October 2009
New entries are at the bottom (so they can be easily read chronologically).
Photos © Nancy F. Little 2009 unless otherwise noted.
Professional entries are in large bold in the text.
Archives
Saturday, October 3, 2009
&
New Art Pages"
11 years ago today, my lovely wife and I (finally) got married after way too long apart. (It's a 
great story. Ask me sometime.) The traditional 11 anniversary gift is stainless steel, so Nancy got me some big toenail clippers. It's just what I needed.
To celebrate, we went out to dinner where we always go for our anniversary: Paul & Elizabeth's in Northampton MA and ordered most of the things we usually order. 
Afterwards, Nancy wanted an after dinner drink, so we walked over to The Tunnel Bar (pictured right) -- a tasteful upscale place located in the old pedestrian tunnel over to the old train station. While we were there, a wedding party came piling down the stairs from the restaurant up above. They ended up taking some pictures past where we were sitting, so on their way back I stopped them to congratulate them and tell them that it's a good day to get married because today is our 11th. Well, they were rather surprised because there was another couple who had been at the bar when they came down the stairs and it was their 11th, too! So we three couples who all got married on the same day and ended up in the same bar at the same time had a merry little time together for a few moments. The other "oldtime" husband got a bit bawdy on the way out the door, after which Nancy & I had a little conversation about couth and class... but I guess it was okay because it worked! (hint, hint, nudge nudge, wink, wink, yaknowwhatImean?, yaknowwhatImean?)
Nancy was at school all day during the daylight hours today, and during that time I spent several hours adding two new art pages to my website: 
1. Our new housemate Ilai (pronounced "Eli") has two wonderful young daughters. The older, Ilani, is 7 and is an artist. She's constantly at the art table drawing when she's here. On Thursday she drew a great picture of our cat Tiger Lilly. And yesterday, she drew wonderful portraits of the other adults in the house besides her dad: Joanne, Nancy, and me. The one she drew of me -- and I'm guessing here -- was from memory from seing me a few weeks ago on stilts at one of our big events at River Valley Market because it's of me on stilts. I was so taken with her drawing that I immediately decided to put it on my website. I looked all over and couldn't find an appropriate place for it, so a created a brand new page called Fan Art. You can see her picture much bigger there. So far, it's the only picture on the page, but I've got plenty of other stuff to go there, so 
there will be more eventually.
2. And that inspired me to also add a new page to my virtual art museum: TREVOR's Museum of Real Art (TMoRA) called "Magnetic Attractions" of some of the art made with magnets on my fridge over the years. There's been a lot of this, but some of them I was taken with enough to actually take a photo. I'm not the greatest photographer in the world (extreme understatement), so most of them have a severe flash bulb glare --- sorry --- but that's the way it is in the art world.
Enjoy!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Our terrific new housemate Ilai (say: Eli) offered to go get his trailer and drive me down to Springfield MA today to pick up some old railroad ties that I'm going to use as a retaining 
wall across the back of our back yard.
Last week, I found some free topsoil and railroad ties at the same location via craigslist. I went down and filled my truck bed to the brim with some of the best topsoil I've seen, and just to save myself a trip, I wrestled the three shortest railroad ties up on top, lashed them down, and started home. However...
Not only was it way more weight than my little truck could handle --- a full-sized tie weighs around 200 lbs --- but there was so much weight in the back that it was tipping the front wheels up a little too much: if I went faster that 20 mph, I couldn't steer! So about a mile up the road, I pulled into a shopping plaza and rolled those three ties off onto the grass in the back of the lot (where they'd be out of everyone's way until I could return for them). 
In the process, I noticed how low the air in my back tires looked. Luckily there were four gas stations at that intersection, so I sloooowly pulled into the first and up to the air compressor. The nozzle had duct taped wrapped all around it and was leaking audibly, but I tried it anyways. It worked for a bit and then I'm guessing there just wasn't enough pressure to do what it takes because the tire stopped expanding.
Meanwhile a woman who looked vaguely familiar came trotting out of the station's convenience store and came right over and addressed me by name. Turns out it was one of my co-workers from a little over two decades ago when I ran the pool for three years at Girl Scout Camp Lewis Perkins in South Hadley MA in the mid-80's. It was a FUN, but short-lived, blast from my lifeguarding past because she had to get back to her register.
Anyways, their air compressor wasn't cutting it, so I went clockwise around the intersection from station to station: the next one's didn't do anything, the third's had an Out of Order sign on it, and finally --- thank goodness! --- the fourth station had an air compressor that actually worked. I pumped up my back tires and got back on the road.
