Nothing like a hostage sitch on a slow news day......

So a guy walks into a campaign office with a couple of flares strapped to him....

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Sorry, but this was the most ridiculous news event of the day. Well other than that "weather event" barreling toward Boston.

Ugh, give me a BREAK!!

Seriously, the account of it on Boston.com is hysterical:

"Colonel Frederick Booth, the head of the New Hampshire State Police, said Eisenberg had wanted to speak to Clinton, but negotiators had refused. "As a tactical standpoint, that would have not been a wise move," Booth said." - no sh*t.

"Clinton told the media earlier at a news conference outside her Washington home that it had been a "very difficult day, personally and emotionally." She said she was "especially just relieved to have this situation end so peacefully without anyone being injured."

"I just could not be prouder of the people who are in my campaign," she said.

She held a second news conference in New Hampshire tonight, praising her campaign workers' courage, and thanking law enforcement officials for their work." - hmmmm, lucky her, two press conferences in one day.

"Three staffers, a volunteer, and a small child were in the office when Eisenberg entered. Eisenberg immediately let the mother and child leave. The mother notified police. Two of the other hostages were released; the third escaped, authorities said.... Booth said the hostages had been communicating with the police during the standoff....

"I don't think he fully had control of them during the whole process," he said. He added that the hostages "were extremely helpful in bringing this to a successful conclusion." - this is like one of those mental math problems from school.

Try it with me: There are 3 staffers, a volunteer, and a kid. The volunteer and the child leave. Then 2 staffers leave. How many hostages are you left with?

If you calculated 1, you are correct.

And I would agree that there was some loss of control in the process considering that the hostage pool dwindled from five to one pretty fast.

And the article winds up with this explanation as to why the situation wasn't worse:

"At the trailer park where he lived in Somersworth, about 10 miles from Rochester, neighbors described Eisenberg as "crazy" and "always starting fights." They said he and his wife this summer moved into an old trailer, which they refurbished." - ah ha! damn trailer trash!

"He started fights with people leaving my house," Carlson said. "He was always drunk. I felt sorry for his wife. He was always fighting with her, always throwing things at her. I told her, 'If you have any trouble during the night and you're scared, come over and knock on my door.' He is crazy. I never wanted to speak to him." - so Channel 7 spent the first 9 minutes and the last 2 minutes of their newscast discussing the antics of a trailer park drunk with a couple of flares strapped to him who took a hostage at the Clinton Campaign office?

Huh. You know what I think? I think that Bill is behind this.
It's his way of making up for Monica and the cee-gar.

Why it's hard to be annoyed with the Booyah! neighbors

You may have read here about my neighbor sitch in previous posts.

To one side I have the lovely and quiet conservatory students - although one of them is not so quiet in the mouth and managed to get himself stabbed in the butt (with a knife! but thankfully only a flesh wound!) Hopefully now he'll think twice about mouthing off to the local hoodlums at 2 in the morning!

And to the other side I have the Boooyaaaahhhh!!!! Northeastern student neighbors. It's their favorite word: booyah. I hear it a lot. I am pretty sure they don't mean it in the sexual meaning way. I hope not anyhow.

They're the ones who like to par-tay and as mad as I get when they wake my cranky old-lady self up at 4am, when I go to yell at them, they completely win me over. Grrrrrrr.

They win me over by saving all their beer cans for me to give to the Vietnamese woman who comes around on trash days and take all our cans.

Because after their party that wakes me up at 4am, there is usually two or three big bags of cans, neatly bagged in drawstring bags just like she likes, ready for me to put down by the gate at the bottom of the garden.

And while I have no idea if the Vietnamese woman understands my wild hand gestures as I try to explain that I live next to hard drinking youths, that it's not that I drink such great quantities of NatLite, but I think that she now thinks that I feed my children beer.

And she was probably a physicist back in the old country.....

*sigh*

Anyway, between that and their offers to feed me mac & cheese right off the stove and out of the pan, it's hard to be mad for too long.

Although check with me Sunday. I was warned this morning that they plan to fight for their right to paaaaaaaaaaaaaaarty on Saturday night. I am of course invited. Growl. Grrrr.

Just kidding.....

I am NOT a cougar. Not after Thursday nights episode of 30 Rock. No way jose.

