The Diary of A Simple Man

We'd forgotten to make a hotel reservation, so Teri asked me to book a hotel from the car with my phone. Poughkeepsie NY, she said. So I called up Holiday Inn Express and booked us a room for the night.

We were tired and hungry when we took the exit for Poughkeepsie. The Holiday Inn was right there, though. I walked into the lobby and said "I have a reservation."

"Are you sure you're in the right hotel?" the girl behind the counter asked.

Our reservation was at the Holiday Inn Express. This was a Holiday Inn, no Express. The Express was a few blocks away.

We drove there, and I walked in the lobby.

"I have a reservation...I hope."

The girl looked dubious. After she made a quick phone call, she said, "Your reservations are for Poughkeepsie?".

I nodded.

"This is Fishkill."

Poughkeepsie, it turned out, was a thirty-minute drive farther away from the highway. But we finally got there, and were able to check in. Whew!

Posted via LjBeetle

It was such a busy weekend - and, overall, a good one. On Thursday, as I mentioned at the time, Teri and I picked up new phones - smartphones, the only Android phones AT&T offers. They're Motorola Backflips. We're still trying to decide if we like them.

They require a data plan, which will cost more. But we finally moved the phones into my name, which will give us a 19% discount. It won't erase the increase, but it will substantially reduce it. I just wish we'd made the switch eight years ago. We'd have saved thousands!
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We ate, got home, I read to Sebastian and again had to resort to singing, and after he fell asleep I started writing this. And now I'm going to bed!

But I will say this: I want to DO things on the weekends. Have some fun. Get out of the same old rut. And this weekend felt like a really good start.

Here's a photo of the Traveler restaurant in northern CT. It's well worth a visit if you can get there. A free book with every meal!

It was an interesting one.

On Saturday we had to get up on the early side, because there was a Cub Scout event at the local high school: a Belt Loop Bonanza, in which each kid took four one-hour classes and will receive a belt loop award for each one. It wasn't just Sebastian's troop, either; there were hundreds of Cub Scouts there with their parents, from lots of Massachusetts and Rhode Island troops.

It felt weird to be in a high school. I haven't been in one in ages...it must have been twenty-six years! It was also strange because we had to bring our lunches and eat in the school cafeteria. I don't know...the whole experience was odd, but fun.

Sebastian took a great Wildlife Conservation course that was taught by a women who works at Roger Williams Zoo, an introduction to chess (we played a game together, since he didn't have another kid to play against - he did surprisingly well), and then had lunch. After that he took a course in marbles, and finally a course in Geology that was taught by a guy who really knew his stuff - he seemed like the kind of teacher you really wouldn't want to piss off, but he was very authoritative.

Sebastian was quite good throughout all of the classes. I noticed that some kids, though, were just awful. They wouldn't stop talking, wouldn't pay attention, or constantly interrupted the teachers with pointless statements ("I like jello!") or long comments about the topic which were usually completely wrong. In some cases their parents tried to shush them, but hardly ever effectively. Those kids had real issues, I would say.

Sebastian did get a bit rambunctious at the end, after the classes were over; there was a closing ceremony where he basically ran around and didn't listen to me, but it was over quickly. Then Teri picked us up and we all went up to my parents' place in Brookline to celebrate a belated Christmas. I should explain: we alternate Thanksgiving and Christmas between my family and Teri's each year, and this year we spent Christmas with Teri's family. So we spend a belated Christmas with my family later. We were worried, though, because the weather report said that we'd be getting a bad storm that night. As always, no two reports agreed on when the storm would start or how much snow would fall. It could be anywhere from 4 PM to midnight, and the volume could be anywhere from six to ten inches.

I brought up a yellow bundt cake that I'd baked late the night before, not thinking of the get-together but just for the hell of it. We had roast beef, twice-baked potatoes, gravy, and Yorkshire pudding...I have to tell you, I love Yorkshire pudding with gravy. I only get it about once a year, when my mother makes it, and I really need to learn how to make it myself.