Without those 3 heavy lugs on the back, I was able to get up to a little over 40 mph and still maintain control (Whee!). But this wasn't fast enough to go on the interstate, so I ended up having to take Rte 5 all the way home.
So, between dumping the ties, going to 4 stations for air, and having to drive slow on the local route instead of taking the expressway home, what was only a 25 minute drive down turned into an hour and 45 minutes drive home. Needless to say, I was late for dinner and had to shovel all that glorious topsoil out of my truck my moonlight and streetlight after supper.
And that's just the preamble to today's entry:
So when I told Ilai my little tale of woe, he immediately volunteered his time and trailer to go pick up the railroad ties today! Yay! We got down there in about 25 minutes, took another 45 to wrestle 
10 railroad ties onto his not so big trailer, drove over to the shopping plaza and loaded on the other three, and headed home.
We took it easy because we were pulling a pretty heavy load. But shortly after we got on the highway, on the 50mph curve just north of Springfield, there was a loud BANG! --- the trailer had popped a tire.
Fortunately, Ilai had a spare. Unfortunately, it was in his barn in Bernadston MA. So we unhooked the trailer, drove all the way north most of 45 minutes to the last highway exit on Rte 91 in Massachusetts, and then 5 minutes more to Ilai's property. We collected the tire, his floor jack, and his mini compressor with the cigarette lighter adaptor. Then, since I'd never been there, he gave me a little tour (What a COOL place!), before getting back on the road.
So 45 minutes more driving later, we were back at that fateful curve, where we jacked up the trailer and replaced the tire in only about 10 minutes. And then it took another 10 minutes each to pump up both the trailer's tires with that little binky air compressor. It was soooo slooooooooooow.
And then, just to be on the safe side, we decided that it probably would be best if we didn't drive quite so fast, so we got off the highway at the next exit and followed the route I'd taken a few days earlier with the dirt up Rte 5 the rest of the way home.
All told, once again, what could have been an easy couple of hours of so, turned into another 5 hour melee. Wowie Zowie!
Thank you, Ilai! Despite the trouble, I could not have done it without you. YAY ILAI!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Each month, the Hats Off Performers Guild meets from roughly 9:30am - 12:30pm. Today we were all there, got started late, ran overtime, and had another packed meeting. But, I'm not going to tell you any more about that, even though it was a good meeting with a great lunch. Instead, I've got more saga to share.
I had made arrangement to pick up more dirt for my backyard project, this time conveniently located in Amherst MA only about 10 minutes from where our Guild meeting was. So after our meeting, I drove over with my empty truck and shovel. I knew ahead of time that this dirt was very clay-y, but I hadn't counted on it being quite so much more work than shoveling topsoil. It took more than twice as long to fill the truck, but since it was only a 20 minute drive home, I still managed to get back before 4:00.
Now, Tuesdays are my lovely wife's library volunteer days. She's at the Springfield City Library first and then goes straight to the Hatch Library at Bay Path College in Longmeadow MA. So she doesn't get home until about 8:00ish, so I knew I had about four hours to do what I had to do.
That clay-y dirt had taken me so long to load into my truck that there was absolutely no way I was going to shovel it all out somewhere and later shovel it behind the retaining wall where it goes. Because of the clay content, I definitely wanted this stuff to be at the bottom. It would both help stabilize the wall and maybe even help keep a little bit of water up top where the forsythia and grass could use it. So before unloading the dirt, I had to build the retaining wall.
I had 4 hours, a truckful of dirt, and 13 railroad ties. That's not 
enough ties to build the entire wall, but I decide to start in the middle and work my way out. Three hours and fifteen minutes and a mighty lot of scrapes and bruises later, I had more than half a retaining wall made of 13 railroad ties. And 45 minutes after that, I was scraping the last of that clay-y soil out of the back of the truck and tossing it over the wall as my lovely wife pulled into the driveway right on schedule.
Each of us were pretty beat after our respective 11-hour days: her's doing lots of volunteer library work, mine doing a long Guild meeting and 6 hours of manual labor. *Phew*
Wednesday, October 7 - Saturday, October 10, 2009
No blab this entry; just a few photos with captions.
(Please notice that I actually took two of the photos below. Nancy must have liked my picture of Pete's boots, because she edited it for me. Thanks, hon! You're the Best!)
This is looking into Pete's kitchen/dining room from the front room (that used to be the porch).
These are Pete's rubber boots. I wear them a lot every time we go there. I want a pair. Now.
I got lots of accordion practice in, including this "Concert With Umbrellas" for Chloe.
(Be sure to notice that I'm wearing the boots.)
