...and then it went BOOM

So I was on facebook the other day and I saw that one of my friends had posted a homemade recipe for shower cleaner on her pinterest. This caught my eye because the house that Joel and I are living in is well... old and dirty and kind of gross, and no matter how many times I clean the tub with scrubbing bubbles (or any cleaner for that matter) it doesn't really seem to make a dent in the nasty appearance of our shower. So I looked up the pin and the list of ingredients was very simple and we happened to have all of them on hand.

Vinegar, dish soap, and baking soda.  "Awesome" I thought. "This is going to be easy!". I decided I didn't need to look at the instructions as there were only three ingredients, how hard could it be?  So I found a small spray bottle and proceeded to measure out the prescribed amounts of vinegar and dish soap and got a funnel ready to pour in the 2 TABLESPOONS OF BAKING SODA. (you can see where this is going)....Without thinking about it, I poured in the baking soda and then tired to screw the top of the spray bottle back on, but I was totally dismayed when it started to spill out over the sides and all over the sink. I kept trying to put the top on so that it would stop making a mess all over the recently cleaned out kitchen sink when BOOM! The contents of the bottle exploded everywhere! All over the counter the floor and all over my hair and face. (should have seen that one coming). After having a laugh all to myself about my own stupidity I dumped what was left of the bottle over as much of the bottom of the tub as possible. I'm pleased to say that it worked, at least the parts that got  the cleaner on it.

By the way... We live in a Jungle! Seriously.  Two days ago Joel was watching out the window and saw a hawk swoop down from the tree and catch a mouse that was hiding in the grass just feet from our side window. I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of it, but we did manage to get a picture of this baby outside the same window.

And yes. That is in fact a Bobcat in our yard. What it's doing in our yard I have no idea, but there it is.
Sorry for the picture quality. It was a little to far away for Joel's iPod camera...

The Tale of the Unwanted Guest

So I've come to the realization that I am really not very good at remembering my passwords for things. Usually when I try and write a post for the blog, it just signs me in automatically which usually works great for me. Today it didn't. So I tried the 'forget your password' thing where they send the password to your email address, which would have been fine had I been able to remember my password to the email account the new password was sent to. Oops. Needless to say trying to get onto the blog was a bit of a challenge today. But moving on...

Day 1) So a few weeks ago Joel and I were just going about our normal morning routine when we noticed some little black things in the silverware drawer. At first we didn't know what they were, but it didn't take us long to figure out what they were. MOUSE DROPPINGS! Gross. We picked out all the utensils and washed them all very thoroughly and vacuumed and cleaned out the drawer. Evidently mice had been a problem in our little house even before we moved in because we found a bunch of rodent poison in the creepy cabinets below the sink (We don't put anything down there). Joel, thinking it would be funny, put tons of pellets in the drawer (because no mouse could eat all of those right?). Day 2) So we wake up the next morning and look in the drawer... Gone! Every single pellet gone! We had a small army of mice on our hands. What were we going to do? Joel had a friend coming in from out of town that was going to be staying with us that night and we had mice! Not to mention that we (Joel, because we all know I sure wasn't going to do it) didn't want to go digging around in those nasty cabinets looking for dead mice. We decided that we would just wait  a couple of days to make sure they were dead and after our friend left to go searching. Day 3) So the next morning the guys are getting ready to go out and I'm just chilling on the couch on the computer, when I see something move in the corner of my eye. I look over, and see a little brown mouse stumbling around on the rug looking completely dazed and miserable. Normally I would have screamed for Joel and jumped off the back of the couch, but luckily I composed my self and very calmly called for Joel to come look to something. He came over and I then proceeded to jump over the back of the couch and get as far away from the thing as I could. Joel then scooped the little guy into a bucket and tossed him our into the two feet of snow outside. He died. And so far we haven't seen any more signs of mice. Hopefully it stays that way.

Our little mouse 'friend' just before his untimely passing

The Blizaaarrrd!

Wow. So it seems like every time I sit down to write a new post for the blog, the Internet quits or something comes up and then I forget what I was doing and never finish. But not today! Today I am going to complete a post! So here it goes.

So over this past week there have been some interesting things going on around our little area. On Thursday, Joel and I are watching the news (or something, I don't quite remember the details of how we found out) and saw that there was a blizzard warning for most of New England, including Connecticut. There was supposed to be lots of snow and some pretty nasty wind ( about 50 mph). So we check and sure enough, school is canceled on Friday for the weather. Hurray, we get to sleep in and just spend the day together. Well, sometime in the after noon, I get a text from our landlord that says "There is a tree that looks like it may come down (on our house). You should leave and come here". Um... What?!  So we pack some things and got our instruments and we spent the night at our landlord's house, which was very nice of them, hoping our little house didn't get smashed during the night by a huge tree with all the snow and wind. We woke up the next morning to check if the tree had fallen, and sure enough, we our house was safe! We definitely were very blessed.

