mandysee_mandydo

It's been a few days, but I'm back to post. Yay!

This past weekend was good, if not a bit awkward. Mostly because we went down to Nashua to help

quantumswordsn and

chenoachem pack for their move to New Mexico and forgot our clean clothes and shower stuffs at home. And didn't realize until we were in Nashua. Oops!

So anyhow, we got a lot of packing done in one day. Like the bulk of it. It was

quantumswordsn,

chenoachem,

quantumswordsn's mom, myself, Kathy and earlier in the day

chenoachem's Mom and her husband as well as

chenoachem's dad and his wife were all down and helped a bit while visiting. I got to pack the game closet. Weeeeeeeeee! As usual, you can't trust Kathy to work without distraction. She found things to play with while packing so we had to keep reminding her we were working, not playing. *sigh*

They ended up giving us a few things, like a copy of NIN's The Downward Spiral on tape (believe it or not I still didn't have a copy of that), a huge length of retired kernmantle rope, 512MB of 168-pin DIMM RAM, a basket, a box fan and a camping grill for use over an open fire.

We had a day of ecclectic eating since meals were on them in an effort to get rid of everything they had in their freezer. We had Atlantic cod, some rice with asparagus in cream sauce (it had some fancy name that I think was Asian), onion pierogies, steamed broccoli and carrots, crab cakes and pork chops stuffed with apple stuffing. Mmmmmm!

I got very sweatty from all the work. I was drenched. I used some of their laundry detergent and hand-washed my shirt so I would have something clean to wear in the morning. A shower was right out because all the towels were packed. Bummer.

The next morning we had breakfast with

quantumswordsn and

chenoachem before heading over to visit my family briefly and pick up even more stuff. My dad was already gone to play softball as usual on Sundays. I got to see my mom and grandmother, as well as my nephew Louis and my niece Adrianna. Adrianna is so tiny! Louis was having a grumpy day but still he managed to find a smile or two. I picked up the console stereo, complete with phonograph that will play my old 78s, and loaded it into my little Sidekick (much to the amazement of my mother). My dad also gave me his entire vinyl collection because it's been sitting in storage and he never listens to them anymore. Thank you, dad! My dad had an incredible collection that included some Pink Floyd, The Who's Tommy (the very copy I wore out as a kid), just about every Grateful Dead album, every Moody Blues album up until the 80s, a bunch of Rolling Stones and some other real gems.

The trip home was nice, although we took the interstate this time since I had to get home to do some work. EZPass is really confusing some people. They wanted to use the EZPass lane thinking it was still an exact change lane, but realized at the last moment it wasn't and had to fight the traffic to get back into an exact change lane. I'm still not sure how I feel about EZPass. I can see the convenience, but they're getiing rid of tokens, which means it's one more obstacle in the way of those with little money who want to get out and go somewhere with what little they've managed to save up. Yeah, I know it's only a toll so pay the full 75 cents and stop whining, but still: every little bit helps. Besides, I'm still very much a proponent of a cash economy.

Kathy and I decided that even though we realyy couldn't afford too much splurging, we'd go see a movie. We had cashed out most of the coin in our large change bottle so it wasn't money coming out of the budget per se. We went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was great! Once again, the trio of Tim Burton, Danny Elfman and Johnny Depp packs a powerful punch of surreality. And Depp plays a very creepy Wonka. I'm going to have to watch the original film first before I weigh in with any certainty, but I think I like this newer version even better. Which feels odd since I was such a fan of the original with Gene Wilder. I say go see it. You'll have a great time and plenty of laughs and creepy moments!

Work is busy this week. I have a bunch of events to tape for the channel, training a volunteer on post-production using our new equipment, starting design on the Town of Plymouth's new site, doing more work on online tutorials for our biggest client at PDG and the usual dryer maintenance at Pemi Vally Laundry.

As usual, I'm playing a bunch of Crimson Moon. Our clan is growing even stronger and we've declared war on a few clans now that we're getting settled. I just loaded up our clan armory with some custom weapons now that Kathy and I are both VIPs. We're having a bunch of fun, especially in our clan forum and chat. We're quite fortunate to have an active and social clan!

This coming weekend Kathy's brother is coming up for a visit. The place is still a bit of a wreck considering we never really finished the rearranging and such. Guess we have the motivation to get it done now! It's really just the living room and kitchen that are a mess right now, so it shouldn't take long. I should probably get working on that now. Bye!