Greetings to everyone! Sorry I haven’t posted for a few days. I’ve been feeling somewhat under the weather. I promise that I will return to you in a day or so, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at usual. Thanks for bearing with me!
Cheers
I was talking to someone at work today about board games and the subject of Boggle came up. I’m actually quite a Boggle fan (yes, I admit it!), although I don’t have much opportunity to play. I had a couple of friends in college I used to play with, and it’s a favorite game at extended family gatherings. Anyway, it all made me think of my Dad’s famous Boggle story. Whenever the subject of Boggle came up, he LOVED to tell this story (which was very cute!). I may not be able to put the same dramatic emphasis on it that he did, but I’ll do my best!
My dad used to play Boggle with his buddies at work during their lunch hour. On one particular incident there was an exceptionally difficult combination of letters. Boggle games vary with each shake of the dice and this was a hard one. There were lots of letters like Z and Q, and too many vowels. By the time the sands in the Boggle timer had run down, most of the players breathed a sigh of relief. The torturous round was over!
But not my Dad! He had hit the Boggle jackpot. My Dad had composed the unlikely word, squeegie, a definite Boggle triumph. But, as my father would now remind us as we waited with bated breath, that’s not all! Not only did my Dad make it into Boggle legend with squeegie (already a five point word), he also found squeegies and squeegied.
After that Boggle would never be the same! The Boggle bar had been raised, the Boggle gauntlet thrown down!
Today is one of the first nice warm sunny days we’ve had here in Boston in a long time and I am trying to take full advantage. I’m actually writing this blog entry out long hand (yes, there’s actual paper involved!) as I lie on a towel in Boston Common. For those of you who don’t know Boston, the Common is similar to New York’s Central Park, a large grassy area in the middle of the city, complete with baseball fields and tennis courts.
It’s incredibly nice to be outside watching dogs chase balls, dogs chase people, dogs chase nothing in particular (quite amusing!). There are people passing by on bikes, people eating ice cream, people playing frisbee or tossing a football, and of course all the sunbathers (I, of course, am wearing sunscreen!). This, all this, is what I love about living in the city. I love the people coming out in droves to enjoy the first day of great spring weather. I love seeing other people doing the same thing I am, writing or reading and soaking up the atmosphere.
There’s some kind of Greek festival going on in the far corner of the park. I can hear Greek music and have seen many Bostonians walking by with Greek flags and blue and white balloons. I’ve even seen a couple of kids and an adult walk by in what I presume is some sort of traditional Greek dress.
Right at this moment I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Although, I am definitely not against the possibility of seeking out another Boston-like city with a better climate. I could do without snow in April! But for now, I’ll just daydream and enjoy.
The writer of one of the blogs I enjoy, Interstellar Lass, passed on these questions to me as part of an interviewing circle. If anyone else with a blog would like to be “interviewed” like this, please see the directions at the end of this blog entry. Otherwise, enjoy my answers!
1) Where was the first place you ever laid eyes on your husband? What was your first impression of him?
I have the vague impression that I had seen my husband before this, but I properly met him on a trip to the Good Will (odd, but true!). We were both in college and he was the president of a group on campus which ran weird, random, fun events. My friend Emily and I signed up to attend the group’s trip to King Richard’s Faire (a renaissance faire). The Good Will trip was a preliminary get-together whose purpose was to find renaissance/medieval looking clothes to wear as costumes. The first time I saw Eric he was wearing his long gray medieval cloak. I thought he was pretty cute and must have a great personality to be willing to wear the cloak about town!
2) Do you have any bad habits? Have you tried to break the habits, or do you just go with the flow?
Does a seriously overdeveloped and frequent penchant for going out for ice cream count?! I haven’t really tried to break this particular habit, just to give into it in moderation. The cold Boston winter helps a lot with this one!
The other strange bad habit I have is chewing my tongue. I know it sounds weird! I have tried to stop doing this over the years, but I don’t usually notice that I’m doing it unless someone else points it out. And I’m still bitter after getting in trouble in 6th grade for chewing gum in class! I didn’t HAVE any gum!
3) What is a secret talent you have? How did you discover this talent?
I used to impress my friends in high school by touching my tongue to my nose! I’m quite an expert at it. Beyond that, here’s a little known fact. I used to rollerskate competitively. Yes, there is (or was, anyway) such a thing! I quite miss it actually. It was a great outlet for creativity, artistic body movement (fulfilling the same urge which makes me want to go out dancing), and just all-around fun. I actually tried to start lessons again in college, but the only rink that offered them was a one hour drive away and that got old pretty quickly.
4) Letterman or Leno? Or are you asleep before the news ends?
Neither, really. I would say that I’m more of a Law and Order, Gilmore Girls, Star Trek: Next Generation, Chasing Amy kind of girl. Although, I don’t really watch any of these regularly. Aren’t repeats great?
5) what is your secret passion?
Besides the aforementioned ice cream and desire to be the competitive rollerskating queen? Well, I want to be the fairy princess vampire sorceress queen…obviously! (Don’t ask if you don’t want to know!)
If you’d like to be interviewed, please read the following directions:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Do you ever notice that people often can’t resist doing something even after they’ve been warned not to and despite the fact that they often know the consequences before doing it?
