Photo-A-Day #581 11/10/06
Today Allison and I headed to New Hampshire to visit with Dan and Marcia. We had breakfast at Cracker Barrel and picked up some Kettle Corn to take with us on our trip. We are spending the weekend at Tara and Erik's place in New Hampshire. It is a beautiful little two family that they have fixed up with the help of my Dad. He installed 35 new windows including a very unique one on the third floor. I hadn't been here since I went to demonstrate up in Northern New York. That was shortly after the house was purchased. The windows were delivered but not all installed at that point. I helped Dad bring a bunch upstairs. The windows and all the paint and the decorations have made quite the difference. The place looks great.
Before we got to the house we stopped to visit with Dan and Marcia We picked up some of the wedding gifts that we had in their cellar. We had to pick them up to take them home because Dan got a job with Citrix. Citrix is what I use all the time to connect back to work for my demonstrations. Citrix is also located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A move is coming so we must move out any of our stuff. It is very exciting as well as hard on everyone, but exciting as well. We are very happy for Dan and Marcia and look forward to visiting them down in Florida. But that doesn't mean that we aren't sad that they are going to be moving away either.
So we picked up our Longaberger dishware that was in the basement along with a few other things. Then the four of us went to the Santa Fe Smokehouse in Manchester to have lunch. Dan and I had BBQ Steak and Cheese sandwiches. They used beef brisket and BBQ sauce with melted cheese on a sub roll to make the sandwich. It was very tasty.
After lunch we headed out to Walpole NH. We found the house no problem and we saw a few places that we want to go to tomorrow. Like Alyson's Orchard as well as Stuart and John's for breakfast. But the sun was setting and we were dead tired. We picked up some cheese and crackers from Shaws and had a wonderful bottle of wine that Uncle Wayne and Aunt Cindy gave us for our wedding. My cousin Scott made the wine label from our wedding invitations. We have a second bottle that we will save for another big anniversary. The wine was wonderful. The cheese was Jack and the crackers were butterfly, a perfect evening for us to exchange our gifts to each other.
Allison was tricky. She gets very excited when she buys someone a gift and wants to give it to the person right away. I like to do the gift thing on the day when the gift is traditionally exchanged. So last week we were having dinner and Allison was all excited because she got me the perfect gift. She wanted to give it to me and I said no. She said, "What if we got each other the same gift?" I said something like, "What, did you name a star after me or something?" Then she got really pissed and left the room. I thought, "Oh, no I ruined her gift." Then I thought, "A star, what a scam, now I have to pretend to like this thing. I know I have said in the past that they were a scam and a waste of money, I can't believe she got me a star."
Well, Allison knows me better than that and thankfully did not waste her money to name a star after me. She got me tickets to see William Peterson (Grissom from CSI) in a play at Trinity Rep on New Year's Eve. The play is called Dublin Carol. We are going to have a meal at Fire and Ice beforehand and then hit the play. Should be a great time. She done good! That was a perfect gift for me and stayed with the tradition of paper, since they were tickets.
For Allison I contacted our friend Wes Molebash about two months ago to commission a custom comic strip for us. I know that Allison got me one for our wedding and I wanted to complement that on our first anniversary. He sent us the original artwork as well as the color version. We are going to frame both the color and the original artwork. Wes did a great job, Wes and I e-mailed each other back and forth with the dialogue, and he came up with the joke. I also got Allison three prints of some of our favorite strips.
Lazy Day
The Cat tried to Murder me
No Farting
We are certainly glad that we found Wes and his work. His comic strip is a part of our daily life and we are so proud to display the artwork, that he has created, in our home.
Tara's house is perfect for sleeping; we ended up falling asleep early and waking up 10 hours later. 10 hours, that has not happened since college days.