The Mac returned from the shop today, and it seems to be working fine. I’ve been shooting all week while it was gone.
August 26 – feeding time at the zoo.
August 27 – Swan boats in the Boston Public Garden.
August 28 – it speaks for itself. It was a great time.
August 29 – Bobkits at York’s Wild Kingdom
August 30 – It’s over 90 degrees, and we took the only car without A/C to do a full day’s worth of errands. It sure is fun to drive, though.
Maine. The Way Life Should Be. It’s a wonderful state, and many of us enjoy a few weekends there every year. In turn, they enjoy our tourist dollars. Flatlanders need to learn a few things, however.
The York Tolls have two EZPass lanes, one on the far right and one on the left. If you don’t have one, stay in the middle. If you don’t know what it is, get out of the EZPass lanes. For some strange reason the Cawmmonwealth insists on doing its own thing and not participating in EZPass, but we do have reciprocity. If you have a Fastlane box, you can use the EZPass lanes.
The Piscataqua River Bridge connects The Way Life Should Be to Live Free or Die. It’s been unchanged for 40 years, although you might have missed it in the dark on Friday night. It doesn’t open, it has just as many lanes as the rest of I-95, and the speed limit doesn’t even drop. There is no need to slow down. There isn’t even a good view from the southbound side. Keep your right foot down, please.
The Hampton Tolls have recently been redone, so you may be allowed a little slack here. The left two lanes are express EZPass lanes, and the right two lanes go to the cash toll booths. The signage is well marked, but people still don’t seem able to figure it out. In short, once you leave Portsmouth, pick a side; right two lanes for cash, left two for EZPass. You have over five miles to get this right, so don’t run right up to the Jersey barriers and then change your mind. It just slows us all down.
The NH Liquor Store is about a mile after the tolls. I’ve always laughed at the concept of “Don’t Drink and Drive, but Buy Your Liquor from Us on the Interstate.” Nonetheless, this is your last chance for tax free booze before you hit the state line. The liquor store also has a good set of restrooms and vending machines, both of which are open 24/7. If traffic is heavy, why not take a break? Perhaps for 4 or 5 hours so the rest of us can get through.
The MA rest area at the state line was built with a state-of-the-art waterless composting toilet system. It’s a wonderful piece of green technology which is not open at all because the Cawmmonwealth ran out of money to staff it. Thanks, Governor Patrick. See the NH Liquor Store above, and N.B. that the NH Information Center on the northbound side is open 24/7.
Finally, I-495. 495 hasn’t moved since it was built. The right two lanes exit, and the left two continue south as I-95. We all know this. You should remember it from last weekend. The idea here is the same as at the Hampton Tolls. Know your lane and pick it early, preferably before crossing the state line. Don’t run up the left lane, then panic and cross all four lanes to exit. You in the white Jeep, I’m speaking specifically to YOU. Maneuvers like that are what is slowing us all down.
There’s a reason the locals have disparaging nicknames for us. If we can all learn these few pointers and drive in a straight line, I should get home at a reasonable hour. Good luck!
I recently learned that Saimese cats are temperature sensitive. The dark areas on their faces, ears, feet, and tail are due to pigmentation reacting on the cooler areas of their bodies. When Chai first came to us she had a cold, and her face turned visibly lighter for a week or so.
Fast forward to last week. While we were away, we left the porch window open. The cats had access to the screen porch 24/7. Chai apparently enjoys the night air. Compare this current photo. . .
Chai – 8/24
. . .with this one from 7/28 during the heatwave. Pretty cool, huh?
I was doing some blog housekeeping this afternoon, and I discovered that NfMH is once again the top Google search result for “notes on wasting time.” Go ahead, try it. I’m the top in my field at something!
We’ve also hit the big time this week with comment SPAM. Just for the record, I’m happy with my current levels of traffic and monetization, I don’t need anything sold by a Russian mail order pharmacy, and all of the blog’s features are working fine. If you do find something amiss, please contact me via the contact form, not by leaving a comment. Thankfully Disqus seems to have very accurate filters.
