// July 21st, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Personal/Blog News
Yeah this entry is way overdue, I put it off then my domain was suspended for a week while I waited to get paid. But its back so for historical purposes, this entry was supposed to go up around June 25th.
“English System MOTHER-[beep]: Do you speak it‽”
What a great few days this has been. This past Friday I went up to Caribou for my nephew’s 1 year birthday. For the next 12 months he will be “1 year and N months”. When he is 1 year, 6 months, it shall not be said he is “18 months old”, or I will start punching people in the teeth. Why? Because one of my pet peeves is people counting a child’s age in months after they’ve reached the next higher increment (YEARS). I am not 1120 16ths of an inch tall, I’m 5 feet 10 inches. Your car doesn’t hold 192 cups of gasoline, it holds 12 gallons, etc. He’s 1 year old. He’s also 12 months old but you don’t say that out loud. Wow, rant. Where was I?
Oh yeah, so my nephew, Parker, turned 1 year old last Wednesday, so my mother and sister came up to celebrate with the rest of the family. I hopped in with them at Bangor and we all drove home together. After stopping in to visit Lindsey, I hopped online and played Zombie Master with Doody, B, Jesse, Aaron, and Zach(!!!) while chatting on Skype. It was so awesome to talk to Zach in particular, and great to play with everyone. The internet isn’t killing humanity, rather it often brings us close together when we otherwise could not be. After gaming until about 4am, Doody came over and we caught up on stuff before crashing an hour later.
The next day, or later that morning really, we awoke and got ready for the party. Grammy and Grampy, and my godmother and Parker’s grammy and grampy and great-grammy and aunt and loads of other friends and family including Mom and Dad all were there (I even convinced Doody to stay!) and we had a great time. Parker got to grab fist-fulls of cake, made by the same lady that made Alyssa and Lindsey and I’s first cakes (she came out of retirement from cake making to do this one last one for Lindsey), and we chatted and had fun and ate and opened presents. Parker helped me put a couple of toys together with Alyssa–he kept grabbing and trying to turn the screwdriver–and he is wonderfully smart. It only takes him seconds to figure out new concepts, and he loves all things mechanical. I can see he’s going to be a lot like me when I was little, taking things apart and being fascinated by mechanics and electricity.
After the party we managed to get a hold of Jalbey, and we gossiped some more with him before going out to rent Mulberry Street (one of the “8 more films to die for”). We watched that with Dad and it was just so-so, picture a zombie movie where the zombies are actually infected humans turned rat mutants, but it was entertaining at least. We had fun punning though. “You rat bastard” and “President Bush doesn’t care about Rat People” were among the best. Doody and I stayed up browsing the internet for a while then crashed again.
Sunday I woke up and cleaned the inside of Amme’s Camry, and Dad waxed the crap out of it (it looks like a mirror, beautiful). Before I headed back down to Bangor Doody and I went to the Jade Palace for lunch and had some seriously good buffet and had a couple more good puns (“jimmy’s buffet” and “the bob buffet” PROTIP: say buffet as buf-fet). This comes from reading too much Spider Robinson, I’m afraid.
“I swear I won’t start singing Peaches & Herb”
After being reunited with my lil’ angel on Sunday night, we went to bed so we could wake up at 6am to head down to Boston. We got to Alyssa’s around 12pm and went straight out downtown to go visit the Aquarium and do a little souvenir shopping. Later we went home to change and headed back out to the game, Sox vs. Diamondbacks, which was really fun since it was Lindsey and Amme’s first games, but incredibly slow since no runs were scored until the 6th inning when Arizona scored 2 runs, and the Sox never did come back, scoring just 1 run. However with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 8th, the tension was palpable.
“Yes Margaret, it is possible to spend several hours reading about shaving.”
At this point, I should mention that I’ve become a huge shaving nerd. Yes, shaving nerd. This came about from 2 distinct events. Last year I read an article about how you can save a ton of money and get a closer shave with less irritation by switching to a safety razor (the old double edge metal ones). I thought that was really cool but never got around to buying one. Then just a couple of months ago, my friend Andrew told me he’d started shaving with one, and there was a whole online forum devoted to the art of shaving (and lathering, which is almost more important than the razor) called BadgerAndBlade.com. My curiosity was piqued and I decided to check it out. What I found was a very friendly and helpful community of people who had set out to find the secret of getting a better shave, with less irritation, and had ended up finding a place to share stories, make friends, and get guidance on what to buy and how to use it.
I’ve been shaving with a safety razor and badger-hair brush for a few weeks now and I’ve never had such a smooth shave or less irritation. Whats more, I spend about $4 on 20 razors, instead of $20 on 4 mach-3 razors!!!
Anyway, I bring this up because The next day we went to the Natick mall. For you Family Guy fans, there WAS a Twinkie factory in Natick, but she’s gone :(. Despite that tragedy, we had a blast shopping and hanging out and just enjoying everyone’s company. My mission was to find all the shaving supplies I needed but couldn’t get in Bangor. This included some shaving soap and/or cream, a high-quality badger-hair brush, aftershave lotion, possibly some cologne, and some good aftershave spash with witch hazel and no alcohol.
Armed with reviews from B&B, and a list of stores with possible supplies, I came away with everything I needed. I also got some new clothes (I clothes shop about every 1.5 years, or 18 months for you unit-impaired new mothers out there).
“Nom nom nom”
Before Amme and I had to head back to Bangor, Alyssa took us all to Asiana Fusion in Watertown, that has absolutely amazing food. This is real asian food, as in authentic Korean bulgogi, kimchi, and kalbi, as well as Pad Thai and other Thai and Japanese and Chinese dishes. Everything we got was just excellent, and we chatted with the Korean girls there and got some most excellent deserts! I highly recommend it to anyone near the Boston/Watertown/Waltham area.
The following morning we all went to Alyssa’s work for a little pizza party and met a lot of her co-workers. It was brief but really nice to meet everyone. Amme and I headed home after that and had a pretty un-eventful drive back home. It was really nice to pass out in our own big comfy bed with the A.C. on.
