Where the f*ck have I been? Where the f*ck have YOU been!

How is it possible that tomorrow is July 1?

I cannot explain the hemorrhage that has been the month of June. The CelebrityDeath-a-Thon, the weather, the economy, the Swine flu, the $300,000.00 parking space, the pursuit of vote integrity in Iran, the decision by the US Supreme Court regarding drug analysis, the Grandview Topless Coffee Shop in Maine burned down, Madoff actually got 150 years in jail AND they took away the wifey's money, the sales tax is going up, and again with the weather.

I want a f*cking beach day already!

Scrape the moss off and let me know when we have two fully sunny days in a row.

Letting at the Goodwill

I have wayyy too much stuff. Things, objects, projects that never quite happened... you know the drill.

So I sold stuff at a yard sale on Saturday and then what didn't sell went to the Goodwill. So far so good.

Except for that yesterday I was looking at my cabinet and I counted my champagne glasses. One.. two... three.. four.. five...

Five...

Five?

That's not the right amount of champagne glasses.

And then it hit me: the sixth glass had gotten mixed up accidentally into the yard sale things. I knew I had seen it forlornly sitting on a table at the end of the day and so it must have made it to the Goodwill.

I mean, I just knew it. *sigh*

So today at lunch I dragged my co-worker over to the Goodwill. When we dropped everything off, they made us bring it to the main store rather than the trailer so I had a pretty reasonable idea that it might be in the store by Monday.

And while my co-worker browsed the clothing racks, I combed the glassware. To no avail.

But then one of the Goodwill employees started unloading a large cart and the stuff started looking familiar. I made a beeline.

Sure enough at the bottom was the carton with the cups and glasses from that one table at the yard sale. And lo and behold - there was the champagne glass!

Woo hoo! I could not believe my good luck.

Oh but then you know what I remembered at work? There were only five champagne glasses, I never got a full set of six, since I had found them at the Goodwill in the first place! I had gotten rid of the 6^th one because it didn't quite match (slightly smaller, different stem) and I had quite totally forgotten.

Ahh hahahahahah! Whoops!

Oh well, into the cabinet it went anyway. I will just use that one the next time I have five other people over to drink champagne with me!

You'll get mail!

In this day and age of email and text and Facebook and Twitter and IM and DM and everything else, sometimes you forget what it is like to actually get mail.

Mail that isn't a bill or a circular or a solicitation, that is.

I am talking about the fun kind of mail, personally addressed to you, just to say "hey, how's it going?".

Well I have a couple of postcards I picked up and I am going to mail them out. There are 6 cards, so the first six people to email me with a name and an address will get a card sent out.



Note: These are scenic postcards, nothing inappropriate. And I won't write anything inappropriate on them either. Even if you ask me nicely. And I guess I should say one per email.

I said it once before, I will say it again.

I don't like this digital tv business.

Yes, I have the converter. Yes, I have an antenna.

But now that the analog signal has also been turned off, the new digital signal barely comes in. The antenna I bought for my tv was meant to be some awesome super-strength digital signal sucker. But really all I get is a couple of channels that mostly break apart into little squares.

Which seems to get worse when the wind blows, or when a helicopter flies by, or if I walk by the tv, or if mercury is in retrograde.

I no longer get channel 7, which is fine since their programming has fallen down the crapper although this also rules out that weird channel 7-2 that shows old B movies. I still don't get channel 38. And annoyingly I now don't quite get the WGBH channel 44 selections. Which is a bummer for a PBS geek like me. Although I guess I won't feel so guilty any more about not donating to PBS since I won't be able to see the fundraising drives.

Possibly the most annoying thing about this conversion is that now when the signal breaks apart, not only does the picture fall apart, but the voices chop up. At least before with the analog signal you might not be able to get the picture, but you could still get the sound normally. Listening to a signal that is breaking up, where you are getting about every third word, is going to drive someone bonkers one of these days.

Hopefully that won't be me! I have been meaning to cut out my tv time, so I guess this would be the right time.

See you later alligator

I am going camping!

Well not really camping, more like camping out. We have this house see, up in Vermont, and time has come to sell it.


The buyer for the land is in place, but they cannot take the house (very specific buyer, thankfully not a developer tho) so we are going to have to decide what to do with the house and the contents.

The contents part is easy. Mostly it's just the odds and ends kind of furniture that you find in a camp house - a garish couch circa 1976 thankfully covered by a sheet, chipped plates, a rug from the dump.

But the house is special. It's a pre-Civil war farmhouse.

It is virtually untouched inside. No electricity, no running water, there is even an outhouse.



Unless we find someone to take it away, it's going to be torn down. Which would be a shame.



So if you know of anyone who really would like to live just like Laura Ingalls did in the Big Woods, let me know.

I really would hate for this to be the end of the road for the little house that could.

If Boston was a one newspaper town...

This is what your afternoon read would be:

How about the 19 year old stripper (!) who had a "torrid" relationship with a teacher when she was a junior (in high school!) and just 18, who is now suing the high school for allowing their relationship to "flourish". She claims that a teacher she confided asked her out instead (oops!) and still another decided to pop into the strip club (Centerfolds!) where she worked (!) for a lap dance.

Get the f*ck outta here! You cannot make this stuff up.

In other news, two lowly drug dealers shot, dismembered, and cooked their drug wholesaler on account of them owing him $70K and it was just easier to kill him than pay him. Can you imagine if that kind of street thuggery was taken to the executive level? Madoff would have been chuck roast by now.

Meanwhile, over at the Globe, a slightly different news preference prevails:

YAWN!

Hmm. Must be Sunday afternoon.

The cloud cover is rolling back in.

*sigh*

Too much Tuesday

I am pretty convinced that time occurs differently that how people think it does.

How else do you explain how the Friday before a long weekend is a third longer than a regular Friday? Or how vacation time passes a quarter faster than work time?

You see?

Here it is only Tuesday and I am wondering how come it isn't really already Thursday....

Well, here are a few pictures I took yesterday on my stroll through the South End. I grew up in the South End; we went to Tony's (the fruit & veg shop where Formaggios is now), bought Jordan almonds at the Syrian store, had bologna sandwiches at the Premier Deli, and laughed that our fancy friends weren't allowed to cross over to this side of the river.

The Syrian store is still there. And one of these days I am going to buy myself that big gold tray.



This is a jeweler near the Syrian store. I am not sure what is going on there with the display, but I like it. Very blobby and pretty.


The intersection of Waltham and Shawmut. I like this view. I also think that it is funny/sad that the old Waltham Tavern is now a fancy condo. Hahahaha!

Too bad the Sahara building is falling apart. Not so bad that it hasn't been made into luxury condos with high end finishes and gleaming hardwood floors that will stun you.

Is it Friday yet. Seriously. WTF?