![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I hate Mondays. A whole lot. Especially rainy miserable Mondays. At least today, though, I had a whole weekend's worth of exciting F-list to read. Y'all were busy.
I spent the weekend in CT with Sarah B. We had an awesome time. I drove out there Friday night and arrived around 10:30-10:45ish, and we proceeded to stay up past 1:30 talking and bitching. Good stuff. Saturday we got breakfast at the Terrapin cafe up the street from Sarah's house (she got the breakfast burrito, I the 3-egg omelette with home fries, and both of us were well satisfied) and then went to visit Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, CT, which is only about 40 minutes from Sarah's house. In a town where there are an unusual amount of pink houses, Roseland Cottage is extraordinarily pink. The tour was really good, and we saw the oldest bowling alley in the U.S.! And privys where several presidents shat. I love historic houses. Then we grabbed some lunch at the Vanilla Bean cafe (she had a vegetarian sandwich or something, I had turkey and avocado, but both otherwise quite tasty sandwiches were completely overshadowed by the wonder of the chocolate cake), and we sat there and bitched about the president and the environment and the Catholic church for a while.
We took the discussion back out to the car with us, and were in the midst of some important point when Sarah suddenly exclaimed, "Puppet Museum!!" and turned the car so hard the tires squealed. Turns out we were driving right past UConn, which has a program in puppetry and a puppet museum. Sarah had driven down this road tons of times, and every time she saw the sign she always thought I'd probably like a puppet museum, so this time it really clicked and we went to see if they were open. They were. John, a senior puppetry major, was incredibly excited to see us and could barely talk because he was so psyched to tell someone all about how great puppets are. It was really sweet. The museum itself was very cool--some info on puppetry in other cultures, in ritual and such, but mostly about the history of puppetry in America. One display was awesome--back in the 1920's or '30's, a woman puppeteer decided to do an entire puppet production for her masters thesis, the first time anyone had ever done such a thing. She did The Birds by Aristophanes, and they have all her materials at the museum--all the puppets, all her concept sketches, all the original music--and the display is just amazing. Beautiful. They also have the original Skooter from the Muppet Show, which sparked quite a discussion between enthusiastic John and myself regarding the future of Muppets with Disney, the future of the Jim Henson Company, the Dark Crystal, and The Storyteller series (of which we are both fans). I also told him about how I'd seen the puppet opera theatre in Salzburg and the Augsburger Puppenkiste in, well, Augsburg, and he was quite impressed. Oddly enough, I can hold my own in conversation with a puppeteer. He's doing an internship right now with a stop-motion animation company, currently doing some commercials or something for Fisher Price, and he's working with people who worked on Nightmare Before Christmas. He was near creaming his shorts just talking about it, understandably in my view. He also took us back into the back parts of the museum and showed us some things that weren't even on display. All in all, a very cool museum. We had a good time.
That night we ate some magical magic cookies that Sarah's friend had made. They were awfully tasty. Then we went out for Thai food to a restaurant Sarah hadn't tried yet, but we liked it a lot, though that could just be the magic cookies talking. I had the pad thai, Sarah had honey duck, and Steve had a yellow curry that was too spicy for either of us to join in on, and we also had summer rolls and fried tofu for appetizers. Yum yum yum. Later on, we met up with Sarah's friends Tony and Dan at a bar, but I was fading fast at this point. We all went back to Sarah's place, but I fell asleep on the couch, and Sarah kept staring off into space. Props to Steve for the conversation carrying. I have no idea how long Tony and Dan actually hung out, but Sarah woke me up after they'd left so I could brush my teeth. I was feeling the magic even then. Whew.
Sunday. Sarah was up first and showered, and we had breakfast together before I showered. Then she tried again to rouse the sleeping Steve and was finally successful. Even though the weather was a bit gloomy, we decided to stick to our original plan and head out to Northampton for shopping. Their friend Karen and her boyfriend (fiance?) Ian were supposed to meet us when Ian got off work, but they didn't end up making it. Anyway, when we got to Northampton we discovered that the town was having a Taste of Northampton festival! You know what that means--lots and lots of food! I'll try to remember everything we got. Okay, we started off with a chicken kabob from the Argentinian booth, and that was yummy. Then to the Tibetan stand, for garlic ginger potatoes and vegetarian fried dumplings--melted in your mouth, seriously. We got a lemonade at around this point. Um, then we got the... pan-blackened sea scallops and some gorgonzola garlic bread from an american-cuisine cafe's stand. Also yum. We were low on tickets at this point, so we got dessert: strawberries and blueberries covered with warm drippy chocolate, from the chocolatier. It was called a Strawgasm and lived up to its name. Gah.
