Yes we are alive

Haven’t had an update in a while, been kinda crazy of late with going here and there. Our cat midnight wasn’t felling well, we boarded him this entire weekend so they could check him out and run some test. The poor guy is friendly just isn’t really eating after his dental visit a week ago when they took out two teeth. So we have been bringing him here or there, hopefully they will give him some good drugs today while he is there.
Here is a little update, more to come tomorrow.

Friday January 25, 2007

Went down to CT on a muti-purpose trip. Had some more work done ink wise on my leg, don’t even want to try to figure out how many more hours of having a needle poked in me it was going to be. Tracey did a great job as usual and finished up some parts that where outlined months ago. Her and the owner Jim where very amusing and are always fun to be around when they are on a roll. A good distraction from the constant needle pokes.

Leg Sleeve Phase 3

We then stopped by IKEA, to pick up our new bed. We have been wanting to get a new bed with a higher floor clearance for a while. Our current bed is only a few inches off the floor which stink. Having a limited amount of space, we couldn’t afford to give up all that space. Picking it up was easy, securing it to the roof rack was amusing. Luckily a huge amount of rope and some bungee cords later it was all set to be brought back to vermont.

Spooky Salem

Chris and I spent a wonderful Saturday at the Salem Inn. It was a blustery cold day and that added to the mystery and magic of the old stone house inn, with its winding stairs and creaky floors. We stayed in the honeymoon suite which was surprisingly decent priced. (One may argue that this is because the place is haunted?)
It was lovely, with a double sided fireplace that you could light, and a jacuzzi tub. you could sit in the tub and open the sliding doors from the bathroom so you could watch the fireplace. All the decor was in the old colonial style.
We ate dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant called Passage to India, which was pretty good. Although the witch theme is a bit overused in Salem, there were some cool little magick shops strewn about, and some very interesting and eccentric shop owners. Our particular favorite is the Broom Closet, they had fantastic herbs and incense and some pretty cool-looking wool cloaks.
Much to Chris’ delight we found a huge comic book store with all kinds of graphic novels, comic memorabilia and manga. It was like heaven!
We ourselves didn’t experience anything too paranormal (unless you count people being nice as a paranormal thing nowadays). But several other guests reported strange events. The owners of the inn claim that many people have witnessed strange happenings in rooms 17 and 18. (We stayed in room 76). The guest book was full of reports of strange sounds, sensations and apparitions. Spoooookkyyy…
The wind howled all night long and the floors creaked; the radiator hissed and the fireplace cast an eery glow across the ceiling. Needless to say it wasn’t a very restful night…but it was all in good fun. Around 3 am both Chris and I awoke to a startling loud crash, but fell asleep again not long after. It could’ve been any number of things! But thankfully the ghosts decided to have mercy on us and leave us alone.
We walked around Salem a little more on Sunday and found a pleasant cafe called Gulu-Gulu cafe (not sure where they got the name). They had some yummy vegetarian paninis. Our last stop in Salem was at Ye Old Pepper Companie, which claims to be the oldest candy store in New England. We bought some chocolates, anise candies and peppermint gibraltars (their specialty, I am told).
It was far too cold for walking around Salem for too long, but we were planning on a concert in Boston on our way home. We were pleased to know that there was an Imax theater halfway between Salem and Boston, and we thought what better way to kill a few hours and be away from the cold? We got to see I am Legend, and it was pretty sweet (and scary!) In Imax. Will Smith did an amazing performance.

Next stop…Boston! After we had planned our Salem excursion, Chris discovered that Blonde Redhead was performing in Boston that same weekend. We thought we’d live a little and stop by to see them on our way home. They were playing at the Paradise Rock Club, which turned out to be a decent venue. Opening for them was the School of Seven Bells, which turned out to be a very unique mix of trance, club rock and Indian music. The lead singer held maraccas (sp?), bells and a tambourine in one hand, and shook the night away! Good stuff.

Blonde Redhead played a quick set but a good one. Their performance was not as spellbinding as Osheaga, but then again they were not outside in the fresh air, they were in a stuffy little club. They played “23′, “The Dress”, “Equus” and all the other hits and even came back for a 4-song encore. The band was extremely shy and said only one sentence the entire set. The lead singer appeared quite shy and spoke in very broken English, so that may have been why interactions were so few. But everyone was captivated by their coolness, even if it was for a short time.

Well, getting home at 3 am was painful (thank you to Chris, who drove the whole way home and let his wifey sleep cause she had work the next day and he didn’t!), but I’d do it all over again. It was a great birthday gift to be able to spend some quality time with the hubby in some magical places.

House Market

Well I have been following the housing market, via my RSS feeds. Sad to watch so much bad news. To top it off I saw the list today of company losses. I still cannot stand people who have been saying companies losing billions will have no effect on anything. Sad to say they have been dead wrong.

 

update on 01/17/2007 from BBC

MAIN SUB-PRIME LOSSES SO FAR

 

Merrill Lynch: $22.1bn

Citigroup: $18bn

UBS: $13.5bn

Morgan Stanley $9.4bn

HSBC: $3.4bn

Bear Stearns: $3.2bn

Deutsche Bank: $3.2bn

Bank of America: $3bn

Barclays: $2.6bn

Royal Bank of Scotland: $2.6bn

Freddie Mac: $2bn

JP Morgan Chase: $1.3bn

Credit Suisse: $1bn

Wachovia: $1.1bn

IKB: $2.6bn

Paribas: $439m

Source: Company reports

Go see JUNO

Go see the movie JUNO.

