Saturday, May 17, 2003

For the past week or more it's
Fly the ocean in a silver plane
See the jungle when it's wet with rain
Just remember 'til you're home again
you belong to me

Posted at 11:20 PM by Laura W. Petix.

4-9-99 is good. Winding around but too short. Reading this right now. Streets, sidewalks, and signs. Picturing tiny round circles, bubbles. Flowing white rivers And pollywogs Floating.

Posted at 11:15 PM by Laura W. Petix.

I did it! I Had Shad. Roe and straight fish. Not milt, yet, though. That article is right; lemon is the perfect and only complement needed. Shad roe is the same size as smelt roe or flying-fish roe; I wonder why you never see shad roe sushi? Maybe it's dangerous to eat raw roe from a fish that's been swimming in the CT river, though. I don't know what colour it is raw, if it's orange like smelt and flying-fish (but I bet it is, or reddish, because the raw roe sac the fisherman showed me was reddish), but the roe turns white/gray when cooked. It's good. Very spreadable texture; you could put it on bread. On the outside of the sac, you can see the veins. They serve it vein-side down, but I turned mine over. The fish reminds me of that kind they have on Block Island for breakfasts with the head on. But even yummier. No bones at all! We scheduled a Shad Restaurant visit for next year on Dean's PDA phone, with a reminder. Essex is a really nice town, too. We had peppermint stick ice cream cones (ha, Jan!) and looked at trees with signs on them. Weeping Willow. And there's a Christmas ornament store there, right across from the Griswold Inn. I have to remember to visit it during the proper Christmas ornament hunt season. Drove by the Shack on the way home, and it was closed again. But it had a sign that said they'd take orders from shad lovers next Friday, to be picked up on Saturday. So if I'm brave, I'll get some milt and make it. Milt's easier to cook than roe; I don't think there's the same danger of explosion.

[Edit: Oh, wow!]

Posted at 7:01 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Friday, May 16, 2003

"Native American legend has it that the bony fish was originally a porcupine who complained to the great creator about its lot in life. As punishment, the porcupine was turned inside out and changed into a fish, and this is why the shad has so many bones."

Posted at 10:18 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Ahh! If you do a search for "shad milt," there are only three hits, and two of them are on my site!

Posted at 10:14 PM by Laura W. Petix.

South Glastonbury has lots of nice sycamores! And, we drove on Whapley road. Multiple times. One yard on Main Street has four big friend sycamores, and nearby, right before Whapley, is a wonderful huge one sunk down below the road, near some water. Nowhere near as huge as MY TREE, but as big as the Simsmore sycamores, I think. You don't have to look in those Big Fat Books to find old magazine articles anymore. It's computerized!

Posted at 8:07 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Wow! The freezer-paper thing really does work. Coolness!

Posted at 12:13 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Thursday, May 15, 2003

The moon is GONE!

Posted at 11:13 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Weird weirdliness! Apparently there is a lunar eclipse going on right now! I can see it, too. It looks like an earth-shaped shadow is slowly rising up to cover the moon. How bizarre that this is happening right on a night when I was specially noticing the moon. It looks just like a real shadow. It's the colour and semi-transparency of a shadow.

Posted at 10:57 PM by Laura W. Petix.

There's a gaspingly gorgeous full moon on the move out Dean's window. I went out on the deck and tired to take a picture, but it's nothing compared to the real thing. On the real moon, you can exquistely see all the moon-details, and, before it drifted up out above the clouds, they were overlapped and mysterious, like ocean waves.

Posted at 9:57 PM by Laura W. Petix.

I'm going to EAT shad roe on Saturday!!!

Posted at 8:49 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Ordered more grogurts! I have to remember to pick them up on Tuesday. I think my favourite months now are April and December. The lady next door's tree smells so wonderful, it's mind-altering.

Posted at 3:26 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

I ran into the former Borders barista at Borders! The guy who reminds me of David. AND, I got into a huge conversation with him. I think he said his name is Mark, but I have such a terrible memory that I can't be sure. Isn't the fellow recluse I talk to in Starbucks sometimes also named Mark?? Ha, I actually talked to the Borders guy!! I was feeling strung-out all day, but now I'm wide awake. Gorgeous midnight blue sky. Oh, and The Slack and the Asian guy were on duty together at Starbucks, but it was awful, The Slack snagged the cup so he could make my drink! Aaagh. I think the Asian guy knew I was secretly groaning. The Slack told me he's getting a gigantic tattoo on his back, but I didn't ask what it's going to be of. And he made me a grande c.m. (when I ordered a tall) as a supposed niceness because it was the end of the day, but I didn't want a grande. Poor Slack, he tries hard, but he will never please me.