We left at about 8 PM. The snow was starting to come down. It was pretty mild in Brookline, but as we approached the I95/Route 1 crossover, it was getting pretty thick and scary. So Teri decided to stick to Route 1. It's a slower route, less dangerous but big enough to get good coverage from snowplows. It was a long, slow, somewhat scary ride home, because when we left Route 1 we were on some relatively unplowed and quiet back roads. But we made it home safely, woke Sebastian up, and put him to bed. It took a lot of reading to put him to sleep again; at least three chapters of The Black Stallion.

Sunday Teri woke me up and asked me to show her how to start the new snowblower. I got up (slowly), got dressed, and went out to get it. Our shed doors were frozen shut, but with some hard work I managed to get them open. The snowblower started up right away with no trouble, and I used it to clear the five or six inches of snow from our back walk, driveway, and front sidewalk. It only took about ten minutes or so. What a wonderful convenience!

Sunday was a relatively quiet day for us. We did some grocery shopping. Sebastian had been scheduled for a birthday party for a girl in his class, but it was postponed due to the weather. Teri and Sebastian played their DS's quite a bit, and I played them when they took breaks. I also spent a lot of time reading Larry Niven's Footfall, a good large SF invasion book of the massive disaster variety. Not top-notch Niven, but very good.

In the evening, Sebastian took a shower. A little later, we discovered that he'd shut the bathroom door behind him...and somehow, the bolt had engaged. This was a real problem, not least because I discovered this when I needed to use the bathroom.

It was also a mystery. How on earth had the bolt been thrown? It's an old door and a very simple mechanism. There's a latch for the door, and a light bolt that you can throw. Unfortunately, this meant that we were in trouble. There was no key and no keyhole. The hinges were on the other side of the door. The lone bathroom window couldn't be opened from outside, and breaking it would be both dangerous and expensive. Even if I unscrewed and dismounted the door handle, there would be no hole large enough to allow us to do anything at all. I tried using magnets to jiggle the bolt, but didn't have a magnet strong enough to do anything through the thickness of the door. I was able to slide a piece of cardboard between the door and the frame, but all I could do was locate the bolt; I couldn't open it, because there was no way to apply left-to-right pressure of any sort. The doorframe pretty much blocked me from any action. I tried lots of jiggling, but that didn't help at all.

So I threw my body against the bathroom door a couple of times, and on the second time I bashed the door open. We were lucky; the damage was relatively slight. The bolt and latch were badly bent (I neglected to fasten the latch open while bashing the door - to be honest, I was pretty pissed off by that point - I really needed to get in there). A very small splinter of wood was knocked off part of the door. But I was able to bend the latch and bolt back enough to make them work smoothly again, and the door itself doesn't look all that much worse.

Still, Sebastian has been strictly instructed never to close the bathroom door behind him again. I still can't figure out how the bolt got thrown - it's completely inaccessible from outside the bathroom!

We're home from the White Mountains. As I noted in the voice post last night, I hurt my left arm quite badly in a fall. I'm basically one-handed right now, and therefore won't be posting as much as usual for a while - I think.

I'm on vicodin for the pain, which equals or exceeds anything I've ever felt before. Although x-rays showed no sign of a break (which completely amazes me) I don't know what other damage I've sustained. I'm hoping there hasn't been any permanent or serious damage to my tendons or other tissues.

By the way, the White Mountains are incredibly beautiful. If you've never been, you really should go.

Let me see...what happened?

I took last Friday off, because it was our fifth anniversary. We dropped Sebastian off at school in the morning, and then went to the gym to take a yoga class.

I only get to do yoga when I take a Friday off. That's too bad, because it's a HELL of a workout. My thigh muscles still hurt from the Friday class. There were a few moments when I thought I'd have to stop, but luckily I made it all the way through.

Teri and I hung out together for the day, and picked Sebastian up early - right after his nap. We took him up to stay with my parents. I can't tell you how hard it was to leave my little guy behind! It was like having my heart pulled in two. Teri had to basically drag me out to the car.

It felt very strange to be without Sebastian. But we got to sleep late the next morning, which was nice. Then we went over and - boy, does this sound weird - had our nails done. Teri had a fill, and since I was tagging along, she suggested I get a manicure. Her regular place was jammed with people, so we went down the street a couple of blocks to a new place.

