blog complacency

folks, it's been a long time...

i'm feeling really blah about posting to my blog these days, but i'm going to promise to get some pictures up about what i've been doing and how my life is getting along these days. but here is the textual update:

1. i changed jobs. this is one of the main reasons i'm anti-blog these days. i am not allowed to check any personal email at work or use my work email to contact people i am not doing business with. all i do is catalogue archival collections all day at work--which is hard on the eyes. i now have a 40-hour/week job, which is rare in library land. i'm used to working 35 or 37.5 hours/week. so i essentially stare at a computer screen for 40 hours (because i do very little else at work), am gone for a longer part of my day, and the last thing i want to do when i get home is email, blog or anything of that nature. i usually keep my online discussions to a few short sentences these days, updated or sent out while cooking dinner. it's strange. i feel very disconnected. but more on my new job in another post. i just can't do it right now...

2. i've read quite a few good books. I LOVE ALEXANDRE DUMAS and i encourage you guys to read some. it's so fun--sword fights, intrigues, amorous encounters. it's all great. i read the three musketeers several years ago, and in light of my attempt to read a bunch of french authors this year, he was a good choice. the count of monte cristo is fantastic, but then i decided to finish out the musketeer trilogy. twenty years after picks up 20 years after the original musketeer story, during the time of the glorious revolution in england. the story takes place in both france and england and the musketeers have a lot of catching up to do because they have barely seen each other in this twenty-year interval. i'm now reading the vicomte de bragellone, which includes "the man on the iron mask." i've also been trying to watch the movies that go with the books i'm reading. it's been fun. in a different vein though, i also read a book called andes which calls itself a biography of the area. it has made me want to visit south america very badly--but only parts of it. it has made me distinctly not want to visit certain countries. i think ecuador and argentina sounded nice.

3. we've had lots of activities to keep us busy. we spent a weekend on a farm in vermont, i went on a great whale watch, lee went to maine, we did trips to salem and new bedford, we went to the cape for about 5 days, and have mini golfed our asses off. we have also picked 13 pounds of blueberries, 10 pounds of peaches (shared with our neighbors) and a half bushel of apples. we have a great garden. we lost some of it to bugs, but we have successfully grown scallions, cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, peppers and lots of herbs. unfortunately, the sweet peas and zucchini plants died after we'd barely started. we harvested a fair amount of lettuce and then it was totally overtaken by lice or something--and then bolted, so it was over anyway. our corn grew amazingly well, and then was eaten alive by something so that all four ears were basically empty by the beginning of september. the cabbage and beets seem to be growing well but have not been harvested yet. i'm excited to see them though :) i've been canning and preseving (freezing) things a bit and have made lemon blueberry jam, garlic pickles, dill pickles and mixed pickles. in the freezer are lots of pesto and apple/peach sauce. it's been fun :) we also finished painting the interior of our condo and so now it's all ours. we just have to finish getting furniture, weatherizing, framing art... the list goes on...

4. and violet is all grown up. she's now about 14 months old and generally behaves pretty well. she is a little "teenager-y" and sometimes has way too much energy and doesn't want to listen, but these moments are short bursts compared to what they used to be. she's a good dog, and super cute to boot :) we've done some hiking this summer, though not nearly as much as we would have liked. but fall will still be great for getting out. so i'm looking forward to it.

that's most of the update. there are probably things i've forgotten, but i'll post some pictures soon to back up my stories :)

10.10.10

my birthday is on october 10. this year, that meant it was on 10.10.10. i did not implode, explode, become enlightened, gain superpowers or anything on this day. i am disappointed.

but i did eat eritrean food at a place called asmara in central square. it was good and they make traditional teff injera, so i can eat it. lee made me a delicious lemon poppy sead cake with lemon frosting.

and then i went to funspot, the world's largest video game arcade, located in weir's beach, new hampshire and home of many great, fun, old time arcade games, including but not limited to:

ms. pac man
centipede
tron
space invaders
indy 500
pong
super off road
duck hunt
donkey kong
after burner
frogger

and many more. also including, skee ball, plenty of pin ball, whack-a-mole, and so much more. it was heaven on earth!

so my parents were league bowlers when i was a kid. every friday night, we ate hamburgers for dinner (well, my parents and sister ate that. i had some kind of chef boyardee), then we got in the car and drove a half hour to get to the bowling alley. when we got there, my sister and i each got a roll of quarters and we hung out in the arcade. i played this cyclone pinball a lot, but i'm not so good at pinball anymore... they had a lot of fantastic pinball machines, too!

i also played this game a lot, but i still had it in me! lee played with me, but then ended up watching, and watching and watching. so he took some pictures.

just check this place out! and this is just part of one floor. it's three floors, and even has a full bowling alley, a bar and a small cafeteria.

here's lee playing tron. lee didn't really play video games as a kid and wasn't familiar with a lot of the games. but he had a good time and was a good sport :)

and here i am with my prize :) i didn't play too many ticket games, but my high score on skee ball was 290. i'm pretty proud of that. but lee and i combined our tickets for a grand total of 250. that got me this sweet fairies note pad. i had an awesome birthday!

