Archive for the ‘The Hubby’ Category
And It Begins Again
Saturday, August 25th, 2012
It’s that time of year again – back to school. The Boy is firmly ensconced in the dorm, with only one item he “forgot” to bring (a rug, which is really pretty good considering he could have forgotten his pillows and blankets – AGAIN). He got to move in early as he is a Facilitator. Basically, he helps out the freshman class get around campus and learn about the school.
His dorm is in the middle of campus this year, so he’s right in the thick of things. There’s no parking lot in front of his building, but other than that, it is a much nicer setup compared with last year. He’s got a room to himself, with two other guys next door, and a shared bathroom with three other guys on the other side of him. He and some friends signed up together, so he’s pretty happy with the arrangement. His GF is one floor below him, so it makes hanging out with her easy.
And I am proud to note that I hardly cried. I teared up a bit when he hugged me goodbye and then The Hubby had me crying as we drove away. He’s awesome that way.
I hope your back to school experiences go well this year, whether it’s a first timer going off to kindergarten or a seasoned middle schooler ready to rule the school.
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Time
Monday, July 30th, 2012
The Hubby and I watched a movie last night (no, that’s not a major news flash!). We had thought about seeing it when it came out, but like so many movies, we decided for it to come out on cable instead of plunking out the cash. The title of this cinematic endeavor? In Time. Starring Justin Timberlake.
Now, say what you want about his singing (I’m sure I like some of his stuff, but I’m not a Timberlake fanatic), but he’s pretty interesting to watch on-screen. I do have to say my most favorite place to watch him is Saturday Night Live. He and Jimmy Fallon do a great Bee Gees skit (it has me laughing even as I think about it, much less watch it. Note to self – find on YouTube and watch today during one of my “breaks.”).
But this was a pretty good movie. The basic premise is that we are engineered to live until age 26. At age 25, your counter lights up, notifying you of every second you have left to live. Time becomes the method of exchange. No one wants to work for money; they work for more time. And, as you can guess, the rich get richer and the poor, well, they get dead.
I don’t want to give too much away – after all, you are going to run out and watch it now that I’ve given it such a glowing review, right? But it brings up some interesting points. Justin Timberlake’s character has almost always been so broke that he’s only had one day to live, but somehow he’s lived three years on that one day, finding ways to make ends meet and getting just a little more time to live. When he is asked: “What have we got?” he says: “A day. You can do a lot in a day.” And the girl he meets is rich but unhappy: “Do I really want to spend my life trying not to die by mistake?”
And how weird it would be to see how much time you had left, down to the second. I’m almost sure I don’t want to know that much about my death – I think I’d be thinking about it so much I would pay attention to what’s in front of me. I have enough distractions already without having the biggest one of all staring me in the face.
It reminds me of the other movie about time we watched sometime in the last six months or so, Timer. When implanted in a person’s wrist, a TiMER counts down to the day the wearer finds true love. But Oona O’Leary faces the rare dilemma of a blank TiMER. Her soul mate – whoever and wherever he is – has yet to have a TiMER implanted. Staring down the barrel of thirty and tired of waiting for her would-be life partner to get off the dime, Oona breaks her own rules and falls for Mikey, a charming and inappropriately young supermarket clerk with a countdown of four months. (stolen borrowed from imdb.com) This was a pretty good movie, too.
Now, it’s time for me to get motivated. I have a book to finish and send on its way to the author, and two more on my plate for this week. Although I just realized the dental cleaning I thought was today is really for next week (yay!), so I’ve got that going for me!
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Nothing to See Here, Move Along
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
I’ve been pondering what to write here lately – it seems like I’ve been working and working and working (not that I’m complaining – I love what I do!) and nothing interesting has been happening.
I guess the highlight of the month would be The Boy’s birthday. My baby -sniff, sniff- turned 19 this month. I was totally fine on his actual birthday – no tears, no melancholy, no going through his baby book. He had a party a week after his birthday (just, you know, 50 or so of his closest friends) and that was the night I kind of lost it. I went to bed around 11, looked at The Hubby, and burst into tears. Being his wonderful self, The Hubby laughed and asked what was wrong. I said, “Nothing. Our baby is 19 now.” His response: “Yeah, but he’s been 19 for a week now. Get over it.” And I did.
