| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 |
We're in Woodstock, dodging hippies and enjoying nature. Well, I am at least—Spyro is watching nature in the Discovery Channel. So far I've seen two snakes, a fat toad, five deer, and two salamanders. I touched one of the salamanders.
UPDATE: Somehow the photo didn't load originally, but that's the "yard" of the house we were staying in. Also, the salamanders turned out to be baby frogs transitioning between tadpole and toad. I swam around with a frog the next day. Nature!
Due to a combination of extreme generosity and bad luck (both on her part), I'm spending the weekend up in Woodstock at an amazing house, my friend Julesie rented and then couldn't use. As I write this, I'm sitting on a screened in porch, looking out at nature and wondering what it would be like to live 24/7 in a place that actually smelled good.
Maybe it's because I live downwind of a poo-processing plant, but the first thing I notice about any new place is the smell. Right now I'm breathing in freshly mown grass, lillies, and citronella. There's a vague firey undercurrent because the last tenants of the house must've taken advantage of the wood-burning fireplace. It is markedly better than the city smells I'm used to.
The big guy is on his way up here this evening and we are so not on the same page, mood-wise. He called all frantic because he was about to miss his bus, while I'd spent the hour before floating in the pool, looking up at the sky. I haven't brushed my hair in two days. I'm going feral. He's shrieking about his new job and how much pressure he's under. Once he officially missed his bus he called again, swearing that next time we're going to Disneyland. I would sooner forfeit a limb than spend one second inside that hellhole. He's on his own.
Hopefully he'll have chilled out by the time he gets there. Because if he hasn't, he's sleeping out by the pool.
As I mentioned in my previous post, last week Debra, Jannese, Spyro and I went on a little journey Upstate. Here's Spyro, being forced to look excited about spending the day looking at antiques.
This is the house we stayed at on Brigham Lane—I didn't take any photos inside, but believe me when I tell you it was unbelievably charming. Whoever decorated it is welcome to come on over to my apartment and have at it. As you can see, the place isn't large, but it never felt too close, even with four of us inside.
What you're witnessing here was my favorite wildlife moment of the weekend. Debra calls these little frogs, "Peepers," which I guess is their actual name. We used to have tons of them growing up in Rochester. This little dude was not happy to be held and so paid J-Ro and I back by peeing on our hands.
My second favorite wildlife moment was when we were all getting out of the car one night, in the pitch black, and something went crashing through the woods behind us. Debra ran shrieking towards the house while the rest of us howled with laughter. It was probably a deer, though I tried to convince her it was Sasquatch.
This is the view out my window. Sure, if I tipped the iPhone a couple more degrees you'd see the glorious trees of Private Sonsire Triangle, but looking down, this pretty much sums it up: some little garbage cans and a giant construction dumpster.
This was the view I had this past weekend. The Large Greek and I, along with our friends Debra and Jannese, made a trek upstate. We're all kind of thinking we'd like to own a little cottage or something up there, so this was a way of getting our toes wet (though not in the creek—that was a little too murky for this citiot).
We stayed at this unbelievably charming house in Lake Katrine. I highly recommend the place—$300 a night, which is reasonable if you go with another couple. I'm sure it's cheaper by the week, but some of us are actually employed and can't just run off to the country whenever the whim strikes. And the others of us are under-employed and can't just run off to the country because we can't afford it. Complete rundown TK.
This is my friend Scarlett and her baby, Marlo. Besides my sister Sue, I spent the most time with them in London. I've known Scarlett for many years and she's the only human I will allow to call me Granny. She calls me that because I have been known to fret over her and also, I like to go to bed on the early side. This photo was taken on my first day in London—Sue and I had gone to Borough Market (which I loved) and then to the roof garden of a nearby pub on the South Bank. The South Bank was my fave part of the city.
Here's my sis at the Princess Di Cafe. You can eat a lovely falafel and gaze upon hundreds of photos of the People's Princess. You would think a cafe named after royalty would be fancy, but you'd be wrong. The food was fine, but somehow I kind of doubt the Princess ate there very often.
More scintillating photos of my trip after the jump . . .
