Coat Rack

People,
I know this is something that most of us take for granted, but coatracks are the best thing ever. I don't have room in my apartment for the freestanding coatrack/umbrella stand of my dreams. So earlier this year I embarked on the process of buying a coatrack that could be attached to the wall. I even looked in a art-y shop in Maine, but, alas, only coatracks with small hooks could be found.


Why is this such a big deal? Two reasons:
1. I am picky, and nothing I found could either hold up all my coats or look remotely nice when it wasn't holding coats.
2. I was quickly tiring of using the chairs from my dining room set as a place to hold coats. It got annoying when I was late for work and needed to find the desired outerwear, and it got embarrassing when I had people over who needed to use said chairs.


My Madre came to the rescue with this as a Christmas gift:

And it makes all the difference in the world! I can see my chairs now! There is a place for my coats/scarves/some of my bags. And Hank will no longer have to hear me curse the world when I'm late for the train and my coats have tangled themselves together.

Christmas is Still in Town

We're still hanging onto the Christmas spirit here in PA.

I Have Senioritis

Whenever I am about to graduate from school of some kind, the last year or so is super difficult. Not necessarily in terms of coursework but more along the lines of "I have no desire to do any work, and I cannot focus on anything that has to do with school." It can get bad; my last semester of undergrad I seriously considered showing up to the final presentation for my Latin American Plays of Protest class and saying, "No tengo un presentacion hoy. Estoy aburrido con mi vida." 


However, I didn't know that this was an affliction that was going to hit me in grad school too.


Senioritis can cause one to do things that they might never normally do. Even the most dedicated student is prone to it. Some side effects include:

• Realizing that spacing and margins on your papers are extremely important. (More important that the paper itself sometimes);  
• Deciding to write a blog post....or seven;
• Getting sucked into watching the entire second season of Bored to Death in 4 episode increments;
• Looking at all of your old photos for hours and wondering why the hell haven't I bought a photo printer yet;
• Realizing that your computer could get a cold and accidentally erase everything; and running out to buy an external hard drive because your old one is formatted for a PC and you're now using a mac;
• It suddenly becomes important to do freakishly detailed cleaning projects that you would normally hate to do- such as cleaning your keyboard....or the oven;
• Cooking like the Barefoot Contessa moves from a distant life goal into something that must happen immediately;
• Cursing yourself because your recipe box is already in alphabetical order (a project you completed the last time you procrastinated);
• Cleaning the bathroom until it is super clean...and we're talking on the level of "it's never this clean unless a boy is coming over."

Sometimes procrastination is more exhausting then just doing the work you're meant to be doing in the first place.

Mi Madre Tiene Cinquenta Anos

My mom recently turned 50, and we had a wee party for her. Just a nice dinner out at The Towne House in Media, and a cake. We could've just gotten fancy desserts at the restaurant, but the cake part was the thing my mom was looking forward to the most (bakery cakes are her absolute favourite...not those awful ones from the grocery store but the ones from a proper bakery). 


I was happy to oblige; it's so nice to have a mom who is easy to please. :-) 

(Parents and the wee brother Jake)

This occasion also marked the first time my mother was photographed (and saw herself) with glasses. 

I think she got a kick out of it too!

The Secret Aim of Morton

The sign was changed the other day to reflect the secret reason why this town was founded....

Also, the word "your" is apparently now spelled with a "Q". Personally, I think we need more words that start with "Q"....would really help when you're playing Scrabble.

New Yet Erratic Series

The insurance company down the street from my apartment has the best signs. I tried to figure out when they change them, but it seems kind of erratic. For instance, they kept the "Welcome to Morton, Home of Roy Halliday" one up for the majority of baseball season, but last week they changed the sign twice (so I didn't get a photo of the one that said, "Don't be mean, Irene").


The actual first time I posted about these signs was during the week of the Royal Wedding. The one that's up there today isn't as silly, but it does reflect the goings-on of the majority of the population.

So I will share these with you whenever they pop up. Perhaps they will start to change all those stereotypes we have about insurance people....

Cheerio, Irene

This time last week, I was trying to recover from the massive hype and stress of Hurricane Irene. My neighbors, Gloom and Doom, had convinced me that my apartment was going to become a swimming pool (it didn't), and I was a nervous wreck. So I took Hank over to my parents' house in Jersey (which my neighbor also told me was a bad idea since "Jersey's supposed to get it worse!" (Side note: not talking to them anymore). My parents' house flooded quite a bit in the basement, but we were really lucky after all.

