random musings

Firstly, I'd like to update cyberspace on the new happenings in the condo. We're almost done with decorating the living room. We need a hallway table (either long and rectangular or the half circle kind - I think I am leaning toward the half circle kind), and we need to decide on three black and white pictures.... which we aren't even sure we have taken them yet. Anyway, first things first.

This is the new wall sconce that we purchased. It's kind of funky, but it looks nice on the bare wall. Our wall is not that nasty shade of purple/gray in real life. Just so you know ;)

Okay, this is where the table would go with the plant on top of the table... get where I am going with that? The only reason I am dragging my feet in looking for one, is I think we're going to need a new entertainment system first and I don't want to buy a table for that space and then have it not fit if we get a bigger entertainment system. Though I dont' think a bigger one will fit, but sometimes it's hard to explain that to Andrew. But anyway, I think once we get the table, it will come together much nicer. And I think the half circle table is definately the way to go, now that I am looking at the picture.

This is just a better picture of the plant, from a sunny day when it was in the window. I like the plant, and I keep meaning to name it. I haven't come up with a name though. I'm tossing around Theodore.

Okay, that's all that's new in the Casa de Meghan. Once the living room is done (and it's taken me almost a year to get it to it's current state, so I don't expect to be finished for another year!) I am going to move onto the bedroom. That's a long ways a way though.

#44 people, #44

Yeah that's right. #44. In the country.

My degree is worth something! If I ever get it

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/mbaschools_hired/2007/full_list/index.html

SO ANGRY

I WANT TO SCREAM


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

okay. scream over. But my fury is only beginning. I can feel it in my shoulders working it's way down my body.... ohhh..... I'm so mad I can't even see straight and I want to sceam and yell and throw things, but I can't. I can't yell about it, I don't have anything to throw, and I can't even vent about it as I really have no idea who reads this blog. Though I am almost positive the "person" that my fury is directed at won't be reading it. BUT I STILL WANT TO SCREAM

Oh, and now Deval is paying the difference between the Caddy and the Chrysler. I guess it's better than nothing, you Dumb Ass Piece of Shit. Now what are you going to do about your wife's PUBLICLY FUNDED $72K A YEAR AIDE and your tendency to take the fucking helocopter everywhere? Um.... you weren't elected to spend our taxes on your wife. She's a partner at Ropes and Gray.... that doesn't take enough of her time? I'd rather not have her act as First Lady at all. I applaud her decision to keep her job and do what she wants. That's fantastic for her. But don't ask me to pay for her aide because she can't handle both. Pick one, Mrs. Dumb Ass Piece of Shit. My tax dollars are not at your disposal. You make enough money.... you don't need mine.

I hate Deval. I said during the elections he spends out of control.... and yeah, I was right.

Though at this point I would take him over THAT PERSON

what a weekend!

I am not lucky enough to actually get President's Day off, but I took it as a vacation day :) We had a pretty good weekend. It didn't start out all that exciting. I did my stats homework for 4 hours on Friday night, and Andrew had to help me figure out how to put it into Excel. We finished around 10 and then caught up on Grey's. I was most unhappy to see Denny, even for a second, but other than that it was a pretty good episode. Then on Saturday we went to Quincy and did our laundry from 10:30 till 6:00 - can you tell we don't do laundry that often? It's hard to not have laundry here. Well we do, but we have to pay for it and they are so tiny that it takes about $10 just to wash and dry two loads. So to Quincy we went. My parents bought us coffee, my mother made us grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, and we watched The Wedding Singer. Which makes it a pretty good Saturday! We were on our way back to Canton around 6:30ish and we couldn't figure out what we wanted to do with our night. Neither one of us was really hungry (thanks to my parents' mini bagels!) and we weren't really feeling the movies, or going home to sit around and do nothing. So Andrew called up Laney in Manch and we randomly decided to head up to Manchester and hang out with Vallone, Laney, and Jen and Jess and Dutch... who apparently has a real name, but I don't know what it is. That was fun - Margarita's is always a good time. So we got home from that night out on the town in Manch around 1ish and got up on Sunday and went to Newport for the remainder of the weekend. Newport in February is still cool, and it wasn't biterly cold. We toured two mansions (Rosecliff and the Breakers), ate at a cute little Greek restuarant for lunch, walked around downtown for a bit, and got drinks at an Irish pub and ate at The Brick Alley Pub. I highly recommend it if you are in the Newport area. We stayed at an adorable B&B called Bayberry Inn. Even though we aren't B&B people, we still had a good time. Here are some pictures.

