valentines, visitors + vito

for valentines day we ate deviled eggs. i made peter a card, just like the old days. that night i drank too much wine. then i ruined a giant batch of chocolate covered strawberries. per usual.

last sunday cousin ian and alex came for a visit. we ate at tortillarilla sinaloa and zellas and lexington market. we also climbed federal hill, saw the laure drogoul exhibit and made them squeeze into the backseat with our defective ikea file cabinet. next time i promise we won't go to see the flamingo in hampden or eat hockey puck-ish pancakes.

last thursday, in an effort to get out of the apartment, we planned to drink beers at the brewers art. unfortunately it was full of old dudes in sports coats. it reminds me too much of the clarkston union.. or a hotel bar. we tried to go to the wharf rat but it was under construction. so we went to the harbor way inn. it is close to home and was completely empty except for vito. we drank lithuanian beer and he told us lots of good stories about the fake dollar behind the bar and getting shot. i marveled at his handiwork and excellent collection of bric-a-brack.

friday i drove peter to work and went to drop off my broken sewing machine at the post office. then i picked out my bridesmaids dress for alicia's wedding. then i went to every thrift store in the severna park/pasadena area, then to a giant mall, then to aldi and more thrift stores. then i was pooped.

saturday we went to attman's deli and ate our corned beef, brisket and pickles in the park. and drank cream soda. and dog-watched. after we went to lots of thrift stores and got shopped out. peter found good records. i found a mini steelmasters card catalog.

sunday we finally finished watching the last three episodes of the wire. now we get to start over with season 1.

i have been somewhat seriously considering going back to school.. that ended and now i'm somewhat seriously considering opening an etsy shop. except i don't have anything to sell.

more excellent news [from oh no they didn't]

more bad news.. and it's still getting worse. i've got an eye twitch.

booze, books, birthday..

please buy something from my mom on ebay. i have spent the better part of three days cataloging, photographing and listing things for her for a commision. if i made 10$ i will be amazed. i will be listing things for weeks as she is a packrat and i need some dough.

last friday we went to the union with a friend of peter's and had some beers. they've added fancy chairs and stools to the MC. there was less spilled beer than usual. afterwards we went back to the house where i had some wine [in addition to the wine i had drank before the union..] then apparently fell asleep on the couch. johans visited and i gave her a fashion show with my sal army finds [or so i'm told] then fell asleep during an episode of bad girls club.

saturday felt poo-ish but had to go to the rents to begin my enterprise with ebay. i also played with lots of kittens and scooped lots of poo. when i got home that night val and timmy were visiting [timmy was sporting some serious 70s beard-face and long hair] and we all ate pizza and had chats. johans and ad joined us later on and we smoked some hookah. once again, i partook in one too many vodka/cranberries [apparently three is too many] and was put to bed early.

sunday i was feeling well beyond my [almost] 26 years. i had unfortenetly over-celebrated and had the hangover from hell all day.. while continuing to catalog ebay items and attempt to make fish stew, cheddar biscuits and a roasted root veggie salad for 12 of my closest family members. luckily by time dinner was over and it was time for cake and ice cream i was miraculously healed. woooo

monday was my for-real birthday.. i woke up feeling [finally] completely un-hungover and finished packaging and posting all ebay items. i packed my car full with boxes from the garage and spent the night looking through middle school yearbooks and high school photo class projects. although i did not do much to celebrate my birth i did eat leftover chocolate cake with strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast. and had birthday chats with some peeps.

today i spent some quality time with peter and henry. peter played with his facial hair. i cleaned house.

tomororw petey goes to baltimore and i will try not to get too lost while visitng sal army's along telegraph.

too tired to alliterate.

been feeling like something is about to happen lately. maybe because things are back to normal. sleeping in tiny, creeky hostel beds doesn't look so terrible now..

last friday i made sure to look through the paper to scout any garage/rummage sale opportunities. i found a giant, american-style second hand store in berlin and made sure to check out practically every rack, but it only made me miss my regular summer saturday morning routine even more. eat a giant breakfast and getting lost all day driving to garage sales and buying random nonsense. i found one "jumble" sale at a church only three miles away so i google mapped it and we set out to shop. of course we got lost on the way. britain needs to work on signing it's roads.. so, when we got there at 2 they were packing everything up! a lady asked us if we were here for the sale. i said yes, i thought it started at 1. she said it did but these things get over with quickly. what! i have been to a lot of church sales in my day and they do not last for only an hour. they have cookies and coffee and casseroles and make a day of it. this congregation must have had add.! i want to come and buy your old junk and you can't even sit there for an hour. goodness. anyhow, she let us look around, which was nice, but i went to pick up a coat and another lady snatched it up to shove in to a garbage bag and said, you should have gotten here earlier love... bah

after that disappointment we headed back, stopped on the way to get some veggies at the green grocers. we discovered they had joined two buildings together to form an almost grocery store. we were excited to have an option besides the ridiculously crowded tesco and aldi in town. they had a giant selection of chapattis/pitas and a better selection of italian pasta brands than tesco carry. we bought a bag of tiny star of david shaped pasta. later that afternoon we picked up goodies [stinkiest, stickiest, most rank piece of brie i've ever eaten] from the french market in st. ann square and went home to lounge and start season three of the wire.

