Saturday, August 14, 2010
I got selected to be an Arbitron person! (It's like the Nielsens, but for radio.) Me, to Dean: "You know why I'm gonna do it? Because I like my radio station, I like surveys, and they bribed me!" (They included a $1 bill in the envelope.) :) Just got back from Block Island, and I'm tiiiiired. I've been tired for the past couple days because I slept really badly the last two nights. I hope I get my 40 winks tonight. (I figured out that 1 wink = 12 minutes.)
Posted at 11:02:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I got a great Hair Compliment at Harry's tonight. The waitress came out to deliver our food and was calling, "Laura? Laura?" while standing next to our table in a huge daze even though I was saying "Yes!" Finally the guy at the next table (who was a lot louder than I am) pointed her to me. After she handed me the food, she said, still staring dazedly, "I love your hair--it's so beautiful!" !!! Now, I'm not sure if the daze was actually caused by my hair, or if she was just overworked (Harry's was really busy), but if so, yikes! Either way it was a really nice compliment and I thanked her with a delighted smile.
Today was probably the busiest day of the summer on Block Island (nice weather, not too hot, not quite back to school time) but Vail Beach was quiet and so were the roads to get there. (The line for the ferry, which we could see from Harry's hill, was HUGE, though.) We went to Vail since it was non-hot and non-windy and we both thought we Really Should go somewhere other than Pots & Kettles all the time. Vail was perfect, although I wrecked my earphones by accidentally soaking one of the ears in saltwater while taking some head pics. Heh. But that's okay because it was pretty long in the tooth anyway, and I have a kanban. When I used it afterward there was no singing coming out of it and instead it just sounded like how my Beag door sounds when it's rattling because I'm playing something with too much bass. Ha. Dean also DROPPED a certain beloved item of mine on the rocks (I was really far away, waiting up on the huge rock we decided to climb up on out in the ocean, so I couldn't see very well and feel horrified or anything) and got it all scratched up, but he's going to get me a new one so I can still have pride in it and use the old one as a beater. ♥ It was a really nice visit and I even feeted a little on the rocks with Dean since I was sleepy. I took a picture of the painted rock at the top of the Snake before we went down it, and another one after we came up, and it was a totally different color each time! Someone had re-painted it while we were down at the beach.
Photos, and lots of them (it was a beautiful day): one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen seventeen.
[Edit: I forgot the Cat Stats! Here they are: Total Distance - 9.55 miles; Average Speed - 8.6 mph; Maximim Speed - 27.3 mph; Total Time - 1:06'39.]
Friday, August 13, 2010
I'm at Ashlawn Farm farmers' market in Old Lyme! There are fewer vendors than I expected, but it's an absolutely beautiful day and beautiful setting. Got Beltane's Vespers aged ripened raw milk goat cheese, roving-encased handmade goat soaps, and a lobster tail from a farmer of the sea! I sampled all the Beltane cheeses, and Vesper was my fav. It's sort of like Humboldt Fog, and the taste keeps changing on your tongue! No band. They need a band. It was too quiet. I stopped at The Bowerbird on the way to kill time (because I had to go to the North End market in Middletown first, but the Lyme market doesn't open until 3), and was surprised to find out that the market is quite close to Bowerbird. Maybe 5 minutes away.
Posted at 04:09:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
The field was sparsely dotted with vendors (I didn't count, but maybe 10?), but the Beltane goat soap/cheese guy said there are more on Saturday and a few were on vacation or something today. (He tortured me with his descriptions of the chocolate vendor who was away.) I had a giant chat with him and his wife since there weren't very many customers. He was going on and on about how the BEST market is the one in Coventry. It does sound pretty amazing, but it's on Sunday, so I'd have to get Dean to go! Rose's was there of course (groan! they are everywhere), and the Old Lyme Ice Cream Shoppe (my mom's fav) also had a stand there, but I didn't get any since I was already full from my O'Rourke's scone from the Middletown market (and they didn't have strawberry).
