Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner

Patrick Swayze died yesterday. It made me very sad. My favorite movie of his is "Dirty Dancing". If it's on, and I see that it's on, I will sit down and watch it. I've seen it over and over. I bet I even know the dance steps to Jennifer Grey's finale dance, if hard-pressed.

He was only 57, I think. Pancreatic cancer---it must suck to die that way. He had never quit smoking, because as he explained it in an interview clip that I saw, he had his priorities. He knew one or the other, smoking or cancer, would get him. He figured out which one would get him first. So, he never quit smoking.

RIP Patrick Swayze

Sweet Victory

Ed and I just got back in from the casino. I walked in there with a $95.00 voucher and walked out with one for $178.25. Not bad for a couple hours on the slots.

The house in Maine fell through. The guy was very insistent on a $400 security deposit, and I was just as insistent that I would not pay it. We have never had to pay a security deposit on a weekly rental. It's just an excuse for the owner to pocket some extra money. The guy just gave out bad email vibes, anyway. It's just as well.

I watched three of my "thirtysomething" episodes last night. It's amazing how well they hold up. It's fun to see the fashions of the 80's again. The shows bring back a lot of memories for me.

Garlic Festival

Today, Ed and I went to the Pocono Garlic festival. It was being held at the foot of the Shawnee Mountain ski resort. The website really hyped it, and I was expecting some huge event. It took us forever to get there---traffic backed up on route 209 for miles. We finally get there, and there is a $10 admission for adults.

Can I just say that we were underwelmed? There were a dozen food stands, all selling foods made with, you guessed it! Garlic. There were a couple of entertainment tents, and there were a few craft booths, and that was it. On the way in, I overheard a woman say, "it took us longer to get here than it did to walk around the festival". In our case, it took us the same length of time it took to consume a shared can of Budweiser.

We then took an alternate route home along the Delaware river and had a late lunch at a place called TK's Bar and Grill. The sandwiches were just, eh... It was a beautiful day, though, and at least we got out and did something.

Thirty Something

I saw a commercial this morning that said the first season of "Thirty Something" was available at Target. I neglected to hear that it's not available until September 5th, so I sent the guest blogger on a bit of a wild goosechase today...

The guest blogger gets to write again! Yeah! Yes, I rather felt like an idiot when the Rt. 248 electronics guru punched in the title of a TV series I didn't watch, and he came up with nothing. Oh well, maybe this store didn't have it yet. On the next new Target on Airport Road....again, nothing. Back to home, started the search and came up with a release date of 5th of September. No wonder the guest blogger had no results.

Point being: what you do for love. Anyway, the "30 Something" series, which I know J will watch, I will get for her.

Oink

Iron Pigs won 3-2. We had a great time at the old ball game!

$100

Ed and I went to the Sands today for brunch. We both had sort of a weird assortment of food. He had shrimp, cheese, salmon, hashbrowns and I don't know what else. I had pot roast, a baked stuffed half potato, a roll, and sausage. We both started with the New England clam chowder, which was quite good. And, we both had fruit and two kinds of cake for dessert.

After brunch, we played the machines a while. I won 400 quarters for hitting 4 deuces on a deuces wild machine. Not bad! Net-net when we left, my winnings were more like $40 rather than $100, but I'll take it.

I'm making a new casserole dish out of the huge yellow squash that Ed brought home. We are also having grilled chicken tonight. The weather is really nice today, and it will be pleasant to sit out on the patio.

Post Hendrick's Gin: The Forgotten Episode

The weather was absolutely horrible today: mid 90's and humid. Even Amber didn't want to go out tonight. (Yes, this is the "guest blogger" writing tonight. Readers, not to worry, the main author is fine, I think.)

Mad Men's 3rd season started last night. Not that the blog owner remembered! We ran out of our favorite beverage last night, thus the re-introduction of J's favorite gin: Hendrick's. This stuff is custom blended with all the right herbs, tastes vaguely like a medicial product, and produces some strange effects. The owner was astounded to discover that she couldn't remember any of the 1 hour long episode, blame it on the Hendrick's. Anyway, she is back to normal tonight.

Dinner at Celebrations tonight. Again, a pleasant surprise: potatoe wrapped shrimp, delicate and absolutely delicious. Signing off, the "guest blogger". See you soon.