sunday morning, in another attempt to find second hand stuffs, we took the bus to new smithfield carboot sale and market. it was not very impressive, but it was very crowded. mostly cheap electronics that will set you house on fire and polyester clubbing gear. and a strange meat auction-ish event that sounded like a creepy announcer at a carnival game.. afterward we ate asda sandwiches on the walk to victoria baths. There was a table-top sale but it was lame. mostly handicrafts and romance novels. last time we tried to see the building it was covered in scaffolding, so i'm glad we got to come back and explore the pretty (in a very creepy way) building.

also in the news..

sad but excellent NYT interview -ish with maurice sendak

strange and mildly aggravating story about rednecks and politics from BBC

been thinking about how baltimore would be an excellent home [can't be that far off from detroit] and falling deeper into the wire abyss.. did you know mcnulty is british? i love it when bubbles calls him mcnutty.. hahaaaaa

this make me frightened. i miss having a whole isle devoted to canned vegetables

bon voyage

friday: ate ice pops in the park then made squid and cabbage for dinner, chatting with kelly about imaginary men and drank cocktails while watched american tv shows.

saturday: more of the usual wandering manchester, drinking bubble tea. there was a tiny jazz festival [with obligatory beer tent] and separate dance festival in town. we saw some interpretive dancer with two orange-coat wearing body guards near exchange square. after grocery shopping we bought 1pound strawberries that were tiny and so delicious. we also went down oldham and into the northern quarter to check out retro rehab. they buy vintage clothes from all over [mostly the US i guess] then wash the mothball smell out and sell them at ten times the price. i bought the most perfect 80s ann taylor dress. it is white with purple polka dots and i love it. i will be wearing it all over the place. for dinner we ate the strawberries, drank more cocktails [mojitos!] and went to watch lyrics born. after the ehhh show we stuffed outselved with fried goodness from tastemasters.

sunday: hot and sunny and hazy. after lunch at home we needed to get out and get some breeze. we walked down the canal and around spinningfields. everyone we passed seemed to be drunk. three old men.. one wearing a white tank top with a red sunburn, one wearing black jeans, boots and a long sleeved shirt in 80º weather and one sipping from a wine bottle. they were all drunk. the guy with the black jeans was walking like he was on a moving boat. later we passed a guy near the library who was eating a bag of chips. he winked at us and smiled and shrugged as he lifted a chip to the sky.. like saying.. it is 2:30 in the afternoon and i'm walking down the street, drunk as a skunk eating these chips. isn't life grand. either that or he was making some lude suggestion or propositioning us for a three-way. either way, it was funny. we all chuckled together. we spent a while reading the paper and getting tan in the park then went home to..eat i guess? i forget. yes, we made calzones.

monday: work. we tried to get a fish curry at this n' that but they were closed by time we showed up at 5. instead we ate leftover broccoli, eggplant and mushroom calzones from the night before and cleaned house.

today: i forgot to set my out-of-office message even after being reminded five times, so, in an attempt to avoid co-workers, i got up early, skipped showering and went into work. it took a good 10 minutes for my computer to turn on then i got distracted by a co-worker with cookies, printed out some articles for peter and turned the computer off again.. without setting my out-of-office message! so i had to stay for another 15 minutes, for the pc to boot and outlook to load..

now we are lounging and will soon be packing and leaving for our first euro holiday ever! woo!

four more

i have been feeling completely crazy the past few days. i have no idea what to do with myself.. i don't want to pack things too early and i cannot even decide what to pack with what or how to pack them. i mostly fantasize about peter like i used to dream about justin white in the third grade. i almost feel as if we are going to meet for the first time, which is ludacris considering we are married people. see, i am going crazy.

the one person i should not be shopping for - considering i am moving and have next to no space to store my belongings - is myself. that giant, unavoidable fact aside, i have purchases some very adorable things this week. all from sal army, so it is merely recycling.. not really. anyhow, i found a black wool sweater dress and purple 60s dress with crazy puff sleeves that only sounds ugly. i cannot wait to wear them for petey. yay peter is coming home! wooo only four days. i should probably shave my legs and remove the toe nail polish i have had on since rachel's wedding.. sounds gross and is gross.

five for $5 fridays

i left work early and spent a few hours digging through the awesomeness that is the saginaw st. salvation army. i discovered a few weeks back that every friday you can get 5 pieces of clothing [originally marked $4.99 or below] for $5. This is an incredible motivator to comb through every rack in search of [at least] five items.. which i did very successfully this week. unfortunately i was not able to try most of what i picked out on due to many an old lady hogging the mirrors, but i ended up fairing very well.

i found four more polos for petey [bringing the total to 12? 15?]. i have been collecting them ever since he left for the UK and he realized we did not pack him enough clothes. maybe it was because his suitcase was full of music equipment... hopefully he will like what i've chosen.

for me i found 2 very cute dresses.. number one is a navy, poly-cotton, knee length dress with white button details on the shoulders. number two is a very 60s-ish yellow shift dress that is ridiculously see-threw. you can probably spy my blue underpants. i know, it's hot. dress number three cannot be worn as a dress.. when i finally tried it on it peeled my blue underwear halfway down my legs. this printed shift dress will be altered into a tank top. i also found a cute navy t-shirt and a white, acrylic cardigan.. yay! and i only spend $10.60. i look forward to visiting the other 3 thrift shops on the south side tomorrow.