Saturday, July 17, 2010
Wow. Amazing lightning shows from Mass and Providence as we were nearing Hartford, and great fireworks extravaganza (Tower's term) from Newington, all three at once.
Posted at 10:15:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Best in-air 'works ever, miniature and silent from the air, but exquisite and straight ahead, with blinding finale. The lightning was even better--huge, lighting up whole clouds, red and golden.
Cat Stats: distance - 8.89 miles; average speed - 9.2 mph; max speed - 26.8 mph; total time: 0:57'31.
Posted at 8:55:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 6:58:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Wandering the pots & the kettles for the past two hours. Low tide today. So so so so much seaweed. ♥ And 1 starfish. I love it here so much.
[Edit: This specimen of my favorite seaweed, codium fragile, looked so fresh and green, it was practically glowing.
So many things were revealed this week that were underwater last. I waded out into the ocean around huge boulders that are normally way out there, inaccessible, and got to see what was on the other side. I climbed and sogged and slipped and looked in the green rocky tidepools. I stood still and watched the waves, brown and thick as soup with seaweed, throwing their contents onto the shore and returning to drag them back out again, over and over and over. I was pretty happy. Basically, I wished it could never end.
This, this, and more of this. Endlessly.
I stole this rock. What do you think the orange part is made of?
My ONE sea star, growing back its fifth arm. This is where I found the sea star. Somewhere in there.
We stayed even later, this time. And I listened to my new Beach Walk playlist for my whole walk, over and over. The tracks are: 1) Sea Pictures: Where Corals Lie (Clara Butt, from Edward Elgar's Sea Pictures), 2) West Across the Ocean Sea (Vangelis), 3) Binary Sunset (Evil Genius Orchestra), 4) Mercedes Lullaby (from Pan's Labyrinth), 5) Bach's Cantata BWV 156: Arioso (the song Robert practiced and practiced on baritone because why couldn't he be the best at everything???), 6) Time to Say Goodbye, Solo Version (which I have because Steady Freddie was listening to it in his car in John From Cincinnati), 7) Up the Spout (Mateo Messina), 8) Sea of Love (Cat Power's cover version), 9) I'm Sticking With You (The Velvet Underground), and 10) Sleep (Kimya Dawson). It's really fun to whistle along to Cantata BWV 156: Arioso!
The new restaurant, MacPhail's (an import from Martha's Vineyard), was open this week (but it closes at eight, so they shut down shortly after we placed our order), and I got to try their self-proclaimed "Block Island's Best Lobster Roll." And it actually was: "We have a new winner! MacPhail's 'Block Island's Best Lobster Roll' is gooooood. Strange puffy big roll, N.E. style edges but buttered & grilled on the flat TOP instead of the sides. Very juicy, delicious lobster with dill on it (dill is so good!) and an amazing buttery flavor. Extra-good because it's different. No lettuce but it's not soggy." I kept whimpering while eating it because I wanted it to be attainable--for it to not be fleeting like Block Island, like summer. Afterwards, I told Dean it was on my Top Four Best Lobster Rolls list, along with Kimball Farm's, the Maine Diner's, and Harry's.]
Friday, July 17, 2010
Wow!!! The #7 stitch with the B foot is amazing! It's almost like having a serger, minus the cutty-off part.
Posted at 10:16:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
We went to O'Rourke's and Dean liked it! They had a lobster roll on the specials menu, so of course I had to get it. Check out that perfectly buttered and grilled New England style split top bun! It was nice and simple, and delicious. Just the crucial N.E. bun, a lettuce liner (for sog prevention), and nice tasty buttered claw and tail meat. It was hot lobster, Connecticut style. A little on the small side, but other than that it was perfect! O'Rourke's also has the best sweet potato fries (they are yummier than ION's!), and our raspberry cheesecake dessert was amazing. The only thing we didn't like was the gazpacho (a choice of soups came with the entrees, and Dean picked the the gaz since the only other veggie choice was chilled blueberry soup, which I picked). It was kind of like eating a bowl of salsa. But the soups were just a small bonus, so that was really neither here nor there. Mine was pretty good--sort like a smoothie that you eat with a spoon, with big blueberries floating in it. A little weird, but I like that O'Rourke's experiments. Dean really liked his vegetarian entree, which was some sort of eggplant thing. I didn't really pay attention since I was too busy wolfing down my lobster roll! Now I don't have to feel guilty about never buying anything from O'Rourke's table at the farmers' market, either. ;-)
Posted at 8:07:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 3:25:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I love going to the North End Farmers' Market!!! Good farmers' markets are so happy-making. This week, I got three different kinds of tomatoes: Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, Brandywines, and Pomidors. (I hope the spelling of Pomidor is right... that's how the farm lady told me it was spelled!) The tiny orange ones are super-sweet Sun Golds, the old-fashioned looking ones are heirloom Brandywines, and the glossy red ones are Pomidor. The little guys were from Beckett Farm in So. Glastonbury and the two others were from George Hall's Ogre Farm (that's what the sign said!) in Simsbury. I'm not sure, but the ones I had last week that were insanely sweet may have been the Brandywines. I'm fairly certain they were from the same seller.
