Beantown

We were in Boston a couple of weeks ago. Just me and the hubby for a vacation. Neither of us had ever been, so why not? It is a very walkable city and not as big as I was expecting. The T was great to get around on too. Although on Friday night we almost took it back to our hotel but I forgot the card so we ended up taking a cab. Between the station that we would of gotten on and the next one there was an accident and 46 people were injured when one train rear ended another. I'm not sure if it was inbound or outbound but I am super glad I forgot the card!!! Wouldn't that have sucked? We ate at some good places but not fabulous. Antico Forno was my favorite in the North End (Italian District). Fenway was fun! Sox won 13-3, scoring 12 runs in the 6th inning to tie a record. The place was a madhouse. We did a Duck Tour- it was cheesy but fun! We sat next to Tim McCarver (an old time Cardinal) on the Duck Tour who still calls the World Series and who called at Fenway Sat nite. Steve was the only person who recognized him. We went to Harvard and Hah-vahd Square, Boston Common, Boston Public Library, Public Gardens (loved this!!), Newbury Street, Beacon Hill, Freedom Trail, USS Constitution... We had desserts and drinks at The Top of the Hub which was cool. It overlooked the whole city.

AJ had picked this book, You Can't Take a Balloon Into The Museum of Fine Arts, up from the library before we left although I didn't realize it then that it was about Boston (and it didn't have any words- just illustrations). I picked it out of the bag 2 days after we got back and it was so funny because we did EVERYTHING in the book EXCEPT go to The Museum of Fine Arts! So there are some funny pictures and it gave me a way to tell him about our trip. The story line (picture line) is that the little girl has a balloon and she can't go into the museum with it so her Grandma stays outside with it and it floats all through the city and people in each place (Fenway, an ump and 3rd baseman) help her grab the balloon and continue with her. Of course she gets the balloon back right in front of the museum right when the girl is walking out. It is a neat book.

Steve & I at Faneuil Hall in front of the Samuel Adams statue. We thought this was going to be really cool but it wasn't. A bunch of junky souvenir shops in a historic building... And then outside was a bunch of chain restaurants and shops, whatever.

How cute is this? This was in the middle of the Harvard campus! Absolutely had to take a picture!!

Steve at Fenway!! We had really crappy seats but we stayed dry when it was raining and we could see everything, so who cares? They played the Indians that night and won 13-3.

More Fenway

Tell me this picture isn't so cool! These were the tulips at the Boston Public Garden. There were 9000 planted in the park!!

Again with the tulips... They just look like they are glowing.

I thought the cemeteries were really cool here. All the graves were so old. This of course is Samuel Adams grave but I took pictures of several other tombstones that had kitschy pictures of an angel dancing with a skeleton and skulls with wings. I didn't post them because I didn't want to be too macabre. There are stories about why designs were chosen and a lot of them had the same designs.

Trinity Church. This church was so pretty. It is on the Freedom Trail. The Freedom Trail was marked all over the city by red bricks and was about 1.5-2 miles. You couldn't lose your way!

Where everybody knows your name... Cheers Bar. (Taken from the Duck tour)

Book Review: Henny-Penny retold & illustrated by Jane Wattenberg

Henny Penny isn't a new story by any means but this one is HILARIOUS! The 'illustrations' which are photographs cut out are so funny. Honestly, the pictures are a little scary for a youngin but I was cracking up the whole time! And when I read to my guy I use voices and accents (not very well but I still do it) and read loud and it was fun to read aloud. This book should be on your list the next time you are at the library.

Craig's List

I admit it. I am a Craig's List novice. Never bought anything off of it, never sold anything on it. Same with Ebay. It's just overwhelming to me. I did buy one thing off of Ebay once and I hated bidding on something that I knew someone else was just driving the price up on. I ended up paying $20 for something that was 'retired' but originally cost $12. Yesterday, I posted some big stuff on Craig's List because I don't want to ship it anywhere because it would cost a fortune. I posted 6 things that have not been used since forever. Four of the six I have received bids on in less then 24 hours, 1 of them in less than 2 hours. If I knew it would be that easy to get rid of my crap I would have done this a long time ago!

