Quite the Handfuls

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Yesterday, when sorting through some old stuff, I stumbled upon this Polaroid, which seems like it was taken a lifetime ago. This is from the early Aughts, I think. This picture has quite the backstory, but I’ll let the readers try to piece it together as an exercise. I’m going to have to make some time to look over my other photos from this chapter of my life. There must be a couple more just like this one.

Some things that I want to do coming up in Spring is maybe a mini-golf outing and also a glass blowing class with another couple friends of ours. If they bag though maybe we can go with any other of our friends that may be interested. I also still want to try that axe throwing thing, that’s been on my bucket list for a while now.

This afternoon while I was walking around the flower gardens today, I noticed the daffodils starting to blossom and the tulip leaves starting to emerge. I also observed a snowdrop that I planted a few years ago is now in bloom, a lone soldier braving the cold to reach the sun. I’ll need to do some spring cleaning, get rid of some leaves, and so on, but not yet. I was thinking tonight might be a nice night to light the firepit, but I’ll wait on that as well. It’s nice to know that I won’t have to wait too long to do these things, and maybe even get the grill out a bit early.

Today also happens to be Pi Day (you know, as in 3.14159…) Normally I would celebrate by eating a pizza pie but I’ll probably save that for tomorrow as today I plan on trying my hand at making a mushroom ravioli dish.

Windy Day Appointment

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Had a dental appointment this morning so I went and got that out of the way. The typical 6-month checkup and I don’t have to go back until 6 months later so that’s all well and good. He did tell me to get some stuff for my gums which I guess have been inflamed lately so they called it in and I picked it up at the pharmacy a little while later. I’m pretty sure I’ve had this stuff before so it’s no big deal. Oh, I also discovered that the city of Cambridge is doing a bike ride this weekend so I might go ahead and do that, ahead of the usual May ride, depending on the weather and if I’m feeling it the day of. We’ll see.

Small Weekly Updates and Beach Waves

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B.E.A.C.H.: Best Escape Anyone Can Have.

Went to Earth-1 to run some errands, visited my grandparent’s grave in Malden, had a treat at Kelly’s Roast Beef, visited LD’s old landlady who recently lost her husband who was a very nice man, celebrated LD’s birthday, and yeah, that’s about it.

We made a quick visit to the beach today since it was kind of nice out. When we arrived we were amazed at how active the waves were and the water itself was quite close to the entry points. We had never seen the water travel up that high before.

Today we plan on making the lemon soup again.

Currently reading: Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers and Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself by Hef’s last wife.

Happy Birthday LD!

Posted on by Markman

Happy Birthday to the love of my life!

Through thick and thin, you’ve been my rock, my confidante, and the greatest adventure partner anyone could ask for.

You inspire me every single day with your compassion, empathy, and wit. Your laughter always melts my heart, and I wouldn’t trade our watching-tv-while-on-heating-pads-night talks and silly inside jokes for anything.

This year, I wish you the best and all you could want. I can’t wait to celebrate with you and make more unforgettable memories together.

Here’s to many more years of laughter, love, and growing stronger together.

With all my love,

Mark

Sparkle

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Got to hang out with my friend Sparkle at the Sanctuary today. We went there after visiting LD’s old landlady whose husband recently passed away, so we were providing some support. I made some killer salmon and we brought bagels too and had a nice brunch visit.

Back to the Grind

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I have to find one of those Giant Arcade Hungry Hungry Hippos games up in this area and get some of our friends to play on it with us. It supports up to four players at a time. It would be really fun.

Living It Up in Lavalette

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Day 1: Running Around the Beach

Arrival!
Staying here
Hoops!

Day 2: Giant Hungry Hungry Hippos Experience

Wavy this weekend
We’ve arrived
Gotta find this by us
Winnings!

Day 3: Coffee and Meetups

Fun couple of days away. Got to see some family, hang out at a house by the beach, partake in the local activities, take a side jaunt through New York State to catch up with a friend (shout out to The El Dorado Diner in Elmsford!) and grateful for the good times. Didn’t get back from travelling until late last night, hence the sparse update- have to recuperate!

Currently Reading: Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth by Natalie Haynes

Visiting some Goat Friends and Getting New Brakes

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We spent yesterday hanging out with some goats at the Sanctuary. I hadn’t been there in a while, and we dropped off some food for the animals. After all of that and returning home for some relaxation, we cooked up a storm, preparing a variety of recipes, some for later in the week. I finally had some time today to travel to Earth-1 and get my brakes done; it had been long overdue, and I’m delighted to be able to mark that off my list.