Okay, moving on. But man, there was so much food we wanted, there was no way we could get it all. Okay. So we shopped then--lots of cute little artsy stores. Eventually Steve decided to get a coffee and relax with a book in a cafe while Sarah and I tried on clothes. I ended up just getting one tank top, but Sarah got a few things. Very good stuff. Then we picked up Steve-O again and stopped by the chocolatier's actual store for truffles, and I got peanut butter fudge for the boys at home, and red swedish fish for me. We decided to go back to the Taste (you knew we would, didn't you?) for dinner before we headed out for the day, but on the way there, a cd store was having a sidewalk sale! I got the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome dvd for $8, plus two cds for under $8 each. AND the guy at the counter accepted my coupon even though it was supposed to be for purchases of $25 or more. Rawk! Okay, then back to the Taste. We got a giant slice of pizza--I've never seen pizza slices this large, it was seriously pie-sized--and it was good, but we mostly got it just for the novelty. Then we used the last tickets on some home-fried potato things that came with a lemon dill aioli sauce. Startlingly tasty. And on the way back to Coventry, we stopped in Springfield for someStone Cold Steve Austin Cold Stone Creamery ice cream. It was teh yum. And then I drove home.
And this weekend I'll see Sarah *again* because she and Steve-O are coming up to Boston for LotR night at the Museum of Science on Friday. I've been looking forward to this for so long I'm hardly excited anymore, but that should change before Friday. Next plan is to find out when the Boston Folk Festival is this fall so we can plan for our next gluttonous face-stuffing pig-out. The food there was so great last year. This weekend I'm hopefully going to take them to the Mexican place that Dylan took us to when Chelsea visited, so that should tide us over til next time.
It's funny--Battistini and I came together in college because we happened to be visiting SU on the same summer testing day, taking the same tests, and then discovering that both of us went to Catholic high schools in the Philly archdiocese and had been Mathletes. We had the Catholic Mathlete bond and figured that even if we didn't have much else in common--environmental science and spanish versus english and women's studies, Boyz II Men and Bone Thugs versus Sarah McLachlan and Ben Folds--at least we knew what we were getting if we roomed together instead of rooming with a complete stranger. Now, four roommate years and three post-college years later, we're still best friends, and what's our common bond these days? Food. Ah, Battistini, how do I love thee.
I spent the weekend in CT with Sarah B. We had an awesome time. I drove out there Friday night and arrived around 10:30-10:45ish, and we proceeded to stay up past 1:30 talking and bitching. Good stuff. Saturday we got breakfast at the Terrapin cafe up the street from Sarah's house (she got the breakfast burrito, I the 3-egg omelette with home fries, and both of us were well satisfied) and then went to visit Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, CT, which is only about 40 minutes from Sarah's house. In a town where there are an unusual amount of pink houses, Roseland Cottage is extraordinarily pink. The tour was really good, and we saw the oldest bowling alley in the U.S.! And privys where several presidents shat. I love historic houses. Then we grabbed some lunch at the Vanilla Bean cafe (she had a vegetarian sandwich or something, I had turkey and avocado, but both otherwise quite tasty sandwiches were completely overshadowed by the wonder of the chocolate cake), and we sat there and bitched about the president and the environment and the Catholic church for a while.
We took the discussion back out to the car with us, and were in the midst of some important point when Sarah suddenly exclaimed, "Puppet Museum!!" and turned the car so hard the tires squealed. Turns out we were driving right past UConn, which has a program in puppetry and a puppet museum. Sarah had driven down this road tons of times, and every time she saw the sign she always thought I'd probably like a puppet museum, so this time it really clicked and we went to see if they were open. They were. John, a senior puppetry major, was incredibly excited to see us and could barely talk because he was so psyched to tell someone all about how great puppets are. It was really sweet. The museum itself was very cool--some info on puppetry in other cultures, in ritual and such, but mostly about the history of puppetry in America. One display was awesome--back in the 1920's or '30's, a woman puppeteer decided to do an entire puppet production for her masters thesis, the first time anyone had ever done such a thing. She did The Birds by Aristophanes, and they have all her materials at the museum--all the puppets, all her concept sketches, all the original music--and the display is just amazing. Beautiful. They also have the original Skooter from the Muppet Show, which sparked quite a discussion between enthusiastic John and myself regarding the future of Muppets with Disney, the future of the Jim Henson Company, the Dark Crystal, and The Storyteller series (of which we are both fans). I also told him about how I'd seen the puppet opera theatre in Salzburg and the Augsburger Puppenkiste in, well, Augsburg, and he was quite impressed. Oddly enough, I can hold my own in conversation with a puppeteer. He's doing an internship right now with a stop-motion animation company, currently doing some commercials or something for Fisher Price, and he's working with people who worked on Nightmare Before Christmas. He was near creaming his shorts just talking about it, understandably in my view. He also took us back into the back parts of the museum and showed us some things that weren't even on display. All in all, a very cool museum. We had a good time.
