Curtin Call

I love Halloween. It’s probably my favorite holiday (well, maybe, I’ll have to think about whether it really beats spending Thanksgiving in my pajamas, next to the fire, with Tom turkey cooking in the oven!) I love Halloween because its all about the kids. In my opinion, most holidays have become all about the gifts and, I’m sorry, but that just takes all the fun out of it for me.

Not that Halloween can’t get expensive, too. We’re three months in the new house now and I’m told to expect to go through a lot of candy. I bought six bags at BJs (read: ~100 pieces/bag) and have been told that that should cover me for a couple of hours. So, I’m excited! Its been many, many years since I had that many tiny tots ringing my door bell in their precious little costumes!

I will also make a point to walk over to main campus today to see what’s happening over there. I’ve been invited to stop by Copy Tech cause they’re supposed to have lots of candy, too, so I’ll probably stop over and visit with my new found friends. (I spent the last two days wrestling Word tables and Excel docs in order to finalize our budget request and I’m giving myself a break today and no one has to know so don’t tell, okay?)

Today is also Frosty’s “birthday”. Or at least, it was four years ago today that Brian found him and brought him home. The best find he’s EVER had! My precious little guy! Its sort of a special day for Shadow, too, cause he’s such a scaredy cat, that his nick name is Spooky. We certainly don’t have to worry about him spooking any children tonight, though, cause as soon as that door bell rings for the first time, he’ll be off and hiding in the closet! (See? He earned the name!)

So, Happy Halloween to all you kids out there – young and old – have fun!

I’m really, really glad its Friday. I’ve had a very difficult week. My brother was in an accident on Tuesday and was brought to the trauma intensive care unit at Beth Israel Hospital from NH. He broke two bones in his neck but someone was watching over him because they did not sever his spinal cord and he is miraculously not paralyzed. He will be in a neck brace for anywhere from 6 – 12 weeks. He had 8 hours of plastic surgery on his face as they believe he wiped out the rear view mirror with it and he tore his eye lid and nose back (okay, I’ll stop. It really is nasty.) He also has two broken bones in his nose which will need to be operated on at a later date and they discovered yesterday that he has a fracture in his ankle (because of the trauma he suffered, the doctor said that additional injuries could show up as they begin to get his pain under control).

The last report I had last night was that they were (hopefully, they said this the night before, too) going to move him out of intensive care. My poor parents were on a (much needed/deserved) free 7 day cruise and we finally called them yesterday morning when we had a better idea of what was going on and they immediately got a flight back and were to arrive in Boston last night. I’m glad that they at least had 4 days to enjoy themselves before getting this sort of news.

On an up note – I was having a real tough morning (I think it all caught up to me yesterday afternoon – I saw a fender-bender on the highway on my way home and started crying) so I decided to give those darn scratch tickets another shot. I bought 2-$2 tickets and I won… $24!!! Woohoo!!! Did I hear someone say I stink at gambling??? I won!!! Woohoo!!! (Okay, I guess it doesn’t take much to make me happy these days, huh?)

Hopefully, things will continue to look up. It is the weekend and that’s always a good thing. I’m tired, though. I just may stay in bed for the day tomorrow (yeah, right!)

I was just reading through some of my old posts. In just a short period of time, I found myself laughing and then I found myself crying and then, laughing again. More than anything, though, I found myself being thankful that I have been keeping this blog for the past 3+ years because where else could I go to remember what it was that has made me laugh and cry in my life. Oh, the wonders of cyberspace!

… why I don’t gamble. ‘Cause I stink at it! MegaMillions – nothing. MegaBucks – nothing. $5 scratch ticket – nothing. 2-$2 scratch tickets – nothing. I’m having a tough time comprehending how people can think that stuff is fun and I’m having an even harder time understanding how anyone can actually get addicted to it! I work too hard for my money to just throw it away like that. I’m done. I think I’ll take Ben’s advise and try mutual funds!

Yes, I’m thinking about it. My buddies, Ben and Stacy (whose link I can’t find right now) both post their photos to flickr. People keep asking me to see pictures of the house and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how to post them on this new blog of mine.

So, here’s my question. HOW do I post them to flickr? I see the upload link so does that mean I plug the camera in and the photos import to iPhoto? Then I upload them to flickr?

