Greetings from the Blackstone River

Sunday was a gorgeous warm day. We thought about going to Sturbridge Village, which was having a battle reenactment, but after how far we drove Saturday, we decided to stay closer to home and went to several parks in Worcester -- first Blackstone Gateway, which has a new visitor center with a museum about local history and culture, plus a long boardwalk through the wetlands from which we saw frogs, turtles, ducks, a bunny, and the dreaded spotted lanternfly, then Worcester Common, which encloses City Hall, has a cemetery of patriots who died in the American Revolution, and features several war memorials plus a Celtic cross commemorating the Irish immigrants to the area. 

We stopped at Cool Licks for ice cream since we had to pass by it to go to Institute Park, where we knew there were a couple of swans but didn't realize that they also had two cygnets who came within a couple of feet of us in the water. We also saw the Canada geese we met as goslings a couple of months ago, a big flock of ducks, a couple more bunnies, and a great blue heron. We stopped at Shaw's on the way home for food for the week and got home for the end of the innings played in the terrible horrible Orioles game, plus the very end of the Mariners walk-off win. Now we're watching the end of this season of A Good Girl's Guide To Murder, which has a bit too much hysteria but remains interesting.

Greetings from North of Boston

I had a great maritime Saturday in Salem and Revere north of Boston, seeing ships and at the beach! The Salem Maritime National Historical Park was having its Heritage Days festival, with people demonstrating historic crafts like aspects of shipbuilding, lace-making, furniture carving, and traditional cooking, plus there was a band singing sea shanties and a Cardboard Boat Regatta which I'd thought meant people tossing models into the water but was actually cardboard boats crewed by several people in a race. 

There were food trucks (Paul got fried Twinkies) and since Salem's tall ship the Friendship is being restored, Pride of Baltimore II was visiting and letting people tour the deck. We had brought a picnic and ate it at a table behind the Custom House, which was also open for tours and had an actor dressed as Nathaniel Hawthorne talking about his work there. We got to see the scales and measuring equipment, the public stores for items no one could pay duties on, and the original wooden eagle that adorned the roof. 

Since we were in Salem, we also visited several of the witch shops -- lots of Tarot, crystals, herbs, crafts, and statues, though I didn't buy any -- and walked through the downtown before driving in the late afternoon to Revere Beach. The water was much warmer than I expected and there were clam shells, mussels, and some snails, plus many seagulls and a few pigeons looking for dinner. We were at the nearly empty north end of the beach and I got so much sand in my toes that I rode the rest of the way home barefoot.

 

We ate cheesesteaks for dinner and watched part of the terrible horrible Orioles game against the Phillies before giving up and putting on the start of the second season of A Good Girl's Guide To Murder, which is pretty well written and acted but very dark. And we discovered that the rain last week stained one of our windowsills, so we cleaned that up. Now I must sleep after a really nice day!

Greetings from Wachusett Meadow

We had gorgeous weather on Saturday, so after lunch we met Adam and Haley at Mass Audubon's Wachusett Meadow park. We got there first, so we walked around the farm with sheep before Adam and Haley's car arrived, then we hiked in the woods for a couple of miles past mushrooms, wildflowers, and eventually apple trees, ending up by a pond with dozens of frogs. The nature center has several bird feeders with a variety of finches, red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, and hummingbirds, with chipmunks underneath cleaning up dropped seeds.

 

We stopped at Shaw's on the way home for food for the week, fed the cats, ate dinner, and watched Masters of the Universe, which I enjoyed enormously although I think they should have marketed it as a retro superhero comedy rather than an action movie. A lot of the jokes would be missed by anyone under 40 -- references to previous iterations, Highlander jokes, Queen music, Idris Elba shots stolen right out of Thor, lots of laughs! Then we watched this week's Sugar, and now we're watching the first episode of Pompeii.

Greetings from Worcester Center for Crafts

The weather is finally mostly clear, so I had a nice Friday -- did a bunch of computer stuff and some reading early in the day, then when Paul got home we went to Hot Night in the City, an arts festival at Worcester Center for Crafts, which had both stage and marching bands, food trucks, artist vendors (lots of stained glass and pottery) in tents outside, and craft demos and shopping in the center building. We got a bakery pretzel and I bought glass octopus earrings.

 

We came home and took a walk around the neighborhood now that the air is breathable, then came home and ate leftover pizza for dinner. Then we watched most of the Orioles win, followed by Apple TV Friday night: Sugar and Silo, both great. Now we're watching Heartstopper: Forever, the movie Netflix made to wrap up the series, which is sweet and melancholy and as with Good Omens I'm fine with nearly all the focus being on the characters from the main pairing.

Greetings from Fitchburg

On Friday we picked my parents up from their hotel and brought them back to our place for bagels and a tour of the neighborhood. Then we drove to Fitchburg to visit Adam and Haley -- my parents hadn't seen their new house, either, and we dropped off some things we'd moved back here for Adam including a quilt that Paul's mother had made him when he was a child. We also visited Haley's parents, Hildy and Tom, who fed us lots of desserts and took my parents on a driving tour of the town. 

We picked up Chinese food from Asia Imperial on the way back to Adam's house, which we ate with them, then dropped my parents off at their hotel and drove home under a gorgeous sunset. Now we're watching Apple TV's excellent Friday night lineup: gritty dark Sugar, tense excellent Star City, and the return of Silo, which actually seems to have filmed its flashback DC scenes on the National Mall and by the Willard Hotel, maybe Common will be less villainous this season, and Good Omens cast!

Greetings from Rhode Island

Paul had the day off for Juneteenth, a gorgeous mid-70s degree day here, so we drove to Rhode Island to the Roger Williams Park Zoo, which in addition to many animals currently has a Bug's World animatronic display. We saw all the giant insect models around the pond in the zoo, where we also saw the first egret we've seen in New England, and we also saw penguins, snow leopards, elephants, anteaters, red pandas, flamingos with a groundhog living in their enclosure, red wolves, and a pair of sloths with a baby among the many species there. We brought a picnic with us and stopped for ice cream at West End Creamery on the way home.

 

We ate toad in the hole for dinner and took a short walk to see if we could find the snapping turtles in the neighborhood -- we'd seen some in the pond at the zoo -- though we only found bunnies. Then we watched this week's Star City (still good, still very dark) followed by the return of Sugar (still very enjoyable, entertaining use of old movies) and a bit of Discovery season three. We only saw the very end of the US World Cup victory over Australia (our son said it made traffic a nightmare in Seattle, along with incoming traffic for the game the Mariners are now losing) and now the Orioles and Dodgers are tied in the bottom of the 6th.

Greetings from Purgatory Chasm

Someone I care about got some awful private news on Tuesday, so I was a little distracted by that. It was otherwise a nice day -- good weather, we went out to pick up bagels, I talked briefly to Daniel about World Cup chaos in Seattle, we took a walk and saw baby bunnies. Our next door neighbor was getting her windows washed by a local company, so I went out and talked to the guy doing the washing and it turned out he's worked in this neighborhood for many years and knew the original owner of our house, so we got him to do our windows too. 

My DS9 group watched "Heart of Stone" -- an episode I really did not like when it first aired, which in hindsight (and after seeing the rest of the series twice) is not only much more likeable but absolutely crucial to three storylines that run through the entirety of the show. Now we're watching some more of the final season of Grantchester, whose mysteries are feeling both a little stale and bitterly dark. Some of the formations at Purgatory Chasm, including the Devil's Pulpit and Coffin, His Majesty's Cave, Fat Man's Misery, and Lover's Leap: