Boston

I've had to travel to Boston quite a bit recently for work. On my last flight there last week I have the window seat, a Bostonian woman has the middle seat and a Texas gentleman has the aisle. During the decent into Logan (Boston's Airport) the Bostonian and the Texan start chatting. Their topics were the usual boring where are you headed, what do you do, where will you be staying chit chat that strangers have on an airplane.

At some point during my eavesdropping, she tells the fella (I'm trying to type accents here, so use your imagination) "You gotta go to Haavaaahd squwair. There is this greaat place called Fiya an Yce (Fire and Ice). They have gweat dwink specials an' the menu is auwsome."

The Texan says "Whuut's the naame agaain?"

She replies "Fiya an Yce."

Then he says "Culd you repeat that again?"

Again she says "Fiya an Yce."

Then it clicks for the Texan..."Oh, Fiyer and Iyce."

South meets northeast and the communication barrier is bridged.

the great wind storm of aught eight

We had a wee bit of wind damage from the great wind storm of '08. It was very minor compared to others in our neighborhood who lost entire sections of shingles or others in town who had trees falling on rooftops, garages and cars.

I had to fly out of town for work on monday so our neighbor was nice enough to tack up my fascia/flashing (whatever it's called -- see photo). But I still had to snap back in a piece of siding above the garage door and shimmey up onto our roof and flip a shingle back over. That, let me tell you, is not something I want to do again soon. I was scared out of my mind climbing up there....but all is back together again.

5k

Xander and I ran our first official 5k together today and it was awesome! We've been running together since it's been nice this spring and we have a good time on saturday mornings when we go out.

I ran a pretty good race and finished with 26:10. I ran the first mile in 7 minutes, but then completely fell off the pace when they introduced the hills. My 5k route that I take through our neighborhood twice a week has no hill action what-so-ever. Nothing. So when I get these itty bitty hills, my legs cried revolt!

It was pretty awesome though because the race takes place 15 minutes before our local parade starts and the streets are lined with onlookers. Xander and I were the first parent-kid combo to run along the route and I ran in a wake of "oh, look at the baby", "ohh, how cute", "now that's how I like to run"; as Xander relaxed and enjoyed the scenery. There was even a female onlooker who crooned "whooo-hooo 121!". It's tough to laugh when you are wheezing and gasping for air.

did you hear that?

That was the sound of me falling off of the blogging bandwagon. KerthUMP.

I'll put something up here interesting once I'm not working a crapload of hours.

The cool things to talk about like our front yard that we are trying to landscape or the garden have fallen by the wayside because my weekends have been occupied with work. Thank goodness I haven't had to cut the grass.

I'm timid to admit this but I'm reading one of the wife's chick novels starring Stephanie Plum; it's pretty funny. One for the Money is the title. It's a nice easy mindless read that takes place in New Jersey. Lately I've read books that are based in NJ...each one of them talks about how gross and disgusting it is...and for some reason I still would like to visit. Or at least go to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Redbank, NJ.