Science Monkey

Okay, let’s get this story out of the way.

As I alluded to the other day, Emma and I came home to a slightly damp house, not just because we live in Florida. We came home to a damp house because we live in Florida where the roofers sometimes forget to cover an open roof with a tarp for the daily rainstorm. Grr.

The reason behind the new roof is somewhat complex, but I’ll try to simplify it. As many of you know, we rent our house from Emma’s folks in a situation that works well for all interested parties. Unfortunately, due to the recent hurricanes and such, many insurance companies are not writing policies for rental properties, meaning that Emma’s dad had to find a new company to cover his mortgage insurance. Not a huge deal, but a pain. The new insurance company’s inspector seemed to be overall pleased with the condition of the house, other than the age of the roof. The roof — the solid, intact roof — was greater than 18 years old, so to get the insurance coverage it had to be replaced. In a way that seemed clever at the time, the re-roofing was scheduled for the week that we would be out of town.

So, while we’re enjoying ourselves with the llamas and the lack of oxygen up in the mountains, the old roof is torn off and the new roof was put on. Unfortunately — and I honestly don’t completely understand how this happened — the roofers left on Tuesday with the roof incomplete and uncovered. This being Florida, there was a torrential rainstorm that afternoon and the water poured into the house, drenching our kitchen and our bedroom. There are water stains on the ceiling, the tiles on the kitchen floor are peeling up and bubbling, and our mattress was completely soaked. Water also came into our bedroom closet, soaking most of Emma’s clothes and about half of mine.

Let me interject at this point that we have some amazing friends, including Angela, who was feeding the cats and chickens while we were away. She must have spent a full day’s work being our intermediary with the roofers, cleaning, and doing laundry at the house. She did such an amazing job that I can hardly even believe it. By the time we got home our mattress was dry and the bedsheets had been cleaned, so we could sleep in our own bed, and the vast, vast majority of the water was gone. Just amazing. I don’t think we can thank her enough.

Emma and I met with the roofing company’s owner and the project manager this morning, who have been really helpful in getting this resolved. We went through and showed him the damage and he promised to do whatever we needed to get it fixed. I think we want to replace the mattress — although it’s dry, it just feels odd — and we’re having a painting company come look at the ceiling. All in all, the damage wasn’t quite as bad as we had feared.

The next story will be more fun, I promise. Maybe some mountain climbing adventures?

Most of my pictures are now online for the Colorado Reunionfest. I’m still working on the descriptions and such, but they’re at least viewable. Hope you enjoy!

If you’re reading this, I suspect you know Emma and myself. I’ll try to simplify everybody’s relationships, but it’s a bit of a muddle, to be honest. Hold on tight.

Abby: Emma’s mom and essentially the nucleus around which this reunion formed.

Mike G.: Abby’s first husband.

Larry G.: Abby and Mike’s older son. His son, Max, wasn’t able to come.

Deborah G.: Abby and Mike’s older daughter. Her son, Ben Z., was there, but her husband, Mike Z., couldn’t come.

Jenny K.: Abby and Mike’s younger daughter. Arranged the entire event (Yay, Jenny!) and attended with her husband, Brad K., and son, Sam K.

David G.: Abby and Mike’s younger son. Was there with his wife, Lorrie G., and children, Joseph G. and Sarah G.

Vince L.: Abby’s current husband and Emma’s dad.

Teresa S.: Mike’s second wife. Attended with her wife, Susan J., and their twin children, Isabelle (Izzy) and James.

Billy and Eli D.. Two of Abby’s cousins.

Susan S.: Another of Abby’s cousins. Attended with her s.o., Stuart.

Priscilla C.: Abby’s sister. Attended with her daughter, (”the older”) Sarah.

Ellen: Mike’s sister.

Judy: Mike’s current wife.

Ben: David G.’s friend, who came to join us for the last few days. His partner, Bruce, came up for the last evening (with his tuba).

Barb: Jenny K.’s friend, who also came up for the last few days.

Is that it? I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody. Hmmm. At any rate, counting friends and children, that’s 30 people at the reunion, at varying times. I think we averaged about 25 at the llama ranch over any given night.

