Vermont!

It's been a social weekend for us! Last night we went to a house-warming party for one of the anthropology grad students and today we went to Brattleboro, Vermont with another grad student and his family. Brattleboro is like Stillwater, MN, but more "earthy-crunchy". It was a beautiful day to be out and about--we had lunch and then wandered into some of the shops on Main Street.

One of my favorite features on the New England landscape, the church steeple. There are several of these old beautiful churches in Brattleboro.

Jay with our friends Boone and Sarah and their daughter Rose.

Cheers to the Birthday Girl!

Our friend April has pointed out to us many times that she has never been featured in our blog. Our response was to refrain from mentioning her for as long as possible, but today is her birthday and we just couldn't let the shut-out go on any longer. So in honor of the birthday girl we have created a special list--Top 20 Reasons Why We Love April

20. "Oops, I guess I should have pooped first" and other similar stories
19. Mind games
18. That tall dude she hangs out with. He's pretty cool, and so patient!
17. Owns more towels than anyone else we know
16. Hostess with the mostest
15. She's an "Us Weekly" person not a "People" person
14. Close personal friend of the Wooger
13. Entertaining to hang out with before she's had her morning coffee
12. Ran a freakin' marathon
11. Can replace the lightbulbs in her car headlights
10. Insert your own April-loves-the-Redsox story here
9. Partied with Prince at Paisley Park
8. Pillow talks
7. You know the sound a fork makes when it scrapes against your teeth? She loves that sound.
6. Karaoke skillz to pay the billz
5. Frequent Miss Blarney contestant
4. Not at all competitive--she likes it when everyone wins and just has fun
3. She promised to visit us soon (hint!)
2. Some people use sarcasm as a tool--she has elevated it to an art form
1. She's April!

There, now we can go another six months without mentioning her on the blog. Happy Birthday to Simon, too!

Scenes from South Deerfield, Part 3

This is the view from the little town commons. Adjacent to this commons is the town's major intersection--a four way stop! We live about a mile up the road pictured here.



There is a fountain in the commons area that the city keep running all winter. As you can see, it's become a huge ice sculpture. We managed to take a picture during a quiet moment--the local kids throw things into the fountain and try to break through the ice. The building in the backgroung is Georgio's, a local pizza place we really like, and if you could look through the pine tree you would see the GoNomad, the local coffee shop.

True story

Heidi, quoted at 6:23 PM ET, 2.19.07:

"I get to look through this book tonight to get information on how to properly store a shrunken head."

That is not normal.

- jbc

Snow, man.

Sorry if there's a weird Blogger navigation bar now appearing at the top of this page. Google's doing some Blogger acount changes, and I'm still figuring out how to work around some of the new coding for this page's template... Grrr.

Big snowstorm here that began Tuesday evening and tailed off late Wednesday -- we got roughly a foot of snow; fun to have it finally look like winter.

We'll get some more pictures of stuff up here soon -- promise.

- jbc

Time for another posting, for crying out loud!

Holy hazelnut, a Blapp Report update is long overdue! "February" sort of rhymes with "lazy New England lethargy", doesn't it?

ANYHOO, a couple of kudos are in order:

• Bravo to Jeff & Karen, now en route to the sunny Caribbean to get hitched. Woo hoo!


• Thanks to all who entered our recent Super Bowl contest, and bravo to Tracy for her winning submission. Your genuine, personally-chosen item from Yankee Candle is on its way now!


• Bravo to Holly, who suffered a flat tire on one of the coldest days of the year!


• Bravo to everyone else who deserves special recognition in this forum. You know who you are.

Our big excitement this weekend was a short road trip to an outlet mall in Lee, MA, off the pike (that's the Massachusetts Turnpike i.e. I-90 for you out-of-towners) about an hour west of South Deerfield. It's a typical mid-sized outlet mall featuring the usual retail suspects, except for the location: the middle of the Berkshires, so the place has these beautiful snow-covered wooded hills rising all around it. Very pretty setting, but kind of weird too...

You may have heard rumors that we have become vegetarians--they are true, at least for February! We are "trying" it for one month, then we'll see if we want to stick with it. We didn't eat much meat to begin with, and the reading about the food industry Heidi did in preparation for her class at Smith pretty much turned us off the stuff completely (check out Fast Food Nation--mmmmm, E. coli). I kinda miss bacon. Other than that, so far so good.

- jbc