After our friends left, lobster shells were plentiful in our uncovered garbage can. Thus, Monday and Tuesday nights saw the return of the marauding pack of raccoons (Procyon lotor, the rabid, chattering scavengers of the urban wilderness) who visit our backyard periodically. The first night I believe they were just scouting and creating caches of food for later consumption. We watched them out our window with a Mag Lite. The next night, our beam revealed a flurry of masked glowing eyes and pink lobster carcasses. As Liz was transfixed on the feeding frenzy, Phoebe the cat suddenly jumped up on the windowsill in front of her face, giving her a hilariously bad fright. I told her I could solve our neighborhood's coon problem once and for all if she let me get a sweet air rifle (with an infrared scope, of course); the catch being we have to eat any and all coons killed, possibly in some sort of unholy stew. Liz reasoned that garbage eating city coons should probably not be eaten, unlike the clean rural coons sold for consumption at the St. Louis farmers market. I reasoned that these coons eat lobster. We never decided for sure, but I think the coons will be left to their scurrying. For now. The last few nights have been peaceful, but they'll be back. They always come back.
We played softball last night on the neighbors' team. I'd sort of forgotten how much I loved playing. The team is terrible (winless until Liz and I joined) so there's zero pressure to perform. Which makes it doubly awesome to see their surprise when you make a running catch, take an extra base on a lazy throw back to the infield, back up an off target throw or a missed play in the outfield, or even just slide into a base. We lost last night 17-8, through no fault of Liz or I. It was a ridiculously fun game. While we were waiting to play, there was an altercation in the parking lot which culminated in someone attempting to run down another person with their car. The nearly hit person then threw a bat at the fleeing Jeep, landing a solid shot. I was on the lookout for a retaliatory drive by during our game.
And finally, Liz continued her "transformation" into a no-nonsense-east coast-in-your-face-type person on Monday as she once again berated unsupervised children, this time for messing with the treadmills in our community center. I was proud and only slightly embarrassed.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Good Friends, Loose Lips, Tall Ships, and Attitude
Erin and Jon, our good friends from Alabama, St. Louis, and now Alabama again were in town last weekend. They brought do rags for us and a lady bug do rag for Phoebe, which she was ecstatic about.
The weekend picked up from there since it almost had to. We looked at some Tall Ships and then hit the North End for some Italian dessert and coffee, then took them to the oldest continually operating pub in North America. It's called the Bell in Hand and it's not all that cool. More of a "so you can say you did" type of thing. Then we went home and were in bed by, oh, let's just say 10:45.
The next day we forced them to walk part of the freedom trail, just so they could say they did. We're very particular about people actually doing the things they say they did. Then we went to a place called Eastern Standard near Fenway where we had awesome oysters, probably the best salad I've ever had (poached egg and lardons over frisee) and a tongue sandwich. A cow's tongue, not my own tongue disguised with a bun and mustard like in cartoons. After that, we saw the Red Sox play the Royals.
The Sox won one to nothing, which makes for a pretty boring game when you don't have a horse or a Twin in the race, Big Poppi notwithstanding. Then we came home and allowed ourselves to stay up until, oh let's say 11:30.
Saturday we decided leaving the house was a horrible idea so we had an all day tasting menu. We started with Liz's famous buttermilk waffles, moved on to watermelon, goat cheese, arugula, and sesame salads, then fried manchego pucks with spicy honey, then scallop and tuna ceviche, and finally venison gorganzola juicy lucy sliders. Liz, who is currently sitting behind me studying vocab for the GRE, says it was ambrosial and metamorphosed our appetence into satiation.
Then we put on do rags and hung out with the neighbors until, oh probably about midnight. We were feeling saucy. Sunday, we ate some lobsters and put them on a plane back to AL. Pretty nice weekend, all things considered.
We first took them to the Barking Crab, a restaurant we'd seen on the TV show Man vs. Food. I guess we shouldn't have been surprised that the food sucked at a place we heard about on a program where the point is to conquer the food rather than enjoy it, but it was an overpriced tourist trap featuring eight dollar "bowls" of clam chowder containing exactly two clams, soggy crab cakes, fish and chips where all the breading falls off after the first bite, bland fried shrimp, decent fried scallops and calamari and chips, and sticky communal picnic tables. Neither man nor food won this contest, one got grease induced gut rot and the other got unceremoniously turned into excrement. Liz did yell at some bratty kid with inattentive parents for sticking his grubby little brat hands in the communal silverware bucket. Tres Bostony.
