theresa, the umpire.

they're coming, they're coming!

tomorrow my house guests come to town. i could not be more excited. we've got all kinds of fun things planned, dinner tomorrow night, a baseball game & tailgate, pizza making party, then the reunion/camping up at sandy pond.. it's going to be an exciting next 9 days!

this weekend however i was able to steal away to new england.. and apparently so did the rest of the driving world. traffic was unbearable. i think i spent more time driving then i did visiting. :(


PMB's formal living room

it was great catching up with PMB and JK in their newmarket, NH home. it's absolutely gorgeous, i want to decorate my place just like PMB did hers. she's my hero.


father and baby

spending a night in sandwich, MA also afforded for some good times. i got to meet the new K-D addition. he is precious! very squirmy and has an extraordinarily strong neck for a 5 week old, but such a good baby, even if he does have blue poop.

rounding out the NE tour was a tour of another type. JBPs new house in centerville. they are JUST moved in, but the place looks great! i am so happy for them. they have a lawn that was made for entertaining, so i look forward to many good times on nottingham road in the future.

here are the pics i took....

new england whirlwind weekend.

i have today off!! wooo who! i feel like i haven't had a day off in a long time. :)

today i am driving to visit an old friend who lives near my favorite NH town, portsmouth. i have nothing but great memories of portsmouth.

tomorrow morning i drive down through boston and pick up miss NYC and we head down to the cape for a relaxing stay on lower hog pond, the new addition to the KD family will be there too!! i can't wait to see his cute little dimples in person.

sunday i'll get a preview of the new JBP compound.. i can't wait, from the pictures i've seen it looks like a dream house. :)

i'm sure this weekend will be chock full of old stories and many laughs. hopefully no vomiting.. :)

meanwhile back at the ranch, i've been furiously preparing for my houseguests next week. i was thinking how my house only really gets scrubbed when i have guests coming. :) thank god for guests.. i washed the off white rug in the living room for like the 4th or 5th time since i've moved in. cath had the brilliant idea to scotch guard it this time... so i am doing just that. i hate this rug, with fervor.

the cleaning/groc shopping will need to continue when i get back on sunday..

yesterday my gardener (cath) came by my house and planted all the plants i've been buying.. she tore out these bushes that the previous owners had in the front planters...

here is the left side before and after...


here is the right side before and after...


alright, i'm off to buy all the things i need to buy to bring with me at the grocery store.

skyping fun with LK

this is my skype alter ego.

some pics.

really barb grogan? are people really going to be able to contact you at www.barbgrogan@aol.com?! what kind of address is that? the people making your sign didn't point out to you that it was wrong as hell?

here are my pics from july so far. there are a bunch in the beginning that you might have seen already.

nice sunday.

today has been nice... i have been free forming it.. waking up when i wanted to, finished up my laundry, shopped real quick for a mortar and pestle. i also found that the "Price Stabber" on midler carries my ortega salsa verde. i bought up three jars.

i've been thinking about pizza since last week when cath ordered some and didn't bring me a piece... i am very tempted to order some myself.

the ESPYs are on right now..

i was really not prepared to write this post. so this is what you get blog readers. :)

busy busy girl

i am looking forward to not having anything much planned this weekend. i have some things i need to get done:

1. mow lawn. i am THAT neighbor, the one with the white trash lawn bringing down the property value of the street. i can't help it though, i found i HATE mowing the lawn. no wonder it's a boys chore...

2. laundry. i couldn't really do laundry last weekend for obvious reasons.

3. sleep in. this is also something that i didn't have time to do last weekend.

4. paint. i need to get my ass going on EBHs painting... shiiiiit.

5. draw. i started 3 drawings ages ago and on my wall they hang, waiting to be worked on.

6. walk patty. she loves it, and my foot feels better when i do it. but i rank walking the dog slightly higher than mowing my lawn. i have a bad attitude.

7. get last seasons Entourage. i never saw last season cause we got rid of HBO right before it came out last year. they are only 30 minute episodes, shouldn't be hard to bang out.

8. catch up my DVR. i have a handful of shows to watch, michael phelps was just on conan, did anyone watch? shiiiiit.

