Primates and Pancakes

Our friend, Jennifer, had a house warming party today at her new home in Holyoke. She and her fella (as she calls him), Scott invited everyone they know to check out their new house, eat pancakes and listen to The Primate Fiasco band. The Primate Fiasco is awesome! They play dixieland-style jazz, funk, swing, you name it.
Jennifer with our friend Kelsey Flynn who is also friends with Jennifer. See how small this world is? Jennifer and Kelsey are friends from the comedy world. Kelsey knows Trevor cuz his kids knew Kelsey from way back when Kelsey worked at Motherwear (nursing catalog in Florence, MA.) cuz their mom worked at Motherwear. Now Kelsey is a DJ on the River in Northampton. She also is active in the theatre world in Northampton and has blog on masslive.com.

The Primate Fiasco is a really fun band! They're having a free (yes free!) show at The Elevens in Northampton on Friday the 19th of September. I probably won't go since we're hosting a pre-wedding soiree here that night.

A trip to the beach!

Yesterday, Trevor and I went to my new favorite beach, Rocky Neck Beach State Park in East Lyme, CT. It takes about an hour and a half to get there from our house. It's mostly highway so it's pretty easy. The beach has superfine sand and is shallow at low tide for quite a ways and so the water temperature can be quite nice. (above picture is not mine, I "borrowed" it.)


When we got there Trevor went immediately into the water. It was almost warm! I followed him and sat in the warm salt water letting it soak into every pore of my body! I LOVE SALT WATER! I was in the water for maybe 10 minutes when I turned around and saw something small swimming towards me. It was a baby turtle! So I quickly got out of the water and ran and got my camera!

Size comparison. Trevor's hand vs. baby turtle.

The baby turtle worked very hard to get to shore.

Made it to the beach!

The baby turtle rested on the beach for a few minutes and then hitched a ride on some waves back to the water!

Morning Glories taking over the garden

A few years ago I planted some morning glories from seed. I'd never had good luck with morning glories before but that year they came up and I built a little trellis (sort of) out of bamboo gardening stakes and hemp twine and they climbed up the trellis and onto the porch and looked lovely. When they died in the fall I just left a few vines on the ground and the following spring they reseeded themselves. They've been reseeding ever since and now it's to the point where they completely take over and are climbing on everything and anything that gets in their way. This is okay with me since just about everything around the morning glories has gone by and the garden still looks good. It's just covered in morning glories!

I like using the macro feature on my camera to get close up photos of flowers.

Am I in the right place?

If you're asking yourself if this is Nancy's blog the answer is, YES! I've decided to change the template because I didn't like the brown font of the old template and also wasn't happy with how the pictures were looking against the background. I think this looks better and I hope you do too!

No Labor on Labor Day

I spent most of Sunday afternoon writing cover letters and sending my resume to a few potential jobs, which I had to do at the home of my cousin-in-law Andrew and his lovely wife, Sarah, since the DSL was out at our house and I had a deadline of August 31st for one of the positions I was applying for. It was such a nice afternoon but a deadline is a deadline and so I spent it indoors at my computer at someone else's house. I told myself since I was working on a Sunday that I would take Monday, Labor Day, off. Even the unemployed deserve to take Labor Day off.

So, on Monday, because I had labored on Sunday, Trevor & I went to visit our friends, Don & Barbara in Bellows Falls, VT. They were laboring on Labor Day though. They had all kinds of stuff to bring to their church in Westminster West, VT for the church tag sale this coming Saturday. When we called to say we were on our way they said they were sure they'd be back by the time we got there. We arrived exactly when I said we would and they weren't home yet. First I checked all the doors to make sure they were locked. I mean, to see if they'd possibly left one unlocked. But, being the paranoid types that they are, sure enough they were all locked! Then I did my best imitation of Peter Rabbit and started snacking on their vegetable garden. The fresh snap peas were the best! When I was bored with that and in need of a bathroom I hunted around for some ferns and striped maple leaves and found a spot where I could relieve myself out of view of the next-door neighbor and the road below. Then Trevor & I noticed that there was a ladder leaning up against the back of the house that had, obviously, been there for quite a while since the grass was growing up around it and whoever mowed the lawn had carefully mowed around the ladder. Trevor climbed the ladder and discovered that the second floor windows were indeed locked. Gotta love those paranoid types. While Trevor was still up the ladder and tormenting the cat who was sunning herself in the bedroom, I went over to the porch above the garage one more time and discovered that the window into the dining room was not locked! Just as I was about to go tell Trevor that I'd found a way to break in, Don and Barbara came home! We all had a good laugh and went in the house together.

We had a really nice walk around the reservoir together despite the most vicious mosquitoes I've come across in a very long time. They were so thick that if you stopped or slowed down for just a few minutes they were on you! Once we got to the other side of the pond where there was a breeze we had some relief from the blood-thirsty mosquitoes and could slow our pace down a bit to enjoy our surroundings. No pictures from this walk though! Maybe next time.

Barbara cooked us a lovely meal and we went home happy and well-fed.

Solving Problems

After several months of intermittent DSL high speed internet service from Verizon and at least 3 phone calls to India, a technician came to the house to today to solve our problem. The technician, thankfully, was not from India (nothing against Indians). He discovered that although there was a strong signal coming into the house, somewhere along the way by the time it actually reached the modem the signal was spotty. He decided that what needed to be done was use a phone jack that was conveniently located near the computer and run a new wire to it. And, amazingly, that's all that it took to get the DSL working again. Well, he did have to go back to his central office, (where, it turns out, his boss is Indian) to check it out there and told us that we were "only" 11, 800 feet from the central office and so if we wanted to upgrade to faster DSL service we could certainly do that because we'd get a strong enough signal at the house. On his way out, he gave me his card and an 800 # for Verizon in Canada, not India. I was so grateful I gave him a couple of my homemade oatmeal cookies.

Letting my Hippie Flag Fly

Yes, it's true, I have "hippie" tendencies. I like good tie-dye t-shirts. By "good" I mean good colors and designs not the type that you made at day-camp and the colors fade after one washing. I like my Birkenstock "Arizona" style sandals. The ones that are completely broken in and truly comfortable by now. I'll never buy another pair, I'll just have these resoled some day. Some of you know I shave (or don't) like a hippie. I put nutritional yeast (aka "hippie dust") on my whole wheat pasta and like it (almost) better than cheese.

But last week I crossed into new hippie territory... I made granola! It's true! I found a recipe in my Uprisings whole grain baking book (I told you I had hippie tendencies) and made "maple nut granola" and it was sooo good with soymilk, coconut and raisins! YUM!

When was the last time you let your hippie flag fly?