The weather is shitty but we are on the road heading North.
We pulled off the highway for a pit stop and just outside of the gas station entrance we saw this little fox casually strolling up the road.
Wildlife, babie!
I didn’t get a picture so here’s a lawn mower instead.
We’re going to see Bellana for a bit today. It’s like Christmas.
Speaking of Christmas, back in December when Covid-19 ruined the traditional extended family Christmas we talked about having a Christmas party in July. Literally Christmas in July. I don’t know if that’s going to happen as we planned it, but I’m still game if everyone else is.
HoHoHo in the sunshine and all that? It could work. We can look back on it as a test drive if we ever find ourselves spending Christmas in Australia.
It could happen, right?
Harry’s not getting the standard graduation party, but we are going to take him back to Disney at some point. We have a date in mind which means we also have a date when we can actually buy tickets for the dates we want to go. There is an entry on our family calendar right now that marks the date when we can first book the dates we want to go… I want to find a way to celebrate that date as a sort of screw you to Covid-19. The ‘Rona messed up Harry’s last two school years and we need to go as overboard as humanly possible on the corrective overreacting. If that means celebrating the day we buy tickets then let’s do it!
I’m trying to write this while watching an episode of Community and my concentration is all over the place. Can you tell or does this post read like it was written by someone with Changnesia?
You know you’re close to the border when the Canadian flag starts popping up at random places.
Look kids, scenery!
We were stopped someplace and I saw this and liked the look of the field for some reason and I wonder what’s under that little bump. A bomb shelter? A meth lab? A Hobbit Hole?
See the school bus? I don’t know what was going on, but I saw privately owned school buses all over the place. It felt like The Partridge Family or something.
You’re going to have to seriously tax your memory for this one… when was the last time you saw a gas pump without a card reader?
And finally…..
Welcome to Vermont….
Here, have some scenery….
Did you figure out what I was doing today? Did I telegraph it enough? Bellana, my step daughter, moved out of her dorm today and I helped. 3+ hours in both directions, Methuen, MA to Burlington, VT and back. The scenery on that drive is pretty fantastic if you get a chance to look at it. It was kinda tough to do while driving though.
This was coming off a rest area somewhere in New Hampshire, just before the Vermont border.
Of course the state line would be under construction. Figures.
I wasn’t there to sight see though. This is the only view of the campus that I managed.
We’ll be back in a couple of months. Next time we’ll have two students there.
I keep doing this but here’s something I posted one year ago today:
Just in case you forgot that society fell apart in March 2020 and here we are in February 2021 and it still hasn’t come back online yet.
We are only 15 days away from the one year anniversary of my last day in the office. It’s been a brutally long two weeks.
Screw you, Covid-19.
I can’t believe it. One year ago today Jen, Harry, and I landed in Florida for a week in Disney World.
Civilization has more or less collapsed since then. It’s amazing how much things have changed.
Will it ever go back to normal, or is the way things are today what normal will be from now on? Ugh… I hate waxing philosophic. Bite me, Socrates.
January. We lost Neil and the world has been shit ever since.
In February we went to Disney World for a week, but we were not the droids they were looking for.
In March civilization came to a screeching halt.
In April we were locked down solid, but we still went for drives and sometimes saw interesting things.
In May we finally gave in to The Great British Baking show and just let it take over. Jen and Harry tried their hands at decorating cakes. I just made a lot of Tewksbury Tweets.
In June the kids finally cracked a little (just kidding).
In July I tried to spend as much time outside as I could because I knew it wasn’t going to last.
In August we had a Vote By Mail dry run thanks to the State Primary.
In September we went into a store for the first time in six months. It was creepy and scary and weird, but we came out with a flu shot. A dry run for the Covid vaccine maybe?
In October we did it for real and sent that nazi prick packing.
In November the lights came on a little early.
In December we pulled off a great lock down Christmas.
Up next is 2021. Here’s hoping Covid will be history and lock downs will end and we’ll get to see a little more of the world than just our house. 2020 was a friggin’ mess, but we made the best of it. I’m proud of us for doing it right.
Happy New Year.
It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but one of these days there will be a post with a photo a month from all 12 months of the shit show that was 2020. I was just perusing the Camera Roll on my Flickr account and I saw something that made me ask… is 2020 my fault?
Back in February Jen, Harry, and I all took a ride on the Millenium Falcon. Was this Disney Imagineering Magic dream come true so colossal that it required the entire universe to a pay a price in return? Did me taking a ride on the Falcon karmically cause the Covid-19 lockdown and all the shit that came with it? It didn’t cause Covid-19 because it was already running wild in other parts of the world, but did it cosmically open the door for the mess we have in the United States right now?
No. No it didn’t. It was pretty awesome though.
A couple of years ago Jen and I took a drive North for no reason other than we like to go on day trip drives and there is a lot of cool stuff to the North.
On this particular drive we ended up near Lake Winnipesaukee. I forget what town we were in but there was this ice cream shoppe and we had to stop in.
They had a little gift shop inside and we bought some silly little trinkets for the kids. I bought a couple of these things:
I got one for me and one for Harry. Why? Because they have names engraved on them, that’s why:
I would have bought one for Bellana too, but that particular first name doesn’t end up on gift shop trinkets that aren’t custom made. Rob and Harry, easy to find. Bellana? Not so much.
Harry lost his. He had it in his backpack when we flew to Florida last summer and TSA tends to frown on bringing knives onto airplanes.
Mine stayed on my bureau. Every once in a while I’d need a knife to cut open a cardboard box or something and I’d take it out and use it, goofily… because it’s a gift shop trinket with my first name on it.
Fast forward a year or so and find us up to our eyeballs in COVID-19 Lock Down. During the last two months the only time I don’t have this little pocket knife on my person is when I’m asleep. We have been surviving off of Amazon and Instacart and every day there are boxes and bags that need to be cut open. This little puppy has been my right hand man. I’ve used it so much that I’ve actually had to sharpen it a couple of times.
So I’d just like to take a minute and sing the praises of this little souvenir shop trinket that has become the most useful tool of the quarantine. Thanks, little Lake Winnipesaukee fake Swiss Army knife! Keep up the good work, my friend.
