Happy Friday to all:
Well-it’s been a busy week in the Green Mountains. The weather has been nuts- alternating between cold and rain and southern- like heat…all making the leaves begin to change in earnest. We got back late Saturday night from our week’s family vacation sojourn to Paradise (Max’s palace in San Diego) and it’s quite an adjustment to be back on Mt. Holly. More attached pictures than usual this installment: a few from Paradise, then the African drummers come to Vermont, the adventures of Stu and Jenn taking an unplanned hike and finally the surreal Tunbridge World’s Fair (yep- that’s right- you can look it up). So…the week in review:
Saturday- got back to Albany International (you can look that up too!) after 8 hours of flying- highlighted by a layover in Vegas that resulted in a quick four aces on the video poker and a $200 bonanza. This was good-because after we landed we stopped at the diner in Troy on the way home and Jenn snuck two orders of rice pudding to go while I was in the bathroom (apparently rice pudding is similar to bedding for her..which by the way, when we spent the night in Albany before our flight to SD, we were compelled to buy more sheets since there was a TJ Max there..I believe we now have 36 new sets of sheets for our lovely bedrooms when you come to visit). We finally got home about midnight and were totally wired with the time difference- so stayed up for hours watching our shows on HBO (anyone catch the season opener of Boardwalk Empire? Masterful). Good family trip with a quick two day side trip to Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernadinos- which is one giant picture postcard.
Sunday- slept really late; tried to get the house and our lives re-organized, admired the new slime in the Pond, found lots that needed done and went off to Proctorsville to hear a group of African drummers in bright fall afternoon sunshine on the town green. Sayon Camara is quite a character from Guinea- now living in Woodstock and paired with a group of new- age white kids from New Hampshire…needless to say he stands out. There were no black people in the audience but I upped our count for our time in Vermont by four just because of his sheer Africaness. It got cold- we left for shopping and dinner in Ludlow- which got us home late enough not to do any chores.
Monday- uggh…lots to do and hot sunshine…no excuses. The lawn had mysteriously grown in epic proportions while we were gone- so we spent the afternoon on it, cleaned the house and went down to visit Podge the organic gardener- lots of good stuff at this time of year- some of which we have never heard of and don’t know what to do with- but bought anyway since it seemed the right thing to do. We then drove around aimlessly looking for something we could not quite find. Stu went to the folk club and we were in our fist heavy rehearsals for the annual show we will do the last Monday in September in the library basement. Two of my songs are being featured and I have a dobro backing me, which is a life peak moment.
Tuesday- it rained- a lot- and it leaked- a lot…so we spent most of the day pondering solutions to this new event. I put a posting on the local town e-serve for someone to patch our little roof over the living room bay window-and got a ton of responses- employment is not all that good in these parts. I only noticed it because Jenn decided that I needed to clean out all the window sills, which were pretty dirty, and I went in the living room for the first time in over a month and saw parts of the ceiling on the floor, which led me to surmise there might be a water problem of some kind. So – I sent Jenn up on the roof to check it out, and…voila.
Wednesday- we woke early to 90 degree heat and major humidity and so spent the morning splitting wood and sweating a lot. Our neighbors lent us their state of the art log -splitter and we decided to get the three big piles of wood left from old downed trees, cut up (while it was nice and hot)for the impending use of the aforementioned living room and its fireplace. We spent half the day and got through one pile…but did not kill each other…so good morning it was. Stu then felt restless and that we had no plans to speak of- so we headed out for late afternoon hike in advance of hail filled thunderstorms. We went down to Ludlow and up to the base on Okemo Mountain ski area and found that there are apparently no trails there…so we walked up the giant slalom ski slope. You can follow Jenn’s progress from my advanced position in the photo spread. It’s my opinion that they could benefit from mowing the ski slopes in the off season- as they were awfully hard to walk up…and what’s with the lifts just sitting there unused? What about all the homeless people who do not have a lift while these sit there empty?
Thursday- woke early so Jenn could play at Skiping (is that a verb yet). Stu went to the barn to work out and then continued his assault on the window sills. Daryl and Daryl came out to look at the leak and told us it was probably just a result of the storm window being left open for months of driving rainstorms. We were so embarrassed we asked them to come fix the roof anyway. We set out at mid morning for our big travel and event day, heading first for the legendary Tunbridge World’s Fair. Now, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, since the population of Tunbridge is about 350- but it sure was a good fair anyway, though the harness racing highlight was put off because the track was so wet. We decided to not wait when we found out about the delay and after Stu spent a half hour walking around the grandstand trying to find the betting booths that don’t exist, though a slightly disabled man told me he would bet me on the races if I wanted. We left there in advance of the latest hailstorms to go down to Hanover NH (home of Dartmouth) and have a real sophisticated kind of night out. We went to Dan and Whits general store-which is really exciting in this part of the country, then to King Arthur massive bakery operation and then to a giant farm stand. Wow…what a coup this was (unfortunately, no bedding). We then had dinner after walking around for an hour in the pouring rain, at the local Thai place, which is actually one flight up (a good sign when choosing any kind of Asian and left us with a great window table overlooking charming downtown and the pouring rain.) This worked really well once we moved the table far enough away from the window to not get soaked by a worse roof leak than ours. All of that was more than made up for by great food and our server, Darcy of Dartmouth , who squealed with excitement when we finished our soup and were ready for our tofu. We then proceeded to the highlight of our night out, a real movie theater, to see Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen’s latest (see my review forthcoming for more on this). We had been wanting to see this film and going about two hours away was the closest we could find- plus it was good balance to the world’s fair. We ended our evening with an hour and a half drive through pouring rain and fog on Vermont route 131 which has been tore completely apart all summer. Jen kept asking me if I wanted her to drive- which is generally not a good romance builder.
Friday: well, we made it through our first week back home. Wet and cold all day today- Stu decided he was in SD and walked round in shorts and flip flops. Discovered this morning that some guy we called for a tree estimate came down and cut down the tree- which left a mess for us to ponder. I borrowed Larry’s chainsaw and his son josh to follow me around- but the chain was so dull it just quit running. So, josh took me to see Barry the hermit chainsaw sharpener who lives in a trailer in the woods in East Wallingford- who would only talk to me through Josh (until I told him my last name was Barry, too…only a slight lie in the interest of community relationships) ; but he was still done for the day and finding a space in the trailer to go to sleep (around 4:30 pm)- but said he would have it done before daybreak- so that is tomorrow’s plan. Jenn has spent the day cleaning and making friends with the City of Columbus water division which has run up hundreds of dollars of bills at her house while no one was living there. That is why we love Vermont. Got to go get ready for dinner next door. Rachel is making chicken chow mein- which might be pretty interesting.
Till next time,
Stu
