AliThinks

In The Bin

   

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I Heart Pennsylvania

The weather is here; wish you were beautiful!

...

We're still in the land of my ancestors. We had a great weekend, and hope you did, too. That's all I will say now, 'cause this is dial-up and I think I need to be outside on a blanket in the grass.

Flat Stanley

Dear Aunt Ally,

I have a school assignment on Flat Stanly. Flat Stanly is very Flat because a bulletin board fell on his body. So that is why he is so flat.

Please remember to entertain him while he is at Kentucky. Please take pictures of him while he is at Kentucky. Send him back please. Thanks.

Your nephew,

M

It's time for Flat Stanley to go home to Pennsylvania. Later on today, I will hand deliver him to M.  I'll tell him all about Flat Stanley's adventures in Kentucky, and give him some of the photos that I took.

Have a great weekend, y'all. Happy trails and safe travels.

PS: Flat Stanley didn't just eat and drink while he was here. He went to a horse race, but I'm saving that story for my nephew.

Remember This?

No? Then look here for the backstory. Here's another photo of the thingy, stripped and ready to be Alisonized.

Nice, huh? I got to play with a Dremel and a sander while I worked at this piece of wood.
I got the thing to look how I wanted it to the other day, but none of the photos I took seemed to catch the light the way I wanted to. So I put off blogging about it. Besides, there were memes to complete and workouts to do.

I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out—this bit of gingerbread and a simultaneous refinishing project I had going on (more on that another time).  Click the extended post link to see more photos.

Another Meme!

Yeah, yeah, I know I just did one, but I got tagged for this LONG before I got tagged for the last one. Somehow I missed Anica's post; in my defense, I was in France when she posted it. I guess I missed it as I was slogging through Bloglines a few days later. Here's a sneak peek. Click the link to read the rest.

10 Favorites
Favorite Season: summer
Favorite Color: lime green
Favorite Time: Suntory Time
Favorite Food: Sun-warmed raspberries

Rim

Iced coffee at Common Grounds.

The New Couch!

   

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Allan has already documented this, so go read his account. I just wanted to point out the scary mind-meld we had in the photo taking. Basically, we took the same photo without the other being aware of it.

Redux

Not long before or after I moved back to the States, I evoked my weight gain of the previous year, and said I was going to do something about that. And I did. For a while. I dropped about 10 pounds the first couple of weeks I was back here, then eased up on the dieting. While I have kept off those 10 pounds, I have not lost any more weight. I haven't tried.

I am loved. I look pretty good, compared to a lot of people out there. I suppose that I could stay this way, but I don't really want to. Instead of just losing weight this time, I would like to get into shape. See, I was slim before -- oh, how blind I was to that fact! -- but out of shape.

So I have been thinking I need to get more exercise, join a gym, start yoga again, SOMETHING. I am by nature a procrastinator, so I haven't done a damn thing yet. And then yesterday I saw this post about going to the gym, followed a few hours later by this post (by the same author). I left comments to both posts; my second comment is basically a "binding" contract that obliges me to exercise twice a week or "donate twenty dollars to a health-related charity and...humiliate myself on my own blog..."

Oh, hell.

UPDATE: I just got back from Curves, where I did a free trial workout. I'll be joining on Wednesday. This is something I can do. It is so totally NOT intimidating. I'm pretty excited, and I feel pretty good. Thanks for the motivation, Neil! I had been meaning to try that place for 6 weeks, honest. Your post yesterday made me get off my duff. 

The Five Meme

Ally Bean of Crazy Dust In My Coffee tagged me for this meme. Now that I have finished cursing her under my breath my coffee, I will hunker down and answer these questions. It's been a long time since I've participated in a meme. And Ally always has fun stuff on her blog.

5 items in my fridge
1. soy milk
2. eggs
3. homegrown sprouts
4. beer
5. many condiments

5 items in my closet (or, that small space of Allan's that I invaded)
1. t-shirts
2. old dresses
3. more t-shirts
4. black zip-up boots
5. that bathrobe that used to belong to Allan (shhh! He thinks it's still his)

5 items in my car (or, that vehicle of Allan's that I have left my mark upon)
1. my Marvin the Martian figurine
2. CDs
3. hand cream
4. WandaWipes®
5. gum

5 items in my purse (what purse? Okay. I do carry one. I hate purses)
1. my wallet
2. various pebbles my kids have asked me to keep for them
3. cell phone
4. a pen
5. lip BLAM

5 people who are tagged
1. Pumpkin
2. Sizzle
3. Edie
4. bhd
5. Catheroo

We Haul

Tomorrow at this time I'll have my ass parked on our new couch. We're picking it up in the morning. I can't wait to see how the thing looks in here.