catching up!

it's been a while! time to get caught up... september and october are very busy for us. our anniversary is at the end of september and then my birthday is only another 2 weeks later. so i'm going to try to remember some of the fun we've been having!

for our anniversary this year (on september 24--and i have several friends with anniversaries around the same date! what an auspicious time of year. cheers also go out to sara and jessica s!), we kept it low-key. we went and had a lovely dinner at ole in inman square. i had the vegetarian chiles rellenos--mmm, mmm! we're still getting used to the new 'hood, but it is so nice to be able to go to such a great neighborhood and WALK!

then the next day was free smithsonian day. since i work at a museum, i get into a lot of places for free anyway, but it's usually just me and not lee as well. and we thought we would pick somewhere that we wouldn't normally go. we decided to go to fruitlands, which has transcendental ties, but also a little art museum and shaker house there. it was fun!

it was a beautiful day, and they have all these tree sculptures around. they are amazing.

the old alcott farmhouse and then under the arbor next to it.

it was fun. and finally, we went to see blue man group on that sunday. hilarious! a really neat show. i would recommend it to anyone looking for something interactive and funny. we really enjoyed it. over all, a nice anniversary weekend.

great september fun

we've had such a busy september already, and it's not even our anniversary yet! i just wanted to share the fun things we've been doing.

first, last saturday, september 11, we went up to hampton beach for the annual seafood festival. i had never been to hampton beach before, and neither had lee (because it's fun--for those of you who know lee, you know that his parents scorn absolutely anything that could be perceived as fun...). it was everything kitch-y and cheesy that i expect a trip to the shore should be. beth, you would love it! there was the seafood festival, which was full of all the people of all stripes that you expect would be there, there was an arcade, a shooting gallery, and we when we were done having fun at all those places, we went up to a 3rd floor roof bar and just watched the waves below. i loved it!

of course, i forgot my camera so i have no pictures of myself eating crab and watermelon gazpacho and freshly made fried potato chips. i have no pictures of me creaming lee at ms. pac man or galaga (and they were only a quarter in the arcade! just like 1989!). i know that some of you may not realize this about me, but i am PASSIONATE about atari and old school arcade games. i played pinball, skee-ball, centipede. i want to go back for the arcade alone...

on our way up to new hampshire, we stopped in reading at a market i had heard about called natural food exchange. they have thousands of gluten free products! i got baguettes, some hard-to-find flours, and this pancake mix from king arthur that made the best pancakes i have ever had :)

anyway, the next day we went out to the 'burbs to visit our dear friends mike & maria and their lovely baby. we went to new england's largest oktoberfest at a german-american club in walpole. there were men in lederhosen and saurkraut--which is one of my FAVORITE foods...

fun german music...

and of course our friends' cute son :)

then this weekend, we rented another car to go apple picking. we ended up getting another cheap car for the whole weekend (thank you, enterprise weekend rates! yes--you can get a car for $9.99/day!!! sadly, zipcar cannot beat that...). so we also had a date night at route 1 mini golf. says it right there on their web site: yup, it's the home of the big orange dinosaur. it was another great time with mini golf, where yet again i won. lee has a hard time accepting my supremacy in sports such as these, but i had 2, count them, 2 holes-in-one! then we went to the arcade and played a couple of rounds of ice-ball (just like skee-ball, with heavier balls that are white), and then went to the dairy castle for soft serve.

the dairy castle is behind me, here.

and here's the ice-ball and then lee posing with our great prizes: stickers and some temporary tattoos :)

on sunday, we went to honey pot hill orchards for apple picking with our friend, allison. honey pot hill was a new place for us. i don't think i'll go next year. they have tv commercials and we just wanted to see what all the hubbub was about. it was MADNESS! but we got a lot of apples and had a good time.

here i am on a ladder picking.

and here's just 1 of honey pot hill's 3 parking lots. crazy!

but it was fun and i'm glad we could go. and i've already made some apple goodies: apple muffins for breakfast and today i had a tuna melt and i made the tuna salad with a nice crunchy apple, olive oil, lemon juice and just a touch of mustard. topped with swiss and grilled to perfection :)

yay for september!

vermont...finally!

i took lee to vermont for his birthday. it was a month ago today that we took this trip, but now i finally have a computer that works and is hooked up to everything!

i worked on the saturday before lee's birthday. so he had that day to spend on his own. his instructions were to pick me up at work, with a zipcar that i had rented, and he would drive where i told him to go. he did not know where i was going to take him. he eventually figured out that it was vermont--i mean, it's not too difficult to figure out, after all. we stayed in a cheap hotel in montpelier. nothing fancy, but inns in vermont are terrifically expensive! and what with a new condo, i wanted to have a good time without breaking the bank... so we checked in around 7pm and promptly started the festivities. first on the list was a stop on vermonts beer trail: the alchemist pub. Now, this may have been lee's birthday celebration, but i must say that i was ELATED to find out that the alchemist makes its very own gluten free beer! it's called celia pale ale and it was THE BEST gluten free beer i have ever had. possibly the best pale ale i've ever had... too bad they don't sell their beer anywhere but at the pub :( but lee sampled several delicious beers while there and then we had a great dinner. thanks, alchemist!