I also got more cute little UFO-looking pattypan squash (but different colors this time), blueberries from Chaplin (two pints! with red string hairnets that the seller put on them when I bought them!), raspberries and peaches from Rose's, and a bar of rosemary eucalyptus mint homemade soap from the soaper, Whey Better Farm in Litchfield. I looked at all her soaps (she had a zillion different kinds!) before I settled on that one. (It doesn't look as ultra-moisturizing as my Connecticut Soap & Candles soap, though! ♥) She told me she is there every other week. I kind of like how the vendors change slightly from week to week; it keeps it interesting. This week's band was really boring compared to last week's, though. It was a jazz trio. They were fine, but nowhere near as good as the The Band-ish band. There was also a baked goods table this week which wasn't there last week, and I bought a good, which I brought to Klekolo World Coffee to eat inside with an iced single bohemian. It was hot!
I love going to the market Friday mornings! Wait, I already said that.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Checking out the Newington farmers' market. There are only TWO vendors!!! Uh... I think I'll cross this one off my list. At least I didn't have to drive that far to get here. :-)
Posted at 3:21:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
[Edit: It was so pathetic that I just left. It was neat to see a different part of town, though
(near the Main Street part of Newington) and to better understand how the towns fit together, since I drove there from the Berlin Turnpike and then drove to the Westfarms Mall area afterwards. There was one other couple at the farmers' market and they told me it was like that last time they went, too.]
I had a dream that I saw a sign in the window advertizing Alphonso mangoes at a Whole Foods when I was visiting my family for Thanksgiving. Diane was zipping into the store to pick up some last-minute item while the Gs and I waited, but I chased in after her to look for the Alphonsos, then instead got sidetracked by the huge card section that had all these great bizarre cards (nothing like at a real Whole Foods... more like the former Persimmon or some cool New York card store) including one with a weird rhubarb-eating person ( = me) that I massively wanted. January was in the store too, in the card/silly stuff area, but she wanted me to notice a stretchy guy toy that was funny as an extremely obscure reference to an LC-related show, but I didn't get it. Also, Robert was in the dream too (standing with a lineup of other family members), and I gave him a big hug. I never did find the Alphonso mangoes.
Posted at 11:40:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
My This from "Paint This!" arrived! I'm pleased with how it turned out. I broke my old center-of-table dish a few weeks before January suggested doing the ceramic painting outing, so I was hoping this experiment would turn out well enough to replace it with. It's the perfect size and looks pretty nice! I use it to put shared flatbread on, and stuff like that, as well as just as a centerpiece. It even kind of vaguely goes with our Robert Delaunay print in the tea room! (And the ones in the living room, which you can also see simultaneously with the dish.) That was not intentional.
Posted at 9:12:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 6:20:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
We snuck out for an IFR Jaff but Dean forgot his wallet and didn't put money in his new belt yet! Saved by $27 in quarters (plus 2 dollar coins as a tip) in the Lex skim money stash. :-D Also, Harvey had the ice cream path re-painted! (But we didn't have enough $ for ice cream. The food was all extra good, though!) We had a giant Harvey chat after we walked back from Kimball. I asked him about the wooden ice cream path signs they used to have in the grass, and he said people always steal/vandalize them during the fireworks festival, so they took them up.
[Edit: Also, on the flight home I was looking at my nails wondering about the white marks on my left ring finger nail. All the sudden it came to me: that's the finger that I crashed into Tango's wing with when we flew to RDU for Memorial Day weekend. My finger was all injured right below the nail. The nail must extend that far down, and the injured spot has been slowly working its way up for the past month and a half. That's pretty cool. I wonder why fingernail injuries turn white?