The tree that might come down right on our house, or hopefully behind it...

 But  the next morning left us one obstacle. Two and a half feet of snow. So Joel being the amazing man that he is, braved the cold and dug us a path to get back home.

The trail

So we have survived two major storms in the 6 months that we've lived here. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the next 6 months has in store for us.

We took a walk, and look what we found

We found a pond at the park

We found an island in the pond

We found some cute wildlife in the pond

The wildlife trying to find the stick they thought was food that I threw into the pond

Still looking for the 'food'

What's this?! More wildlife in the park!

A close-up of the very good looking park wildlife

So, we dodged a pretty large bullet with regards to hurricane Sandy yesterday. Aside from blowing away some Halloween decorations that we had up, and forgot to take down, we really didn't have any problems with the storm. We never lost power and no evident damage to our little house. We were definitely very blessed.  School got canceled for Joel because of the weather so he had the day off today and yesterday.  We'd been inside for the last few days because of the storm and we were both starting to go crazy wandering around our little one bedroom abode. So, after I got off work today, we decided we would go on a walk to the park. We made some hot chocolate, for me, and some apple cider, for the handsome man, filled our little thermoses, bundled up and headed out. It was a pretty nice day, especially after how gross the weather had been yesterday. The sun was shining and it was the perfect fall temperature; a bit brisk, but still a little warm. We made it to the park and found a nice little bench to sit on and hold hands. It was such a beautiful day and it was fun to spend some quiet time with my best friend. We talked, and sipped our hot chocolate and apple cider, listened to the birds, leaves rustling in the trees, and random bits conversations of people walking by. It was a wonderful afternoon with my wonderful husband and it's days like this that remind me that I am the luckiest girl in the world. :)

To New York and Back

Skyline of Hartford. Not exactly relevant in this post, but cool nonetheless. 

So, I was at work on Monday and I get a call from Joel. I thought he was calling to tell me he was going over to practice at the school, or that he needed the key to lock the house, but I got a very unexpected surprise. "Hey, do you want to go to New York tomorrow?"  He had been given some tickets to a concert featuring George Coleman, one of the greatest saxophonist that has ever lived, (says Joel) from one of his former professors that is now teaching at Juilliard. I was stunned for a minute, not sure he was being serious, but then realizing what he was asking me, I jumped at the chance. I went to New York once in high school on an orchestra tour, but as much fun as it was, it's never the same when you have to travel with a huge pack of children all wearing the same t-shirt. Hartford is about two hours from the Big Apple, on a good day with minimal traffic. It's not too far, but far enough that we haven't been, and probably won't go, every weekend. We left around 5:30, and the concert was going to start at 8:00 pm, so we were going to be cutting it close if there was any heavy traffic. Heading out of Hartford there was some traffic, so we knew where ever we ended up parking, we were going to have to hurry to make it there on time. Getting into Manhattan we found a place to park about a 1/4 mile from the Lincoln Center. We were excited, until someone told us that we were parked in an NBC news reporter spot and that we would be towed if we parked there without a permit. Not wanting to risk it, we got back in the car and headed closer to the concert hall. It was about 7:55 and we got directly across the street from Juilliard still looking for a spot when miracle of miracles, a car pulled out leaving an empty parking spot! We parked and walked quickly over to the concert hall. As soon as we walked in and sat down, the lights dimmed and the concert started. Amazing. The concert was great and we both had a lot of fun. It was great being able to go and spend time with Joel doing something that we both enjoy and that he loves so much. It's not going to be very often, but living so close to New York is definitely going to have some perks.

The Beginning of the Cotton Club

The Cotton Club circa 1936, NY city

 For all of my family and friends that wanted to keep in touch, and because I'm too lame to try and message everybody individually, here is my blog. Here I will try to update things that happens in my life, and let you all know what's new. Being married to a jazz musician, it's become a huge part of both of our lives, I figured I should include it somehow. The Cotton club was a very famous jazz club back in the day, and it obviously has some pretty key things in common with both of us, (Cotton) so it worked out perfectly. When the Handsome Man and I decided what school he'd be going to back in the spring, we knew it was going to bring some huge changes. So, less than six months later, we packed our bags and headed on a one way trip across the country. Despite being totally stressed and unprepared, we found a good place to live in a good area, thanks to a lot of prayers and some miracles, and we are both very happy and doing well. The North East is beautiful and I am falling in love with all the trees and squirrels and bunnies that run around in the grass outside. Thus, the adventures of the Cotton Club begin. :)