Sam is Driving me Crazy!!

Sam has been home the last couple of weeks for his break from school and he is starting to really drive me nuts. Let me explain. It is hard in our little one bedroom apartment where we have to always be in the same room together. When I am working I have to tell him to mute the tv when I have to make a phone call. If I didn't have to work then it wouldn't be a problem at all because I could actually hang out with him. Lucky for me he sleeps in until noon so I at least have the morning alone time. I am used to listening to The View and Gilmore Girls in the background on tv while I work. While Sam is here I have to listen to PTI (for those of you who don't know what this is, it stands for Pardon The Interruption, a sports talk show), Sports Center or some dumb movie that he taped on tivo. I am just used to my regular routine and he is interrupting it now. Where is school again!!? Only one more week and then I will be free again. Although I know the second he starts school again, I will wish he was home all day.

On another note, today while Sam was home he made me lunch while I was working (this is a very nice thing about having him around). He made some chocolate milk and I was explaining that I just like a little bit of chocolate in it. I just want to barely taste it, "I like it light brown. " He then said, "Just like you like your men!" I was dying laughing, it killed me!

More Humongous fun

Our search for pointless continued and it took us to Maine. We started out by heading to Portland where we wanted to go to a Mexican grill called Costa Vida, because honestly, the only thing that motivates us more than the absurd is food. Ginger loves Cafe Rio in Utah and Costa Vida is a copycat version of it. We were really surprised to see that there was one up in Maine. We had tried it before in Utah and didn't love it, but it's hard to find good Mexican out here so we thought we'd give them another chance. Sadly, it was really disappointing. Luckily, we had a gigantic bearded man in plaid to look forward to.
This is, of course, the legendary Paul Bunyon. If you look real close you'll see that Ginger is pulling her best "Where's Waldo" and is actually in the picture. We couldn't stop laughing as soon as we saw him. I think the people of Bangor, ME thought we were crazy, but let's be serious, these people live in a city that celebrates American folklore by erecting a ginormous plastic statue of a lumberjack and pass by everyday like it's normal. Yea, we're the crazy ones.

It so happens that Bangor is also the home of Stephen King and according to a lot of people this is where he lives. You can see the bats and the webbing on the wrought iron fence. We took these pictures from the car, we didn't want to run out there and be crazy.

Meet "Eartha"

Keeping up with our theme to see different tourist attractions, Ginger and I went to Yarmouth, ME and visited the DeLorme Map Store. They're very proud of their gigantic, record breaking, rotating globe, Eartha. We were surprised to see so many people there, I guess it wasn't the hidden gem that we thought it was. Of course, we were there during the city's clam festival (and hey, if you're going to throw a party for a mollusk, you better expect the mobs to come). It was more fun with all the people though.
There were a couple of Bohemian hippie types that were just sitting there with these awe-inspired looks on their faces. Not to stereotype, but I'm pretty sure they were inspired by more than that globe, I mean it was cool and all, but those two looked like they were ready to start a new religion and worship that thing. Of course, we also had the nerd that was showing off with all their geography knowledge pointing out all the rivers and mountain ranges... OK that was actually me, but believe me, people were impressed. The globe was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. I think they said it was 41.5 feet in diameter. It was pretty cool.

School is Out for the Short Short Summer

Sam just had his last final today. He has been having finals for at least the last month. He is so glad that he doesn't have to study for a bit. He can't rest too much though with only 2 weeks off until he starts his 3rd year. Can you believe Sam is half way through dental school!!? It has gone by so quickly! I know he won't miss his commute to and from school every day. He travels on the bus from our apartment to the subway and then gets on the bus again to get to school. His commute takes about 1-1 1/2 hours each way. It would take longer if he were to drive into Boston. Traffic is crazy out here.

We will be going on a couple of road trips while Sam is on vacation. We have to do that on the weekends since I still have work. I have been working for my job I had before we moved out here at DucksinaRow Appraisal. I have a computer set up to work from home. It has worked out perfectly. I only work a few hours a day. It is so convenient to just roll out of bed and jump on the computer, not that I do that (at least not every day).

Project Runway

The last couple of weeks I have been watching marathons of Project Runway. I am loving it. It is just one more of those reality shows. It plays on Bravo and it is competition between people that want to become clothes designers. They have fun challenges where sometimes they make wedding dresses, prom dresses, swim wear, and many other things in short amount of times. It is just fun to see how talented or not so talented some of them are. The new season of Project Runway starts either this week or next week so I will definitely be setting my tivo for this one. I love these kind of shows. I think it is funny when I find myself judging their design when I really don't know hardly anything about fashion. It is fun to do anyway.

