We went to a local street festival. ("Taste of Chamblee", Chamblee being our little town here on the outskirts of Atlanta.) Heard great live music, drank beer, saw a Chinese dragon-dance and a mariachi band, ate everything from alligator canapes to deep-dish pizza nuggets to amazing, amazing cheesecake and chocolates. It was great fun. (I'll probably link my pics from the event here tomorrow... I'm too tired to upload 'em tonight.)

We did loads of shopping (Target, grocery store, Trader Vics, and fruit/vegetable market) and just had a killer greek dinner (Mrs Slack is a wonder in the kitchen). Now we're just hanging enjoying the cross breeze coming through. Hopefully nothing else too productive will happen tonight.

Today's drink of choice is a Paloma. Mmmmmm....tequila.

Drinking beer. Stressing about my bizarre apartment situation. (the landlord's son who was flinging around threats of eviction a week or so ago over a broken lock, engaged me in a very pleasant coversation about my job on the stoop when we encountered eachother earlier today. But after consulting with lassie, we're not going to include the price of the lock in the rent check tommorrow, so we'll find out if they're gonna boot us then. It's been tying me in knots for weeks now).

Alas, NYC has been raining on and off all day, so we postponed our trip to Coney Island until a nicer day. We went out and walked up and down a street fair, and then entered the lottery for $26 tickets to see "In The Heights", which we did not win. A mediocre, overpriced dinner at City Lobster (I had been looking forward to trying that place, too, boo on them) and now we're home!

I got my ass beaten like a rented mule at a hot, windy bike race on the world's godawfulest pavement. It was so bad that my feet got bruised and I can barely hobble. That plus they originally told us we'd be going 60 miles but due to construction and the fact that there arent many roads out in East Jesus Colorado, they changed it to 80. Pretty much everyone was sunburnt and cranky by the end of the ordeal.

I saw a bunch of pronghorn antelope and tumbleweeds, tho. Those were kind of cool.

oh and I have internets again at chez lfr. I should be in bed with my feet up (cos I'm racing again tomorrow) but instead I'm surfing.

We did loads of shopping (Target, grocery store, Trader Vics, and fruit/vegetable market)

Ummm....that's supposed to be Trader JOES, not VIC's. I WISH we went to Trader Vics. I could use a nice tropical drink right about now. Although the Palomas are serving me well.

It's cold and windy and foggy here. I went to yoga class this morning, which was a minor victory in "Doing things that I don't really feel like doing, but know will be good for me once I'm doing them", and it was a really good class.

Then I came home, ate a wonderful take-out salad, and pretty much crashed. I've been reading cheesy teen lit and napping for most of the afternoon, and I'm feeling too tired and brain-dead to do much else. I'm trying to psych myself up to go get a burger for dinner, because the burger place is near the pet store, and I need litter.

My body seems to have decided that I was maybe a weeeeeee bit stressed out this school year, and has been taking the past few weeks to force me into resting.

I have a social day planned for tomorrow, however, so I guess crashing today is a good thing.

Depressed and isolating today. But I did prepare my CV. Insomnia now, past 2am on Sunday morning.

because the burger place is near the pet store, and I need litter.

There's millions of jokes running through my head now, but they're all colliding and turning into nonsense.

(wish me luck with the confrontation with the crazy old Greek bat tommorrow. I dipped into the blue kitty today, too. That's a blue kitten shaped purse where I keep some my herbs and spices. Maybe I'll hit the jameson bottle soon)

I had a kind of uneventful day. My youngest child had a fever last night and this morning. We stayed in. I had an appt. at the gym but didn't want to bring him to the childcare center at the gym, for obvious reasons.

My sister came over with her son. He had the fever last week, so what the hey. We watched cartoons and Everybody Says I Love You and a documentary about a married deaf couple that both got cochlear implant surgery at age 65. I cried. We read. We played video games. We played cards and taught our older kid how to play Crazy Eights and SlapJack. I picked up the house a bit. My sister vacuumed the area rugs. Husband got home from work and we grilled steaks and had mashed potatoes and peas,grilled onions, and cesar salad for dinner.

