what our child will look like

gosh, i hope not. no offense, honey.

there is no way to convey how funny this moment was. most of the family was down in the basement playing poker and c got to putting on the mannequin wigs. i was upstairs at the time. so c came running up the stairs and walked into the living room with the wig on but like nothing was wrong. i don't think i've ever laughed so hard in my life. so, of course, after this everyone in the house had the opportunity to try the wig on. unfortunately (or fortunately?) i don't have pictures of that. but maybe i will in the future.

more pictures of the weekend at my flickr site.

slow food fundraiser

Terra Dinner Invite v4 (web)
Originally uploaded by jspatchwork

for anyone who might be interested. this event promises to have really good food, a great atmosphere, and the funds will go to a good cause. this is our first big event but for sure there will be more to come.

thanks be to God

baldman and i took a quick trip to western pa this weekend for the annual furgiuele family reunion. there was lots of chaos as 16 people (of the same (crazy italian) family) all tried to squeeze into one tiny house. but there were a lot of laughs and hilarity ensued during several notable moments throughout the weekend. i'm awaiting some choice photos to publicize some of the funniness. but for now i thought i'd post this letter which was historically interesting and caused quiet a chuckle and many references throughout the weekend.

so the story goes like this. my grandmom volunteers for a book sale at her church every year(i'm pretty sure it's at her church). this year when she was sorting books she came across some books from her previous (irish) priest (who here shall remain nameless, per grandmom's request). this priest is now deceased. inside the book she found the following typed letter to the priest from his cousin in ireland:

County Cork, Ireland October 1, 1940

Dear Cousin,

Your welcome letter received and me and your aunt Bridget thank you kindly for the money sent. We have seven masses said for your Grandfather and Grandmother. God rest their souls.

You have gone high places in America. God bless you. I hope you'll not be putting on airs and forgetting our native land.

Your Cousin, Hughie O'Toole, was hung in Londonderry last week for killing a policeman. God rest his soul. And may God's Curse be on Jimmy Rodgers, the informer, and may he burn in Hell. God forgive me.

Times are not as bad as they might be. The herring is back and nearly everyone who has a heart is making ends meet and the price of fish is good. Thanks be to God.

We had a grand time at Pat Muldoon's wake. He was an old blatherskite and it looked good to see him stretched out with his big mouth closed. He is better off dead and he'll burn till the damned place freezes over. He had too many friends among the Orangemen. God curse the lot of them.

God bless your heart, I almost forgot to tell you about your Uncle Dinny. He took a potshot at at turncoat from in back of a hedge, but had too much drink in him and missed. God's curse be on the dirty drink.

I hope this letter finds you in good health and may God keep reminding you to keep sending the money.

The Brennens are 100% strong around here since they stopped going to America. They have kids running all over the county.

Father O'Flaherty, who baptized you is now feeble-minded and sends you his blessing.

Mollie O'Brien, the brat you used to go to school with, has married an Englishman. She'll have no luck.

May God take care of the lot of you and keep you from sudden death.

Your Devoted Cousin,

Timothy

P.S. Things look bright again. Every police barracks and every Protestant Church has burned to the ground in County Cork. Thanks be to God.

P.S. Keep sending the money.

what we did with our weekend

gosh,i'm so happy to have this new storage shed. but i really am done with house-improvement projects!


by the way, look at this cutie as he's about to get to work.

slowfood's blog

i just found out the other day that the slowfood convivium in columbia has a blog. it's not really posted on that much, but keep your eyes peeled for updates on some coming events. (of course, i'll post them here too.)

thoughts while riding

i've been trying to get up early several mornings a week to ride my bike. here are some random thoughts/sightings i had while riding:


why are there so many loose dogs roaming my neighborhood? i have never seen so many dogs just walking loose. i have learned that if you are chased by a pack of dogs while riding a bike, stay calm and keep riding at the same speed. however, do not, i repeat, do not look back.

i saw a huge bird, i think was a hawk. it was hard to keep sights on it because i was trying to watch where i was going. i first realized there was a big bird somewhere overhead because i heard it flapping its wings. cool.

i've been riding past a construction site and i finally realized what it is. what will this do to the neighborhood? though we already have some major sports attractions to my neck of the woods, so...

would anyone notice if i took figs off the really big fig tree on the outskirts of someone's property? i'll wait till their ripe to find out.

i think i saw scruffy. i know he 's been missing. and he is one to live the tramp life, but do you think he could really find his way from mississippi to south carolina? probably.

really local farmer's market

so there's a church up the road that apparently partners with a local farmer (or farmers) and every week they hold a market to sell produce. i'd never gone because, honestly, i'd forgotten about it. and once i remembered i didn't have the opportunity due to work or being out of town every saturday morning. so this week i finally was able to go. it's just a small affair, but i'll tell you! that stuff is cheap. cheap. cheap! how much do you think this would cost:

3 yellow summer squash
a pint of blueberries
12 peaches
2 cucumbers
4 ears of corn
2 1/2 pounds of okra

....

you don't know? ok, i'll tell you. $10! what the what!?

of course, there was the problem that i realized later of what am i going to do with all this produce because i had all this, plus the continual supply of stuff coming from our garden*, plus the farm share. so i'm trying desperately to use everything up.

so lesson for next week--buy more blueberries but less of everything else!