The new place was quite nice, actually, and Teri may actually switch to it. As for me, I always like getting personal attention; I spent too many years without anyone touching me at all, so now I really appreciate a human touch. The manicurist cut my nails really short, so much so that I started bleeding a bit under the nail of my left little finger, but she did a good job overall.

There was one thing that was quite interesting. I have a lot of hard, dead skin around my nails, particularly near the tips at the sides. The manicurist removed a lot of that dead skin. It felt weird; somehow she clipped away a lot of it, and it felt as if she were using some sort of glue to PULL the skin off.

To be honest, I didn't watch, and that's why I don't know how she did it.

After the manicure we headed over to Plymouth. My parents had given us an overnight stay there at the Governor Bradford hotel as an anniversary present. On the way, I started reading James Clavell's Shogun to Teri. I'm glad to say that that she found it quite interesting.

It was a cold and windy gray day. And I mean cold. People were going around in winter jackets, and the temperature was well under 45°. We checked in at the motel, walked around a bit, looked at the Mayflower II and the urine-soaked-and-coin-covered Plymouth Rock (from which I filed a voice post), and then went to Carmen's Cafe Nicole for lunch. I had a meatball sub; not bad.

We did some shopping, buying a cork popgun for Sebastian (I was torn; I don't like the "gunning" that he's been doing lately, but I had a popgun myself when I was a kid) along with a few other things. Then we went for a drive, since the bitter cold made outdoor walking painful. We found a mall with a theatre, but there wasn't anything that we really wanted to see.

Unfortunately there was a Joanne's Fabrics there, so I had to sit around while Teri looked at fabrics and patterns. In sheer desperation, I filed another voice post.

I was pleased to see a Brighams in the mall; I'm afraid that that chain will disappear before too much longer.

Eventually we found our way back to Plymouth and went to Isaac's Restaurant, which was next to the hotel. It was jammed. The hostess told us that the wait was an hour and a half! Teri wasn't inclined to wait, but just as we were about to walk out, the hostess added "...or, you could be seated immediately at a smaller table on the other side."

The "smaller table" was a four-person table, actually quite large, and the view was just as good. We're both still not sure what all that was about. We were wearing jeans; was that it? But there was no dress code. Very strange!

Teri had seafood, fried clams I think. I wanted a burger, but that was on the lunch menu; the only thing on the dinner menu that I could stand was filet mignon. I honestly would have preferred a hamburger but I was out of luck. Still, we managed to have a nice dinner and head back to the hotel.

Incidentally, here's the view from our hotel door (we were on the top floor, the third):


Since it might be hard to see, here's a magnification of the Mayflower II; as you can see, it was right there. A nice view.


We had an odd night; I had a lot of intense, vivid dreams, and didn't sleep very well. The next morning we both slept late. To my amazement, Teri slept later than I did! That's very unusual.

The next morning I was incredibly stiff and sore; for some reason that usually happens when I sleep in a hotel. Teri was sore, too, so she took me through a quick yoga exercise. To my amazement, I felt much better right away; not pain-free, but mobile and functional.

Incidentally, I called my folks several times over the weekend. Wouldn't want you to think that we'd forgotten about Sebastian.

Although...weird as it is, Teri and I both confessed to each other (to our mutual surprise, I think), that much as we missed Sebastian, it was still fun to be on our own together, on the road. I don't know exactly how to put this, but we still have something, even without Sebastian; and that's something that we might have forgotten over the past few years.

Breakfast was excellent; we passed up the hotel's continental breakfast for a full sit-down breakfast at the Water Street Cafe, which was a couple of blocks to the right of Plymouth Rock if you're looking seaward. It's opposite Brewster Gardens, which is a lovely little park with a brook - and is, apparently, where the Indians caught herring and taught the Pilgrims to place some in each hill of corn for fertilizer.

I had a Belgian waffle, and it was the real deal (as was the maple syrup). Teri had eggs and bacon and home fries, and next time I might have those as well. Excellent food; we'll probably try them for lunch next time. I have a feeling they'll be very crowded in-season, though!

After that we checked out and headed home. On the way we passed a large horse show of some sort near the highway. I read some more Shogun to Teri. We got home relatively early; it felt good to be home. The cats were glad to see us, too.

