Saturday, May 23, 2009
Excellent flight to Maryland--we listened to AT40 from 1972 for the whole trip, which was highly diverting. Good ol' Casey Kasem. The most entertaining part of the trip was that, when we landed at Tipton, there was an F16 and a Coast Guard helicopter circling above, just for us!!! Lots of excitement for little Tipton airport. We knew we didn't do anything wrong; we were IFR the whole way, and therefore flew exactly where the controllers told us to fly, so it was a big What the Heck? After we fueled up and tied Tango down, Dean called Potomac Approach and asked them what was up. Apparently someone did violate the restricted zone and they thought it was Tango until they verified we were IFR. "They found their target and it wasn't you. You did everything correctly." Hahaha. I wonder what they did to the real target???
Posted at 2:52:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
It was hot at the airport and I had a slight brain boil headache, so we stopped at the Greenbelt SBUX before checking into our hotel. When we parked, I joked to Dean, "I bet Diane, Jan and June decided it was too hot for a walk in the park and will be sitting at a table inside having coffee and chatting." We walked in, and there they were, at a table in the back, with just enough extra chairs for us to join them. Yes. I do have a very special brain.
Friday, May 22, 2009
I'm listening to the Noah's Ark episode of Themetime while folding laundry, and Bob mentioned Lonesome George, the only known remaining member of the Pinta Island Tortoise subspecies, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. When I read the part about the eggs, I gasped... but then when I read on, about them turning out to be infertile, I almost cried. What a poignant name, Lonesome George.
Posted at 12:37:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
The fixed-up copy is here already, and it looks perfect! Yay!!
Posted at 12:35:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Excellent shad milt feast!! I even managed to take a few good pictures. Here's my meal, partially eaten. (I also had Fake Romanesco, aka broccoflower, on the side, not just a huge pile of shad milt...) I couldn't find any Rudi's Organic whole wheat small batch rolls this year (ION Market is so downhill, grrrr), so I had to use toasted Rudi's Organic wholegrain bread as my milt stand instead, but it was still good.
Posted at 8:57:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
If you want to see what the milt looked like raw (after I rinsed most of the blood off), click here, but don't do it if you're squeamish about raw stuff. That's the big pair. Here's a picture with the small pair piled on top of the big pair (I ate both). The smaller pair was a lot redder! In the cooked picture, it's the part on top that looks browner; the big pair was altogether paler. They didn't taste any different, though. I lightly floured and cracked sea salt over them before I sauteed them in butter and olive oil, in a frying pan on the stove like eggs. Flipped them once. That's all there is to it. It was good.
Posted at 3:56:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Wow! Very interesting new sign at Hale's! Hahahaha. Nice going, Dan! Once again, the older lady asked me what milt tastes like. Me: "You ask me that every year!" She also, as usual, asked me how I prepare it. And once again, I told her she really should try it. An older guy (her husband?) was with her and seemed interested, so maybe they finally will. But I doubt it. When I left, she said "Good luck!" As if eating shad milt requires lots of it! The very entertaining part was that, when I first got there, she couldn't find the milt and thought they didn't have any, even though I called ahead and the younger guy (her: "Billy") said he'd put it aside for me. I knew it'd be there... but I didn't know where he'd put it. She was all flustered trying to find it (when she finally did: "Thank God!"), as if it's highly important that the Milt Lady gets her milt. It was hidden in the bottom of the cooler under a whole bunch of roe. (Maybe Billy put it there so no one else would snag it...) Oh Hale's, I love you so. :-)
Oh yes, and I took a photo of the signboard with the shad prices. They had a notice about having had to raise their prices, but they were still tons cheaper than Atlantic Seafood, just like I thought.