9. go to the middle eastern festival with mike. i have never been to this, but it looks very similar to the greek festival.. and i love that food.

i guess i do have more planned than i thought. this is my last "free" weekend for a while. i have a trip to MA and NH planned for the weekend of the 25th. then it's CO guests and family reunion time. a possible trip to NYC in early august, back to MA mid August, then before you know it it's fair time and some MA friends are coming out to visit. damn, summer is almost over!!

i heart technology

i just felt like declaring that. i think it's because i can't believe how easy it is to manipulate my new hosting account, and i am LOVING tweetdeck for my desktop. that program is really quite awesome, if any of you tweet and follow people with any regularity, this is a must have.

i also enjoy that some of the madmen characters are starting to follow me because i started following betty draper. :) i know its fake (or is it?) but i like it. i think i could probably follow just about every character on the show. hee hee.

another thing i really love is routing my brownshu.com mail through googles app. i never realized how much i would love their email sorting/labeling/archiving system. i was always skeptical of it, but now, it's the bees knees.

i also love the auto spell checker a'la word and their squiggly underlines in my blogger wysiwyg editor.. i wonder if it's a function of firefox or not... i don't recall having that in IE. speaking of which, firefox is infinitely more stable in vista than IE ever was. if you haven't made the switch yet. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? do you like your browser window to crash every session?

i see that LK beat me to the punch and launched her new blog before i did. maybe i'll have some time to spend on it this weekend. i've been concentrating really hard on setting up my new profile with google. still can't get my new calendar to work right in google desktop, nor are my subdomains working properly, but i am confident i will be able to get it to work at some point... but anyway, check out LKs new blog.. it's not password protected, so anyone can read it! yay!! www.smilingonfoot.com bookmark her.

let me tell you this flower story.. (Aunt C you are going to like this, it's about flowers.) cath always gushes about how much she likes to garden, and how she would "do it everyday!" so i offered her to do whatever she wants with my gardens in the front of my house, she agreed. we were supposed to go to her 2 favorite garden stores after work last week cause they were open till 7, but i had to come straight from work so we would have time to make it to both.. cath assured me that they BOTH close at 7. we didn't end up going last week, and planned to go sunday after the guests all left town. well, the casino called cath, and the raw sewage in my basement couldn't be ignored, so sunday turned into tonight, right after work! so i hightailed it to her house, as we are driving over to cazenovia (or chittenango i don't know which) at 540, she tells me, oh, bad news, debrouques closes at 3pm. WTF! well, at least we could still go to sorbellos. we pull in at about 545. what time do they close? 6!!! jesus!! cath assured me last week they were BOTH open till 7. SHE NEVER CALLED EITHER.. liar. needless to say we didn't get much, we didn't have time, nor the stomach to peruse the merchandise because the manure smell was so bad in the air you could taste it. i have certainly had my fill of shit smell for the year this week.

baby wipe free sewer pipes

so after last nights debacle, the city was supposed to come to my house between 8-10am. at 730, i hear patty barking her fool head off... they were early, and i was in bed. i jumped out of bed, threw some clothes on, limped my way to the door and was greeted by three men. one wanted to see the water standing in my basement. i led him downstairs to the dried up bit of TP and shit in my utility room... great... so i suggested we flush the toilet.. we see some water in the other room, in the hole, but it's not bubbling up like before.. so i run upstairs and flush that toilet.. it spurts up into the shower. one of the men takes a strange looking plunger and tried to plunge the hole in the utility room.. he says he can't get any suction because of the drain in the shower... they say the road looks clear to them, and i need to call a plumber. i tell him i called on yesterday and they told me to call him (the city) first.. then he asks who i called. i tell him the name of the first plumbing company that showed up for my zipcode with a website in google. he suggests another plumber even though he says he's not supposed to..

so i call his suggestion and and their motto is they will "drain your pipes, not your wallet".i leave him a message, it's 10 of 8. at 8:15 i get a call from this plumber, he can be here in an hour.

i shower and check my emails. he shows up promptly at 9:15. he is smoking and has a friend that pulls this contraption that looks sorta like a snowblower, or small lawnmower out of the van, plugs it into the van and it starts snaking down into the drain at the curb. he puts 10s and 20s of feet into it while the smoker checks out the basement and asks me to flush the upstairs toilet. i over hear the friend saying it took him 3 trys and i see him pull the snake out completely and there are white sheets of paper stuck to it.. baby wipes i later learn.

the smoker comes back into the house and gives me a bill for $135. i write him a check and watch him leave. it's 9:30.

as i am getting ready to leave the house i see that patty has thrown up in her cage over night.

i left it, i am a bad mother. i reached my bodily fluid clean up max for the day. maybe tomorrow. maybe i'll leave her cage unlocked tonight in case she can't take sleeping next to vomit for another night.

much worse than i thought. **update below**

ugh...

mike and i just snaked a bunch of drains with his 30' snake and didn't get much accomplished. in fact, we might have made it worse. it smelled like sewage in the basement this morning when i went down to get BreeD a yinyer-ale and i found out this afternoon it was because there was some standing sewage water on top of the drain in the utility room in the basement. mike and i snaked that drain and did get to a point where we couldn't push the snake through anymore, and were able to pull some raw sewage out on the end of the snake, but that didn't seem to make the problem go away. i am afraid to take a shower, but i need to because i got some backed up unpleasantries on my forearms, and hands and probably elsewhere.

i've emailed a plumber. i didn't want to call the emergency number and pay extra because it was a sunday evening.. hopefully they email or call me tonight.

