Greetings from Gloucester Harbor

My Monday was all about unexciting things like laundry, bathroom cleaning, and working on a project with a friend, though the latter was fun and involved looking up a bunch of things from old movies. I also did a little organizing of bookshelves because I bought some awesome little shelf lantern lights. When Paul got home, we took a walk up toward the woods, and though it was a gorgeous cool afternoon, we only saw a few bunnies. 

We watched most of the Red Sox game, and although they didn't lead until the very end, they won their fourth straight and I got to see a Rutschman-Stowers reunion. Now we're watching the end of the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which isn't as great as it should be but is still enjoyable. Here are some of the sights around Gloucester, including the Gorton's fisherman, two lighthouses, and the site of the Massachusetts Bay Colony:

Greetings from Gloucester

We spent Saturday in Gloucester, about an hour and a half from Worcester, starting with a trip to Wingaersheek Beach at low tide so we could see the tidepools. They aren't as dramatic as the Alki Beach tidepools on the west coast -- no 10-inch sea stars -- but there are snails, barnacles, little swimming crabs and isopods, schools of fish, and many seagulls trying to eat all of the above, plus whatever they can beg or steal from people's lunches. It was overcast and cool; the water felt the same temperature as the air, and we could see the Annisquam Harbor Light. 

We brought a picnic for the beach (I had a young gull date while I ate), and after we finished, we drove to the Gloucester Fisherman's Memorial, where we met my friend Marty from high school, though we haven't seen each other since except on Facebook and in Pokemon Go (it was a raid day, but I only caught one remote Starmie). He took us on a walking tour of the western harbor to Stage Fort Park and Half Moon Beach, then we drove together to Eastern Point Lighthouse and walked out on the Dog Bar Breakwater, where we saw ducks, ships, and a grey seal. 

 

We stopped at Panera for dinner on the way home, arriving in time for the end of both the Orioles and Red Sox games which both ended with walk-off victories. We're watching another episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender while I upload photos and post this.

Greetings from Mystic

Sunday was another gorgeous day and we spent most of it at Mystic Seaport at the Sea Glass Festival, where we met Kristen, admired the sea glass, bought some small jewelry, and ate lunch under one of the festival tents. We also walked around the seaport and its museums -- boarded the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, talked to the shopkeeper in the nautical instruments shop about celestial navigation and the first grandfather clock, looked at the carvings and figureheads on exhibit, saw jellyfish in the river, admired the ships! 

 

We drove home from Connecticut in the late afternoon, had baked potatoes for dinner because they had those at Mystic Seaport so we got in the mood for them, and watched the rest of Pompeii: Out of Time, which has a lot of the flaws of all the National Geographic historical recreation shows but is interesting despite the clunkiness. Now we're watching the first episode of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, which is alternately very funny and extremely creepy, like an Irish comic I Know What You Did Last Summer with great acting.

Greetings from Pacific Beach

It was another overcast but lovely day in Ocean Shores, which started for us at a crowded hotel breakfast at which we may have been the only people not wearing animal ears, a tail, or both -- a lot of Furvana attendees are apparently staying here too. We walked to the seashore after we ate and then headed in the opposite direction from yesterday to Pacific Beach, a more isolated part of the shoreline where vehicles aren't allowed. There were many pelicans, gulls, sandpipers, and crabs and clams being feasted upon by them. We ate our Mexican leftovers and snacks for lunch, watching a pair of deer move from the dunes to right behind our hotel, visible from our window. 

Then we walked to Pacific Paradise, the obligatory beach town amusement park with mini golf, an arcade, and bumper boats, where we posed with Zoltar and played 18 holes; I lost, but I did get the only hole-in-one, and the golf course was Sasquatch-themed as well as seashore-themed. We stopped in a few beachy and craft stores, came back to the hotel to change our jackets, and walked a couple of miles down the beach to Galway Bay Irish Pub, which in addition to Irish cheese curds had live music -- some traditional folk and some animal themed for the Furvana guests! We walked back along the beach watching lightning coming closer over the ocean and arrived just before the rain.

Poem for Friday and Weekend Nature

The Frog 

By Hilaire Belloc 

Be kind and tender to the Frog,

And do not call him names,

As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"

Or likewise "Ugly James,"

Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"

Or "Bill Bandy-knees":

The Frog is justly sensitive

To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay

A treatment kind and fair;

At least so lonely people say

Who keep a frog (and, by the way,

They are extremely rare).

-------- 

Friday was warm, a lovely summer day with lots of people at the beach. I spent the morning working on various things, did some reading around lunch, then we went for a walk and saw lots of eagles and geese. It was another good baseball day since the Orioles dominated and the Mariners won 12-3. 

We had a busy sci-fi TV evening: the season premiere of Foundation (falling apart, like the empire), the season finale of Murderbot (surprisingly touching and hope all these characters come back), and tonight's Resident Alien ("the human penis is in the heart"). Some views of Mukilteo and Edmonds: 

Poem for Monday and Ogden Point

On The Breakwater 

By Carl Sandburg 

On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a

     girl are sitting, 

She across his knee and they are looking face into face 

Talking to each other without words, singing rhythms in

     silence to each other. 

A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out-

     going boat, 

Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of

     green, 

And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his

     knee. 

-------- 

Monday involved laundry, bathroom cleaning and other exciting chores like that, plus some computer work and a bunch of hunting in the closet for a bag I still haven't found. It was a gorgeous mid-70s afternoon, and I know how lucky we are from talking to people elsewhere; we walked to the beach, saw many ducks, geese, herons, and eagles, and I got to try out my new tie-back baseball cap that hopefully will be harder for the wind to blow off my head. 

We watched the Orioles shutout of the Rangers, then we watched some more Bad Batch with Cheryl around dinner (veggie chickn marsala). We went out to see the ducklings at twilight and now we're watching the third episode of season four of Resident Alien, in which Harry must live as a human and Eleanor is the best. Going back a couple of weeks, these are photos from the Victoria breakwater around Ogden Point and over the water:

Greetings from the Salish Sea

We got up and packed on Monday morning, then headed out of the hotel to grab a quick breakfast -- sandwiches at 7-Eleven, which we ate overlooking the waterfront. We bumped into Daniel on the way out, headed to take the dogs for a walk in Beacon Hill Park, but we really wanted to see the breakwater where Adam had gone running a couple of days earlier, so we drove over to the beach town side of Victoria and saw jellyfish, a seal, and the little lighthouse at the end of the walkway which had greeted us upon our arrival by ferry on Thursday. (We would see it again from the ferry leaving Victoria in the afternoon.) 

We drove back to the Empress, checked out, and drove to the ferry lot, where we left the car, walked around that side of the harbor, and got ice cream. Daniel and Cahaya ended up right near us in the ferry line, so after customs and parking on board, we hung out with them and the dogs -- and got to see porpoises in the water! Upon reaching Port Angeles, we all went to The Rail for burgers, then followed each other to Kingston for the ferry to Edmonds, which was clear in this direction so we saw Mount Baker and Mount Rainier. We got home in time to save our cats from starvation -- our neighbors had fed them 15 minutes earlier!