Freaks on a plane

As I get older I really don't care about my legacy....

Not so Super

Laura, Christin and I went to see Super tonight.

It was not well received. "I'd rather have watched a period piece!" is criticism indeed coming from Ms Aronson. It was a movie searching for a tone - one minute over the top crazy - the next, darkly violent and psychotic. At least I got a dose of Screening Room popcorn before jet setting to Seattle. I need an episode of Friday Night Lights to take the curse off....

Can we keep milking that NYC weekend?

Bill had his first softball game tonight (sadly, a loss) and I went to our festival committee pot luck dinner. But this is a picture of us having dinner on our prefect day in NYC...granted this was two nights ago but we look so darn cute I wanted to post it.

Meanwhile, as soon as I came home tonight I fired up another episode of my new obsession - Friday Night Lights. Can't get enough!

More on Our Perfect Day in NYC

One thing I love about NYC is that all you have to do is wander to find little surprises. Today started with this Tiles For America - a tribute to 911. This chain link fence was covered with hand painted tiles - many of them with people's names and ages, all with messages saying that these folks will never be forgotten. There were hundreds of tiles - an amazing memorial that seemed to spring out of nowhere. (Later I looked this up on line. You can read more about it here: http://www.tilesforamerica.com/nyc.html)

We decided to check out the new High Line park - NYC's latest public space created out of an old train track. We were absolutely blow away by how beautiful it was! Miles of walkway surrounded by greens and wild flowers with open spaces with built in seating. Every seating oasis was different - some had wooden loungers, one had a water feature, one had a glass window over the street where people could sit and watch traffic drive under them. We went expecting to walk just a little and then go do something else and wound up walking the entire trail and back. This picture is the start of it at the top of the village near the apartment.

Bill already mentioned that we saw Victor Garber (I was pretty uncool with my gaping mouth but he ignored me. He was on the phone talking to someone about how he was having company over and they were "bringing the kids tonight"....Bill and I spent the rest of the day talking about how we were hanging at Vic's house tonight with the kids...)

We had another sighting later in the day at the Union Square Farmer's Market - Lee Houck, one of the authors from this year's festival was at a booth selling maple syrup! Another nice surprise just from wandering around.

An unplanned perfect day in the city

I love the paintings of Wolf Kahn. I was psyched to find a gallery with his work. He is 84 years old and still produces prolifically. When I'm 84, I won't be alive, but if I were the only thing I will produce is dribble. You can interpret that as art-dribble or just drool-like dribble. They both would be true.
I celebrated by having a cigar in a very cool bar on Hudson Street.
Jennie had her own little moment today when we walked past Victor Garber in the village.

Jen will post later with her own input of a great day in the big city. Our quick vacation is nearing it's end, but it has been all around fantastic.

Cupcakes, art, drag queens and long ashes

I had a little irritable moment from being in Midtown too long (too many tourists...too many people in general). So Jen bought me a cupcake.
One of Jen's favorite painting at MoMA. She wouldn't pose for me by lying on the floor like the girl in Wyeth's "Christina's World", so I had to settle for a head shot.
We're colorless compared to the Picasso's at MoMA.
On our way to dinner in Little Italy we ran into a drag parade. Considering the big win today in NY for gay marriage, we didn't really like their chant "We don't want to marry, we just want to f***!" Some people are never happy.
Jennie is one with the gay drag kings and queens.

We separated for a couple of hours while we both got to do some of our favorite things. Jennie strolled though The Strand, a ginormous book store in Union Square. Meanwhile, I went to a little cigar bar in the village. It really isn't a cigar bar because you had to bring your own alcohol. I had a quandary of what to bring. A six pack was too much, one beer too little. Getting some scotch or bourbon seemed excessive. So I opted for a giant Duval, a Belgian ale. Pretty strong beer.

I put on a little show for the locals at the cigar bar apparently. While I drank my giant Duval out of the bottle I was nursing the longest cigar ash I've ever kept going. It was three inches long by the time it dropped. Several of them moaned when it finally fell. Before that I was quietly doing my thing watching t.v., but after my little show I mingled easily. I like the little unwritten, mostly unspoken, rituals we all have of qualifying people into groups. After my ash show I was allowed to converse with the locals.

