Saturday, April 21, 2007
Here are two of the photos w/better detail: Route 9 and flooded Harbor Drive / Harbor Park Restaurant with the bridge in the background. And here's the website for the restaurant... I have a little trouble actually believing it's open like the site claims! There's an article about the park/restaurant flood here.
Posted at 1:17:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Friday, April 20, 2007
It was one of those weird situations where a set of circumstances just come together. Nearly 4:00. I'd finished my Thursday-ing and I wanted to feel the sun, to get close to the river. Rt. 9 South. 91 North exit? Rocky Hill? I didn't want to go to SBUX. Drove past it. Middletown, yes, but how can I get close to the river there?? You can see the river, all along the road, high and sparkling, but it's only a tease. Too late to turn around, though.
Posted at 8:58:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Parked near the library and walked to Klekolo for a single bohemian. Sipping it at a tall table, I kept staring at this other customer who was buying a coffee. I recognised her, but I couldn't remember from where. Then I placed her: it was the bead store owner! We walked out together and started talking (she recognised me, too), and she told me it was Bead Street's last day; she's closing the store. Sad.
We walked together and I mentioned that I was lured to Middletown because of the river; that I wanted to get close to it, but I didn't know how. She knew how! She told me how to get there: walk a couple blocks down and there's a way (near the church in the distance? yes!) -- you go under the highway; there's a place called Harborpark, and a restaurant (I've seen it from the road), which is all flooded. The waters peaked two days ago.
We talked for a while in the nearly-empty store (she wished she could've come with me, but she had to vacuum), then I walked. Past that movie theatre. Road Closed sign. But only for cars, not for me. Over the railroad tracks, and underneath Route 9! Road half under water and debris, and restaurant underwater to halfway up the ground floor. There's probably a boat launch under there, a big parking lot. I can't see it--it's all water. Lampposts and trees buried up to their waists. "No Parking, Including Motorcycles" only barely above the river's rise. Christopher Columbus statue on high ground. The highway just up the bank, "Exit 15, Wesleyan University / Business District." The graceful arches of the Middletown/Portland bridge straight ahead. Buttonwood trees. Shad swimming by, probably. It was very very cool.
I went to the River!! @ Middletown! Photos to come.
Posted at 5:35:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Posted at 11:36:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I was high, high, high this afternoon, but now I'm crashing. I'd be a little worried if I wasn't. EEN tonight, and I ordered vindaloo (aka "vinders") solely because of Vila. I'd never had it before. Verdict: Vila has good taste! Took notes on the way in Tango:
- snow! (only at altitude)
- Six Flags - cool looking! colorful! r o l l e r c o a s t e r s
- Basketball Hall of Fame - big and silver - flat rectangle w/dome
- Shad Falls!!! [Holyoke Dam] big & white! WOW!!!
The sunset was beautiful tonight.
No, Bob, don't go!! What a way to end a year of dreams, schemes and themes. That was fantastic!
Posted at 5:38:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
It's so magic! Blue-and-white sky. Sycamore trees drinking from an April-flood swamp. SUN, WARM. Sun that you can feel. I think the secret reason I was wide-awake last night when it was time to be sleeping is that I could feel spring coming, stealing in. (Please don't go away again.)
Posted at 3:57:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Oh, and I think Bob's themetime season finale (spring cleaning!) is one of my favorite episodes. (Haven't listened to the whole thing yet. It's two hours!)
Hammering. Hours of hammering. Wow. Hammering is loud. Loud! I could even feel the vibrations through my feet when two guys pounded at the same time. I guess the roofers came. They sure didn't slack. My head feels all floaty now. But hammering-occluded sleep is better than no sleep, and, lucky for me, I had my noise-reduction earphones in bed with me. Dull-ish bangs instead of cringe-inducing bangs. I could even hear them talking... but not what they were saying, since it was in Spanish. So that was good; it was a lot easier to pretend to ignore that way. That was a pretty darned arduous sleeping session, but I think it actually worked out in the end. Meaning: after they finally went away, I was still in a state that allowed me to fall back to sleep and get a couple of hours of sleep for real.
Posted at 1:00:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
(And yeah, I guess I could've just gotten up, but 1) Due to other factors, I'd had less than three hours sleep at that point, and 2) I figured endless hammering is probably much less annoying while curled up in bed partially asleep wearing earphones than it is if you're wide awake trying to think but being driven out of your mind.)
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Gar recipes! Six of them, even! So there, Dean!!! You can stop making those accusative chewing noises every time you walk past me, now.
Posted at 11:48:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Recent B7 viewings: Trial (yesterday) = eXcellent! A plethora of scathing Avon quips. He's in rare form. And I've always loved Travis in this episode, even whilst madly wishing it were Travis I instead of Travis II. Oh yeah, and I really liked Secretary Rontane! For some reason. (Okay, I'm just weird.) And Trooper Par. And Thania. I even like Zil and that tongue thing he/she/it does. Killer (today) = quite good, despite the insane and ugly costumes. (Or, okay, maybe partially because of them.) I especially liked the opening Avon-Vila scenes on that cold windy beach. Not sure why I like it so much. It's very grey and bleak. A lot like Connecticut in April.