Currently Reading: Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night by Lisa Belkin.

The Valentine’s Card

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I picked up this special card 8.5×11 card a little while ago and wrote things in the circles from Carson and I and then covered them up with scratch off stickers, so that when the circle is scratched the saying I wrote will be seen. Pretty neat, huh?

I also have a special unique thing planned for LD, but it isn’t quite ready yet, which is a shame, but I’m hoping it’ll come relatively soon and turns out extremely well.

The new couch got delivered this afternoon! Yay!! Great Laz-E-Boy store pickup. Just hope that Carson doesn’t take clawing to it. We’ll have to watch that.

Happy Galantines Day, Ladies!

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So much for a snow day! They really messed up on this one, a real blockbuster ended up being pretty much of a dud! Don’t get me wrong, I prefer to have little top no snow, and I appreciate the day off (I have to move my regular duties to this Friday) but it’s like I said before. The better the technology gets in weather predicting, the worse the forecasts are. Actually I don’t think it’s the tech, it’s the analysis of the models. Plus the media likes to hype stuff up ridiculous. I actually don’t really pay attention to them anymore to be honest. Rather just use my phone and see the day before what the day after will bring.

So what exactly is Galentineโ€™s Day? The iconic celebration is an unofficial holiday that takes place on Feb. 13, the day before Valentine’s Day. Its entire premise is that women forget about any significant others for the day โ€” and solely focus on celebrating the female friends in their lives. Contrary to the popular criticism that Galentine’s Day patronizes single women, the celebration is meant to be a day of empowerment, and a reminder for women to support and uplift one another. It’s about “ladies celebrating ladies,” as Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope, would put it.

This afternoon we made a lemon orzo chicken soup, and it came out really good. Today was the perfect afternoon to make a soup, in my opinion. I’ve already eaten three bowls of it and plan on having more of it tonight, that’s how much I liked how this one came out!

The Case of the Cute Cuddling Capybaras

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We got to partake in an amazing experience yesterday. getting to cuddle and play with a pair of capybaras! I love them! Their fur feels like straw. I never thought in a million years I’d ever be able to play with a capybara, let alone two. I remember seeing this animal in a zoo a few years ago and only learned about their existence a few scant years ago. To me, they seem to be the next up and coming “big thing.” We also go to see a wallaby which had a baby popping it’s head out of her pouch every now and again, which was cool to see, and a special cat, some yaks, alpacas and, of course, some goats, but the capybaras were the stars of the show for me! We were lucky to even get into this experience as it is currently very limited but I hit it just right and was able to get us access. The location of all this wonder was down in Mattapoisett, a town down on the southern coast. It was a bit chilly.

Planning on checking out the Puppy Bowl later today. It’s an animal filled weekend!

Trimming the Bush(es)

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I completed a number of tasks today to take advantage of the warmer weather this weekend. That makes sense, with temperatures in the 60s tomorrow and snowfall on Tuesday. Today I even got to talk to a woman who told me she was from Afghanistan and comes by me every now and again so we struck up a short conversation. Anyway, after my shift, I went ahead and decided to attack the insane rose bushes out front. I wanted to drastically reduce the size of those babies. Meanwhile, LD went to urgent care to see about a sore throat she’d been getting. And last night Carson gave us a little scare as a string was coming out of his butt and wouldn’t dislodge but I eventually got it out. Thankfully he’s fine now. That boy needs to stop eating strings! Also, since it’s National Pizza Day, I had to get some tonight. But back to the rose bushes.

I trimmed them way back and also had access to some invasive plants there that I wanted to get rid of for a long time but it was just too difficult to get to. But not today! A couple of hours of hacking and they were gone! Come to find out there was a patch of daffodils under there just trying to breathe. They can get the full sun now! Of course the only negative thing is that where the thorns clipped my fingers every now and then through my gloves, they itch. But that will go away.

Ballin

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Surrounded by silver balls. We’re back to watching season of NYPD Blue since we took a break to watch the entirety of seasons of Nip/Tuck. We just got through the gut wrenching sad death of Bobby Simone , which goes across 5 episodes and what I thought was extremely well done.

Other than nothing, nothing earth-shattering to report just yet. Oh, a countertop guy did come by this afternoon and fixed a couple of things in the kitchen but he was done within the hour and it looks great.

Capybara Cuddles for my Valentine? You betcha! More to come on this development!