I do have the purging feeling lately. I have things that have never seen the light of day and keep being carried from one house to another house (hopefully THAT won't happen anytime soon again- no more moving!!), one room to another room and most likely end up in the storage room. More like accumulating room. It has a tendency to just accumulate things. Over the long weekend I moved my studio from an upstairs bedroom to a room downstairs that just got a set of new french doors & a paint job. There is no closet in this room so I am using a portion of the 'accumulating' room as a closet (the door for the storage room is in the studio and the storage room is HUGE so no worries). As I am moving and reorganizing, I just couldn't believe how much stuff I had. Scrapbook paper? I could open a store! And here's the kicker: I DON'T EVEN SCRAPBOOK!!! But I do use it for my cards. Like 1/32nd of it... I had it organized into polka dots, stripes, flowers, etc. but that isn't working for me. I think I need to go by color instead. First, I need to get rid of 3/4 of it and then organize it by color. Other craft things that I am never going to get to? Check. Have lots of them. A desire washes over me, I buy the materials and then they sit and sit and eventually I forget why I bought this stuff in the first place. What project?

So what this boils down to is that I am going to take the money I make off my Craig's List listings and buy some more scrapbook paper and maybe take up crocheting. Hmmmmm... :)

Book/Movie Reviews: Twilight, Midnight Sun, New Moon

I am reading the Twilight saga... I like it. A lot. I don't know what is getting me sucked into this madness. Maybe it is the easy going writing, I don't know.

Twilight (the book) was awesome. I loved it. It was romantic and I didn't want it to end (and I have 3 books to go so I guess I'm in luck...). I'm not sure why it was romantic, I mean who would really want to fall in love with a vampire? Sounds really creepy to me actually. And the fact that he is always cold? That doesn't sound really comfortable when they are getting it on. Well I suppose there was no getting it on really... After all this is a teen book.

I thought the movie sucked. It didn't follow the book enough to do it justice and was super cheesy. Like I said before, I don't like Rob Pattinson. I don't think he is that good looking (and that is the one thing that was emphasized over and over in the book). And even though the whole family is suposed to be super fantastic looking- Jasper looked like a FREAK. They should have kept Peter Facinelli's (Carlisle) hair his own brown color (or just gave him highlights) instead of dying it blonde. Same with Nikki Reed (Rosalie). You could see the make-up lines that made them 'pale' and it looked awful. My high school's make up crew could have done a better job and they were all regular students!! And one other side note, why did they change the Biology teacher's name? Did they think people wouldn't notice? That was just weird. This is better than the movie. Check it out. It is hilarious!

So then my friend Lindsay told me about Midnight Sun which I read fast and furiously on my laptop despite the fact that to read the computer screen makes me sleepy. Midnight Sun is Twilight in Edward's perspective. It is only a partial draft as it was leaked onto the internet. So Stephenie Meyer was pissed that it was leaked and put it on her website and probably won't finish it. Here is the link to it. Bummer. It was again really good. And I didn't want it to end and it did right in the middle! I finished Twilight and read this 3 days later and it is basically the same book! What's wrong with me...

So I wasn't going to read the next one in the series so soon but since we were going to Boston I thought I would have time to finish it and not be ignoring my son while I was obsessed with reading it. I had also heard that this one was the worst book of the series. I liked it but didn't love it like Twilight. I am not crazy about werewolves and it was so obvious what was going to happen in this book that it could have been about 200 pages shorter. It ended on a weird note and was unresolved (maybe it will be resolved in Eclipse?). And there was hardly any Edward in it.

I started Eclipse late last night. I am also reading another good book (Stalked by Brian Freeman) at the same time. What I don't like about Stalked is that it is the third Detective Stride book and I haven't read the first two and it gave away the stories of the other two. Don't you hate when they do that? Certain books shouldn't have to be read in order. Twilight- yes. It is a saga and the books are obviously a series but Stalked was the only book that I could find at Barnes & Noble when I was there. Note to all the authors of the world: if your book isn't an obvious series, don't spoil the other stories within it!!! I hate that! They should really number things... Thank you Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Sweet Valley High & Babysitter's Club authors and all the other authors that use a system to their series! You make it a lot easier for people to read and figure out how to read your books.

SLACKER!!

I am a total slacker! No post in 3 weeks??? For shame! I have A LOT to blog about- just trying to find the time...

AJ is two. He is behind in language so he goes to speech therapy. It is totally funny the words that he DOES say. Like microwave. WTF?? Why does he say microwave and not pig? I will never understand...

So I can't wink. Unless I put real effort into it and then it looks like I put effort into it and is weird. BUT when I eat something sour I can't stop winking. Bizarro. The sour hits a certain spot on my tongue and I keep winking. It's just very weird.

Just a couple of random thoughts...