we then woke up the next morning and headed straight out for the ben & jerry's factory tour in waterbury. it was fun and smelled delicious. this is also where, though it was lee's birthday, they happened to be serving my favorite ice cream flavor as the free sample :) it was mint chocolate chunk. for those of you who know me, you know that i always go to ice cream shops with the intention of trying something new and fun, but each time, as soon as i get up to the counter, i just order the shop's mint chocolate ice cream, whatever it is. how predictable! lee was also able to nab us an additional sample to share :)

anyway, this was vermont, and i'm happy to report that by 1pm, lee and i had sampled the following:

• ice cream at ben & jerry's
• plenty of cheese at the cabot annex store
• chocolates from lake champlain's factory store
• apple cider
• wine and hard cider

nary a vegetable or healthy item to be found. so we drove into stowe and had a wonderful salad at the green goddess cafe :)

then we drove up to burlington. i know there are some die-hard burlington fans out there, but i have to say that i just don't really have to go again. lee and i used to live in boulder, co, and burlington and boulder are so much alike (but not in the ways that we liked boulder--in the ways that we disliked boulder...). in any case, we had a nice stroll around on some festival day. then we went to a creperie called the skinny pancake that makes gluten free buckwheat crepes! both of our dinners were delicious--lee did not have a gluten free or vegetarian/pescatarian variety, so i could not sample--and we were so full that we had no room for dessert. but lee's was a completely local crepe: local handmade sausage, cheese, maple syrup, and some veggies. it looked great.


we rolled ourselves back to our hotel, slept soundly, and drove back to boston the next morning. it was a great trip, though it sounded more like a trip for me than for lee! i had never been to vermont before, and i will go back. but lee thought it was a great trip and also agreed that we should go again sooner rather than later. maybe we'll get in some good snowshoeing this year?


lee's real birthday was the following tuesday, august 10. lee wanted a real new england meal, so i made lobster, steamed mussels, biscuits, maple glazed carrots, and boston cream pie. i am eating a lot more seafood these days (my choices are so limited, and i immensely enjoy what i've been having!), but i'm not a huge lobster fan. lee got most of the lobster to himself and then was able to gorge himself on plenty of mussels too.


all in all, i think he had a great birthday :)

vacation pics

all right, it's been a lot longer than i thought, but we moved a week ago and it was just the other day that we finally found the camera and all the cords necessary to download pictures. warning, this is a long post :)

so here it is. we began our trip with a laugh in promised land. yes, this is promised land, pa. dear lord, there is not much there, but there is this handy fuel stop!

when we arrived in virginia, we went straight to luray caverns. they are astonishing. this here is "dream lake." this is actually a reflection of the stalactites on the ceiling!


the next day we began our hike of approximately 40 miles of the appalachian trail. lee is pretending to orient us. about 3 miles in, we had a lovely picnic.

our stop for the night: lewis mountain cabins.

hiking the appalachian trail day 2--off for big meadows lodge!

big meadows lodge itself was wonderful, and we had a nice meal in the dining room. then we reposed in the sun room after dinner and played a game of checkers. the only bummer was that they are redoing the porch, so we couldn't sit outside--the porch wraps around this beautiful room. but we did manage to see a great sunset.


hiking the appalachian trail day 3--skyland resort or bust!


and then we capped off the evening with a slice of virginia blackberry ice cream pie (topped with meringue) and then another wonderful sunset.

hiking the appalachian trail day 4--canceled due to broken toe. instead, lee drove me around. here i am with our binoculars, the very same ones we believe we left in the rental car :(

and then driving around through beautiful virginia farm country for the next day and a half and wine tasting.


a good vacation, overall :)

ohio and a new nephew

here are some pictures of my trip to cuyahoga falls, ohio that you might enjoy:

first, we stayed in the sheraton suites in my hometown. it's pretty much the only hotel, but rather fancy. i was kind of embarrassed to stay there, because it's the kind of place that no one in my hometown can afford to stay in... but to keep it real, it's across the street from a factory--the schwebel's bread factory, so it smells like baking bread down there all the time. oh, and this is downtown. that's what makes ohio wonderful, all the factories downtown. at least this is just a bread factory. when i was a kid, there was a coal plant in my town. and still, near downtown cleveland, there are actually oil refineries. mmm, memories of childhood... petroleum in the morning!

then a picture of my sisters when we went out to dinner at a new place in downtown akron called cilantro's. it was actually pretty good, and we had a nice time.


the west side market again.


city chicken. have i explained this before? city chicken is another thing unique to the area that i grew up in. it is pieces of pork on a stick that you bread (or shake 'n bake) and fry or bake. i never liked it.


here's what city chicken looks like when it's cooked--pan fried here in this photograph:


and here are the nephews. vinnie is 3 and dominic is 1 month.