The Middletown Market wasn't as great as usual since I had to go late to coordinate with Lyme, and also just because I was really tired. I missed the band, and the Yummy Peppers guy didn't have any Yummy Peppers left! (He gave me a handful of free lima beans still in their pods, though, so I can try them and see if fresh limas are yucky like frozen limas.) I just got a few tomatoes, some berries for Dean, and a scone from O'Rourke's. The item made using the new cherry-pitter was cherry preserves, so I didn't get that. I want a cherry scone or scuffin! I got a single Bohemian at Klekolo to try to wake up, but it didn't really work. I also tried some Ashlawn coffee, since they roast their own and have a little coffeeshop, but I got decaf there. I'd rather be groggy than get caffeine shakes, and one cup is my limit.
!!! I was just looking at my Mido's guarantee booklet, and it says, "Running of a mechanical watch may vary according to the wearer's temperament and climatic conditions. Therefore it is likely that it has to be set after about one month." Hahaha, how about after about two days? I can't believe it actually says the watch is affected by my temperament! The whole hummingbird thing is true, then. I love my watch, but that's kind of crazy. (And I'm not sure what my computer's excuse is. I don't wear that 23.5 hours a day.)
Posted at ?:??:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 12:06:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Yay! The weather looks perfect for Ashlawn Farmers' Market tomorrow! (After the good 'ol North End market in Middletown, of course. I hear O'Rourke's is going to have a cherry something, to use their new cherry pitter on!)
Thursday, August 12, 2010
I made Potatoes & Tomatoes with the leftover heirloom scraps (the ones that hadn't started to go wonky) and it was sooooo pretty. I massively should have taken a picture, but I didn't. It had the best color combinations: pinkyred fingerlings, yellowy-orange heirlooms, pale green avocado, mauve shell beans, all tied together with pale gold olive oil and sea salt and just a bit of cracked black pepper. I think my eyes got even more pleasure from it than my mouth did. Also, I had some smoked sea salt lying around and tried sprinkling it on my ear of Suder corn (today's Corn Thursday) and it was amazing. Dean tried it too and then we both did it to the rest of our ears! It gives the corn a campfire taste. YUM!!!
Posted at 7:29:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I was in a super-happy mood again today. It's Thursday! Listened to the LibriVox recording of "Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" while Thursday-ing and it was so good! Then when I was all finished all the Thurs-ing, I went out to Suder's and got the corn, and stopped at Rocky SBUX on the way back. (It's on the way back even though it's farther away than Suder's is, because if you are driving on the road toward Suder's and you keep going the same direction instead of turning around after Suder's, you eventually end up on the SBUX road, and then you can come back via the highway. That makes total sense, doesn't it?) The barista knew my drink (I have no idea how, since I almost NEVER go there anymore) and it was incredibly good today! It was just so good. Delicious fine-textured foam, just the right amount of contrasting bite to the espresso, just, I don't know, all the flavors playing off each other in very mouth-delighting ways. And, there was a young woman at one of the tables outside snuggling a kitty-cat in her lap! It looked so soft and warm and purry and I really really really wanted to touch it (even though I'm allergic to cats). It just made me happy to see that cat. [Edit: Maybe I was thinking about this picture I looked at last night. Okay, probably not, but I like it, even though poor Matilda looks like I have her in a headlock, and I must've been making myself so sick sitting zero inches away from her like that.]
Aaagh, my computer time is wrong again, even though I just synched it last night! It's keeps getting 10 minutes fast. Why??
Posted at 12:17:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I was just thinking a little more about ALB, and something else Wendy wrote on her blog today made me realize something. People that like my blog probably like it because of its exuberance and positivity--and that is all totally real and honest. Just because I choose to have a positive outlook and pretty much only write about things that I'm getting joy and pleasure out of (which is lots and lots of little things, because that's the way I am now), that doesn't mean it's shallow and silly. Or, if it is shallow and silly, it's shallow and silly in an overall beneficial way, both to me and to my readers. :-) [Note: I'm not implying anyone called me shallow and silly, other than myself!] I can appreciate how happy I am now and all the wonderful obsessions my life allows me to have because I wasn't always this happy and didn't always have this lifestyle. I know I am incredibly lucky, but it doesn't just happen by chance; you have to make decisions that lead to where you want to be and you have to take joy in where you are and focus on what you love about your life. I am in awe of blogs that share gritty personal details and probing psychological introspection--I love reading them and am so glad they are out there. But I can't be like that. If not being "deep" is a character flaw, it's one I'm willing to accept because of the overall benefit.
