“groovy mother...”

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.)

Inappropriate beverage dispensers, spotted in Target.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.