Strange and Unusual Sites to See

We have decided that we want to start to visit some strange and unusual sites in the New England area. There are a lot of great things to go see around here. Some people may think it is a waste of time but not us, we live for pointless destinations.

Our first stop a couple of months ago was the World's (used to be) Largest Chair. I know you may be a little jealous, which you should be! It stands 16 feet tall and is located in Gardner, MA. Sam was going to try to jump up on top of it but it was too rainy. I didn't feel like going to the hospital because he slipped and fell trying to get up on the giant chair. This was the tallest chair for a while but then was beat out. The tallest chair is now in Alabama standing at 31 feet. The 16 foot tall chair is good enough for us even though I would love to see the 31 footer. Here is a little article about the chair wars, if you are interested.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/CIVIchair.html

This last Saturday, the paper house was our destination. It is located in Rockport, MA. It was built by a man in the 1920s as his summer home. Heck, why wouldn't you want a home made out of newspapers! They used about 100,000 newspapers. The framework to the house is wood, just like any other house, it has a regular wooden floor and wooden roof. The shingles on the house were newspapers and almost everything in house is made out of newspapers. The newspaper was rolled up with varnish on it to make the furniture. It was pretty interesting to see all of the different pieces of furniture they had made. Making the clock, they used newspapers from all 48 state capitals at the time. It was amazing how detailed everything was.

Well these were the first of many trips. If you ever hear about anything crazy in the New England area, let us know, I am sure we would love to go and check them out!

Paper House

4th of July Festivities

Ginger and I were sitting at home watching Rascal Flatts perform in Boston for the 4th of July concert and we just thought, what the heck are we doing? We're over here where so much of our countries history was first played out and we're sitting on our couch watching TV. Obviously our patriotism was in question and we had to head into Boston. It turns out we might have been better off just staying home.

We rode in on the subway and got off at the Charles River. It was packed when we got off and it took us awhile to get down to the park area. We had to weave in and out of crowds and climb over barricades and walk through fences and while we were hurdling over one of the roadside barriers, Ginger caught her pants (just purchased that day) on some steel wire and scratched her knee pretty good. She's a trooper though and we managed to walk down the river and find a spot that wasn't covered by trees and people.

When the fireworks finally started it was beautiful. The weather was perfect, we were sitting in a great spot with a great view, and the fireworks were awsome. Then we started to notice that the air was filling with smoke and wasn't clearing out and that was it for the view. We couldn't see a thing after that and for the next 15 minutes the sky was just full of smoke and it looked like downtown Boston was being bombed. It was fun regardless and we started to head back to the subway.

There was a huge crowd outside the entrance and all of a sudden there was some kind of fight that broke out and people started to scream and scatter away from the subway station. It looked like we were going to get trampled, so I'm trying to get Ginger and myself out of there and I start yelling at people to calm down before we get run over. I'm expecting to hear gunshots the way people are screaming and running. I'm still not sure what happened down there, but it turns out that someone in our ward heard that there were 5 shootings and 2 stabbings during this whole thing. I don't know how close we were to it all, but we managed to survive and make it back to our car.

We had to park up on the roof of the parking garage and so the traffic out of there was horrendous. We were at a stand still for a half an hour before I just shut off the car and waited it out. There was a guy up there that was roller skating and people were out of their cars playing music, looking over the edge, and just enjoying themselves. It was like a block party up there. Finally after another hour of just sitting on the roof, they opened up a side exit and we made it out. So that was our 4th of July and despite all the craziness and the disappointment of not seeing the fireworks like we wanted, we still had fun and had a good time.

Rained out 3rd of July Party

We started out our holiday weekend on Thursday. Every July 3rd we are usually in Utah and we go over to the Stapleys' house for a big 'ol party. I love the 3rd of July parties every year. It is a fun time to catch up with all of our neighborhood friends I grew up with. We have a barbeque, sing songs, have a raffle, dance some funky dances, and then end with a fireworks show. This year, Sam is still in school so we had to stay here and it is way too expensive to back and forth so many times. I wanted to do something fun since we would be missing out on the party so we were going to go to our town center for a party there. It was a street dance, I just assume we would go and dance in the street. Sam was dreading going to it but I was set on getting out of the apartment. Our street dance got rained out before it even started!! We drove by anyway just in case they were still doing it and the band was taking down all of the equipment. Sam was very excited that his prayers were answered!

It's Official!!

I am a blogger now. At first I wanted to wait until I was pregnant to start my blog but since that isn't happening any time really soon, I am jumping on in. I am excited to tell about all of our Boston adventures.

I know, I know! The name of my blog is soooo original but I can't think of anything. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.