Three Favorite Pictures: July 11, 2010

I've never seen a bald eagle in the wild.  Sure, I've seen the one at the Roger Williams Zoo.  But living in a zoon isn't nearly dignified enough for a bird this magnificent.  He was flying near the Bear Mountain Bridge, near West Point.

This one happened when I was trying to take a picture of something on the shore just north of New York City.  It was, as Bob Ross would call it, a "happy little accident."  I've always wanted to take a picture like this.  I've tried and tried.  And then managed to actually get it by dumb luck.  Who've thunk it?

I am a sucker for pictures of Sabine at anchor.  I have scads of them.  This was taken just north of West Point, near an intake for the New York City water department.  I totally peed in the water, sorry citizens of New York.

Start Spreading the News

I'm leaving today...
It’s late. I am on the train heading back from New York City. My brain is oozing out my ears from the Writer’s Digest Conference I attended over the weekend. (If you want to read about the writerly stuff that happened over the weekend, you can check it out at the Lunch Hour Novelist, as I am trying not to contaminate this blog with book stuff.)

On Friday I took the day off from work. It had snowed early in the morning, so I left the Mini in the garage and drove the jeep to the train station in Kingston. When I got on the train I pulled out a book and enjoyed the forced inactivity of reading and watching the scenery, until the woman beside me struck up a little conversation.

I meet the nicest people on planes and trains. There was the time I met the yacht manager who was on his way back from managing some mega sailing yacht somewhere in the Caribbean. This man was older than dirt, had a stutter, and could only speak in 2 volumes… loud and LOUDER. He whipped out his laptop to show me pics of the boat. Before I knew it, I was gazing upon a digital picture of his naked wrinkled genitals as he lounged on his favorite nude beach.

Then there was the time I met the man who was the president of the local Sierra Club. He was actually quite cool, as was this woman I sat next to on Friday. Turns out, she is the mastermind behind Be My Guest granola. I listened as she told me her story, and I thoroughly enjoyed the passion with which she told her story. More people should be like that. Her eyes twinkled as she talked about her product and how it was catching on. I totally want to party with her.

When we arrived in New York we agreed to find our way to the cab stands together. I helped her get her bag off the train, as it was overloaded with granola. She made it a bit lighter as she gave me a bag (which was a Godsend when I got up at 6 on Saturday morning to prep for my day at the conference). Let me tell you, this granola is EVERYTHING I’ve been looking for in a granola. I love to toss a handful into my yogurt. I’ve even turned my friends on to doing that. And this is awesome granola. It’s not too sweet, it’s got a nice balance of nuts, fruit, oats and seeds. I will buy it again, and I encourage you guys to try it too.

We shared a cab, which wasn’t really a cab. We nervously stepped into a Mercedes SUV for $20 each. We stood outside Penn Station and wondered if we should trust that this man wasn’t ripping us off. I pointed to the line of people waiting for cabs and said “Hey, our time is worth something.” And it was fine, we got to where we were going.

I arrived at my hotel and went to my conference to begin my first day of learning to be more authorly.

To be continued…

Meep Meep!

And now I am driving around town in this:

And here's the kicker.  We didn't trade in the Jeep.  You know, the thing that wouldn't start reliably for the last few months.  We did finally manage to get the Jeep registered and street legal.  Now that it has a new starter, new alternator, new steering column guts and all that stuff... maybe it'll last awhile.

But I don't need to worry about that.  Because I am tooling around in this bitchen little car.  And it is little.  You can see in the picture at the top that it has a back seat.  It's purely decorative, as there is no where to put your legs if you sit in the back seat.  The backrest of the front seat is right against the back seat.  (Why bother, Mini?)

But still, it's such a fun little car.  I cannot wait to cruise around with the top down in the summer time. 

Only 53 more days until daylight savings time!

Monochromatic

It snowed here in Rhode Island.  This is what I saw when I opened the front door this morning.

As Griffen stood in the snow it was still snowing.  In fact it snowed all day.  I'd measured 16 inches after we finished the shoveling and the blowing.  I cannot see the surface of my deck anymore.  It got covered with a few more inches a mere minutes after we'd shoveled.

The birdfeeders were still pretty busy today.  

Here are out pear trees, weighed down.

Junco going in for a snack.

The railings were also covered minutes after I shoveled them off.

I Tried Not To Get Sucked In

I tried, I really really did. But the holiday season got me again. The overall busy-ness, the overeating, the trying to cram way too much work into the last few weeks of the month, the all of it. And here I am on January 3rd, noticing that I hadn’t posted since the middle of December. Gah!

Well, resolution time is upon us. And here are mine. I think I will finally take that damn cooking class I resolved to take last year. There’s one coming up next week, and I want to cross it off my list.

The next is to plan and cook dinner 2 nights per week. I am not talking about throwing a frozen pizza in the oven, I am talking about planning an actual balanced meal 2 nights per week.

My last resolution is to connect with family more than I have. I was looking at all the Christmas cards we got this year, and thought about how nice it is to get handwritten cards in the mail instead of bills and junk. Then one of Todd’s cousins put together a calendar for the year and put every single family birthday and anniversary on there. My goal is to send a card to each family member on their birthday or anniversary this year.

I say bring it on 2011!