Time in New England took me away…. You might recall the song Weekend in New England written by Randy Edelman that could have easily been inspired by the magnificent views in Acadia National Park. We took this photo from a stop along the park loop road on the east side of the island near Thunder Hole. That’s a cave that emits a thunder-like sound when a … Continue reading Long rocky beaches
Normally, if I’m going to take a photo of dinner, it’s after the meal is ready and sitting on the plate in front of me. In keeping with the “locally grown” campaign that is prominent in grocery stores across Maine, here you see the before and after photos of the delicious lobster dinner that our friends Anne and Paul prepared for us. Because it was a Sunday afternoon, there were few fishing boats in operation but Paul knew exactly which dock to go to for fresh lobster. As you can tell, this boat has just arrived and the crew members are sorting their catch. The guy in the yellow slicker is slingling that blue crate with our six lobsters inside over to the scale to weigh them. Continue reading “From surf to turf”
When was the last time you had a really good time at a wedding? For us it was just a week ago and the party started two days before the ceremony and continued on through brunch the following day. My guess is that no one had any trouble falling asleep on Sunday night. We were in Rockport, MA where our guesthouse was right across from the beach you see here at sunset. Elaine and Fred, parents of the bride, were the first to stop by to enjoy a glass of champagne on our front porch and to take in the view. Later we saw Lynn, then Lucy, met up with Pam, Al, and a delightful group of new friends including folks from France and Germany. Continue reading “Any excuse for a party”
If you’ve watched the British television comedy Keeping Up Appearances you’ll be familiar with the lead character Hyacinth Bucket who prefers to put a French spin on the pronunciation of her last name. It would seem appropriate, therefore, that we should have a bouquet list of things we wanted to do before leaving the US. Since we won’t have a big oven in our French house, Bill’s been baking all kinds of bread, and besides, we’ll be walking to the boulangerie every morning for our daily baguette and maybe even a pastry or two. From our pantry we’ve already had our fill of tapioca and gelatin (yum?) so it’s time to see what else is on the list. Continue reading “The bouquet list”
“Clunk” is not a sound that you ever want to hear coming from your computer yet that’s exactly what happened last week. Bill and I each have two computers (or more, but this is not Truth or Dare) and his large laptop emitted that ominous noise indicating an eminent hard drive crash. He started looking online and several times found what appeared to be exactly what we were looking for except for all of the terrible reviews it received or the fact that it didn’t have a DVD drive, or it wasn’t touchscreen. Continue reading “Things that go clunk in the night”
This morning while walking Heather I noticed that the aptly named Beautyberry bush (Callicarpa for you scientists in the crowd) at the back of the house was glowing like neon with purple berries. I told Bill that I wanted to get a photo to include on the blog and he suggested that I do so in a hurry since they are quite a treat for … Continue reading Berry hurry!
Bill bought me a Fitbit®. Do you think that he was trying to tell me something? Actually we’d been talking about wanting some way to track our activity, or lack of, since we anticipate walking a whole lot more than we do now once we move to Carcassonne. Considering that we won’t have a car it should be a relatively easy goal to achieve of the recommended 10,000 steps a day.
But just how far is that? It’s about 5 miles. I read that a sedentary person takes between 1,000 and 3,000 steps a day so you really do have to make a conscious effort to get up to make it up to the much higher level. If we make daily trips to the bakery, cafe, market, etc., and long walks along the Aude river and the Canal-du-Midi with Heather then we shouldn’t have any problem. Continue reading “Here, you need this”
