November 26, 2007
 
     
The above picture is something I made up from some of the Polaroid photos found in our wedding picture.
 
It's really hard to write when Baxter wants to play.  He brings me a toy, which I then throw out the room and down the hall.  He's so zippy, that he can retrieve it and be back faster than I can type a few words (and I'm a quick one on the keyboard).  If I ignore him for more than 30 seconds, he'll stand up on his hind legs (like a little Rory Calhoun) and just stand like that for up to a few minutes...the sight of this insanely cute tower of chocolate and tan dapple will drip drip melt your heart all over the floor to the point where there is absolutely no other option than to throw his toy for another run down the hall.  Over and over and over again.  His current favorite toy is this deer, which is almost (but not quite) as big as he is.  I think that's why he likes it, because he can attack, bite, thrash, chomp, carry, fetch, and kill something big.
 
...
 
That's a new one.  Baxter's now dragging his big metal basket full of toys down the hall.
 
Saturday night I got home from work after midnight, and then Kari and I drove down to her store because she thought she might have accidentally left some lights on (she didn't, but we felt better for having checked).  Since it was late, and we were out, we decided to try and find this cache.  It taught us an important lesson in that Geocaching is best left to the daylight hours as we spent a solid half an hour looking for it in the middle of the biggest intersection in the county.  I think a lot of it had to do with my flashlight.  It's one of those no-battery kind that you need to crank crank crank crank for a good solid two minutes at which point you're rewarded with five seconds of useable light. 
 
Anyways, when we were inches away from home, we saw something that was crazily bizarre/borderline creepy in a totally impossible dream-like way.   Maybe what we saw wasn't what we thought we saw, but either way, it's really inspired me to write a short story out of it, because wow, you just can't make stuff like this up.    
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Rilo Kiley - It's A Hit 
 
 
 
November 20, 2007
 
I can has a lolcat...
 
      
 
This is probably the closest these three have gotten without fighting.  Pizza - the great uniter.
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Saybia - Bend The Rules
 
 
 
November 18, 2007
 
I was thinking today that it had been a day or two since I last updated the site, and wow, was I surprised to see that it's actually been something sorta kinda like 11 days (although, I did update the concert list page, but that doesn't really count).
 
In the past almost two weeks, I've seen more snow, done lots of Geocaching, and other fun stuff.  Mainly though, I've been writing (obviously not here).  Writing about writing isn't any fun, so I'll leave it at this:  I've written the ending of my book series.  Yup, not the book itself, but the very end end book that is several books down the road.  I get way ahead of myself sometimes. 
 
I haven't had any of the fancy-schmancy beers I've gotten lately, but tonight I did have a nice one from Dogfish Head.   
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  The Smiths - A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours
 
 
 
November 7, 2008
 
Today I saw snow!  I was driving to a Geocache location and out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a little something white and wispy...I looked again and didn't see anything.  "Nah.  It can't be snow," I said as my eyes instinctively looked up to the thermometer on my rearview mirror.  It agreed with me, keeping mum apart from only saying it was 38 degrees.  But there it is again!  I saw it this time!  A real honest-to-goodness snowflake!  Another went "YEEE-HAWWWW!!" as it slid up and over my windshield.  A less-fortunate follower of the braggadocio flake timed it wrong and splatted on the window before saying, "Oh noes!" and melted.  It wasn't like a blizzard (or even a "snowfall") or anything, but the occasional flake could be seen by those fortunate few who were aware.
 
What I was liking less was the sharp cold winds that were making life difficult as I spent 20 minutes looking for a cache in the Wal-Mart parking lot, all the while cursing the cloud cover for fuxing my signal.       
 
