Bionic thoughts

(Only spoilers in evaluation)

Lame script. Lame dialogue. Eick should be ashamed. Katee, you're way better than that.
Being super-strong doesn't give you actual fighting skills.
Jamie: Starbuck with a nice mommy.
And Badger aged like 20 years between prison and mountain.
HI, CHIEF!

let's catch up, you

I went to Taughannock two weekends ago and stumbled on this.

It was like walking into Middle-earth.

Was it a group effort? A mob rock sculpturing?

Wee elf house

This tried to bonk me on the head, falling from afar. Sucker!

Please come back. I love you.


Mike, Jenny, me


Stan


Hitler



Littletree Orchards. Cox oranges, methinks.

Jen!

And finally: I came in to work yesterday to discover ... THIS.
A couple of other things were knocked over.
No idea what happened.
No one has 'fessed up.

This makes me so happy

I want this video to be my life. But outside, not in a warehouse. Pick your colors and fling your hands in the air one at a time, mi dancy amigos!


Thanks, Apple! I can't wait till you rule the world!

This is the very reason I got my wee camera

I was just at the urologist's office. While I was waiting in the exam room, I noticed a bright green bigger-than-index card on the counter. It had "vasectomy" written on it. Now, you can't just stick a bright green card with the emboldened word "vasectomy" on it in patients' easy line of sight and expect it to go unnoticed or unexamined. I tried to spy what it said without actually getting up (it is my instinct to behave while at the doctor, and keeping to myself is key to that), but the only other words I could make out were "plastic gloves" and -- I swear this looked like what it said -- "can opener."

Keep a camera with you at all times.

SEVEN!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KITTENS! And Happy Mama Day, Rogue!

Look what Elly found

here. Hee.


She ALSO is awesome for making me DVDs of two of my favorite shows ever. BFF, Elly! Standing O!

Road trip to Salem!

I'm a direct descendant of this woman.

Despite my adoption.

Eat that, nation!

WE GOT COLBERT TICKETS!!

All thanks to a fine young Cornell student named Wren.

WREN
IS
AWESOME

Fin

When I was in my 20s I wanted to become a marine biologist. I didn’t because I just don’t know how to make such dreams a reality. Maybe cos the things I always wanted most growing up never became reality; maybe because my parents did such a good job at making me think I was not part of the real world; blah blah blah. Regardless, it’s mostly why I moved to Florida, but the dream never happened.

Whenever I told someone at Shoals that I had wanted to do that, instead of answering with the “Oh yes, everyone wants to do that; I bet you wanted to work with dolphins, too” that I expected -- that so many people say -- they said, “Why didn’t you?”

That impressed me. For of course; they’re doing it, they’re helping others do it, they see it every day. Why didn’t I?

(the real answer: fear. A life lived in fear is a life half lived. My half-life ain’t been so bad, though.)

part deux

Off the boat and on to finding out what had happened to my bags and where I would be sleeping. In a dorm (I was hoping for more private and modern quarters), but oh well. Hm, just one toilet in the dorm, and at the opposite end of the hall. I pee a lot during the night. No biggie, I thought anyway. It’s just one night.

I sat in on a marine mammal class where JB told us really bizarre things about certain kinds of whales (Mother Nature is weird), but after that, there wasn’t anything specific to join. At one point my social anxiety almost got the best of me; I’d spotted Willy and hoped to set up a time to talk, but he was wrangling with his son and kept saying, “We’ll be in touch through e-mail.” Since this was only like 5 p.m. and I was there till 2 the next day, I felt a little abandoned. Finally I forced myself to sit down with some people in the dining hall. They were completely welcoming. This is what they do there, after all: new people come, all there because they love the sea and the things that live in and above it. They all meet and gather for the time they’re there. Everyone’s a stranger and a new acquaintance. Corny, maybe, but it’s true.

And there was rum. JB, the second director of the island, had brought rum along. (Rogue is rolling around in the sun, BTW. Inside still.) There were also lobsters for dinner, which I didn’t have and which smelled just horrid. Like death, really. I had barely eaten all day, believe it or not, so salad and corn and egg rolls were fine with me (there were vegetarian dishes, but both had soy).

John and I met up to take pictures of the sunset (rather, the pink sky above it, since it set behind clouds), but I bailed before it was totally done cos I was just exhausted.

Walking back to the dorm, though, I realized I would never have a night like this again, so I went and sat on a porch in the night, looking toward mainland. In the building behind me someone was teaching kids to sing sea chanties. Brilliant.

(different porch)

Here I have to applaud my bladder on this trip: first, holding on while on the boat, then, during the night, I only went twice! Whoo! Yes, you do need to know this! Sometime I may be staying at your house, and you’ll know to put me near the bathroom. Also meriting applause is my head, for fending off pain even while in the sun for 4 hours (the wind helped).