As I was driving away, I noticed that Mitchell's On the River, the little restaurant near Hale's, has both hot and cold lobster rolls (I drove really slow past it and looked at the sign out my car window), so I pulled over and re-parked, and bought one! (I had my milt in a little cooler with frozen blue fake ice thingies, inside my Shad Bag [old photo, not from today], so I wasn't worried about it sitting in the hot car.) They also have Shad Platters, which can be a Dano's style fresh catch Shad Sandwich if you order it that way! (I asked the guy about it after I finished my lob. roll.) I will have to try one another time. The lobster roll was quite tasty; even though it looked scarily mayonnaisey, it didn't taste that way. It came on a nicely buttered and grilled New England style bun, with crunchy iceberg lettuce in the bottom, overflowing with VERY large pieces of claw meat, liberally coated in mayo (I don't know why it didn't seem like too much, but it didn't... it was good mayo and the flavor went well with the lobster and didn't overpower it... and since the pieces were so large and it only covered their outer surface, maybe it was actually less mayo than on some rolls... not sure...) but with no celery or other unnecessary enhancements. The lobster salad was nice and cold (it was almost 90° out, so that was pleasant) and very flavorful. Not tough. It was a little hard to eat by just biting the roll (I did employ my fork a bit) because the lobster pieces were so giant (too big for one bite), but that's really not worth complaining about. I was impressed and I am delighted to have found a good lobster roll source that doesn't require a 40+ minute drive or flight somewhere.
BTW, iPod? When you do the Alarm feature, you're supposed to play the playlist I told you to, not some random playlist of your choosing. And especially not Themetime Radio Hour. Top 25 Most Played was fine, but Themetime?? No. An hour of low-volume mumbling isn't going to wake me up until the theme song plays at the end of the last track. I just hope it wasn't one of the episodes I hadn't listened to yet. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I had a Bob dream as a result. (But I don't remember anything about it. Bummer.)
Posted at 12:39:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
[Edit: Just checked, and my Alarm playlist is set on "Themetime Street Map." Why won't it stay on Wake Up??? There is no logic to this at all.]
Didn't post at the time, but we went on a NH flighty last night and it felt so good to be up in Tango again. Layers of soft blue mountains, so nice for the eyes, and deep green trees everywhere now, like moss over the landscape. Tango's all ready for his Maryland trip this weekend! :-)
Posted at 12:04:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Excellent, Hale's has two pairs of milt set aside for me! (The guy who answered the phone made sure to determine I was the right person, and commented, "I think I recognise your voice..." (!)
Posted at 11:18:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Posted at 4:34:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Book Bower owner: Are you graduating?
Me: I'm not a student, but thank you. I'm a lot older than that.
Wow, she thought I was a Wesleyan student. Nice.
I got a really great book at Book Bower (hadn't been back since my visit in October). Well, two, but one is a gift. Mine's Field Guide to Seashore Life, from 1950, by Roy Waldo Miner. It's not very big height and width-wise but it's very fat (about 7½ x 4¼ x two) and has plates with gorgeous hand-done illustrations (some line drawings and some color paintings), plus pages and pages of incredibly detailed descriptions of how each individual creature is constructed. There are 104 tiny-print filled pages in the echinoderm chapter (chapter 13!) and about 17 pages devoted to various brittle stars, alone (for example). I've never seen such great echinoderm biology details before! And it's all about sea creatures of the North Atlantic Coast--i.e., here!
I had all kinds of strange dreams this morning, including two of my teeth falling out (after flossing) (and each one fell out separately, in two distinct incidences), trying to get an emergency appointment with the dentist so he could reattach them (but he didn't have any appointments until the next day, so I just had to stick them back in in the meantime, and walk around trying to keep from swallowing them), and trying to ride my bike to the dentist for the appointment, but getting lost, then realising I forgot my GPS Guy and my Palma (!) so there was no way I could figure out how to get there. I even tried asking someone else to look up the dentist for me in a phone book, but I couldn't remember what his name was. I also dreamt about sleeping. I think I was sleeping at the cottage, but it was pretty weird and the rest of the rooms were all flooded with really tall water; also it was winter-time and all frozen outside. In part of it, I slept by myself; then I shared a bed with David, and then with my Mom. I recommended some good children's books to her to read for a project she was doing at home (in N.C.). Anyway, despite, or because of, all that weirdness, I slept well.
