April 25, 2010

Spring is finally officially started as we have now had our first lobster rolls (several weeks ago if you are following our blog), first clam strip dinner, and our first Dairy Queen Blizzards (caramel brownie for me and Oreo cookie jar for Jo).  We accomplished the last two last night for dinner.  Not the most healthy of dinner fare, but very satisfying for the soul - which is really the whole point of dinner anyway.  We went to Fred's Shanty for our clams which is our favorite place for fried clams and they did not disappoint.  It was a lovely evening and sitting watching the swans swim by on the Thames river was a great way to relax.  The reason we felt that we could have the caloric binge is that we spent the day working in the yard.  It was a day of hacking away at our pile of mulch, which required carting wheelbarrow loads up two hills to the garden, along with doing some planting to try and get our landscaping to look like an English garden (still a work in progress with the odds of achieving it low).  As a result we were outside and moving all day long and felt that deep fried food and an ice cream Blizzard would bring our energy levels back in balance. 

For the rest of the week, nothing all that exciting although, I finally found out who will be my new boss.   It is a person I never have met before so there will be the thrill of learning how to work with someone new.  He comes from the Wyeth organization, that Pfizer just acquired and unfortunately was on vacation all week, so he still remains a mystery.  But at least I now have a boss with a name.  Jo was in town for most of the week after returning from New York on Monday night.  She was pretty tired and spent the rest of the week recuperating from her week on the road.  Weather was pleasant so we got in some nice runs during the week.  My shoulder continues to recuperate and I've been able to return to my usual lifting schedule although I'm still building back the strength in my shoulder.  Still a few pains now and then most of which seem, unfortunately, to occur while I'm trying to sleep.  Friday night was pizza and a movie (well really pizza and taped TV shows from the week).  And today looks to be an inside day as it is rainy.  Although, that means a good book and a good nap which seems like a perfect way to spend a day.

Didn't get any new photos this week, so using pictures of us in the M&M store in NY from last weekend.  Ever notice the theme on being around food that is good for the soul but not the waist.

April 18, 2010

Jo was in New York all week - more on that later - while I was in town still awaiting to hear about my new boss.  In the meantime, I managed to do some more garden planting and began to move that massive pile of mulch up the hill.  Given the size and the limited amount I can actually get moved up in one load, the mulch pile will be there for some time.  Fortunately, given the Icelandic volcano, Jo was in New York and not over in Europe.

We spent the weekend in New York, taking advantage of Joann having to be there all this week and into the coming week.  But also, my college room mate came in from Chicago to visit along with his two eldest daughters (That's John with his daughter Katie and Jo with Alyssa - this is a return engagement for Alyssa to our blog, check her out from last year postings).  We spent a fun filled, but exhausting weekend trying to see as many things as possible.  We met up Friday night for pizza at John's and then walked around Times Square enjoying the crowds and the lights.  We did manage to do a wee bit of shopping in the M&M and Hershey stores (keep that thought in mind as it really is the theme for our weekend) as we meandered.  As we headed up Broadway we found the theater for "Promises, Promises" which we decided would be our show for the weekend assuming tickets could be had Saturday morning.  Fortunately, right next to the theater was a cupcake shop that provided a nice cap to our some what wet Friday night.  As each cupcake comes in around 400 calories, these are not your mother's cupcakes (starting to see the theme here?).  After quenching our hunger we made our plans for Saturday and headed off for some rest.

Saturday dawned drier but cloudy and cool.  Jo and I headed out for our morning run followed by a bagel and orange juice for breakfast.  You have just got to love New York bagels with cream cheese (although Jo always opts for butter due to a college problem with cream cheese).  Then it was off to meet up with John, Katie, and Alyssa at the theater were we actually managed to score some great seats.  Next up with a visit to the "Intrepid", a WWII era aircraft carrier that now acts as a floating museum.  As you can imagine, I could have spent the day walking every inch of the ship and going over the aircraft displays.  But I needed to temper that some to meet everyone's elses needs.  Everyone did find it interesting even if it was pretty chilly and windy up on the flight deck.  After touring a submarine also on display we went to grab some lunch before walking through Central Park.  We took advantage of the Carousel which was our bargain for the day and was a lot of fun riding - although it might have been that we were all pretty tired from walking and sitting on a bobbing horse was just great for the feet.  Heading from Central Park we took in St Patrick's Cathedral and Rockefeller Center along with picking up a few items at the NBC store nearby.

