wtf?!?

I had all of those pictures next to each other so there could be side by side comparisons, do you know how long it took me to do that? I went back and forth between the preview screen lots of times! BAH!

The Moment You Have Been Waiting For...

Picture time!!!

These are just a few of many that we have taken, some of them aren't that great because of angles and the like and you aren't really going to get the full idea of it all. The teeny pictures seen here are just a teensy weensy preview of what our house actually looks like. Also, I am tired to having to format them and size them and all of that other junk to get them to stay next to each other. But please, whoever you are viewing this, leave a comment of any sort, although I probably don't know you, I care immensely what you think about me.

Pre-Thanksgiving Festivities...

We are having Thanksgiving at our place again. This time it will be at our house, not our teeny apartment with only one sofa to sit on. It will be, as Thanksgiving dinners go, a legitimate attempt at a true family Thanksgiving. Family, plus a few extras. First off, Dan and I have been together for almost two years, but none of our family has actually met (not counting the time that Dan's mom and my older brother from California got cozy in between puffs at a Tom Petty concert last summer). One time my parents almost met his mom, but instead my dad peed next to her house in some bushes and then we left. In exactly one week from today, these parties will finally meet. On top of that, Dan's mom is bringing her boyfriend. Now they started dating or hoo-ha-ing a little bit after Dan and myself got together, but we have never been given the opportunity to meet him, Mr. Williams, Lee. Of course we will also be having the normies including the sisters and the friends and the post dinner drink friends. All in all, it should make for an interesting evening.

In preperation for this event, we have started household improvements again, we kind of let off after finishing all of the bigger stuff for the housewarming party. But alas, they have begun, again. Currently, we have two large projecs underway, fixing the hallway wall, and dismantling and gutting the upstairs bathroom. Right now the project being concentrated on the most is the hall, applying layers of spackle to the new drywall so that we can paint the entire hallway upstairs and down prior to next Thursday. Here is a picture of the hallway prior to having part of the wall removed:




Now you can't really tell from this picture, but alas I cannot find my camera cable to get the pictures I took before undertaking this project, but, on the left side of the picture on that wall in three different places, before, and twice after the thermostat, there are large cracks running from floor to ceiling in the plaster. I decided one day while Dan was at work to knock the plaster off to get rid of these cracks. It was a somewhat lengthy and extremely dusty task.




This is what it looked like with the old plaster knocked off. Since then we have put up new drywall and I have spackled and we are very close to painting, I will update as soon as I can with more pictures. ALSO, sidenote, notice little Mow Mow in this picture here, isn't she a cutie? She is such a wonderful cat who somehow is not afraid of drills and hammers and all of the noise that these things make. Amusing story- today Jack was trying to eat her head, as Jack normally does, and Mow Mow pawed at him and in doing so her claw got stuck in his collar and when he started walking away he ended up dragging her with him a little bit, she either failed to notice, or care, that she was being drug across the floor by the dog.


But anyways, if anyone out there doesn't have plans for Thanksgiving, feel free to stop in as Dan will be in charge of the turkey (he's very good at this task) and I will be doing everything else, with some help from my mom of course. If our company isn't enough to tempt you, remember this, there will be brussel sprouts!

Halloween!

As Tara mentioned in the previous entry, our Halloween plans were to dress up the dog, hand out candy, and then hit up a party. Luckily, we realized early in the evening that we were old and toned down the, admittedly, over-ambitious plans.

Tara worked in the morning, but when she got home we headed out to the middle-class beacon of disposable culture: Costco. No doubt everyone is already aware of the magnificence of Costco; the glory of buying in bulk, the markdowns, the sense of power in showing off my black "Executive Member" card, the free samples, and the $1.50 all-beef hotdog and soft drink combo. Magnificent.

We stocked up on candy. Two bags of fun size candy bars (each containing 150 pieces), and a box of full size candy bars, not to mention a few of our general staples: a bag of Andy Boy romaine lettuce and some sliced turkey. We tied it all together with a couple pepperoni pizzas that were marked down. Another quick stop at the beer distributor and we headed home. When we arrived at home it was around 5:30. We hefted everything inside, filled up a bowl with candy, and began getting down with our festive selves. We put our pumpkins out front, hung up some cool little lattern lights, tossed the pizza in the oven, and opened up a bottle of wine.

Then, for the next hour and a half or so, we sat out on the front porch, drinking wine and eating pizza, handing out candy, and questioning kids about their costumes. There were some fantastic ones, cute little kids dressed as oompa-loompas, bumblebees, and giraffes, and then there were the lazy teenagers who had no costume whatsoever. One of them was on the ball when I asked him about it, stating "I'm myself. I thought I'd go as something scary this year." Another boy came up without a costume and simply began stuttering when I asked him about his lack of costume. His mother came to his aid, explaining that he has a mask in the car, but chose not to wear it because "it makes his face sweat".

Trick-or-treating ended around 7:30 and we headed upstairs. We tossed around the idea of going to a party or a bar, etc, or even just watching a scary movie, but finally we just settled in and watched the Phillies game and went to bed.