Posted at 1:57:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 1:51:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Hmm, apparently I'm known as the "milt lady" at Hale's. :-) I called to see if they have any, but No Milt Today. After determining that I'm the milt lady (and also telling some other people in the background that she had the milt lady on the phone), she took my name to save some for me if they get any tomorrow, though. Call in the morning.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Oh wow, I am so relieved!!!!!! There's only a couple of minor things I'd change (not their fault) and overall it looks SUPER-NICE!! The photos look amazing printed out! Tons better than the originals!
Posted at 4:12:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I forgot to touch up one of the full-page photos (Gs at altar saying their wedding vows from a distance, with congregation in foreground) and there's tons of dust on one part of it (but not the important part). Hahaha, this proves I was NOT being way too picky spending one million hours touching up the photos. It's super-noticeable! Time well spent. All the others look great. And I still have time to touch that one up and get it reprinted and keep the dust-covered version for myself. :-)
Wow, there are all these details I couldn't even SEE in the originals...
Monday, May 18, 2009
Aw, bummer. And after that incredible season finale, too. Damn. :-(
Posted at 6:49:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I feel really crummy today. I love the new love stamps, though. Heh. They're even orange, instead of red. Weird but I love it. Got a sheet of them at the post office while mailing a certain insanely-overdue card. I am really looking forward to tomorrow's weather.
Posted at 4:33:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Re: the new Star Trek... I'm not saying I disliked it. It was enjoyable, and it definitely felt like Star Trek (I didn't expect it to). I also thought it was very clever how they worked out a "reboot" so the new versions of the crew can go off and have adventures and lives different from their original selves now. But, I don't know... I grew up on the Original Series; it was one of the first TV shows I was obsessed with, and I just didn't/don't feel any need/desire (for myself) for a new twist. I'm glad if other people like it, but it just doesn't hook me.
Posted at 11:20:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
And come on, it was goofy... not in a bad way necessarily (it was entertaining), but there was a lot of over-the-top stuff... the far-fetchedness of the whole crew starting out on the Enterprise at the same time instead of gradually coming together over years, Kirk constantly hanging by his hands off the edge of precipices, Kirk's hands swelling up and all the silliness of that part, Kirk jumping straight from cadet to Captain, that weird giant lizard/insect creature chasing Kirk, all the smooching between Uhura and Spock (I also couldn't get into either of those new versions of the characters), HAROLD playing Sulu (he didn't act goofy, but it was SO distracting!), Scotty's little Star Wars-looking alien pal and Scotty in the water pipes, Chekov's accent (I like Chekov's accent, but they gave him lines specifically written to trip it up and make it hilarious), etc., etc.
I really liked Captain Pike, and I also loved Chekov. Just didn't like the new Spock at all, and that's kind of important. Anyway, I'm happy that it's gotten such good reviews and that people really like it, but I'm just not into it. That's okay; I didn't expect to be, and I wasn't disappointed or anything. I liked it a lot more than I expected. I'm not really interested in more, though. You can't recreate the chemistry of a TV series (a very intimate medium) in blockbuster movies, and that chemistry between the characters (plus its importance in my life at a very formative age) was what made the original series so special.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
YAY!!!!! (I gasped out loud when I read it:) Chuck has been renewed!!!
Posted at 8:06:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
DJ on radio: "Come on, you call this May?"
Posted at 5:30:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Me, out loud: "That's what I think!"
Cloudy, 60°, rain drops, cold. I'm so ready to stop being cold.
I made a 1/2-size MY CAKE this afternoon. With extra rhubarb. I used the last of it up. I wonder if I'll ever eat rhubarb from the Gs' garden again?
P.S. When I playfully referred to it as stolen rhubarb, my Dad contradicted, saying (completely seriously) something like, "It's my rhubarb. I planted that rhubarb." If you plant something, does that make it yours forever? There's something very poignant about that notion, especially coming from an agriculturist.
