Independence Day

The All Star Game is in what look to be its final moments, and I really need to go to bed, but since I'm trying to keep at this a little better in spite of craziness in my life and dayjob (oh my, you have no idea) I'm going to throw in a few photos from the 4th of July a couple weekends ago.

We went to New Hope again this year, to hang with Carl and Kevin. But this year we were also joined by Carl and Eevin. Eevin rhymes with Kevin.

That's right folks, we were with Carl and Eevin and Carl and Kevin. Carl and Carl and Kevin and Eevin. No shortage of fun there!

We did have lots o' fun, including the Erwinna Fireworks (complete with local orchestra) and some fierce games of Killer Bunnies (have you heard of this?) We also went to some friends' pool, and got to hang out with some wicked awesome puppies.

Sam and Sadie love the pool.

Sadie prefers it from the outside, in general.


Carl and Eevin shared some of their weekly Sunday Times traditions.

And I like this shot of paws and prints by the pool.

Ok, there you have it. Plus the National League won the All Star Game for the first time since 1996. Holy Moly!

I'll try to be back sooner than that.

Lost and Found

I've been pretty busy with rehearsals and a bunch of other things lately, so my input here has been on the sketchy side. And I won't be able to catch you all up on everything now either, but in the spirit of putting something out there...

Cory and I hosted a party for the finale of Lost last weekend. We don't qualify for the most serious category of Lost fan (those would be the ones who have whole blogs devoted to dissecting the inner workings and mythologies of the show), but we took it seriously enough to do some cooking and put together some design elements.

Our notion of design for a party was not nearly enough for my sister Lori, however. Although she has never seen a single episode of Lost, she insisted that we 'theme it up' a notch or two, and put in more of an effort than would have occurred to us.

Cory ordered some custom M&Ms. BIG UPS to Cory for the notion, and seeing it through! If you know the show, these are pretty cool; if you don't, they're probably just baffling.




The inscribed candies got little bags to be handed out to the partiers. The skull image goes with the show at least a little bit ("Adam and Eve" in the cave; the general sense of foreboding and rampant death in the last few episodes)




And the simple Black and White candies went into coconut shells.



We also got a pineapple to fit with the Pacific Island theme, used the top as a centerpiece and skewered chunks with toothpicks decorated with banners Lori made, inscribed with character names.


Stole this photo from my sister, as I somehow managed not to get any shots of the pineapple spread.

Check out her work! She picked out the tropical paper, and we gave her a list of names (with the name crossed out for characters who were dead in one timeline or another.) She used special paper and ink for the names of the "Candidates." Pretty good for someone who has never seen the show, and doesn't care about it at all.



We made a fish stew. Lori helped a lot with this on the sous chef end, but she doesn't really like fish (as in - she runs screaming from the kitchen when seafood is cooking), so she didn't stick around for the completion of that.



It was a good stew - I used cod and mahi mahi in a garlic lime marinade; peppers, onions, tomatoes, scallions, cilantro; coconut milk made it extra-special island-y; and the secret ingredient was oil simmered with annatto seed. Yum.

Also a special blend of spices, including a hands-across-the-water conjunction of hot sauces.



Here's the food table before people arrived. The dips haven't been put into the bowls yet, and a lot of food was yet to come.

This shot gives a sense of the party in action.

Off to the left is the corner of the now-fully-loaded food table. You can see the platter with Lia's corn, black bean and quinoa salad, and the sesame-peanut sauce that went on Daniel and Susan's buckwheat noodles. Sadly, I did not get a shot of Sherin's broccoli-mango salad or Shannon's bread bowls, but trust me: all was extremely tasty!

Also, Sherin put together a game of Lost Bingo. She gathered a bunch of possible events of varying likelihood, and arranged them into a bingo board to check things off as they happened. They were really great!

Cory had the first winning card. She won a mango! Here's the Great and Glorious Card of Victory:

I love this shot - lots of joy in the faces of Shannon, Leslie and Cory.

'Twas a fun party. Maybe see you at the next one - in another life, brother.

Winter Weekend - the Continuing Adventures of Marguerite

When last we saw our noble heroine she was facing the elements in her new do, pimped out in every sense of the word by Dustin.


Here she is seen from the house above.

The gals made her a name plate while there was a walk further out onto the lake (you knew that all this was taking place on a frozen lake, right?)


Her nickname was made official by twigs in the snow.

Some images from the lake walk:


Snowmobile tracks.


Shadows of our crew.


Finished creating his woman of the night, Dustin worked on inscribing his own name in the snow in a poignant moment melding the permanent and the fleeting.




The sun sinking on our endeavors.

There was more sledding; Aaron whipped Shannon around on a little snow saucer, to universal delight.


The light caught Lora nicely as we got ready to go upstairs.


But Jacquie had a pensive moment as we left Margie to her own devices...

We went up to the house and had an evening of fun and frolic. We played a game called Ex Libris (which, beside being fun, provided the opportunity for that first photo I posted here last week.) We played a couple games of Celebrity, which was a new experience for Lora. Won her over, as it wins over pretty much everyone. We had a delicious meal of grilled tuna steak and tilapia, couscous and salad. We used the phrase "That's what she said!" a ridiculous number of times. We finished the bottle of Jameson and did a good job on the wine and beer too.

Before going to bed, I went out to the porch and saw Margie, alone in the darkness after whatever she'd been through that evening.



Was Jacquie right to have been concerned earlier? Had Dustin thrown our Marguerite to the wolves, while we amused ourselves inside? Had we failed in the responsibility creators should have for that which they create?