That night we ate some magical magic cookies that Sarah's friend had made. They were awfully tasty. Then we went out for Thai food to a restaurant Sarah hadn't tried yet, but we liked it a lot, though that could just be the magic cookies talking. I had the pad thai, Sarah had honey duck, and Steve had a yellow curry that was too spicy for either of us to join in on, and we also had summer rolls and fried tofu for appetizers. Yum yum yum. Later on, we met up with Sarah's friends Tony and Dan at a bar, but I was fading fast at this point. We all went back to Sarah's place, but I fell asleep on the couch, and Sarah kept staring off into space. Props to Steve for the conversation carrying. I have no idea how long Tony and Dan actually hung out, but Sarah woke me up after they'd left so I could brush my teeth. I was feeling the magic even then. Whew.
Sunday. Sarah was up first and showered, and we had breakfast together before I showered. Then she tried again to rouse the sleeping Steve and was finally successful. Even though the weather was a bit gloomy, we decided to stick to our original plan and head out to Northampton for shopping. Their friend Karen and her boyfriend (fiance?) Ian were supposed to meet us when Ian got off work, but they didn't end up making it. Anyway, when we got to Northampton we discovered that the town was having a Taste of Northampton festival! You know what that means--lots and lots of food! I'll try to remember everything we got. Okay, we started off with a chicken kabob from the Argentinian booth, and that was yummy. Then to the Tibetan stand, for garlic ginger potatoes and vegetarian fried dumplings--melted in your mouth, seriously. We got a lemonade at around this point. Um, then we got the... pan-blackened sea scallops and some gorgonzola garlic bread from an american-cuisine cafe's stand. Also yum. We were low on tickets at this point, so we got dessert: strawberries and blueberries covered with warm drippy chocolate, from the chocolatier. It was called a Strawgasm and lived up to its name. Gah.
Okay, moving on. But man, there was so much food we wanted, there was no way we could get it all. Okay. So we shopped then--lots of cute little artsy stores. Eventually Steve decided to get a coffee and relax with a book in a cafe while Sarah and I tried on clothes. I ended up just getting one tank top, but Sarah got a few things. Very good stuff. Then we picked up Steve-O again and stopped by the chocolatier's actual store for truffles, and I got peanut butter fudge for the boys at home, and red swedish fish for me. We decided to go back to the Taste (you knew we would, didn't you?) for dinner before we headed out for the day, but on the way there, a cd store was having a sidewalk sale! I got the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome dvd for $8, plus two cds for under $8 each. AND the guy at the counter accepted my coupon even though it was supposed to be for purchases of $25 or more. Rawk! Okay, then back to the Taste. We got a giant slice of pizza--I've never seen pizza slices this large, it was seriously pie-sized--and it was good, but we mostly got it just for the novelty. Then we used the last tickets on some home-fried potato things that came with a lemon dill aioli sauce. Startlingly tasty. And on the way back to Coventry, we stopped in Springfield for some
And this weekend I'll see Sarah *again* because she and Steve-O are coming up to Boston for LotR night at the Museum of Science on Friday. I've been looking forward to this for so long I'm hardly excited anymore, but that should change before Friday. Next plan is to find out when the Boston Folk Festival is this fall so we can plan for our next gluttonous face-stuffing pig-out. The food there was so great last year. This weekend I'm hopefully going to take them to the Mexican place that Dylan took us to when Chelsea visited, so that should tide us over til next time.
It's funny--Battistini and I came together in college because we happened to be visiting SU on the same summer testing day, taking the same tests, and then discovering that both of us went to Catholic high schools in the Philly archdiocese and had been Mathletes. We had the Catholic Mathlete bond and figured that even if we didn't have much else in common--environmental science and spanish versus english and women's studies, Boyz II Men and Bone Thugs versus Sarah McLachlan and Ben Folds--at least we knew what we were getting if we roomed together instead of rooming with a complete stranger. Now, four roommate years and three post-college years later, we're still best friends, and what's our common bond these days? Food. Ah, Battistini, how do I love thee.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-18 06:26 am (UTC)From:Have you been back to that Mexican place (Jose's) since that time?
Good muthafuckin choice, muthafuckah.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-18 06:56 am (UTC)From:I haven't been back to the Mexican place since that time, probably because there are two decent Mexican places within walking distance of home and/or work. But I really want to take Batts there on Saturday--are you working? Or if you are, can you give me (ie, write down for me) directions?