Things I don’t understand

A list I had been compiling in my head of things I simply do not understand…

- Family Circus…how as that been around for so long? Does anyone read and enjoy it? WHY is it so unfunny???

- Toilet paper dispensers that only allow you to get one square of toilet paper at a time.

- Bars that don’t let you have a glass of tap water and force you to purchase bottled water for $2. $2 for water?! GASP! I’d rather drink from the bathroom faucet!!!

- Ranch dressing on pizza. BARF. Sacrilege, I say!

- Those who honk their horns during a traffic jam. What do they think that’s going to accomplish?

- Televised poker, although I guess people watch it. Matt likes it.

- How and why Rhode Island began calling milkshakes/frappes “cabinets”.

- Why sweet, unhealthy cereals like Trix, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Pebbles, etc can be considered breakfast.

- Stirrup pants!! I’m glad those aren’t in style anymore!

- Tough guys with MOM tattoos. They make me giggle.

- Bathtub Madonnas. They creep me out. And I’m half Italian!!!

- Soap on a rope…I enjoy it for novelty purposes, in fact I own a lovely Snoopy soap-on-a-rope, but do people really use it? If so, what do you do with the rope? Does it go around the shower head? Do you hang it around your neck?

- Large ice cream portions. I like Cabot’s, but even the smallest ice cream I can get is way more than I can eat. Nobody needs to eat that much ice cream. The worst part is that I’m so cheap that I feel obligated to eat the entire thing and I battle with some abdominal discomfort shortly thereafter.

- Our neighbors from when we lived in Watertown who left their Christmas lights up year-round but never turned them on around the holidays.

- Tootsie Rolls: what are they? Wikipedia says they are “are one of the best selling candies in America and throughout the world”…but I just can’t figure out what they are! They claim to be a “chocolatey chew”, but they don’t taste like actual chocolate to me…they taste like the artificial chocolate scent found in Bonne Bell Lip Smackers!

- Uncrustables!

- How Ernie Boch Junior could possibly have such an annoying commercial and still stay in business. (Ditto on Bernie and Phyl’s and Bob. )

- Fortune cookies that don’t give fortunes. “You love peace” or “You have a kind heart” are NOT fortunes, man!

- That creepy vacant FACES building on Rte. 2 in Cambridge…anyone know the story behind that? Why is it still there?

Electronics make me mad

Do you know how many cell phones I’ve gone through over the years? A LOT. And it’s starting to infuriate me. They make these things so disposable. After a few months they become totally obsolete. I got my current cell phone in August of last year, and it started having problems a few months ago. It is now kaput. Useless. Won’t even turn on.

As recent as 10-15 years ago, if an electronic item broke you fixed it…but the days of the television repairman are long gone, my friends! Now when your television breaks, you throw it out.

When my first cell phone’s battery went completely dead in 2001, I went to Radio Shack to go buy a replacement battery. They didn’t carry my battery, so I would have to order it through them for a whopping $75 and allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. $75? Are you kidding me? So, I just bought another cell phone. And since then, I’ve gone through way too many.

And now this weekend I get to go to the Sprint store again to buy yet another new cell phone. :-(

More fun commercials

As many of you know, I get a kick out of jingles and radio ads. They stick in my mind more than anything else. Now that I use Tivo I don’t see as many commercials but I still have this huge catalogue of past commercials stuck in my brain. I barely remember what I did last week, yet I can remember all sorts of random commercials.

I bet few people remember this one: “Crispy Critters, entirely new! A low sugar cereal with lots of ca-RUNCH! IT’S INDUBITABLY DELICIOUS!” (Their commercial worked, my parents bought us the cereal and it even came with a Little Golden Book featuring the little alien mascot guy.

Or the one that STILL gets stuck in my head until this day…Mattress Discounters! We even got our mattress there, even though it was totally overpriced. :-(

And of course there’s the diabetes commercial with that dude who pronounces it “dia-beet-is.”

The most recent one that stuck in my mind is Dental Relaxation which I recently heard on the radio. It reminds me of a meditation tape. “Imagine your body being encompassed by a glowing orb…it starts in your head…moves down through your chest and abdomen…travels down to your feet…it is now enveloping your entire body…”

With the peaceful piano music and a serene voice, I am told that if I’m scared of the dentist I can have a “new dental experience” by taking a sedative prior to my dentist appointment. Has anyone else heard that one?

The Garden City Blog

In the spirit of h2otown, Newton now has a blog entitled The Garden City: A Newton Community Blog! I collaborated with Chuck of TanoBlog and Media Metamorphosis to get the blog started.

