I'm not hot shit in a wineglass, more curried goat in a paper cup

Still getting over the cold - I don't think that going out to look at houses, yesterday, was the best thing for it. But we saw some really interesting places! Eor wants the little bungalow we saw. The pipes in the heating system froze, because it was either improperly winterized or it was done too late, and it's impossible to tell if the furnace or water heater need to be replaced. And the kitchen looks completely impossible - it's so small that there's no space at all for a fridge and stove. I kept looking around and cocking my head like a spaniel, wondering how on earth they ever had this set up so as to cook. Only maybe they never did, because the back entry way is full of pizza boxes. The whole house is full of trash. But all the woodwork is original, the walls and ceilings and floors look true, the chimney looks sound, and it has a tiny garage which is still in good shape despite the door being gone.

The big drawback to the property itself is that it's a very small lot with absolutely no shade at midday. And that's not something it's easy to fix. A partial fix might be to grow peas and run their strings up the porch, but you can't just get a full-grown tree in like you can change out a water heater. Well, I mean, you can, hypothetically - I had a uncle who moved a gigantic tulip tree one time, but he had a crew, a crane, a backhoe, a large truck, and plenty of money from the woman who wanted it done.

Anyhow.

Just hanging around waiting for littleredhead and groundctrl, at the moment - we're supposed to go sledding :) - and trying to decide whether to make a thermos of hot chocolate or not. Or whether to make it from the old tried and true Nestle's instant or go with something more interesting. I got these chocolate balls from Granada for Christmas, from Eor's sister - one ball is supposed to be melted into three to five cups of water, strained, and then milk and sugar to taste, so it seems unlikely that I'll ever do this if I don't have someone to share it with. Several someones.

...

Whoops, I guess I should have posted the above. Sledding has been done and a wonderful feed of Indian food has been fed. I'm finishing myself off with coconut cookies that littleredhead brought for me, and some hot chocolate.

We had a wicked good time sledding! It's brilliantly sunny out, if cold, but we didn't feel the cold at all. 13F and we were sweating from climbing the hill. And then we did the Swedish hot chocolate ritual - where you squat on the ground, pour out two cups of chocolate and each couple shares a cup back and forth repeating the ritual phrases: "Did you see me hit that bump, man? I caught air! I totally ate snow!" and "What is the sound of one buttock throbbing?" And then we changed into dry things and found the appropriate Indian restaurant in which to rejuvenate ourselves. :)

I just swallowed, all at one go, all the amazingly cool little ficlets that daegaer's been posting over the past few days, and have no brain to properly compose comments on each. She always comes up with a twist on the story or a way to tell it that's somehow not quite what I would have expected. I think that's the particular genius which always makes me stand in awe.

So, for my part, I've had Lady Grey tea, blueberries swimming in goat's milk, and toast with chashew butter and tayberry preserves for my first breakfast, and that was all so very yummy that it makes me want more, but the point was to get myself moving early and go do all the things I didn't yesterday because the boy at the Chevy dealership neglected to phone me until 10AM to let me know that my window handle was in. I don't know if he just doesn't come in until that time or if he thought that because I was out there only shortly before that the day before that 10am was a suitable time for me to be leaving my house or what, but by then I had to tell him that it really was too late for me to go out.

I don't expect the fabric store to be open this early, but it looks as though we'll have the always delightful company of littleredhead and groundctrl with whom to peruse (or, as she said, ravage and plunder) the fabric store tomorrow, so that's okay. :D

Eor and I went to the Old Port Festival with littleredhead and groundctrl yesterday, and I acquired a silver (colored) ankle bracelet with little bells on it for $4, and a quite impressively dark red sunburn at the base of my neck for free. :) Photos (of the festival, not my red neck) will be forthcoming, I swear - I won't be lazy this time like I was with the Florida photos. Or rather, I'll BE lazy and find an easier way to do it, that way it might get done. I got all hung up on editing and choosing and renaming those Florida pics, that's what killed my momentum.

We haven't seen them in so long I'm afraid that I must have babbled like a crazy person. Ah, well.

Later we went to see Iron Man with a woman from binne. Very cool to meet her, she seems quite nice, and we hope to hang with her again, sometime. The movie was a lot of fun, but I'm not quite sure why people are so gaga over it. I do agree, however, that Robert Downey Jr. did a great job. I like how they've retconned the Tony Stark character - the thing that was really lacking in the comic, when I was a kid, was that Stark was just square and boring. Now he's this goofy, impetuous genius, and it works well.

Most excellent visit with groundctrl and littleredhead - a gorgeous walk along a woods trail down to the Damriscotta River, then went to see their building site (woods, right now) and had a pot roast and roasted root veggies dinner (really good sweet potatoes, too - I'm not usually a fan of sweet potatoes), with ice-cream and applesauce afterward (they have the coolest apple peeler and corer, which was fun to use!) and much much much talk about books, Heinlein in particular (groundctrl expounded eloquently on Heinlein and gave lots of good opinions about how I could possibly write a Heinleinesque story if I should decide to take up that challenge), and the messed up state of the union. We were having such a good time we almost forgot to leave. Seriously, I'd hate to be that guest that people are too kind to say "get the hell out!" to, but the conversation just kept bouncing.

