Thanks for Everything.

Dang it! It is so hot...again. I just cleaned the bathroom. What a pain in the ass. However, thank you to Soft Scrub. You have made my life so much easier. You make cleaning the tub so much faster. Just squirt you all over the tub, rub you in with a scrub brush, let you soak, and then rinse you off.

And thank you to Munchies Kids Mix. I am sitting here like a big sweat hog mindlessly scarfing you down. All of the goodness of cheetos balls, pretzels, mini doritos, smartfood, chocolate pieces, and 'captain cunt' cereal all in one bag. Just so delicious when you are hungry!

And one last thanks to my Talking Heads CD. What fun it was to listen to you while cleaning that stink hole. I am very busy doing laundry and cleaning in preparation for my mini-vacation to Maine. Tomorrow night I will be packing and going crazy. I can't wait to get out of here, even if it isn't for long enough. Yay!

Appearances

One of my favorite bands, Blue Merle, will be on CBS tomorrow morning (June 25th) beginning at 7A.M. I hope I can catch some of this while I am getting ready for the Farmer's Market. Also, for anyone living in Southern Vermont, David Sedaris will be at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester on Sunday, June 26th at 2 P.M. DAVID SEDARIS!!! That is like having a rock star in the state! It is first come, first serve for the seating and I'm sure it will be mobbed because who doesn't like David Sedaris? Have a good weekend!

The First Day of Summer 2005.

What a long, long day! This morning I worked up enough courage to ask the boss for a few days off to go on a mini-vacation. Mission accomplished...I'm going to Maine at the end of next week for five days! I can't wait to go. It smells so good there and the ocean is so beautiful. We are going to try to go on a whale watch this time. My old neighbor called tonight. We made plans to visit them at their new house tomorrow. I miss them soooooooo much! I finally heard from the Brandon Artists Guild last week and I did not get in. There was a lot of competition. I am very disappointed but it was a good experience anyway and now I will try to get my stuff in somewhere else.
Here is a funny article that appeared in our local paper today:

And here is a post card that I received in the mail from my sister today:

She celebrated her 24th birthday over the weekend and was very pleased with all of her gifts. We ate dinner on Saturday night at American Flatbread in Middlebury. You can buy their frozen pizzas all over the country, but nothing is as good as one of their nightly specials. They are made with all local ingredients in a wood-fired oven. Then we went home to have cake from Mirabelles in Burlington.

Wow!

I have been neglecting this blog REAL bad. Things have been crazy busy. The apartment thing hasn't been going very well and work has been really busy. I haven't been getting enough sleep and not much time to work on my projects. There's my update for the week. More soon!

The worst day of my life, what do you think?

Here is a little card I made tonight. I still like doing things by hand. I needed some 'Napoleon Dynamite' humor after another miserable day. Even thinking about that movie still makes me laugh.
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I am really enjoying these Dar Williams CDs that I got at a yard sale for $1 each.
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I would update on the happenings of the day, but it is just too much to re-hash all over again. Things aren't looking so good for the apartment. Work has been busy. I have to get up early again tomorrow. Also, I have had an annoying crick in my neck all day long. And I am hungry because I had to wolf down my dinner at 6 P.M. and ended up throwing half of it away. The only good thing about tonight was that we took a walk.
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While we were walking around Middlebury on Saturday we visited Vermont Beads & Fibers. It is a fairly new store and it has some very nice yarn and beads for sale, class offerings, and an extremely talkative owner. I can't really afford to buy any of that now, but I drooled over all of it. If you ever visit my hometown, you should go there!

Moose on the Loose!

I took my sister's film to work today to process. On her field trip last week they encountered this young moose on interstate 89 in northern Vermont. They pulled over and she got out of the car to take this picture. Confused, the moose started coming towards her and her friend kept shouting to her to "GET BACK IN THE CAR!!!" That's Vermont for you!

Life is Brutal.

