Day 7.071: The fruits of my...wrong turn

It's almost certainly my last weekend alone in the apartment, and so it's time to think about what needs to be done in order to move out.

This morning I decided to take my recycling out. This was a quite momentous event as I had some 72 bottles and six bags of assorted cardboard and plastic taking up quite a bit of my small kitchen. I run past the recycling place almost every day, but it was only my second attempt to get there by car and I took a wrong turning.

I found myself in a very congested parking lot, and looked up and saw it was Trader Joe's. Well, what was I supposed to do? Just drive out again? I decided to go and do a bit of grocery shopping.

I didn't end up with anything particularly Trader Joe's-y but I did buy some Mexican food and rustled up this for dinner tonight:

which I then crunched loudly on while Skyping the family. Good times.

I also disposed of all my recycling - remembering to achieve what I'd set out to do albeit after getting a bit distracted.

Day 7.050: Moose and a moose

With another offer to buy a house circulating, we took E5N1 and his friend "Moose" to Freeport - home of LL Bean - where we found:

1. A nice lunch
2. A huge LL Bean store
3. One of Moose's distant relatives

We nearly lost Moose himself a few minutes before this was taken and spent an anxious few minutes retracing our steps. In the midst of all this retail therapy, the only purchase made was by E5N1 who bought some marbles and later said this (verbatim apart from what he calls his sister):

I'm not going to lose these.

Exile #3 lost her marbles.

Day 7.004: Rug city

Here are some more pictures of E5N1's rug city. Apart from bottom left (a shopping area including a kayak shop - entirely from his imagination as far as I know), they are all potentially recognisable parts of a certain city.

Thanks for yesterday's guesses - keep them coming!

Day 6.323: Fair Trade and unfair trades

This morning, we had a long-ish walk in the cold, visited the Bethlehem Fair Trade Market where we chatted with some friends and did some Christmas shopping - not exactly classic Black Friday bargain-hunting perhaps. There is still time for some more FT shopping at the excellent and varied market tomorrow.

After that, we felt the need to really get the financial wheels turning, so we (except for E5N1) played a long and intense game of Monopoly.  The one true version from the streets of London of course.

Exile #3 was the first to go out. Knowing a good thing when she saw it, she then teamed up with Exile #2. For a while they seemed unbeatable, but then I exercised my right to do any deal I saw fit, by donating all my property to Exile #4. I then joined her as a financial advisor and it could have gone either way for a while - but in the end Exile #2 (and Exile #3) triumphed - as ever the game turning on a few lucky or unlucky turns of the dice.

Day 6.314: Not so wild horses

One more picture from the family's visit to see me in Maine a week and a half ago.

This makes the carousel at the mall look quite a lot more exciting than it was:

but when you only go to the mall about 3 times a year, it's not a big overhead.

Day 6.303: Geeking out at The Maine Mall

We had a busy day - getting to know various parts of the area - including - though we hardly ever visit one near home - the mall.

We happened upon these three gentlemen:

who we assume were attending Coast City Comicon - we didn't check with them, but they did pose very happily for me in their excellent costumes complete with proton packs with lots of details and flashing lights.

A little later, these two posed for me too...

in a shop full of geeky goodies and many graphic tees.

Day 6.275: Stanton's revisited

It was almost exactly a year-ago that we discovered the local pumpkin-patch fun of Stanton's Feura Farm. Judging by the photos, it was a lot colder that day than it was today when we made our follow-up visit.

We enjoyed the same fun - pumpkin picking, corn-box playing, a corn maze, a hay maze, racing tricycles, a hay ride and the straw slides in the barn:

We also sampled again their donuts - which were on back order and coming out fresh and warm from the fryer into waiting hands.

Once again, we didn't make time for apple-picking - but we did come away with all of this:

- enough to get us our $15 entry fees back and make us feel we were leaving having scored a bargain afternoon out.

Day 6.193: Christmas melon giant owl in the desert..?

Sometimes the only question is, "Why?"  Sometimes I wonder if it's best not to know.

Day 6.169: Super fiendish

We had a very nice visit with some friends this afternoon - hopefully we'll see them again before we leave - but for today, apart from a lot of catching up, it was just like picking up where we left off for adults and kids alike - great!

During the day yesterday, both Exile #3 and Exile #4 managed to get themselves locked in the downstairs loo* here. They both managed to get out with a little coaching but it prompted my Dad to act on a long standing intention to replace the lock-and-key arrangement for a privacy lock that can be opened from the outside if necessary. This was not much of a concern for us now, since both the girls have mastered it now and, as we said at the time, E5N1 is unlikely to go to the trouble of locking it - we're lucky if he closes the door.

So after two trips to a local hardware store and a pile of tools and an hour or so of drilling, chiseling, measuring and shoving, we finally succeeded:

I'm not sure, in spite of the issues we had, that I'd call it fiendish, but my other achievement of the day was more than just fiendish:

It turned out to be quite a good antidote to the jet-lag slump!