We’re home, to a slightly damp house. (Story to come later)

Pictures and adventurous tales to come later, but for now, bed.

I’m heading off tomorrow on vacation, to Emma’s family reunion in Colorado. We’re staying on a llama farm near Rocky Mountain National Park, which should be a lot of fun. I’m taking my laptop, but I don’t really expect to be able to internet. I’ve set up Twitter (@sciencemonkey) on my cell phone, so I’ll probably send out too many messages the first few days and then get tired of it.

I hope you all have a lovely week and I’ll type to you all when I get back. If you see her, don’t forget to wish the unbelievably awesome Sarah a happy birthday on the 14th! Col-o-rad-o, here I come, gonna be a llama farm bum…

Well, I had intended to post this yesterday, but oh well. Two entries today! Woo!

We left Connecticut fairly early in the morning, after hearing dire predictions of how long the trip would be. “Oh, I’ve done that. That’s a 12 hour drive, at least!” Maybe if you drive slow, I guess. It’s not like it’s a 700 mile drive. Still, we were anxious to get on the road early and make it to Pittsburgh before dark.

This drive was particularly easy and lovely. We drove out of Connecticut the same way we came in, but then we stayed north in New York, so rather than go back to Manhattan and cross the GW again, we used the Tappan Zee bridge to cross the Hudson. Did I tell you how beautiful that part of the drive was? Simply gorgeous.

The drive across New Jersey was actually quite lovely, too, and I had no idea that we were so high until we started to descend to cross the Delaware Water Gap. It felt like we were going downhill forever. Or at least an hour. Much of the trip was like that, though, where I noticed the downhill parts far more than I noticed the uphill parts. My brain’s just weird like that.

Driving across Pennsylvania probably should have been a little nostalgic for me, as a lot of my Mom’s family lives in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area where she grew up, but I didn’t remember it. Probably we were still too far north.

The hardest part about getting to Emma’s sister’s house in Pittsburgh was navigating between the interstate and her neighborhood. “Go through two stop signs…Take an easy right turn…Don’t go over the cliff.” Heh.

Brad and Jenny’s house is lovely, basically situated on top of a hill. It’s hard to tell that such a major industrial town as Pittsburgh is so close. They’re fairly close to the interstate, too, but you’d never be able to tell.

When we first arrived, Sam was very shy, running away to the other room to practice his guitar soon after we walked in the door. After it was apparent we weren’t leaving, I suspect. Soon, though, he discovered that uncle Arne makes for an excellent punching bag. As did Joe and Ben, actually. I wonder why that is? Probably because I play along at first, so then they think it’s a fun game. And it is, for a while…

Sam’s favorite game with me was to “cut” me apart with a magnet inside a plastic case that was slightly tapered at one end. The magnet was his knife, and he delighted in cutting off my hands (so I couldn’t tickle him), ears (so I couldn’t hear), lips (so I couldn’t talk), feet, etc. Happily for me I seem to have remarkable regenerative powers, because soon after he cut them off they grew back. Magic!

To kill some time until Emma’s sister got off work (she’s an ICU nurse), we thought that we’d take a drive around Pittsburgh and Brad could show us the sights. I thought it’d be fun, since I’d never been to Pittsburgh before, but I don’t think that Emma wanted to sit in a car much longer. Fortunately for her, as we were getting ready, somebody mentioned that there was an Ikea store nearby. Whoa. I had never been to an Ikea. I decided unilaterally that that was where we should go. So we did. And it was good.

What a freaking AMAZING place, that Ikea. First off, there’s a playroom for kids, with what appears to be decent security. There’s a giant ball pit and some other stuff for the kids to play with while their parents shop. Sam really likes the ball pit. Arne really likes the Ikea. We had a great time wandering through the store, looking at all of the fun stuff. We found one lamp in particular that our cats would have loved. So, you know those dangly cat toys, with a feather or a ball on a string, tied to a long pole? The ones our cats really love? Yeah, this lamp was basically that, but huge. The lamp itself is a chopped-off sphere made of thin fabric about two feet across, which hangs from a bent pole over a table, for instance. The pole, however, is nice and bendy, and I can just see our cats playing catapult with it. Well, I can see Keegan using it to launch Rory across the room, which Rory would probably love. Heh.

