the menu.

Jen and I like to yell "Mapow!" whenever we drive by.

Below is the strip joint Kittens in Salisbury. I would think out of all the tax returns that an accountant has to prepare this one would rank high on the list of most fun. "I'm going to have to come back several more times to make sure I calculate your return correctly." I bet the IRS find the most adding mistakes on the returns of the strip joints.

What do other people eat??

During the week I eat the same thing every day for breakfast at lunch and I eat them both sitting at my desk at work. It's boring but efficient.

Come the weekend and I'm completely stymied about what to eat. The cupboards are bear, I have no urge to cook, I have no skill to cook and so we wind up going out to eat...a lot.

Today was brunch at the Plum Island Grill. They promised live jazz on their web site - it was this octogenarian on a portable key board that you can see over my shoulder. They must have a lot of people working the kitchen because the parking lot was full but the tables were mostly empty.

The food was good and the pianist was actually better than it looks. Fortunately I didn't have to look at him. Bill showed him some love between songs:

We went food shopping after brunch to stock up on our salad fixins for the week's lunches but now that it's time for dinner Bill and I are just looking at each other saying we have nothing to eat!! Looks like it's pizza Sunday!

Purple Onion and Petey

We hired Banksy to illegally paint Petey on the side of NBPT Boat House.

Scattered throughout NBPT are little Petey paintings.

We missed our weekly standing appointment at the Purple Onion last week.

Here we are back to the routine.

He probably talks about himself in the third person

Clooney came over to watch his own movie, "Up In the Air".

Who makes people watch their movie?

Arrogant shit...

Jammin' at Enzo

Dinner last night at the Ale House wasn't exactly gourmet...and you know how I like a good meal. So to make up for it, I talked Bill into having dinner out again at Enzo. I had my haircut tonight so I was newly coifed and ready for some nightlife - although these pictures don't do the cut justice.

Really, if you look at me long enough -I'm kind of weird looking. What's with that big nose? Was it smaller before I broke it in second grade? Its like when you say the word "fork" over and over again and you realize what a silly word it really is. How can "fork" mean a pronged eating utensil?

Enzo has a really good red wine that I can't pronounce but the description of it has the word "jammy". So I enjoyed several glasses of jammy wine tonight. Can you tell? Fletcher will be begging for more Joey after this post....

Our future slaps us in the face....

Joey left for England today. The Ipswich Band took a trip to Ipswich England and will do concerts in three cities, including London. Meanwhile, back at the homestead, we commiserated with a beer or two. I read that Amesbury had a fairly new Ale House that had a 100 different beers. I couldn't figure out the beer menu. The descriptions were odd..most had fruit of some kind. I kept thinking of the scene in Austin Powers - Man of Mystery, when he drank the glass of poo.

This is our future. Joey will be off at college. Bret is living his life. Jen and I will entertain Mom with ridiculous stories and hypothetical questions.

Tonight was the question of how we want to die. Mom in her sleep, Jen reading her favorite book would expire as she read the last page, I would roll the dice for my last game of dice baseball.

I love our little Wednesday dinners.

note: Fletcher's guest blog appears to be a complete failure.

Tonight - a very special blog post

Stacey, Di and I went out for dinner tonight - most likely our last girls night out before Stacey spawns another human being. We all agreed that having a baby doesn't make you any more interested in anyone else's baby and that the only reason people tolerate other people's stories about their kids is so that they can then then talk endlessly about their own kid. It's all about air time.

Here we are enjoying our cheese plate.

As if that wasn't exciting enough we have a very special addition tonight.

This is a post from our first guest blogger. We'll give him second billing tonight, as he has been brought in on a probationary period.

His name is Mike (although in this house he is known as "Fletcher"...have you ever noticed that people with the last name Fletcher go by the moniker Fletcher? What does the family call each other at home?) and he's a Sales Manager from California. And he's a pain in my ass. Please feel free to give Fletcher feedback.

