Jailbird

So I was poking around some old files today, and came upon something I had to share. If you've ever hung out with me for an extended period of time (or a short one, if there is wine involved), you know I often write senseless, silly poems, usually in limerick form. I think they are goofy and fun and I love to write them.

Well a few years ago on Halloween, we were having a pumpkin decorating contest at work. Some of the pumpkins were really nice and crafty, such as this one:


My group however, must have had some really interesting lunch, because this was what we came up with:


Meet the jailbird-pumpkin. We thought we were hilarious. But he wasn't quite complete without a story. I mean, how often do you see a bird-pumpkin, let alone in jail?? People would wonder what he was all about.

So my friends, I give you his story, "Jailbird". Enjoy :)

"Jailbird"

There once was a jailbird, alone in his cell
Nobody to listen, a story to tell.
It wasn't his fault he was stuck in this jail,
If only somebody would come pay his bail.

You see this poor pumpkin was kind of a nerd,
The others they laughed, at the weird pumpkin-bird.

It wasn't his fault he was a little displaced,
His life was abnormal, many challenges he faced.
While other little pumpkins sat nice in their patch,
This little pumpkin had a large urge to hatch.

He knew it was wrong, but he couldn't stop trying,
He'd squirm and he'd squeal, he just felt like flying!
His weird bird-like beak, disco balls for his eyes,
They just didn't get his squawky bird cries.

He knew that he needed to get out of here,
The feathers he found helped him get into gear.
Stuck onto his sides, they gave him new hope,
He knew he could fly, he was no dope.

Then one night it happened, he saw his big chance,
The other round pumpkins were at a big dance.
He saw in the distance a glimmer of light,
He felt in his guts he could get to new heights.

He flapped those fake feathers in hopes he could fly,
And before he knew it he was 20 feet high!
He screamed, HALLELUJA! and flapped them again,
And flew to a place that no pumpkin had been.

But as he was flying above the fall dance,
He spotted Lucia, his pumpkin romance.
The love, how it grasped him, he stopped in his tracks,
Stunned by her beauty, her luscious knick-knacks.

In less than a second tragedy did occur,
As our hero was no flying connoisseur.
In this moment of love, he sure did forget,
To flap his strong wings, his fate he then met.

As he fell towards the dance he was spotted above,
They shouted "Look out!" and each other they shoved.
Poor little Lucia got lost in the mix,
Bird-pumpkin fell on her like a great ton of bricks.

The dance it fell silent, they all knew her sad fate,
Lucia was crushed under his heavy weight.
Our pumpkin was devastated, his love he had killed,
One dream was now crushed because the other was filled.

So now this poor pumpkin sits alone in the jail,
The whole patch does hate him, he never gets mail.
He knows he will die alone in this place,
The local officials, they won't take his case.

If only bird-pumpkin had known from the start,
A little known fact which would have changed his poor heart.
Yes, Lovely Lucia, although she was sweet,
Was a confused little pumpkin, who's real name was Pete.

The Nibbler

Every once and awhile I'll post recipes on this blog of new dishes that I've found, tried, and had some success with. Since this summer, I've been trying quite a few new recipes each month, so I decided it was time to share what I've been learning. I've started a new food blog, titled "The Nibbler" which will have the recipes and pictures of each recipe on it. I've found as I learn to cook that online food blogs are a great source to find new recipes, so I hope it helps some of you. The web address is http://kristinasfoodblog.blogspot.com/. Feel free to check it out, and please comment if you try any of the recipes!

Another Essay

So a few weeks ago I wrote a post about how it would be really cool if students only knew that sometimes their admission essays fall in the perfect set of hands. Like girls who's entire life was cheerleading, or students who traveled abroad to help students in a Spanish speaking country.

Well today I got one that probably should not have gone to me. Remember when I hiked Katahdin? I do. I remember crying the entire way up the mountain and not being able to walk for a week following.

Today I got an essay from a girl who also hiked Katahdin. She described her experience by saying that she "raced to the top, dodging boulders, taking in the amazing views, and picking a flower at the top."

I felt the need to throw up a little at the end, but kept my cool.

BDC Love!

No, I promise I do not have code names for every one of my friend groups.

That being said, this weekend Jim, Rowdy, and I headed to Boston for what we called the "BDC Reunion"...a night of good food and fun with my former roomates.

When I moved to Boston back in 2004, my high school friend Leah and I decided we wanted to live together. Leah's current roomate Kerry was also looking for a place, so we invited her to join. A few weeks later and after searching many apartments, we found the place that would soon be known as the BDC. You see, our house number was 13. Our street was Craigie. Our friend Eric is goofy, and deemed our new place the Bakers Dozen Craigie.