I would like to thank all of the spammers who “found [my] information on this subject very useful and will definitely return.” Welcome aboard, guys. I’m glad someone thinks my ramblings are “very informative.”
And soon the bright flames were wet black ashes and the crackling sound of the flames was quiet and there was only the great purring of the red hose truck pumping water and the bright searchlights of the fire engines making the trees and bushes much greener than they had been before.
While the sentence structure is not what I would use, the image is beautiful. This evening at bedtime, it jumped at me from one of my favorite children’s books, The Five Little Firemen, by Margaret Wise Brown & Edith Thatcher Hurd, with illustrations by Tibor Gergely. It’s a Little Golden Book from 1949, but you can still find it if you look.
Beauty and inspiration are where you find them.
August 23 – Thirteen years.
This is actually a good thing.
The MBP was in for service again today, as the previous attempt didn’t fix it. This time it failed the graphics processor test, with a bad NVIDIA chipset. (This is what we suspected the first time.) Now that we have a diagnosis it’s getting fixed for real, and it’s under a recall. Hopefully it won’t cost me a cent.
That red bar sure looks scary though, doesn’t it?
Photoblogging was light this week. In fact, it was nonexistent. We were out of town at the Big E in Springfield for the Mass Morgan Horse Show. Internet was limited to what I could access via the iPhone, although I did achieve one text-only post. The fairgrounds did have WiFi, but for $$$. I tried the free service at the local McDonalds, but we won’t discuss that any further. As I couldn’t find an access point which was both pleasant and affordable, you’ve had to wait. So without further ado:
August 16: I’ve never had a campsite with its own fire hydrant before.
August 17: Breakfast
August 18: Sunset
August 19: Terriers around Town. Beth loved the psychedelic one the most.
August 20: How could you not love this face?
August 21: Mrs Mack505, Scotty, and trainer Shawn Amazeen in the winner’s circle.
A hot August day. Beth and I bide our time letterboxing in a new corner of the world while Mrs. Mack505 is otherwise engaged.
John Cleese guides us in his clipped, efficient Britishness, to a town so small that it has no numbered routes. Our endpoint lies in an old cemetary, pedantically named The Old Cemetary. We park just inside the gates. Strangely in this case, the newest graves are near the front, becoming progressively older as you pass among the stones.
As we step from the truck, my eyes are drawn immediately to the stone at my feet. He’s a firefighter from a local city, dead at the age of 65. My first thought is that he never got to enjoy retirement. Then I notice his wife’s stone next to him. She predeceased him. Perhaps they’re enjoying retirement after all.
I find cemetaries to be fascinating places. Each stone represents a story, a biography, a life. We pass among the stones, noting a few on the way to our quest. The stamp lies hidden in a shady corner, peacefully away from the hustle and noise of the street.
On the walk back to the truck, Beth notices another stone. “Dad, a book!” She runs over to the shiny, modern headstone and demands that I read her the inscription. Teacher – Traveller – Historian. Died in 2002 at the age of 58. There is definitely a story here; probably there are many stories here. We will never know them.
As we turn the truck to leave, I’m drawn to another modern stone. This one is large and shiny, with one full name on it. It’s not a family stone; it’s a monument to one person. It is engraved with a picture of a boy on a swing, and its face carries a poem. The dates are less than five years apart.
Beth insists that I read her the poem, and I do so with a hitch in my voice. I defy any parent to stand in front of that stone and not be moved. Though I will never know the boy or his family, I can feel a reflection of their pain.
As a six year old, she has a concept of mortality. I still don’t want to disturb it with the idea that children younger than her die. (Heck, the idea disturbs me.) We drive away, and I try to explain it away lightly. “Maybe it was cancer. Sometimes it happens.”
Beth chimes right in, “Or something bad happened?”
I follow her lead. “Right. Like maybe he drowned, or was in a car crash.”
She splits a big grin. “Maybe it was a shark!”
Here I am worried about the fragile psyche of my little princess, and she’s cracking jokes to cheer me up. I think she’ll be OK.
August 14 – Along the New England Southern north of Concord, NH.
August 15 – the American dream. Five bicycles, a canoe, and a Jeep.
