West Meets East - Part Two

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One Day by Chris Isaak

Life - 

We chose the ideal way to start off our vacation with Lindsay's parents on Monday morning. Rich has always prided himself on his backyard. It's fenced in and private, with plenty of shade trees and a lush little garden, plenty of decks and places to relax. And in recent years, he's started feedinging and watching birds. He gets a huge number in his yard everyday, and delights in identifying them, and catering the feed to their liking. So when we were planning the trip and noticed that there was an Audubon sanctuary nearby, we immediately added it. 

Having never been there, it may have been risky, but it paid off extremely well.

 

Tucked off of the road near West Bath, the Hamilton Audubon Sanctuary is phenomenal. It has a two-mile trail through pines and oaks that skirts the edge of the bay, swampland and old-growth forests.

We spent a long time leisurely wandering the path, spotting birds, peeking under mushrooms for fairies, examining fishermen's buckets of bloodworms, and taking in the amazing scent of the pine forest. This was probably the highlight of my trip. I was still fresh and hadn't tired of driving everywhere and it was a joy to wind my way through root lined paths in the middle of nowhere.

Afterwards, we drove for a bit, ending up on Popham Beach. In the summer, this place is insanely busy. They have a pretty substantial parking area and when we went by in July, it was full and folks were parking along the highway. On a windy, rainy day in October however, it was just us. My in-laws surprised me by being remarkably game for this, and we spent some time there, dodging the surf and watching the Atlantic. 

Fort Popham was a logical next stop. Built in 1869, this crescent shaped granite Battery saw a little action before the nearby Fort Baldwin made it obsolete. Nowadays, the place is open to the public during the summer months and it's very impressive to wander around in. You can still see the mounting brackets for the cannons and the spray painted tags of the soldiers stationed here. I had a hard time deciding whether the fort would make a better backdrop for wedding photos or as a stronghold for the zombie apocalypse. 

We ate at a nearby restaurant, Smitty's, or something, where Rich had his first Maine Lobster. He was quite shocked by the small amount of meat you get for the work, though the flavor was as amazing as ever. I had a serviceable cheesesteak. Overall, it was pretty unremarkable restaurant, but it did have great waterfront views. We rolled on home after that. Lindsay watched a little bit of TV with her parents and learned that you can describe the entire plot of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind to some people and they still wont realize that they've seen it until the DVD menu comes up.

 

Reviews Of Unusual Size  

Television



NIKITA
Thursdays, The CW
 

Re: Yet another remake of the Luc Besson story, this hour-long drama follows the adventures of a woman named Nikita. (Maggie Q) Trained by an underground governmental group, Nikita was burned and escaped. Now she's gone rogue and will stop at nothing to bring the organization down.

Outstanding: I've always liked spy shows, and I got a kick out of the 1997 series. 

Unacceptable: Too bad this show was so horrible. The acting was atrocious, the writing even worse, and I think Maggie Q is totally and completely unbelievable as a trained assassin. She's so skinny and gangly that the weapons she's holding look like Rob Liefeld cartoon guns, and her angry face is that of a model concentrating on the catwalk. Which is too bad, because I've liked Maggie Q in some other stuff. And that would be forgivable if the other characters weren't just as bad. None of them look like the clichéd stereotypes they're meant to play. The bad ass controller has a pretty boy face with a neatly groomed douchestache, and the computer nerd looks like a surfer. 

Summary: I will not be watching this again. I suffered through the first two episodes and actually found myself looking forward to paying bills afterward.

1/5