Life at the BDC was interesting. Looking back, it shouldn't surprise any of us that our very first weeks there would in a way foreshadow the year ahead of us. The day after we moved in ,our landlord Doug (a creepy man with obvious small man syndrome who was completely obsessed with roomie Kerry), asked us if we would like a brand new kitchen and bathroom. Of course, we said! Who wouldn't? Little did we know that would mean that for two straight weeks we would have to shower in the morning on the third floor of the building in another apartment whichwas also being renovated (READ: Shower by candlelight while making sure not to step on tetanus covered nails), not have a kitchen available for use AT ALL, keeping my poor three month old kitten locked in my bedroom so that she wouldn't die of asbestos, and literally being taped into our bedrooms on a Saturday morning while a group of uninvited, unexpected, illegal immigrants painted our hallway and we all had to sneak out of our bedroom windows in search for coffee. To say the least, it was both a disaster and utterly hilarious, the two words that best describe the next several months.

We laughed a lot at the BDC. We also cried, screamed, and dramatized. We fell in love, we fell out of love. I still can't believe everything that happened while we lived there happened in only a matter of 11 or so months. Through the months, we had some additions to our little group. Eric was friends with me and Leah in high school and got to know Kerry while Leah and Kerry lived together. He would come over to the apartment and stay for hours, even if nobody was home. Mike was friends with Eric in college, who then became friends with us. Mike and Leah started dating not long after we all moved in. Jim, well you all know Jim, arrived in my life in November. The girls were nice enough to let him move in with us for a few months when he moved to Boston.

I could talk about a hundred different things that we did while we lived at the BDC, but my favorite of them all were our dinners and breakfasts. At that time I was as far from being a cook as one could imagine. Kerry and Leah however, were pretty well versed in the kitchen and enjoyed spending time in there. Most of the time we prepared Sunday morning breakfast and ate as a "family"...Mike and Eric in their boxers unable to create a coherent sentence in their sleepy states, and Jim playing the guitar and singing Dave Matthews, and me, Kerry, and Leah whipping up waffles, pancakes, eggs, bacon, fruit, and juice for our traditional meal. Occasionally we'd do dinner as well. I moonlighted at a liquor store in Porter Square and one of the regulars would go on fishing trips and always bring me back salmon. While we were hesitant at first, we decided to whip it up and it made for awesome meals.

When we all parted ways the following summer, I hoped we would stay close. Leah and I struggled living together and we were a bit distant for a bit, but have definitely come back together since. We see each other at the holidays, as we both go home to see our families. Mike and Leah have since split up but stay close and we see him from time to time. Eric and Jim have become very good friends so we see him whenever we are home for the holidays or down in Boston. He comes to visit us quite a bit as well. Kerry and I have kept in touch mostly by email and the occasional visit when we are lucky enough to have our schedules connect.

So, onto the reunion. Kerry and I met up this past November while I was traveling for work and decided it was time for a BDC reunion. We needed to reconnect the "BDC Love" as we always called it. So this weekend we headed to Boston for a night of cooking and fun at Kerry's awesome apartment. We had so much food, I never thought I'd get out of bed the next day. Dips and salad, pasta dishes, baked zucchini, scallops and swordfish, wine, and bread. It was awesome. It was so fun to get together again and cook, drink wine, and laugh about the ridiculousness of our year at the BDC.

Here's a picture of our group, and the fun we had getting ready for the night!










Mike and Leah

Introducing...

...Taylor Marina!!
Remember the CC baby shower I posted about a few weeks ago? Well, she's finally here! Taylor was born yesterday afternoon, and we all stopped by the hospital today to see mom and baby. Jaime is doing amazing..you would never in a million years know she delivered a baby yesterday. She was perky and glowing and as happy as a new mom should be. Taylor is just perfect and was the best baby while we all oooh-ed and ahh-ed at her for a good hour and a half this afternoon. I couldn't get over how alert she was, and how much hair she has!! We are all very excited to welcome our new niece, and I wanted to share some pictures with you all. Many congratulations to Jaime and Chris!!

Fun!

One of the perks to moving to Yarmouth last spring was our new vicinity to Freeport. Most of you have probably been there before, but if you haven't Freeport is a huge attraction for outlet shoppers. Probably its biggest attraction however is the flagship store, (actually its a campus now..there's like 5 stores), of L.L. Bean. Jim and I have always liked Beans but I don't think we expected it to be almost a weekly occurence to take the five minute drive up and just walk around. For some reason, it never gets old.