This phenomenon seems to start out at a pretty young age. You’re in the kitchen while your mother is baking cookies or cake. You are helping her cook by bringing her ingredients and mixing the batter. Then your mom asks you to retrieve the baker’s unsweetened chocolate. And oh, that chocolate smells SO good! Forget that MOM says it won’t taste good. What does she know anyway? So you take a nice, large bite only to find out that it does NOT taste good. If only your mother had warned you! Many kids then go on to repeat this same scenario when it comes to the vanilla extract. It smells like vanilla and is being used to make delicious cookies. Why shouldn’t it taste good? Darn, wrong again. Mom smiles knowingly.
Of course this inability to resist trying these things for ourselves does not go away as you get older (and wiser? maybe, maybe not!). Have you ever found yourself in a restaurant where the waiter tells you not to touch the plate because it’s hot? Well come on, how hot could it really be? There’s only one way to find out! My husband is a big fan of testing the waiter’s verity on this one. And then there’s the timeless classic that always amuses me. Someone says to you, “does this taste spoiled to you?” And inevitably, what do you do? You taste it, because someone told you it tasted bad, and you thought it would be a wonderful idea to test the theory.
People are weird. Although, just to be clear, I am certainly no exception. And instead of asking someone else if something tastes bad, I’m just as likely to try it two or three more times just to be sure. Is the two week old wine spoiled? *sip* It tastes a bit funny. *sip* I think it’s gone bad. *sip* Ack, water, need water! Hey Eric, take a sip, does this taste spoiled?
Monday was a state holiday in Massachusetts, Patriots Day (aka Marathon Monday) and many of us had the day off. I love state holidays! The post office was closed and certain streets blocked off to accomodate the runners of the Boston marathon. Waking up on Monday morning to the pounding of the rain and cries of the wind really made me sympathize for the runner’s plight. A little rain might have been nice on a hot day to cool off, but it was neither warm nor a LITTLE bit or rain. Oh well, you know what they say about April showers…and at least it wasn’t snowing like earlier this week!
Speaking of athletic competition, I was once the glorious winner of a tri-athalon: 1 mile swim, 15 mile bike ride, 3 mile run. Of course, the small detail to reveal here is that it was a team competition. I’m not sure swimming 1 mile is nearly as impressive as saying, “I was in a tri-athalon!” Oh yeah, and the reason we won is because there was no one else in our division. But hey, how many people can say they’ve won a tri-athalon?! Alright, I don’t really claim this as true. Although, when I was younger I used to canoe race and did legitimately win a few races. That was fun, back in the day! Maybe I’ll write more about it some time. For now, happy Marathon Monday and stay dry!
As we still have our Christmas tree from last December (a strange phenomenon of husband-wife interaction), my husband and I have decided that the best course of action at this point is not disposing of said Christmas tree. Rather, the thing to do is find as many uses for the not so healthy tree as possible. We’ve already come up with a couple of brilliant ideas of our own.
Here’s the tree in all its glory…
It could be a stunning coat rack…
Or maybe I shouldn’t just dismiss the possibility of keeping the Christmas tree around for next year! It would be a cool testament to the chic, modern lifestyle. You just wait. You will soon be seeing these babies available at Crate and Barrel for $400 each! We’ve come up with the next best thing for Christmas! Who knew?
While all of these uses are excellent ideas for our mature Christmas tree (if I do say so myself, and I do), we’re wondering if anyone can think of other great ways to make use of our Charlie Brown (hip, ultra modern!) Christmas tree? I will be happy to illustrate all of these ideas in a future blog entry (and have a really fun time doing it!). What do you say?
I recently remembered a cool idea I once had and figured that perhaps it’s time to carry it out. Wouldn’t it be neat to hold a city-wide treasure/scavenger hunt? I picture it as teams of two to four people. Everyone would pay a small entrance fee (so that I can provide some nice prizes). Each team would receive the first clue and they’d be off. I would suggest that people purchase a one-day t-pass (for the subway) if they do not have a monthly pass (as many of us do).
The clues would lead the teams to different parts of the city where they would have to search for the next clue. The first team to find me at the final location would win. Once everyone finished we’d all get together for a celebratory dinner and the awards distribution. So the next step, in order to get this started, would be for me to spend a weekend day roaming around the city for ideas. It would be so awesome if I can put this together!
Is it wrong to get pleasure from your husband being sick? Now, before you stop reading in disgust thinking what a horrible person to say a thing like that, let me just say that I don’t really want Eric to be sick. It makes me sad to watch him feel sick (and I know he really feels lousy when he actually admitted being sick and even stayed home from work for a day!).
But I have found that even in the midst of something terrible like my husband being sick, life provides its simple pleasures! 
While Eric may be burning up because he’s feverish, it makes sitting next to him nice and cozy warm! And speaking of cozy, my husband gets nice and cuddly when he’s not feeling well. I love it! He becomes all sweet and sleepy. It’s very cute. (I can’t wait until Eric reads this! I’m sure he’ll love being called cute.)
So now that you all think I’m a terrible person, I’m going to go sit on the couch with my warm, teddy bear husband. hehe
I watched a couple of episodes of the tv show, The Office, last night for the first time. That is one hilarious show! I think what makes it so funny is that it may be over the top, but so many things about it are not that far from the truth. Every office, every work place has its cooky characters and strange clueless bosses. I may not have any coworkers who make a jello mold with my stapler in the middle (too funny!), but we do have our share of interesting personalities.
The Office is close enough to real life that you can relate to the humor, much the same way that Office Space, is. While I don’t believe that anyone at work is devising an elaborate scheme to rip off the company, I can totally relate to the guy playing his radio too loud and the ridiculousness of having so many meetings and writing TPS reports (or the equivalent!). If you liked Office Space, I would highly recommend The Office.