Dinner was at a local bar-and-grill-type place. I had a sliced steak sandwich with cole slaw and French fries, which is apparently the Pittsburgh way. Very tasty.

After dinner we played a few games with the boy, I think, then sent him to bed. He read “Go, Dog. Go!” to me and I read “Gerald McBoing Boing” to him. Very cute.

Coming tomorrow (or perhaps later tonight): The Tunnel-Bridge Song! With video goodness!

Day 4:

Friday morning we went out to breakfast with Billy. Every morning he goes to the same diner for breakfast and, since Emma and I like going out for breakfast, we decided that we’d like to join him. Talk about a greasy spoon! I mean, I enjoyed the food (although the hash was a tiny bit too salty for my taste), but after eating there I can see why one would need a bypass. It seemed like a lot of the town passed through while we were eating. Billy was constantly greeting and chatting briefly with people as they came in or left.

Following breakfast, Billy took us to a fantastic donut shop a few towns over. I’ve forgotten the name, which is a shame because they make amazing donuts. Lou’s? Bob’s? A short, male name, I think. Paul’s? I don’t remember. I’d recommend them, but I can’t remember where they are or what they’re called. Sorry.

After picking up a half-dozen delicious, delicious donuts, we dropped Billy back off at his house and headed down the highway towards Mystic. The goal was to spend the rest of the day enjoying the seaport then head back to Meriden for one last dinner with the gang there. I must say that we were quite successful.

The Mystic Seaport is a working recreation of a late-1800’s seaport from the area. They have recreations of a number of the shops (boring), as well as several tall ships and an actual working shop. There is apparently always a ship being either restored or built on the grounds.

One of the things that Emma remembered from her childhood was the Dead Horse ceremony. She didn’t actually remember the ceremony all that well (I think; I could be mistaken) but she remembered the song that her family made up afterwards for her aunt’s answering machine. “Cilla’s not here so you’d better leave your name / And we think so, and we hope so / Leave your message at the sound of the tone / Poor old horse! / Wait for the beep…” The song was based on this sea shanty that they perform, called “Poor Old Horse”. They bring a “dead horse” made up of old sailcloth on board and sing the song to it, then toss it overboard.

It’s apparently full of symbolism and crap, but mostly it was just fun. Since a crew would have to buy its own supplies for each voyage, the shops in town usually gave them an advance on their first month’s wages. This month, for some reason, became referred to as the “dead horse” month, so at the first day of the second month of sailing, the sailors performed the dead horse ceremony. It was fun. The whole day was fun, in fact. I could probably write for a few hours about all of the things that we saw and did, but I’ll spare you.

On the drive home, Billy had recommended that we stop at a used book store in Niantic called the Book Barn, and we’re really glad that we did. There were about a half-dozen buildings spread over a couple of acres, stuffed full of books. Oh, and there were cats everywhere, as well as a few goats (in a pen, presumably to keep them away from the tasty, tasty books) and a dog. If you’re ever in the area, you absolutely need to stop.

Dinner was at a Chinese buffet that Eli likes. As with the Greek restaurant the first night, this was one of the oddest Chinese buffets I’ve ever been to. They had a nice selection of Chinese dishes on half of the buffet — standards like beef and broccoli and General Tso’s chicken — but the other half of the buffet was made up of sliced turkey and steaks and the classic Chinese favorite, cheese pizza. And there was sushi. I always enjoy Chinese buffet, so I was able to rise above the oddity and have a nice dinner, but it was a little strange.

Coming tomorrow: We travel to Pittsburgh to go to a furniture store.

We had no fixed plans for our first day in Connecticut. We drove around Meriden for a little while and Emma pointed out places she remembered from her childhood — where her grandmother lived, the hill she would sled down into a line of trees, that sort of thing. Although we had planned to go to Mystic Seaport on Friday, we decided to go ahead over, because there’s a lot to see.

