The Bristol parade was good, even if there were some huge gaps between bands/floats. Eddie and I ended up watching from the opposite side of the street from where we usually sit because the Prudence Island crew was there and had spread half of themselves about 4′ into the street, successfully blocking everyone’s view on their right sides. We weren’t the only ones who moved, either. There was some discussion at home after about how we may want to just sit on the other side next year. I managed to get a lot of good shots of people this year, as the camera seemed to be on good behavior for a change.

We did more work in the new place. Doorknobs for cabinets and big doors have been painted, if not installed (the blue one is installed on the bedroom door, and man does it look funky). The bedroom closet doors need to be done, so we’ll work on that over the weekend once we move the bed and the assorted pile of goodness that’s been sitting on top since Mom and I went through all of it 2 months ago. Eddie will paint the doors while I get the kitchen finished, then we’ll have all 3 rooms done, and be pretty much good to start moving stuff over there in 2 weeks. I still need to finish the curtains.

There was a bit of discussion about what to do with the bathroom, and we’re leaving it as is until we determine if there is indeed a mold problem brewing behind the shower walls as my aunt seems to think there is. To be honest, there’s probably a buttload of mold in there, if the wood’s not completely rotted away anyway.

And to end this small post, I’ll give a bit of an overview of how last Thursday was at work. We had an old man have an accident while leaving the employee bathroom, and my boss spent literally 20 minutes on the phone with a grown woman sporting a 103F fever for “a day or two” who was arguing with her about whether she’d be better off going to her doctor’s office and getting a shot of antibiotic in the ass (like he MD told her to do), or if she could just stay at home and take a couple of Tylenol, and she just wasn’t understanding that she was FRYING HER BRAIN. If I had the power to do so, I would have reached through the phone and beat some sense into her with her Tylenol. Add a splash of our regular junkies and it was a typical way to start my 3-day weekend.

Dear government,

We know you have a weather controlling machine. Don’t try to deny it. I don’t care what you’re using it for, or how many of my tax dollars went into its creation, but I do have one small favor to ask:

Please stop fucking with our weather.

You see, it’s January. According to my calendar, it’s been Winter for nearly a month now, and yet Rhode Island is having weather reaching nearly 60F for the past week or, and it’s been in the upper 40s most days since late Fall. You just can’t fuck with out weather like this. Without snow, we have nothing to complain about. Gone are the days when we could show up to work 2 hours late and tell our bosses that we had to shovel ourselves out of our driveways, or that our car was coated in 1/4″ layer of ice, or that the state needs to get more fuckin’ plow drivers because your street seems to be the last one cleared every time it snows. No longer can we stock up on milk and bread when Gary Ley says there’s flakes in our future.

But what really sucks about not having snow? Everyone is out on the roads, and in true Roe-dylanduh style, none of these oxygen thieves can drive. It’s raining? Drive the speed limit. Sunlight? swerve across 3 lanes of traffic because you can’t see the lines on the road. Cop in the breakdown lane? Immediately slam on your brakes and drive 45mph on the interstate. Someone’s sighted an orange contruction cone? Holy shit, stop the car, I think the earth has split up ahead!

On the plus side, I turned the heat way down.

I woke up abruptly very early yesterday morning. I’d been dreaming that we’d moved out of this house, and into one of the ones further down the road that was much bigger inside, allowed pets, and didn’t involve a psycho landlord. In the dream I’d gone for a walk, and Eddie had gone out to get something we needed. When I returned to the house, I went in and started calling for Eddie, letting him know that I was back. I walked through the empty house, asking if he was there. I finally got into the bedroom, and called out, “Ed? You here?” From behind me a voice with a heavy Spanish accent replied, “He’s not here, but we are.” I turned around to find a group of about 4 or 5 dirty, dark-skinned guys advancing towards me. they pushed me onto the bed and tore at my stockings and ripped at my shirt and pulled off my panties. Right as I started to fight them off, kicking and screaming, I woke up. And then, laying there in the dark in that semi-lucid, semi-dreaming state, Eddie reached across and put his hand on my ass in his sleep, and I spazzed out and almost screamed.

I went back to sleep and had another dream, this time that the armory in Bristol was much bigger but also partially submerged. There were people in the parking lot taking pictures of it and cheering because the Pope was on top, wearing the Pope hat, and doing jumping jacks. I took pictures of him, right before he and 4 cardinals did a magnificent swan dive off the roof and into the water, pointy hats and all.

We stayed up late last night. We stayed at Mom’s house until the Pats game was over, watching the game on Nanny’s TV because they can’t get local stations on the dish, and can’t get a clear picture on the big scream without it, but Nanny’s TV gets great reception downstairs. We got home shortly after 11pm and let Pickle out to run around for a couple of hours before going to bed. We managed to actually SNL in its entirety, something we haven’t done in about a year. I had dreams about being stranded with a small group of people on a trio of small, deserted islands, and we made out houses in the trees, ate bananas, and stole gemstones from ancient stone idols.

Completely messed up dreams… I must be getting my period soon; my dreams always end up being more insane and vivid.

Dear WJAR weather crew,

I understand that forecasting the weather is not an exact science, as Mother Nature is a fickle bitch and sometimes things get blown off course. I forgave you when your forecast for 6-8″ of snow last Monday turned out to be a dusting. But what happened today?

We started off with snow. It was light, puffy snow from the looks of it. Being a Rhode Island native, I checked the news to see what was expected (2-4″) and locked myself indoors where it’s safe. I mean, we only get snow 10 or 20 times a year, so it’s not like any of us know how to drive unless we’re tailgating a plow and the state closes up tighter than a gnat’s ass, right? No need for me to be out, so I opened the blinds and settled in to watch the snowflakes.

First we had some light snow. The flakes weren’t huge, but they weren’t flurries either, and there was probably about 2″ out there. Then it changed to much bigger flakes and came down a lot heavier for a while, giving us another 2″ or 3″ of it, but just as predicted it turned to rain, and so we got that for a little while after about 1pm.

And then the weather changed so much so fast that even you guys were confused.

First the wind picked up, blowing the rain sideways for a while, and at the same time the temperature dropped about 15 degrees in an hour. So now we’ve got about 5″ of snow on my street and a driving rainstorm that is freezing to anything it touches. Then the rain turned to snow again. Not the big flakes we’d had earlier, but again not flurries. Snow flying horizontally and even upwards and sustained winds of about 35mph. At this point, my windows are now covered with snow and I can’t see out them anymore. Imagine this scene now - snowflakes with anti-gravity properties, crazy winds, and to cap it all off, we start getting thunder and lightning.

At the last report, we were looking at the end of the bad weather and you were saying that the sun would be coming out soon. If by “soon” you really mean “tomorrow morning”, I’ll believe you.

When I left the house this afternoon right after my last post, there was something brewing along I-95S, right along the train tracks. There’s a helocoptor flying overhead, but you can’t see anything happening. There weren’t any cops around when I first saw it, so I figured it was a traffic chopper and continued on my way down to Warwick.

However, it was still there when we were driving home, and even now we can still hear it - the tracks are not too far from our house, and we could see the chopper from the top of our street. Of course, there’s nothing on the local news pages. The local news doesn’t start for another 30 minutes, so I’ll have to wait until then to find out what the hell is happening in my neighborhood.