*we just ate our first big eggplant last week. yea, baby!

well-deserved

after all the hard work from the past week's home improvements.

finished!

csa season again!

yea! today was the first day for our summer csa. this is the third year that c and i have done this. for the past two years we've belonged to five leaves farms and we have been nothing but completely thrilled with the experience. the experience, that is of signing up for a share in a local farm. for those new to the csa idea, you can read all about it here (and once you read about it, you can use the same website to search your local area to find a farm near you to join!).

i'll be honest and say it does take a little time in the kitchen each week to be creative and figure out what you're going to make. and sometimes i just don't want to be cooking in the heat of the summer. but it does turn out to be really fun and it gets my creative juices flowing and helps me get out of the rut of eating the same-old same-old. plus! it supports local farms and gives you fresh, usually organic, and sometimes heirloom varieties of foods. so i'm excited to get our first harvest of yukon gold potatoes, greens, barbosa onions, tomatoes, and scallions. hmmm, i wonder what i'll make with them??

fourth of july construction

happy belated fourth, everyone. hope you all enjoyed your burgers, beers and fireworks.

c and i didn't do any of that this weekend. instead we went into action to try to knock out the rest of the closet work that i mentioned we started the other day.

good thing we went out to indian food to treat ourselves on thursday night because we were in for quite a weekend!

friday we spent most of the day at home depot buying everything we would need (or so we thought) for the project. we rented their truck, hauled everything home (luckily we were in hd for so long we missed the afternoon rain storm), unloaded everything and drove the truck back to hd. we rewarded ourselves with krispy kream and a home-cooked meal for the fourth.

saturday we started bright and early with great optimism and energy. "we're going to just knock this out," we thought. we'll definitely be done by sunday afternoon. anyways... i started out by painting the new screen doors while c finished the framing on the closet. then, came the drywall. here's where our problems started. nothing too major, but we had to do a bit of rethinking because our drill wasn't working and the house is all lopsided, thus every time we cut drywall it didn't fit because everything is lopsided and uneven. so we had to do a lot of cutting and recutting. but by the end of the day we did, indeed, have the looks of a closet.





sunday we went to early church so we could get another relatively early start on things. we had one more piece of drywall to lay, and then we were to start the spackling. except, we realized we needed a few things from the store, so i spent about 1 1/2 hours going to 2 hardware stores to get what we needed while c cut out the wood we'd need for the shelving. the rest of the day i spent in a close relationship with spackle. as of tonight, everything is spackled at least once. we still need to sand and respackle, sand again, install trim on the inside and outside around door, install door, and paint. oh well, so much for getting it done this weekend.

all in all, though, we're very happy with what we've accomplished and how it looks. oh, plus we got the screen doors painted and c got one up (which sounds easy, but with our old house, that's a lot harder than you might think;).

here's the pictures as of tonight.


there are three shelves and a bar for coats


kitchen wall, which was the hardest part to do, so i'm proud of this! the little spackle on the left of the pict is an imperfection in the wall the we're trying to smooth out.

i'd say we'd put our construction skills out for hire, but there ain't no way i'm doing anymore housework for a long time! (hopefully)


we're all tired after all of this work!


the new door on porch, we had to move the 2x4 on the left and we added a 2x4 on top because there wasn't one before. new screens to come soon.

more pictures of our process at my flickr page.

donate money without donating money

if you want to do something good for a good organization and you have a little free time on your hands, visit palmettobizbuzz and review a business in south carolina. when you submit reviews you can choose a non-profit to donate to and bizbuzz will donate $1 to that organization. my office is signed up as a potential recipient, if you'd like a suggestion of a place to donate. hint hint.

as to where to review, that's entirely up to you. i found it a little daunting at first because i didn't know where to start. but now i can't really stop myself. i think i've reviewed like 15 places so far (restaurants, bars, vets office, roofers, my bank, etc)! each individual can only donate to up to $25 to your organization of your choice (and they have to be local). but of course, you can review as many places as you want.

so check it out.

summer what!?

i'm not complainin'. just wonderin'.

when i rode my bike this morning it was actually cool outside! i mean, i was a bit chilly in my shorts and tank top. i was lovin' it!

erica and fuzzy helped produce a barenaked ladies video!

the new barenaked ladies video for pollywog in a bog was finally released. erica and fuzzy's friend noah was the major mastermind behind the project, and e and f helped produce it. great job, guys!

fun stuff.