Month: October 2017

Trees in the trash 😢

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My (close to 100 years old) neighbor Rosalie, was taken out in an ambulance a few weeks ago.  It has become a common occurrence, sad none the less.  I don’t think she is going to come home this time.

I had only had a few conversations with her.  One of the first times I talked to her was probably close to 10 years ago when we first moved into our house.  I was out side, sitting on our porch smoking when she came to the fence and said “do you want to check out my garden?”

Of course I said yes and walked over. I made it to the door of her greenhouse when I collapsed and had a seizure.  When I came to she was standing there with orange juice.  She was a nurse, and thought I was probably diabetic. 

Luckily, that was the last seizure I have ever had.

I had talked briefly to her, and she said how she was still working as a teaching nurse, teaching women from Africa about nursing.   At 92 she was still working!  She talked about her garden, her flowers and plants.

Today, when I was about to leave I noticed her trash was already out on the sidewalk.  Someone had begun to throw out her plants.


I’m not into plants.  I have overgrown grass and not much landscaping in my yard.  Seeing this plant in the trash hurt my heart.  I don’t even know what kind of plant it is, but it is beautiful. Luckily my sister likes plants, so I called her and she just picked it up a few hours ago.  We will see how it adjusts to its new home.

The agony of defeat!

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Ok, maybe I’m not impartial, but I think I got robbed.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how I entered the “Cumberland Farms #1 Fan” contest.

Here is my video to refresh your memory :

At the time, I believed I was only one of 2 entries.  I checked all the hash tags that were required to enter the contest on instagram and youtube.

Well I was surprised to learn that I lost to this guy, who only posted his video yesterday (October 17th)!  In the contest rules all videos had to be posted by October 4th, 2017.

Here is the guy I lost to:

What? Really?

Maybe I am partial, but come on! I had a least a little bit of production value in my video.  Of course being from Rhode Island, I have to believe this guy is related to the judge. Maybe he is splitting MY coffees with one of the judges.

That is the thing with competitions where there is judging.  If it was running, the fastest time wins. (People who know me, know I will never be winning or entering a race)  So you are subjected to personal preference.  And the judges preferred this two note song with words you can’t hear over my submission.  Total bummer.  I know in my heart I am Cumby’s #1 fan, I still am even after this horrific miscarriage of justice.

As far as competitions, I am one win and one loss on the year.  I won the PVDonut Hascon tickets and lost the Cumby’s #1 Fan competition.  The sad thing is I can’t even support PVDonuts for the next eight weeks because my wife is doing a 8 week diet and exercise program, and donuts aren’t exactly “clean eating”. But, the competition I lost…I will still be going to Cumby’s two times a day, supporting them.  That coffee is my crack.

Pronk

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On Monday we went to Pronk.  From the website :

PRONK! (the Providence HONK! Festival) presents a heartfelt antidote to mainstream culture by inviting people from all walks of life to come together for a day set aside for the celebration of music. We aim to blur social boundaries between audience and performers as well as between musical genres, resulting in a joyous reclamation of public space.

We have been going to Pronk for the past few years.  We love music and performance.  This year it was raining a little, but we still got to go and enjoy the performances.  We wouldn’t let a little rain ruin it for us.

 

It is great to see the bands that travel from all over to participate. The event reminds me of Pride, as you get to see people from all different backgrounds….and a whole bunch of different family structures.
Combine cool people and cool music, I look forward to it every year 🙂

This year we did have one incident. Sidney was dancing (aka splashing in a puddle) with her juice box. Randomly she put her juice box down and bent down and put her face into the puddle. Of course I screamed, jumped towards her and pulled her away by the first thing available to grasp…her hair (sorry).  Luckily I got her before she actually got a drink from the puddle. We were in a parking lot of the Hot Club, there is no doubt that the puddle consisted of rain, dirt, cigarette remnants, and urine.   There were a group of young kids walking by and they saw the whole incident happen, they all laughed and for the first time in her life Sidney experienced embarrassment.  She put her head into my stomach (She is 3 but she is sooooo tall and is the size of a 5 year old) and cried.  I felt horrible, and so did the kids walking by. They said “Sorry, we didn’t mean to scare you” but you could tell she was embarrassed.  For the first time in her life, my little ferrel child felt embarrassment.

My love for Cumby’s

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I work for myself. I spend quite a few hours a day in my store, by myself.  I like it, not having a boss and stuff, but I do miss having “fellow employees”.  I have a pretty strict routine.  Everyday (weekday that is) I get up, go to the gym, go home, then go to work stopping at cumberland farms on my way.  I also go to the post office everyday to ship my orders from ebay, etsy, amazon, etc. You name it I probably sell on it.  So these people are basically like my co workers, only I don’t tell them what to do, and they don’t tell me what to do.  Almost like “single serving friends” as the term coined by Fight Club.

But these are my daily single servings.  I see the same people all the time.  The people who work for the post office and the ones who work at Cumberland farms.  Everyday, the same people at the same time.

So these single serving friends have become a part of my routine, and I actually look forward to seeing them every day.

It is strange, because every Cumberland Farms I have been in, all the employees are friendly.  I only ran into one Cumbys where the one employee was a bit rude, but she was old and I felt bad she was still working at her age.  Every other Cumberland farms I visit, they are all so friendly.  I have been to some so many times they know my name.  It is like the tv show Cheers 🙂

So Cumby’s had a competition to see who the #1 fan was.  Of course I entered the competition because I actually think I am perfect for the title.  Here is my submission:

I don’t have much of a singing voice, so I went with the filter.  There is only one other submission I can find, and that is this guy:

I love his video too 🙂 I can relate to this guy, we both love cumby’s, and we both have great spelling skills. This guy could be my single serving friend anytime. (Also, I still don’t know if it is Cumby’s or Cumbies)

So hopefully I won, I love free stuff and can use the gift card 🙂