"Hello vast army of Jen and Bill blog followers. As one who religiously tunes in each day (as I am sure you do also) I think I can speak for us in saying that recently some of the material has been a little weak. I recently told Bill, that more Jen and more Joey would certainly improve the quality. Rather than take my well thought out feedback, instead we get a picture of Bill's cheeseburger. Clearly Bill has stolen the controls of the blog away from the undoubtedly more eloquent and infinitely more interesting Jen/Joey.

In any case, I was anxiously looking forward to actually seeing Bill's smiling face at a meeting we were going to be having in Arizona this week. Visions on him actually generating some interesting content, perhaps even up to the Jen/Joey level, danced in my head. Instead, what I got was a some lame excuse about why he couldn't make it and another picture of the cheeseburger he had for lunch. As such, I took the liberty to taking this photo of Bill's badge which as you can see is clearly not attached to him. This is my tribute to him and small attempt to help him in never-ending quest to have interesting things to write about."

Dinner Al Fresco

It was such a beautiful night tonight that Bill and I got to enjoy dinner outside after my 90 minutes of festival insanity (our weekly meeting). Bill is sporting his new hat from Austin, I'm in my pajama top and sweater. We even used our new little camera.

The big news today, however, has nothing to do with me, Bill or weather....drumroll....Laura has a job!!! She officially starts back at Jordon's on the 25th. Congratulations Laura!!

Home is where the large cheese pizza is

Jennie and I returned from our separate weekends. We were thrown off of our weekend rhythm so we went to Pizza Factory to get back on our track. Here are two pictures of downtown on my way to get our pizza....

Who would rather read about famous authors and old Blues harmonica players when we can blog about the local pizza place?

Blues, baseball and bad boys - our Chicago weekend

Joey and I concluded our trip to Chicago by going to the famous blues club, Buddy Guy's Legends.

We watched Harmonica Hinds get-it-on! It was a perfect way to cap our weekend.

University of Chicago visit, Chicago White Sox game and Chicago blues made for a great mini visit for Joey and I.

The University of Chicago visit was cool because we went without the benefit of an official tour, but we carved out our own tour that was definitely more informative. A nice old guy showed us around the basketball arena after first telling us it was secure and we couldn't go in. Then an Illini football player gave us a personal tour of the football stadium, showing us his locker and a view of the stadium we never would have received. Trulan Henry is our favorite football player now. We Googled him and found out he was arrested for robbing a convenience store and was sentenced to 60 months in a Federal prison. Our best friend at the University of Illinois is an ex-con. Who's cooler than Joey and I.

Then we got a tour of the dorm by asking a random kid to see his room. Parth told us all about how his dorm was the party dorm and how underage kids get alcohol. Thanks a bunch, Parth.

I don't know if Joey will ultimately go here but it was a great visit nonetheless.

Friday Night of a Totally Jen Weekend

I'm in Vermont at a book retreat hosted by my two podcast friends (Ann & Michael) from Books On The Nightstand. On paper, to non-book people, this is the ultimate in book-geek-ness. Me and 1oo strangers and 2 people I know a teeney tiny bit (mostly virtually) all staying in Manchester VT to see 9 authors throughout the day and go out to dinner and talk about books. I know - I'm a nerd.

Sadly even in nerd-land there are levels and I didn't want to bring my camera down into the cocktail party for fear of look like the lower level of nerd-dom. So the only photo I have is of my room at the inn. (that's Petey sitting on my blue flannel pillow on the bed)

The highlight of my night was running into a couple who stopped me and said "Are you Jennifer of the Newburyport Literary Festival??" (OMG!! hello 15 minutes of fame) They were from Beverly MA and they recognized me from the panel discussion I did with Ann & Michael last year. Then then spent 30 minutes telling me how much they love the festival and how we have a great line up this year etc. Seriously. That just made it all worth while.

9:30 on Friday night at the U of Illinois; i.e party time

There are 40,000 students at the University of Illinois. I'd be willing to bet none of them own a baby blue monkey snuggie. It could go one of two ways: Joey becomes the coolest kid in the dorm because of his eclectic choice in snuggie-wear OR he gets the shit kicked out of him.