This is the back of Rosecliff - it's somewhat modeled after Versailles, which is why there are only 2 floors. There is actually a "hidden" small third floor for the servants, but you can only see it from certain angles (clearly the servants did not need a lot of space if they managed to "hide" their quarters). Rosecliff was really nice and if you have seen The Great Gatsby or True Lies you have already seen the ballroom, which is the biggest one of the mansions.

This is the view of another mansion from the yard at Rosecliff. I don't know which one it is, but it certainly has a prime location! The chimmneys you can see way behind the mansion on the left belong to The Breakers. That's the Cliff Walk you can see below the yards

Me at the wall at Rosecliff. That wall is probably worth more than I am. Nice to have boatloads of money before there was income tax. (these manions were built during the Guilded Age, which is a nice way to say "people started making money as we became an industrialized nation and there was nothing else to spend their money on" The Guilded Age ended three years after income tax came in)

This is the view of the The Breakers from the front. It was built by the Vanderbilts in 1893 and cost approx $5 million BACK THEN. Today it's beyond priceless because of all the handcrafted workmanship in it. Two of the rooms were actually made in Paris and shipped here.

View of The Breakers from the back. These pictures do not do it justice for the sheer size of everything. There is a room inside that has a 50 foot ceiling.

This is the Bayberry Inn. It's a converted "mansion". If you can call it a mansion after seeing the big ones. But it's very cute and has a dining room I would kill for.

When we were leaving on Monday, this cat was waiting for us outside. He went right up to Andrew and started rubbing up against his leg. We think he lives at the Inn since he certainly seemed at home. Or else he wanted to be adopted, kind of like Kitty!

You're my Wonderwall

okay, let's start by me pointing out the following are not my thoughts. I took this from a message board. But it's an angle on LOST I had not thought about before and it's interesting to me.
But my favorite part is yet ANOTHER Wizard of Oz reference -- the crushed dude with the red shoes. Coupled with Henry Gale/Ben and his hot air balloon, I'm beginning to think that this is not an accidental coincidence. Desmond's reaction to Charlie when he met him busking was VERY similar to Dorothy when she returned from Oz -- "You were there, and you, and you!" -- There is definitely a "wizard" somewhere on the island, operating all the smoke (!) and mirrors. In the movie, Dorothy's trip to Oz never happened. But in the book, it did. And let's not forget that their flight originated in Australia -- commonly referred to as Oz...!!

Hmmm.... we all know there is some philosopher thing going on (Desmond's last name is Hume??) with the characters, and everybody has bounced around theories, but for right now I like the Oz/Island thing.

Alright, enough LOST for this blog. I was just so excited I didn't have to see Jack, Sawyer, and Kate in last night's episode, that I couldn't contain myself. I hate Jack and Kate. HATE. But, I already said no more LOST, so I am done. (ihatejackandkate)

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Andrew gave me a book on wine and some chocolates. I gave him a book, and no chocolate. I guess he wins the present award since my book came with chocolate. Chocolate that is almost gone.... yeah.....

This weekend we are going away for the night to Newport. I know, it's February - who goes to Newport in February? People who can't afford it in July!! So that should be fun. We're staying at a B&B. I am so not the B&B type - I'm more of a big huge hotel kind of person, but if you are going to do Newport, you might as well do it in a B&B!

On a positive note, I have FINALLY kicked this cold on its ass. I haven't coughed all day, no headache, no sinus pressure. I am healthy! woo hoo!

You look like you're going to a funeral.

My god. I haven't been this sick in a very long time. And I will be so far behind when I go to work tomorrow that I might cry. Multiple times. But on the bright side, I did get to watch Walk The Line today. I love that movie. I could seriously watch it back to back all day. First of all, Joaquin Phoenix is ridiculously attractive. I know where he lives in NY too. Maybe I'll try to stalk him the next time I'm there. I'm pretty sure if I ever came within a few hundred feet of the man, I would turn a pretty shade of purple and run and hide. But I can dream. It's a good thing the closest to a celebrity I have even been (concerts aside) is when Howie Day used to perform at Saint A's on a semi-regular basis. I think that as sophomore/junior year. And he wasn't even famous yet . I used to just get annoyed when he was at the CS because it was really crowded and they wouldn't call the food over the speakers. But, before the tangent, I was talking about Walk The Line. It's such a great movie. Whether or not the story is actually similar to Johnny Cash's life is debatable, but it's such a good story.

