41!

kayaking2

There’s something pleasing both with leaving 40 behind and having an age that is a prime number. I’m in the depths of a writing deadline so I’ve been scarce since the scarcity of being gone all weekend. Now I’m in the procrastination phase of my writing deadline so I’ll make some notes here.

Hey, I turned 41! I had a really nice birthday weekend. Unlike last year which was a frenzy of friend-oriented activities and houseguests and cake and not much sleep, this year was all about getting out of town and taking a lot of naps. Jim and I went up north to stay at a little lodge on Seymour Lake. We figured while we were there we’d try to

– go to Canada for ketchup chips and ground cherries
– get a lot of rest
– go kayaking
– hit some of the towns that are still blank on my 251 Club list
– go muck around in nature

Which is pretty much what we did. We stayed in Morgan Vermont. Tried and failed to go to Lewis, Averys Gore and Warner’s Grant (got all the way to the one paved road in only to find gates there; I’ll have to go again when I’m prepped for hiking). Did a lot of driving and looking at things. Stepped over and drove over the Canadian border. Got a lot of sleep.

I’d show you a ton of photos, but I dropped my camera in the lake. Amusingly, my already-purchased-but-not-yet-delivered birthday present was a new camera. So, everything is fine. I mentioned over on librarian.net that I’ve got a slightly different job configuration for this school year but things are mostly the same. The same and good.

Also, towns that I still need to visit: Arlington, Benson, Cornwall, Dover,Franklin, Granby, Hubbardton, Jamaica, Lewis, Maidstone, Middletown Springs, Pawlet, Pownal, Readsboro, Rupert, Sandgate, Searsburg, Sheldon, Somerset, Stamford, Stannard, Stratton, Sudbury, Underhill, Wardsboro, Wells, West Haven, Weybridge, Whiting, Whitingham, Wilmington, Windham, Woodford

100% chance of rain

familycamp

So last weekend Jim and I got all set to do a fun “Hey let’s meet halfway between your house and mine and have an adventure!” day trip. Problem is that all the places that are public-transportationable from my house [Brattleboro, Amherst, Springfield] are awkward from his place, and all the places he can get to simply [Manchester, Concord NH, Portland Maine] are a bit of a schlep from my place. So we decided to meet in Concord NH with him taking the bus and me driving. I’ve sort of had it with driving lately, but this seemed like a good enough reason. We decided to go to Bear Brook State Park and spend the day walking around in the woods. Well, that was the plan anyhow.

The weather said 100% chance of rain for all daylight hours on Saturday. I can’t recall another time I’ve seen this. So, I had my bags of snacks and bug spray and sunscreen packed and swapped it all for two rain slickers and a portable Scrabble game. I had some trouble figuring out what else was going on since all the New Hampshire tourism stuff is by region and I have no idea if I was in the Lakes Region or the Merrimack Valley or what. We spent some time walking around lovely Concord NH, thinking about maybe going to a movie. We went to the public library. We nerded around in an antique mall and I found a bunch of old postcards of Randolph from the teens and twenties.

We did wind up stopping by the park when the rain slowed to a gentle misting and checked out the American Museum of Family Camping which is an adorable museum that talks about recreational camping in the US from early times to the present. There was a guy working there as a “work camper” — he leads tours and keeps the museum staffed and in exchange he gets to park at the camp for free all season and they pay his utilities — and I got to ask him all the questions I’ve wanted to ask someone who is really doing the “live in an RV” thing. How did he get his mail? How easy is it to get workcamp work? What state was he a resident of? Apparently there are three million people living in the US in RVs and other mobile home arrangements. It’s a big number. The museum also had a lot of different tow-behind trailers out front that you could poke around in.

We headed out to stop by my friends Casey and Sandee’s place. On out way we saw a sign that said ROLLER DERBY TONIGHT which sealed our evening plans. When I told my Dad I went to see Roller Derby, he asked “Where the women all punch each other and flip over the rails?” and I said no, it’s a little different now. We really enjoyed seeing Skate Free Or Die battling the Garden State Rollergirls. After a while, I think I even started understanding some of the rules.

We wrapped up the day with some delicious pulled pork sandwiches and amazing corn chowder, got some shut-eye and went to the Red Arrow Diner the next morning for grits and a grilled muffin (for me) and chicken parm hash browns (for jim). That last bit became the subject of a fairly amusing driving home story which I summed up over on Twitter.

So, some of the worst weather of the Summer actually wound up turning into one of the best weekends I’ve had. I came back to a Vermont that seems to have decided that it’s Autumn which I guess is okay by me.

ground cherries and the virgo month of leisure

I just got back from Montreal where I was in an all day meeting that had no internet access where I tried to tell people who were hoping to sell people a web portal that people don’t really buy web portals anymore. I guess I am now a “social media consultant” so you can tell your friends.

I spent one night at the Omni and one night on my friends’ couch and as you can probably guess, preferred the couch. Not that there isn’t something nice about a fancy hotel room on the 20th floor with a view of the actual Mount Royal but the room was cold [and unwarmupable – usually my hotel strategy is to set the heat to “stun” which is good for sleeping] and the tub didn’t drain and the bidet was offputting and there were no cats.

