Saturday, July 23, 2005

Dead Juniper Shrub should be marketed as a home fragrance or something, because our garage sure smells good. I have a new fav ice cream flavor: bumble buzz. The chocolate-coated honeycomb pieces are incredible. Crocodiles wouldn't stand a chance.

Posted at 9:11:00 PM by Laura.

Dean made me buy an ALB coloured/patterned mousepad. It massively matches my room--actually it practically blends in with my chaise. He told me to open it immediately but I'm saving it to use with my new Octopus when it comes so everything's brand new.

Posted at 6:59:00 PM by Laura.

Wow, I'm impressed. I already got a beverage recovery coupon in the mail from Starbucks in response to my feedback form rant about the undrinkable cappuccino at the Oats branch. I mailed it on the 13th or 14th!

Posted at 3:59:00 PM by Laura.

Smead's new fronds are growing so fast! (He has three now.) My jaw really aches today. Extremely silly. I just tried this (with crunchy freshly ground salt crystals), and it's really good. It kind of reminds me of soft pretzels. Of course, I'm a huge salt-on-bread fiend, so I guess it's not surprising that I liked it. I don't put salt in oatmeal, though.

Posted at 2:19:00 PM by Laura.

Friday, July 22, 2005

I am obsessed with finding a wild boar picture now. I love wild boar pictures. I used to have one on my bulletin board. I found this instead, though. Giant Club Mosses are even better than wild boars.

Posted at 11:26:00 PM by Laura.

I think I've lost my love for Spris. It's really gone downhill. (Every time I use the word "down... hill!" I think of Murry Wilson.) But! I get to cross another item off my "Weird Foods I Especially Want to Try" list! Wild boar. I had wild boar prosciutto with fresh figs. Meanwhile, I hurt my ear/jaw today. I won't go into detail about how.

Posted at 10:54:00 PM by Laura.

There's a beautiful London Plane Tree on Main Street in Middletown, surrounded by flaked-off curls of bark. Couldn't help fondling it, and stopping to pick up a piece of bark when I was crossing the street. Klekolo was playing "Shine A Light." And the whole rest of the album, I think.

I got this fantastic book for a dollar at the library: Polka-bats and Octopus Slacks. It even has snails! The front page has a dedication inscribed on it, "11/99 For our beautiful sweet Olive ~ We hope you like to read this book and want to take a second look... or third, or fourth, or even more... but goodness sakes, who's keeping score!?!? Love Aunt Jackie and Uncle Scott." But it looks like Olive didn't want to take any looks, because as far as I can tell, the book has never been opened except by Aunt Jackie and Uncle Scott. Well, it's gone to a good home now. Also got this great American Trees book from 1942 with beautiful painted illustrations. The artist even did justice to the sycamore! It's better than most tree books' photographs.

Posted at 4:55:00 PM by Laura.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Such entertainment to be had from the What's New section of The Band site: 1) a Robbie-narrated ad for Toronto that plays just like an R.R. music video (it reminds me of "Take Your Partner by the Hand"), 2) the tracklist and highly detailed credits for the upcoming Band box set ("Richard Manuel - fingersnaps & handclaps" -- I love it!). Some of the stuff on there sounds very very cool. Richard songs I've never heard before!! I'm dumping Bob when this comes out. Dumping! So much Richard.

We snuck out for our second scooting trip of the season and went all the way up to the Sargasso Sea of the River, then turned around so we wouldn't get tangled in seaweed (or disturb the eels). Had our picnic on a new island. The FSP store doesn't have bologna anymore unless you get it striped with two other things (pastrami and something else). :-( No Band Sandwiches! It was a wonderful scooter trip; up toward/past Hartford, the water was like glass.

Posted at 9:03:00 PM by Laura.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Dean is so sneaky! He ordered me a new Octopus. (!!!)

Posted at 11:41:00 PM by Laura.

I can't believe it! I got a reservation for Per Se! You have to call two months in advance, and the reservation office opens at 10 AM. We wanted a rez for September 4th, but when we called on July 4th there was a message saying Per Se is on vac until July 20th and that all rezzes for September 4th-20th had to be made on July 20th, so we called back today at 10 AM sharp. Endless busy signals x 1,000,000. Dean had to give up and go to work at about 10:20, but I kept dialing. Finally got through at 10:51!! Waited on hold for a while, and then talked to an actual person, and they had a rez! I am shocked. By that time I had calmly given up expecting an answer but just kept dialing anyway... for fun or something.

Sunday September 4th at 1:30! They actually had 5:30 too, but we wanted lunchtime, so that is perfect. There are only 15 tables in the whole dining room, and Per Se was recently named the 7th best restaurant in the world. Dean wanted to go for his birthday (which is actually in October) because one of their menus is a 9-course vegetable tasting menu.

Note to anyone who reads this who tries to get rezzes at Per Se: be persistent, have TWO phone numbers ready to give them (home and cell), and have your credit card handy because you have to give the number when you make the rez. I was not prepared! But it all worked out fine.