Five Guys

It's been a pretty lazy Sunday afternoon. We did go out briefly to get a new propane tank for the grill, and we stopped at the new Five Guys Burgers. It was not really ALL THAT. I mean, it was a good burger and fries, but nothing I would race across town to get again. In fact, we've found a pretty good frozen burger that we like to cook ourselves called Bubba burgers. They are pure Angus beef and quite tasty.

I've watching trashy Lifetime movies most of the afternoon and playing that awful addicting game, Bubbleshooter. I'm looking forward to seeing Big Brother this evening...lots of drama going on. Then it's the premiere of my very fave show, Madmen!

Forty Years Ago

There was an interesting show on VH1 last night about Woodstock. It's a subject I find fascinating, because I wish I'd been there. Unfortunately, I was only 13 years old at the time....

Peace Out!


HeHeHe. The "guest blogger" was. Rain, drugs, mud and rock 'n roll. Didn't find the car back to Massachusetts for a day. But had fun. Fun? So far from the stage, no food, lots of booze, stoned and wet. A lifetime experience. Where else is a moment in time a real moment in time. Listening to the Woodstock Channel at work for the past two days, I did catch a couple of the tunes heard. But 40 years later, it was just an experience in your life: one that I was lucky enough to have taken.

Casino

We went to the casino today and had a great brunch, and then lost some money. The restaurant with the brunch had everything imaginable available. The creamed chipped beef was very good, the fruit was excellent, and Ed enjoyed the peel and eat shrimp.

When we got home I turned on the A/C. It looks to be a couple of hot and muggy days ahead. Musikfest concludes this evening. Thank goodness! We get our street parking back. Good riddance festers!

More of the Same

“Big Brother” is on tonight, and it conflicts with the two-hour finale of “So You Think You Can Dance”. I think I’ll DVR “Big Brother”. I’m most anxious to see who wins on the dance show. My money is on Kayla.

Today was the start of the craziness at work. I had to scramble to put some orders on hold and make phone calls, because some of the customers are in very bad shape with their accounts. I feel like I’m holding their iris orders hostage.

Musikfest is still going on. I can’t wait until it’s over this Sunday. We may even not make it down there this year, since the weather has been either rainy or hot and humid. Ed commented last night how the first year we attended, which was years ago, we ran around from platz to platz not being bothered by the heat at all, and it was very hot that year. I guess we were younger and skinnier then. That might have something to do with it!

Musikfest

Today is the start of Musikfest in our town. It’s a 10-day music festival of mostly free performances, although there are headliners like Blondie, Chris Isaak, David Cook and others on the main stage that have ticket fees. Over a million people descend on this town over the next 10 days, and traffic and parking are a mess.

Because of our house’s location, we are only a couple minutes walk from it all, and as a result, our street is very popular for parking. Fortunately, we do have two spaces in the alley that are on our property, so instead of parking on the street as we normally do, we have to park behind the house. It’s a minor inconvenience, but most of our neighbors are not lucky enough to have off-street parking.

This is the one time of year when our neighbor, whom I refer to as “Dipshit”, is out of luck for parking. The rest of the year he hogs the street and usually takes up a couple of spaces, since he doesn’t know how to parallel park properly. It serves him right that he’ll have to scrounge for parking for the duration of Musikfest.

I’m not very neighborly, I guess.

Back to the Grindstone

Oh, boy. Back to work after a week’s vacation is a drag. At least the boss is preoccupied. We are getting a new server installed, so the software consultant guy is here all week getting that running. I found out we do have training this Saturday from 8:30am – 2pm. I’m not thrilled with that, because Ed and I are going to see my mom on Sunday, so there goes my weekend.

Tonight is The Bachelorette finale. Who will she choose?

Hide in Plain Sight

I spoke with my mom at lunch today, and she is still hiding out from Kathy. Kathy’s dad died, and she should be in my mom’s area on Thursday for the funeral, but if you knew this person you would know why my mom is avoiding her. She is 58 years old, never married, never held down a decent job for long, very poor grooming, etc. etc. She recently took all the money she got from the sale of her house in New Jersey, and purchased a house in North Carolina that she thinks she is going to “flip”.

When we were growing up as kids, her family lived across the street. Since she was 5 years older than me, I never really had much contact with her, but she was a strange bird back then, too. If she starts telling any type of story, it goes on and on past boredom to pure agony.