The sky looked pretty amazing flying home. I took a bunch of cool pictures: one, two (notice the little spectrummy spot in these two), and three (amazing texture in the clouds right below us). Then as we were about to land, Hartford looked really weird and hazy, and I got these two super-cool photos: one and two. !!!
]
Whoa! I was just looking at that Farmers' Markets in Connecticut site I linked to previously, and there are a whole bunch of farmers' markets near me that I didn't know about!
Posted at 2:11:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Ones I should check out:
Berlin (of course) - but it's on Saturday morning, 9:00-1:00 - Corner of Massirio Dr and Farmington Ave
Middletown South Green - Tuesday and Thursday 8:00-1:00 - Corner of Old Church St and Main St
Middletown North End - Friday 10:00-2:00 - in front of It's Only Natural Market on Main St. (this is the one I went to)
New Britain (maybe...) - Monday: 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM - St. Ann's Church, 109 North Street
Portland Tri Town Foods - Saturday: 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM - Store Parking Lot, 316 Marlborough St
Newington - Thursday: 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM - Rear of Market Square, 100 Market Square
Wethersfield - Thursday: 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM - Keeney Memorial Center, 200 Main St
West Hartford @ Whole Foods - Monday: 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM - Whole Foods Parking Lot, 50 Raymond Rd
West Hartford @ LaSalle Road - Tuesday: 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM & Thursday: 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM - Public Parking Lot at corner of Arapahoe Rd. and LaSalle Rd
!!!! I need this all made into a calendar or something! [Edit: I did make one!]
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
I made another clafoutis! Half pint of Beckett blueberries, one apricot, 1/2 milk & 1/2 vanilla soy milk, an extra egg white, and a mix of Greed and cinnamon-sugar on top. I am not too hungry (it's mostly for tomorrow) so I only ate a little, but it's v. good! I ♥ blueberry clafoutis.
Posted at 11:22:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Ha! I just "liked" clafoutis on Facebook, and it put it in my "activities" category. So my "activities" are: Scuba diving, Snorkeling, Free-diving, Tide Pooling, Bike riding, Sewing Without a Pattern, Appreciating Good Food, Trying Weird Foods, and Clafoutis. That's pretty true, actually. Clafoutis is more of an activity for me than an interest.
Mysterious Illness Killing Pufferfish in Hawaii! That's terrible. :-( :-( :-(
Posted at 8:07:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
The battery ran out on my Cat partway through our hounding on Sunday, and it stopped registering my mph (therefore, no Cat Stats report, for the first time ever), so I replaced the batteries today. I haaaaate the Cat Eye manual; it's so hard to follow! I wish they would just use words instead of all those confusing pictures. I think I managed to get the settings right, though. For future reference, the wheel size is 40-406 or 20 x 1.9 which equals 1490 mm (the number I'm supposed to input is 1490). I foolishly took out the old battery before writing down the settings, so I had to do everything from scratch. I put in 515 as the total accumulated mileage. I'm not sure exactly what it is, since I didn't check first (plus, it wasn't working for half the hounding on Block Island, anyway) but I think that's fairly close.
Posted at 8:00:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Rain! The Draghi lady said she just wanted to stand out in it. :-) She smiled when she saw my Cold Spring Brook Farm bag, and I told her it's my local farm in Berlin. I took the Arrigoni Bridge home! I got Rose's blueberries and local peaches at Berruti's, and Beckett blueberries and local nectarines at Draghi. I didn't even know there were local nectarines! I also got local cilantro at Berruti's and local broccoli and Farmer Butchie eggs at Draghi. I can't wait for the farmers' market... I need more of those good tomatoes!!! And Chaplin blueberries! Do you think I'm in danger of turning blue soon?
Posted at 5:45:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
[Edit: Mmm! The local nectarines have really good flavor.]
Monday, July 12, 2010
I cut my finger (in multiple places!) on some corn at Suder's! I wrapped a paper towel around it (since it was bleeding everywhere), and then the cashier girl (Suder wasn't there) gave me a bandaid. :-) They didn't have any berries today, and when I asked her about it she said they were still picking but there weren't many left because of the hot weather. Oh no! I hope the berry season isn't super-short at all my other fav farms, too!
Posted at 6:18:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
It's been really hard to pick out what to buy for the past two weeks because decks are being re-stained here and we had to put away the grills! I hope they finish up soon. I grill at least part (if not all) of just about every meal in the summer. Today at Suder's they had Japanese eggplant and I almost bought them, but then I remembered that I wouldn't be able to grill them. Eeek! Good thing it's corn season now.