Sunday morning I went down to see the birds being banded. They catch them in this wall of net set up between tall bushes; boys—just boys!—there for family programs would get them out of the net, put them in a paper bag,



and take them back to David, who gives private piano and flute lessons when he’s not at Shoals. That was so cool. I can’t believe people can handle those tiny teeny things like that.



Then on to brunch; this time I just sat down at a table by myself and waited, and it filled up around me. Good food, too, esp. the cod cakes. After brunch I talked with Willy for a while after all, on tape (so to speak), then wandered a bit before getting ready to depart. It was really pretty easy to get people talking about themselves, I have to say.

When I got back to Creek Farm, around 4 p.m., I knew I couldn’t stay another night there. Just something about it I don’t know if I’ve been able to explain properly. It felt weird knowing there were people around but not being connected to them. (There was someone upstairs from me, too.) And something about being given this space for myself but it not really feeling like mine. And I hadn’t slept well Friday night, though I slept like a log in the dorm. And I didn't like the bathroom. So, I went off and found the Hilton Garden Inn I’d spotted while out with Pam and got myself a king-size bed there. (Granted, the memory foam of the mattress made me all sweaty during the night and I had to remake the bed at 4 a.m. so I could sleep on top of the comforter, but that was OK. I slept really well otherwise.) I was so happy to have that brand-new bathroom to shower in. I was coated in sunscreen and OFF! and hadn’t showered in my 24 hours on the island, upon the advice of a teenager who kept calling the Shoals showers two-minute Navy showers. I went out for dinner and shopped some; shopped some more the next morning. ITHACA, YOU CAN LEARN A LOT FROM PORTSMOUTH.

Shoals recap, part un

Bliss and Rogue are at the screen door, Bliss sitting on her haunches as she examines something upward that I can’t see, looking like a small friar.

I’m outside and on my laptop on a beautiful day; I have Fantastic Day (Haircut 100 or maybe just Nick Heyward) in my head. I figured out how to close the screen door so it latches, so Rogue won’t get out again. But I also dosed her with Frontline today and put a new dusty rose harness on her in preparation for when I bring her out with me.

But my purpose is to write about Shoals, so here we begin.

The seven-hour drive on my own was no problem, and the path itself was beautiful. I arrived at Creek Farm in Portsmouth just after 7 p.m. —Oh, here she goes, Rogue, trying to get the door open, sly little thing— and met director Willy, his son, and the ‘coastal coordinator,’ Pam. Pam was awesome, so nice and really easy to talk to. She showed me downtown Portsmouth, which is an adorable place, filled with clothing and arts-and-crafts shops and loads of restaurants (and nary a Pottery Barn among them). Ithaca Commons, take note. This is what you should be. We got back to Creek Farm around 10:30, and I settled in to my section of the house.

Creek Farm was built in the late 1800s and is about 5,000 square feet, I think I heard someone say. I don’t know the style, but you’ve seen the photos at my Flickr site. It’s really beautiful, but needs a lot of renovation (I’d start with the bathrooms and the 1970s flocked wallpaper), and it’s very spare. AND WARM. I brought my own fan along, and don’t know how I would’ve made it through the night without it. It was really warm and humid that night. Or at least, the house had trapped the heat. It’s broken up into several apartments now, and its main purpose is to be a place where island staff can stay on their days off. There were two other people there while I was there, in other parts of the house. That was kinda weird.

Around 8:30 a.m. or so I went with Willy and his son, Owen, to get breakfast, then we skipped like a stone over the waves to Appledore Island on Willy’s ‘e-pod’ (some kind of wee boaty thing).

I asked if there were whales around, and Willy said I should go on the whale watch later that day. Well, when we pulled up to the dock, there were people getting onto this other boat. Willy determined that it was the whale watch and sent me off. I grabbed a bag with some snacks and my water and camera, ascertained that there was a toilet on board (I feel stupid saying “head” when I’m a total landlubber), and off I went. I discovered that two Cornell alumni were on the thing, people I had met at a Plantations luncheon last year. They were there taking nature photography classes with a man I misunderstood them to say was John Reis’ nature photographer. So when I tried to find out from him whether he knew Chris K, he was very confused.

No no, he was his own nature photographer, John Greene, look him up, yo. He became one of the highlights of my trip—so easy to talk to, always happy to see me. (Calm down; he’s like 60.) I plied his brain, trying to determine if I could ever do what he does. With a partner who is all businessyheaded, maybe.

“Did you get seasick?” you're wondering. (You are!) I was fine till I went to the head. Back on deck I sat down, thinking that would help. Nuh-uh. Finally my brain told me to go stand in the back with John again, for my legs would absorb and adjust to the swaying and rocking that way. “Oh no, don’t go below deck,” John affirmed later. So on this four-hour cruise, I peed only once. Can you believe it! No! I know you can’t!

Also on this four-hour cruise, no whales. Not till almost the very end, at least, when the island was in sight again. I and I alone spotted a minke whale for a second and a half. It was already really cool to be out on the ocean, but that definitely made the trip worth it.