On a different topic, one of my new favorite songs is Taylor Swift's Tim McGraw. She allegedly wrote it when she was a freshman in high school when her senior boyfriend went off to college and they broke up. It's a classic country song - even if her voice isn't fantastic. Country music is all about the story-telling, and hers is a good story-telling song. But my question is.... what IS her favorite Tim McGraw song?

I am on a mixture of dayquil and excederine. It's a fun and happy life I've got going on right now. I think I'm going to head back to the couch for awhile before I have to go class.

The first cut is the deepest

The fact that I am closer to 30 than to 20 makes me sad. I'm not young anymore. Okay, I'm not saying 25 is old. I know I still have the majority of my life ahead of me, but I have laugh lines around my eyes (I refuse to call them crows feet if they are only there when I laugh). Those are new. I supposed I have the endless summers I spent sailing and on boats to thank for that. I wouldn't trade those summers for the world, but I think my face is a little worse for the wear now. I slather on sunscreen all summer long now, but when you are 12, you're hardly worrying about re-applying because in 13 years you're going to have wrinkles around your eye (laugh lines, they are LAUGH LINES). Ahhh.... Those summers. What a different world they were. But as Buffett has told me a billion and seven times: I have too much to see waiting in front of me, and I just can't look back for too long. I've been dwelling lately. I need to stop. What I need is a vacation, but time, money, and the fact that I don't have more then 4 days in a row off from school until December is hindering that plan. But my god, do I need one. I also think I need to spend about an hour on the treadmill, but this cold has been keeping me from the gym. Holding in the coughing last night so I wouldn't cough all over Alexia and Liana absolutely killed me. Ultimately I didn't cough on anyone. Or even in the house when the babies were there. But I feel like I'm 10 times worse today than I was yesterday. And I can't call in to work. The thought is inconceivable to me... I'd be so far behind that the stress would do more harm than staying home would do me good.

I'm going to lie on the couch and watch Lifetime. Till next time

I would have given you all of my heart

Go Bears!

Well today is the Super Bowl and my boys will not be playing. This is because they forgot to play in the second half of the AFC Championship game and got completely schooled by Peyton Manning and the Colts. It also doesn't help that Tom Brady is excellent at throwing interceptions. Usually you just put up with it because he always always always performs well in clutch situations. Yeah.... Always. Except for when he threw yet another interception to end the game two weeks ago.

Oh well, there's always next year, right? Except Bruschi is rumored to be retiring this year and I may have to go into mourning for a good year, should that heartbreaking event occur.

But on a positive note, the Super Bowl is always good entertainment, even when my boys are not playing in it. You cannot beat Super Bowl Commercials. I'm in suspense even now... What will the Budweiser Clydesdales do tonight? Will the monkeys be back to their usual crazy ways for careerbuilder.com? What will Coke and Pepsi think of? Can you hear me now?

After all this name dropping, I would like to make a small, humble point. I do not get paid for my blogs. I do not, and will not ever, use pay per post. It so incredibly annoying. Don't sell me something on your blog. And for you readers out there, for Christ's sake, don't click on them. They won't go away until they stop making money. There. That's all I have to say about Pay Per Post. You won't ever find it here, and I will not read blogs that have it.

Onto more happy matters. This is the part of the blog where I post random pictures from my parents computer (since that is where I am right now) and comment on them

This is me Christmas 2006. I was waiting to open presents at my grandmother's house. I love presents. :) My brother plays Santa Clause and hands out all the presents. He's very good at it. That's not a just just anyone can do...

This is my cat. Hello Kitty!! He doesn't like to have his picture taken. However, my father was learning how to use the new camera so we have lots of Kitty pictures from right after Christmas. Kitty is whole in this picture, amazingly enough he hasn't been beaten up by anything in a few months. Good job Kitty!
This is me and Andrew at our Rehearsal Dinner. At the Nimrod. Yes, the Nimrod. Don't even get me started on that. Look how tan I was, and this was BEFORE I went to Aruba!! Don't we look smashing in this picture?? Hmm.... I might have to upload this to MySpace. We'll see.

This is Pete. Pete is a parrot who lives down the cape. My grandfather made him. There is a string on his belly, so if you pull the string (gentley, Pete is fragile!) his wings flap and it looks like he is flying. Pete has had to have many surgeries over the years because people aren't gentle enough. If you meet Pete try not to break him.

Okay, that's all for now. I have to try to sneak up the heat in this house and switch my laundry.