:( this is crappy, pun intended.

**UPDATE**
i got an email back from a woman at the plumbing place (ironically named luann) and she suggested i contact the city and ask them to "power flush" the lines. if that doesn't solve the problem she said that they could come out..

woo who.. i hope there is no cost from the city. isn't that what taxes are for?

however... i have to wait for them to come between 8-10 tomorrow morning..

sunday sunday sunday **updated with pictures**

i like having visitors to my house, because it usually means i have most of the day sunday to myself. i get to see and visit, and still relax.. this is the life!

BreeD and MK came to visit for a wedding they were going to. we had a couple of really late nights. what was most thrilling to learn is that they are seriously considering moving to this area to buy a house. :) woo who! how great would that be?

i think there was a reason that breed and i were up talking so late in the night, because at 1am, a BOC kinda came up on woot.com.. getting the Bag Of Crap will depend on that the final number before the decimal is on the DOW monday at closing, and if it matches the final digit of your credit card number... say a prayer it's a 6. :)

having just two guests this weekend has been taxing on my delicate plumbing. :( mike is on his way over with a snake, and we are going to hit up Lowes for some "liquid" plumber hoping that takes care of the issue.. i really would rather not have to call a real life plumber. i can't imagine it would be cheap when it cost 2 bills just to change my locks.

speaking of paying for things, patty is having her yearly check up/shots on wednesday. cross your fingers that is under 100. :)

wednesday cath and i are also going to buy some plants for my front gardens and cath is going to redo them. i'm so excited. if possible, i'd love to buy one of those beautiful delicate japanese red maple trees for the corner.

i need to mow again too. :( i am not a fan of mowing.

the hunts came over friday and we ordered pizza.. i decided to do a little test and try some pizza. i had 2 pieces and suffered no ill effects. very encouraging.. i had 3 pieces of leftover pizza the next day for breakfast/lunch and was also not bothered. but i'm going to remain abstaining from wheat as best i can... i don't want to push it. i did discover though that guinness is wheat free. :) love.

friday when i had people over, it had to have been the hottest evening so far this summer. and i had no fans, and just the one air conditioner. i went and bought a couple fans saturday, and am going back today for another air conditioner. it was 20% off. shiiiiiiit.

i have some pictures that i've been taking to post.. i'll try to do that soon.

** UPDATE **

here are the long awaited pictures .

i'm such a slacker.

wow. i've been such a bad blogger.. i have been mighty distracted and busy, but that is no excuse..

this is what i have to report....

1. my new site, www.cnydigested.com is up and running... i've converted over all the restaurant review posts and comments.. i also set up a twitter feed for it.. so follow me! @cnydigested

2. i switched to firefox, i couldn't take IE crashing on me with vista any longer. however, facebook chat works infinitely better with IE...

3. the PA hunts came for a visit... and mowed my back lawn, it was great. we celebrated the nation's b-day with a barbecue. we made audrey practice her walking a lot.. she WILL be walking by the reunion.. (cross your fingers) i'll post pics later..


4. i finished watching all my downloaded backlog of tv shows. 13 episodes of MadMen (starts august 16th on AMC) i thoroughly love this show.. it was a little jarring to get used to at first with it being so chauvinistic, but it's also awesomely fascinating. it takes place in 1960-1963 so far.. cath tells me that the things i marvel at really did happen, and that is really what people wore... seriously, if you don't already watch it you have to check it out.

i also watched all of season 2, Flight of the Conchords. the buzz on the street was right, not as good as season 1. but i will surely watch season 3...

i also caught myself up on Weeds season 5. it's getting good...

next up... a bunch of episodes of eli stone, and season 5 of entourage. and maybe the dvd commentary of madmen season 2.

5. i had all my locks changed, and now they are all the same red sox key!! woot! it was long overdue, and it's sooo nice to have a key for doors i didn't have before, and it's nice that it's just one key, not 4, i don't feel like a janitor anymore.

6. more guests this weekend. this weekend is a wedding for BreeD, so she and MK are coming to town, and so are the rochester Hunts. this weekend is also the premiere of Bruno.. i'm so going.. even if i have to go by myself, but i think teags will like it.. i'll even buy her ticket..

7. i'll be switching this blog over to a new one soon... so stay tuned...

8. i need to plan a trip to the NYC... to see a yankees game, check out KTs new life, and visit with other NYCers.. anyone want to come with me? speaking of trips, i also need to plana getaway for thanksgiving... the family is scattering from here on out, so i am free to do what i want! and what a great time of year, i naturally have 2 days off that week from work.. so i can get a full vacation for half the vacation time. and since i can't eat my favorite food in the world, stuffing, and don't eat turkey, what good is t-giving anyways? who wants me to come visit them in november?

alright, that's a good place to stop, it's late..