Five days ago a very good friend of mine lost her husband. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to blog about it, but it’s been incredibly hard. I adore her—we’ve worked together for three years—and she adored her husband. They never had kids, were together for over 40 years and had the kind of marriage I hope the Chop and I have.
The funeral was this morning. Taps was played at the grave (he served in the Air Force) and she broke down hard when the Honor Guard handed her the flag. He’d been sick for a while—we exchanged stories of home health care issue (my Nana required that level of care the last few years of her life)—but she thought he had a few more years in him.
Earlier today we celebrated Chop’s birthday by going to a Celtics game. It’s now become his default gift: floor seats to one game and I go with him. 😛 It’s surprisingly fun, although today KG was out so that was a bummer. I did, however, get nailed in the head by a shirt thrown from one of the “get pumped up” people. Chop was too busy saving his beer to save my head (so mean) and I was too busy protecting my shoes from getting covered in soda (the teenagers next to us were thisclose to knocking over their drinks on my feet while jumping for the shirts).
And now we just finished watching the Super Bowl.
It’s totally been his day.
I did get really awesome sushi though, so to each his own.
From the NYTimes.com: Gary Chang, a Hong Kong architect, lives in a tiny apartment, but thanks to accordion-like wall units, he can create at least 24 different room configurations. Check it out.
This apartment is incredibly awesome and very futuristic (reminds me of The Fifth Element). If I had to live in small space, I would definitely want this guy building it for me. Chop and the dog would have to get their own next door. 😀
Whenever anyone asks me about the wedding, the question of gifts always comes up. And inevitably I end up defending my decision to not ask for gifts. I will not be registering for anything and we’re going to list charities people can donate too if they feel so compelled… but that’s never a good enough answer.
Don’t you want wedding china or silver? Are you kidding? I’m a klutz and I break everything.. plus, there is no way I’m going to polish silver. Ever. No chance.
Everyone wants something, you can ask for anything! We buy what we need/want and we’ve both lived on our own for years. I have every kitchen appliance known to man and I’ve been given almost all the dishes that I need.
What are you going to do when people insist? Send them the list of charities to donate too or graciously accept cash and use it for the honeymoon.
I’ve been in and too a few weddings, and each one cost me a lot of money. If you’re in it, you buy the dress, matching shoes, get your hair done, plus you still owe presents. And then there’s the getting there (flight), car rental, hotel, etc.
We’re already having the wedding in a remote location, so everyone who comes is going to shell out a lot of money to get there, and we just want them to have fun and relax and party with us. That’s gift enough.
This, my standard response, is never good enough. And I don’t get it. We don’t need anything, and people are already spending money on us by coming… why are gifts such a big deal?
Last night I stuck dinner in the oven and went back to the living room to work. A few minutes later, some odd noises were coming from the kitchen and the dog and I both sighed and I yelled at Ellie (her normal thing is to knock stuff off counters and be generally annoying). Finally it got so loud the dog got up and I walked into the kitchen… to see the oven aflame.
Part of the heating element on the bottom had melted off and was burning the oven. I flipped it off, pulled open the oven, grabbed the pan and slammed the oven shut. Which was a good thing, because the element was popping and shooting sparks (apparently you should never open an oven if there is some bit of metal burning—yeah, I know, you already knew that. Shut up. If your dinner was in there you’d pull it out too!).
At this point we’re thinking it might be a short, but we’ll spend tomorrow calling oven repair people (is the Maytag man available?) and see if someone can come out and fix it. Anyone ever had this sort of problem? ‘Cause I really don’t want to have to replace the oven, lol.
And, here you go, your moment of zen (yeah I stole that, deal!): possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen. A newborn Madagascar lemur… and his stuffed animal.
And he had trouble with the oath, LOL. He was going too fast, then he got stuck and the Justice had to repeat. And update, yeah, it turns out it was the Justice who messed up and Obama fixed. Nice.
Awesome.
And wow, the screaming crowd. Never seen so many flags waving at once in my life.
