Our first trip to Plymouth, Massachusetts did we take this afternoon. They are so up on pilgrims there.

There was a big Thanksgiving parade, followed by a food festival. $7 bucks got us all the chowder and cheese we could sample. We saw anachronistic reenactments with pirates and soldiers and scotsmen. We saw a Coast Guard rescue exhibition. And we saw “America’s Neighborhood.” A nice day.

Just returned from a relaxing trip up to Bridgton, Maine for the weekend. The colors on the trees were in full saturation. A couple of photos below show the trees.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast called “The Noble House.” Everything was perfect, including the owner Julie’s recommendations for sights to see and places to eat. We visited the White Mountains in New Hampshire, including the Cog Railway that goes up to the peak of Mount. Washington.

We ate at an Irish Restaurant called “May Kelly’s Cottage” in North Conway. It looked nothing like Fado’s or Claddaugh’s, so it must have been authentic. Jakers, the potato cakes were delicious, made with bacon and drizzled with horseradish.

The other place of note that we visited was Bray’s Brew Pub & Eatery in Naples, Maine. There, we watched the Red Sox game on Saturday night, Game 6 of the ALCS. A story from that visit follows the photos and the break.

The Noble House Bed & Breakfast, Bridgton ME	View from the Highlander Suite
Cog Railway - The Little Engine That Could	Comin’ Down the Mountain
Requisite Pier Photo, Kennebunkport	After a Swim near Kennebunk

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Today is Blog Action Day. Bloggers everywhere are posting about the environment in their own blog-specific ways.

I’m tempted to call the topic of “the environment” a cheesy topic, but looking through these photos from a nature walk taken last April reminded me of the majesty and quirkiness of nature.

These were taken at various parks at Hocking Hills in Ohio.

The last one is one of the squirrels in my old backyard. That photo is for Tricky Trev.

(Ugh, sorry for the overlapping images.)

These images are from the First to Find card game I worked on a while back. If you ever want a fun way to spend some time in the woods (or other natural environments,) have a look at Geocaching.

Last Sunday, September 2, we attended our first Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston, MA. Besides fulfilling one of Jen’s sports-related dreams, the experience flipped a switch in my brain. I like baseball now, and I follow the Red Sox now. Who knew?

Sunday morning, we hopped on the train from Braintree to Boston, intending to take a “Duck Boat Tour” of the city. The car filled up with people in Red Sox gear. Dads and sons and daughters and babysitters and large groups and seniors … there was red everywhere.

“Let’s just stop by Fenway Park, just to see it,” I said. “We can even stop by the ticket window and see if there are any cheap seats!” (ha.)

Game day around Fenway is a festival, a feast for the senses. The street performers and food vendors alone made the trip memorable. Scalpers, or excuse me, men who “needed tickets,” were everywhere, and we soon found out that they were looking for $150 - $200 bucks for their tickets. Bullocks! We’ll just go up to the ticket window and see what they have, thought I.

No, I don’t know much about Red Sox baseball. I didn’t know, for example, that all the games are sold out and have been for a few years now. We started to head back to the train.

We rounded a corner and saw a long line of people outside Gate E. Really long line - like, new ride at Cedar Point or bathroom at Cedar Point -long. Finding the end of it, almost a city block away from the gate, Jen asked the nice folks there, “what’s this line for?”

Two of the friendliest Bostonians, (because they’re actually from New Hampshire,) told Jen and I all about Gate E. At each game, people line up here to try to buy tickets that season ticket holders give up. It’s really the only way to get tickets to the games anymore. You can only buy tickets for people who are physically present, in line, and you have to enter the park immediately. Keeps the scalpers, jerk-faces, from turning around and selling them at crazy prices.

“What the heck,” reasoned we, and we waited. Talked to our new friends about the Sox, about Boston. Jen wins people over easily, you know. Must be that Appalachian accent.

Two hours later, twenty minutes before the game started, we got to the very front of the line. Our friends were next. We were giddy …

… Until the guy came over and said with genuine sadness, “no more tickets, folks.”

Our hearts sank, but he said there might be more tickets trickling in. We would have to wait awhile, another hour perhaps. Well, what else were we going to do? The Duck Boats had certainly all waddled away by now. (Truth is, we would never have made it there, either. You have to get reservations pretty far in advance.) Beautiful day. Friendly people. So we waited.

We didn’t wait for long! Not ten minutes later, six tickets opened up! $45 dollar face value! (Street value of lots more than that!) Right field box! In the shade! We were in! We even got to sit right next to our Bostonian New Hampshirian friends.

We bought a shirt and a cap from Yawkey Way, a street inside the park with shops and vendors and performers and crowds. We walked around and got caught up in it: the tradition and the fever.

The game was exciting. Boston beat the Orioles 3 runs to 2. The crowd drew us in, made us members of the Red Sox Nation, (probationary members, I think. I asked a lot of dumb questions, like “what’s the Green Monster?” and “Who is Bill Buckner?” Jen begged, “keep your voice down, honey,” a lot.)

We sang and cheered and showed our support. I imagine it was a lot like being at a Premiere League game for one of the top four, only we sang songs like “Sweet Caroline” and “Dirty Water,” instead of chants like, “Who the F is Man United?”

Can’t wait for the next game, though it would be the Yankees series when I’m in Boston again, and it would be a little trickier to get tickets. Probably won’t happen.

If you ever want to visit, bring your standing shoes and we’ll spend a day at Fenway.

Looking to get out of the cubicle for fifteen minutes? Visit San Francisco, Vegas, New York, and a couple of other cities (more to come) from your browser. Think “Castle Wolfenstein 3D” only with photos from real cities.

Unbelievable: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html

New Orleans 2007 Trip Cartoon
Charcoal, White Chalk and White Acrylic on Newsprint
(Digital, Painter), 03/25/07

Azaleas and Tiger and “BEAR”!

We spied all sorts of things during our recent trip to New Orleans. Here are just a few:

• A house that could not be taken by tank.
• A suggestive, nay, obscene football mural.
• Wild turkeys, the kind that are birds.
• Mike the Tiger, LSU’s mascot, whose head is so big.
• An unhaunted plantation.
• An amphibious transport dock ship.
• Crawfish, beignets and cafe au lait.

I’ll add more as I think of them. (Plenty of inside jokes here.) Thanks to our friends in NOLA for a great time, as usual! Can’t wait for next year.

Starting off the new year with a faux-charcoal sketch. I brushed the cobwebs off of my installation of Painter, awoke the beast of a program and wrestled it into submission. It’s a little tricky to use with its very strange and un-ubiquitous interface.

It’s nice to have clean fingers and cheeks and a smudge-free nose after a charcoal drawing.

This not-so-flattering rendering is of Adam Weaver of the band Adam Weaver and the Ghosts. If you haven’t heard them yet, listen to the four songs they have on their MySpace page. Then, go buy their album from iTunes or somewhere else. I’m not that great at describing music, so here’s a description from CD Baby:

Southern slowcore writing meets intelligent urban delivery resulting in dark folk-pop. Mississippi meets Omaha.

Jen and I saw them perform in St. Louis in December. Adam rocked a nice cover of “Feelings” that bore little resemblance to the original tune but was easily my favorite song of the night. Here’s the photo reference for the sketch above, from that night.