Could he BE any more ambitious?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the first ever Twins Separated at Birth post:

I tell you, I sort of really wish Chandler Bing was running for mayah.

This would NEVER happen in Boston

Some weeks ago I was in DC for the Marine Corps Marathon.

My dear friend Ennairda and I were hustling around on the Metro system with two tiny tots, a fistful of fancy mylar balloons and all the other tot-toting paraphernalia that goes along on these kinds of trips.

As you may know, the Metro system requires an advanced degree in quantum mathematics to even begin to comprehend. DC is a very smart town.

So we just stuffed some money into the machine and hoped for the best. We took various Metro rides, converted our two cards into three, tried not to get crushed in Rosslyn and eventually made our way back out to Baltimore after the race.

As Ennairda and her race-fatigued hubby packed themselves back into the minivan, I went about seeing if I could redeem our tickets. Why not right?

It turned out that we had about $15 smackaroos left. Which to me means either one round trip on the Metro during peak hours, or 48 trips between Foggy Bottom and Farragut West. I really do not understand the Metro pricing at all.

However, the very nice Metro guy helpfully explained to me that I was actually entitled to a refund.

Really? Are you kidding? Does my expression of wonderment further reinforce the Masshole stereotype?

Yep, turns out that you just have to stick your partially used tickets in this special envelope, give it back to the nice Metro employee (or mail it) and expect a check to follow within the next few weeks.

I know this is true because I just got the refund check in the mail!

Goes to show what a little cheapskateness and a little curiosity can get you. Not killed like the cat, that's for sure!

It's tough time for Bruins fans.

They never get a scoreboard.

Patriot fans only have to wait until after October.

How I know I am from Boston, home of the bean and the cod

Because instead of reveling in Patriot wins, I am living in fear of their inevitable loss.

Oh shutcher sweet potato pie hole!

Seriously, the way that people are complaining about Bob's Southern Bistro closing, you'd think there wasn't anywhere else to find decent soul or southern food in the entire city of Boston.

So what if the owner of Bob's is tired of serving up regular ol' Southern food. He wants to spend all his effort at the Beehive. Whatever, that's his business. Clearly he is more interested in catering to a more yuppified & moneyfied milieu, which he didn't seem able to do on the outer edges of the South End.

Ok, so let him.

And hey, a burger joint in the heart of Northeastern country, that sort of seems appropriate. The demographic of the area has changed, for better or for worse, and who's to say that something shouldn't change for nostalgia's sake. Wait until they close Wally's and convert it to a Starbucks. Or flip New York Pizza into a Qdoba.

Because if you are seriously going to need a soul food fix, Chef Lee's hasn't closed. Neither has Ray's Soul Kitchen. Nor Mrs. Jones.

Or if you need some really good BBQ give M&M BBQ a try. It's a food truck that operates out of an old junk yard over on Hampden Street. I think they used to be over on Columbia Road, or maybe now they have two "locations".

Why not support these fine establishments with the same bellyaching fervor?

And call me if you do, because I will pretty much drop everything for a plate of ribs.

More for The List

As regular readers may know, I keep a running list of things I would not do. It's not too long, so that means that there are lots of things I will do.

Today I am adding another thing to the list: Shopping for "doorbusters" on "Black Friday".




For one thing I hate traffic and there was a 4 hour traffic jam of people trying to get into the Wrentham Outlets.

People were turning on each other like rabid rabbits, ears flattened and tails a'thumping territorially. At least that is how it looked on the news.

Which is ridiculous, because they put themselves in the situation voluntarily!

And I sure would not want to be the person who has to work there and be at work at 4am with hordes of crazed bargain shoppers coming at you.

There is no kind of deal that would reward me enough in exchange for shaving a year off my life. Because that is what that kind of stress does to a person. Shaves years off. Just so you know.

Even if they were giving away Le Crueset fo'free, I would not put myself through that kind of stress.

Yeah, so a "doorbuster", definitely on my list of things I don't want to do.

Random things I am thankful for.

My big list of things I am thankful for, in stream of consciousness order:

1. My grandad is 92, going strong, and one of my top five favorites to just hang out with and shoot the sh*t.

2. I have a job I don't dread going to, that I actually enjoy, with co-workers who don't suck.

3. My new fridge. It's awesome and saved my sanity last night.

4. I don't go hungry. Ever. Seriously, that's a luxury for which I am extremely grateful.

5. Clean water from a tap.

6. I have everything I need and only few wants.

7. My friends. It is the best feeling in the world to know that people unrelated to you like you and want to do stuff with you. That rocks!