Later that afternoon my parents brought Sebastian home. It was wonderful to see our little guy again. Unfortunately he dodged around Teri and jumped into my arms, shouting "Daddy! Gaggy!"

I don't know why he says "Gaggy", but I suspect it's due to a strong strain of silliness in his makeup.

Teri was a bit sad, but he snuggled with her on the couch later and made up for it.

And that was our weekend, and our fifth anniversary!

On Saturday Teri's father took us to the New England Aquarium. Here are some photos - ten of them.

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After the Aquarium we walked to Quincy Market, passing a seemingly psychotic guy in a wheelchair who had been dogging us all day (and brightening the trip by screaming curses at the top of his lungs). We had lunch in the basement of the Salty Dog, where Sebastian and his cousin Margo were pretty naughty. Then we walked to the State Street station, and headed to South Station to wait for the train home.

My timing was off, so we had to wait a little more than an hour. The train display was still up, so Sebastian and Margo killed time by screaming with delight and running around and around it. Finally the train came, and we went home.

The funny thing is that when we asked Sebastian what his favorite part of the day was, he said "South Station".

The next day Teri's mother took Sebastian in the morning, and for the first time in years I was able to persuade Teri to join me in sleeping late. We woke up at 11am, feeling great. Teri's not good at relaxing, but we were both suffering from a huge sleep deficit exacerbated by the strenuous Saturday expedition. I told her I want to sleep in like that every Sunday...well, I can dream, can't I?

Last night it snowed; only a couple of inches, but under that the car was sheathed in ice. As we waited for the car to warm up, Sebastian and I looked at pictures on the computer. The one that really grabbed him was one of the last ones I ever took of our old cat, Sam. Sebastian stared and stared. He reached out and tried to pat the screen. Then he turned to me, pointed to the screen and said:

"Daddy, wait here a minute. I'm going to go in there and get Sammy back."

A very busy weekend. My mother had stayed over on Thursday night, so on Friday evening Teri, Sebastian, and my Mom all drove up. We had dinner with my parents, and that's when I performed the Herculean task (I'm thinking Augean) of cleaning up my father's computer. I find it's really good to do something special, get out of the house on Friday evening; it makes the weekend seem much longer.

On the spur of the moment I imposed on my folks a little, I guess; we arranged for me to bring Sebastian up to the city on Saturday, since Teri would be volunteering at the animal shelter. I thought Sebastian might like to see the model train display at South Station. They have one every year for the holidays, and I'd seen them setting it up on Wednesday evening.

I also noticed that the Enchanted Village was open. This is an old local tradition; it used to be done at Jordan Marsh, but since they were taken over by one of those damned national chains the store stopped, and the city has been doing it instead. Since it was just $1 per person, I could actually afford it - barely.

And now, some photos and more detail.
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We got it all done. Sebastian came home and helped us trim the tree. I'll post photos of the tree and that crazy Christmas train soon.

What a busy weekend!

We drove up to Maine on Wednesday afternoon. There was less traffic than we'd ever seen before, all the way up to Boothbay. Sebastian slept for part of the trip, then woke up and expressed a deep dislike of highways.

"Is this a highway?"

"Um...yes."

"NO! NO HIGHWAY!", accompanied by tears and shouts of dismay.

It was raining when we pulled up to the house. I unstrapped Sebastian, who ran to the house to see Grandma - only to experience a sudden attack of shyness. But that soon passed, and before long he was running all over the house.

Dan, Jen, William, Lily, and Craig came in at about 11PM; we were asleep upstairs.

Okay, I'm not going to get too detailed here, because I just don't have the time.

The kids had a lot of fun, running around, shouting, playing, etc. They listened to the Peter and the Wolf and Super Mario 64 CDs I'd brought up. Looking back, I wish I'd brought up the Nintendo itself; we'd have had some fun with it.

Both William and Craig want a copy of the Mario CD. Just a note for myself.

We went downtown and I got to hit the library porch. There were a lot fewer books than there are in-season, but I was still able to find ten good ones. Most of them were children's books, including another version of The Aristocats. Sebastian was quite pleased. We left some of them up there, and brought the rest home.

