rain rain go away come back some other day

well it is grey, gloomy and rainy here in brooklyn and i tell you that sure does not motivate me to write my dissertation. i got out this morning and moved the car to a non street cleaning side, stopped at the post office and then got some thank you cards at the hallmark. before i write out thank you cards to all the folks that helped with my work event, i am going to try and clock a few hours on the dissertation. i did a little writing this morning on the midwestern regional scholarship stuff, and then i have to do the tying together stuff and go back and fix it up stuff. i hope i can get this printed up and sent off to the committee by friday. i need to be moving forward at a quicker clip. right now i feel like moving toward my bed for a nap.

so instead of dwell on the gloominess that is this tuesday in new york, i will recount the glory of the weekend- with pictures, of course. so the trip back to brooklyn from atlanta was fairly uneventful. our flight hit some turbulence so the captain would not let the drink carts come out. this made kim and sarah very sad b/c they were both counting on a diet coke. other than that, we made it ok. when we got back to the apartment, we dropped off our stuff and headed right to joe's pizza. both sarah and kim quickly fell in love with the deliciousness that is joe's, and they each got a diet pepsi (unfortunately, this is pepsi land). after lunch we walked around the neighborhood doing a little window shopping and getting a sense of the neighborhood. we stopped at the superhero supply store on 5th ave. and sarah and kim tried on these very effective disguises. can you even tell that its them?



we met up with jes at her school with hopes of getting some brooklyn law tshirts for them, but alas, the bookstore was closed. so we walked up to the promenade and looked at the lovely view. here they are in front of the manhattan skyline:



that evening we had a birthday dinner for kim at de vincenzo. i got the delicious penne alla vodka, jes got some pasta with veggies, kim got pesto and sarah got some pasta with brie and bacon. we also shared a lovely bottle of australian pinot noir. sarah and i suffered from a little indigestion, but after a little tonic water, we were good to go. we headed to cattyshack to show them how lovely a bar it is. it was really really dead so we had a few drinks and then headed to gingers (which is on the way home). things were HOPPING there because of (thank god) karoake. altogether it was incredibly painful. this one ahole did prince's "darling nikki" which was exciting because sarah lives for prince and our friend niki was with us. but alas, he was horrendous. i begged jes to go up to him and give him a ten dollar bill to stop. she wouldn't so my ears just bled through the whole song (not really but it was that bad yall). some cute girl gave me and niki a piece of delicious vegan chocolate cake with cherry frosting, i guess it was her friend's bday. jes played a little erotic photo hunt with kim and sarah, niki and darelle played pool and then we headed out. oh and it must also have been the make out/fuck in the back room night at gingers b/c there were all kinds of couples: young and old basically doing it in front of us. overall it was pretty gross, but what made it worse was this guy just sitting across from us watching it all. i mean STARING. i was like if his hand goes to his pants someone will get a beatdown. it did not.

we slept in a bit the next morning, got a bagel and headed off to maine for the weekend de relaxation. the trip there was hilarious. a few highlights:

1. kim screaming b/c some dude next to us was yanking on his weenie and honking his horn at us. the whole car screams while i try to avoid crashing into anyone.

2. so much traffic that it took over 8 hours when it should have taken 6 hours

3. stopping at every megaplex filled with more junk food than you can shake a stick at and sarah saying "don't they have any boiled peanuts up in here? what kind of truck stop is this?"

4. finally getting to portland, maine and doing our grocery shopping to JUST make the 8:30 pm ferry across to peaks island. we decided to pay and have our car go across with us rather than schlepping all our bags and groceries by hand. very good choice as it was rainy and cold.

kim and sarah were stunned at the beauty of the higgins "cottage." when we got there the fire was a roaring and everyone was chilling in the living room. baby bailey was already asleep (oh i wanted to wake him up) so we got to spend some quality time with dawn and gator. we made some frozen pizzas, ate some dips, and drank some wine. i was in the bed asleep by midnight.

the next morning muzzy and tony made a divine brunch that consisted of crepes (savory and sweet). the savory was eggs and spinach and cheese and the sweet was like bananas and dulce de leche or something. it was hella good all around. here they are making the eats:



after breakfast we chatted and played some. jes and i have commenced operation crawl for bailey. we kept putting things out of reach for him and encouraged him to crawl to it. he does this adorable downward dog thing and then gets back to the ground. because he is exceptional, we think he may go right to walking. here he is laughing at some hilarious joke i made:



and here he is after one too many miller lites:



and after all those miller lites, he really needed a bath, so dawn and gator threw him in the kitchen sink:



by that time i was tuckered out so i took a nap, as did many other folks in the house. higgins, of course, went for a run around the island in the rain cuz she is cool like that. then when everyone emerged rested, and in some cases, showered, we began to eat, drink and be merry again.

here are some pretties:





so higgins folks came over to the island to partake in kim and sarah's DELICIOUS dinner of veggie chili on top of scrumptous greenonion corn cakes. it was so good yall and i did not even get sick from all the beans. YAHOO! and then for dessert we had this strawberry cake higgs folks brought over. since i had been eating sugar and junk all day it pretty much put me into a a diabetic coma. here is higgs with her folks and baby b:



after her folks went back to the mainland, the beer and wine flowed and we got into a pretty exciting game of taboo. the other team won by the hair of their chinny chin chin. i clearly had telepathic connection with my teammates muzz and gator as i got some of their words with just one descriptive word. after that we played popular culture trivial pursuit which higgins insisted she "sucked" at. she basically won every clue that got them a puzzle piece and therefore they won. by that time i was so tired i didn't care who won, i just wanted to go to sleep. some of the kids stayed up after that but i was fast asleep.

the next morning we ate some breakfast, chatted some more and then packed up to go home. here is a picture of the whole group before we left:



not a bad looking bunch? is it?

anywho, our trip back to brooklyn was pretty chill. kim and i had cramps so we took little naps. sarah read trashy mags and informed us about the latest in britney, jessica and jennifer aniston's lives. we dropped them off at laguardia and came home and had burritos and watched some television. i was sad to say goodbye to everyone because it was so nice to escape to this island paradise and just be with each other. now its back to the daily grind.

oh bother.