visa revoked

we're back. with 9 weeks to go until the fatburger's birthday, i don't think we'll be undertaking any additional travelling out of town for the time being, especially because i'm a frugal little parker and the idea of getting jacked by the u.s. of a. should i give birth there doesn't sit right with me.

it was a very fruitful mission though! what fun! i'm so glad my family family and my friends family get along so well. with travelling companions like dr. rei and hanbo, you can't really go wrong.

thursday night the four of us plus rico went to see rush, who were playing the grandstand at the NYSF. this is us en route:

pretty cute pic, huh? that night was pure hilarity. some notable events that transpired:


- my first gianelli sausage on a bun (pictured above)
- the dotytron, upon seeing the gianelli sausage mascot, exclaiming, "that pig looks like lagerfeld!"


- rico, overcome with joy, exclaiming, "you know what i love about this place? there's just, so much, beer!"
- deep fried oreos which went down EASY - seriously guys, those things are murderation:


- when rush was playing new material off their "forthcoming album", rico: "THEY'RE BORING EVERYONE"
- dr. rei, when rush was showing some really sub-par CGI to accompany one of their lesser-known numbers: "where did they get that from, REBOOT?!?"

we hung in there long enough to hear all the tunes we wanted, but not so long that we would end up getting caught in the post-second-encore traffic clusterf**k.

the drive home was EPIC. in so many ways. first of all, on the way out, the dotytron was pretty drunken and i was sober and tired so a little fed up with his his tipsy antics. he scattered off at one point to go into the bovine barn and pet a cow, and i had to go grab him because everyone was waiting for him so that we could find our car and leave. when i hissed at him that he shouldn't be petting a prize cow, he said to me, "this cow. understands me." and kept repeating it pretty much all the way to the car.

lol! then we started the drive home. the NYSF is in syracuse, which is about 1 1/2 hours away from geneseo. dr. rei offered to drive since she wasn't drunk. the dotytron basically passed out about 10 minutes into the drive, waking up only every now and then to open the window on the interstate (which totally stresses me out). so the whole ride home consisted of me, stressing out that the dotytron was going to puke in the car, and then hissing over hanbo (who was a gentleman and offered to ride the hump in the backseat) for ian to close the window. the dotytron also got a bad case of the hiccups and would occasionally be mumbling incoherent nonsense to himself, which only made me and hanbo all the more worried that the drunken mumbling and hiccups were a precursor to imminent ralphing.

then rico fell asleep in the front seat and i told dr. rei to take the next exit, but then we started gossiping, and then dr. rei missed the exit, which resulted in us taking an HOUR LONG detour to get back home. rico woke up almost immediately as dr. rei said, "uh, is that the exit i should be taking?" and then felt really bad for falling asleep. then dr. rei told us that her contacts were actually the wrong prescription and that it's really hard for her to see the signs at night, in other words, that she was basically driving as blind as a naked mole rat. so we took this MASSIVE detour to get home through these back road streets that culminated in everyone apologizing for the extra travel time. everyone, that is, except for the dotytron, who conveniently woke up in time to complain about how long the trip was taking. the rotten thing about missing that one exit, is that the next one is a billion miles away. it's the worst.

so we're driving down this country road, and then rico says, "whoa!" and we put the brakes on to see a FAMILY OF DEER crossing in front of our car, with a little wee baby deer as the caboose. then the outlaw bro (aka rico) rolls down the windown and screams: "CA-CAW!" to make sure that any additional deer keep a wide berth.

at this point it's like, 1 am and we're about 5 minutes away from home. rico directs dr. rei to turn left, the dotytron pipes up: "there's no way to make a left here" and then dr. rei TURNS RIGHT. lol!!! it was hilarious. the look rico gave her when she turned right INSTEAD of turning left, accompanied by the commentary, "i'm pretty sure i couldn't have been clearer to TURN LEFT" had us all howling. so then she did a million point turn and got us home and we're never going to speak of that drive again. so good.