Posted at 10:54 PM by Laura W. Petix.

A Dong is officially great. Azuma Foods brand Grilled Unagi (aka eel) & Rice Bento is incredibly incredibly incredibly good. (The octopus intro on their site is awfully cute, too.)

Posted at 5:45 PM by Laura W. Petix.

No Shad to be Had. But, we did see THE Shad Shack, AND I also talked to a real live shad fisherman who offered to show me his shad roe. I took him up on it, of course. But I'm too wimpy to cook my own shad roe, so I didn't buy it. (Not sure if it was even for sale, although I assume it was. It was his wife's shad shack and he said reproachfully that she was probably only going to have it open for one day this weekend.) For some unknown reason, THE Shad Shack was also closed, even though it had hours posted on the building which claimed it was open every day except Monday, from 10 to 5:30. Tease!! I don't know if they have cooked shad roe either, though. They had shad roe, shad milt (which they called "buck") and smoked shad. But I want cooked roe and milt! We also saw the Shad Museum (it's only open on Sundays). So Sad about the Shad. Maybe we'll just have to go to the Shad Derby in Windsor or some boring inn-ish type restaurant.

Posted at 4:31 PM by Laura W. Petix.

!!! Bob recorded "Any Way You Want Me"??? Willow tree!
Shad search time. Wish me luck.

Posted at 2:16 PM by Laura W. Petix.

I'm going to really wish I scanned some of these envelopes, or something. But I don't. That's part of it, I think. I don't want to give them away, but I do anyway, and I do it completely. I'll never see them again. I hope people save them. Thinking of putting this one in the mail physically pains me. That's yours, June. Although I'm terribly fond of Jan's as well. Unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable, unpreserved. This whole thing is your fault, Mary, and I love it.

Posted at 4:37 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Blue cheese is a blue food.

Posted at 2:37 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

"I went down down down / And the flames went higher..."

I used my little phone to send myself an e-mail about two things I wanted to remember. The message says: bohemian lorax. Because, my new fav drink at Klekolo is the Bohemian (made with foam, though, not whipped cream), and while I drank it I sat on a tall chair at a tall table and read The Lorax ("I speak for the trees").

I bought these Bela sardines at the ION Market because I liked the tin so much (the top is cool-looking, too). Plus I like sardines, of course. Tomorrow is Shad Shack Day! (If we can find one.)

Posted at 7:26 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Monday, May 12, 2003

Hm! I actually feel rather great today, except for having absolutely no sense of direction.

Posted at 5:33 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Aaaagh. Weird night (morning). I couldn't fall asleep no matter how hard I tried. Even tied black stockings around my head in an attempt to block out the light (which actually worked pretty well) and listened to "Cross the Green Mountain" (the version that goes on forever) over and over, but I still couldn't sleep. Well, I guess I finally did, sort of, eventually, but then I had a dream about some menacing and bullying high school boys wanting to to use the shed at our land (for partying, or something), and not listening when we told them they couldn't and when we demonstated how very unsuitable it would be for that purpose (by ripping off the sides of the shed? or did they do that?), and I cut my foot while stomping around raving at them, and it was bleeding in a dark red slowly spreading thick puddle that looked like Ribena, so I asked Alicia Derin (someone I went to elementary school with and haven't seen for 20 years) to clean and bandage it for me, and she kept playing around with all this weird goop instead of just using alcohol, so I was freaking out and telling her to absolutely not use that stuff on me because she was going to get it on my face, and she wouldn't listen to me and kept doing it anyway... and then when I woke up, my foot still felt weird in the exact spot where I had the cut in the dream. It was a lengthwise cut on my right foot in the area under the arch. Oh yes, and I woke up too early, and I had to force myself to keep my eyes shut (again) (still had the stockings tied around my head and my head(ear) phones on, but removed them) and lay in bed for a while, in an attempt to get some additional sleep, but it wasn't really very restful. And I still feel extremely wide awake and wired. When I can't sleep, my feet don't fit on the bed.

Posted at 1:25 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Posted at 9:05 PM by Laura W. Petix.