Framingham: The House, The Fam

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

I really like Robin’s family’s house. It’s a big farmhouse in the middle of a suburban sprawl. Two floors and a barn attached, very spacious with an old, homey feel to it.

I first visited this place in the summer between my Junior and Senior year in college. Robin and I borrowed her parents’ car to drive up to Ogunquit, Maine, our first destination date. We spent the evening in Ogunquit, got lobster for dinner and had beers and karaoke during the evening. We drove the car back the following day, Robin’s parents weren’t home and we spent the night at their house. Playing pool in the game room and blasting the juke box, it was a good time.

I grew up in a small apartment in Brooklyn. A dining room with a small bathroom and kitchen attached, a living room, my parents’ bedroom, and my bedroom. That was it. When my sister was born she slept in my parents’ room until I moved out – I was 18 and Elizabeth was 7. Robin’s house, by contrast, was a palace compared to our apartment. Bathroom, kitchen, dining room, game room, living room, and computer room on the first floor. Four bedrooms on the second floor. The barn, the storage shed, the large yard, the patio – it’s the kind of place you’d hardly ever see in NYC and when you do see it you’d know it belongs to one of the richest people in the area.

Contrary to the impression the house left on me, Robin was not Ms. Richie Rich growing up. But that’s her story, and it’s probably not my right to tell it. The point is – this house impressed the shit out of me.

Interestingly, my history with Robin’s family is sort of a blur. I don’t remember the first time I met her parents or her brother. I think it might have been a quick encounter at her brother’s lacrosse game but I have no recollection of what was said or how it went. I feel like my memory’s been going, recently, or I’ve been filling my head up with the unimportant shit.

My most prominent memory of Robin’s parents comes from the following summer, when Robin moved down to DC to me. After loading up the truck Robin’s dad told me, “If you hurt my daughter I’ll kill you.” That’s the kind of thing you don’t forget.

I do remember meeting Robin’s sister. The three of us went to Sunset Grill in Boston together. Again, memory fails me and I don’t remember much from the get-together but I’m sure it was fun; I always have fun hanging with Robin and her sister. One thing about Robin’s sister, she always makes me feel younger than I am. She’s only a year older than me and she’s married, has a nice house, and she’s having her second kid today. She definitely has her shit together to the point where I hope to have mine in seven or eight years from now.

It’s always amazed me how some people can actually embrace adulthood. I look at my friends – we’re starting to get married but none of us have any plans for kids or owning houses or moving out of the city or any of that stuff. We’re all still partying whenever we can and wondering where we want to end up and what we want to do. Despite having a stable career that pays me very well I’m still trying to get a writing career going. My best friend’s my age and he’s contemplating moving to Italy for six months to learn how to cook. I get together with my DC friends and we talk about video games or TV shows while kicking back six-packs. I compare that to someone like Robin’s sister (or my parents, for that matter) and I’m just amazed (and admittedly a bit jealous) that someone can be an adult at 30.

Anyway, I’ve definitely gotten closer with Robin’s family over the years, just like she’s gotten closer with mine. And I love this house, even though everyone here goes to bed at 10PM.

Labels: rambling

posted by Jason at 8:06 AM 0 Comments

Framingham!

Monday, September 22, 2008

Robin and I drove up to Framingham, Massachusetts on Saturday and we’ll be here until Friday. We have several reasons for taking the trip, first-and-foremost being the fact that Robin’s sister is having another baby on Tuesday. So we get to see the baby along with our nephew/godson Shamus – always a good time. We want to take him to the aquarium for the first time and take him to get his Halloween costume this year. I’m thinking I’m going to push him towards The Flash because it’s an easy superhero concept for a 20-month-old to grasp: The Flash runs really fast. It doesn’t involve utility belts, healing factors, or super strength – just run.

We’re also doing some wedding planning while we’re up here. We met with a DJ on Saturday night and he was a super nice guy but he seemed like the kind of person who does a “whacky” morning show on the radio. The good thing is we’re pretty sure that he’ll do whatever we tell him to do so if we go with him we’ll be able to at least fake the type of DJ we’ve been looking for.

Today we’re meeting with a caterer and on Wednesday we’re getting our engagement pictures taken care of. The caterer situation is insane – the one we really liked sent us a proposal that was around $55 per person for food (within our budget) and then an extra $100 per person for staff, linens, silverware, etc (about $100 out of our budget). The person we’re meeting with today seems to be within out budget but, as a foodie, his food choices hurt my soul. I’ll live…

The wedding thing is getting scary – especially with this whole “economy is rapidly falling apart” thing. We were trying to be frugal going into it and now we’re tripling our efforts on the savings front. Who knows how it’s going to go, anyway – for all we know we could be in a depression within a year and we won’t even have the wedding; at least not the picturesque one we’re going for now.

