More Soon

Well, I've had a pleasant couple of days. Patrick and I went camping this weekend (more later). I finally made it to my Stitch-n-Bitch on Monday night. With all of the WAM stuff and then family stuff, it had been at least a month. I missed my girls!

Patrick and I are going to turn up the heat on these home improvement projects. With the cold weather coming, there isn't much time left to do our outdoor must-dos. It will feel good to finish all of these half-done projects, like the bathroom walls or installing lattice to cover the crawlspace under the house.

Speaking of cold weather--how about those holiday gift crafts? I have pipe dreams of knitting and sewing all kinds of gifts. It doesn't help that the blogs I read regularly are written by people with an inhuman ability to churn out amazing projects at breakneck speed! How about you? Any gift-making in the works?

Old Lady?!? Old Lady.

Everyone has a moment when they feel old, right? My first came when I turned 27 and realized that I was no longer eligible to be on The Real World. Not that I ever wanted to be on it, but I always loved watching it. Once that birthday came around, though, watching it was never the same. They were just kids, using every opportunity to grope each other and fight about who disrespected whom (without any real sense of what respect is in the first place).

Now I'm 30. I'm good with that. I had a big party, we rented a dunk tank.

My ongoing project is to have my 12-year-old sister watch all of the movies my brothers and I loved while growing up. I made her her own queue in Netflix, and so far we've watched Walk Like a Man, Vice Versa, The Wizard, and as of last night, Gremlins.

In the opening scene of Gremlins, the camera pans slowly down Main Street of the town. Here's the bank, a shop, Burger King, the florist... My sis turns to me--wide-eyed--and with a hint of skepticism in her voice says, "You guys had Burger King back then!?!" Hence, the name of this post.

Actually, this has been the funnest part of the whole project. I have to interpret the 80s for her, or she won't get the jokes.

Like with Gremlins: the guy in the movie drives a beat up VW Bug. Nowadays the Bug is kind of cool again. But I had to tell her that back then the Bug was definitely not cool, and that the character, therefore, is not cool.

Or in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead: One of the boys steals some money and purchases a state-of-the-art entertainment center. All of the characters gape at it in amazement. When the camera turns to the center, though, it is laughable. There are about 15 components to the stereo, and the TV is about 25 inches. I had to tell her that back then that was a giant TV (I think the one in her bedroom is about 25 inches!), and the stereo was awesome. Nowadays, with flat-screens that literally take up an entire wall, the scene didn't make much of an impact on her.

Another issue is clothes. In movies, clothes are chosen by wardrobe departments to say something about the character. But really, clothes in the 80s were so fucked up--she can't tell who is a dork and who is cool. For example, the movie Can't Buy Me Love with Patrick Dempsey (McDoodle or whatever his name is on Gray's Anatomy). Dempsey pays the popular girl in school to transform him from dork to hunk. Here's the movie poster--what do you think?

Is this Dempsey before or after his transformation? Those glasses. The string tie. And Good God, the pattern of his shirt!

Here are the movies I have in her queue:

Short Circuit
Short Circuit 2
Little Monsters
Innerspace
The Last Starfighter
Flight of the Navigator
Explorers
D.A.R.Y.L.
SpaceCamp
Mannequin
Crocodile Dundee
Star Kid
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
Starman
Batteries Not Included
Willow
Labyrinth
Krull
The Beastmaster
Better Off Dead
Teen Wolf / Teen Wolf Too (Double Feature)
Splash
Big

Any others I should add? Ideas in the comments, please!

That's Right--BOOKS!

Historic Reading Posters - September - Back to Books

I love this poster. The bold design, the nostalgia of going back to school. It's part of a series of posters created in the 30s by the WPA that's now being reprinted. I'm thinking about getting it, but framing posters--is it too high school/college/I'm broke? Maybe it depends on the stock it's printed on?

Here's the post that brought it to my attention.

Sorry!

OK, OK, so it has been awhile. But I've been busy!

This year's Window Arts Malden project is up and running! Here's my post on last year's project. This time I took on a bigger role, organizing the Opening Celebration in front of City Hall. We had music, dancers, raffles and a Treasure Hunt for kids. Too bad it was 97 degrees and had we winds of about 500 miles per hour. As a result, we didn't have that much of a crowd.

http://www.maldenarts.com/

But the art really looks great. A great treat: head down to Pleasant Street at night. Kelvy Bird's pieces are in the big new apartment complex at 160 Pleasant and across the street from there. When they're backlit at night they are breathtaking.

http://www.kelvybird.com/art/eyes.html

So, now that the opening is over I can just relax and enjoy the installations.

Chal-onge!

So, TS, where's your blog? (*taunting chicken clucking noises*)


P.S.--I was looking for a picture of a scaredy-cat and
found this. Perfect for you!

Lousy Tomatoes!

I finally canned those tomatoes. It took 4 pots, 5 spoons, 3 oven mitts, a colander, a knife and mason jars and lids. I peeled, I boiled, I sanitized. I stirred, I waited, I watched. And what did I get? 1.5 jars of tomatoes. A lousy 1.5 jars of tomatoes. And these are the smaller pint jars! Apparently, it takes pounds and pounds of tomatoes to fill just one jar.