I feel so BUSY! I had to be at work sort of early today. I have to be there REAL early tomorrow and pretty early for the three days after that. It has been crazy busy for the past couple of weeks. We did 78 rolls of film today and at the height of craziness the machine malfunctioned and they had to tear it all apart. We got so behind that when I left there this afternoon there were already 40 or so to start with tomorrow morning. It is so hot in there and the boss has been around ALL day, so it has been BRUTAL! Just MURDEROUS!
To add to that hell, I have to come home to Nancy the smoker and her boyfriend Roger Redneck who is "thinkin' about roomin' with her." After stewing and fretting all day I called the landlords to set up a meeting to complain about the smoke when I got home. Mr. Landlord found out about R.R. today when he came to set up Nancy's washer and dryer in the basement. Apparently R.R. was not known of when the lease was signed and now he is planning on moving in. In addition, it seems that Nancy is unemployed at the moment, which she also lied about. Nobody is happy here except the trailer trash and this is going to be a long saga, I'm sure
...More updates soon!
On Sunday we went to Home Depot to get an air conditioner for my room. The heat was buzzardly and the smoke was coming in all of my windows. It has helped considerably so far. We ended up eating spicy chicken sandwiches at Wendy's for dinner. Not bad.
After all of the commotion tonight I didn't end up having much of anything for dinner. Oh, by the way, forget what I said about those Thai noodles a while ago. I have had them twice since and they totally sicked me out. Barf! There's not much else going on. I don't know what's happening with the Artists Guild yet. I should be receiving a decision letter sometime this week. My fingers are crossed! Now with more hours at work and all of this busyness I haven't had time do anything crafty. Baaaahhhhhhhh!!!

Nancy stinks up a perfectly good weekend!

Boy oh boy does it stink cigarettes in here. Last night was the pits. From the time I got home from work until about 2 A.M. it just reeked. There was a huge smoke cloud in the kitchen. I am sooooooooo pissed at the landlords for doing this to us. This is just what we expected and WORSE! We are getting psyched up for a lovely phone call to them to complain. What in the world are we supposed to do? I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Nancy had to move out of her last apartment because there was a person who lived in the building who was on oxygen. Her landlords gave her a wonderful reference and said she did not smoke much. Heck NO! I don't think so. She smokes inside every 20-30 minutes. Unscented Oust has become my best friend. I'm either going to die from breathing in ozone from the aerosol can or have to go on oxygen myself from the second-hand smoke. There is no way to get used to this. Oh, and about that HEPA filter that Nancy supposedly has, it ain't working! How can it when she smokes in every room downstairs? She has ruined my sanctuary!
As for the rest of the day, it was good and busy. I got up early and dropped the zipper pins off to be juried at the Brandon Artists Guild. They have to tally up the scores and will be sending out letters later in the week. I feel positive about the experience and I am really hoping that they pick me! In between all of that I went to Middlebury, my hometown. I stopped at a yard sale at the Humane Society and got 6 CDs for a dollar each, 2 of which are Dar Williams. I went to Retroworks, an over priced thrift store and TJ Maxx to kill time. I met Trish at the Co-op and we ran into Bill Ramage there. What a coinkydink! At least I had some halfway good news to report to him. We walked all over like tourists. We went to the Middlebury Farmer's Market and taste tested lots of cheese. We had a good sandwich at Noonies and then cookies from the Otter Creek Bakery. We went to visit my mom and sister out in the country. My mom showed us all of her garage sale finds for the day.

There were zillions of those nasty-ass tent caterpillars. They are worse than ever this year. They were hanging on strings from the trees and would drop on your head and cling to your clothes. They were probably thousands of them crawling all over the side of the house and the ground. They were munching on the leaves so loudly that it sounded like it was raining out. While I was there they crawled into my car and on my way home I had to kill one on my leg. GROSS!

I can finally show off the HUMMEL card that I sent to my sister in the mail. Aren't Hummels funny?

Getting out of Rutville.

It was another festering hot day at work. Pure Hell. El Cheapo boss did NOT turn on the air conditioning at all even though it was 87 degrees out again. She kept wiping her brow with the back of her hand and going "phew!" over and over. She also ran film until waaaaaaaay after the cut off time and stayed there until 5 P.M. The day dragged even worse than yesterday.
Bad news, smoker Nancy has been chain smoking all evening long. Every 20 minutes it comes right out of her living room window and up into my bedroom window. The only good thing so far is that she goes to bed early and she can't smoke when she is sleeping. I have my Walmart candle going and a can of unscented Oust within reach. This morning when I went to leave for work she had some redneck buddy over and she was parked in the middle of the driveway. Her dog had a fit when she saw me and started lunging at me then I had to wait for the bitch to stop talking and get in her car so I could get out! I was 5 minutes late for work. According to the bank across the street it was 8 minutes. I have got to get ready for bed because I have to be out of here before 8 A.M. tomorrow. It's jury day at the Brandon Artists Guild!!! Then I am going to Middlebury to meet up with Trish, and then home to see my mom and sister.
I am so not an early bird.

