Athene Numphe

On Wednsday, lordaerith and I said good-bye to our kitties and headed to the airport to fly to Boston. The flights went very well. At our layover in Houston we picked up non-pariels for Aerith's mother-in-law and 4 caramel apples (they were by 3 get 1 free) to share with the rest of his family, which we did, slowly over the days there.

Got into Logan with no problem. Got my bag and to the Enterprise dealership with no problem. Because we have a CostCo membership we were supposed to get 5% off and a free upgrade. The 5% was in the system, but the free upgrade wasn't. However, the guy was really awesome and said that he'd give it to us anyway. When we went out to look at the cars that were in our size, he mentioned that oh, there's a 2010 Prius over here and I'll give it to you for just $5 a day more. You should have seen Aerith's eyes light up :). So we took it. Drove out to Haverhill to Aerith's sister's house. Sister, niece (8 year old daughter of other sister), and sister's husband were all there. Sister's husband has a garden and grows green beens, cucumbers, and zuchinni (3 of my absolutely fav veggies) amongst other things. Dinner was made by sister and included stuff from garden. Yum! Hung out for a while and after niece was asleep, watched Role Models with sister and her husband. Still funny.

Woke up on Thursday and slowly nephew got up. He's 17 (OMG, i've known him since he was 5!!!) and his voice has dropped and he is now taller than Aerith. He stands like an awkward teen, all gangly and hunched. It's adorable. Finally Aerith's mom showed up and then everyone, except for me and sister's hubby (who was at work) went to Water Country. I had to stay at Sister's because I had to teach a class online at 2. But that was okay because I just hung out and chilled and the class went well. Also it was in the 70s and I don't do water parks until it's at least 90 out. Eventually they all got home, then we went to the store and got food to grill. Aerith showed off his awesome grilling skills.

Friday Aerith and I went to H&R Block to try to sort out some old tax stuff that seemed weird. It's still weird, but whatever. I had to teach the second half of the class that afternoon. As soon as it was over, we got in the car and headed out to W. MA to visit with artemis42 and her partner. Got caught in some traffic, so we were thankful for the Prius! Had a very lovely visit with Ms. A and her partner. They live out in the middle of nowhere with apparently lots of lesbians, musicians, and chickens (what is it about redheads and chickens?). We played music exchange. I played Marian Call for them, and they played their kirtan and an early cut their new blues album for us. A made yummy yummy dinner. That girl can cook salmon like no one else. After dinner we hung out and she showed us Sita Sings the Blues (you can watch it online if you want), which is an animated movie about Rama and Sita and some other stuff. Finally it was past midnight, so we said goodbye and headed back. I fell asleep on the way back, but Aerith was amazing and made the drive, even though he was really tired by the end of it.

Saturday we showed Sister and Niece how to make breakfast tacos :). Then we headed to Rockingham Park to meet up with Aerith's mother and uncle and watch/bet on televised horse races. All the horses I picked kept coming in one spot behind what I said, until the very end where I won a whole $3.80 and the woman behind the counter asked if I was over 18. It was silly, but kinda fun.

After a brief stop at Sister's, we headed out to wabres's Hobbit Hole. It was me, Aerith, Wabres, his brother, Wyleblad and his wife, Percival, and godspiel. It was great to see those guys again! We had lots of cheese, including queso made by Aerith. Wabres made his chicken masalla for dinner. We watched YouTube videos and talked gaming and went to Kimbel's for ice cream. We left around 11:30. On the way back to Sister's we got caught in some really bad traffic due to construction.

Sunday we woke up expecting to take most of Aerith's family to see Scott Pilgrim, but it turns out that after we got back, Aerith's sister was coming home from his other sister's house and her car got side swiped by a van and she and her car got pretty banged up. She's okay, but had wicked bruises, a cut on her head, and said that her back was hurting her. So we dropped her off at Other Sister's house and got Aerith's Mother and went to the movie just with her. Scott Pilgrim was pretty good. I wanted it to be totally awesome, but after reading the books, it was almost-but-not-quite-as-awesome as I was hoping. After the movie, we saw his mom's place and the infamous dining room table that is ours, if we could ever figure out how to get it down to Austin. Went back to other sister's and realized that it was late and Aerith and I needed to do laundry. So we took Niece back with us and did laundry and Sister's got Nephew and South Asian food.