On the way to Mystic, we came across Gillette Castle, which Emma had gone to when she was a kid. It’s a remarkable house, built by an actor in the 1890’s overlooking the Connecticut River. Gillette (no relation to the razor family) was the man who brought Sherlock Holmes to the stage (and largely to America, I think). He made an absolute fortune acting across the country and eventually retired to Connecticut. He designed and built a home that looked like a European castle. Not an intact castle, though, but a ruined castle. It was…amazing.

The grounds were absolutely beautiful, with an amazing view of the Connecticut River.

The inside of the house was equally striking. Every detail in the house was either fun or interesting or beautiful or some combination of all of the above. Each door had a different, carved mechanism for opening and locking the door. Gillette had mirrors installed so that he could stand at his bedroom door and see who was either at the front door or who was vainly trying to get into his bar, which he had discreetly locked. It was simply fantastic.

After a few hours wandering around the castle, Emma and I pressed onwards towards Mystic. Since we were planning on going to the seaport the next day, we decided to go to the aquarium. The first thing we did was pet the stingrays. Hee!

The rest of the aquarium was equally fun. Our favorite part, I think, was the penguins. When we walked up to their area, almost all of the penguins were staring intently at the back wall. Just staring. Standing completely still, staring. The zoo person (guide? zoologist? whatever) came over and asked if we had any questions. “Um,” I asked, “what’s up with the wall?” It turns out that just behind the wall was their kitchen and lunch was being prepared. Smart penguins.

Two of the penguins were less interested in the wall and were playing in the water. Interestingly, they were the two juveniles in the group, so maybe they didn’t have the attention span of the older birds. The older of the two was swimming around, showing off for the visitors. The younger one was playing on the stone island in the center of the enclosure. He would waddle over one direction, follow something with his head, then waddle off in a new direction. After watching for a while, the zoo lady explained that he was chasing bumblebees! How cute!

They’ll also chase planes flying overhead. And will fall over. Heh.

For our last stop, Emma and I drove to the Mohegan Sun. It was completely overwhelming. There are two huge casinos (the Casino of the Earth and the Casino of the Sky) and a large number of shops and restaurants. We wandered around both casinos and failed to find blackjack tables with minimums lower than $10, so we played a few slots and ended up ahead 40 cents. Yes, that’s right. We took the casino for 40 big ones. Oh yeah.

Dinner Thursday was pizza in New Haven. New Haven is apparently famous for its pizza shops, and we were not disappointed. We ate at Modern Apizza, New Haven’s “fourth best” pizza, according to Billy and Eli. They don’t like the one that’s supposedly the best and we didn’t want to wait in line for the other two. The pizza was really good, I’ll admit, but it was not the best pizza I had ever had. Top five, though. Really tasty.

Day 4 report coming tomorrow.

Emma and I woke up early Wednesday morning, because we had a long drive ahead of us. We said our good-byes to Dave and Lorrie and were on the road by about 6:30. The road out of Raleigh was not great, but at least it was four lanes and traffic was moving along well. As would become our usual routine, Emma drove for the first couple hours while I tried to sleep, then I took over driving when Emma decided that she was going to fall asleep at the wheel. Seemed like a good plan to us.

Most of the navigation for this leg was pretty easy. Go to I-95, head north to New York City. I can do that. We met up with 95 at the Virginia border and sped on towards Washington, DC. I don’t remember when I took over driving, but I do remember it was after we were on 95 but before we approached DC. We hit the DC area around 10:30 or 11, so we were careful not to actually go into town. We just skirted around on the Beltway and pushed north towards Baltimore.

By the time we passed Baltimore, we were starting to run out of gas. Since the car was so new, we didn’t have a good feel for how much gas was left when the “empty” light came on (we now know that we have about 45 miles of highway driving available). Guess what we couldn’t find. Gas stations. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t see any for about 15 minutes. Plus, the only exits that we passed were junctions with other highways heading hither and yon.

