Tuesday, June 14, 2011

mystic beantown

June has certainly proven to be a busy month so far for us WOA (women of action).  Early June began with marking the completion of Kristina's garden. I think it is now about 10 ft. by 30 ft. and notice there's a new little herb bed outside fence (yes there's a fence made out of chicken wire which is supported by the poles).  Carrie would like you all to know that  she did not help in the garden this year but my friends John (the hammer) Messier and Gretchen (tiller queen) Legler did help me out in significant ways.


My friend Ruth had another successful show at Slates in Hallowell ME.  It was her cd release party and the concert went quite well.  For those who are interested in her music you can check out her website www.ruthhillmusic.com and/or friend her on facebook (Ruth Hill Fan page).  I'm her sometimes roadie / email gal.  It was an awesome show and if you like folk / acoustic music you'd probably like her stuff, its pretty great.

Carrie, who is sitting next to me reading a magazine in her kitchen, wants everyone to know that "one piece suits are the best bet if you want to look slimmer in a swimsuit.  Tankinis are particularly unflattering" (ShopSmart ; ) July 2011: 30).  This was actually a recent topic of conversation with my friend Gaelyn and I as I had to purchase a new swimsuit.  The old one still fit except in the behinder area which was saggy and would probably create a few uncomfortable moments for me if I wore it in public.  Carrie does not need to purchase a new suit this year.


I have been in Boston since Friday afternoon - I came down to celebrate Carrie's birthday, hang out with her friends and our mutual friends Lucy (from NC), Neil (currently residing in Worcester MA) and Sarah (who lives right down the road from said Carrie).  We decided that before I headed back North that we'd update people on our recent happenings.  I just asked Carrie if she remembered any of the 'funny' things we said yesterday she replied, "like what?".  This could be quite the dull post but alas, we will trudge along in the hope that maybe someone is slightly amused.


Friday night:  we went to Sarah's house to watch the "B's" game and while we were there we walked up her street to see the filming of I hate my dad which is some kind of new Adam Sandler film.  We were quite star struck seeing the crew breakdown the set and seeing clothes from the show - not.  While we arrived too late to see anyone famous / semi-famous (unlike my most recent brush with fame which was having David Strathain sit next to me at a conference) we were pleased to know that Wollaston MA can easily be transformed into looking like a neighborhood in the 1980's.  Aside from having fun with Sarah and friends, the Bruins lost that game and that's really all we'd like to note about that night.


Carrie's birthday Saturday:  While Carrie worked at another thrilling Curry Orientation, I picked up the house a little and did some food prep for her birthday gathering.  She actually got up early to make cupcakes for the event.  In the afternoon I went and met our friend Lucy (who I worked with at Warren Wilson College in Asheville NC), for lunch in Boston.  She is in town taking a two-week education leadership seminar.  Lucy and I enjoyed seeing people who were all dressed up in their rainbow gear for GLBT Pride.  We also saw bands of roaming pirates around Faneuil Hall - seriously - there were tons of younger folks with pirate outfits on, we believe it was tied to a pub crawl connected to a fundraiser for a deadly disease but we have no supporting evidence.  Lucy and I returned to Wollaston where we helped Carrie prep a whole bunch of yummy food and then parteeeeeeeee into the early AM, well actually late night.  Rumor has it there was a dance competition when Neil and I were taking Lucy back to her hotel but again, there's no supporting evidence that this occurred.  [Note from Carrie: The evidence is the 14 people who witnessed it -- Kristina is jealous she missed it!]


Sunday - meeting Andy in Mystic: part one: unhappy worker goes back to orientation to make sure students fill out the CPI correctly.  This is a simple assessment tool for incoming students which consists of 100 questions.  Carrie's favorite story involves a student filling in the dots to 183 and then pretending she wasn't doing it.  Ah, higher ed.   Part two: we head down to Mystic CT to hang out with her pals Ned and Itzik.  Ned's family owns a house on Masons Island (which is part of Enders Island) and they rent it out to tourists so we went down to chill on the porch, gaze at the ocean, eat and help make beds for the first batch of tourists for the season.  Enders Island used to be owned by a Dr. Enders somebody and it now is a retreat run by the Catholic Church.  It has a beautiful chapel with really cool contemporary stained glass windows (done in an arts and crafts style to match he main house on the island and so you can see lots of ocean) and a mummified hand of St. Edmund, which looks nothing like this:


His hand & forearm have a faded red silk glove thing on it with fingers exposed and the ring finger has a loop of the glove around it.  My guess is so it doesn't fall off since there's no elbow to hold it on.  Its in a case with other religious artifacts - little medals and pins with pictures and jewels on them.  While we really went to see the arm, the island itself is very beautiful and it was a lovely walk to have before dinner and our partial viewing of the movie Seven which was not so lovely.  We missed the end because we had to eat dinner but no one seemed that disappointed once I told them what happened.


I do think though that one of the highlights of the trip was meeting Andy.  As we were walking to see St. Edmund's hand, Ned has us make a detour through some bushes in someone's yard (attached to a big fancy house of course).  In the bushes was a clearing and there laid Andy.  Don't be afraid, it wasn't a real person, although it did startle Carrie.  Andy is a concrete statue of a young man (naked!) that was made in 1963.  Ned talked about how the statue caught his eye when his parents bought their house; at that time, Andy was standing upright.  We then talked about how we would rescue Andy - he looked fairly heavy and that he may have broken his legs when he fell over.  If Ned gets the statue (he's going to contact the people in the big fancy house) then we'll let you know what happens to him.  We think he'll be moving to Jamaica Plain MA.  At that time, if appropriate, we'll send fotos.


Carrie also demonstrated her mad skillz as a saver when we went to BigY to buy TP for the Mystic house.  We needed to get a large amount since 10 ladies would be staying at the place in a week or so.  After roaming around the feminine hygiene and diaper aisle, we located the goods and kizang!  there was a sale going on if you had a BigY card.  So after minutes of debate, Carrie headed over to the customer service counter and signed up for a card.  Since they are excited to have new customers, she also received some gold and silver doubloons.  Apparently Itzik was pissed off the first time they went there as he thought they only gave change in doubloons.  We played with the coins, grabbed an 18 double-roll pkg of TP and then cashed out.  We were a bit miffed that we couldn't use the doubloons to pay as we were buying things that weren't on the magical pirate doubloon list but when we were leaving, I did note that we could have gotten a fee mylar baloon with one of our doubloons.  We saved $5.71 - Take that Extreme Couponing (and one new mama of twins in Cary NC).


We headed back yesterday with some fine boutique items we purchased in Mystic (including a birthday gift for a friend of KWs) and one gay man who endured the backseat of the Saab which blasts hot air instead of cool.  Carrie's planning to call Saab this week but isn't too concerned since she never rides back there or in the passenger seat.  Apparently the driver's seat has full AC.  Kristina is on her way back to ME to work on finalizing an article, mow the yard and pack for her return to beantown in two days as she flies out to Oahu on Friday at very early in the morning.  Carrie will be resting to prepare for taking KW to the airport at the "butt crack of dawn, when no human should be awake" (CC).  


Thanks for reading, if you made it this far, we're a bit concerned about your boredom level (jk!).


xoxox the employed WOA cc and unemployed WOA kw


go Bs!


No comments:

Post a Comment