Isn't the weather nice?

Wow! It sure was HOT today! I work at the dumbest place in all of Rutland. The air conditioner didn't get turned on until 3 P.M. when it was 87 degrees outside and probably hotter inside. It is an ancient piece of crap from the early 80s. It barely works and it only cools a few feet around it and the store is pretty big. The boss is so cheap that she won't get a more efficient one that would save her money on electricity...NOOOOOOO! Then who ever ends up turning it on gets the hairy eyeball from the her. Meanwhile, she is either at the golf course or in her air conditioned house. I was so dang hot! Work just dragged on and on and it was really busy.
I searched all over the city for a black tablecloth without any luck. I guess it just isn't hip to have a black tablecloth in these parts. How dark and depressing! Except that I am not using it for an eating table, but for a display on a table to make my zipper pins look snazzy and elegant when I take them to be juried at the Brandon Artists Guild on Saturday. If you didn't know, Brandon, Vermont is home to the famous American folk-artist Warren Kimble. I have met him and he is a very nice man! I was told that there are three spaces open for 3 dimensional artwork and there are six people they are considering at this time. I sure do hope they pick me!
I got home around 7 o'clock and have been busy ever since.
-I talked to my sister who had to cut her field trip excitement short. She ended up at the emergency room of Dartmouth-Hitchcock this afternoon due to a reaction from sun exposure and antibiotics. How horrendous! At the time she was at VINS in Quechee watching a lecture on raptors and buzzards.
-Nancy the smoker was with her entourage and a huge U-HAUL in the back yard. She looked extremely frazzled. She was hacking with what sounded to be smokers cough and shaking something wicked. She has some mighty fugly furniture. No smoke smell yet...I am crossing my fingers. She has been nice and so far they are very quiet.
-We had chicken made on the Foreman grill tonight for dinner. It was pretty good. It took forever to clean up everything after.
-I started reading The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. It is very good so far.
-Now it is late again and I really haven't gotten anything accomplished. Tomorrow I have to work with alone with the boss again. It will probably be busy and way too hot. I am just too tired and busy to deal with her bitchyness and nonsense. I better end this and get going so I can mentally prepare myself for the abuse that will be called Friday.
Oh how funny...The spell checker just told me to replace P.M. with pooh and bitchyness with patchiness. If I did that, this just wouldn't make any sense, would it now?!

Hump Day

*I feel so busy! There are clothes that need to be folded, craft projects that need to be started and finished, library books to be read, and movies to be watched. Everything is a mess! Now it is getting to be time to go to bed and I haven't done much of anything. On top of all that I have to go waste the day at work tomorrow.
*Here is an apartment update: We got our washer and dryer platform after a good deal of hemming and hawing over what to say to the landlord and then actually talking to him. He put them on there and leveled everything and now they work great. Nancy the smoker is supposed to move in downstairs tomorrow. I have a new Mainstays vanilla candle from Walmart all ready to go. You can scoff at the Walmart brand all you want, but I swear by this candle! It smells just as good as Yankee Candle while burning. It makes the whole place smell like yellow cupcakes baking. Unfortunately, I don't think anything will get rid of the nasty-ass ciggy stench when Nancy starts smokin' butts down there.
*I have been wearing semi-uncomfortable shoes all day long. If I deviate from my Birkenstocks for more than an hour I always pay for it later with a week of sore feet. I have been on my feet at work pretty much all day long for the past two days. There have been a lot of holiday weekend pictures in Foto land.
*My sister is on a school field trip with her sixth grade class, the fifth grade class, teachers, and parents. They are visiting places all over the state for three days. They are going to be staying at a school somewhere and sleeping on gym mats. GROSS! They are going to be taking a few hikes and the weather is supposed to be in the 80s. They are not going to be able to take showers. DOUBLE GROSS! I feel very sorry for her.
*Those nasty caterpillars are EVERYWHERE! My mom calls them "tent" caterpillars. They are sooooooooooooooo UGLY! Today at work I went to remove the wood wedge that props open the door and I felt something strange. There was one between my thumb and the wood struggling to free itself. Ewwwww!