By the time we found gas we had pulled off on a random exit and driven through a small college campus followed by a small college town. Somehow we didn’t get back on the interstate at the same place we left, either, so we completely bypassed Philadelpha. Oh well. Next trip.

There was nothing remakable about the drive through Delaware (other than it was hella-short) or New Jersey, which brings us to…New York City.

We didn’t want to actually go into the City, for fear that we poor, dumb Floridians would get befuddled by all the tall buildings and never find our way out. We drove over the George Washington bridge and apparently lucked out…the traffic wasn’t bad at all and we zipped right on over. We were on the upper deck which made for a lovely view of the river and the city as we crossed.

Following the GW, we tried our best to get lost in the one area we didn’t have a good map for (note to self: nice planning, doofus). A few twists and turns (and quick zips off of the exit back onto the road) later, we were on our way to Connecticut. At 5 PM. With all the rich snobs who live in Connecticut but work in Manhattan. Fun. It wasn’t horrid…we took about an hour to do twenty or thirty miles, but the parkway was beautiful. We rolled down the windows and Emma said that Connecticut smelled just like she remembered from her childhood summer camps.

We had dinner that night with Billy, Eli, and Ellen. Billy and Eli are Emma’s mom’s cousins who have lived in Meriden their entire lives, I think. Ellen is Emma’s mom’s first husband’s sister who also grew up in the area and now lives in New Haven, about 20 minutes away. We visited for a while, then went out to what they called a Greek restaurant. It was…odd. While the restaurant did advertise itself as Greek and did serve a few Greek dishes, Emma and I both would have called it Italian. The Greek dishes that I remember seeing were Greek salad, moussaka, and pastichio. Moussaka and pastichio are essentially Greek lasagnas, especially the pastichio. Oh, and there were stuffed grape leaves at the salad bar. Beyond that, it was spaghetti, baked spaghetti, or many different types of pastas and lasagnas. Good food, but not quite what we expected.

After dinner we visited a little more, then found a decent, reasonably inexpensive hotel to stay in for the next few nights.

Tomorrow: Gillette Castle!

Emma and I left early Tuesday morning on what we thought would be about a six-hour drive to Raleigh, NC, to see her brother Dave, his wife Lorrie, and their children Joseph and Sarah. We got on the interstate and set off north.

The drive was easy across southern Georgia and we hit Atlanta by about 11. While ordinarily we might have been very happy about this, except…well…Atlanta’s not really on the way to Raleigh. So, you see, what we should have done was head over to Jacksonville and gotten onto I-95, rather than just heading out on I-75. Whoops.

I knew in my head that we shouldn’t go through Atlanta to get to Raleigh, but didn’t say anything until we were actually in Atlanta. “So,” I said to Emma, “when do we turn east to Raleigh?”

“Umm…Turn east?”

“D’oh!”

We had just driven though downtown Atlanta, so we were able to jump on the Perimeter and head over to I-85, which would take us in approximately the right direction. As a small consolation, we drove by a Dave & Buster’s, where we decided to have lunch.

The skee ball machines were down for maintenance, so we played a little pop-a-shot basketball and some other ticket games and won enough tickets to get a small, wind-up turtle, who we designated as our trip mascot. His name is “DB”, which one might guess stands for Dave and Buster’s, but that’s not the case. It’s Dingleberry. Dingleberry the turtle. He rode in the front of the car for the remainder of the trip, only falling off a very few times. Sharp turns, you know.

We made it to Raleigh about 7 PM, which was not too bad, considering our misstart.

We had a really nice evening hanging out with Dave and the family. We had very good Indian take-out from a local restaurant in Raleigh. The children are pretty wild, but perhaps it’s their ages. Joe seems actually pretty appropriate for a five-year-old, but Sarah can be a handful. She’s apparently started playing this new game where she’ll do something that she knows is wrong then, when an adult comes to send her to time-out (”me time”), she’ll look at them and say, “Give me me time! I want me time!” Sigh.

Emma and I stayed up chatting with Dave and Lorrie for too late before finally going to bed, ready to start our second day of vacation.