We had seen the reviews and decided to see it this past Friday when it opened at the latchis. I am gld we did. It has been getting great reviews and in our opinion it has earned very one of them. The movie is amazing, the main character endeering and the cast is deep. Juno has a sharp wit about her which makes it even a better character.  This one will be one of those movies that is on our top list of movies for the year.

the classic bunny suit movie

A classic movie we just saw the other night was Donnie Darko and I have to say it was very good. The movie is hard to describe but was very good. It centers around a young teenager, his sleepwalking, antics and a 6th tall rabbit suited guy. It is a movie you definitly have to watch more than once in order to fully get it. We plan on watching it again real soon.

Happy New Year!

This has been a wonderful year for me. I’ve had some wonderful adventures with Chris and I feel extremely blessed. I feel like I should write a deep musing about the passings and the goings-on, good and bad of the year ahead. Perhaps a few sincere resolutions. And while those are all stirring in my heart, I just can’t seem to focus enough to write about them. So, I hope you will forgive my corniness by just doing some “Top 5s” of the passing year. Maybe something more deep will come later. Chris is going to add some of his “Top 5s” too.

Top 5 Movies watched in the theater this year:

1. Lars and the Real Girl (see post)
2. Once (see post)
3. 10 mph (a great movie about life in the slow lane)
4. Grindhouse! (because who can resists zombies and a girl with a machine-gun leg?)
5. Sweeney Todd! (made me glad I’m a vegetarian! Tim Burton’s cheesy gore was magnificent; as was Mr. Depp (who can give me a bloody shave any time he wants…)

Top 5 unusual but great albums of the year:

1. Radiohead “In Rainbows” (the best album you never bought)

2. Fiery Furnaces “Widow City”-how to describe this band? Think wacky wordsmith-ery with quirky background music. It brings to mind Seargent Pepper- era Beatles and early 70’s Who, with a female lead singer. At first listen you might think it too strange, but then you won’t get the music out of your head.

3. Panda Bear “People Pitch”. When you hear Panda Bear’s voice, you will swear you are listening to the Beach Boys in a big hollow cave. Combine that with whooshy train sounds and skateboard over pavement sounds and you have an album that is haunting and just plain cool.

4. LCD Soundsystem “Sound of Silver”- I never thought “dancehall punk” would be a term, but somehow this band accomplished it and made a catchy album that could possibly start a robot apocalypse. Love it!

5. Blonde Redhead “23”. This band isn’t very unusual, unless you count the fact that it is made up of a Japanese fashion school dropout and her friends, who happen to be Italian twin brothers. This album is positively magical, with undertones reminiscent of Lush (remember how they rocked?) and a sound all their own. They are cute, and also kicked ass live at Osheaga!

Top 5 websites of the year

1. Instructables.com You can learn how to make cool things like homemade light sabers and artificial moving hands! You can also learn how to make “practical” stuff too (but how much fun is that?).

2. Etsy.com A positively awesome site full of homemade artwork, clothing, jewelry and everything you can possibly imagine, all hand made by folks like you and me. You can find unique, inexpensive goodies and you know where the money is actually going to.

3. AskANinja.com Because, believe it or not, ninjas really DO have all the answers.

4. Channel102.net The strangest, funniest web episodes you never saw until now. My particular faves include “Defenders of Stan” and “Cakey! The Cake from outer space”.

5. roadsideamerica.com If you’re planning a roadtrip, you can find the world’s cheesiest tourist attractions here, such as the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum, The Grave of Pete Kibble’s foot (whoever he is?), and the site of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. C’mon, you know you wanna go!

Top 5 shows we’ve been watching from Netflix

1. Heroes (lovin it!)

2. Coupling (hilarious!)

3. Scrubs

4. House, M.D.

5. The Office

Had to add a “6” here which is actually a tie between: 6.The L Word and Psych

We’ve got plenty more to catch up on, including Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights and LOST.

Top 5 moments of the year

1. Having a new nephew!

2. renewing our vows in St. John

3. Finishing many house projects, number one of which being the bamboo flooring!

4. Seeing almost 60 bands in the past year, and having a great time at music festivals like Osheaga and the Green River fest

5. All of the little trips and long weekends I got to take with Chris during the summer, even when we went nowhere at all.

Have a great New Year everybody–2008 will be really, really great! (someone told me a year motto has to rhyme in order for good luck in the new year).

Ho Ho Hijincks

Just got back the other day from NJ to spend the holidays with Kathy’s family.  It was great seeing our new nephew, Jacob, and we got to spend a ton of time with his older brother Jeremy which was so much fun. We miss them both a lot, especially during the drive home when our road buddy Jeremy wasn’t with us.  The trip was an adventure and  am going to let Kathy post all about it in the next day or so.

On unrelated news we are totally addiced to watching Heros season 1, we love that we can watch it through Netflix streaming movies.