Just an update...

For any interested parties, here are some things that have been going on with us lately.

We took the motorcycle saftey class. It was fun. It was four sessions, two in class ones in the evening and two riding lessons on sunday mornings. We were both very nervous, in the first riding lesson, I, Tara, was almost killed by a rogue motorcycle. In the second I nearly killed myself with my own bike. Dan however did very well, never falling or faltering and in the end we both passed with somewhat flying colors and are now licensed motorcyclists. Scary, I know, keep yer children out of the road.

Last tuesday we bought a motorcycle. It is an 82 Kawasaki 440. It's a crazy little bike that rumbles and grumbles and has weird handle bars. But we both like it and Dan doesn't know it yet but we're going to clean it up all nice and maybe he'll repaint the tank. We'll prolly upgrade in the spring. Oh yeah, and it's, i mean his, name is Tommy. Rusty Tommy our first little motorcycle.

Dan is in the process of applying to law schools. He's such a smarthead he's going to apply to Harvard and Yale. Looks and brains, I don't know how I got so lucky to find such a man.

We are going to dress Jack up like a shark tonight for Halloween and give out candy for trick or treaters. Then we may hit up the local PNA because Dan is intent on getting a membership though neither of us are Polish. But I guess I was part of the VFW and wasn't a veteran of war, foreign or domestic.

That's about it. Thanks.

It's Almost Halloween!

...And that means decorating and eating pumpkin pie and drinking cider and most importantly- getting costumes for our pets! Now unlike most children, we cannot take Abby and Jack and Mow Mow into a store and let them pick out what they want. So we chose for them. Of course we put a lot of time into thinking up the best outfit for each of them, something to match their personalities*. We thought "What most defines Jack? The fact that he's a little dimwitted? No... The fact that he is a big pervert and his wiener is out at the most puzzling of times? No... Oh, he bites, let's make him a shark!" So we did.
The costume is a little small, it is supposed to fit dogs between 30 and 50 pounds, Jack is about 55. With his figure though we figured he could pull it off. He can.

Then we had to decide the same about Mow Mow. Now, this cat is the best cat in the entire universe. No joke. I'm not exaggerating. AND, she is beautiful. Not in that standard "oh that's a pretty cat" kinda way. Mow Mow is a one of a kind gem. We didn't want to make her a rock for Halloween though. So we figured most appropriately that she should be a jack-o-lantern since she herself once had her eye cut out. So we got her a little shirt.


Isn't she the prettiest cat you've ever seen? Don't lie. She even has a mane. A real mane. It's around her neck, it's made of fur that is longer than her other fur. Your cat doesn't have that.

We haven't gotten Abby a costume yet. But we will, don't worry. And it will be posted for the world to see.


*In actuality we put little thought into these costumes, in fact we walked into Target and found the pumpkin shirt in the awesome cheapo bins at the front of the store and happened to stumble across the pet costumes in the back by accident. The shark costume is in fact awesome and probably the only thing there that could have fit our dogs. We do love our pets though, don't get me wrong. Just not enough to not make them dress up for our entertainment.

Dan Jumps on the Bandwagon

Dan likes to go online. It's just his thing. He blogs, reads articles, keeps up with all the current events and even the past ones too. He likes Wikipedia a lot. He also likes television- cable television. He's also seen a lot of movies. All sorts of movies. What Dan doesn't do is keep up with current trends of strings of movies- like Harry Potter, or Saw. And though Dan knows how to read, he never read any of Harry Potter books either. I know, weird.

Me, I don't like the internet much. I find it tedious. Convenient? Yes. Quick and easy? Yup. My cup of tea? Nope. I like the good old days when people had to slave over books for hours researching for papers. Personally, with so much information at the tips of my finger, it's so easy to read and research that I don't take much away from the research. I find I don't remember much of what I had learned after one week of turning the paper in. But anyways.

I like movies, and for the most part I was up to speed with the prequels to the now being released sequels. Not Dan. This caused a bit of a dilemna when I wanted to go see the newest Harry Potter movie (which sucked btw omg blar blar!!). Having never read or seen anything of Harry Potter, he was in no shape to go see this sixth installment. but, being the kind and loving person he is, he decided he wanted to watch all the movies so he could go with me to see the new ones. So we did. One weekend, about a month ago, we sat down and we watched the first five movies, finishing the last one at about 9:15 sunday night. We both had to work early the next morning but had the undefeatable urge to see the final movie. So we did, in IMAX at the Mills mall at 10:30. *spoiler ahead- what a shitty movie. Lucky for Dan though he has no idea yet just how crappy it was since he hasnt read that book yet. He's getting there though.

So recently we started watching the Saw movies. I have seen all of them already, I like them. I was sad when Luke died. He had never seen any of these either but with the new one being released around Halloween he was nice enough to watch them with me so he could see this movie with me as well. So we watched them, we finished them about a week ago. Now we play Mafia Wars. The end.