Thursday, October 27, 2005

Irving Plaza

Last night Ernie played at Irving Plaza. It was his first time. It was a lot of fun. He played with his new band backing Craig Wedren. They are really awesome. They opened for OK Go, who are really good. That band is so tight and solid. The frontman is so freakin' hot. I hadn't heard any of their stuff before other than that goofy web-video thingy. I have to say their shit rocks, influences range from the Cure to the Violent Femmes, but their song writing could use a little work.

Craig's new record, Lapland is so good. You should buy it. Craig used to be in a band called Shudder to Think. He is such a nice guy. He currently writes the music for the Comedy Central show Stella. Craig is a great songwriter. The band is Ernie, Kevin March on drums (from Guided by Voices) and Kevin McGuiness on guitar. These guys are hot. The next show is next Friday 11/4 at the Living Room on the lower east side.

Has anyone ever said to you "Not to name drop but, nobody ever calls me anymore except U2. I wish someone else would call me once in a while." WHAT!? Sometimes it just amazes me how my life has become such a twilight zone episode- now I'm going to go bid on some keywords...

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Retraction

OK - all of my Blogging friends and family. Yesterday's Blog post was not directed at all y'all (right back atcha Steph :-)). I was really ranting about myself; my poor grammar and typing skills, my boring stories about buying and selling property (like, is this really something one should complain about?), my self-indulgent diary-like Blog style, yada, yada, yada...

Truthfully, I enjoy reading other people's lives online. The problem is that lately I have not had very much time to keep up to date with all of my blog reading. The last thing I read from Anne was about her poor neighbor with the sudden and unexpected brain tumor. It broke my heart and made me extremely paranoid (surely my recent lack of memory is related to my very own latent brain tumor!). I thought, this is bad. Very bad. I can't keep reading these things until I learn to seperate my life from the lives of those I read about. Some strange psychoses that I seem to have developed in my later years. Don't ask.

Deanne's Blog seems to have fallen by the wayside, which is a shame because that was much more scandalous and explicit than The OC, Desperate Housewives, or any other evening Soap. And I have neglected poor Josette's Blog for far too long (whose latest entry I see is entitled "Bug in a Cup"). I do apologize my sisters, and I promise to read again if you will only continue to write.

So I apologize and thereby retract anything I said that may have offended my fellow Bloggers. Please, Blog away and I will keep reading as much as I can.

Thank you.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I Don't Know Why

But I just can't seem to write on this thing anymore. It has become a chore really, more than anything else.

I mean, I constantly think of things and then think to myself "Hey! This should go on the blog!" but then I wonder if all of this blogging isn't just self-indulgent and annoying to others. And of course I know that if what I write is irritating then a person has the right to continue reading or to remove the Blog address from their bookmarks folder, never to return. Either way is fine, really. I thought that was the whole point, in the beginning.

I think now, however, after reading other personal Blogs, that I don't really want people to think I am self-indulgent, flakey, conceided, pompous, etc. I mean, I am sure I am all of these things, but that doesn't mean I need to point it out, does it? And I especially don't want everyone to think I have poor grammar or spelling skills - all of these typos really show me off in a negative light. It's a lot of pressure, to be sure.

So anyway, for now I am laying off the blog posts. And besides, it seems I have become increasingly busy at work, with no time to slip in a blog entry during the day and no desire to do so when I wake up in the morning or after returning home from work. So if anything AMAZING happens, or if I see anything completely outlandish in my daily travels, I will surely report it. But I need to rethink my overall blogging strategy before reinstating the daily "diary" entries.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Lumber Jack Photos

Here are those photos I promised:

The original tree, the one that nature took down
The tree that Ernie and Mike decided to take down








The second tree made short work of the
chain saw - Good for cutting trees around
corners, as Ernie pointed out

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

If a Tree Falls In the Woods...

