No Exageration

My mother-in-law, as Alison and I are heading out the door to the pharmacy:

I need cigarettes and Dr. Pepper and do they have any packs of those little doughnuts that I like?

Seriously. This quotation succinctly summarizes her diet.

Dogs at Dad's

(I seem to be in a Newton-photo mood, so I'll continue the trend here.)

We spent Christmas and Michaelmas in Atlanta last year.  We stayed at my father's house, and Alan* brought his dog Marley over to play with Newton.  Newton enjoyed the interaction, as was expected.  We don't have any photos, videos, orother photos of them playing this time, but we did get take a couple of good canine photographs.  

Here's a pic of Newton sleeping off a play session on my dad's couch.  Compare it with this one from 2 years earlier.  (Note that you can see photos of Alan and me in the frame in the background.  I'm the one in the little-league-football uniform, aged 8 or 10. 

The second image shows how much of a cuddle pup Marley can be.  He's resting his head in my lap.  (Note Newton sleeping in the background.)

* Alan is my half-brother.  He's tall, blue-eyed, and blond-ish.  What's that about?

He Loves His Auntie Ashley

Apropos of nothing, here's a cute photo of Newton wondering why his Auntie Ashley has stopped petting him.

Holidays in the ATL

Regular readers may have noted a drop in activity here on the Offical Blog of Team Grondul lately.  Alison, Newton, and I just returned from a weeklong trip to Atlanta, where we spent the both Christmas and Michaelmas.  It was a good trip, all considered:  we spent some time with both sides of my family, ate at a couple of my favorite restaurants, and tried to relax.

VTGTG4

Alison and I hosted the fourth consecutive Very Team Grondul Thanksgiving yesterday.  We had our largest-ever turnout:  8 people including ourselves.  I'd like to offer my thanks to everyone for making it such an enjoyable holiday.

This was our first VTGTG with family, since Ashley now lives in the DC area.  Her visit actually started the evening before.  She stayed over to help us with our night-before cooking.  Newton loves his Auntie Ashley, and he spent the night cuddled up with her on our fold-out bed.  Here's a photo of Newton, Ashley, and me as we relaxed on that piece of furniture Thanksgiving morning.

Newton was well behaved throughout our Thanksgiving gathering.  As a reward for that, and because he's such a cutie, we let him "clean up" the turkey platter.  He was happy to lend a paw, as you can see from these pictures:

You can also see that Newton's not quite looking himself.  He's had a disturbing growth on the back of his neck for a couple of months, and we had it removed on Tuesday.  The incision site was shaved, as was his left forearm, where his IV was inserted.  He's wearing the inflatable "travel-pillow" collar to prevent him from scratching his wound.  We're hoping the biopsy comes back with "benign" written across the top.  We're also hoping he makes a speedy recovery.  If he doesn't, it won't be for lack of protien.

The Mailman? Seriously?

Those of you who know us in meatspace are aware that Alison didn't take my surname when we were wed.  She made that choice, I believe, not only because it would be strange to abandon her family name after 29 years with it, but also because she had already established her work identity under her birth name.  Certainly, since she'd already published several papers, changing her name would not be helpful.

Anyway, her grandmother insists on addressing cards to us with "Mr. and Mrs." followd by my full name.  What I find hilarious about this approach is that she writes our address in this manner because she doesn't want the mailman to think we aren't married.  Seriously.

Sisters, Again

Ashly came by a week or so ago, and she and Alison had a girls' day at the mall.  They also found time to fit in some Super Mario Brothers on Alison's Nintendo Entertainment System.

If this photo looks familar to you, that's because I posted one that was eerily similar about 6 months ago.

Happy Birthday, Mickey

Today is my mother's birthday.  So, happy birthday Mom!  I hope you have a good one.

Welcome Ash and Finny

I'm about three weeks late reporting it, but, as predicted, Ashley has moved to Maryland to begin her career as a high-school history teacher. She and her mother arrived on Friday, and on Saturday, Ashley, Sharon, Alison, and I all set off to buy Ashley's first car.


Alison and I had decided that the Honda Fit was the best vehicle for Ash, and she had reached the same conclusion herself. She had also decided on on a trim level (Sport), the options she wanted (principally an automatic transmission), and even the color (Blackberry Pearl). In this era of high fuel prices, the frugal Fit, which is also roomy, cleverly designed, fun-to-drive, and award-winning, is selling as fast as Honda can ship them from Japan. The dealership nearest Ashley's apartment didn't have the exact Fit she wanted. She called a second dealer and found one in Virginia, but it was sold in the time it took us to drive there. We finally got to drive the exact car in question at the third dealer, but when we got back from the test drive, an identical car had just been sold and was being prepped to be taken home by its new owner. So, after all that, we didn't feel that we had as much negotiating leverage as we would have liked. Still, I think Ash got a good, but not spectacular, deal on her new vehicle, which she has decided to name Phineas Fit.

Sisters

During Ashley's recent visit, she and Alison independently arrived at nearly identical outfits one morning. I took this photo of them that night, as they played Alison's first-generation Nintendo. Look how cute they are!