(getting all my stuff as far away from the floor as possible)

(Hurricane Preparation)

(Butterfly on my parents' porch. It doesn't like the wind)

Monday, after I got home, I took a drive past Swarthmore falls. My dad had driven by them mid-storm and told me that there was so much water, you couldn't even tell that there was a waterfall! The water had gone down a bit by the time I got there, but there was still so much of it. And the noise was deafening. A lot of trees had gone down too, and the whole area was surrounded by police tape. I totally would've gone past the tape to get better photos if there hadn't been some weird creeper lady sitting in her car on the side of the road. I never figured out why she was there, but she was acting like she was looking for someone. Like I said, weird.

(Swarthmore Falls)

Happy Royal Wedding Week!!

The insurance company down the street from my house always has the most creative little sayings on their sign. Last summer during the baseball playoff series, it said, "Welcome to Morton-Home of Roy Halladay" This Easter past it said, "Welcome to Morton-Home of Peter Cottontail."


Driving with my littlest bro tonight, we spotted the newest version (by far my favourite):

Bakery Love

One of my earliest memories was walking to the local bakery with my mom and getting a cupcake shaped like a Sesame Street character. 

After having lived in the black hole of South Jersey for twenty years, I think my mom and I had given up on the dream of finding a real bakery. Living in the Philly suburbs for all of her life (until the Jersey move) kind of spoiled my mom for good sweets. I know that's why she was so excited when I discovered a good bakery down the street from my house in Morton. 

They even make the Sesame Street Cupcakes of my childhood:

(These are from my birthday March past)

(I found this frog cupcake for my sister's birthday; she loves fondant)

Cakes and cupcakes like these just beat the crap out of supermarket cakes. I'd actually stopped eating a lot of cakes because everyone seems to just get them from the grocery store. Not many people make their own cakes or get them from a bakery....even birthdays celebrated at my office in Philly depended on greasy, heavy cakes from Superfresh. 

Not super. Or fresh.

I'm normally not a person who can't stop eating sweets, but these cupcakes are so good that I can't help it. Having them around is dangerous!

(Jake loves the Cookie Monster)

Cookie Selling Tips

Driving down the street the other day, I saw a very inventive Girl Scout Cookie sign:

That's how you sell cookies, Delco style.

Fighting the Man

I live in a house of men. Old men, but men nonetheless. My house is divided up into three apartments: Jim has the entire second floor, and the ground floor is split into my apartment and a second flat for and elderly man called George. George does not drive, and no one is really sure how old he is (every time someone asks, he gives a different number. These ages are not always in the same decade). He is completely dependent on public transport, and so we always talk about the train. Every time SEPTA raises its rates or comes out with a new kind of train, George leaves the relevant newspaper clippings in my mailbox or wedged into my storm door.

George and I are currently staging a coup d'etat against the Power Company. I came home from work last night to see George sitting outside. He asks me in a conspiratorial tone, "Do you have a computer in there?" as he pointed to my apartment with his cane.

"Yes, I do."

"In there?" he asked again, for clarity.

"Yeah, I have my own computer."

He wanted me to look up a website he'd heard of on the radio. Since the Power Company is raising its rates, he is thinking of getting all of us to talk to our landlord, Uncle Lenny, about switching. Honestly, I'm for anything that will save me over $100 a year and get me away from a company who won't take my calls about outages because they say I don't live in the area and my account doesn't exist.

(I bet they'd change their minds about that if I suddenly stopped paying my bill!)

I let George go on about the power rate increase before promising for the upteenth time to look up the website and report back. He even called out the first word of the web address before inferring that I should chime in and finish it-just to make sure I had the right one. This makes me wonder if George was a schoolteacher in his earlier days.

He even gave me a bag of apples as a bribe.

Walks with Sister

This weekend, my sister and I took a break from our spooky movies to take a walk round the neighborhood. Saturday was a brisk, fall day; just cold enough that you needed a jacket and a scarf, but warm enough to actually enjoy being outside. The leaves were crunchy underfoot, and everyone had their pumpkins carved on displayed on porches, stoops, and stairs.

(lovely old church doors down the street)

(sister walks along)

(mums o'mine)

(sister)

(the normal sidewalk turned into this brickwalk)