Village People

After an afternoon of walking through the Village we stopped back home for tea....and had a very hard time getting our asses off the couch which is why, when we got to Housingworks for the Moth story telling night we were waaaaaaaay at the end of the line. We heard they only seat 50 and the others have to stand. Not sure what the total capacity is but we were about 130 people back. So we decided to ditch it.

In our pre-dinner travels we came to Joey's favorite urban basketball court and watched a little street ball.
We had a great dinner at Mary's Fish Camp. Bill tried to take a picture of his whole sea bass but dropped the camera on to his plate. We came, we ate, we entertained.

I don't care if you are the Piano Man, you're annoying

A rare missed blog last night. We both fell asleep, literally and figuratively.

So we'll be sure to extra-blog while in NYC. We arrived to the Village and grabbed a bit to eat at a cute little spot. The only negative was Billy Joel, who kept trying to stick his head in our pictures.

I don't care what you say, Billy Joel, this is my life.
Here is me, angry at Billy Joel.

Reading "Maine" in New Hampshire

Courtney Sullivan did a reading at River Run bookshop in Portsmouth tonight. She was a new author at the festival a few years back and I vaguely recall that she told me the festival was going to be her first such event. Now here she is with a second book getting great reviews in Entertainment Weekly and the Washington Post and doing the bookstore circuit. It's pretty cool to think that the festival was the start of someone's rising career.

Anyway, it was great to see her again. She was funny and charming and I'm looking forward to reading my new autographed copy of "Maine" this summer and being able to say "I knew her when...."

Tree Huggers

The most beautiful tree in Newburyport is sick.

Randy has diagnosed the problem as gypsy moths (over the phone, sight unseen) so Bill went out and bought the recommended chemical. He sprayed from above and below.

I will worship this chemical, buy its stock, send in my own video commercial, and basically marry it if it works. This tree is my baby (if my baby had roots, lived outside, and, well, was a tree).

I do not want to imagine the devastation we will feel if this does not kill the pestilence. For now, we are hopeful.

Happy Father's Day

I had a nice well-rounded father's day today. It started with a nice note from Joey that brought Jen and I to near tears. Then Jen and I went to Portsmouth where we had lunch and beer near the water.

Afterward I met Bret and the grandkids at the park.

Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie) would have approved.

"If you don't have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don't have much at all."
Mitch laid it on thick in this book, but he hit this note perfectly.

Happy Birthday Laura!

It's Laura's birthday today so we had girl's night out with her friend Janet from California. Laura is sporting her new top from our afternoon of birthday treat shopping.

Bill is also sporting a purchase from today. Nerd glasses.

What a positive influence...

Having Lauren come over pays major dividends. First Joey cleaned his room .... and we never told him to. Then when it came time to get the pizza he and Lauren went and picked it up.

Lauren brought us strawberries too.

We're all better when Lauren is here!

Do we look 100 years old??

Last night was my employer's 100th anniversary. I was part of a planning team to arrange the party at the Museum of Science. I was amazed how many people showed up in jeans and t-shirts. Of course, Beth and I were appropriately dressed for the occasion.

On an unrelated side note...Bill ran some blog stats today. They were a little disturbing. We have a post that has had 169 hits! The title was "Fat Nudist Playing Euphonium with Hairy Pits". Which word was the big draw? Nudist? Hairy Pits? Euphonium??? We probably disappointed all 169 people when they got the site and found a picture of Joey.

Get it on, Bruins!

Vacation in your own home town

Laura's friend Janet and her 5 year old twins, Iris and Satchel, are visiting so they rented a house on Plum Island. I went over tonight for dinner. The place didn't look like much from the outside but turned out to be very nice inside with a gorgeous view of the ocean. It did make me realize why people in Newburyport might want to have property on PI. As soon as I got there I felt like I was on vacation. The glass of wine (seen on table) didn't hurt either.