8. The Champagne Supernova. She passed inspection for the second year in a row and I didn't have to spend anything on it. Not bad for a $600 car with a $1000 bumper courtesy of U-Haul.

9. My neighbors don't suck. They party, they are good looking, they are pretty nice, and all are mostly friendly - I can't complain.

10. People other than my family read this blog and occasionally comment. Same feeling as number 7.

11. Sassy Sauces. The best sauce on earth.

12. My sister. Cheerleader, comedienne, grounding wire, accomplice, driver, keeper of records as to which closets have skeletons in them... what more could anyone ask for in a best friend.

13. My parents. For the most part they've watched me haphazardly toddle through life like a truculent three year old. They've made sure I didn't die, and they've always, ALWAYS set me back on my feet and have taken my phone call. Plus they are awesome people too.

14. My eyes, back, feet, and head, are mostly pain free. Lots of people complain about eye, back, feet, and head pains and that doesn't not sound fun to me. I would go insane with chronic pain, so I am really thankful I don't have any.

15. Alice's Restaurant.

16. The best turkey. And being able to cook a Thanksgiving meal without stress.

17. Having relatively little stress in my life. It would not suck to win the lottery, but really I only need like $250K to be set. So I don't even need to win the big one.

18. Boston, for all its flaws and idiosyncrasies and idiots and byzantine bureaucracies, is a nice place to live and I live here, so I am glad I live in a nice, interesting, city.

19. I was linked to in an article on Slate and for one glorious and brief moment in time my readership soared above 5,000. Wow & cool!

20. The kind folks at UniversalHub link to me. They don't have to link to me, but they do. That's a thrill that never fades really.

There is much more, but I have to finish the stuffing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Birthday Evil Twin!

Being alone on this adventure would SUCK!!!!

Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to yooouuu.
Happy birthday dearest Eeeeeeeevil Twi-in.
Happy birthday to yooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Not that I am stickler or anything, but......

Seriously, what is with the low standards in spelling lately?

This is from Boston.com earlier today:



Bad punctuation I get, there is no punctuation checker.
But there's no good excuse for poor spelling.

Even the Noo Yawk Times is finding it hard to even spell vegetable correctly.

Well, thank goodness Blogger offers a spell checker and even helpfully underlines misspelled words.

Still. "Helecopter". It grates.

Diemand Farm - best damn turkey!

I love Diemand Farm.

For the past five years we've gone to get our holiday turkey from them and have not been disappointed.

The best part about going out to the farm (aside from the scenic 160 mile drive) is that they have a little shop where you go pick up yer bird, where they also sell assorted other things: eggs, stock (turkey & chicken), pot pies, soups, sausage, ground turkey meat, gravy, and really delicious deviled eggs.

You go in and everyone sort of stares at you like you came from outer space (stupid city folk - that's us). There is lots of activity, pot pies being made, people playing cards, and basically lots of farm-related flurry going on. It's a farm, so duh.

But they are super nice and entertain my city girl questions with good humor ("um so you just let the turkeys run around outside?" "Uh, yeah")

Then because we are tuckered out from hefting turkeys around we go to the Old Mill. Today was actually the first time we ever had to wait to be seated. The service was desultory as ever but hey, that's what Turkey Shoot is all about!

If you ever want a really great turkey, raised with love (because the way that Faith talked about her poults, she definitely loves them), and maybe some of the best deviled eggs ever, I tell you - go to Diemands.

You will not be disappointed.

Thanksgiving Comes First!!!

No one is allowed to mention the "C" or "X" word until well after the Turkey hangover wears off.

THAT holiday is in December. Talk to me about it then please!

November is for grey afternoons, black bark and luridly orange leaves, for apple picking, pie making, bread baking, turkey hunting, wooly tights, tartan, wood smoke, and THANKSGIVING.

I want to hear Alice's Restaurant, not Dominic the Italian Youknowwhat Donkey!

Trying to leapfrog holidays is like eating strawberries in January. NOT NORMAL.

Thanks to Suldog for making this a movement!


(Turkey Shoot 2006 - what a beauty!)