The weekend picked up from there since it almost had to. We looked at some Tall Ships and then hit the North End for some Italian dessert and coffee, then took them to the oldest continually operating pub in North America. It's called the Bell in Hand and it's not all that cool. More of a "so you can say you did" type of thing. Then we went home and were in bed by, oh, let's just say 10:45.The next day we forced them to walk part of the freedom trail, just so they could say they did. We're very particular about people actually doing the things they say they did. Then we went to a place called Eastern Standard near Fenway where we had awesome oysters, probably the best salad I've ever had (poached egg and lardons over frisee) and a tongue sandwich. A cow's tongue, not my own tongue disguised with a bun and mustard like in cartoons. After that, we saw the Red Sox play the Royals.
The Sox won one to nothing, which makes for a pretty boring game when you don't have a horse or a Twin in the race, Big Poppi notwithstanding. Then we came home and allowed ourselves to stay up until, oh let's say 11:30.
Saturday we decided leaving the house was a horrible idea so we had an all day tasting menu. We started with Liz's famous buttermilk waffles, moved on to watermelon, goat cheese, arugula, and sesame salads, then fried manchego pucks with spicy honey, then scallop and tuna ceviche, and finally venison gorganzola juicy lucy sliders. Liz, who is currently sitting behind me studying vocab for the GRE, says it was ambrosial and metamorphosed our appetence into satiation.
Then we put on do rags and hung out with the neighbors until, oh probably about midnight. We were feeling saucy. Sunday, we ate some lobsters and put them on a plane back to AL. Pretty nice weekend, all things considered.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Return to St. Louis
We made our first return trip to St. Louis since we left in October last weekend. We met the Twins and several other less famous Minnesotans, St. Louisians, Chicagoans, and Omahanians there. We packed a lot into a weekend and returned to many of our old haunts, including The Stable, which has some seriously good pizza and obscure beer, Rooster, which has some seriously good crepes, Busch stadium, which has a seriously good first baseman, Sage, which has good stuff in general, Square One Brewery and Distillery, enough said, and the Hennies' back yard, which has seriously good people.
The game itself was less than ideal. As another more famous St. Louisian once said "It's getting hot in herre," as in upper 90s hot. We were in the shade which made it bearable. Albert Pujols put on a show, pretty much single handedly beating the Twins. Our boys won the other two games of the series, which made it OK. Here's us trying not to melt.
In contrast, here's one of the last games we went to in Kansas City last April. It was below freezing. The picture is blurry because light travels differently through extremely cold air. Look it up. Anyways, neither temperature extreme is conducive to beer consumption.
We got a sweet deal on rooms at the Four Seasons, so we hung out a bit at the rooftop pool to cool down. Later, a thunderstorm rolled through and we watched lightning blaze across the sky over the arch. That was neat.
On the plane ride home we sat in front of a mom with two boys, aged approximately seven and ten. We overheard this conversation as the mom attempted to keep them busy with Mad Libs:
Mom: I need an adjective.
Younger Kid: What's an adjective again?
Mom: A describing word like silly or hairy.
Younger Kid: Toilety!
Two hours later, literally 50 feet off the ground and 500 yards from the runway, Older Kid barfed all over himself. Younger Kid: "Look mom, it's his nachos." It smelled very stomachy.
The game itself was less than ideal. As another more famous St. Louisian once said "It's getting hot in herre," as in upper 90s hot. We were in the shade which made it bearable. Albert Pujols put on a show, pretty much single handedly beating the Twins. Our boys won the other two games of the series, which made it OK. Here's us trying not to melt.
In contrast, here's one of the last games we went to in Kansas City last April. It was below freezing. The picture is blurry because light travels differently through extremely cold air. Look it up. Anyways, neither temperature extreme is conducive to beer consumption.
We got a sweet deal on rooms at the Four Seasons, so we hung out a bit at the rooftop pool to cool down. Later, a thunderstorm rolled through and we watched lightning blaze across the sky over the arch. That was neat.
On the plane ride home we sat in front of a mom with two boys, aged approximately seven and ten. We overheard this conversation as the mom attempted to keep them busy with Mad Libs:
Mom: I need an adjective.
Younger Kid: What's an adjective again?
Mom: A describing word like silly or hairy.
Younger Kid: Toilety!
Two hours later, literally 50 feet off the ground and 500 yards from the runway, Older Kid barfed all over himself. Younger Kid: "Look mom, it's his nachos." It smelled very stomachy.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Gardening...
The people who owned our house before us did a wonderful job with the landscaping. It's quite the task to keep up with all the weeding and pruning. We had to purchase a hedge trimmer a few weeks ago to keep the massive boxwood hedge looking nice and boxy.
We've got two of the tree/bushes pictured below in our backyard. They are prickly and catch every dead leaf in our yard. Does anyone know what these are?
Here is a close up of one of the branches.
Here is a close up of one of the branches.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
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