[Edit: P.S. I made dinner out of the pattypan squash and smaller tomatoes I got at the farmers' market on Friday. We just ate the tomatoes straight, raw, in wedges (with a little cottage cheese to go with them), because they were SO good! Didn't need salt to bring out the flavor, or anything. Dean even said they were "almost too sweet." WOW. They were really intense. Now, that's what a tomato is supposed to be like. Also, pattypan squash are cute and look like UFOs. That is all. Oh, also (I guess that wasn't all), when I was looking up ideas for how to cook the pattypan squash (since I couldn't grill them), I found out they are also called scallop squash! Weird and cute. (Although, I guess, actually, "pattypan" is an even weirder and cuter name!)]
Yikes--I really have been avoiding Starbucks. I ordered a "small dry cappuccino"! Also, Rocky is completely rearranged and I'm all confused!
Posted at 4:30:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
"Don't Worry Baby" on the radio, so rich and full. Singing along. It matches that seaweed.
Posted at 4:23:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Photos x 30!
Posted at 1:56:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Yesterday afternoon we flew to Block Island and rode our hounds to Mansion Beach. Our favorite section is where it starts to get rocky and the people disappear, except for the surfers. Unless it's taken (which is pretty rare), we always snag this spot next to these two large rocks. Dean brings his folding chair, but I like to go for a long walk to the far end of the beach and check out the area known as "Pots & Kettles." At low tide, you can find lots of sea stars in the pots and the kettles.
It was high tide yesterday, so all the pots and kettles were underwater. But that's part of what I love about walking on the far end of Mansion Beach--it's different every time. Instead of looking for sea stars, I looked at seaweed and rocks. This piece of kelp was washed up with its roots intact, still grasping some pebbles.
Bright green algae, also washed up with its roots intact.
Fucus--a brown alga also known as rockweed--along with some sea grass and part of a shell. I love the interesting positions the ocean leaves things lying in.
Looks like something (maybe a seagull?) had a good meal of this crab.
Looking at this is just so relaxing to me. Maybe chordaria? I'm not much of a seaweed expert.
This one was my favorite! It looks like a jellyfish! And even the bubbly-looking sea splashes on the sand add to the illusion.
A sandy pocket. You can see one of the Block Island ferries off in the distance.
I don't know what these things are called! They're weird.
Green and red algae, exhausted together.
Bright red algae! So pretty. I wish I knew the names of all the varieties...
Lots of layers in this rock. I wonder about all the creatures that were around when it was being formed.
My favorite kind of seaweed, codium fragile, in an embrace with some ceramium (I think).
This rock reminds me of a whale.
I was listening to the same song on my iPod for the entire walk, one million times in a row: Clara Butt singing "Where Corals Lie" from Edward Elgar's Sea Pictures.
This stripey rock looks like the head of a gentle plesiosaur who wants to be petted on the nose.
Black sand! There were some larger pockets, too. Black sand in New England is from a placer deposit, not a volcano. :-)
Almost the end of the line for my walk. I liked the feeling of motion in the bodies of these rocks.
The one to the right was thin and flat (it reminded me of an operculum, but it was far too large!), and I loved the built-in art on the smooth pale gray and white-streaked round one.
I knelt down and stuck my face in a little pool because I just HAD to get salty.
Parts of the bluffs are clay. When it's wet you can smear it on yourself or make things out of it; I love the cracky patterns when it dries.
Walking back. The part of the beach with the people (including Dean) on it is still hidden behind this part of the bluff.
Bizarro composite rock! Nature's own concrete?
Bluffs and ocean back the other direction again. It was pretty...
These delicate feathery patterns in the sand were the ocean's own design.
I loved the soft yellow and salmon colors in this small quartzy rock that I noticed after my return, when I was hanging out with Dean and reading the Block Island Summer Times.
We left around seven o'clock. The tide was starting to encroach on Dean's chair.
Our hounds were waiting for us on the bike rack, guarded by our snake locks. Everyone else had left!
Classic Rhode Island treat, after our ride back into town: a Del's frozen lemonade.
My dinner: Harry's Cafe's version of the classic New England lobster roll. Magnificently delicious! Since Dean ran over to Del's to get the drink, it was up to me to order, and I couldn't resist adding the lemon cheesecake. Mmmmm! Best cheesecake ever!!!!