A Communication Glitch

Bill was in Austin TX last night enjoying all that Austin has to offer - a cigar bar, a rooftop dining, and lots 'o beef. I thought that he was going to post an update last night but...no post! Apologies to disappointed fans (all 5 of you!) Here is the picture of Bill's burger that he sent me. I doubt he was able to get his mouth around it. Let's face it, I'm the only one in the family with a mouth big enough for a Texas burger.

Right now Joey and Bill are flying to Chicago - I drove Joey to Logan at 4:30 AM yawn!!!! - to go check out Univ Illinois at Urbana. This time next year will Joey be rooting for the Fighting Illini? Or will he be at opening day at Fenway skipping his classes at Wheelock? Stay tuned...

But Officer, I didn't want to ruin my pedi....

Treated myself to a mani-pedi tonight after work. This is what happens when Bill goes away - I have to hire a professional to pamper me. They sent me home in these micro-thin flip flops so my converse all stars wouldn't mess up the job, but they are really not a good driving shoe. Fortunately, I was able to make it the 1/2 mile to my house without incident.

When you have a pedicure do you like the person to talk to you? I'm torn. I'd like to be reading my book but I also don't want to miss the good massage moments by not paying attention. But then if you don't read you wind up trying to make chit chat with the women who is vigorously filing the dead skin off your feet. "Did you see American Idol last night?" was one of the questions I was asked along with the standard "Do you live in town?" and "Are you doing something special this weekend?" To top it off, the pedicurist and I were the only two people in the salon for the first 45 minutes of my visit so I really couldn't not talk to her. But it all got me thinking about what the perfect pedicure experience really is. Talking? Reading? The best is probably when the other two seats are filled with your girlfriends. Readers - book me as your next pedicure companion to test my theory!

Là breith sona dhuit, Andrea!

Andrea missed her bookclub birthday celebration tonight because she had to work. We couldn't even skype because Martha's wireless was down and the free Quietfish-Guest network didn't seem to "take". (Have you ever noticed the wacky names of your wireless neighbors? Are people on my street saying "Who the $%@& is named their network Bumbleman?"

And is everyone thinking "Baby Fish Mouth is sweeping the nation...." right now or just me?)

Anyway, we didn't get to see Sita in her Easter garb and we didn't get to hear Andrea (or Cindy)'s thoughts on The Postmistress (thumbs up first 2/3s - thumbs down last 1/3).

But we did have cake and a toast to wish Andrea a happy birthday. May this be the year that she buys that flat in Edinburgh and we make our bookclub an international organization.

Measure the result, not the process

Jennie is writing me a little card. I can tell because when I looked over at her in the mirror she was huddled over her desk and looked up guiltily. She has a terrible poker face.

She just sauntered over, whistling awkwardly. She doesn't even feign being sneaky now.

"Which bag are you taking so I can put this thing you don't know that I'm putting in your bag in your bag".

I don't care that subtlety has been eliminated. I still love that I get the little cards.

Little Jen

A full day - undocumented

Bill and I started the day with an early breakfast at Mad Martha's and a walk on the beach. It was a beautiful day and the beach was almost empty. There were penned in areas where they are trying to grow new dune grass. It was all very photogenic. We were sans camera.

Then we went down town. Newburyport was buzzing with Spring. We had a fabulous lunch at Ceia Kitchen (I had the salmon salad sandwich on sourdough with arugula salad and sweet potato chips - dee-lish!) and then we did a little Wyatte birthday shopping. Out and about again without a camera*.

Now its getting late and we need a blog post. Bill is packing for a business trip. Now of course, I have the camera. So that's what you get - Bill packing.

*we finally decided to buy a little pocket camera so I ordered one just a few minutes ago. This shows our commitment to the blog and to you, our readers, that we will now have a little camera to easily have on hand during any event. Of course, we will be doing the same boring things that we always do so don't get too excited.

The Mormans would have a field day with this

We were bored tonight so we Googled "cloning yourself". It worked on Jen, but when we tried to clone me something went askew and I ended up looking like a fun house version of me. Now my hats don't fit.

A couple of April Fools