So Friday night we decided to get out of the house and drive up to the store. We actually had a purpose this time..we got Rowdy a nice little travel crate. Hooray for no more roadtrips with a metal crate that takes up 3/4 of the Subie wagon, when folded. Anyways, I always like to poke around in the shoe section to see what fun things they have this year, and stopped right in my tracks when I saw these...chocolate lab flip flops!! Beans always puts out a line called Maine Isle Flip-Flops every year, but there's never much I really want. Usually its just lobsters and light houses, but I definitely couldn't pass these up.

I don't see any of the lab ones online but they have tons in the store.

Fun huh?

Vote for Rowdy!

I just found this website that gives monetary prizes to photos of pets that win the most votes, so of course I entered our handsome Rowdy! Please vote for him! The weekly winner will be announced next Saturday but there are also daily winners so every vote counts. Just click this link and then click on "Give a Hug" Thanks!

Yay for Love!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I hope everyone finds themselves happy, healthy, and with someone to share their love with.

Its still very strange to me that I "get" to celebrate Valentine's Day in the way that one would hope to. Yes, its always nice to call your mother or your siblings and wish them a happy VDay, but to have someone really special to spend it with is a whole separate ball game. It definitely hasn't always been like this for me. Those of you who know me well know I haven't exactly been the most versed in dating throughout my life, and actually the first Valentine's Day I ever had someone to celebrate with was my first with Jim, five years ago, (it was really special, he got a very nice hotel room in the city and took me to dinner with some close friends to the Top of the Hub in Boston, which since then has kind of become our spot). But before Jim, VDay usually consisted of me trying to pick up a shift at work, or hanging out with my other single friends, which were often hard to come by.

I'll never forget the Valentine's Day the year before I met Jim. I was living in Berwick, and my friend Ray was in Boston and we were pretty much inseparable at that point, so of course I chose to come to Boston for the weekend. It was one of those odd years that Ray wasn't dating, and neither were our friends Ian, Jamison, and Petro. So we deemed ourselves "The Lonely Hearts Club" and took ourselves out to Sissy K's, wearing black hearts on our shirts. Luckily "The Lonely Hearts Club" didn't last long for most of us, but it was a fun way to spend the evening. Consequently, I think that's also the night we hailed a limo instead of a cab because it was too cold out for a cab, but that's another story for another post I think....

So anyways, I hope everyone has a fantastic day of love. Jim and I were going to give snowshoing a shot, but he's a little under the weather so we'll spend the day just hanging out and then tonight we'll head to our Portland place, and the best sushi around, Yosaku.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The PS3

Well it happened. After months and months of telling myself we couldn't get to that point, it happened. I am a PS3 widow.

I didn't plan for this. In fact, I planned for quite the opposite. We have enough video game systems to last the rest of the century. A Super Nintendo. A Nintendo 64. A PS2. A Wii. Why, might I ask would we ever need a PS3?

My husband will tell you its because of its amazing graphics, online capabilities, and BluRay disc player. I will tell you it is so that he can justify that even though he's turning 31, he's still a young gamer at heart.

I really thought I'd get out of this one. I thought for sure he'd hem and haw at the fact that yet another video game system had passed him by. This one would be a no-brainer. We just couldn't afford it. When they first came out we had just bought the Wii, and once the price dropped we had bought the house and were thinking of getting the dog. Oh shucks. But then came that fateful evening when my father-in-law, who I really love to death, called me up to ask how I would feel if they baited Jim with a PS3 to finish his degree. What do I say? No problem! He'd love it! Inside my head I'm thinking: he'd never take them up on that..that's just too much bribing.

I'm too damn nice. And too damn naiive.

So it's here. In my living room. There are games and controllers on my coffee table. As I type I'm listening to the oh so soothing sounds of machine guns and men screaming. As I'm drinking my coffee in the morning, getting dressed, and doing my makeup, I am accompanied by the sounds of rally cars and my husband shouting "That's so &$#@& awesome!!"

I am a PS3 widow.

And now the disclaimer, or I may be sleeping on the couch.

As much as I dreaded it all, it hasn't been nearly as bad as I expected. The night he picked it up, Jim brought me home American Idol Karaoke, and even played it with me for two nights in a row. He makes sure to do something nice like clean the kitchen before he plays, and when I ask if we can hang out without the PS3 for a bit, he doesn't hesitate to put the controller down. It's as if he can...wait for it...balance a video game system AND a wifey.

There may be hope for the world after all.

This is what it looks like...

...when you put a mad bomber hat on a 7 month old puppy.


He loves us. Really.