The LazyAssGeek’s

OK so by the time I’m actually publishing this it’s not “last weekend” so I hope Heidrun forgives my lack of timely posting!

Andy & Biggi graciously, if naively, invited the whole gang to spend President’s Day weekend at their place so Val, the kids and Sport could enjoy seeing some snow. We decided to rent a minivan from Enterprise to keep the wear & tear off of Val’s van. After getting it home Val noticed that the inside of the van was not that clean.  In the process of loading it I found out just how not clean, including a soda bottle, juice box, teething ring, some fries and a couple of chocolate chip cookies.  Enterprise will be hearing from me.

The drive was fairly uneventful, though we did hit traffic near Boston(again for me). Sport was very good in the car, except an incident where he notified us of his need to poop by doing a dead-on impersonation of Chewbacca.  Fortunately we’re conversant in Wookie so we figured it out and stopped to take care of that problem. We got to I-495 at just the wrong time again and lost nearly an hour sitting in very slow-moving Friday rush hour traffic. We got to their house close to 6:30, nearly 8 hours door-to-door.  After some pizza for dinner we settled in for an evening of Rock Band and we managed to break 1,000,000 points on a song for the first time under my profile, unlocking the achievement!

Rock On!

Saturday we had a relaxing morning as everyone recovered from the trip and figured out what we would do for the day.  Val & I decided to drag the kids, somewhat reluctantly on their part, out for some sight seeing as they had never been in that part of the country before while Andy & Biggi would head to the store to prepare for Val’s birthday Schnitzelfest. So we loaded up the rental minivan and after a quick stop at the NH Liquor Store for some schnapps and an 18 year old bottle of scotch (present for a retiring customer) it was off to Maine to check out Nubble Light!

I’d been to Nubble twice before this, but it’s still worth visiting. It’s a beautiful drive in on US 1A along the coast on Cape Neddick to the light even in winter. It was pretty cold out by the Light, so thank you Andy for the use of your jacket! I had managed to forget to pack one. The air temp wasn’t bad but the wind off the water was damn cold.  Still we had fun and the kids actually enjoyed it. Sport REALLY enjoyed it, getting to climb around on the rocks and scare off seagulls.

The Gang

The Poser

Ain't we cute?

Oh look, she's posing again

After we’d wandered around and taken pictures to the point where even the puppy was ready to get the hell out of the wind we retreated to the van.  After a short additional tour North on 1A we headed back to Dover. Val & Biggi spent (wasted?) some more time on Biggi’s online Mahjong game in the ongoing effort to get some “medal” for Biggi and we took it easy before heading to dinner. As it was Valentine’s Day we had decided to have a nice dinner at the restaurant owned by the realtor, Maureen, Andy & Biggi used to buy their home.  It’s called Ship to Shore and is in Newfields, NH. Dinner was excellent as it has been each time we’ve dined there, except of course we had WAY too much food so left with lots of bags of leftovers, and dessert to go!  More mahjong, Rock Band, beer, Mike’s Hard Lemonade finished up another great evening.

Sunday was Val’s birthday and it started with another nice lazy morning, if a bit hungover for some of us (Biggi). Melissa & Biggi were set to have a big day of shopping with their neighbor Amy and Amy’s daughter Sydney.  Amy called to see if they were ready and Biggi, um, generously told her to take her time.  Melissa was of course bangin’ off the chip and ready to go. They did eventually get out the door and Sunday morning returned to quiet, spent mostly again on mahjong! This more or less continued until it was sports time.  The Flyers & NBC gave Val a birthday gift of a network game so we watched the Flyers kick Ranger ass while Val wore her new Mike Richards jersey, which I gave her just before game time.  She had one more gift coming, but it seemed silly to not give that to her to wear for the game.

While we were watching hockey and the ladies were out shopping Andy started into part 1 of being a good bitch to prep for the birthday Schnitzel Fest by beating the holy living hell out of the boneless pork chops to make them patties. Michael helped me kill the time between the Flyers kickin’ ass and Daytona 500 green flag by playing an hour of Rock Band.  Amy’s husband Mark had arrived during the Flyers game along with their son Kyle and this was his first exposure to Rock Band. He of course was as blown away by Michael’s expert level awesomeness as we always are, while I struggle along trying to play hard level bass. If you haven’t guessed what Val was doing at this time you haven’t been paying attention.

Eventually the race got started, the ladies returned victorious from their shopping adventure and serious schnitzel & spaetzle prep got under way. Melissa had done some birthday shopping on behalf of all the kids and got Val a very cool new purse. Just as dinner was ready the race was red-flagged and eventually Matt Kenseth was declared the winner.  The food was awesome as always and after the initial “what the hell is this” reactions from the kids, EVERYBODY dove in and ate far more than they should because you just can’t help yourself! There are of course already plans for a Summer Schnitzel Fest.

As I mentioned previously, it was Val’s birthday and there were a couple of surprises left for her. The first was her birthday cake.  I had joked about putting this on there, but Andy & Biggi decided to go ahead and do it, much to the confusion of the folks at the bakery!

No Dear, you will NEVER live it down!

She got to open her other present from me, a set of Piloti Speedway driving shoes. She’s driven the Z06 now, but you have to have the right gear AND she has heel-toe lessons ahead of her!  There was one last surprise on the docket in honor of the day. Andy had some killer fireworks they’d purchased for New Year’s Eve but hadn’t been able to use because of high winds so he thought it would be a great opportunity.  It wasn’t exactly a windless evening, and it was DAMN cold standing out there watching, but it was calm enough to be safe to set them off.  Turned out to be WELL worth the cold as they’d bought two sets of pre-fused fireworks that ran about two minutes each and they were killer! Getting the sets ready-made is a great idea, you can light one fuse and stand back and enjoy.  They were really good aerial sets as well, going very high, secondary explosions, etc.  Great stuff!  The rest of the evening was pretty low key and we all turned in pretty early as we had to hit the road in the morning.

Andy & Biggi have a guest book that they insist you write in on each visit, and the kids weren’t let off the hook. If you ever visit check out what they wrote, I thought all three wrote great stuff and it was very cool to see that they had enjoyed the visit as much as Val & I had. The rest of the trip was pretty standard fare so I won’t regale you with the thrill of driving a loaded minivan from Dover, NH to Schwenksville, PA.  This has taken far too long for me to finish writing but I do want to send out one more thank you to our very good friends for hosting a spectacular weekend.  We look forward to many more!