I was at the local big liquor store today, looking to see if they had any new beers, and wow, I found a good one.  They just got in a shipment of Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence.  It was over $10 a bottle (750ml), but I'm sure it'll be well worth it.  Yum.  Two months ago I got a bottle of Ommegeddon, which has since sold out (almost) everywhere, and I should probably try it soon so I can decide if I want to invest in more bottles of it.  I've been thinking of organizing a Ratebeer tasting party sometime soon, since I have so many rare, big, and expensive beers hanging around.  Whenever Kari asks, "Can I have a beer?" I have to run to the fridge and take a quick stock of the dozen or so bottles on hand, before regretfully telling her, "Sorry, we don't have any regular 'drinking' beer."  Anyone in the "metro"-Berkshires area want to host a Ratebeer party, so we have an excuse to drink up all of this good beer?
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Gimmie Some Salt 
 
 
 
November 5, 2007
 
                                       
                                      Photo lovingly lifted from my wife's Flickr account.
 
It was a shiny, sunny day in the post-pretty, autumnal Berkshires.  A perfect day to spend Geocaching.  Last night I loaded up the GPS with coordinates, and today I packed up Baxter in the car, dropped of lunch to Kari (who was working today), and then ventured into the vast wilderness that is Kennedy Park, with my intrepid dachshund by my side. 
 
The doxie in question seemed to really enjoy tangling his leash around every tree in the whole damn park, and then look at me like, "Hey dad, look what I did!" as he dangled five feet off the ground in the cat's cradle he wove from his leash between a few unsuspecting trees.  I probably would have found the caches and been out of the park a whole hour earlier if I wasn't spending so much time untangling him from every tree, horse, pond, and woodchuck that he happened across.  He's a very fit doxie, but the several miles we walked today really wore him out.  Once we got home, he burrowed under the covers of the bed and zonked out.  Occasionally, I can hear him let out an oh-so quiet bark as he dreams in his sound sleep. 
 
We're living in temporary housing as our amazingly awesome apartment is being finished.  (To see the progress on our apartment, go here)  We currently don't have a kitchen, so it gives us a chance at sampling the local restaurants.  This week, we went to two new places on North Street:  Burger and Bobby Hudpucker's. 
 
Burger is owned/managed/chef'd by the same people who do one of Pittsfield's best restaurants, Spice.  It's even in the same building.  Executive Chef Douglas Luf gave Kari, Paige, and I a private tour of Burger about a month ago when we were having drinks at Spice.  The other night we happened to walk by and it was open.  Well, secretly, softly open, but open nonetheless.  The burgers were excellent (someday I'll try the Kobe burgers, they looked great), and I really liked the spices on the dirty fries.  We're going to have to try the liquor-infused milkshakes the next time we're there.  Chef Doug saw me getting a refill of soda, came over and asked what I thought.  As he and I were talking, this guy butted in and asked him, "Can I give comments to you?"  He said sure, and I politely bowed out.  I felt bad for him as the guy spent a full 20 minutes nit-picking about everything, "And another thing...what if you did..."  Overall, it was very good, and you can't beat the location.  If you walk out their front door, and head perfectly straight ahead for one block, you're at our place.    
 
In stark contrast, last night we went to the new Bobby Hudpucker's (sorry, I can't find a website) location further down on North Street.  Their first location is on East Street, and I remember going there about 10 years ago with a friend who I worked with at the Crowne Plaza.  I think we just got nachos, but I remember them being really good.  Sometimes you need to hold onto memories because they're so much better than how things really are.  Between the sports-bar atmosphere of the oddly-shaped bar, to the stark, poorly decorated dining area, to the "custom" carpet with their "lips" design (laden with crumbs and trash galore), to the dried food splattered on the wall, to the late 80's cascading wave of hair our waitress sported, to the wrong order that Kari got, to the crazy-ass other people eating around us...we decided that maybe, just maybe Mr. Bobby Hudpucker's wasn't for us.  Or for you...or anyone, for that matter.
 
I've noticed that the songs I've traditionally hated on cds I've owned for years have grown on me to the extent that they're now my favorites from those cds.  Some examples include "Late Night, Maudlin Street" and "Driving Your Girlfriend Home" off of Viva Hate and Kill Uncle respectively, and the entire Vauxhall And I cd.  Funny how now I think they're just brilliant, but at the time I hate hate hated those songs.    
 
 
What I'm listening to right now:  Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                                                    © 2007 Eric Nixon.  All rights reserved.