See, not very exciting, huh?
Although, tomorrow may be interesting. The Hubby is going to court to fit a speeding ticket. I’m going with him to see the exciting proceedings. {insert dramatic soap opera music and voice over} Who knows what will happen? Will the court dismiss the charges? Will the cop show up? Will there be arguments and counter-arguments? Will I throw up in the excitement? Stay tuned for our next episode of…At Home With Faith…
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I Ran Away
Monday, July 9th, 2012
On July 4th, I ran away to Canada. So did The Hubby. Aren’t we patriotic?
The Hubby needed to do some “shopping” in some of his potential customers’ locations in Canada before he made some presentations in a few weeks. The only time he could fit it into his schedule was the week of the 4th. Well, actually it was the week of the 1st, but the holiday on Wednesday threw everybody off and I am sure everyone was calling it the week of the 4th. So we ran away from our country on its birthday. Bad, bad citizens!
Anyhow…this was the first time The Hubby and I have been in Canada at the same time…together, even. It was the second time I have visited our wonderful northern neighbors. The first time was with my father, The Boy, and my niece and nephew. But that’s a story for another day. Today’s story is about me and The Hubby’s visit to Canada. We drove to Montreal on the 4th, by way of Vermont. We took the hour ferry drive from Vermont to New York. We walked around Burlington for a bit before we left and guess what we saw? You’ll never guess (unless you have lived in Burlington or wandered around the ferry area in Burlington).
Aghh! Flying Monkeys!
So then we hopped on the ferry (well, actually, The Hubby drove the car onto the ferry and we generally behaved while we looked at the water) and made our way to New York. We finally got to Montreal around 6 or so. We stayed at the Marriott – very nice hotel, but the pool closes too early! – and walked up to Catherine Street area and found an outdoor restaurant for dinner. We finished and walked back to the hotel by 9:30 – just in time for the pool to close.
We left the hotel on the 5th. While we were waiting for the valet to bring the car around (doesn’t that sound wonderful – “Giles, bring the car around, there’s a good fellow!”) the doorman – Ronny – charmed us. He has worked at that hotel for 40 years. 4-0-YEARS. He must make a lot in tips, because he knew how to chat up guests and make the ladies feel good, in a nice old-gentlemanly way. After the car finally showed up and Ronny told us how to get to Ottawa, we made some stops at the stores The Hubby wanted to check out.
I found a thumb latch that I have been looking all over for. $10 Canadian. $50 USD on websites I’d actually been lucky enough to find them on. No way was I going to spend $50 on a door handle, so I am glad I waited for our trip. Also picked up some mats to go under the grills (yes, there is more than one grill on this new, expanded deck now!) that we couldn’t find at our own Home Depot, but were plentiful at the Canadian Home Depot.
We made our way to Ottawa and got a bit turned around trying to find the hotel. We stayed at – wait for it – the Marriott (sense a pattern here?). After The Hubby checked in, he inquired about the concierge level hours. For those not in the know, the concierge lounge is a perk for Platinum Marriott patrons. They have light breakfasts, snacks, and dinner appetizers throughout the day, as well as internet and concierge services. But there was a problem. Remember how it was the week of the 4th of July? Well, apparently we were NOT the only Americans who decided to ditch our homeland celebrations. The Ottawa Marriott decided to CLOSE the concierge lounge that week because there were “too many American tourists” in the hotel.
Now, this did not sit well with The Hubby. Not any Joe Shmoe can access the concierge lounge. In fact, they have to code your key in order to open the doors of the lounge. And you have to be in that elite group that gets that code in the first place. So why close the lounge when they can control who gets in there in the first place?
So he pitched a fit. He called corporate Marriott to complain. We ended up with vouchers for a free breakfast in the restaurant AND a personal card from the hotel supervisor on duty for “appetizers and drinks” or “dinner” in the hotel bar/restaurant. After The Hubby calmed down and we did some more shopping at stores, we went back to the hotel to decide on dinner and the night’s activities. After much internal debate, we went to the bar and ordered some drinks and two appetizers. It was the perfect amount of food. The bar guy – Keiren – was told to give us “anything we wanted.” I guess it pays to bitch sometimes.