I just got back from a fun-packed trip to London. This bus ad was on seemingly every other bus and made me feel ill each time I looked at it. Does anyone find the idea of salmon zipped up into a crunchy crust appealing? Plus, the phrase "fish finger" just sounds dirty to me. But then I've always been partial to using "finger" as a verb.
This ad for an apartment cracked my ass up. "Living here you won't be mocked." Aside from the questionable grammatical structure, what a funny thought: "buy this apartment and people will stop laughing at you!" If only it were that simple.
When I think auto insurance, I do not think Iggy Pop, but apparently the Brits do. I would be more inclined to hire a spokesperson along the lines of Martin Sheen or even Rachel Ray. Someone who looks like they use turn signals—not a guy who rolls around in broken glass. But these ads are all over the place and they are rather cheery.
This isn't exactly an ad, though it is designed to draw customers in, so I'm including it. "Warm" pita bread. I'll bet it's "delicious."
Tomorrow night I'm going to be on a big ole jet airliner, zipping across the ocean to London. I'm going to see my sis as well as my buddies Scarlett and Alex who have new(ish) babies and boyfriends for me to meet.
My pocket-sized Time Out Guide to London is flagged and ready to go. Suzy doesn't know it yet, but I plan on us reenacting all my fave Ab Fab moments. We're also going to shop, drink pints at quaint pubs, look at art, and possibly go on a boat ride or two. Maybe we'll go see this teeny tiny rare pony! I'm leaving the Big Guy at home for this trip, so it'll be just me and the ladies. Big fun will be had. There may be blogging from the road, but I make no guarantees. I'm not bringing my computer and my beautiful iPhone will be switched off, which is giving me minor heart palpitations, but hopefully I won't go into full-on tech withdrawal. My sister doesn't even have a television!
I'm too slammed to write a long, coherent post about my four-day visit to the Big Easy, but I have two flickr sets of photos if you care to look. They're here and here.
I'm just going to break the trip down into greatest hits:
• My visit to the Ninth Ward was the highlight. Dave and Ana are friends of a friend and they thought it important I not leave NOLA having seen little other than the French Quarter. They were right. It gave me an entirely new perspective on the city. In case you were wondering, it seems poor people are completely expendable. Hopefully that's all about to change. The photo above is from there. Go look at my Flickr set for more.
• Oddly enough, my trip to the Ninth Ward gave me a new appreciation for Brad Pitt. His organization and Habitat for Humanity are the only ones that seem to be building any houses out there. Between that and his donation to defeat Prop 8, I'm starting to like him again.
• Rock City Morgue—aka, my new favorite band. Sean from White Zombie plays keyboards and bass, a Dave Navarro lookalike plays guitar and a skinny guy with great moves, Rik Slave, sings. Very cinematic and creepy and if you know me at all, you know that's a very good thing. (I'm so Martha!)
• Chargrilled oysters from Acme Oyster House. Wow.
• The honeymoon suite at the Olivier House. We had two ginormous rooms and a balcony overlooking Toulouse Street. Yes, it did seem like the bed might cave in on us, but it was the perfect place to stay in New Orleans. The staff was unbelievably nice too. Especially when the BF's band members showed up tripping their brains out at two in the morning. They were a lot kinder than I was, actually.
• The Halloween parade! I usually hate parades because in NYC it means being herded around in huge groups by mounted policemen and being jammed up against tourists and their screaming brats. This parade had minimal police supervision and the most good-natured crowd I've ever been part of. Everyone was nice and talking to each other—unbelievably fun.
But here's a preview of of my New Orleans adventure.
Every so often I need to get out of town and go somewhere and smell trees without the rat-a-tat-tat of jackhammers as background noise. Unfortunately, neither myself nor the Large Greek are very competent drivers, so that kind of limits our options. I decided a weekend in Woodstock would be nice. There's a bus that goes there and I found a cute place to stay that was advertised as a five-minute walk to town.
Despite spotting my evil ex-boss pretty much five seconds after exiting the bus (we hadn't even dropped off our suitcase yet!), the weekend was really fun. There was a creek, a pizza place that delivered and I even got to see my old pal, Dan, who drove down from Hudson.