I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!

Ten Years in My Life: Where I’ve Lived

On Saturday, 24th October 1998, I flew from Glasgow to Boston, with little more than a suitcase of clothes and a credit card with a decently high limit.

It's now 24th October 2008. Ten years have gone by. Time for little personal retrospection. How have I spent these ten years?

“Dear Bike Thief: You Suck!”

Flyer posted to a phone pole in Union Square.

Bloc 11 Cafe - The Vault

The building used to be a bank -- one of the vaults is now a small room with tables & chairs. Didn't test the wi-fi access from there, though.

Bloc 11 Cafe mug

Diesel Fuel from the new cafe in Union Square.

Back Seat Basset

When Bacon's in the back of the car, and I'm stopped in traffic, he loves sticking his head out the window and getting adoration from the other drivers.

Trashbag Balancing Thursday 7:25 am 1/4/07 Somerville, Massachusetts

Somerville changed their Trash pickup policy on the 1st January. Now trash will only be accepted if it's in, or on, a trashcan; you can't just leave the bags on ground level. I forsee my future of creative stacking. (Or, perhaps, going out and buying a second bin.)

Come, Children! Drink from Santa’s Cock!

Inappropriate beverage dispensers, spotted in Target.

Wii in Action

Home, unpacked, and rawkin'! Four hours in the cold? Worth it!

With Love, From Carnegie Deli

My birthday present from my wee sister? 2.5lbs of cheesecake, overnighted from the Carnegie Deli in New York.

Joy’s Moo Cards

I treated Joy to a box of Moo Cards for herself -- each illustrated with a photo of the dogs. Here are two, resting in some dog photo holders I picked up for her at Philadelphia Airport.

The word ‘unblowupable’ is thrown around a lot these days.

This is the pressure-gauge on the outside of our central heating furnace that gave up the ghost over the weekend. You might note that the clear protective plastic shield on it has turned brown, melted and buckled.

This is because the furnace apparently decided that merely heating water into steam and pushing it around our radiators was, shall we say, passé, and instead dived head-first into a mission of heating itself up to a frighteningly hot temperature and dripping boiling water onto the basement floor.

Remind me again why home-ownership is a good idea?

Home, Wednesday 5:53 pm 10/18/06 Somerville, Massachusetts

Berkeley Street, Wednesday 5:52 pm 10/18/06 Somerville, Massachusetts

Dunkin Donuts, Union Square Wednesday 5:49 pm 10/18/06 Somerville, Massachusetts

Used Car lot, Prospect St Wednesday 5:48 pm 10/18/06 Somerville, Massachusetts

My Flickr Moo Cards

A mixture of Boston, Bassets and a Bunch of other stuff. They look great, especially considering most of the photos were taken with crappy cameraphones!

Sadly, two of the twenty images I uploaded got printed as "Unavailable photo:" Not sure what caused that, but I'm gonna ping Moo and see what happened.

Decorated Trunks

Someone's been decorating the tree trunks around Union Square.

‘Best’ of Boston?

This is odd. Dunkin Donuts cups currently proclaim that they were awarded a "Best of Boston" award by Boston Magazine this year. However, a search of the Best of Boston site finds no such win.

In fact, it appears that the "award" was merely a corporate agreement to use the cup on the magazine cover.

I love DD as much as the next New Englander, but since the "Best of Boston" usually _means_ something (unlike some other awards, which just rank which business did the best job getting their customers to ballot-stuff), it seems massively lame to whore the title this way.

Clyde’s Nest

Clyde isn't spritely enough to hop onto the bed like Bacon, so he's made himself a little nest in the corner of the bedroom.

‘New Hampshire Boring’

Refreshingly honest, but it really feels like the New Hampshire tourist board isn't even trying anymore.

Snakes which are neither on a plane, nor in a movie theater

AMC apparently has a policy that you are not allowed to take rubber snakes into movie theaters showing Snakes on a Plane. These were the contraband snakes confiscated prior to this evening's showing.

Scooby Snacks

When I got home from work, there was an unexpected package on the doorstep from Petco.com.

"Crap!", thinks I. "Clearly Bacon has got himself a credit card, and entered the murky world of e-commerce."

Luckily, it turned out to be a gift from the lovely folks at Reddit, as thanks to Bacon for appearing in banner ads for them!

As a precaution, though, I've taken away Bacon's pre-authorized credit-card application forms. You can't be too careful.