Back in February (yes, I paged all the way back, because I really really wanted to find it), June posed a question on Facebook: "Semiotics assignment: name 3 symbols of your identity. Whatcha think?" My answer was: "Okay, I should probably think about this longer, but, for me: a sea urchin, a sun, and an ice crystal."
I went on to explain in the comments, "A sun is because people perceive me as radiating a warm, happiness-inducing kind of aura (not sure how to describe it... not friendliness, but just maybe a contagious sense of well-being kind of thing? not sure, really... but I do have a sort of strange charisma in that way, which people really seem to pick up on) and the ice crystal is because I'm also cold and crystalline (brittle, sharp, detailed, distant, very reticent) at the same time.
The Sea Urchin (as described by the brilliant Pablo Neruda):
The sea urchin is the sun of the sea,
centrifugal and orange,
full of quills like flames,
made of eggs and iodine.
The sea urchin is like the world:
round, fragile, hidden;
wet, secret, and hostile,
the sea urchin is like love.
And it's a spiny echinoderm, just like me. :)"
Okay, that's enough introspection for the next 6 months.
I am so confused about what time it is lately. My beloved Mido watch is running faster than ever (it's an automatic, and seems to attuned to my hummingbirdiness instead of real time) and even my computer clock keeps going wrong. This is the fourth time in the past month or so that I've noticed my Palm and computer time don't match. How disconcerting is that? Is it 3:55 now (Palm), 4:02 (Mido), or 4:05 (computer)? No idea. Actually I'm pretty sure I trust the Palm. I think. :-/
Posted at 4:01:00 AM???? by Laura W. Petix.
I was just reading my cousin Wendy's most recent blog entry. I don't know if I've ever linked to her blog here; if I haven't, it's because I love it and it's personal to me, and I usually keep actual personal things close to my heart and don't write about them on ALB. I never really knew Wendy very well until we stared reading each other's blogs when I was in Hawaii in 2008. I'm the youngest of 13 Whaples cousins and Wendy is one of the oldest, so we never interacted much. To get an idea of our age difference, here's a picture of the whole family when I was a few months short of two years old. I'm the baby in my cousin Randal's lap, and Wendy is the beautiful, tall, confident looking young woman in the center of the same row, right in front of our grandmother. Of the people in this photo, four are now dead: my uncle Donald (Wendy's dad), both of our grandparents, and Randal. I always thought Wendy was sort of scary and that our personalities were totally the opposite; she was boisterous, while I was quiet and shy. When I started to read her blog, I discovered that although she may be that way on the surface, she's an incredibly insightful, sensitive, creative person who's actually a lot like me in many ways. We e-mailed each other and shared family memories and have sent each other little gifts every once in a while. (The very best was the poem she wrote me for my birthday last year.)
Posted at 3:26:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Anyway, I was just reading her latest blog post, and she talked about how hard blogging is and how much she loves ALB, commenting, "Her unique perspective on the world is sweetly child like and worldly all jumbled together. I want to write my blog like her, but I don't." The thing is, I love her blog because it's all the things mine isn't. Provocative. Introspective. Honest. I am so reticent on ALB... I almost never write about anything truly personal or intimate, and I shy away from talking about things I do with my family or how I feel about them. I almost always write about happy, fun, surface-level things but never look inside and analyse my psyche like she does.
