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