I live vicariously through other people’s pets since the only thing I seem to be able to keep alive at home is a cactus and I think maybe it’s just dying too slowly for me to notice. It’s been so damp here that one of my birdfeeders had sprouted which was a glucky cleaning job for me when I got home. Also the trees outside are full of peeping baby cardinals and their parents giving them birdseed (and bugs!) so that’s been a nifty thing to get to spy on up in the trees here.

I’ll be gone the next two weekends, one in NH doing some hiking and friend visiting and one in the Northeast Kingdom having a little R&R with Jim over my birthday. Last year I did a big huge birthday weekend thing which was a lot of fun. This year a lot of people are going to be out of town so I’m doing something a little less planning-intensive and a little more relaxation oriented. As per usual, the Virgo Month of Leisure kicked off while I was busy doing other things and this MoL will be like all the other ones, gone in a flash. I fail every year; at least I’m consistent.

And ground cherries? They are like twinkies in a fruit, totally delicious.

NOva SCOtia TRIP to MAINE

obligatory acadia shot

This vacation, which I am only a few hours returned from, did not have a theme song, though I had the Mountain Goats’ cover of “I Saw The Sign” song stuck in my head the whole time. It occurs to me that the words in the title have a cadence that would make a good vacation song. Instead, I have a lot of photos: mine, Kate’s and my Mom’s that, along with the comments on the photos, tell the story of the trip pretty decently. This short video is also helpful.

return to soxboro!

So the wedding and all the other kerfuffle last weekend was a lot of fun. I went back to Vermont Tuesday evening after a quick visit to my Dad’s. Had a three day week which was meetings and houseguests and cleanup.

The guy who is caretaking my place in Topsham — yes it’s still standing, no I don’t really have a plan for it yet, thanks for asking — came by my place with a truckload of stuff of mine, just odds and ends. He dropped it all off on Thursday evening and the next night I was having overnight guests, folks from the internet who were stopping by on a New England driving vacation.

I did my handflappy thing of “oh my, the house is now a mess!” and set to looking at all the boxes of stuff and it was a speedy trip down memory lane. I found old newspapers from Burning Man 2001, part of a novel that Greg was writing, some things from my childhood [a sign for my door that said JESS made by my grandfather, the dress I wore to my high school graduation], a lot of miscellaneous cables, CDs [music and data] and lots and lots of paper. Apparently paper was very popular in my household in the pre-internet days. Or maybe it wasn’t and that’s why I had so much of it left.

In any case, I still had the five mystery garbage bags of junk left when my guests came to visit. They seemed game for whatever, and I was leaving town for ten days, so I did an impromptu “hey let’s see what’s inside THIS bag” fashion show and managed to separate everything into “keep” “toss” and “donate” piles. My guests were good-natured and amused and I got a big dumb project done before heading out on the Nova Scotia Road Trip to Maine which commences tomorrow. They drove off in the direction of the Vermont Country Store and I headed off to the bus station. Will let you know how Maine is. Signing off, from Soxboro.

hello from poxboro!

I’m at my sister’s house today, chilling out and preparing for attending a friend’s wedding tomorrow. My local thrift store was having a 90% off sale (not a typo) and so, since none of my fancy clothes fit me, I got a dress and shoes and a few shirts for Jim (if he wanted them) as well as a little purse-thing (all I have are messenger bags) another skirt and a light sweater, all for $6.19. It is hard to have to leave the 1950s sometimes….

Last time I was down here, I wanted to grab a gyro on my way in to town. I knew there was a pizza place that I liked but I couldn’t remember what it was called. A quick aside, when I grew up, Boxboro was sort of teeny. It didn’t have its own post office and you’d tell people where you were from and they’d say “Foxboro?” “No, Boxboro.” “Boxford?” “No!” People had yellow t-shirts made that said “Boxborough with a [picture of a bumblebee]”

Now the town is a little bigger and more people live here and more people have heard of it. The town has a post office and a website even if we can’t all agree on how to spell it. However, there are still problems. My default “How do I find this business?” option is to call Google 411. You say the business name and the city/state and not only will it look up the number (for free) it will connect you (for free). You can even just say a business type like “pizza” or “taxi” and it will give you the top listings. It uses voice recognition, no humans, and it works pretty much all the time. Except for Boxboro.

I called and said “Pizza. Boxboro Massachusetts.” It repeated what I said “Pizza. Foxboro Massachusetts. I’ll connect you, or say ‘start over'” “Start over.” I tried this a few times figuring this was just the voice recognition machine getting used to or possibly learning different voices. However, no matter how hard I stressed the B, it kept hearing F. I had some time to kill so I went through the entire alphabet of letters “Soxboro Massachusetts…. Start over… Toxboro Massachusetts… Start over…” Sometimes I’d get Foxboro, sometimes I’d get something else, never would I get the actual town. I finally just punted and asked for “Pizza. Acton Massachusetts.” And got Bravo Pizza in the top set of listings.

When I heard them say the name of the town in the listing, it sounded a lot like box-burr-OH which isn’t that far off so I’m not sure what the problem is. I’m not sure if this is something that I care about enough to start a whole “hey fix this!” campaign especially because I know right now it would likely be futile, but it’s just one more tiny ignominy about living in smalltown America while Big Tech makes awesome tools that only sort of work here.