It is really hard to keep up with a blog. I have so many events that I wish I wrote more in-depth entries about, or wish I wrote about while it was fresher in my mind, or deeply regret that I never wrote about at all. I barely touched upon some of the most important things... like my dad's 70th birthday party, my parents' anniversary party, my sister Diane's 50th birthday... how wonderful it was spending time with Hunter at my parents' in 2007... things I really really want to remember and hold on to, but it's just so hard for me to write about things like that, for some reason, even though they were wonderful. Instead I withdraw and end up writing about fruit and bag-making and seaweed, because I don't have to think as much, or look inside as much, or feel as much, or share as much, to do that. Wendy isn't afraid to write about deeply personal things on her blog (or maybe she is afraid, but she does it anyway). I love the "behind the scenes of Wendy's brain" perspective. Some of her posts about her father have even made me cry. Her family has criticized her for sharing too much that's personal, and I can see why, but I'm grateful that she does it anyway. I never would have gotten to know her and understand her (and understand myself better) otherwise. I think her blog is a treasure. Anti-Linear Brain will never be like Wendy's blog--I'm too goofy, too shallow?, too self-censoring, too reserved for that, even if it means holding my thoughts and feelings so close to my heart that I can't even read them myself--but I'm so glad hers is.
P.S. Things I WILL WRITE ABOUT ASAP: my anniversary visit to Block Island with Dean and my trip to New York with Antonina. Things I will finish writing about (poorly, because I only have notes and my dreadful memory to go on) before the end of the year: our Chicago and Bahamas Tango Adventure trips last year.
Okay, giant tomato face-off (conducted last night at dinner) report!
Posted at 12:34:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
The contestants: Purple Cherokee, Stripey, Field Tomato; Brandywine, Old German, Japanese Black Trifle, Prudens Purple; Green Moldovan, Paul Robeson, and Green Zebra. (Sorry it's a little fuzzy/grainy; lighting was tough.)
Here are the innards. We each consumed one slice of each tomato, compared the flavors, and awarded stars. Dean sliced and I took notes.
Paul Robeson: Fore Street-y! Sweet, but not overly sweet, no bitterness but some tomato tang. Intense flavor. *****
Brandywine: Much less sweet; more sophisticated/adult taste. Tomatoey. *****
Old German: Mild, doesn't taste like an orange (low-acid) tomato. (A good thing; they have a weird taste. The Old German is yellow, not orange.) *** 1/2 (I gave it 4 stars; Dean gave it 3.)
Japanese Black Trifle: A little stronger than Old German. Seedy. *** 1/2 (I gave it 4 stars; Dean gave it 3. I commented that its innards ranked the highest in beauty!)
Prudens Purple: Sweet and tomatoey. Similar to Robeson. *****
Green Zebra: More bitter, complex. ** 1/2 (I gave it 3 stars and Dean gave it 2.)
Purple Cherokee: Sort of eh. Least favorite so far. **
Stripey: Kind of mild but interesting; sort of a different flavor. ***
Field Tomato: Tastes less sweet and intense than the heirlooms, but classic. More of a bite. ** (My mind was BLOWN by how poorly the good old field tomato stood up to the heirlooms! I'd thought field tomatoes from Cold Spring Brook Farm were the greatest!)
Green Moldovan: Yuck. *
(BTW, for scale... a grocery store tomato = ZERO stars. Oh, and in case you didn't know, never never NEVER put your tomatoes in the refrigerator. It kills the flavor.)
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I heard the UPS truck outside so I ran down to see if our mokes had been delivered, and there was a box on the doorstep, but it's not the mokes! It's from January and it's addressed to Laura Petix, The Lucard Club! ♥
Posted at 3:00:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I was really saaaaaaad yesterday, but in a good way. I'm not even sure "sad" is the right word, but I guess it is. David can't come to the Lake this year, and thinking about his e-mail was making me all emotional. (Plus I was listening to totally triggery music!) I love that I feel such a deep connection to him. It's painful but wonderful at the same time. Maybe I'm weird, but since I'm not usually a very emotional person, I LOVE feeling really strong brain-hurting emotions every once in a while. Like, you know, once a year or so. I love being able to FEEL. The music I was listening to was just making me cry and cry and cry (while driving, even!), it was so great! "Emotion in Motion" by Ric Ocasek = ♥! Okay, I'm a little strange, I know.
Posted at 2:34:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Anyway, I'm feeling nice and happy and peaceful today. Lots to post about from yesterday, but it had to wait because Dean and I watched the first episode of the new BBC modernized Sherlock Holmes series, and you know what that leads to. And we also did our giant heirloom tomato tasting! I took lots of pics; I hope they came out okay. Didn't look at them yet. It was a very successful tasting session and neither of us OD'd on tomatoes even though we tried TEN different ones. Looking at the gigantic spread of sliced raw ripe tomatoes, I remarked to Dean, "Wow this would be the ultimate Murry-torture for Dennis!" (He didn't get it, so I had to explain.)
