Pumpkins That Party Too Hearty

Sorry. I couldn't help myself.

Sunday Custody

It's official. Heather, the brat, has flown the coop and now lives in her own place. One of the conditions we negotiated in the deal is that we get custody every single Sunday for the rest of her life, so sure enough she moved out on Saturday but was back the next day for Sunday dinner.

To show what good sports we are that she selfishly insists on having her own life that does not include living with me until she's 85 years old (but I'm not bitter) we surprised her with a housewarming gift.

...a set of very cool black and white stripey dishes. They'll come in handy since we plan to show up for dinner at her house the other six days of the week.

PS: I tried to toss in a bonus gift that I thought matched her decor to a "T", but she wasn't having any of it:


STRAY NEURON:
This is a short video that has nothing whatsoever to do with Heather moving out but I thought it was pretty cool.

How in the world do you train a dog to say no to a treat? Shelby won't tell me.

Modern Conveniences

This is our "new" old boat, Magnificent Obsession. We love her because she is roomy and solid and has lots of modern conveniences. That's Carol standing in the cockpit. Hi, Carol!

We love all the nice features on our "new" old boat. For example, it has an washer/dryer to wash your clothes or sheets, or a load of dirty towels such as the ones I washed the other day after we'd used them in cleaning the funk off the boat. The washer/dryer worked great...

...except for the drain. Actually the drain works great, except instead of draining the water overboard, it drains it into the floor of the guest stateroom and hallway. I got the spend a whole afternoon using a shop vac in this area. I now know this part of the boat very, very well.

This is another modern convenience onboard our "new" old boat: a full bathroom just for guests. It works great too...

...except for the toilet. Well, the toilet works great, except instead of pumping the water into one of the holding tanks, it pumps it here:

...this is the other full bathroom on the boat. This bathroom doesn't work so great. The pump on this toilet doesn't send the water anywhere. It just makes it swirl round and round inside the toilet bowl. We got to know this part of the boat very, very well too.

We never could get things working and so we had to place a call to the one and only marine plumber we know on Lake Lanier. We've now been waiting a week for him to show up and get the plumbing problems fixed.

In the mean time, two slips down from our "new" old boat is our "old" new boat which we are trying to sell:

It's a really nice boat except it doesn't have as many conveniences as our "new" old boat--but the toilet works great. These days we refer to her as our $100,000 outhouse.

Flying the Coop

After an embarrassing amount of begging and pleading (plus maybe a teeny, tiny amount of crying and clinging on my part), Morley and I convinced Heather to move in with us a couple of years ago. Even though we realize she's a grown woman and all, we just like having her around plus we had all that space upstairs that nobody ever used which we were paying for anyway and was going to waste, plus we already had a storage unit where she could store her stuff, plus it would be fun for the three of us to hang out together--for us it was a no brainer.

But for Heather it was a big decision to give up her own place to move in with the old folks so we chipped away at her until we wore her down and she finally agreed to be our roomie, except she put strict timelines on the deal.

When her deadline for moving out came, Morley and I shamelessly ganged up on her and locked her in a dark closet with no food or water until she agreed to an extension, and then we immediately returned to our happy place of denial that she would ever mention moving out ever again.

Well, the extended deadline has arrived and this time the little brat is sticking to her guns. A couple of weeks ago she found a cute place in a swanky neighborhood close to her friends and great places to shop and lots of trendy places to hang out, and this time she ignored our whining and pleading.

To snap us out of our denial she put in her car last week and took us to check out her new digs.

On the drive over Morley tried talking her out of it, but she just turned up the radio really loud to drown him out.

We gave the new place the once over hoping to find a serious infestation of bugs or a major structural defect--something! anything!--we could use as ammunition to scare her off, but no such luck. It is a darling place in perfect condition.

I scouted out the neighbors trying to find evidence of a serial killer or even a Obama campaign sign but all I found were a bunch of nice people with good solid jobs and no criminal records, plus a few Libertarian bumper stickers and a couple of McCain/Palin and Fair Tax signs.

I informed Morley of what I'd seen in the neighborhood and here's how he reacted: he said he thought it was a cool place. The traitor.


And then Heather ordered us out to her car which just happened to be crammed full of stuff that needed to be carried into her new place.

I think she'd planned this whole thing.

Brat.

Hitching Delay

The very moment I slipped the noose, er, ring on Morley's finger

Bad news: Morley and I won't marry each other twice in one year after all. Good news: we're getting married two years in a row.

Business continues to boom and our hands are really full, so we simply can't take off to spend a couple of weeks in England right now. Wah. Point being, our commitment ceremony at Banwell Castle has been rescheduled for next year which means we'll be getting hitched in 2008 and 2009.

To be specific, our ceremony will be now held on Sunday, April 26th at 2 PM in case you want to come. (Michelle, I'm looking at you.)

Even though we are both very, very, extremely disappointed we won't be going this month, at least we now have something to look forward to while we work our arses off all winter. Plus the weather in England will probably be nicer (read: less rainy) next Spring.

And besides, how cool is that to get married in an English castle, eh? Worth the wait, no doubt.