As told by Ernie to Anne (photo to follow):

[When we called on Saturday] We were trying to get to you to borrow a chainsaw. We had a HUGE tree down across the driveway. Our Saw is in the shop (plus it is only 12 inches).

Frank Savitsky, who has like 75 chain saws, was nowhere to be found.

So we called the other neighbor when on Sunday we still hadn't removed the tree. So he comes over with his dad's saw. 20" Echo (expensive) and proceeds to do short work of the tree, we get it out, start drinking Yangs [Yuengling Beer] and smoking ciggs.

Real man over wilderness type stuff.

When he asks, "you got any other trees you want to take down while I got the saw?"

If anyone ever asks you this SAY NO!!!!!!!!

But we didn't know any better.

So, this guy [Mike] and I pick the tallest meanest thickest tree that is right next to the driveway, and he proceeds to go to work on it.

It sOOOOOOOOOO should have fallen into the woods, but this tree decided to fall back over the driveway. On the way down it pinches the saw blade and proceeds to take the saw out.

The saw is in Like 2 pieces and the blade is so bent that it is only good for cutting around corners.

So of course Nancy and I feel realllllly bad and give him a check to help pay for a new saw for his dad. (The whole point of borrowing a saw was to not have to buy one) so now it looks like we have to buy 2 saws; one for the guy and now one for us to get the new monster tree out of our driveway. Cuz of course Nancy and I were too stupid to put our cars on the other side of the tree, so now both of our cars are traped up by the house.

So Nancy and I hack an alternate path through the woods [Go Big Blue! Nothing like a 4x4] and drive around the downed tree to freedom and LOWES.

On the way we get a call from my parents' friends who were in Atlantic city all weekend, and they have a saw we can borrow.

Saved.

So we go and get the saw and it is a 16" blade and the tree is like 4 feet in diameter.

So we spend like 2 hours trying to get a cut through, which results in us finaly getting the saw bound up in the tree and haveing to use the truck to pull a section of the tree I cut out of the huge monster tree. It finaly works after like 4 tries and the saw is free and we have a huge 3' x4' piece of tree and the 2 other huge ends.

The neighbor comes back and has an idea of driving his truck into the woods and
hooking a chain around the shorter stump and hauling it off of the road . We rig it all up and in a few minutes the tree is clear enough so the hyuandi can get through.

Ugggggggg!

Monday, October 03, 2005

Closing Day

I am getting really bad at the blogging thing. Though all the spammers seem to think I do a bang up job of it!

So today we buy a house. We are closing on the house in Stamford but we aren't moving in today. Nope. We are just closing and then coming back to spend the night in Brooklyn. Frustrating, really. But for us it makes no sense to move everything and start paying the commuting cost until we have an accepted offer on our Brooklyn apartment - which we don't. So instead, we are bringing some stuff that we know we won't need anytime in the next month:

1. One bottle of Blue Caracao Liquer
2. One bottle of Grenadine
3. One bottle of Godiva Liquer (seeing a trend here?)
4. Books
5. Books
6. More, books
7. Old towels
8. Old sheets
9. 10 bars of soap
10. 3 cans of refried beans
11. 2 boxes Macaroni & Cheese
12. 3 bottles of hair conditioner
13. Winter parka (hopefully we won't be needing these anytime soon)
14. Did I mention books?
15. 1 kitchen chair

I have no idea how we ended up stocking up on things like soap and refriend beans, these things just happen I suppose. So we will be carting off our unused back-stock of goods. I am sure the house will feel homey in no time at this rate.

I had to throw in the kitchen chair because once I took a minute to think about it I realized that there will be absolutely no place to sit in the house while drinking our Blue Hawaiis, reading books while gnoshing on macaroni & cheesey refried beans.

OK. My husband is barking at me from the other room to get off line and help him "get ready to go". I am guessing what he really means is "please get in here and keep me from pulling out every strand of my hair while I bang my head against this mirror and smoke 200 cigarettes..." So I'd better get in there before I end up with a nut job on my hands.