Today, I'm talking about Brown's Harvest in Windsor CT. I've been stiltwalking every year at their October Pumpkin Festival for six years in a row now! It's a family farm in every sense of the word, and I know the whole family: Mr & Mrs Brown, their two grown-up daughters, and their grandkids as well. I've particularly enjoyed seeing their grandchildren growing up, and always look forward to talking with whichever one(s) of them are around helping each year when I'm there. I've seen their little fair get better and better and better each year. And each year it seems the crowds keep get bigger and bigger, so the must be doing something right!
In fact, in the parking lot today there were boodles of cars from Connecticut, of course, but there were also tons of cars from Massachusetts, as well as a few from New York and even one from Pennsylvania! I suspect the latter was here visiting someone, but I'm sure that those MA cars came specifically for this event. That's how good it is: people from out of state drive here to get their pumpkins at Brown's even though there's hundreds of pumpkin farms right here in Massachusetts. (I can buy pumpkins at six places within 10 minutes of my house!)
So check it out. They're open every day through November 1st from 10-6 with their mini corn maze, hay rides, cider, their extremely popular cider donuts, pumpkin painting, and lots and lots and LOTS of pumpkins in all shapes and sizes. But the real festivities happen on the weekends with live entertainment, face painting, and a host of other FUN stuff. Oh, and crowds of happy people having a great time!
(NOTE: to get back on Rte 20 East and back to Rte 91, no matter what Google Maps says, take a left out of the parking lot. At the stop sign about a half mile up the road go straight ahead and the highway entrance will be on your left shortly after that.)
coupon. The entire time I was passing out coupons, only 7 out of 1007 people wouldn't take one. And pretty much everybody seemed really excited about the Beacon's opening. Most people knew about it already and were delighted that it was going to be opening so soon. (It's actually ahead of schedule.) So a big YAY! for Downtown Inc for this wonderful, wonderful event! 
I was thrilled to find fresh, local chicken of the woods mushrooms at River Valley Market today. It's a fan-shaped shelf mushroom that grows up to 2 feet across the outer edge and an inch and a half thick. What I brought home (right & below) was a small portion of what had to have been a rather large one because this piece is about 6" wide at the outer edge, and I broke it off of a piece about twice that size that was obviously part of a much, much larger piece. The top side is a gorgeous shade of orange and the bottom (not pictured here)
is a soft yellow. 
And then it was over to Darien Rivera's 9th birthday party just a few short minutes and a few short blocks later. I've done several other birthday parties for this family, including (I think) all his older brothers. When his mom Lisa Alicea called to book me she told me a little story about why she was calling me: It was very last minute (very... like yesterday!) and they were all sitting around the table trying to come up with a good idea for entertainment at his party. She'd called a few magicians but none of them were available, and then Darien piped up saying, "Why don't you just call TREVOR, Mom?" So she did.
FUN Thing #2: I've added a rather clever musical joke all the way at the very bottom of my "Cool Factoids & Other FUN Stuff" page. When you get there, just scroll all the way down. It's
titled "Noteworthy". A little musical knowledge helps to understand some of the word play in it, but there's probably enough there for just about everyone to enjoy. FUN Thing #3: I also added one of Hilary Price's Rhymes with Orange cartoons to the bottom of my "Cartoons I Like" page. Scroll to the bottom when you get there. I still start snickering every time I read it.
where there's a bunch more for the taking. Now I need an endless supply of dirt.
Now, let me tell you about these nails. First of all, each one is a foot long. That's 12 inches --- the length of my forearm from elbow to wrist! Second, 26 nails cost $23.48. That's 90 cents per nail! Third, each nail weighs 6.2 ounces, that's 3/8 of a pound. 5 of them together weigh over 2 pounds! Fourth, it took me over an hour to pound in 10 nails. That's over 6 minutes per nail. Each one took 150-250 whacks of the hammer, depending on how solid the railroad ties were. I was sweating after just two of them, that's how much work it was! I got blisters on my fingers through three layers of band-aids.
"Rock Garden"
meow!), a koala (in super slo-mo, too), a baby elephant (wonderful), a baby kangaroo (just barely), a baby bear (too much talking), a baby monkey (also very short), a meercat (like a dozen times), and a rabbit (17 times in a row!). But no cats or dogs (too ordinary).
There was an opening ceremony, live music from lots of local musicians (including Sarah Pirtle, David Fersh, Annie Hassett, and the Amandla Chorus!), lots of interesting booths (most of them with hands-on activities), a sculpture installation of a giant iceberg that rose before our eyes throughout the morning, a pep rally, a parade led by not one but two stiltwalkers!, a "350" made out of people (that's me above the 0), and a closing game of Keep the Earth(ball) in the Air with about 150 people and a beach ball with the earth on it.
