Saturday, June 02, 2007
Posted at 9:45:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
These shoes fit my trotters like a glove!
[Edit: Ahh! No time to post anything! This is what we did Saturday, and it was so FUN that we decided to go to New York the next day to buy our own folding bikes to bring in Tango. (Not quite as spur-of-the-moment as it sounds, but almost. We've thought about getting folding bikes for a while, but Block Island on Wednesday and Nantucket Saturday convinced us to really do it! Nantucket has great bike paths... I love how there are NO CARS! I teased Dean for being a slow poke, because I had to keep waiting for him to catch up because he downshifts on inclines but I practically never shifted ever. :-) I didn't get tired at all!! We biked into town, then all the way to Madaket point on the western tip of the island, and back to the airport. It was 90° at home, but 70° on Nantucket, which was perfect for riding bikes, although the beach was cold and windy, so we didn't stay on it very long. It was a pretty boring beach anyway. Dunes and sand. My new shoes are perfect for biking!]
Friday, June 01, 2007
I'm still obsessed with my coins, but I will quit talking about them nonstop on ALB (for now at least) so I won't bore everyone to death. Now I'm comparing all the different British monarch heads. I have lots of different ones! Also, I wore my silly new shoes today and I love them. They are super comfortable, cool (temperature-wise), and fun. I am also crazy about my newly modded skirt that I got at Uptown Consignment and smallified this afternoon by taking in the seams a bit. I realised skirts with zippers in the back (vs. the side) are great, because they're insanely easy to make fit if they're too loose in the waist. Then I can buy a skirt that I like even if I know it's too big, because it's so easy to fix. My new one is orangey v-striped seersucker and it's fabulously cool and comfortable, just like the shoes. I went to Rocky today (mostly to read the Advocate) and it was a mess! Poor Rocky. Its glory days are so over. We're planning another bicycle/airplane excursion for tomorrow, but I will not be eating oysters this time.
Posted at 9:34:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I orged all my coins into piles! I think the most arrogant country is Great Britain, because they usually don't even bother writing the name of the country on the coins; they just have a giant king or queen head with a billion bragging initials like "FID * DEF IND * IMP." It's a bit confusing because tons of other countries have the king or queen of England's head on their coins, too. But the ones that are actually from Great Britain are above even mentioning where they're from. (Okay, I guess they do have a tiny "G BR" on there if you look really hard, but my point still stands.)
Posted at 1:51:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
I have a lot of coins from Ceylon (not surprisingly), most of which are cool shapes, like wavy or square. The ones from Uganda and East Africa, and some of the ones from Nigeria, have yucky green stuff on them; they must be made from some kind of inferior metal. I like Cyprus' 3 Mils coins; they have cute fish. I also have a lot of cool modern Belgian coins (like this one, for example), which I actually got myself (along with the Icelandic ones, on our trip to Luxembourg in 1996). There are still a bunch that I can't identify (yet). I am currently most intrigued by the one of the guy in the fez, with Arabic (?) looking writing on it.
[Edit: I figured it out already! It's a 5 Milliemes coin from Egypt. Makes sense, since I have three different Sphinx head coins that I already assumed were from Egypt.]
!!? I have a Chinese Ch'ien-lung coin minted between 1736 and 1795! I also have two Taiwanese 1 Chiao coins from the 1950s, and that pretty coin with the flower in the center that I've always liked and been curious about is a 1 Yuan from 1960-1980. I had no idea those three coins were even related.
Posted at 12:45:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
I need some tiny envelopes so I can group and label the ones I figure out. Almost all my coins' origins are a mystery to me.
Wow! This is a good site for figuring out where the heck all my bizarre coins are from. I just solved the mystery of the wiggle-edged head guy coins with a lion on the back. They're from Ethiopia!
Posted at 12:01:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
My favorite country of coin collection coins is Iceland. Icelandic coins are cool. (The backs are neat, too.)
Posted at 10:39:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
When I was at his house, David gave me our old copy of Richard Scarry's Best Mother Goose Ever. (It has a label with his name and old address on the inside cover. He told me he used to keep it around at the office in case he needed to read some nursery rhymes.) I just now looked at the whole thing, and it really is excellent. It's weird which ones I remembered and which seemed totally unfamiliar. The one I remembered best (visually) when I saw it was "Taffy Was a Welshman." Not coincidentally, it's also my favourite. I always loved the part at the end where the narrator goes to Taffy's house and beats him on the head with a marrow bone. (You have to see the Richard Scarry illustrations to fully appreciate it, of course.)
Watched "Moloch" tonight. ("Ultraworld" last night when I was feeling sick, appropriately enough.) At first I didn't remember the episode at all, and then I started predicting things: "Moloch's going to be a silly-looking shrivelled up midget thing!" "They're going to sing 'It's Great To Be Free'!" "Avon's going to munch an apple!" "Colonel Astrid's going to be pasty white and floating in suspended animation in a tube!" "Villa's pal's going to die!" Not really a great episode, but it's pretty entertaining and Villa's role in it is one of my favourites. Plus, "It's Great To Be Free" is very catchy.
I think stores should hire people to wander around pretending to be customers who happen to see you looking at an item and start flattering you like mad, telling you how cute the item looks on you and how you'll regret it if you don't buy it. They can also butter you up by mentioning how young you look and how you can therefore carry off said item, while confessing that they themselves wouldn't be able to. They can even bump into you again later and go on some more about how perfect the item is for you, if you're wavering about it haven't completely made up your mind. This technique is highly effective, and I now own a new pair of shoes, thanks to a very persuasive fellow customer.