Congrats, Again, Ash

As regular readers know, Alison's sister, Ashley, recently graduated from college. About 2 weeks ago, she came to stay with us for a bit. One purpose of her trip was to visit us, but the principal reason was to attend a job fair being held by local high schools looking for teachers. As you've surely guessed by now, she found a job; she'll be teaching history in Charles County, Maryland in the fall. She also found herself an apartment and roomate, and she'll be moving to MD in just 2 months.

So, congratulations, Ashley. We look forward to having family in-state.

Ouch, crap! My finger!

After Ashley's Graduation, Michael went home and I stayed behind to spend some extra time with my family and to help my mom with some home improvement projects. During the past week, we managed to install a hardwood floor in the living room. Here it is...a work in progress:





This was achieved by hand nailing the boards rather than by using a pneumatic cleat nailer, which might have been smarter given the injuries to our left index fingers that occurred during the course of the project (more on that in a minute). They make a manual cleat nailer, but it's almost impossible to use and the pneumatic ones are prohibitively expensive to buy. You can rent them for approximately $70/24 hours, but it probably still would have taken us several days to lay the floor, so we would have spent quite a lot to rent one, too. A lot of our time was spent finding just the right boards to complete a row...it's a lot like a puzzle. They come in random lengths, and it's important that your seams not match up exactly with those on the previous row or two, so you can imagine that you could spend a fair bit of time finding just the right combination of boards to complete a row. You can cut them to fit, but then you end up wasting wood, which we were loath to do. Because we were so frugal with our wood, we probably have almost enough left to do the next room, too (yay!), so our plan is to lay out most of our rows ahead of time and then go rent the cleat nailer and just nail, nail, nail. That way we can get the most out of our 24 hours.

As I mentioned, there were some injuries during the laying of the floor. My mom managed to drive a nail set into her left index finger. My major injury occurred when I was holding a board in place while nailing it and I missed the nail and hit my finger, which drove the edge of the board into the pad of my index finger. OUCH. Both of these injuries bled profusely and, although we each dripped blood all the way to the sink we managed to not bleed on the new floorboards. Kudos to us.

Anyway, here is the finished product:



Isn't it pretty? I'm so excited that it's done! Let's not talk about the other, larger room that we haven't started on. Today I am clean and dressed and I have makeup and jewelry on and I'm not covered in splinters and sawdust. I'll think about THAT tomorrow, just like Scarlett.

Congrats, Ash

Last week, Alison and I traveled to the Land o' Lincoln to see her sister, Ashley, graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ashley was awarded University Honors, which are reserved for the top 3% of each class. She was the only history major so honored.

Happy Birthday, Mickey

Yesterday was my mother's birthday. So, happy birthday, Mom!

I Think They Meant "Luge"

Alison and I have been quite happy with our iRobot Roomba Scheduler vacuum-cleaning robot. That's why, when I learned about iRobot's upcoming Looj gutter-cleaning bot, I immediately thought, "My mom needs that." That way, she won't ask me to clean the gutters every single time I visit Atlanta. If only there were a robot that would make her stop telling me that my hair is too short.

Ah, the Bachelor Lifestyle 4: Man Stuff

My bride, Alison, has gone out of town for a week to visit family. So, Newton and I are bachelors for the next few days. We plan to do some man stuff together. You know, working on cars, watching sports on TV, objectifying women, and so on. Maybe, if we have time, we'll keep someone down.

The Scion of Grondul

After my post announcing my intended label for any child or children Alison and I have, Michael F. proposed this more catchy alternative:

the Scion of Grondul, noun phrase. Any individual Grondulspawn.

I think his proposal has a more formal tone, and I expect that it will be reserved it for more...significant occasions: state dinners and such:

• "Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to present the Scion of Grondul."
  
• "You will cower before all the Scions of Grondul."
  
• "Dear god, it's the Scion of Grondul!"

You get the idea.

Grondulspawn

I've recently come up with a great description for any future---repeat, future---children Alison and I might have:

Grondulspawn, noun. Any child or children produced by Team Grondul.

Happy Birthday, Dear Chuck

Today is my father's birthday. So, happy birthday, Dad!

Ah, the Bachelor Lifestyle 3: Your Newton Update

Newton has made some significant progress recently, so I thought I'd report it here.

• First, for the last couple of weeks, excluding our disorienting trip to my ancestral home, he's been sleeping through the night. He hasn't woken us up because he needs to use his box* or, as is more often the case, because he's awake and wants to play. Ah, sleep...
  
• Second, for about the same length of time, he's been much better behaved around the house. Aside from being quite consistent about using the box, he doesn't chew as much on things he shouldn't , and when you tell him to drop something, he often does. Good boy!

All of this is particularly useful now, since Alison has gone to Chicagoland to visit her family. While she's gone, I've been practicing my single-parenting skills and doing "guy stuff" with Newton.

* I don't know if we mentioned this before, but we are litter-box-training him.