I know my mom feels badly about being deceptive, but if Kathy gets a hold of her, she’ll literally want to camp out at my mom’s house for through the weekend at least. So, meanwhile, my mom is not taking her calls, she’s keeping the house closed up, and won’t surface until she’s sure Kathy is gone. Then she plans to call her and act like she was out of town with me.

There was a big write up, front page, in fact, in our local newspaper about the concert last night. I’m so glad we got to go and see most of it. I really don’t have any regrets about missing Willie Nelson, and even the article said that John Mellencamp was the highlight of the evening. Bob Dylan, eh…take him or leave him, but I will acknowledge that he’s a musical legend.

Ed has been out and about today, doing lots of the last minute vacation related things that need to be done. He’s stopped the paper and mail for the week, and purchased filters for my aquarium so we can give that a good cleaning before we go. I checked the 10-day weather report for Kennebunkport, ME this morning, and was disappointed to see a lot of overcast, rainy weather predicted. Hopefully, the forecast is all wrong, like it is half the time anyway. Predicting the weather is a crap shoot at best.

No Cameras Allowed

The concert tonight was great, after a faulty start. Ed and I both left work to get to the stadium early, but when we got there the line of people waiting to get in pretty much double encircled the perimeter of the parking lot--a VERY long line. It was hot, and neither of us wanted to stand in that, so we decided to go to dinner and come back later.

We missed Willie Nelson, but got there just before John Mellencamp came on. He sang a lot of my favorite hits, and we were having a great time until one of the event workers confiscated our camera. We knew that cameras weren't allowed, but practically everyone in the stadium had a camera if they had a cell phone. I was pissed.

So, Ed had to be escorted to the stadium office and turn over our camera until we were ready to leave....

"I fight authority, authority always wins."

Mondays

I hate Mondays. Especially today; I was just very tired and very much not in the mood to be at work. The boss comes back tomorrow, so no more goofing off. In just a few short weeks, I'll be too busy to even entertain the thought of random web surfing moments at work.

Tomorrow night Ed and I are attending the Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson concert. I'm hoping we're able to find decent parking and seats. The youngest among the bunch is John Mellencamp at 57. When did all the rockers get so old?

Headed for Gamblers Anonymous?

We had a good time last night at the casino. We ate at the Cobalt Café, and had a pretty decent meal. It’s the kind of restaurant you expect to find at a casino. The menu had a limited number of full dinner type items, sandwiches, soups and salads, and they serve breakfast as well. They also have a buffet on the weekends that we would like to try some time.

After dinner we went to play the poker machines, and both Ed and I couldn’t remember the PIN for our comp cards, so we played without getting our free 5 bucks since the line for customer service was too long. We’ll have to get new PIN’s some other time. We figured after playing a voucher from last time, and cashing out two vouchers last night, minus the money we spent, minus the tip for the cocktail waitress, we came out $3.00 ahead! I’ll try not to spend it all in one place!

Tonight is the start of my ultimate guilty pleasure reality show, “Big Brother”. I can’t wait! I hope it’s an interesting group of people. Several years ago, I was so obsessed with the show that I would subscribe to the live feeds. Obsessed now? Not so much…

Scattered

My eyes are about to bleed. I have been translating orders from last year into current orders that can be entered from this year’s catalog. It involves a lot of going back and forth and substituting varieties, packaging, etc. My eyes hurt!

Ed and I are off to the casino to try our luck tonight. I’m not sure where we will have dinner…

After that, home to watch “So You Think You Can Dance”.

Silly, stupid entry, but I’m in a hurry.

The Bachelorette and Other Randomness

Woo hoo!! Jake is now revealing to Jillian that Wes has a girlfriend! How is that for an up to the minute news flash? I don't know why I keep watching this show....

I talked with my mother today, and the window installers installed all her windows in just one day. Given the number of windows in her house, that's pretting amazing.

I posted my Bob Dylan tickets on Craig's List today. If there are no bites there over the next couple days, then I'll post an auction on E-Bay. Worse comes to worst, I'll have Ed scalp them at the stadium.

They Come In Threes

It really is true that deaths come in threes. First, Ed McMahon on Tuesday, and then Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson yesterday. I almost feel that Farrah got short changed for news worthiness because of MJ dying on the same day. Not that she's around to worry about the media coverage, but I just think that she deserves more respect and attention than Michael because of the circumstances of her death. Farrah suffered for 2-1/2 years with cancer, and Michael Jackson probably just drugged himself up. We shall see what the autopsy report says.

R.I.P. Farrah and Michael