Finally...Wireless

Last year at this time, I was doing blog postings two or three times per week. I had established a routine, and had assembled a small group of loyal readers (led by my mother - Hi Mom), who seemed to find me amusing and interesting enough to read on a regular basis. Then Thor came in February, and I haven't really had much time to write anything since. I got into the habit of spending my evenings with Moose Puppy, and our activities didn't included me sitting upstairs at the computer. I've been meaning to get a wireless router, but it never seems to be at the top of my list when I'm doing errands. Since it happens to be tax-free weekend here in MA, G and I tacked a few extra destinations on our usual Saturday errand route - one of which was Best Buy to get the router. I hooked it up without any difficulty at all, and now all of my problems are solved. (Well, that's a total lie. All of my problems are not solved, but I digress...) I can write on my netbook while keeping the pooch company downstairs.

Right now I'm sitting on his sofa watching The King's Speech while Thor (taking up 3/4 of the sofa) is alternating between chomping on his bone and snoozing. Did you ever notice that Colin Firth always has actors from Pride & Predudice in his films? Just a side note. Okay. Now, for something totally different, The Royal Tenenbaums is the current film selection. I should be able to type faster since I don't have to concentrate on the film as much and plus, Wes Anderson rocks the house.

Last weekend I went up to Wingaersheek Beach to spend some time w/ my dear friend E and her family. E is one of my two best friends from college. I used to visit her at her family's summer home during college, but I hadn't been there in years. It was so beautiful; exactly as I remember. I'm not really much of a beach person, (and I never take my ghostly white, nordic skin out in the sunlight) so the fact that it was raining last week was perfect beach weather for me. When I got there, I found out that we were going clamming. What fun!! (My mother is from Philadelphia, and in the summers when I was little, we used to go to the Jersey shore with our cousins for vacation. The older six of us were all born within 34 months, so we were all basically the same age. Somebody told us how to find quahogs, and so we used to dig for them. When we'd find them, we'd smash them on the hard sand, dig out the clam and throw it up to the seagulls. I remember sometimes the seagulls would miss and the clams would land on people sunbathing on the beach. Now, I'm sure it's hard to imagine me ripping a raw clam out of its shell and throwing up to a seagull, but I did. Great fun for kids.)

When we went out last week it was pouring, so no one else was on the beach. We got off to kind of a slow start because they have to be 5" to be keepers, but things picked up when the tide started to come back in. We ended up with tons. It took E's brother R close to two hours to clean them all. Then E made stuffed clams w/ onion, garlic, salt pork, tabasco, the ground clams and bread crumbs. I generally don't eat fish or shellfish, but I did have half of a stuffed clam.

During the time that I wasn't writing or posting pictures, there was a black crowned night heron baby that was growing up in my biggest tree. Check him out:

This first photo was taken in June. I have these birds every year, and this is the youngest one I've ever seen.

This was taken in July, and he or she had grown into a very handsome teenager.

This was taken just a couple days ago. He's sleeping, but you can see that he's getting big. I think he's full grown at this point, but you can tell by the feathers that he's a juvenile. If he were an adult, he'd be primarily white with some gray and a black head. For more on these birds, check out this link.

During my post last Saturday, I was complaining about the mystery mammal who has been eating all my zucchini flowers. When I was at E's I asked her mother if she knew how I could get varmints to leave the zucchini flowers alone. Her answer was absolutely brilliant. Forget the zucchinis; pick the flowers, dip them in egg, roll them in flour and fry them. Check out a picture of last night's dinner: Fried zucchini flowers at 2:00.

That's pretty much it for today. I'll think of something interesting to write about and post again sometime this week.