This morning Aerith and I got up and drove into Boston, getting a little lost, to get me to the hotel. I checked in and dropped off my bags, then we drove to the airport (we got really lost...but figured it out thanks to iPhone goodness). Said goodbye to Aerith and I made my way back to the hotel via public transportation and walking. Chilled for a bit, walked around the area for a bit, and took a bath at the hotel. Now the Frenchman is here so I have to go. Yay!!!

Been having a good week. lordaerith and I both had this week off from work. We were supposed to get a lot of cleaning done. We did get some done, but not as much as I really wanted to. Oh well, that's how these things go.

For New Year's Eve we went to a friend's house who was having a James Bond themed party. It was fun. We dressed up all nice. It was good to see some people that we haven't seen in a while.

( All dressed up )

On New Years day we mostly hung out and played WoW and stuff. Aerith made a Pork and Apple roast in the crock pot which was really yummy and made the house smell good all day.

Yesterday Camera came over for a while and we watched more Firefly (I am slowly turning him into a Browncoat. Mwahhaha!).

Other that it's been nice to just have quiet time at home. My dwarf is almost level 25, I've seen the whole first season of Entourage, and I'm reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and re-reading Kushiel's Chosen at the same time.

Party tonight, last day of vacation tomorrow, back at work on Monday, and mom comes to visit in two weeks.

After breakfast on Monday, lordaerith and I walked down to the beach and walked along the edge of the surf. Northern Atlantic Ocean = COLD!!! But it was fun anyway.

After getting our feet/legs thoroughly wet and numb, we put on our shoes and walked into the town of Ogunquit. Went into a bunch of tourist-y shops, including the 1 Pride store (yay) and Spoiled Rotten, where we found a larger variety of Stonewall Kitchen items than we had ever seen in one place. We ended up getting some Caramel Apple Butter, Coffee Caramel Sauce, Red Raspberry Jam, and Raspberry Peach Champagne Jam. We didn't get any of the Lavender Mint Home Keeping Products, even though we really wanted to. We found out the next day that the Stonewall Kitchen store is about 7 miles away from Ogunquit.

Then we walked back to the room and then went into the swimming pools and hot tubs that the place had.

After that Aerith went and rested and I lay in a beach chair on the grass lawn overlooking the ocean while listening to Paul Simon's Graceland on my iPod. I regulated my tanning by flipping over every two songs :)

Then after another short rest in the room, we headed out to Perkins Cove again and ate dinner at Barnacle Billy's. lordaerith having lobster the day after our anniversary is getting to be a tradition :).

Walked back via the road instead of the by-the-sea walkway and found out that the library looks like a castle and there's a house across from it that looks like a house from Shakespeare's time.

Went swimming again at the hotel. Then chilled in the room for a while.

Then Aerith and I sat out by the sea and ate more cake as twilight was approaching.

The next day we ate breakfast in town and then headed home.

On the way home, we were listening to Jonathan Coulton when a piece of pipe that was lying on the road got kicked up by another car and came flying under ours. I heard a large popping sound and Aerith decided to pull over onto the shoulder of the highway. Sure enough, our back tire on the passenger's side was flat. Luckily we have a full size spare in the trunk and it was still full of air. As we were getting everything out of the trunk, an elderly woman came up to us. She had also hit the pipe and was parked a little way down the highway, also with a flat (note, this was not the car that kicked the pipe over to us). She borrowed our phone to call AAA. In the meantime, Aerith couldn't get the lugnuts off of the tire, so we had to call Toyota Roadside. After a little while, a policeman stopped at the woman's car and then came up to ours. I explained what was going on and he was able to loosed the lugnuts by kicking the loosener thing with his boots (Aerith couldn't kick it because he had sandals on). So we changed the tire, called Toyota to tell them we were fine and headed into Lowell (we had stopped JUST before the exit) to put air in the tires and get some ice cream at Kimball's (which we were planning on doing anyway). Ice cream is good for the nerves.

Got back home just fine. Listened to more of "The Adventures of the Red Panda" by Decoder Ring Theatre (which is a wonderful radio-drama style podcast) on the way. Upon getting home, we napped and then got ready for Haven's drag ball...but that's a story for another time.