6/14/07

Dear Blog,

It's been a while since I've checked in, so there is much to report.

First of all, last weekend I did not get to go down to Connecticut, as I had been hoping I would be able to. Instead, I went back down to the Cape. The Cape League season begins tomorrow night, but last weekend a team of baseball players from around the US Military was in town for a two game set, one game in Chatham and the other in Orleans. Unfortunately, I didn't get in until very late Saturday night, so I missed the first game, but the folks and I were able to take in the second game (write up in the sports blog tomorrow).

The Friday before last weekend, my Aunt Martha threw a baby shower for my cousin (her son) Eric and his wife Adriana. It was unusual for a baby shower in that the whole family came, men and women. The fact is, the Fadden's just can't resist an opportunity to get everyone together. We used to make fun of our next-door neighbors for always being involved in extensive family get-togethers, but now I realize that the main reason we weren't always involved in these things is because we were geographically seperated from our family for the first 24 years of my life. Anyway, there was a lot of great food, and fun was had by all, and we almost didn't notice that the parents who we were celebrating hadn't shown up over an hour into the proceedings. When they were finally called and asked where they were, we found out that they didn't know that the party was that day - they thought it was on Saturday. But they drove up from Boston and, even though they were about 2 hours late, the party was considered a success by all in attendance.

After I got out of work the next morning, I went with Andy, Jason, and Anthony to a lake by Jason's house in Haverhill to do some fishing. Well, actually, they fished while I pretty much just stood around and watched. Honestly, fishing is something I've never really gotten into. If I didn't get such a kick out of the three of them I wouldn't have gone at all, but because they are such an amusing group I had to at least watch and see what happened. Even though they didn't catch anything, I wasn't dissapointed. I like going to breakfast better, because there is more talking involved, but it was a nice change to break up the routine.

On Saturday evening Kait and I went to see Pirates of the Carribean 3, bummed out in advance because the reviews had been so searing and because we hadn't heard much good about it from anyone else, either. Honestly, we didn't find it nearly as bad as everyone was making it out to be. It was a good deal better than Pirates 2, which, for some reason, was not slammed as unanimously, and much, much better than Spiderman 3. I'm not saying it was anything near as good as the first movie - they obviously rushed these last two movies - but we went in expecting a total bomb and what we got instead was a movie with more than a few plot holes but which had a high production value. I give it 2.5 stars.

Last week my sister wanted to eat healthy, and since we missed Monday's dinner, I decided it was time to do some experimenting, to see if I could find another meal or two to add into the rotation. I did not expect everything to be as succesful as it was. With the successes of Spanish-style baked fish, the fajita pizza, and crab delight, as well as last week's successful cowboy spaghetti, I now have a five-week rotation of meals. I'm pretty pumped about that, honestly.

This week has been plodding by rather uneventfully, so far. Work has been lighter than it has been in recent weeks, which unfortunately will show up in my check next week, but that's something I'll have to deal with then. The most exciting thing to happen this week, in fact, happened just a few minutes ago when I opened up the mailbox. The Barack Obama bumper sticker which, reader of my political blog know, I ordered some time ago, finally arrived today. Now I finally get to replace the Barbara Mikulski bumper sticker that has been on my car since '04 and has undoubtedly been confusing my fellow Bay State motorists ever since I had my liscense plates switched over.

Ok, this weekend I should be going back down to the Cape on Saturday, and hopefully catching a baseball game that evening, and then the family, along with our close family friend JoAnn and her parents, will be driving up to Lake Winnepausakee where she has a house that will be in between renters this coming week.

And exciting news for later this month: I'll be going back down to Maryland on the weekend of June 23rd, flying back on the 25th.

Ok, that's plenty for now. Check in tomorrow and read all about the baseball adventure I had Sunday evening. Till then...

6/4/07

Dear Blog,

It's been an interesting few days. I'll start with Thursday:

Last week I hadn't been cooking as much, so I decided to do a little experimentation on Thursday evening. I found a recipie in Rachael Ray's cookbook for something she called "Cowboy Spaghetti". I really enjoyed it, and will be adding to the rotation. Cowboy Spaghetti is really just a combination of spaghetti and chili, which follows Rachael's M.O. So far, I've added four recipies of hers into the rotation, and all of them combine two dishes into one in some way. The "Messy Guiseppe" is a combination of a sloppy Joe and spaghetti sauce, Thai Chicken Pizza is exactly what the name suggests, and the "Inside-out Margherita Pizza-dilla" is, again kind of obviously, a combination of a margharita pizza and a quesadilla.

After dinner, we went to catch some of the softball game between my sister's high school and a Catholic school. It was the first round of the state playoffs, and my sister's friend Kelly is a coach of the high school team. When we got there it was already 3-0 in Dracut's favor, when I left for trivia night - Kait stayed - it was 4-1. Later, Kait would tell me that they would win 8-1 to move into round 2.

Trivia night was just me and Geoff, but we had plenty of answers. Once again, a lot of questions from Tuesday night were repeated, but they were all ones that we would have answered already. We ended up winning the game by 6 points. We think we might be skipping out on one of the games in the future; my vote is we skip the Ground Round and play at the Old Court on Tuesdays, since the food is better, the gift certificate is for twice as much, and, most importantly, the place is within walking distance of my apartment. Also, Tuesday is pretty much a sucky day, anyway, so it'd be nice to have something to which to look forward.

Late Friday night my sister's best friend/hairdresser Megan arrived with her husband Brian after I had gone to work. I didn't get a chance to see them until Saturday afternoon, after I woke up and made my way down to Cape Cod. Kait had taken the two of them to Boston while I was asleep, so we arrived at about the same time. We went down to Falmouth and walked around downtown for awhile, and then went back to Mashpee for dinner at Cooke's. I got a chance to purchase some Buzzard's Bay beer, which I'd never had before. It was more bitter than I'm used to, but quite enjoyable.

Sunday was more of a rest day. After lunch at Dino's, I watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the classic Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, while everyone else pretty much napped. Then we loaded the four remaining chairs from the set Kait bought at a consignment goods store into her car and brought everyone and everything back to our apartment. From there we quickly brought up the chairs and got all of Meg and Brian's things into Kait's car and got them down to the airport, stopping at On the Border for dinner on the way back. All in all, a very successful weekend.

Today I have to make my way down to the grocery store to pick up this week's meals, and I also want to schedule an apointment with Mr. Al to get my hair cut sometime this week. I'll let you know how it all goes on Thursday. Till then...