uncle mervie's big time

Let's start at the very begiiiiining

a very good place to staaaaaht

When you read you begin with ...A  B  C

When you vacation with uncle merv you begin with....

Airport drinkie pooooooooos

We took a trip back east! It was a whirlwind of activity, we checked so many things off of so many lists. It was the greatest, and now that we're back I think we're all still coming down from the constant movement and laughter and food and booze and fun. I love visiting with my peeps! My peeps are good peeps.

Let's begin!

I never get the good airplanes anymore. The ones with the cool consoles and personalized entertainment, you know? Look how close that dumb tv screen was to our fool heads. And they showed My Big Fat Greek Wedding Two, just to be assholes. 

But we made it to the New of Jork in the blink of six hours, and were soon being whisked off to the upper west side by this guy

Clara stage whispered to me "His taxi license is expired."  Scandal. 

 And before we knew it, our heads were hanging out of one of our very favorite windows of all.

we looked north*

and we looked south*

 *if those are not the correct directions, please reverse them or look at them in the mirror or something. It will be fine. 

We visited with the lovely MB for a while and got our bearings, then took ourselves over to Hi Life for half off sushi and marvelous mugs of rose sangria

After dinner we had a lovely walk through the neighborhood to the river basin where we enjoyed a nightcap and dessert, then we made our way back to MB's under the light of a big full moon. We went to bed like good girls and boys on a school night, and MB and I only got busted once for cracking up instead of sleeping in our shared bed. It was hard to sleep though, when the view outside the window looked like this

full moon over Gotham

 The next morning, poor Mar had to go to work while the rest of us explored Central Park and ate good things

I'm allowed to take photos of the kids now! The only rule is "one and done", no matter how much I'd like to correct the shot. Sometimes one and done resulted in me snapping the photo before my girl had time to Wipe That Look off of her face

Shakespeare garden

view from Bellvedere Castle when we finally found it after resorting to the GPS after admitting that our "which way feels castle-y" navigation wasn't working out all that well

 We had lunch at the one and only Artie's Delicatessen

love this place, love that waiter, love my peeps. One and done, baby.

loooooove that lunch

Then we missed one train but made a different one, and even had time to pick up a beverage from a cart at the top of the track. Look at my cool beer:

It cost $3.75! I heart NY

the look

We made it all the way to mom's where we inexplicably took zero photos on a lovely evening of thai chicken, cool drinks, long swims, and big laughs. We all slept well that night and then were up and out on the early side for a field trip!

Look at these two!

Look at these two!

Auntie Lill has the look too!

We won her over, though.

Our field trip was up to Rhode Island for lunch with Aunt Lill, who is lovely and poised and a very happy birthday girl. The kids and I were determined to get her talking about the old days growing up with Dad, we were aiming to hear some dirt about that guy. No one can be that perfect, right? All we got, though,  was a heartwarming story about young Joe and his dead dog, and a mildly concerning recounting of a time when Aunt Lill hit him on the head with a hairbrush. So, yeah. I guess that good kid facade was the real deal after all!

These field trip photos don't even hint at the super awesome fact that we had picked Ellie up on the way to Lill's, and by picked her up I mean we went to her house then made her drive us to Rhode Island. Let's drag this out though, shall we?

Coming up on Uncle Merv's Big Time:

Chapter Two: I went to New London for 48 hours and all I got was bonnet 
Chapter Three: Milford pitstop where laws were broken
Chapter Four: Lesbian Lovefest
Chapter Five: Ennnnn Whyyyyy Ceeeeeeeeee

Tidal

This is what summer is all about -- tide pools and beach glass finds.

Stop, Drop and Roll

Wait, I mean Pick, Roll and Eat.

We Pick:

From The Field, my friends. The Field!

And then . . .

We Roll:

And . . . . . . . . . 

Oh, you guessed it.

We Eat.

How do I look?

Stuff this

I have many photos and stories to share from our just-finished New Mexico & Colorado vacation, but unfortunately not enough time to share them this morning. My work in-box is atrocious after a week away.

So, I'll take you back to the atrociousness of my work load just prior to leaving for said vacation. I was responsible for getting out a marketing mailing that day. And by mail, I mean overland mail. (I know! Who still does this?)

I personally had not done this in many, many, many years. Do you know how long it takes to get an overland mailing out, especially if you factor in hand-feeding 196 mail-merged envelopes?

Well, it takes an entire day in the office, a trip to the post office, lugging the remaining not-stuffed envelopes and their fillings home so that you can enlist three more people to help you fold and stuff and seal and stamp. Then another trip to the post office. After dark. That's how long.

Yes, after 19 years on the job, these are my (and my kids and boyfriend's) tasks.

Do any of you know anyone who's hiring?

Moon in a Cave

We've had a string of sultry summer days around these parts . . .

. . . just the way we like it.

Having a beach two miles down the road makes everything happy, joyous and delightful. And quite picturesque.

I wanted to take one of those cool panorama shots of the beach but succeeded in getting just a little bit of the beach, and a whole lot of the bar.

Wait, there we go. "Beach and Boardwalk."

Last night Mistah tried to take photos of that waxing gibbous, almost-full moon . . .

. . . which can be a tricky business.

Thankfully, though, he's the Master of Wacky Settings. So a result, instead of looking up at the moon in the sky through the trees . . .

. . . he made it seem like we were looking down at it through a hole in the ground.

Moon in a Cave.

blame the bougainvilla

I came here to talk about the fence!

I uploaded photos, sorted them in the order of the story I wanted to tell, drafted witty comments, and elicited the help of my kids to send photo updates to prepare a documentation of the fence project that is currently taking over our lives.

I left a space for the photo I wanted to use to demonstrate the illustrious beauty of the bougainvilla.

I've got an external hard drive that is mostly dedicated to photo storage, and whenever my phone or camera is getting bogged down with images I plug it in and back those sucker up to the hard drive. It's capacity is vast, I don't think I could ever fill it even with the impressive quantity of food and drink pictures I relentlessly save. (why? WHY?)  But if you know me at all you know that I've never taken the time to include any semblence of classification or organization in that hard drive. It's just a series of random folders called 'camera dump,' insert date.

On Thursday evening after spending a couple of wine fueled hours in the beauty magician's chair after work, I came home and set to work finding that bougainvilla photo to complete my fence post.

I wasn't having much luck with recent years, so I clicked through to those adorable early attempts I HAD made at organization, and I sought out visit/family member themes because I am forever making people pose in front of the damn bougainvilla.

I was waylaid, though. That one spot where I landed after a million folder and subfolder and file clicks just so happened to deposite me back to 7/29/08, when, to quote my wise and wonderful mother, we still had our innoncence. We still had dad. They still had Jidoo.

They still had Jidoo

It took my breath away.

He's been on my mind, of course. With our summer CT tripped just days away I'm always tansported, usually back to the bullshit that was 2010, then the poignant summers that have followed, thick with nostalgia and loss. But in July of 2008, we still had our damn innoncence.

He was making a speech as emcee of the cannonball contest awards

I love this so much. Mom is *cracking up* at her man

And we got to just reach out and touch him, crack up at him, be with him.

It's just dad, being dad. (and mark being an assbag)

We still had him. 

 

Mom still had him. Look at them!

They needed more time. 

The stupid fucking fence isn't finished anyway, I'll show you next week. But the lumber, the sawdust, the power tools, the measurements and precision and whistling around here these days? It's no wonder he came and bumped that bougainvilla.

We really miss you, Dad.