West Meets East - Part Two

Now Playing -  
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     

June 04, 2009 - Foggy Conditions

Life -

Today was a pretty fine day. Lindsay and I were both off, and we started the morning early, heading to Butterburrs for breakfast with the In-Laws and my Sis-In-Law, who was leaving that afternoon to meet her biological mother in California. Both of Lindsay's siblings are adopted, which I think is great. We don't plan on having kids, but if we ever decided to, we've discussed it a lot and would like to adopt, it's a good thing.

I'm more torn about the finding your biological parents aspect. While I can easily see the benefits, seeing where you came from, any hidden medical history, etc... I don't think I ever would. Of course, I think it's safe to say that my opinion is colored; I was raised by my mother with only a very small amount of input from my father, who then left us completely when I was 2. He has made a few half hearted attempts to contact me in the past, and frankly, I have no need to add those kinds of complications to my life. I appreciate that he wants to be a part of my life, but he wasn't there when we really needed him, so why should I go out of my way now, when I don't need him? Unless of course, he's got $70,000 he could loan us for a motel....

It's a completely different circumstance than finding your biological mother, but I'm pretty sure that it's why I have a hard time understanding why you would want to.

All the same, Marissa's BioMom sounds pretty cool. Laid back and a bit crazy, like Marissa and I hope her the best of luck on her quest. Not just because she's going to Southern California. Bleah.

After that, we hit the pet store and bought Ludo a new collar for his birthday. Our little boy is 3 years old! Which really means he should stop acting like a puppy... eventually.

He seemed to enjoy his birthday treats!
As did freckle-faced Pooka, who likes to have his brother soften the chewies up first, then steal them..


Apart from that, I spent some time editing wedding photos, in the hopes of having a CD of 'em for Marissa when she comes back through town in a week, and I worked on some ...

Writing -

During which, my wife made it clear to me why writing a dream sequence while in pain, suffering from cabin fever and hopped up on pain pills while it rains outside is a bad idea....

You write entire pages describing fog....

This time, he found himself on the same stump with three trees growing from it that he saw in one of his earlier dreams. He was standing on the stump, wearing his winter coat and new boots, with a faint breeze drifting through the trees. All around him, the undergrowth seemed over sized, with some of the ferns so large that they looked like they would tower over him if he was on the spongy forest floor instead of on the stump. There was fog too, drifting through the trees and plants, almost like a living thing. It rolled and twisted, sliding up over leaves, then slithering back down the stems like misty, insubstantial snakes. Thousands of them, too. The entire forest looked like it was being invaded by these sinuous gently gliding snakes of fog. As he stood on the stump, watching the fog roll below his feet, he was afraid to get off of the stump. What if the fog sensed him in it, wrapped around him and drug him down?

I go on like that for a full page and a half...

I have roughly 3 weeks to finish editing, revise the manuscript, do a second edit and revision and get it in the mail... it is gonna be tight.

The Last Sentence -

"The heat so hot that things seemed to shimmer in it and jungles so wet that your clothes could rot off of you."

From The Whispering Ferns