My week off
People were asking me all week what I was doing during my week off.
On Monday it was about 60 degrees in the shade. I scraped and painted the floor of our front porch. Our doorway is on the right (the one with the cute home plate mat — which was an engagement gift from Jennifer Myszkowski. We also got a cute new floor mat for our wedding from Alyson and Bill. It has monkeys on it. We are saving that one for when this one wears out. But, enough about the doormats). One of our tenants gave me the news that it was going to rain that night, so I only got to put one coat of paint on the floor. When the weather gets warmer again, we plan to do more painting on the porch.
On Wednesday night, we went to the Rag Shag Parade in Easthampton. I had never heard of such an event, but it’s basically a chance for kids and parents to walk down the streets of the city, while the police direct traffic away from downtown. The kids are dressed up in their Halloween costumes and there are essentially no spectators, just parade participants. We did not follow the entire parade through town, but Matt tells me they head for some location where they are given free candy. Matt grew up in Easthampton and did this as a kid.
During the day on Wednesday, I spent some time at the Holyoke Mall. What is a week off without at least one pilgrimmage to the Holyoke Mall? I bought a few tops in anticipation of the new job, had my eyes checked at the optometrist and treated myself to a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I finished it Saturday afternoon. Isn’t it pretty?
Jigsaw puzzles are a fruitless activity, which can be a good and a bad thing. On the one hand it’s very zen to focus on something with absolutely no reward except the act itself. On the other hand, it took hours away from my life.
Despite my reputation as a highly organized person, I will often wait to do things until the last minute. One of those things was purchasing a pumpkin for Friday night’s 2nd annual Halloween pumpkin carving extravaganza. As the week progressed I casually noticed that there were fewer and fewer pumpkins available at the Stop and Shop. On Thursday, I drove around Chicopee listening to Winterpills and trying to find a damn pumpkin.
It wasn’t until Friday afternoon when I finally tore myself away from the jigsaw puzzle and drove to Atkins Farms in Amherst. Atkins was out of big pumpkins, but I ended up picking up the last pumpkin at a roadside farmstand in Granby. The guy sold it to me for four bucks. On my way back I shot some photos of the Holyoke Dam area. This shot is of the South Hadley side.
And here is the carved pumpkin, which we ended up naming Barack O’Lantern, because that’s what you do when you are hanging out with a bunch of commies.
I did a lot more activities, including Endless Shrimp on Tuesday night, but I’d rather not talk about that. Our close friend Amy was also in town for the weekend and so we spent some time with her. And just this morning I met up with a few Twitter friends at a Starbucks in Connecticut.
Anyway, more blogging will happen from here on out. It feels like the seal has been broken.
daily life, holyoke, home improvement, western mass | kristen November 2, 2008
1 Comment
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By alyson, December 5, 2008 @ 3:24 pm
Hooray for doormats and monkies! I think they should forever be combined.