Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Taxes, Patriots, and Baseball.

It's April 18th. We are celebrating in my household today. While April 15th is Tax Day for the rest of the country, those of us in New England (and for some quirky reason New York as well) had until today to postmark those returns because of the Patriot's Day Holiday. Hubby works in a tax related field, so today we heave a huge sigh of relief, and start a week's vacation.

Patriot's Day really is one of the fun things about living up here. It celebrates the "shot heard 'round the world," or the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.

Tangent: How many of you know how to pronounce this word: TICONDEROGA?
Bonus points: What is it?

Anyway, Patriot's Day has become synonymous with the Boston Marathon. Marathon Monday is a huge party here. Plus, the Sox play a day game. OMG how awesome was that walk-off home run yesterday?! It's just nuts. Kenya swept the race again this year. Big surprise. I can't even imagine running 26 miles. I have a lot of admiration for my friend Ali as she prepares to take on this feat. As I have begun running again, and push myself to run a 10 minute mile, I realized how these elite runners pretty much have to run twice that. For twenty-six miles. Two hours. Pass the Gatorade and a masseuse.

The Easter weekend in NYC was pretty much a gastronomical event. Good Chinese take-out, swank martinis and tapas at 718 afterward; a fine Italian feast at Ponticello Ristorante for Easter dinner, where I had calamari, baked clams, gnocci bolognase, and veal marsala. We eat family style, btw- I did not consume a plate of each item. LOL We topped it off with espresso, apertifs and dessert. Mmmm. I topped the whole weekend off by hitting Mama's Empanadas for the trip home. Jobee, I had the Cubana---definately my new favorite.

Needless to say I need to run my ass off this week: literally.

As I said, we are on vacation this week. Not that we're going anywhere beyond home sweet home; it's in dire need of our attention after a busy winter of playing in Maine. LOL Posting will be sparse. Happy springtime world. Please continue to visit What if? There was some great stuff posted. We still would love some fun suggestions for "first and last lines", our next exercise.

7 comments:

hello jamie: said...

um... Ticonderoga. The street where you live. That's all I know of it. *WEG*

Bored Housewife said...

I know the word, and how to pronounce it. I also know it's a place/name/noun. heh. All that comes to mind is the pencil company "Dixon-Ticonderoga"....dammit, i suck. I even grew up THERE. ish.

Unknown said...

Mmmmm...thanks for the foodorgasm. I would have consumed a plate of each!
happy vacation!

Bud said...

At home vacations are sweet. Ticonderoga is that Revolutionary War fort up at the bottom of lake George, isn't it? It's also a brand of lead pencils,I believe.

hello jamie: said...

oh HEY! I knew that. I used to live around the corner from an old Dixon-Ticonderoga Pencil Factory in New Jersey. They had turned it into yuppie apartments and I always thought it was a cool building because it still had DIXON-TICONDEROGA PENCILS on the facade.

What I should have said was... it's the street where you live, which is the MOST IMPORTANT TO ME. *wink*

kathi said...

A weeks vacation at home, that sounds wonderful to me. And, I've gotta tell you, a lot of this post was like reading a foriegn language..sad for me. I need to get out of Texas more.

Anonymous said...

isn't there a penis joke with Ticonderoga? I'll ask Paulie