But before all that, I went to Draghi Farm (via the Arrigoni Bridge!). Cheerfuled up while talking to the Draghi Farm lady. Bought three heirloom tomatoes: Purple Cherokee, Stripey, and a little Brandywine. She was asking me what heirlooms taste like, because she'd never tried them (!!?). Sat in the car drinking my Draghi coffee and eating a Draghi cranberry-orange muffin and it was SO GOOD. Afterwards I decided to drive down a back road I'd never been on before--the one that leads to the ferry crossing in Glastonbury. It was beautiful, with lots of rustic New Englandy-looking farms. I pulled over at one of them (Killam & Bassette Farmstead) that had a tiny building you can go in and help yourself to stuff and pay on the honor system. It smelled soooooooo good in there. Fresh corn in a confined space. Swoooooooon. (Photos: one, two, three, four.)
Then I drove the rest of the way to the ferry landing. It was so different than the Rocky Hill side! Very green and shady and pretty. There's no big parking lot for boat trailers--just a little park. I could see Hale's Shad in the distance on the other side. There was one car there lined up for the ferry, so I went up to the window asked them what to do, since I'd never taken the ferry before. I know I went on it once when I was little and we were visiting CT from Maryland (since there's a picture), but I was only four and don't remember it at all. The ladies in the car were super-nice and seemed to think I was really cute being all excited and a little nervous about the ferry. I had my orange camera with me and was taking some pictures of the sign (and this sign too), but got back in my car when they suggested I should line up to wait since the ferry only fits three cars. When the ferry started coming, one of the ladies came up to my window and asked, "Don't you want to take a picture of the ferry??" and urged me to run over to get one as it
approached, and even offered to take one of me with the ferry in the background!
The ferrymen were really nice too, and kind of wacky. We all got out of our cars while the ferry crossed over, and the ladies joked around with the ferryman on the barge (the other guy drove a towboat that hooked up to the barge's side). They went on it all the time and seemed to know each other well. I took more pictures, of course, and they said I should pose for one with the ferryman! It was so fun and I was smiling my head off. :-) I asked the ferryman if people came over from Glastonbury in the spring to buy shad at Hale's, and he said they did all the time. The ladies had never had shad before, and I said, "Oh, you have to!" They also told me about this little boutique on the Rocky Hill side that I had never been to before, even though I've driven past it many times when going to Hale's. It's in the old railroad station. Based on the name, I'd assumed it would just have tacky frilly overpriced ladies' knickknacks, but I checked it out, and it was actually a really cool shop and NOT expensive! I ran into the ladies again there and they were really friendly. I bought some interesting old buttons, a small bag (only $12 and very me-ish looking, with polkadots!) and a little present for David. :-) The whole thing was so fun and I didn't feel sad anymore! I should take the ferry more often when going to Draghi; it's a great shortcut to South Glastonbury.
(Ha! I added the Rocky Hill - Glastonbury Ferry as a "like" on Facebook, and FB sorted it under "activities" again! True, I guess it is an activity, kind of like how clafoutis is an activity. Oh yeah, speaking of which, I made my first ever afternoon clafoutis today! Blueberry. Oh, and the Rocky Hill - Glastonbury Ferry is believed to be the oldest continuously operated ferry in the United States. It started in 1655!)
Waaaait. I just realized that the North End Farmers' Market actually closes at 2, not 1. So I was actually there an hour and a half before closing last week, not cutting it super-close. Heh.
