Day off

We have some neighbors who are very nice. They have a back courtyard area that is right next to our house, which they fill with flowers and a little table and chairs. They also fill it with so many ridiculous things that we refer to it as the circus. The man of the couple, Dave, is a plumber, so he built a fountain out of some flowerpots and things. There are Christmas lights strung everywhere, and a light up palm tree. The strings of lights criss cross over the patio, and a huge American flag hangs from the center. Over the summer everything was red white and blue; now the lights are all orange and there are purple bats and spiders and some kind of really really creepy R.O.U.S. type thing perched atop the crisscross of lights. They leave everything turned off until they go to bed, at which point they turn on the whole circus, fountain and all, and go inside. The sound of the fountain makes me think it is raining all the time and makes me have to pee constantly. They are good neighbors, friendly and a little quirky. They have two dogs, Daisy and Susie. They've had Daisy for a while. She has incredibly short legs and is very shaggy, and kind of hops when she moves. She barks loudly whenever we come in the gate, all the way until we make it back to our door and inside. The people who used to live here had cats, so she sometimes peeks around as we're going in to see if we have any. Susie is a new dog. Daisy is working hard to teach her how to bark incessantly at any humans. She's coming along well with that training.

We know Daisy's name for sure, because every time she barks we hear her owners yelling, "Daisy! Daisy! That's enough!" And Susie being a new dog, we hear her name shouted pretty often as well. And we hear the lady saying "Daaave? Hey Dave?" all the time, so we know the plumber is Dave. But he never seems to call her, so even though we see her all the time, we don't know her name. There is a chance that it's Mary. We may never know.



If you come over any night of the week you can see the circus.

Since Friday is my day off, I always feel the urge to do something awesome on Thursday night, but I can never find anyone up for doing awesome things with me. Ben was working late yesterday, and then went to the gym, and I had no luck with anyone else. So I decided it was the time to bake my apple pie. I turned on good music and cracked open a beer and put on my apron and got bakin'. When Ben came home I presented him with a delicious bowl of apple peelings. He had a mostly-full bottle of Port from his work receptiony thing, and I had bought some Dubliner cheese, and we had some yummy almonds too. We were classy, and I was drunky and spicing up my pie before I got it in the oven. We danced with our wine glasses in hand and were very silly and it was perhaps a sickeningly adorable evening of careless fun spent by two young lovebirds in their little apartment.

And then we got to eat this for breakfast.
Seriously, I can't believe I made this thing. It's incredible. If you come over in the next couple days you can have a slice.