Not at my table thanks!

What do you think a "vegatable" is?

Naughty Noo Yawk Times!

New Poll, Please Vote

Look to the top right corner-ish and take the easy poll!

Vote now.

Turkey Shoot Weekend Approaches

This weekend is IT, whoo hoo
TURKEY SHOOT 2007

I am so excited. I love Thanksgiving ("Thanks for the country! Sorry about the smallpox!)

I love going out to western Mass with Grandpa and getting the turkey. I make him shoot it with his blunderbuss, just like in olden times.

And instead of frittering away my youth with blogging for my mom and my sister's amusement, I am typing my recipes into Excel and making a shopping spreadsheet. NaNoWhatMo?

Anyone who knows me is laughing at that last bit about using excel.

Right now I am cooking for 10 (I think, maybe 12) but I am really going to make enough for 14 so that we can have lots of leftovers.

There is nothing like Thanksgiving to smother an entire plate of otherwise healthy veg and lean meat with tasty gravy!

Or to start drinking ridiculous amounts of alcohol at 1pm on a Thursday.

Bring on the old Kentucky bourbon. Who doesn't love a little Puritan Punch to get the party started....

I am so tired, I am not even funny.

Yeah, I took waaaaaaay too much allergy medication yesterday and was up last night with a racing heartbeat.

You know the one, the kind that goes:

buhbump
buhbump
buhbump
buhbump
buhbumpbuhbumpbuhbump
buhbump
buhbump
buhbump
buhbumpbuhbumpbuhbumpbuhbump


Totally annoying. So now I am really tired and totally not funny even a little.

Plus, I hate my NaNoWriMo project. It stinks. I can't write.
It's like thinking "oh I can act" and then getting on stage and finding out that instead of channeling Meryl Streep a la "I had a faahhhm in Aaahhhfrica...", you're channeling Madonna a la Swept Away.

Blurg.

BOOOOOOYAHHHHHHH

As you dear & loyal readers know by now - I am an island in a sea of students.

And I am hesitant to be judgy, but empirical data suggests that Northeastern students are more likely than their Boston Conservatory counterparts to party with loud music, louder friends, and more shouts of "BOOOOOYAH!!!!!"

I have been know to complain about it once or twice.

So yesterday evening there is a knock at my door and it is the girl next door and no wonder the boys send her because she is perfectly charming. She gave me her cellphone number and said they were going to have a party but to call if it got too loud.

And yeah, they were loud. But I think because I was expecting it I was able to sleep through most of it. Unfortunately a couple of loud & rowdy party goers went berserk in the back yard crushing cans and shouting at around 2:30 which woke me up.

But from the sounds of it the hosts roped them back in pretty quick. I managed to roll back over to sleep. However, I thought I might have heard a doorbell and someone say "police" but I might have been dreaming that part.

At any rate the party did seem to peter out by 2:45am.

All I can say, from things I've read over at UniversalHub, I am just excited they are not BU or BC students.

Solving the head full of snot problem

For the past three weeks I have been suffering from a head full of snot.

Sounds as gross as it feels.

I am convinced that it is allergies. This same thing happened last year.
Or maybe I just get a wikked bad cold every 12 months.

Anyway, for three weeks I have been STUFFED UP. Every inhale is followed by an annoying whistling-flappery noise, and a dementia inducing sinus tickle.

My sleep has been fitful at best, and when I wake up in the morning my throat hurts and swallowing causes my eardrums to flex inward and press on my shriveled brain.

In my current vernacular it's "nod preddy".

I've taken enough Sudafed to technically stay awake and not operate heavy machinery for the next three months.

And one more Tylenol will put me into liver failure.

So when my co-worker suggested snorting up a faceful of Zicam Intense Sinus Relief, I said "oday". Never mind that the internet is awash with reports of Zicam users losing all sense of smell and scary stuff like that.

Preventing sinus pressure from building in my brain and likely making my eyeballs shoot out of my skull was worth losing my already crappy sense of smell.

She also warned me that the initial blast of Zicam was going to hurt like a major mutherclucker.

Well I blasted the dose up my "node" and nothing.

It turned out that the snot ball in my head was so big the spray went right into the booger and not onto the sensitive sinus tissue, preventing the crippling pain I'd been warned about.

And so for the first 45 minutes after that initial squirt - nothing.