*apologies to my US readers - I meant "half-bath" obviously ;)

Day 6.123: Want something from my store?

This went on for several days recently - changing in content, adding signs and names, even - at one point - becoming just one store in a mall.

On Saturday morning we were given a random selection of home-made bank notes to spend. Generous - although the denominations resulted in some very expensive snacks.

Day 6.120: A little shirt of words (or two)

One of these shirts was in a department store in Germany, the other in the biggest department store in the world in Korea. Both of them are written in English - after a fashion.

Day 5.365: Nice bag, but I gave it up...

I went for a run this morning. Well, it was part run, part investigation of routes, part discovery of the iciness of the pathways.

I eventually found myself on a nice walk/run/cycle path along the river. It was before dawn, so I appreciated the lights closely spaced along the path. More surprising was the piped music. The most surreal moment had me running along a river in a small city in South Korea in the dark with Free Electric Band playing out in all its early 70's glory!

As the sun came up, it looked like this (one of those black dots at the bottom is a large mammal - probably a coypu):

Later in the day we ended up with this:

Would you like to guess where we were and what we were doing?!

Day 5.333: British Christmas in Pittsfield

We spent the middle of the day in Pittsfield today. We had lunch at the Marketplace Cafe (great as ever). We narrowly missed seeing Katherine Winston perform again which I'm a little sorry about especially having checked out some of her recent additions to her youtube channel.

The main event was a trip to the Berkshire Museum - of which more another day when I've got my thoughts and photos in order. Then we were back to the cafe for another cup of coffee and a sweet treat.

Our final stop was at Brits 'R' US where we bought some real Smarties - after we realised that our kids think that these are Smarties - when we know that these are Smarties!

Anyway - we discovered the makings of a proper British Christmas there - Christmas cake, Christmas pudding and crackers - right next to the Roses and Quality Street!

We had a quick chat with the owner too who was very friendly to these fellow ex-pats even though we were only spending $2!

On the other hand - I'm guessing (from the name they chose) that the people running this "pop up shop" just down the road are probably not British.

Not sure it would go down too well on a UK High Street (because of this if you're wondering).

Day 5.327: The third will have you on your knees

It's now the third consecutive year that we've gone to Majestic Tree Farm in Selkirk to cut our own Christmas tree.  It's also the third and last post title in what could be the longest running pop-pun feature ever - although it's more pop than pun.  Maybe I should get back to those?

Anyway, it was a great place to go once again.  This time I let the kids loose with the camera resulting in these (car shots by E5N1, others by Exile #4):

My best side is in one of them.  Here is one of my own photos:

Sadly the gust of wind made the tag hard to read.  It's labelled, "Man Wreath". Obviously.

Day 5.306: Slimming down

Thanks to a bit of dieting (not any more) and a lot of running, I've been losing weight.  A few of you have been kind enough to notice.  Here's the data:

I had to drill a new hole in my belt today.  A nice problem to have.

But that's not what I had in mind when I started writing this post.  Several years ago, a new admin assistant started at my work, she used association to remember people's names when first introduced to us all.  I found out a few of them much later.  One person was "Joe Bloggs* - sensible shoes".  My association was bulging pockets.  The reason was, perhaps disappointingly, that I always had a fat wallet.  Not generally because of having much money in it (often none due to poor ATM visit management), but due to a complete lack of weeding of cards, receipts, foreign currency and the like.

Anyway, I finally did something about it with a little help from a Groupon offer.

Wallets empty (left) and fully loaded with all the same important stuff (right). Before swapping (top) and afterwards (bottom)

I don't want to sound like an advert for Big Skinny, but this is life-changing stuff.  Now I can worry that I've lost my wallet instead of worrying about the structural integrity of my pockets!



* Not his actual name.  Another disappointment to add to the tally in this post.

Day 5.296: So good I bought it twice, twice!

A few months ago, information about a film adaptation of Cloud Atlas started showing up on my facebook feed.  I guess I'd listed it as a book I liked and that at some point turned into a 'like' of a 'page' about the book...etc.

Anyway.  I liked the look of the ideas in the film and decided I needed to re-read the novel.  I couldn't find it.  The library was back-ordered to the nth degree, so I decided I had to buy another copy.  This is it - it has a plug for the movie (but thankfully the original cover art).  I thoroughly enjoyed it the second time around.  It suffered from my "I want to know what happens" first-pass reading style - it's a book that needs to be loved page by page, not rushed through to get to the resolution.  It's the first time I ever bought a novel twice (I often have to read them twice - thanks to that reading style I mentioned).  I'm not sorry I did.

Today, Exile #2 and I went to see the film. I'd actually already seen it - on Monday when our plans to go together were disrupted by the school-closing, but I really wanted to share it with her and have someone to discuss it with.