FIVE!

One of my pet peeves is when I'm trying to find a friend's house, but can't read any of the house numbers on the street.

I just installed this number on our house this week. It's a nifty design -- It's solar-powered, so it charges its battery during the day, then when it gets dark, lights up using a couple of white LEDs.

The things I do to help out our friends. (OK, I'll be honest: Most visitors to our front door are Chinese and Pizza delivery guys).

$20 from ThinkGeek.

Arrogant Bastard Ale Saturday 9:55 pm 7/29/06 Somerville, Massachusetts

My chum Noel and I sample Arrogant Bastard Ale. The bottle warned us "You probably won't like this," and it was right.

Baldy!

Having woken up to a particularly stonking case of bedhead this morning, I inwardly-dialogued "fuck it!" and asked Joy to help me take my beardtrimmer to my head.

Lesson learned? Next time, use a longer setting on the trimmer, cause my blond hair is nearly transparent this short.

Hitched

A (year-and-a-half) belated first wedding anniversary gift from our smashing chum, Cheryl: A signed Garry Trudeau print of Mike & JJ from Doonesbury.

Hopefully, our marriage will turn out happier than theirs!

Joy trains her brain

I bought the DS Lite that I've been craving for so long this morning. Joy's been quite taken with Brain Age.

I'm hoping to get it back off her soon so that I can indulge in a little more Super Mario.

No running, shouting or piddling in the shallow end.

Our basement, with the delightful addition of a couple of inches of floodwater. Every hardware store in the area is sold out of pumps, so we're waiting for the fire department to pop round and help us out. Oh, the joys of homeownership.

EL(?)OO

Do Stop & Shop lie? Is this really "Extra Light" enough for Shangri-La?

The Radio Knives, P.A.’s Lounge, Somerville

My Brother-(in-law)^2's band. Fine garage-rawk tunes can be found at their MySpace page.

Crated Bacon

Bacon suffered a back injury this week -- A slipped disc or a pinched nerve, reckons the vet. Poor little bugger has the be kept in his crate (except for "short leashed walks") for two weeks.

Since he's caged and being fed steroids, Keith suggested we should rename him "Veal".

Licky Tongue

Somerville has a Dog Park

Until very recently, there was not a single place in the City of Somerville (population ~77,000) where you could let your dog off-leash. Thankfully this has now changed, with the just-opened dog run on Nunziato Field. Here's some of the cheerful dogs that were gallavanting round there when we took Bacon down this evening.

A ‘smooth, creamy coffeehouse classic’, apparently

Or, alternatively, half-a-mug of piss-weak, nastily artifically-sweetened, CoffeeMate-crammed brownwater. The rather disappointing result of trying a HomeCafe "frothy cappuccino" pod.

I got the coffee machine for free from BzzAgent, but I still feel ripped-off. I'll stick with my Senseo, thanks.

Another Zonetag test

Bacon's tail: Too fast for the LED flash on the camphone.

Talking House

A house near us has just gone up for sale, and apparently there's an AM transmitter so you can hear all about it without having to ring the doorbell.

Of course, the bad man in me wants to try to broadcast "Metal Machine Music" on that frequency at a higher power.

They're currently asking about $50k more than the Zillow Zestimate. Curious to see how this plays out with regards to Zillow's estimates.

My first folding-chair parking-space-holder

A great Boston tradition. Let's see if my space and/or the chair are still there when I get home.

The back deck

We won't be opening the sliding door any time soon.

I believe this is my car

I don't think I'll be making it into work tomorrow

Berkeley Street

Just barely visible is some poor bugger who tried to drive down the street, and is now having to resort to digging-out and pushing his car to have any hope of making it to the other end

Joy’s Bike

Not cycling anywhere today.

Brrr… it’s a bit nippy out.

The bottle of water I left in my car last night has entered the solid state.

Pies With Bling

The menu for a local pizzaplace. Can we get anchovies on one half, and bling on the other?

Stop & Shop gets Sox fever

These signs were dotted around the new Somerville Stop & Shop, along with "Mrs Schillng Shops Here" ones.

One window fewer

100% less radio too. Bah!

(They had no idea what my GPS unit was, though, so that remained)

Maison du Begbie

Our house. Not, as those tricky pranksters Madness would have you believe, in the _middle_ of our street. More towards the corner.

Somerville in Winter

The snow-laded cycle-path near Davis Square