Posted at 11:06:00 AM by Laura.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

My nice little smeared monitor is back! We got rid of the giant fancy one. And my eyes are recovering. Now I have my corner-of-ALB blue desktop again, too. Also I got some Fish Friends.

Posted at 11:08:00 PM by Laura.

Waaah. Dean says my new monitor is going down and that I'm not allowed to wear sunglasses while looking at it. It's so pretty, but I guess he's right. My eyes have hurt and felt sunburnt all day. (But even so, they haven't been thrown into a state of wonk! My new contacts are the greatest.) 17" monitors = BAD. Don't laugh. I know 17" isn't that giant, but it's too giant for me. At least I tried.

Fantastic summer storm while I was driving home from Stupid. Raindrops two inches across, splatting down out of nowhere. Rumbles, lightning, then sheets of rain and flooded roads and trees waving their arms like crazy octopuses.

At Rocky today there was a customer who looked just like James Brown, but then I realised it was a woman. Then I was sitting in the velvet chair drinking my fantastic foam and I saw this guy who looked like Brian Wilson. I think he noticed me staring at him. They were playing "Gotta Travel On," but not the Bob version and I kept grinning and told the cashier, "I like your music today." The newspaper was printed wrong and all the coloured words looked like things do when my eyes are really, really wonky. All overlapped. Like this. Isn't that fun to look at?

Posted at 5:35:00 PM by Laura.

Dean says my new desktop colour is "rad." I changed it because the old colour was overwhelming with my new monitor. The old colour is the same as the little blue rectangle at the top left corner of ALB. (It was a custom colour tweaked by me and I am very very fond of it.) My new colour is odd and I like it, I think. (Also custom and invented by me, natch.) I will reveal its identity if I decide to keep it. I like my new monitor better now that we got rid of the stand. It looks insanely futuristic. My eyes are still kind of cowering, though. This is a lot for them to handle. But they haven't gone wonky, so that's good. Too much WHITE on ALB. Too much white everywhere.

Posted at 2:23:00 AM by Laura.

Monday, July 18, 2005

I just got a huge new monitor (it's not that huge, but it seems huge. I like small monitors) and I don't know if I like it yet. My old monitor had a smear that wasn't a smear. This sure looks big. My eyes are scared.

Interview with Denise went fine. Her place has frog sounds and deer behind it.

The new monitor isn't quite so terrifying if I push it really really far away.

Posted at 11:48:00 PM by Laura.

I have been sleeping badly and my shoulders have been killing me, so last night I took a blue. I massively overslept, but now my shoulders are all cured and I had a dream about Boothby! A really really long one. There were lots of other people/characters in it, too, and I remember saying in the dream that I'd never remember the whole thing, and I don't. I don't remember it at all. But it was great.

Posted at 2:11:00 PM by Laura.

Amazon.com Bob Dylan concert = zzzz. Sorry, Bob. I guess I'm not a very good Dylan fan, because I was pretty bored. (Now I'm glad I got mixed up about which night it was on, because it would have been utter torture to sit through Bill Maher live--at least I was able to skip over everything but Bob.)

Bob's harmonica playing was great, though. (Seriously; that was actually my favourite part.) But that little spindly keyboard is very cheesy. Get a real piano, Bob. Please. A piano would be cool. That keyboard thing is just embarrassing. But I'm sure Bob doesn't care what I think.

Posted at 12:14:00 AM by Laura.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Check out all our stolen blueberries! The big clear container on the right is a soup (?) container I stole from Rein's (really did steal that), and all the other ones are empty planters I found behind the Gs shed and used when we ran out of space in the Rein's container. I had no idea there would be so many blueberries. The Gs are on vac. (Yeah, yeah, they did say we could stop by and pick blueberries, so it wasn't really that illicit.) The two containers on the left are mine. Unripe! There were way more ripe berries than unripe, though. Not fair.

Oh yeah and my eyes are ZERO% wonky! For the past several days! I haven't even been wearing my driving glasses. My new contacts are great.

Posted at 6:35:00 PM by Laura.

I had a dream that my Grandfather Whaples died (he's actually been dead since I was a baby) and my mom found him lying on the floor in the living room at my grandparents' house (it looked exactly like their real living room did, too!). I comforted her, and then said how sad and awful it was that the house would now have to be sold, because it was such a absolutely cool house. My mom said, Well, maybe it doesn't have to be... we could donate it and have it turned into a LIBRARY, with books collected from all the old people around, because they all have hoards of cool old rare books in their houses. I thought that was the best idea EVER.

But first, we had to go through Grandmother & Grandfather's stuff and pack it up/get rid of it, and we had to start right away, because there was probably tons of MONEY hidden in SECRET spots in all the furniture. (???!) I promised my mom I would help her. So we immediately started ripping the back off this dresser in my grandmother's old bedroom--it had all kinds of dusty layers with semi-falling apart paper. We did find a big pile of coins, but it was all FOREIGN coins from their travels. I was all excited about that because I have a collection of foreign coins, so I grabbed them.

Posted at 1:36:00 PM by Laura.

Eyes blueberries (stolen) Elvis RICHARD! 100%

Posted at 12:08:00 AM by Laura.