Helping Out a Few Migrant Families

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Tuesday is my busiest day of the week usually. This time on my rounds I changed it up a bit and went around some different ways which ended up being quite fruitful. Some folks think they have the schedule down which is why we like to change it up a bit every now and then. All you have to do is follow the signs and you’ll never have a problem!

In the late afternoon I dropped off some supplies for donation that LD heard about for some migrant families living in town and what they needed. So I went and took the stuff down to the home to be dropped off. It helps out these folks and we were able to get rid of some stuff that was just lying around so it was good to get it moved. Win-win situation.

Gametime; A cute little puzzlescript game called A Rat in Cheesetown. Don’t worry, I didn’t find it difficult but a fun diversion for a few.

Carousing at the Cat Cate

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It ended up being a real “cat” kind of day. In the morning I went to a pharmacy store to get a baby card for someone who just had a baby and while I was there I noticed this really cute planter in the shape of a cat with a cactus in it so I got it. Sort of an impulse buy but I thought it was pretty cute, especially since I lost on on the ones Trader Joe’s supposedly had last summer but I could never find. We took a trip out to Tiverton, RI this afternoon to check out a cat cafรฉ! We didn’t know what to expect but come to find out, the place was actually very cute.

Many of the cats were sleeping when we initially came (actually, we had beverages and I had a breakfast sandwich), but by the time we were finished, a lot of them had woken up and started playing with us. A black and white cat was still nursing her kids, which were very large by this point, but she permitted it, so there was that. They had installations along the walls that allowed the cats to move about the space and perches from which they could look into the cafรฉ area if they so desired. They had a ton of toys and a very cool what appeared to be handcrafted kind of a cat tree with branches in the corner. Eventually all the cats here will be up for adoption. It was fun way to spend a part of our afternoon. Afterwards we checked out a beach in the area but didn’t stay long and then headed back.

Of course, as cute as they all were none can compete with our Carson. Here he is in a shot I took that kind of reminds me of those Playboy Playmate shots in the magazines from the early 70s!

Highlights for a Saturday in January

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What’s been the highlight of your week? This image above was surely one of those. Can you guess where this was taken? I’ll give you a hint – it is in Massachusetts.

This morning I installed the rear wiper on my SUV. Easy peasy. You can find basically how to do anything on YouTube.

I saw a craft online where this person used some beach rocks to make a scene of a lighthouse and a sailboat passing by it. It looked really cool, I think I’m going to try to replicate it. We’ll see how I progress. The first step is obviously getting the rocks the right shape and size and in proportion to the other scene elements. Totally think I can pull it off though.

Note to self: I want to plan an outing back out to KBP in February to maybe check out some of the “Paint the Town Red” events. Maybe start the planning process now. (Yeah, it’s a marketing thing to get people to come there but it’s a cool place and we love it there- plus maybe we can tie in a Boomer visit).

In the early evening we went ahead and made a vegan-ish cheddar broccoli soup. Instead of dairy it uses raw cashews all mashed up. It was actually pretty tasty!

An Ordinary Thursday with Meanderings

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Bow to the King! The wonders of A.I.

Just playing around with some AI this afternoon. Doing a little face swapping on things. Like me on this Greek artwork. At least I think it’s Greek? Could be Roman I suppose. Anyways, it’s pretty good except I don’t think it got the hair quite right.

Not much to report on about today. Just shuffling around town doing my thing. It’s amazing that on the days you don’t think you’ll get a lot, you do, and when you think you’ll get a lot, you actually don’t. It’s so strange. Meanwhile, the head honchos want to have a meeting with us in a couple weeks to discuss some “issues.” Sounds ominous but that’s just the way these guys talk. Not sure what that’s all about but hopefully nothing too earth-shattering.

Currently Reading: Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom by Gypsy-Rose Blanchard. Looks like this will be an easy one, it’s only about 100 pages. I already know the story from all the television shows but it popped up as available, so I figured, what the heck. Give it a go You know the story, the one about the Munchausen by proxy.

See a Sunrise At Least Once a Day

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Here’s a fun Cape shot that I took a while back. It was cold and I had to get up super early to catch it, but I think it was totally worth it!

When I get a chance sometime and the next time I’m in downtown Boston, I wouldn’t mind checking out some of these Winteractive exhibits. You know I’d have to check out the whale and clown ones at the very least! ๐Ÿคก ๐Ÿคก๐Ÿคก

I went ahead and finally ordered a rear wiper blade for my SUV. Truth be told the rubber had worn out quite a while ago. I plan on installing that myself sometime this weekend.