We took a long walk out in the fields and woods in the back of the house during a short lull in the rain. Saw the broken-down old turkey coops, the stream, and some big rocks. Sebastian soon decided he was tired and had me carry him. We all climbed up on a rock and Dan took a picture, but it came out very blurry.

During the walk Sebastian started telling a strange story. Something about "Uncle Dan and Craig and William [who were ranging ahead of the rest of us] all disappeared suddenly, but there was no wolf nearby." I have no idea what that was about.

I brought a length of birch bark back from the walk, but Teri didn't want to bring it home so I left it rolled up in the hollow of the old water-pump lamp that I made back in junior high.

On Friday Sebastian woke up at midnight, wailed "I'm going to throw up!", and did. Fortunately Teri was there with a plastic bag, so things could have been much worse. My poor little boy sobbed and sobbed. The attack was over after about ten minutes, and to my surprise there were no repeats. Once we got him quieted down and cleaned up a bit, he insisted that I sleep in his bed. It's an awfully small bed, so I was crammed up against the wall, but he fell asleep soon enough.

The animals and seagulls dined well on the Thanksgiving leftovers. There were lots of seagulls perched on the top of the house, and their shadows fell clearly on the hill in the back.

The trip home was uneventful; Sebastian went in Mom and Dad's car until we stopped and had lunch in York (ME), at Bosun's Landing. The food was excellent, as always, and we discovered that they were closing for the season the next day. Sebastian enjoyed showing Fred, the large blue fish with a big bulge on his head, to Grandma.

After lunch Sebastian came to our car, since we'd be heading for home. The boy objected to being on the highway, and made us take a potty stop at the state liquor store; after, as we were starting to pull out of the parking lot, he made us stop again, claiming that he had more to do. False alarm, it turned out.

Finally we got home. Sebastian was overjoyed to see Sarah; he kept patting her and saying how beautiful she was. Both cats seemed pretty pleased to see us.

On Saturday we went to the Bridge of Echoes in Needham, MA with my parents, my brother and his wife, and their kids. The videocamera died for some reason (I don't yet know if it's permanently dead), but I got some decent shots with the still camera.

On the way to the bridge we took a small detour to see this waterfall. Apparently that's some sort of restaurant in the shot; pity the water looks so dirty, as otherwise it looks like a lovely place.

It took a bit of climbing to get to the top of the aquaduct (the bridge is actually an aquaduct), but it was worth it. The part over the river must have been close to 100 feet high. Teri's agoraphobia kicked in; it didn't help that the walkway isn't flat, but rather has a peak shape that makes you feel as if you're being pushed to one side or the other. The view was incredible. Incidentally, those are the tops of very tall trees alongside the aquaduct. On the way back a couple of canada geese flew by, honking; they were high above the river, but actually just below the height of my head as they skimmed over the top of the aquaduct.

The iron railings on the sides were also quite interesting, because they were simply packed with yellowjackets. The railings are hollow and in some cases rusted out, and the bees were swarming everywhere. I tried to get some close-up shots of the bees, but maybe I was too nervous - when I downloaded the photos, the bees were just out of shot.

Creepy - you could hear the buzzing as you walked down the aquaduct.

Here's a shot from the middle of the aquaduct. That restaurant next to the falls is in the lower part, of course. Needham has some spectacular radio towers.

Another shot from the top of the aquaduct. These are the start of the steps down to the street. It's a long way down, particularly if you're carrying a 39-pound boy who's too tired to walk.

Top to bottom. It may not look that high in this shot, but that's because this is the shortest part; the river is actually well below the street level. That's my father down below, although that's not his truck.

Cross over the street and you soon reach the head of another staircase that leads down to the inner base the bridge, and the echo platform. I don't know what she sees in it, but since Teri likes this shot I'm including it here.

The staircase down to the echo platform. My father and brother are at the bottom, and Sebastian's head can be seen as refreshed (but not entirely willingly) he climbs down on his own.

An experiment: a composite photo of the entire span from underneath. I stood in one spot and started out with my head bent way back to get the side of the arch behind my back, then tried to space shots out evenly. Not perfect, but kind of fun to create, I guess.

The echoes were pretty cool; Sebastian enjoyed them, as did we all. If you'd like to know more about the bridge, here's an article about it. And here's a page with much better photos than mine.