Newton’s a decent sized city with a lot going on, but it’s hard to find one central place to keep track of it all. My hope is that this blog will serve that purpose. So, if you’re a fellow Newton resident, please check it out so you can participate and contribute! :-)

Another glorious trip to Russo’s

I always leave Russo’s with a feeling of mild to moderate euphoria.

Today I left Russo’s with:

2 large, plump tomatoes
3 different kinds of delicious peppers (including two habeneros which I plan to use for chilli this week!)
4 bananas
2 pears
2 apples
a large container of seedless purple grapes
hard rolls
fresh premade seafood salad (to put on the rolls as a sandwich)
2 large and fresh cookies (to undo all the working out I planned to do later)
delicious tea that I generally can’t find anywhere outside of Asian markets

This came to $20. Getting that stuff at any other supermarket would have been way more than that and the quality would have been much lower. (The apples and pears I got were a DOLLAR CHEAPER per pound than I saw them at Shaw’s. And the ones at Shaw’s did not look so hot!)

Yes, I’d say this was a satisfactory trip!

Looking for something to do on Saturday night?

I’ve been bad at plugging Matt’s gigs lately…but Custom Deluxe is playing at The SkyBar in Somerville on Saturday night. Matt plays bass in Custom Deluxe and it’s an instrumental rock band with a jazzy-bluesy twist! They’re not going on until (gasp!) 11:30, which is wayyy past MY bedtime, but hey, it’s SATURDAY and a HOLIDAY WEEKEND!

So come on out!

Fun at Drumlin Farm!

We went to Drumlin Farm on Saturday! Here are some pictures:

A rooster and hen. They just recently got together after the rooster lost his old hen, and they’re just starting to get along.

This goat was super duper preggo. She was in a separate pen and she was HUGE. I didn’t take a picture of her whole body, though, because her udder was freaking me out.

Happy as a pig in mud!

Piglets!!

These are the goats. They were frolicking around and playing. It was so cute.

More goats, enjoying the beautiful day.

I took more pictures I couldn’t get any good ones of the sheep. There was a really pretty fox there, too, but it was shy and ran away before I could snap a photo. There were also rescued owls there which I couldn’t get decent photos of.

But I like the goats. :-)

Somewhere over the rainbow

Anybody catch the rainbow this evening? I’m glad people caught photos of it. During the thunderstorm, I was feeling very distraught about Cleo but then when the rainbow came it made me feel like everything was going to be okay. :-) I had never seen a rainbow like that…the way it stretched across the sky was incredible.

Rest in peace, Cleo

Cleo passed away today at the age of 14.

She was a good cat. She was a little psychotic and moody, but the most affectionate cat I’ve ever known. Whenever I was sick or sad, I think she sensed it because she’d climb up on my chest purring at top volume. I haven’t lived in the same house as her for years, but whenever I’d visit my parents I always looked forward to a cuddling session with little Cleo. I loved her. She really was a good girl and I’ll miss her forever. Needless to say, I’m very sad.

Rest in peace, Cleo. I like to think of you at Rainbow’s Bridge wrestling with Choo-choo and being as happy as can be.

But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years

Christine’s post ” Top 10 signs I’ve become, you know, mature and responsible” really resonated with me today.

I’m 24, but in the past 3 years I went from living la vida single life in my studio apartment with bright red hair and 10 piercings to being in a serious relationship, owning our own home, and being a college graduate with a stable job. I too complain about gas prices and the weather, and worry about my flowers after too much rain.

The reason her post struck a chord with me today was because last night I said good-bye to something that had been a part of my life for many years. After six years of having my navel pierced, I just took my ring out and am letting it close up.

It was fun while it lasted, but it was simply time to remove it. It was cute when I was 18 but it ain’t so cute when your metabolism slows down! It just made me feel silly after a while. It was also very prone to infection and was uncomfortable when it rubbed against clothes.

Between that and my eyebrow ring which came out almost 3 years ago, I’m really starting to lose some of the pieces of my teenage “rebellion”. I feel like by taking my belly button ring is closing a chapter in my life.

I remember when I got it. I was 18 and it hurt really badly. Way worse than my nose. And it bled. I hid it from my parents for about a week, then proudly showed it to my parents. Grimaces and cringes ensued, particularly from my dad. Actually, I think his facial expression made the pain and blood completely worthwhile for me at the time.

I am left with a little bump which will be an everlasting scar above my navel where the ring used to go through. Heal up nicely, little belly piercing. You were cute for the first few years, but the time has come. Good bye!