Posted at 12:04:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Monday, August 09, 2010
The bag was great at the market. (The best part was having my Piece of Paper!) Even with the flat bottom thingy in it, it stayed folded pretty flat if I rested the bottom thingy on its edge until I had stuff to put in the bag. Too bad I only had two tomatoes to put in the bag, since that farmers' market is so pathetic! They are super-cool looking heirlooms with great names, though, so it was still worth going. The Windham Gardens had Brandywines, Cherokee Purple, Japanese Black Trifle, Mr. Stripey (!), and Old German. I bought an Old German and a Japanese Black Trifle [edit: here they are posing with a good ol' regular "field tomato" from Suder's... the wrinkly yellow one is an Old German, and the green & burgundy is the Japanese Black Trifle]. Maybe I should have gotten more, but most of the others were huge, and I didn't know how we'd eat them all. I guess if I'm just doing a heirloom comparison contest we don't really need to eat the entire thing. Heh. Oh, and the felted wool crafter wasn't there; instead there was a hideous tie-died stuff stand. Alas.
Posted at 5:20:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Wow! I ironed my farmers' market bag, and now it folds down nice and flat. I wonder if the creases will stay? I can also steal a rectangular plastic thing from the bottom of one of my KTA bags to give the bottom more structure, but that would make it more awkward to have on my shoulder when it's empty, so I'm not sure if I will or not. I really like those in my grocery store bags, but I don't carry them on my shoulder until they're full; until then, they just sit in the cart. I'm going to use the bag today at the farmers' market in front of Whole Foods and see how it goes.
Posted at 2:03:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Today seemed so dark and overcast and stuffy; I couldn't seem to fully wake up, but it made me crazy thinking about wasting a weekend hanging around inside when the evil spectre of autumn is already nipping at my heels. So I decided to take my bike out for a ride! Dean blew up the tires for me, and suggested I ride on the bike path past Aetna, so I did. It was really easy to get there: just go straight at the end of Main Street and keep going until you get to a sign that says, "Welcome to the Westlake Area Pedestrian Bikeway. No Winter Maintenance." Then there's a wide sidewalk-like thingy on the left side of the road, and that's the path.
Posted at 1:44:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Things I thought while riding on it: UNFORTUNATELY, it's warmer out than I thought. FORTUNATELY, it's also breezy. UNFORTUNATELY, this is awfully hilly for a bike path!!! FORTUNATELY, my non-folding bike has 24 gears! UNFORTUNATELY, this bike path is pretty boring. FORTUNATELY, I have it all to myself! (Yeah, my brain was in Remy Charlip mode for some reason.) I pretty much keep my hound/folding bike in 7th gear all the time, but I actually used the gears on my big bike, and although the hills seemed really fast on the way down and I was expecting torture on the way back, it wasn't bad at all. I didn't go on the whole thing because it seemed kind of zzzz (mostly just mini-Aetna kind of places), but on the way back home I stopped at the cemetery and wandered around a whole bunch. I made a Facebook Album about it, and I'm going to link to it here because it's way too much work to recreate on ALB (and the photos aren't really personal ones, so if Facebook goes away someday and they disappear, it'll be okay). Anyway, here's the album; I hope this works. You should be able to click on the first photo and read the description underneath, then proceed along (even if you're not a Facebook member).
It was pretty inspiring. Looking at all those old gravestones with the names and dates and family relationships and things written on them almost made me want to start writing again. A cemetery is a great place to wander around if you ever need inspiration for names. So many cool old ones. I really want to go back and make a list of my favorite names (the ones I took pictures of didn't necessarily have the good names). It was cool seeing Civil War gravestones, and Revolutionary War, too! And fascinating textures on the old stones, especially with the lichen. My all-time favorite are those ones with the heads, though. I love how their wings emerge right from the heads. No necks or shoulders. Tonight my sister posted some self-portraits that children in her Early Learning Center did, and they are the same way, except theirs have straight stick arms (with stick hands on the ends!) that emerge from a body directly below the head (but again, no neck or shoulders). I'm not familiar with how young kids draw, and thought it was such a cool style, so I got inspired to try my own version. It's sort of a combination of the little artists' style + the gravestone heads style. I really like it.
I need to go to Trader Joe's tomorrow, and I want to go to the farmers' market near Whole Foods again, even though it was pretty boring last time. I think the secret reason I want to go is that I'm feeling a little autumnal (because things felt disturbingly crisp a couple evenings this past week...) and I want to look at that upcycled wool crafter's stand. I hope it's there.
Oh yes also: we killed the fatted Brandywine tomato today, and it was so good. Thumbs up on Brandywines.
