23 March 2010

Baby Steps

My credit history is what a person could call spotty. Had a bad run of it a couple years back, blah blah, excuse excuse. It's a wonder they let me buy a car at all (which is a year closer to being mine!). Anyway, I've been chipping away at the debt and trying to get shit cleaned up. I would like to buy a house one day and it would be ever-so nice if my picture wasn't hanging in every mortgage office with the caption "DO NOT LEND!!" It would seem that I am indeed making some progress because I got a letter from my wireless provider saying that they were removing my spending limit. Now, this may not mean a lot to some of you, but I have lived with that cap for so long; ever since I opened the account, in fact. It is good to see that my efforts are paying off. Luckily for my credit score, there isn't a whole lot of crazy I can do with an unfettered cell phone account. I already have unlimited almost everything, so I don't see myself getting dug into a wireless chasm from which there is no return.

One Has Nothing To Do With The Other

Four people in the last 5 or so days have commented on my weight - in a good way. For the record, I haven't lost any weight recently. At least, that's according to the scale and my ego-crushing Wii. Whatever the cause, it's nice to hear. I think I got the comment today because, for once, I'm wearing nothing remotely baggy. And my ensemble is all black, which everyone knows knocks about 5lbs off. To say nothing of my kick-ass motorcycle/cowboy boots which draw the eye downward (and give me a nice swagger too!).

In "oops, that was embarrassing news" I managed to let out a sizable fart at my desk. The kind that flaps your ass cheeks. The bitch of it is, I don't know how audible it was as I was A) coughing and B) wearing my headset. My neighbor didn't recoil in massive disgust, but she's a pretty cool chick, so maybe she chose not to draw attention to my flatulence. As I didn't immediately pass out from the odor, I guess I got lucky this time.

image courtesy of flowtv.org who got it somewhere else, i'm sure

13 March 2010

Back From Holiday II + Minor Weirdness

There's nothing like the first day home from vacation. Piles of laundry, piles of cat puke, buckets of rain. OK, perhaps I'm exaggerating a tiny bit - there was only one pile of puke. Stupid sensitive male cats.

For those of you not in the know, I spent the last week traveling to, skiing in, and traveling back from Sunday River. That's in Maine, in case you didn't feel like doing a Google search. About a 9hr drive, which isn't too awful split between three people. The reason I'm only now writing about my trip is because there was no internet in the condo and I wasn't comfortable leaving my netbook at the lodge while we were skiing. I'm going to get the annoying stuff that happened out of the way:

1. Had an underwire fail.
2. Found a hole in some underpants - I think I'm going to be done with Victoria's Secret. Those panties were NOT old.
3. My favorite jammie pants ripped beyond repair. Considering how old they were, it was not entirely unexpected.
4. I lost my ring somewhere in the lodge. Major sadface about that.

On to the rest...

The conditions on the mountains were fantastic. Sunny and warm, not too crowded. The lack of crowds was especially good as I hadn't been skiing for about 2 years and I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Other than having my ski pants jammed up my hoohah for 4 days straight, and taking one minor tumble, it went rather well. The tumble didn't even injure my pride as I was expecting to take at least one. The ski pants issue was just because I'm apparently exactly the same size as I was when I got the pants two years ago...just too large for them. Doesn't really matter because they were comfy enough.

Our condo was on the small size and the door to the balcony required an authoritative push to get it to latch. The bathroom was minuscule but hot water was plentiful. There was a pool with a hot tub and a sauna in the complex but I didn't use either of those. The hot tub was mostly populated by young bucks drinking beers. Luckily for us, since our windows faced the pool, that all closed down at 10.

I had a choice of sleeping spaces. The first was one of the most claustrophobic bunks I have ever seen. Picture a blank wall. OK, now cut out a 6x6 hole and shove two beds, one about three feet above the other, in there. Yeah, I took one look and announced that I would be sleeping on the couch. It was a fold out, but I didn't bother with that. I can manage to sleep anywhere for a short period of time. And the couch was long enough, so I was actually pretty comfy.

We had a great view up the mountain from the balcony. It was really cool to look out the window at night and see them grooming the trails. No, I don't have any pictures. You should know by now that I'm not any sort of shutterbug. Just imagine a hill with trees and snow and you're good.

Not surprisingly, we had some really good meals while up there. One place, S.S. Milton, was in the town of Bethel. Milton's is a small, slightly pricey place (good thing I wasn't picking up the tab) with excellent food. They have a delicious lobster chowder (nothing like being close to the source) and the chef obviously knows how to cook seafood. The lobster casserole I had was a bit on the rich side, but I had skied all day. I needed to replenish, right? Eh, I was on vacation. I've never had the kind of willpower that could keep me on any sort of diet/sensible eating plan while vacationing. I also had a drink from Holland called Choco Vine. The menu said it was better than Bailey's and it was definitely as good. Who knew Cabernet and chocolate were soul mates? We ate at Milton's twice and it was equally as good the second time.

The other place we ate was about 20 feet away from our condo, Phoenix Bistro and Bar. Again, a bit on the pricey side, but the food was good across the board. And the portions were extremely generous. I took leftovers back the first night (chicken piccata), and thought I was going to grow gills after the enormous and delicious and perfectly rare tuna sandwich I had the second night. Couldn't manage dessert but I did down two glasses of Shiraz.

The weather turned a bit on Friday, but I still got a good view of Mt. Washington on the way home. Driving through Connecticut is a fairly awful experience but my mom got that stint. It started raining pretty steadily in NY but without the winds we got today. Got home around 9 or so, thought I was gonna do laundry and watched TV instead.

Now for the minor weirdness. Back in September, I posted a silly little thing in Missed Connections on Craigslist about almost running over a cyclist. Surprisingly enough, I got a couple of replies. Nothing came of it, which was fine as I wasn't expecting anything. Then this morning, I'm checking the email account I used for the post, and I have an email from one of the dudes who had replied to my post originally. It said (paraphrasing here) "Cycling season is right around the corner, do you want to see me in my spandex?" What now? It's been six months, guy. Do you really thing I've been pining away for a glimpse of you in your candy colored man tights? 'Cause I haven't been. In fact, I'm a little worried about you. Why would you decide that this was a good idea? We exchanged about three emails and now you want to parade around for me in form-fitting biking gear? I think I'll take a pass. But thanks for thinking of me.