Oh, and while you’re answering questions for me – how is it possible that I, the one who NEVER used their computer at home, has now posted on BOTH days of the weekend? I better be careful – don’t want to lose this beautiful house as a result of divorce as a result of yet another internet junkie! LOL!

Since we’ve been in the new house, neigbors have been telling us that there is a family of deer that lives in the woods behind us. Last night, we saw them! It appeared to be two fawns that were wandering through the yard looking quite mystified. It was really quite amazing for us!

My first step, of course, was to get online and find out what I could feed the baby deer to be sure they were getting plenty of food (and, selfishly, to see what would keep them coming back!) According to the Mass Audobon, feeding them is not necessarily best for them. Though they will feast on berries and apples, which is what I was planning on feeding them, it says that nature supplies plenty of this for them and, I must say, there is an abundance of berries in our yard. There was an apple, too. Yes, AN apple. Hopefully, they enjoyed that one and next year, more will grow for their pleasure as well!

I went and did my shopping this morning. Again, according to neighbors, this is one of the favorite neighborhoods for trick or treaters – people acutally drive them in! I went and bought six bags at BJs. Geez, they better be right about this prediction or we are going to have a lot of candy to get through!

The plumber is here upgrading some of the heating/hot water stuff (which is probably why I’m actually on this foolish thing on a weekend – you’d be surprised what you can not do without water!). It’s getting cold outside – only 41 degrees in Boston this morning so please keep your fingers crossed for me that all goes well so I can be warm tonight.

Oh, yeah! Did you hear that the Red Sox won last night? Yippee! It was bit nerve wracking to start because our opponents have really.good.pitching but it became evident last night that we have even.better.hitters!!! Hee hee!! Yippee! Hear we go Red Sox, hear we go!

Okay. This lottery thing is not working. One number… again.

You know what, though? I thought about it last night and I don’t think I’m going to continue even trying to win the lottery. This may sound strange, but… I don’t want to be a millionaire. I want only to be able to choose to work on the days that I feel like it and not work on the days that I don’t. Becoming a millionaire would change my life and, quite frankly, I like my life just fine the way it is!

It was sort of fun, though, so I think maybe once a week, I’ll give a scratch ticket a shot. I think the first one I’ll try is $1,000,000 Corvette. Part of the reason for moving included finding a house with a two car garage as, one day, Brian would like a “toy”. His dream is to one day own a corvette of his very own. The total prize if you win is $1,077,500 ($1,000,000 & CORVETTE). The odds of our winning this? 1 in 3,024,000!!! Though, someone has to be that 1, right??? Yeah, I think I’ll buy one of those and surprise Brian with it tonight! Wish him luck!

Okay. That didn’t work. I got one number in Mega Millions which nets me $0. Tonight is Megabucks – yeah, I’ll give that a shot!

I love weekends. I love being in my new home. It was gloomy and wet outside on our holiday yesterday but I didn’t care. Being there is still better than being here.

I told Brian I was going to start playing the lottery so I only have to work when I want to work (and trust me, that won’t be often!) and I did. I played Mega Millions today. Wish me luck…

Well, if y’all aren’t tired of hearing about the house already, here’s the latest. We’ve been busy, busy, busy getting the outdoorsy stuff done, while the weather is still permitting! At this point, all trees/bushes that needed to be pulled out/cut down have been (we filled a 20 yard and a 10 yard dumpster mostly with that stuff!), Brian removed all the patio block that was haphazardly laid outside the sliders downstairs. He has since laid that back and it actually looks like a real patio now. He also raked out some mulch out front and made better “lines” where he laid grass seed that we’re just waiting to grow!

We’ve had new garage doors and openers installed. Our carpenters came and installed a couple gutters where there were none but should have been. They also dug trenches for the drainage to get the water further away from the house (Brian was home that day, too, and helped out with that part).

Tonight, we have a b-day party to attend and tomorrow morning, our electrician friend is coming to install outlets in the ceiling of the garage so we don’t have to run extension cords from the new openers. Sunday, my parents are coming down from NH to see the homestead.

Monday is a holiday. Thank goodness. I’ll need it.

Have I mentioned lately that we love our new house???