yesterday i went to the grocery store with randy and a bottle of wine leapt out of our cart and dramatically CRASHED to the floor, shattering all over the place, and it was red wine, so a huge red pool oozed all over the place.
but it was in no way my fault!
so, accident-free for a coupla days now, although probably my destructor energy caused the wine bottle to leap to its death.
i just put up the rest of my photos from april up here and i now realize it’s probably way too many for one posting, so just be prepared, go get a snack or something before you start. or maybe you could stop halfway through and come back later.
here, april 12th, the daffodils were finally making an appearance. late late late. the weather has been so crazy that one day last week it was 87, and last night we had a frost warning! right now i’m waiting for it to warm up a little before going running.
kevin decided that the dining room table would give him the most clear space for his sail sewing project, so he got all the stuff off the table and set to work.
it was like a hidden object game, because i kept looking around and finding a candlestick up on top of the grandfather clock, and a couple more things in various high-up places.
at first, les didn’t care about all the activity.
but you know that les has to be smack dab in the center of the action! plus he was very helpful with sail-making.
kevin went out onto the screened porch to do this work – it involved some kind of electric hot knife, which cut things but also cauterized them, so they wouldn’t unravel.
he’s slicing off the rope, which i had to help pull through the sail.
chester assumed his favorite position, sprawled out and hanging his head off the end of the table.
the thing is, the cats then spent a lot of time on our dining room table. this was a terrible precedent, because sometimes they’d gotten on it when it wasn’t covered with a sail, but they’d get back off because they knew it was bad. but then they were free to sprawl all over it, so after the sail-making was over, they still felt it was their table.
which i guess, really, it is. just like mostly everything in the house.
if they just weren’t so damn cute…
i like this photo of winston nestled on kevin’s lap resting on the sail. i can’t remember why the sail would have been strewn about on the couch, but i’m sure there was some good reason for it.
i have an addiction to swan planters. i had two, and these two were on sale at schnuck’s so i bought them. i’d like to have a whole herd of swans.
i just looked it up, and according to random internet sources, a group of swans is called a herd. or according to one person, it’s a herd, a bank, a team, a bevy, or a lamentation.
obviously, a lamentation of swans is the most poetical.
here’s our new front door. the old one had a bunch of panels attached to it, and one of the panels kept falling off and kevin kept fixing it, but finally it was un-fixable. i’m excited about our beautiful new door because we’ve never had a door with a window in it before.
and back to the sail…here’s an example of the fine stitchwork kevin had to do.
and in order for the grommet to be secure, he had to sew all those layers of the cloth together… you might remember that he initially sewed the layers into the wrong spot and then had to painstakingly rip them all out and sew them again. lots and lots of work, and quite frankly, i don’t know how he only made this one tiny gaffe – when i looked at the huge instruction booklet, it was like it was written in a totally different language.
the sail stretched all the way out to the end of the screened porch.
please don’t get the idea that les is spoiled in any way.
the moon looks beautiful, but it was a million times more so in real life. real life can be good sometimes, especially when it’s nature.
and speaking of good…numie and noodle came over to visit and we gave numie a bunch of mollie’s old toys, and numie dilligently started shredding them. he’s such a funny and highly entertaining dog.
at the end of april, randy and i went to see a gavin degraw concert in effingham. it’s not “nearby effingham” because it took almost forever to get there, mostly on really twisty and turning little roads with big trucks or RVs in front of us going painfully slowly.
when we finally arrived in effingham, it was a nightmarish onslaught of gigantic signs for all kinds of stores and stuff. i mean, much uglier than the ugliest groupings of stores and signs that we have here in springfield.
but we turned off the main, hideous thoroughfare, and suddenly we were almost out in the country. i’d looked this restaurant up online, it was called the Firefly Grill, and i found really gushing, glowing reviews for it from people from all over.
the restaurant was cool and trendy-looking, especially for effingham.
randy ordered his favorite wedge salad, but this one was above and beyond any of them i’d ever seen.
we both got burgers, but it looked like most other people had individual pizzas, and the burgers were a little disappointing. expensive and kind of greasy. but good. but i wouldn’t drive to effingham to just go to this place.
we ordered two desserts, some kind of chocolate coffee toffee tiramisu, and some kind of fancy white chocolate brioche bread pudding. randy loves both of these desserts, so i figured, why not get them both.
i had high hopes for the tiramisu, because to me, tiramisus always tasted kind of flavorless.
this one was kind of lacking in flavor, too. but very pretty.
i should have stood next to this GIANT easter basket they had outside, because you can’t tell here how giant it was.
and then we got to the concert, which was practically right across the street. randy loves gavin degraw, and he was gonna take his friend lori ann, but she went to florida, so i went with him even though i’d never actually heard of the guy.
the venue, the effingham performance center, was a really nice place, not too big, maybe 1,100 seats, and randy got tickets in the second row. should be good.
randy looks so shocked here, like he’d never seen a camera phone before.
i had to take a picture of the seats, because they were so fancy – plush and fake leather with a cup holder, very comfortable.
we got there pretty early; actually, there were two warm-up bands, and this is after the first one was done. by the time the show started, it was packed.
but here’s the bad part – even though randy had paid a lot for these fantastic seats, for some crazy reason the management let many people flock the stage. i’ve been to quite a few concerts in my life, and i can’t remember any where they let people do this. i mean, people in the firs couple of rows would be right up there, but it doesn’t make sense to let people who didn’t pay much for seats way in the back to be able to stand right in front of the stage. so even though we were so close, after all these people rushed the stage, we seemed to be pretty far back.
it was like a little social hour up in front of us.
but gavin was really good. i don’t know why my photos didn’t turn out better; maybe i need an apple 5 phone instead of a 4s?
i think this picture would make a good album cover.
this is about the clearest picture i got, and it’s not so clear.
randy had said that he’s kind of like billy joel, and he was. he was actually also touring with billy joel. a very busy performer guy.
it was a good concert, and the drive back was much quicker because there was almost no traffic.
randy did save my life, though, because as we roared along, a semi was coming towards us and with no warning, decided to turn left directly in front of us. luckily randy is an excellent driver and had many years of dealing with crazy drivers. he slammed on the brakes, and we made it home safely.
and there’s april…later in the day, i’m going to get started on may.
feeling very productive, this morning anyway.
it was sunny and promising to warm up, but it’s suddenly overcast and not looking like it would be nice for running now. but here i go anyway…
ok then,
mrs. saturday morning hughes.