So – guess what street we saw in our travels?
And some cool horse sculptures:
We left the next morning to return to our beloved homeland.
We ended up taking rural routes home from Ottawa, which was pretty cool. We went through Amish Country – which I was not aware there was Amish Country that far north. We had breakfast at the Silver Leaf Cafe. It was the BEST French toast I have ever had. I highly recommend it…so hop on over there and have some. They also had little kick-knacks for sale. As The Hubby picked our table, he gets credit for getting me within sight of these:
Yes, 10 wonderful tourist souvenir spoons for $5. There’s one from Hong Kong; Wellington, NZ; Luxemburg; and even one from Kentucky (which I don’t think I had yet). Super cool, huh?
Anyway, that was our Canadian adventure. I was a little disappointed they didn’t stamp our passports, but at least we had them with us in case they did want to stamp them!
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Updates and Changes
Friday, June 22nd, 2012
Hello all! Just wanted to check in – you know, my typical post for every 3 or 4 (or 6 or 7) months.
I just spent an hour changing the permissions on my posts to turn off comments. I know this will make you all sad (especially the people/spambots that are so excited to share a way to monetize my blog or push their porn or sell their illegal/knockoff products), but I was getting tired of getting comments on the same four or five posts. The clear winner was Out of Gas – I’d get three or four spam comments on that one EACH.DAY. So now, I have turned off commenting and am hoping that will cut down on the email notifications that keep clogging my system.
In reviewing some of my old posts, I found the one where I talked about the sucky end of 2011 and finding out about my aunt’s cancer. She passed away on June 20, 2012. She was lucky enough to be with her husband and her two sisters. Her brother – that would be my father – was able to visit on the Monday before she started on a morphine drip. I was able to be with my parents for that visit, as my father was under doctor’s orders not to drive until the 20th.
And the reason he was under doctor’s orders not to drive was because he was recovering from surgery – prostate cancer surgery. The week he had surgery, my aunt went to the hospital with an infection. Everyone was thinking in the back of their heads that it was possible they would not be able to see each other before something happened to my aunt. But, he was out of the hospital before she left the hospital for a nursing home. I actually drove him from his hospital to her hospital the day he was released.
On a more positive note, The Hubby is working with his friend to expand our back deck. It’s almost done – we’ll have an EXTRA 150 square feet of space. And they are fixing the stairs to be wider and more sturdy. The Boy is home for the summer and has a paying internship. He broke up with the New Girlfriend and has a New/New Girlfriend. (Gee, how long can I call them that? I’m going to have to think of something else to start calling them!)
And I have been very fortunate with my freelance proofreading/copy editing business. I’ve been busy just about each week, working with some great authors on some very cool books.
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Last Day, First Day
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
So today is the last day of 2011 and tomorrow will be the first day of 2012.
We have our traditions, The Hubby and I. And one of them is to spend the last day of the year and the first day of the year watching the Twilight Zone marathon (what, did you think I was going to say we did something mystical?). The first episode this morning was one of those make-a-deal-with-the-devil-and-live-to-regret-it ones. I’m not really sure I’d seen this one, or if I have, I haven’t seen it very often. Episodes like that could make one all philosophical, starting to ponder the mysteries of life, the gifts of love and sacrifice, and what is really important in the world. Or, it just could be a solid thirty minutes of entertainment. The beauty is – you get to choose.
We recently saw The Adjustment Bureau on cable. I’d wanted to see it at the movies, but never got around to it. It’s a pretty good movie, but again it can lead to some philosophical introspection … or just a hour and half or so of solid entertainment. But part of the argument in the movie is that while we have free will to choose our breakfast cereal, we (as a species) don’t deserve or take our free will (and the consequences thereof) seriously enough, so the Adjustment Bureau is there to keep us “on the right path.” You start thinking about fate, destiny, chance and just what the hell does it all mean.
Deep thoughts, people, deep thoughts.
Then again, it could just be entertainment….
Happy New Year’s to all of my dedicated readers….wherever you are (and I guess you haven’t become dedicated readers yet, so this one is for you to find years from now).
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Holiday Half Time
Thursday, December 29th, 2011