I don't regret it. If I'd had some help during the peeling and cutting stages the process might have been fun. Anyway, when I twist open these jars sometime in January I'll remember how much work went into them. I'll have to look for a really special receipe--one that's worthy of my tomatoes.

Bountiful Harvest

As you know, Patrick and I grew lots of tomatoes this year. Some of the plants are 7 feet tall! So now I have to figure out what to do with them.

I've decided to try jarring them. According to the directions I found online, it isn't hard, just time consuming. I've been putting it off for a few days now, so I really should get to it before they go bad! I'm starting with the plum tomatoes, and then maybe I'll do some of the other types.

Any advice? Wish me luck!

Starting Again!

Today I had lunch with my friends TS and SP and their little ones. We got to talking about blogs--whether they're worth writing, how we've tried and failed in the past, etc. Anyway, TS and I decided to give it a go. So she should be starting one soon. I'm going to try to be better about it.

I recently discovered Google Reader, which keeps track of blogs I like reading. In the past I've bookmarked stuff I've liked, but then I forget to check back on them, or I do take the time to check in but there's nothing new posted. I totally love Reader! I especially like that I can star posts--have you ever tried to remember something that you read on a blog somewhere, and then you have to find the blog and then search for the post? No more! Just star it in Reader. So great.

Not forgotten...

It's been about a year. I thought this might happen.

Wee Bunny

A few weeks ago my sister and I decided to do some sewing. We went to the Wee Wonderfuls website and found a bunny pattern. So cute! My bunny's mouth came out crooked, but that's cute too...

Lost my reason to get up in the morning

Many of my friends know that I LOVE Count Chocula cereal. Really really love it. The chocolate crunchy cereal parts, the marshmallows that stay firm in the milk, the dark brown the milk turns by the end of the bowl. And the layer of brown powder that lines the bowl after the milk is gone--there's so much chocolate I can't even get to it all! There are so many chocolate molecules trying to stay afloat in the milk some of them perish to the bottom of the bowl!

So around April I noticed that C.C. was missing from the shelves of my local Stop & Shop. I tried another store, thinking that Stop & Shop must have lost its mind, but Star Market didn't have it either. Had General Mills discontinued Count Chocula? Why not give Trix the ax instead?

I turned to a new chocolate version of Lucky Charms. Not as good. Then I tried a box of Pirates of the Carribean cereal. It was like Coco Puffs with marshmallows. The only good thing about it was the picture of Johnny Depp on the cover. Sigh. (Actually, the caption made me think. I never bothered to think about the shapes of the cereal...how clever to recycle Coco Puffs and call them Black Pearls!)

Well, the other night Patrick and I went grocery shopping, and there were all my old friends! Boo Berry, Frankin Berry and --yes-- Count Chocula! Though with a new look (see pic). I bought two boxes.

What a mistake! With a new look comes a new formula. The marshmallows fall apart the instant the milk touches them. The milk itself turns only a light tan, an indication of the lack of chocolate-y flavor. Why? I'm going to try to return the second box tomorrow. And write General Mills to complain! You should too: Give 'em an earfull...

WAM

For the past month or so Patrick and I have been involved with a group here called Window Arts Malden. Here's the link: www.maldenarts.com

The organizers, Kelvy and Naomi, are pairing 40 Malden-based artists with 40 businesses in downtown Malden for a two-week exhibit of all types of art. The result is a kind of free, open-air museum. It's been amazing to see the project grow in scope and detail--the PR material is beautiful, the have lots of participants and support from the city. They're having a launch party on Saturday, the 16th which, unfortunately, Patrick and I won't be able to make because we're going to a wedding.

My job so far has been to organize the distribution of posters around Malden and the surrounding communities. This means hitting the road on my bike with a roll of tape. I'm pretty good at chatting up store owners and convincing them that these posters are totally innocuous, so I've had a respectable success rate.

Where to start?

So, there have been times in the past when I've tried to keep a written record of what was going on in my life. All of these attempts failed. I never managed to keep a travel journal during any of my trips, never documented my junior high heartaches, never wrote down funny happenings or sayings.

Part of the problem was that I never knew where to start. How to you just start writing about a life that's already been around for 12 years, 19 years, or, now, 29 years? Do you need to start with a backstory? A bio? A cast of characters?

Lately I've been feeling very disconnected to some people in my life. I've lost touch with friends that I only just recently saw on a weekly or nearly-daily basis. Some friends I haven't communicated with in years (hello Elaine--you're getting married?). In part, I'm thinking about starting this blog in order to keep in touch with them. Do you ever do this--think about calling someone you haven't talked to in a long time, but then you think it will be too awkward to call because it's been so long since you called? And you'll have to fill them in on all the stuff that's been going on in your life that really you should have told them about much sooner? Yea, its like that.

So, in a nutshell, I have a lot going on in my life :) Patrick and I bought a house in Malden (hence the blog title), we got married in May, I'm trying to buckle down and finally finish my thesis so I can just graduate already, I need to find a job, and I've started gardening. Actually, this is the calm after the storm of the wedding/purchase/finals crunch, but I'm still feeling a bit drained.

Anyway, I thought I'd start keeping track of this sort of stuff, for my own sake. I think it should be kind of fun to write about my job search, my attempt to understand Malden, and the problem of what to do with the kitchen. Maybe you'll find it fun to read.