By this time we needed to find dinner before our show.  After a few unsuccessful tries as many places needed reservations we found a lovely Mexican restaurant which fit the bill.  Warm, had room for 5, allowed us all to sit and rest, and was pretty fast.  A great dinner then on to the show.  As it was a Neil Simon comedy there was no way it wouldn't work, but having Sean Hayes and Kristen Chenoweth made it great.  Sean Hayes was hilarious and very much like his role in "Will and Grace" and Kristen Chenoweth can really belt out the songs.  Very enjoyable show and we were glad to have gotten the tickets.  After the show, we were beat so we trudged back to the room and promptly crashed.  For those keeping track we estimated that we walked somewhere around 7-8 miles, couple that with a 3 mile run in the morning and we put some miles on the old feet.

The sun finally was shining Sunday morning but the walking from the day before allowed us to skip running without feeling guilty.  We met up with everyone for brunch then went to the top of the Empire State building where the views were phenomenal - and the lines amazingly were non-existant.  You could see for 40-50 miles (my estimate and I'm a terrible judge of distance).  It was fun trying to pick out all the different landmarks from up high and imagining you're Cary Grant in "An Affair to Remember" (or "Sleepless in Seattle" for those to young to know).  We finished the day with catching up on some shopping and sights we didn't have enough time the day before.  This, of course, included another stop for more designer cupcakes (although we did manage to share 3 among the 5 of us) and a crepe at a street fair that we ran into (again we shared - but we wanted to keep that sugar high going).  But after all that it was time for me to hop back on the train for home, John and family to head for the airport, and Joann to go back to her hotel room for a nap.  It was a wonderful weekend to get caught up with all the happenings in the John's family and see some of the sites in New York.  Although, I dare say, we will all need some extra sleep and rest to get caught up from our weekend.

April 12, 2010

I'm a little late this week since we had a very busy weekend and there just wasn't a good chance - or the energy - to post yesterday.  The region has started to dry out after the rains although it will be some time before everyone has returned their house back to normal.  We have a couple of bridges still out of commission due to either damage or the inability to tell how damaged the bridge might be.  Hopefully, we won't see another rain like that for some time.  The week in terms of work was pretty standard.  Jo traveled to NY for a day and I'm still without a boss.  The weather on the other hand has started to show why spring is such a lovely time of year.  Temperatures are routinely getting into the 60's during the day although night can still be chilly.  This warmer weather caused our magnolia to put on its annual spring flower show.  We took advantage of the weather by spending almost the entire day outside on Saturday and Sunday. 

Our big event for the weekend, as previously announced, was we rented a chipper help clear dead branches out of the forest as well as make mulch for our garden and path.  That was our major chore on Saturday and involves lugging heavy branches out of the woods and to the chipper.  The chipping part is fun especially as you watch it eat a 10 foot long tree - but that goes relatively fast compared to the lugging portion of chipping.  So that you can get the full enjoyment of our weekend, the before, during, and after photos are included.  As you can see from the last photo we managed to chip ourselves about 10 yards of chips in 2 days. That represents a whole lot of branches from the yard since any one branch really doesn't produce a significant amount of chips.  Needless to say this left both of us very tired and very sore.  We didn't move too much Saturday of Sunday evening and were quite glad each day when the sun started to go down.  One upside, since we knew we would be exhausted on Saturday we headed out to dinner to pick up our first lobster rolls of the season (at Captain Scott's).  They were as delicious as ever and you just can't go wrong with melted butter over lobster meat on a bun.  Couple that with an order of onion rings and while your heart is crying for help, the rest of your body is saying ahhhhh that was great.