Posted at 5:12:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
They look like this--pale pink and brown striped, with a sort of Hawaiian flower fabric showing through the distressed parts. Yeah, they're already falling apart, intentionally! But, on the upside, they're ultra-comfortable, take up almost no space (great for a trip to the beach), and were on sale for $20. (The original price was $45.95?! That's crazy!) And they are very cute, especially with capris. Anyway, I think the fake customer thing would be very profitable.
[Edit: Further refinement to the Fake Shopper thing... after exclaiming about how much the item suits you, they should ask you how much it costs and, when you look at the label and tell them, exclaim something like, "Oh, that's not bad at all!" Also, there are lots of variations on the "you look young and can therefore wear it" thing... they can tell you you're slim, or tall, or have certain coloring, or whatever fits the bill. The key is to make you feel like the item uniquely suits and flatters you because of something special about you, and that most people wouldn't be able to wear it as well as you can. This is the same formula that convinced me to buy my new winter coat. Of course, I adore my new coat, so it's not as if I'm knocking it.]
Hm, I should probably take it easy today, but I feel quite good despite the oyster-poisoning. It was pretty weird, a couple hours after I ate them, I started feeling really wiped out and slighty light-headed. After a while, I lay down on the floor and felt a little nauseated. Then I actually threw up a few times over the next several hours, feeling quite cheerful and perfectly fine in between! (I didn't get feverish, like last time.) Now I feel great, not even dehydrated or anything, although I did hurt my throat. So this definitely proves I shouldn't eat oysters. (Dean kept singing a special "You're allergic to oysters..." song he made up for the occasion.) They weren't even raw ones, supposedly at least! They were boiled or broiled or something, although in a pretty raw-ish style. I don't know. But I'm glad I tried them so now I know for sure that Laura and oysters don't mix.
Posted at 1:24:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I am actually writing this outside on the back step on the laptop! (I'm pretty bad at typing on the laptop keyboard, so that's very bragworthy.) It's insanely nice out again (I LOVE MAY) and I just ate part of my Stew's Profit melon. It was too flavorful and succulent, but I guess it was good anyway. (I like Profit melon on the crunchy and unripe side.) I made up a new snack using part of it: frozen salted Profit melon. I will report back after it hardens up about how successful it is.
I loved biking on BI yesterday!! My muscles don't even hurt today or anything. And it was nice and upright and didn't injure my shoulders at all! Bweel's is under new management now and is sort of different (neater, less hippy-ish). The changes seem mostly good, although it does feel like it's missing some character now. But they still have the same great quiches, and the iced coffee and chai are better! I wonder if Bweel is the new owner?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Okay, I'm definitely oyster-poisoned.
Posted at 11:33:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
That was such a fun little trip! We flew to Block Island and went to Pots & Kettles on rented bikes!
Posted at 9:33:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I ate oysters and I can't tell if I'm oyster-poisoned or not. I do feel a little lightheaded and really tired, but it could be from biking (?).
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
"Sarcophagus" was excellent! Weird, but good. Practically every line that came out of Avon's mouth was quotable, plus loads of the others'. "Sarcophagus"! Such good characterization. Little things. I'm a bit giddy over it. How can you follow "Rumours of Death"? You can't; but you can, with "Sarcophagus."
Posted at 10:41:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Also, I'm officially a fan of Stew's now. We like Stew's! Their yellow squash is somewhat mind-blowing (?!) and so are their berries. I don't know why, either, since they're normal berry brands, but they do taste better. I also got a whole Profit melon (I've never bought a whole one before!), which I will report on when I devour it. The Stew's produce guy helped me pick it out. I told him I wanted a nice crunchy non-ripe one. I also like Stew's coffee! I have totally dumped Starbucks, by the way. Well, it's not like I won't set foot in SBUX, or anything like that, but I just don't care about it anymore. Like, I'll drive right by Rocky and not even want to stop. I have to be cold about these things. Detached. I don't even drink coffee every day now. Just sort of randomly. The weather was perfect today.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Posted at 3:00:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
It only took 1 hour and 55 minutes to get home from W00! It was about 3 hours on the way there yesterday. It was IFRfully hazy (both days, actually), but we had a nice direct route and favorable west winds, coming northeast. Less than two hours from Bowie, MD to Meriden, CT--wow. We were flying an average of 145 knots (167 miles per hour)! There was a big line of thunderstorms following us, but it didn't catch up with Tango!
It was weird being in suburban Maryland. It felt different the moment we climbed out of the plane, before we even got to Greenbelt. I can't put my finger on why, exactly, but it just felt very different than the northeast. Familiar, too, in a forgotten kind of way (I grew up there and moved when I was 11), but I immediately felt glad I don't live there. Maryland seems crammed, I guess--with people, businesses/office buildings/stores/restaurants, houses, streets, cars, noises--which felt overwhelming and hectic to my brain. And it's flat, and there aren't any old buildings/things, and the balance between the hard surfaces like concrete and streets and buildings and the soft green of trees and grass was wrong. Just too much, too close together--but not in an exciting way like NYC. I don't know. I guess I just love where I live now.
Anyway, it was a really nice visit, and David's house was the opposite of what I said above. It was like a cool, relaxing oasis, filled with endlessly different interesting spaces to be lazy and delight your eyes with color, materials, shapes, and textures. He has such an amazing house. Very unique, very David, and also very liveable. It was totally pleasant hanging out with him and his family. And I really really like Hunter.