I loved the film.  It takes some liberties with the stories - above and beyond the necessary removal of subplots and secondary characters - but they don't change the feel of the six worlds (three historic, one contemporary and two futuristic) that Mitchell created in the book. It's a refreshingly un-Hollywood-ish adaptation despite the blockbuster cast.  The conceit of using the same actors in multiple roles across the story nearly as often distracts from the action as it adds to it but, just like the hints at self-awareness in the book, this doesn't prevent the emotional impact being felt as each story comes to its climax.

And yes it's the first time I've seen a film in the cinema twice since - wow I have no idea - maybe ever!

Day 5.280: Stanton's Feura Farm

On Saturday, we went to Feura Bush to pick pumpkins at Stanton's Feura Farm - a pumpkin patch of the hay-ride, corn-maze, cider and donuts (and a field of pumpkin) school of pick-your-own.  We had a blast!

We enjoyed the straw maze - a small but excellent maze with lots of blind corners and dead-ends, the kids area where Exile #4 and E5N1 raced tricycles and played in a corn box (that's not sand that his sister is burying E5N1 in below!).

The cider donuts were rather excellent.  I'm not sure if they are made on premises or with their own apples which are also available for pick your own right now only a few years after the orchard was established (sadly we ran out of time to do that - much to Exile #4's disappointment.)

The star of the show was undoubtedly the straw slide - the kids went down, climbed back up, went down again for quite some time - even too-cool-for-kids'-stuff Exile #3 was well and truly won over.

It calls for a moving picture I think:

Oh yes, there were also pumpkins to pick.  Lots of them.  And views.

And next to the pumpkin field, a corn maze - large, fun but intricate rather than fiendish (this one should move too):

And after we returned on the hayride with our pumpkins...more sliding! (and this one)

Now we just need to find time to go back for some of those apples...

Day 5.277: Straw zombie attack!

We visited Delmar Farmers Market this morning. Although the temperature had been well below freezing when I went out for my run this morning (still short and slow), by mid-morning the bright sunshine had changed it to a very nice (if solidly autumnal) day.

The market is held at the middle school and outside it are a number of straw men.

This one was clearly an attacking zombie:

But fortunately, despite never having seen the Thriller video (as far as I know), Exile #3 knew that the way to ward off an attack of the undead is to engage them in a dance routine:

So we all escaped with our lives (and our wares)!

Day 5.264: Technology in Slingerlands?

I had no plans to attend the opening day of Shop Rite in Slingerlands until one of my readers contacted me to do so late this afternoon.  Well...OK, if the readers demand it, what can I do?

So I made my way over to the Vista Technology Campus (perhaps they should just change the name to avoid further embarrassment?) where Shop Rite were opening their doors on their third store in the region.  I expected to go over there, take a few photos, admire the buzz of opening day and write something nice about the store - after all, you can always find something nice to say about a brand new store.

However, I failed at the second step.  As I was taking an interior shot - just because I like to accompany my words with a relevant picture - I was pounced on by one of the many staff who were standing around (there were also many working the counters and registers to achieve an impressive flow of opening-day shoppers through the store, but there were a lot also standing around) who informed me that I wasn't allowed to take photographs in the store.

Now, this is not a public place and the owners or operators are within their rights to set such a rule, so I merely expressed surprise and explained why I wanted a photograph.  Perhaps sensing a PR blunder, the staff-member then asked to wait while a manager was called over so that permission could be sought.

The manager was very polite and accommodating, he told me I could take a general scene inside for my post and asked if there was anything else I particularly wanted to photograph so he could approve it.  If that had been the total conversation, I might have thought nothing more of it, but he also tried to explain the policy and that was less successful.  First he told me that there was a legal restriction because of the people in the photograph.  I explained my understanding of the law - that for reporting purposes I needed no releases and that if I did, that was for me to worry about.  He explained that the store could be liable for some kind of invasion of privacy...vagueness...then he dropped it and took another tack.  There were commercial reasons - I might work for a competitor and want to photograph prices etc. - OK, that's valid, except that the store has online shopping, so why would any competitor want to send a guy with a camera around the store - and if they did what could Shop Rite expect to lose?

I'm being harsh - I know - but it always annoys me when people lie to me or spin a guess into a fact to try to get rid of me or shut me up.  He could have said, "It's our policy. I'm not sure why."  He did not have to explain it to me - I never suggested that they could not ask me to stop, I just expressed some surprise at the restriction.

Hopefully we will do some shopping there soon and I can report on some exciting finds.  I noticed some interesting gluten-free items and a better-than-average beer selection.  I look forward to seeing what they have in the way of dairy-free too - we are a challenging family when it comes to grocery shopping.  For now, however, I am left musing on the technology restrictions in the technology park.





Full disclosure: I received a small free sample of cake that was available to all shoppers today.  It was tasty.