This economy – I’ve tried to create several posts on it but there’s simply nothing funny about it. It’s just a mess.

Anyway, that’s how my week is looking. I imagine there will also be a lot of beer involved (although I did pick up a couple of bottles of Rhone from the Vin Bin, a fantastic wine shop in Marlborough). There will also be a ton of keno and scratch tickets. Every bar we go to in Framingham has keno in it and I’ll play twenty-dollars in numbers as soon as I get in. On Saturday I wound up winning $15 dollars over cost between Keno and scratch cards so I’m already ahead. I’m sure I’ll end up a couple of bucks down by the time the week is out. We also want to go to Foxwoods to check out the new MGM Grand so that’ll certainly put me out a couple of bucks unless I have a blackjack run like I had at Atlantic City this past summer (I put $100 in and pulled $700 out).

Anyway, that’s really all there is to do in Framingham. The nights are particularly boring – I usually find myself in bed by ten which is about 3 hours earlier than I’ll go to bed on a weeknight, let alone a weekend. Hopefully I’ll get some writing done while I’m out here, I have several pitches I want to work on and several scripts I promised folks I’d read.

That’s all – sorry for the boring “here’s what I’m up to” blog post. Better stuff (in theory) on the way.

Labels: rambling, wedding

posted by Jason at 8:00 AM 0 Comments

Long Time No Post

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I'm in Austin, Texas at the moment. I'm at a conference for work and haven't been at my computer much. This trip follows a week in Boston that followed a week in Brooklyn. It's been fun, but I really want to just go home and relax at this point.

I've been doing a lot of reading. I finished The Trojan War: A New History by Barry Strauss shortly after Christmas. Tore through Steve Martin's hilarious and moving The Pleasure of My Company, a gift from Elton Pruitt, a writer whose own voice has been developing quite nicely recently. Now I'm devouring Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. It's such a smart book, a 900 page biography of our 16th President and his three rivals for the Republican nomination, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates. I'm 160 pages into it and I haven't been able to put it down - I'm looking forward to my 6 hour trip back to DC on Friday so I can dig into a large chunk of it.

I read some comics as well. Persepolis, finally. Sleeper Volume II and a chunk of Absolute New Frontier. I haven't picked up a monthly in over a month, mainly because I haven't made it to a comic store in a while.

I've been desperately searching for a Wii. I'm obsessed. I realize it's more the thrill of the hunt than the desire to own yet another gaming system but it's been keeping me occupied during my three weeks of living out of a suitcase.

I'm also in love with slip-on sneakers now; I'm upset I haven't caught onto this sooner. I got a pair at the New Balance Factory Store in Boston and they're my new footwear of choice. Mainly because I'm still breaking in my new shoes, they actually made my feet bleed on New Years Eve.

I have a nephew. Shamus Rowe. He's a very cute kid. I spent a lot of time at the hospital while I was in Boston hanging with Robin and her family. Almost made me want a son of my own. Than I realized I'd have to stay home all the time and that urge went away real fast. I'm going to adopt a 16 year old Dominican with a wicked pitching arm, that's my plan. Low commitment, huge pay-off.

I realized that there'd be a huge problem with an eventual child Robin and I would have. She's a Red Sox fan, I'm a Mets fan. She's a Pats fan, I'm a Jets fan. You know how some families have to deal with one parent being Jewish and one being Christian? I think this is worse. I can never let a child of mine wear a Pats shirt. Ever. Anyway, watch the kid spite of us and be a Yankees and Dolphin fan.

Speaking of the Jets - my Jets, my Jets. Heartbroken. They weren't supposed to do anything this season and the final score of last Sunday's game made it look like a blowout, like they were a big joke that just got lucky. Always next season, I guess. At least I got to see the Jets spank the Pats this year live at Foxboro from the fifty yard line, thirty-or-so rows from the field. I'll always have that memory. I one hundred bucks on that game; I don't have that anymore, though, I basically drank it away after the game.

Anyway, that's that. We're basically caught up. I'm going to go read some and then fall asleep, I have 9 hours of conference to sleep through tomorrow. I wish Team of Rivals wasn't so fat, I'd sneak it in with me.

Labels: rambling