Strangely enough, I was the mechanical whiz of the evening figuring out how to work both the gas grill and the dvd player. I would have been the hero but I was overshadowed by someone who didn't even come over. I had to listen to two little voices asking "Where's Bill??" throughout the evening.

We capped the night with this gorgeous full moon. This was the view from the back deck. A lovely end to my 3 hour mini-break.

I won a major award!

As previously mentioned in the blog, I am the recipient of a book from two of my favorite podcasters, Mark & Jon. I finally picked up my major award. No, not a leg lamp, my book from the Enthusiasticast! They had it prepaid and gift wrapped at Jabberwocky bookshop.

I was going to link to a You Tube video of Ralphie's dad singing "a major award...a major award". There are a surprising number of home videos of people and their leg lamps. I got sick of wading through them all. You all know what I'm taking about.

Side note - good to see that comments are working again. Talk to us!!

If Jen were a sportscaster.....

"Hi Sportsfans. Our Boston Bruins are kicking Canuck a** tonight. Why don't you stupid Canadians go back to your igloos and drink some Molson and eat some poutine, eh? Losers. OK, now here's Scott Montminy with the traffic."

DoppleJoey

Brenda and Keith hosted Joey's graduation party at their house today. For a day we were all Joey.

It was a nice day. Burgers and dogs, family and friends and bunch of wild dogs.

Joey's haunted t-shirt

I could have sworn that Joey's t-shirt was legible, that the letters actually spelled out the words correctly  And yet, in this photo, they are backwards!! Is this the work of the devil?  This reminds me of listening to Beatles albums backwards on my mother's turntable.  "Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him...."

As a side note, Barbara Streisand came up in conversation so Bill asked Joey if he knew who she was.  "Of course - she's the mother in Meet the Fockers."  How proud she must be.

Sometimes more is less

If Jen were co-joined twins which one would I have married?

"creepy old man, repeat after me, singing na-na-na-NA ... NA-na-na-na"

When we took tonights photo we thought it looked cool and artsy.  After I uploaded it, it looked more like the creepy old guy and his teenage concubine.  

This will be me in a few years.. or less.

Can you guess the song from the title?

Have a Joey Day!

When I went to bed last night, Bill was still outside working on his Joey project.   I woke up this morning and wandered downstairs to find a dozen Joey heads lined up in the kitchen.  What a happy morning greeting!

Tonight these heads are going on sticks to prepare for Sunday's graduation party. 

And a blogging logistical note:  I see Christin has been able to comment!  Yay!  I looked on the blogger message board and saw that the fact that not everyone can post a comment has been an outstanding issue so hopefully it's been resolved.  To our regular commenters - come back and give it a try! 

 To our irregular commenters....try prunes.

Suitable for every occasion

Joey doesn't read the blog so I can share this without spoiling the surprise...Bill is working on making Joey heads on a stick that we can all 'wear' at his graduation party this coming weekend.  Here are some sample heads.  They are bigger than you think.  I'm hoping to get the slack jaw (second to right on lower level.)

It ain't easy being a blogger

It was dvd night at Christin's last night (Lark Rise to Candleford season 4).  But of course, as soon as the camera came out all I got was "Don't take my picture!" and distorted tongue wagging faces.  Nice. 

At least one girl in the room was ready for her close up.

Congratulations Joey!!

It's a big day for us today.  Joey donned cap and gown and was handed a teeny tiny diploma (seriously, its only 3x5 in a black folder.  I assume this is a big money saver for Ipswich High??) and was officially pronounced "Educated".  The speeches at the ceremony all talked about what a good class this group of students has been and I believe the hype.  Joey has had a great high school experience with really good friends, lots of group activities, and plenty of school spirit.  I usually leave it to Bill to get sentimental on the blog, but I'm so proud of Joey and I have to admit I'm pretty sad to think of him leaving in the fall.  What were we thinking when we talked him in to Seattle??    I know that no matter where he goes, Il Dominatore will be a star!