on friday goosetang was left to their own devices during the day, which meant that we met up with dr. rei and hanbo and initiated them into the glories of aunt cookie's subs. this was after going on a field trip to wegman's where we loaded up on lil' debbie snack cakes and deli salads (i've been all about the deli salads lately). the combination of aunt cookie's, a late night, and oatmeal cream pies then resulted in us snoozing on my sis' couches watching the latter half of "mallrats" and most of "teen wolf" before venturing into town to do some shopping at target and the like.

my sis is the cutest. she got dr. rei a wegman's cake to celebrate her becoming a doctor.





saturday was NYSF day. these pictures basically sum it up. we ate a billion deep fried things...i personally tasted: deep fried pickles (thumbs up!); deep fried veggie combo (thumbs up!); deep fried pb&j sammy (thumbs up!); deep fried twinkie (okay); deep fried nutter butter (thumbs up!); deep fried cheese curds (thumbs up!); deep fried reese's peanut butter cup (thumbs up!); deep fried grilled cheese sandwich (not my favorite but other people liked it); a corn dog; skinny fries; a clam boat (deep fried clams in a soft roll w/ tartar sauce); funnel cake.

then we drove home and ate at the CHEESECAKE FACTORY. zomg. it was insane. i had an appetizer order of crab cakes and split the dotytron's salad, but STILL guzzled a vanilla cheese cake slice because i'm mental like that. the cheesecake factory cheesecake is damned near irresistible.

sunday we had breakkie at brian's and then rico got his revenge on dr. rei by sending them off with the wrong directions for a scenic route out of town. lol! they managed to chase them down and right the wrong though.

usually we stay til the bitter end in geneseo because we love it so, but we couldn't because the dotytron wanted monday to prep for school and get our lives back in order. we stopped at ikea on the way home to pick up the shelving for the fatburger's room, that i'm also using to make up for my reduced lack of desk space. it looks good! things are totally coming together. i also bought the ikea komplement drawer organizers and i'm practically swooning with joy. who knew that something so unassuming could make me so happy?

i originally had them in the fatburger's dresser, so that little wee socks wouldn't get muddled up with onesies and sleepers and washcloths and cloth diaper covers...but today has been a swoony day of reorganizing, vacuuming, and cleaning, and i ended up using them to organize my work socks (so mundane, but for me, utterly thrilling). i'm totally going to snag some more. they're kind of miraculous.

it's been nice getting our lives back in order. i love a clean house and fresh sheets on the bed and my fall clothes switched with my summer clothes and all the other stupid things that other people mightily resent having to do on a statutory holiday that i perversely go apes**t for.


it's also been nice getting our diet back in order. this morning i had whole grain toast with boiled eggs and for a snack a multigrain pita with baba ghanouj and a banana strawberry and blueberry smoothie with flax oil. for dinner tonight i made us a caponata pasta with whole wheat penne: fried eggplant, grape tomatoes, olives, garlic, and basil.

the dotytron is all excited about bringing "big salads" to work for lunch so we prepped the stuff for this week's iteration - black beans, corn, tomatoes, green onions, mixed greens, shredded oaxaca cheese, and boiled eggs, dressed in a cumin-chimichurri dressing. i think it's going to be pretty damn tasty - i might start hopping on board that train.

goodbye summer! hello fall!

fin.

cooler air

...my butski! it's been hot as hades 'round here lately and it's making for some champion whinging courtesy of k. lagerfeld, esquire. YOU try not whinging when you've become a fat little mouth breathing weirdo.

kdubsguelphtdot cottage was really really nice...there were some pros and cons to the set up. pros: the bathrooms were all really nice, huge fire pit, drinkable well water, big kitchen and giant kitchen table for eating at, lots of activity space. cons: basement (secondary hang out room) smelled dank and was kind of neglected and featured the furnace room and beer fridge of doom, the dock was tiny and rickety and had rotting wood galore, and there was no outdoor table for eating outside. the dock was a bit of a pisser as was the axe murderer vibe in the basement - it just meant that we didn't really want to hang out there all that much.