And then all of a sudden I could fully sniff. I was SO excited I kept sniffing like a well trained drug beagle.

Which was immediately followed by a searing, burning pain across the front of my face.

But, hey, the pain is temporary.

And it is now about 8 hours after the first spray and I am still giddily sniffing through BOTH nostrils.

Whoo! Hoo!

No more a-choo!

Since the Storrow Drive Tunnel project fizzled out...

They're going to redo the Southeast Expressway.

Holy clusterf*ck batman, that's gonna SUCK.

According to the Globe article, the work will take place at night. They're going to resurface the road between Braintree and Savin Hill.

Which makes me curious as to why they aren't going to do anything to the road from Savin Hill up to Boston.

Ugh, like I said - it's going to suuuuuuuuuckkkkkkk.......

I'm 92. How are you?

That is now my Grandpa's new official greeting as of October 29th.

His plan is to live to be 100. He got a book, did the research, he is a man with a plan!

He lives on his own in a regular apartment building, dates more than I do, and instead of enjoying the Red Sox Rolling Rally the other day, he managed to somehow get a ride across Boylston Street in an ambulance.

Turns out that he was trying to cross Boylston Street some time before the Rally and the cops wouldn't let him. I guess they thought it was easier to hold back a 92 year old with a walker then to let him break the line and rush the players.

(Let me just also say that Grampy walks when the fancy strikes him since he gave up his car some years back)

Well a nice lady in the crowd started to make a fuss on his behalf and an ambulance driver stepped in, put Gramps, walker and all, into his "bus" and tried to cross Boylston.

But the cops wouldn't let the ambulance cross either. So on when the siren and the lights and the end result was that Gramps made it across.

I've left out some important details to this story to protect the helpful...

How he got home is a different story.

But my point is that the best thing about my darling Grandpa is that when we call him to ask him how his day went, this is the kind of story we get.

Not about how they served mushed peas again for lunch in the cafeteria.

The tribe has spoken.....

It's Lily von Schtoop and Barack Obama for President!

Pretty cool huh.

I am going to make it a law that Wednesday is legally Prince Spaghetti day (a mandatory office holiday) and that everyone is to be given ice cream sandwiches on Fridays. Oh and that it will be illegal to ban jeans in the workplace.

I will defer to my co-president Barack to take care of everything else.

Here are the results:

Hillary Clinton - 43 votes
Rudy Guiliani - 13 votes
John McCain - 6 votes
Barack Obama - 46 votes
Lily Von Schtoop - 46 votes

We ARE the Evil Empire Now Beyotch!

GO PATS!!!!!!

WAAAAHOOOOOO, NA NA NA NA, NA NA NA NA, HEY HEY HEY

GOODBYE!!!!!!!

Pats won, Colts lost.

Only a matter of time before Dungy wants to see the tape yo!

Undefeated. Whoah.

And the Sox won the World Series.
What the f*ck is going on around here.......

Weather.com - Hard to Trust the Forecast

Click on the picture to enlarge the image.

But yeah, that's a "Who will win the World Series" poll next to the current doppler radar.

So maybe they're wrong about Hurricane Noel too.

Hmmmmm......

The Mother of All Renovations

According to an article in the Bawstin Glob, the Harbor Towers are undergoing a major facelift.

Well, maybe not a facelift so much as a tummy tuck.

Did I say it was gonna be major? I mean may-ja!

The renovation is going to cost $75 million smackaroos.

And the assessment is due at the end of the month, in full.

$75 mill between 500 folks works out to about $150,000 per person - if you were going to lay it out like that. Of course it's not going to be evenly divided, but fo'shizz if someone came to me and told me I had to come up with $75,000 in thirty days, I would probably go cuckoo.

That's $2500 per day. Holy pit sweat Batman, I am stressing and I don't even live there!

Of course the trustees seem to think nothing of signing merrily on the dotted line. Hell, Walsh Bros is thrilled to be doing such a big job - not only are they right down the street, but heck if you are going to do it right, do it union! And that is easily worth about $35,000,000 right there.

I feel bad for the few people in the article who are saying "whoa nelly, you want HOW much to do WHAT exactly". From the sounds of the article, you'd have thought they were the ones who pooped in the punch bowl.

Heck, for $75K I could build an exact replica of my own house in my backyard!