Note to couch buyers out there: purchase your furniture from a store that delivers.

I seem to have lost all ability to think this evening. This could be due to the fact that I surely breathed in some lead paint dust earlier. I broke down and sanded the rest of that paint off of The Project, and boy! was it fun to wield that new Black & Decker sander.

In reality I think it's because I have actually been active this week. Okay, so there was some jet lag involved, but there were also activities. There was me, using my noggin. There was cold, rainy weather. There was champagne and sushi for dinner.

So it's Friday evening. I'm tarred tired. What's happening with you?

Bubbly

   

Click image to enlarge.

 

Project

Okay, so recently Allan and I traveled to Pennsylvania to do some work on my family's summer house. It's an oldish house on land that my ancestors settled on a Really Long Time Ago. (*snip* long story bla bla bla)

Allan wrote a bit about it here and posted a lovely photo/commentary here.

Anyway, my brother AK cleared a bunch of scrap wood out of the basement during that work weekend, and he found this square thing and set it on the front porch of the house. I did a quick survey to see if anyone wanted it, but no one did. Jackpot! Now, I had no idea what the thing was; all I knew was that I could turn it into something COOL.

So today I started stripping it. There are at least three layers of paint to get through. I'm going to have to continue tomorrow -- that's how encrusted it is.

Photos appear after the fold. Suggestions as to what this is are welcome.

Scary Mind-Meld

Look over in the sidebar. → There's a new thingy there, under the label "Credo." 

Allan found the "Ad-Free Blog" icon at Ample Sanity. He pointed it out to me, and we both decided to use it. Because, you know, we both are 100% behind the Ad-Free Blog idea.

After placing the icon in our "Other Stuff" sidebar category lists, we talked about putting it up higher, so that it'd be more visible. After agreeing that it was a good idea, we went about creating a new Typelist (that's a Typepad thing, natch) for the icon, each of us minding our own business.

Just as I hit "Save and Publish" to add the new list to the sidebar, Allan turned his laptop toward me so that I could see how his blog looked with the new icon. The name of his Typelist?

Credo. The same as mine.

It's just scary sometimes, I tell ya.

She Travels In Cartwheels

Photo taken by my son, on the eve of his rendezvous with the snake.

C. is 11, and she really does do cartwheels as often as possible. Her record is 10 in a row. I take her preferred mode of transportation to be a sign that all is well with her.

Not Sure How To Tell This Story

If you read my last post, or Allan's, you know that something went down while we were in France. It happened last Wednesday.

I've been trying to think of a good way to tell the story, but I'm coming up dry. [eyeroll]

So there was this snake. On the beach. Now you have an explanation for the Snakes On A Plane references.

The snake bit my son. Panic did not ensue, but a trip to the hospital (with a bonus two-day stay) did. Before I go further, let me say that T is fine. Some of his curiosity has been curbed, but he's just fine.

All I can do at this point is copy and paste some words I wrote elsewhere about the adventure.

Fill In The Blanks

We're home. While I wade through the 108 messages in my inbox and the 580 feeds that Bloglines has waiting for me, you can play a game:

The hallmark of this trip to France was the muthafuckin' ____________ on the GOT damn ____________! 

Weekend Recipe (Illustrated)

Originally posted on November 13, 2004 as "Leaves of the Grape."

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Grapes are awesome.  You can eat them, drink their juice (fermented or not), rub the extract of their seeds on your face to make you look younger, and eat their leaves. 

Tonight I made my Killer Stuffed Grape Leaves, and I'm going to share the recipe with you.  It's a good weekend recipe because, although fairly easy, it does require some time to roll the leaves. 

This is a vegetarian recipe, but in the past I have added ground lamb to the mix, as well as ground beef.  I've also served these as an accompaniment to grilled lamb chops. 

9th Grade Wisdom

Originally posted on June 3, 2005. I wonder how Tristan is doing?

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Today was sort of the last day of class for the 9th graders.  Tonight we held conseils de classe, which is an end-of-quarter event.  This time we discussed the kids' orientations:  who'll go on to high school, who'll go to vo-tech school, etc. 

I say it was "sort of" the last day of class, because once the conseil is done, lots of students don't bother coming.  Today the kids were all rowdy.  I started the lesson with the correction of homework, and let a girl who was hoping to pass into high school sucking up write the answers on the board.  I was circulating around the room and  stopped near Tristan's desk. 

He said "Madame, I have a question."

"What is it, Tristan?"

A Different Kind Of Retrospect

Here. Go read my archives from March 2005. I enjoyed doing it, and I hope you will, too.

Photo of the Day

Click on the photo to see larger versions of it.

This is my brother's hand. He was asleep. I have a lot of pictures of him when he's awake, but in most of them he's wearing that "not more pictures!" expression.