We forgot to watch the Space Shuttle go up at 5:02. We knew it was going up to and made a mental note, but still forgot. We were cursing ourselves.

It's utterly gorgeous here in L.A. I mostly ran errands (by car, alas - my nasty bike wreck a few months ago has left me permanently gun-shy about bicycling in L.A. traffic), but I just kicked my own ass at the gym for about an hour and a half, so I'm swimming in beautiful, beautiful endorphins. I'm gonna have a light dinner, a refreshing nap, and perhaps a trip to Amoeba before heading off to a Burner gathering (no fire, dancing, or all-nighters, alas) in Van Nuys.

Well, I wasted the morning waiting for the plumber (but the refrigerator water supply line is repaired and we will have CRUSHED ICE for future cocktails). Then I went to my parents', hung out with the nephew, played Guitar Hero, made some incredibly delicious superdark chocolate cookies from the Sweet Melissa baking book, ate mom's awesome shrimp & scallop pasta thingy, and am now sipping a cocktail and playing online games with Guy.

Let's see...
Woke up late, went to the gym for my modified preggo workout which still kicks my ass (not too much though). Then got lunch, did a bunch of messages, preliminary furniture and big tv shopping (mr. g has decreed that we need one, and as he is getting a major pay-raise in a few weeks, I am grudgingly going along with it).

Then came home, mooched around watching the clean up from the crane collapse, took a nap, watched some baseball, went out for sushi and now back at home. Exhausted.

Saw the new Indy movie and decided that Shia Lebeouf is a great actor. Never heard o' him before this movie.

Played old-timey music with Miko for a few hours prior, me on mandolin, her on guitar.

Massive rainstorms throughout the day.

We also fitted Miko's cat with a new harness, which she is having the usual angst about (the cat, not Miko).

please no "Miko in a harness" jokes, kthx.

Good day all around.

crush-onastick, I once ran into Melissa from Sweet Melissa, and you'll be happy to know that she's just as sweet as her store's name. I was at the Staples by my old home in Park Slope, furiously buying moving boxes to pack all my stuff up before the movers showed up a couple of hours later, and she was in the checkout line behind me. When she came out and found me struggling with my 4,000 boxes, she very kindly gave me a lift home, and even offered to help me carry them up five flights of stairs. I declined her kind offer, but made it a point to swing by her place on Court Street later that week and buy some pastries as a way of thanking her. I don't know about you, but I'm always pleased when famous people (hey, she's famous at least in this part of Brooklyn) turn out to be nice too,so I thought I'd share this story.

jon and Pips, good luck with it tomorrow.

My day was pretty uneventful -- birthday party for a friend, and then Scout and I just got yelled at by a total "get off my lawn" type because Scout was walking across his neighbor's lawn. I'm not thrilled that my dog can only pee on green grass, but she came to me with this habit and there's not much I feel I can do about it now. He called me an asshole because I wouldn't engage in a debate with him about whether he had the right to tell us off for walking across his neighbor's lawn. Kind of ruined an otherwise pleasant day, but there's baseball at Camden Yards to look forward to tomorrow, and it's going to be a stunningly beautiful day apparently.

Baseball at Camden Yards, lassie? I am jealous! That's my old 'hood.

It got up to 104 today, so I hauled the kids to air-conditioned stores to do some shopping. Once it got down to 80-something in the evening, they rode their bikes to the park and ran circles around it until they were ready to drop.

Yeah, I know, gaspode. You (among my many other Baltimorean friends and acquaintances) actually popped into my head when I made this plan.

Here's hoping (well, I am!) that Baltimore actually take a game. Bummer you missed Manny's 500th by a day...

Hmmm ... Fussed with my iTunes. Drank coffee and read/wrote emails. Walked dog. Drug myself to the gym for 30 minutes on the stairmaster. Went to a friend's house for a bit. Mostly depressed (boring).

I was sad to miss his 500th -- I'm a very quiet Red Sox fan. It comes from a decade living in Western Mass. The fandom, not the quietness -- that comes from living in New York :). I'd have loved to have seen that home run. But, I'm going to tomorrow's game with four O's fans, so it should be a fun time no matter what happens.

