Procrastinet

Working Through It

filed under: Dadditudes

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Max was looking forward to a playdate with his best friend from school, but said friend is sick today and had to cancel. In the midst of Max's stoic grief over this, we somehow got on the topic of his long-lost "V Train Bear" from the transit museum, which was dropped from the stroller soon after purchase and disappeared.

Max: Does someone have V Bear?

Mommy: Yes. Someone gave it a good home.

Max: I want to kick them.

Mommy: Well...

Max: I want to kick them all the way to Uganda.

Mommy: ...

Max: To Northern Uganda.

Don't Work Blue, Kid, You'll Never Work the Big Rooms

filed under: Dadditudes

Max's new knock-knock joke, which he made up last night:

Max: Knock knock.

Dad: Who's there?

Max: Peep.

Dad: Peep who?

Max: Vagina.

Submitted without comment.

Livingston Manor

filed under: Idle Chatter

I could probably file this under "The Weekly WANT-IT," since our trip last weekend sprung from my recent (okay, year-long) obsession with the idea of vacation property. Undaunted by our utter lack of funds or the hyper-inflated cost of real estate within three hours of NYC ($199k for a shack on one acre? Really?), Lisa and I have been nattering on happily about having "a place upstate," someday.

Of course, to her "someday" means "when it makes sense," and to me "someday" means "when I can find something even barely habitable on Craigslist for under $30k, preferably this weekend."

Last weekend, that quest took us to Livingston Manor, New York, to see a "500 sq. ft. 1BR cabin with sleep loft." This was, the ad said, situation on an in-town lot of "less than an acre," feautred a "rocking chair front porch," a lawn with an apple tree, and had been totally gut renovated by its architect owner who was for some reason totally unable to find a picture that looked more recent than 1977.

Still, it was a nice weekend for a drive, so we kidnapped our friend K8 and took off for Livingston Manor.

We found it easily and just started laughing. First of all, I commend the seller on his creative use of "less than an acre," given that the above picture shows the entirety of the property. So yes, it is less than an acre, in much the same way that my bathmat is less than an acre. And to come up with 500 sq. ft. I suspect he counted not only the 3' high loft and the unfinished basement, but possibly a couple of the walls.

Luckily, Livingston Manor itself has an adorable Main Street:

It also has an adorable sandwich/coffee shop called Peez Leweez, which also seemed to be the only game in town in the off season. We went in and found a sparsely populated, nicely decorated place with a menu of interesting sounding sandwiches. The back wall looked out on the Little Beaverkill Creek, which was beautiful:

And then I saw the sandwich of my dreams. Pot roast salad. Yes, pot roast salad. With pickles, mayo, and horseradish, on a pressed sourdough bread.

Oh my god I think I'm in love. The side is a crisp and fresh cucumber salad, and the "pink mayo" as Lisa called it turned out to be a tiny extra side treat of frozen ambrosia.

More pictures of our mini-roadtrip are available here.

Laugh Out Loud Halloween

filed under: Dadditudes , Pictures

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Trying out the embedded Flickr slideshow tool flickrSLiDR for the Halloween pix!

Mouse to the top of the slideshow for controls, mouse to the bottom for tiny thumbs of all pictures to jump around. Neat!

Ape Lad, esteemed creator of the Laugh Out Loud Cats, posted two of our Halloween pics on Hobotopia. Fleeting Intarweb Fame - We Haz It! Big thanks to Mr. Koford - glad you liked our costumes, we sure love the Cats.

Our attempt at re-creation of one of the original panels we own:

And finally, my favorite picture from the inordinate number I took last night. Maybe one of my top five favorite pictures of the boy ever: