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it has arrived, today marks the beginning of a celebration.

as we now find ourselves in the month of september, nine months after the holidays, there are many glorious events about to take place worthy of at least an obligatory nod on these here pages. it's not only my birthday season, but this month will also mark my six month blogoversary as well as my 100th post.

now, i usually don't make a big deal about my own birthday, but this year i'm turning thirty, and i think that's reason enough to party. oh, yeah, and this will also be the first year for family birthday week. that's right, myself, the fuss, and b all have our birthdays in the same week at the end of september. and there's also the big get-together for my nana's eightieth birthday. yes, the same nana responsible for my header pic.

while us yankee/mets loving folk will descend upon the land of the green monster to visit the fam in the cape cod area, there may be some things going on here at my pearl hiding spot.

i still can't believe i haven't quit blogging yet. there have been so many times that i questioned my ability to tell an entertaining story, or doubted that i would ever reach an audience that understood my point of view, yet i still kept going. and mostly to show my appreciation for that momentum from you dear readers, i want to do a little something special.

and also because i never win any bloggy contests so it feels a lot better to give things away than to be sad about being a loser.

so you guessed it, there's a giveaway coming up here soon! unfortunately i don't have the pics ready yet to get you really, officially amped up for it. so this is more of a teaser post about a giveaway than the real thing. but trust me, it will not be crap from my closet or chewed up dog toys, despite the fact that monster's headless blue dino cracks me the fuck up and i can't see how anyone else wouldn't laugh at it:


oh, and i'm not done yet kiddies. i'm working on arranging my all-star lineup of guest bloggers to thrill you with amazingly hilarious and well crafted masterpieces while i'm off getting drunk. i have no idea what they intend to write about, but i do know that they are probably going to be at the very least slightly more fun than me talking to inanimate objects or inventing different personas to talk shit to.

if that isn't enough to entertain you, then you're shit out of luck, because that's the best i could come up with for my fantastic birthday/blogoversary/100th post extravaganza. and if you are intrigued, or even shivering with anticipation about what exactly my fabulous 'thank you for reading my words' gifty gifts are going to be, then i can tell you to relax. take a deep breath. details will be coming soon, with pics to prove i'm not entirely full of it.

i forget what sunshine looks like

tomorrow i will be on my way to the beach. except that i probably won't spend much time at the beach with all this never ending rain and unsummery cold air.

little miss and i are road-tripping it to visit some fam out by cape cod. i may yet still parade her around in her new pink and white polka dot tankini, because i don't foresee another beach trip before she outgrows that piece. and also because my cousin bought her daughter the same one so of course we've been talking about them playing together in matching tankinis for about two months now.

suck it up girlies, parents are allowed to make you uncomfortable for their own entertainment, that's what you're here for. and besides, playing in the rain is almost like swimming in the ocean, right? close enough.

oh, and let's not forget about the concert i will subject my kid to on the three plus hour drive. i never could carry a tune, but i sure can have fun car singing. at least she'll sleep through half of it, and when she is awake for my singing, she can't talk yet so i don't have to worry about any verbal objections.

my set list might include some of the following, in no particular order:

- the entire we are scientists album, starting with this one



- weezer, circa the blue album. i can never have too much of a good thing.

- anything by ryan adams.

- the shout out louds, playing this one no less than four times




of course once we get to the lovely land of the green monster, i will promptly turn off the music, roll down my windows (no matter what the weather) and blast the yankees game on the radio. unless they're losing, then i'll just mutter about it to myself.

and that's basically all i need for a good road trip. luckily i have an ipod full of 90s rock so i'm sure i'll find plenty of soundgarden, smashing pumpkins, and toadies thrown into my lineup as well.

as for little miss, how could she not enjoy that? actually, the way i see it, i'm doing her a favor by not playing boring classical or dreadfully repetitive children's music in the car. i think she's only pretending to like 'i've been working on the railroad' anyway.

one thing i know little miss does love, is kristine and her masterful paint skills (and also my segue skills), so it only felt natural that she should guest blog here at the pearl hiding spot while i'm away. i personally think k is hilarious, and i think most of you already read her blog, but for those of you who don't, you should. go here. but also, come back here, please.

i can't vouch for content, but i'm pretty sure there will be words and there may or may not be a picture posted in my absence sometime this week.

i shall return, hopefully with some interestingness this weekend, perhaps with an update on hook-up chef. happy first week of summer y'all!!

my baseball post

you may not know this about me, but i grew up in a family of baseball fanatics. there was no other sport that we even paid attention to. when i was about eight years old, and my brother about six, no one could top ol' donnie baseball in our minds. darryl strawberry on the mets and jose canseco on the a's were up there too. we don't need to tarnish that childhood memory with where they ended up, so i'm just going to move along here.

now, with b being a mets fan, we enjoy a mutual love for our ny baseball teams. we still have to make it out to visit the new stadiums sometime this summer, although i have to say that i'm a little superstitious because every single time i've been to the old yankee stadium the guys lose. i might be a hex.

my point with all this is that i was super annoyed to read this crap in my local paper this morning about how they're auctioning off the fucking clumps of dirt from the old stadium.

i mean, i always kind of looked the other way when ticket prices kept going up and up and up. it's entertainment, and if that's the price you have to pay to enjoy it, so be it. but selling clumps of grass and pieces of a busted wall that that douche kevin brown punched a hole in, just to make a buck?

i can't decided who's the biggest tool, the yanks for looking at $$, the assclowns who pay for this stuff, or me for getting annoyed about it all when i really should have seen it coming a mile away.