These questions were between Margie and the moon. We ended the night keeping those thoughts at bay, rolling out the cot and sinking into the sofa. The next morning we made coffee and Lora made french toast and we played a tie-breaking round of Celebrity. Marguerite made it into the game as a celebrity name. Was that enough? Had she transcended her tawdry beginnings? Had we redeemed ourselves in her eyes and the eyes of the world?



The last shot of tequila was sacrificed to the gods.

Winter Weekend - the Legend of Marguerite, part one.

Ok, very late entry, but a while ago I went out to the Delaware Water Gap for a short weekend-o-fun with Aaron and Shannon. Jacquie and I drove out Saturday morning - nice to have such lovely company! - and I came back on Sunday afternoon in time to make dinner with my sister. In between those drives were a lot of great food, plenty of drink, games of various shapes and sizes, and some good old winter frolicking.

So without further ado, here's the visual representation of the occasion.

First, portraits of our hosts:


Aaron


and Shannon

Dustin and Lora had been there since the night before, with a couple other guests who left before we arrived. So Jacquie and I had a period of acclimation before the serious merry-making began. Aaron regaled us with tales of the strange and wonderful as we had a chili lunch.

Then we went outside for fun in the snow. There is a hill beside the house that we used as a tricky-to-navigate but not too perilous sled run. Don't have any shots of that as I was too busy trying to steer various sleds around trees, bushes, posts and water mains to take photos.

Then the creative forces took over, and it was decided that a snowman must be created.


'Twas a group effort, naturally.

It was soon decided that our creation was to be a snowwoman rather than snowman.

Dustin took it upon himself to fashion the gender characteristics:

He presented himself as a self-styled breast-whisperer, but I suspect he had more insidious plans in mind...


And while Dustin was snowboob obsessed, Lora worked on other body parts.


She started to take on a life of her own early on.


Finishing the hat.


Taking shape.


Shannon's artistry was essential. Note the pasties - Dustin was not alone in the cause of tarting her up.


We recognized that her arms were a little outsized, and Jacquie took on the job of performing the needed surgery.



I leave it to you to interpret the nature of the closeness Aaron was going for.

At this point, there was some general discussion of the direction this gal was going in. Was she on the path to degradation? Could she attain glory? And what about that hat?

Some more snowcrafting took place, and for a while we were in the realm of the fantastic. Jacquie gave up her scarf, extravagent ears blossomed, and there was even the appearance of a horn:


I think it was Lora who exclaimed: "She's a Vulcan Unicorn!" But Shannon put an end to that with a quick "Duh... There's no such thing."

In the end, Dustin had his way and sexualized glamor won out. He and Jacquie conspired to create the perfect coif and celebrate a triumphant debut for our newly sprung snow nymph, whose name turned out to be Marguerite, or Margie for short.


Making magic.


Ready to take on the world.

That's it for now. Tune in tomorrow for more on this fab weekend, and the continued Tales of Margie...

How Many Words?

Yes.

The Vineyard

Monday, I had to choose between getting up at dawn and making a ferry at 9, or sleeping in a bit and catching a boat at 2. Given the night we had on Sunday, it wasn't a particularly hard choice. Teeny bit of drama in Woods Hole when the main parking lot was full and I had to go to an alternate lot, but I caught the shuttle to the ferry to the island just in time to make the 2 o'clock departure for Vineyard Haven.

That first afternoon, after a delicious lunch courtesy of SaraJane, we drove to Edgartown and had a good walk on and around the main strip. Got some really good iced coffee, and headed to the coast.


The 'On Time' Ferries to and from Chappaquiddick, passing in the canal. (They go back and forth pretty much constantly, so timeliness would seem to be a fairly manageable factor.)


Isabella and Madeleine watching the ferries.


A lighthouse near where SaraJane got married.


The kids had a bunch of fun playing near that lighthouse (and during the whole downtown venture.) You can't really tell, but this photo shows Isabella during one of their favorite games du jour: throwing around a teddy bear. The bear did not seem to mind.

Fish tacos and good wine for supper. The next day, SJ, Cory, Madeleine and I took a jeep to one of the beaches where you can, well, drive a jeep on the beach.

This, it must be said, was tremendously fun.

I'd never gone four-wheeling before, and there aren't any photos because, well, I was in the jeep. We all took turns driving - too inexperienced to do anything fancy, especially given that we had a 2 1/2 year-old with us, but still - way fun.


Here's one of my favorite shots from the trip: Madeleine in all her beachy glory.

The rest of the trip was full of lots of the kinds of things you'd associate with Martha's Vineyard: farmers' market, Boggle and Scrabble, more good food and wine (I made a lobster feast one night), more time on the beach, in Chappaquiddick this time, ice cream and iced coffee, blowing bubbles on the deck.

It was a pretty estrogen-y household: 6 gals, ages 10 months to 41 years, 5 of them related to each other, and me. It's been said that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Now, I don't hold much truck with that proposition, but if we grant it for the sake of argument, I'd like to think I speak Venusian as well as the next guy, and better than most. But even for me, this was a lot of chick energy. This is not a complaint! It was a great vacation. In fact, it was kind of wonderful - exactly the thing for a long summer weekend.

We also took a walk through a quaint and well turned-out town square, ending up at one of Madeleine's favorite places of all: the Flying Horses carousel.



Here we are getting ready to ride. It was fun - very old school. There's a spot inside and one outside where the riders try to pluck rings off the wall. Now I'm not saying that I was the best at that game or anything, but only one person on each side of the carousel gets the coveted brass ring that wins you a free ride, and guess who grabbed it on the outside?

No, I didn't keep the free ride for myself! I gave it to Madeleine, of course.


Given the opportunity, what wouldn't you do for this one?