Oh, and I almost forgot the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, which we taste-tested - I had dirt and earthworm together, because that seemed appropriate. Sardine is not too bad if followed by pepper, and bacon is not really that bad, at least to start, though it gets a little weird at the end. Soap stays in your mouth forever - ptheh! I didn't dare try to get the buttered popcorn because I was afraid to grab a vomit or earwax bean by accident. I didn't expect that they were really going to BE like actual gross flavors, I figured they'd just used their regular flavors and gave them gross names, but with how convincing the sardine one was... I just couldn't risk getting vomit. They actually had to have people taste stuff and compare! Can you imagine having that job? :P "Here, eat this worm. Now tell me if we got this bean to taste the same."

We brought home a ladybug by accident - she rode on our windshield all the way, so eor felt we should reward her tenacity by bringing her into our home. As soon as we got her in here she disappeared, of course. :)

I'm dead tired, now. Must consider falling down. It's a good tired, though. :)

I was welcomed home by cyberquail asking, "How was your Armageddon?" 

Nothing much.  It was a rather blah Armageddon - pretty much like every other day, oddly enough.  But the Armageddon Curry she and eor cooked up was most excellent. ;)  

Followed by a blueberry/rum lhassi.  Yay! :) 

Also, Trailer Park Boys is really pretty awesome.  This evening we watched another three episodes, the second of which was titled, "I'm not gay.  I love Lucy.  Wait a minute, maybe I am gay."  And then in the last ep that we watched this evening ( spoilers! )

( one cut, since multible cuts really don't make sense anyway )
That kept us up until midnight...

...and we got up at 4:30am to start the long drive home. 

eor is of course doing his post about the weekend, but I suppose I can still do my own notes.  This, of course, is actually written on 8/16 and backdated.

Friday:
( Five states between us and our goal... )( ...and my birthday celebration. )

(because other things distracted me from posting about it at the time...)

Kayaking on Monday with the TSA Adventure Club (aka The Ladies from Work)* was fun! :)  They bus you from the store, provide kayaks, paddles, water sneakers and flotation vests, and have two guides who take you out and might even give you impromptu tour guide talks if you get marooned by the tide. ;)  All for $12.  And then you get a $12 voucher against doing the half-day course, so it'd be $37.  I think in that one they teach more skills.  Anyway, it was a perfect day, and we saw Canada geese and some other kinds of stalky water birds in two different shades of gray/buff, and cows - you have to go through a cow pasture to get to the water.  (I'm not sure, but I think they are the beef steers belonging to Wolfsneck Farm, so they're soon going to be organic steaks.  I base this conjecture entirely on not having noticed any udders.  The guides didn't mention this, I think they're afraid it will depress people.)  And we got the castle tower explained to us.

This castle tower is one of those weird things that attracts comment, because it's just sitting in the middle of a residential area, in someone's back yard.  Apparently it's the last remnant of one of those grand hotels from back in the day, and the person who owns the land now wants to tear it down, but he's prohibited from doing so because it's a landmark for all the ships in the area and is on all the marine maps.

And afterward we went to Gritty's and had a beer and some food and talked. :)

***
*Slinky (Mistress of the Night) suggested a kayaking trip, GK brought in info on the Walk-On Adventures, Al McL got there early and signed us all up and paid in advance, and other attendees were CF and CW.  They're a good bunch to go out with. :)

I'm going to talk more about Wednesday, because there was so much in it.

That afternoon we found out Eor will have to have a CAT scan, and possibly surgery on his ear. It appears now as though his repeated ear infections might actually be caused be a cyst in there. He's not feeling really happy about the prospect of surgery, and is concerned he might lose some hearing.

And after seeing the Dr in Dover NH we continued on from there to Portland ME to see Adam Brodsky's show. First we hooked up with some friends (Caw, Lorelei [ETA Lorelei = mollyrazor], and Lorelei's new boyfriend A) and had dinner (at Norm's on Congress Street - if you ever get to Portland that's the best place to eat), then walked around being obnoxious drunks on the streets of Portland. Stopped at Amigo's (a dive bar, for those of you who don't know Portland).

Eor and I used to have a massive thing for Lorelei, but she was married then. Well, she's not married anymore, a recent development, but she met A before breaking up with L. :P Oh well. It IS good to see her happy. We teased her and flirted as a compliment, anyway, and A seemed to be taking it in stride that she wants to flirt with _everyone_ - she's so delighted to be out of the bad relationship.

Caw is hysterically funny - she doesn't drink, but she doesn't NEED to. Everyone else around her needs to drink just to get to the same zone which she normally inhabits.;)

So they were great to hang out with.:)

Then we went to the show, at the Free Street Taverna (which, by the way, is also not a shoddy place to eat - Greek cuisine). Brodsky, as always, was cool.:) Eor went up and talked with him before the show. Eor DOESN'T usually voluntarily speak with people, so this made me very curious. A few minutes later Brodsky came by our table and said hi, talked with us all for a few minutes, and expressed his condolences about my Grandfather. And, later on during the show, he dedicated his song "Dough" to me, because Eor had told him it's my favorite.:) Well, it's hard to have a favorite, but I like it a lot. So, we danced - we were the only people in the place dancing, of course, this being Maine, and not a really large venue, either.:)

Thursday and today were fairly quiet.:) Thursday we cleaned house most of the day, and recovered, and today I've been a slug.:)