We were supposed to take a walk to Plaka with the dog and eat lunch out, but we forgot that we rescheduled her rabies vaccination for Saturday, so we had a morning trip to the Vet, then V. watched the dog (in case of reactions), while I went to my flower lady and got flowers for the house and ordered a few things for the courtyard, then we sat in the courtyard and had wine (me) and beer (him), while he repaired his sound cart umbrella. Then we made dog food, I washed some curtains, and made a chicken and chickpea soup. We ate, we crashed. Excitement over.

Didn't fully get up until 2, made a slight dent in the master bedroom, went to crappy Clint Eastwood movie at MOMA, had Greek food.

Jonmc, Mrs. Hankey backed off after I wrote a letter-- stating that my lawyer (actually my father's) had made it clear one could not be evicted for the way one walks. I made sure to cc the lawyer at the end.

I went to Merkado a little design sale/showoff held in Folkets Park in Malmö, specifically to get the owl tray for Perle that a friend of mine has designed. We rode bumper cars, carousels and the ferris wheel, had pancakes and ice-cream, played in the fountain and the sandbox and generally ran mom into the ground - god the energy of little kids man. When we walked home Perle feel asleep and slept until the evening only getting up for a little dinner, so yeah she was spent too. Perle also declared "I love.... *waved arms around to point at the park trying to find the word for it*", I replied "Folkets park?" and she said "Yes! I love Folkets Park!".

So do I. So do I. Free entry and hours of fun, even pony rides. So great!

My Saturday was horrible even beyond my expectations. Friend who was supposed to help me move had to work, so I had to swallow my pride and ask former friend who's being a jerk to me. Unsurprisingly, he was a jerk to me. I tried to be nice about it, tried to ignore the endless snark and sighs and eye-rolling, until I couldn't any more. Completely lost my temper (which is very very rare for me), he drove off (which I expected, but there's only so much shit I'm prepared to take, especially when I don't deserve it and have offered a dozen olive branches only to be whacked on the head with them). Unfortunately, he's staying with the actual friends who were there to help and was their ride home (god I felt sorry for them, stuck in the middle of this crap), so I was left at about 3:00, not finished by a long chalk, no-one to help. Had a good cry (also rare), a great pep talk from my step-mother ("We've never understood how you put up with that guy anyway, he's been sucking off you for years"), went to the job site to do clean-up ('cause I'm a fucking professional, dammit, and it had to be done before the clients came home), and then got pleasantly drunk at the pub, surrounded by people who kept telling me how much they liked me, what a nice person I am, and how much I'll be missed on the island.

Thankfully, other people are coming to help today, my new room-mate's making us dinner, and as long as I'm out and cleaned up by about 6:00 tomorrow, it's fine. I have a pitcher of home-made iced tea to caffeinate and de-hangover myself with, and am almost ready to start. Plus, tonight I'll finally be back in the land of high-speed internet! W00t!

Elizard I'm not sure whether to feel bad or say "oh well that worked out in the end, eh?"
I guess I'm glad it worked out in the end, and yeah fuck people who aren't nice.

Me? I did yardwork and then took a shower only to realize I forgot to mow the lawn. Oh well. I'll do that tomorrow morning.

A bit of both, I guess. Thanks. Just found out that my uncle and his wife are both sick, so they can't help after all. Frantically trying to think of people I can call at the last minute on a Sunday (who have a phone), 'cause I'm down to one friend and his van. This is insane.

See, I always always always hire movers. It avoids the bs, and I hate asking people to spend a day of their free time helping me move heavy stuff from a to b. Paying strangers to do it is so much cleaner all 'round. (Though Zack_Replica did help a *lot* with my move here, bless him.) A drawback to living on such a sparsely populated island (about 1100 people) is that we don't have movers for hire here. Gah.

Later on Saturday evening, we went to a bar down the street that was doing a Sex and the City party. 1 Cosmo, 1 Flirtini, and 2 jello shots later, I was a little tipsy. I came home and did a lot of drunken eBay bidding.