Holyoke Dam fishcounter results so far this spring: zero Atlantic Salmon, zero Blue Back Herring, zero Gizzard Shad, zero Sea Lamprey, zero Striped Bass, and ONE American Shad. River = very high. And very cold. (None of the fishermen on the message board want to go in!)
Posted at 9:36:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Speaking of lamprey, this is the best YouTube video.
Another thing: the 2007 Hartford Advocate Readers' Poll results came out today (yes, I voted, and yes, it was pointless), and the magazine-ish format for this year is pretty nice. Page 11 has a really weird ad for a new (I assume) restaurant in Manchester called Aquatic Wildlife, with stuff on the takeout menu like "pacific blue jellyfish" (from the Philippines), "electric blue lobster" (is it like an electric eel??), "fire shrimp" (they probably burn your tongue off), gar fish (Dean's old pet), and panther grouper (sounds like something Steve Zissou would chase) (okay, not really; sounds cool, though). What the heck. I want to go there!
AAAAGHH!! What the heck!!! It's a FISH STORE! The ad was a joke. Or something. Grrrrrrrr. Dean says, "It's so mean that you wanted to eat them!!" I say, it's so mean of THEM to trick me EVILLY like that! I'm going to show up with this ad in hand wearing a lobster bib and demand a plateful of captive bred seahorses! *grinds teeth*
"Freshest Fish East of the River," my foot. Just look at this ad! I ought to sue them for dashing my expectations so badly. Just plain cruel!
Dean says: "It would take a mean person like you to take the ad seriously and think those fish were meant to be eaten!"
*moan*
[Edit: Just finished reading the whole "Best Of" and maybe my votes weren't so pointless this time, after all. Some good things actually won! Kashmir even came in third for best Indian restaurant. Still, I'm never going to trust this evil publication again after that cruel scam they pulled on me. The ad is even in the restaurants section!! I think I'll call that number and try to order takeout, and see what happens.]
Forecast for Saturday: big smiley sun and 70°! But it's probably a typo.
Posted at 8:34:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 5:00:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Whenever the river gets high like this, I want to get close to it. From Rt. 9 South, it looks impossibly higher than the banks, higher than the highway. Grey and grey and grey and cold. Big pewter texturey sky. Tiny raindrops. Brown. Colors: soggy pale green grass, pale yellow willows just showing life, rosy tinge in the buds of those trees. Everything else's steel grey. The buttonwood branches are starkly beautiful against the sky.
I'm aching for spring. For sun and warm.
When I got home from Middle, there was a gift bag hanging from my front door. Why?? What was it?? And I wanted it to be for me--though there was no reason for it to be--for it to be something cheerful amidst all the grey and cold damp. I took it off the doorknob and looked at the label, which read only, "To Laura." It was all full of parcels, wrapped in white tissue paper. All for me, like unexpected sunshine! Turns out it's a late, late, late birthday present. Exactly on time.
Monday, April 16, 2007
I slept well last night and my back actually feels good for the first time in over a week! No guarantee it'll stay that way all day, but it's nice for now, at least. I also had two very entertaining dreams, but I can barely remember them now. Dean was in both of them, which is very unusual for my dreams. In the second one, he showed up at Rocky and went behind the counter; I was thinking, "What the heck?? Customers aren't allowed back there!" but they dressed him up in a black cap and green apron (he looked really cute!), then even invited him into the back room. Meanwhile, I was talking to the D.B.G., who was hanging around at his corner table, and he ended up making my cappuccino, which he apologized for, saying it was "****in' awful." There was about two inches of empty space at the top, so I asked him to at least add some more foam. He spooned some on, but it was all bubbly. Weirdness.
Posted at 2:11:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Things I learned in my new Zoo Animals Golden Guide book (edited by Herbert Zim, natch):
- Lions (and other large cats) can't purr
- Wart hogs (like Brambles) "display well in zoos, and many become gentle"
- Yaks have a "skirt" of long hair around their legs, which protects them from the cold
- Hyraxes are related to elephants and horses
- There are a whole bunch of different species of zebras with different stripe styles
- A lone rhinoceroses may attack a train or a car, charging at speeds to 30 miles per hour
- There's a species of penguin (the Galapagos Penguin) that lives on the Pacific islands, as far north as the equator
- Flaming-os are fed a mix of carrot juice, paprika, boiled beets and raw shrimp, so they'll maintain their color
- Box turtles can close their shells tightly, if they're not too fat
- Giant salamanders, the largest of all living amphibians, reach a length of five feet
Golden Guides are the perfect size for my flight bag.