also, the weather was kind of lame, cloudy and cool most days with only 1 day of consistent sun, and it wasn't that hot. but there's nothing that can be done about that.

but my oh my did we have fun! we camped out at the pearces' dock where my pregnant belly was deemed to be collateral by J, in case the pearces happened to be there and got mad at us for trespassing. we ate like kings: key lime pie, peanut butter cookies, burgers, mac'n'cheese, salads, monkey bread, taco night, so many chips. a few of us went on a trip to visit the dorset fire tower, which in the subsequent re-telling, became the GREATEST ADVENTURE OF ALL TIME. there was a race with a startling upset - one of those true underdog sports stories finishes, recorded for all posterity. we played so many games and had so many cozy chats and basically loved up on one another and rued our eventual return to reality. i'm really hoping that we can make it an annual tradition, to supplement the winter farm vacay.

momma d's family cottage was another time entirely. quiet, relaxing, reflective time on one of the prettiest, most wildlife-rich lakes i've ever been to. it's teeming with life in a way that the other cottages i've been too aren't. we saw so many frogs, and minnows, and crayfish, and a pretty chubby garter snake, hummingbirds galore. i caught like 4 fish just casting off the dock and managed to land the best thing of all (for an avid fisher), a "the one that got away" story. most of the times at healey lake i've never caught anything of note - small little rock and baby small mouth bass about the size of my hand. but casting off the dock on the thursday night, i got something BIG. something big enough to snap my line, make off with my lead, hook, worm AND mangle my bobber (!!!!!) so exciting!

saturday night we had a hootenanny on the dock, recorded by ehmdo. now, if you're a tone death motherf**ker like myself, just try participating in a hootenanny featuring a gifted guitarist/singer (dotytron), a mandolin/songwriter (poppa d), a choir singer (momma d), and a professional singer-songwriter (ehmdo), AND another talented singer (ehmdo's bestie L, who frequently joins her on backup at live shows). you may have heard of a certain evolutionary phenomena known as "flight or fight." well, my friends, my survival instincts kicked in and i desperately clung to the melody with every atom in my being, trying to tease it out from the FOUR PART HARMONY going on in some of the numbers, singing with my hand in front of my mouth to muffle my (limited) contributions. it was kind of terror-inducing. it was also the most over-directed and micromanaged dockside hootenanny that i've ever seen, lol! so many takes! i think there's some good material there and there was definitely something magical about singing under the stars, with an inky black lake still beneath your feet, and a slowly dying fire casting flickering ember shadows on our faces.

then we came back to the stinking, stinking heat. oy vey. tomorrow evening we're going on the last big excursion before the fatburger's appearance, to visit my sis and outlaw bro and family, with dr. rei and hanbo, in geneseo. the real reason for the trip is to go to the new york state fair, which is BLOWING MY MIND at the moment. check out the interactive "food finder" map! check out the categories: "fried" "on a stick" "unique" - i'm going to eat the S**T outta this fair, mark my words. i really want to try a deep fried oreo, fried cheesecake, fried mac'n'cheese and all sorts of other goodies that you don't normally get (because you would die, obvs). i'm also liking all the seafood options, like fried clams, shrimp, crab cakes, and the regional new york specialties. GAH!!! i'm basically spending all my free time poring over the map and trying to commit it to memory and playing sophie's choice about what's actually going to make it down my gaping maw.

last night's dinner was an attempt to recalibrate post-cottage excesses and pre-NYSF excesses. we had pan-seared lamb shoulder chops with a mint chimichurri, white bean & grape tomato salad, and a tomato-cucumber salad:

i have no less than eleven (!!!) book reviews and 2 movie reviews on deck for my peeps.

it's hard to believe that the last weekend of the summer is already here. i'm glad i'm spending it with my favorite people. is it weird how much i love going on vacation with friends? should i only want to go on vacation with my partner?

fin.