We also managed to squeeze in getting our vegetable garden underway for the year.  We planted our peas (that's Jo in the process of planning out how many rows and which varieties), onions, potatoes, and lettuce.  Now all we need is the right amount of sun and some periodic rain and we'll be eating fresh veggies.  Notice that hope springs eternal every new year that this will be the year that our garden actually thrives.  I'm getting some idea how farmers must survive - endless optimism.  We finished Sunday by getting the grill out of storage along with the flower pots for the front steps.  We savored some brats, grilled potatoes and onions, and green beans from last year's harvest.  All in all a great weekend, but we will both be sore for days.  Sure was a lot easier doing all these things when I was in my 30's.

Jo is spending the week in NY as she has both a conference to attend along with her usual mix of business meetings.  While, wait for it, yes you guessed it, I stay here in CT waiting for my new job to start.

I should mention, that 10 yards of chips now has to get moved, 1 wheelbarrow worth at a time, up the hill to the garden.  The fun just never stops.

April 4, 2010

As anyone who posts items and lives in the Northeast the topic this week has to be the rain.  The area received a torrential downpour most of the day Monday and all day Tuesday.  It started raining and just would not ever let up or even slacken.  I was on the web downloading building plans for arks but unfortunately most of those looked to take more than 40 days to build - especially with my wordworking skills.  All told, we recieved somewhere around 8-9 inches of rain over the two days.  This was on top of 8 other inches of rain we had in March.  While March and April are normally wetter months, that was more like 3-4 months of rain.  There was extensive flooding across the area with several bridges severely damaged and roads washed out.  Work and schools were closed early due to the problem getting around on the roads.  For us, we had a waterfall coming over our backyard stonewall which was at least lovely to look at and listen to as you tried to figure out what to do if it starts coming into the house.  The water coming down off the hill did manage to wipe out much of our pathway up to the garden but as this was the only real damage besides some washed out dirt at the base of the wall we counted ourselves lucky.  Fortunately when it came to the house, we only had a small amount of water come in around the bulkhead door (that's the door leading from the basement to the outside for those without basements) into the basement; about the equivalent of a gallon of water total.  It was easily dried out and didn't damage anything.  Unfortunately, many of our friends and co-workers were dealing with inches or feet of water - see Bruno and Sheri's blog.

On to brighter topics, the sun did finally emerge later in the week and we have had some lovely spring weather to help dry out a little.  I spent the last few days in the back yard cleaning up and repairing the damage from the rains.  Also removed a few dead trees especially as next weekend is "chipper weekend".  That is our annual rent a chipper and clean up all the dead fallen limbs - always a fun but exhausting weekend, but more on that in a week.  Friday night we went up to Hartford with our friends Laura and Mike to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra perform.  For those in the know, you should be surprised because usually TSO only puts on a winter concert.  They have a new show based on their CD, Beethoven's Last Night - check out the tour dates at the link.  I would highly recommend the show as it is has their usual mix of great music, singing, and tremendous energy from the performers.  Saturday evening's cultural event started with dinner at Bruna's in Westerly with Sheri and Bruno (yes, those of the aforementioned blog) and then the start of the Granite Theater's season.  First up this year was "On Golden Pond" which was well performed if the crowd was bit sparse (Westerly was particularly hard hit with the rain with the main bridge and several of the alternate routes into town closed off due to the flooding.  Which presumably led to the fairly empty theater and restaurant).  As often happens, it makes you want to go out and rent the movie now to see how Henry Fonda and cast handled the roles. 

Today well be a little more work in the yard along with catching up on some reading and napping (those two often go together).  Then off to another week of work - for those keeping tally, I still don't have a boss or group named, and Jo did her usual mix of travel (to NY last week) and meetings in town.  Nothing too special planned for the coming week although I do have a follow-up visit with the doctor were I'm hoping I get a clean bill of health to begin regular duties with my shoulder.

Have a happy Easter and don't forget to find all the eggs.