Ben Franklin's inventions

I haven't done a lot of the tourist activities in Philadelphia yet because when I visit, I usually am just hanging out with my friends...who all saw the tourist stuff together when they moved here after college.

This weekend I had the chance to do the tourist thing because I had a friend in town. We went to the Liberty Bell and the visitor's center, but missed Independence Hall...again. When you visit Philadelphia, make sure to go to the visitor's center early in the morning to get your (free) tickets for the hall, cause they apparently go by lunchtime.

In the visitor's center, we learned more about Ben Franklin and some of his inventions, including this cool instrument called an Armonica. It's basically like playing wine glasses, a la Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, but in a way that you can play multiple glasses at once. He essentially cut off the stems of different-size glasses, put the glasses sideways, strung with a cork rod and motorized the whole thing so a musician could play chords.

Anyway, since we couldn't do much more in the Mall area, my friend and I went for a walk towards the river. We passed the First Quaker Meetinghouse and, looking inside the large windows, I saw a lady playing an armonica!

It was the last 15 minutes of an hour and a half concert, but it was really amazing. I didn't have my camera, only a cell phone, but I did manage to take a 15-second video on it:



(That's a bit from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, in case you didn't recognized it. I should've taped the more recognizable bit!)

The Armonica, the musician informed us, fell out of favor because people believed it led to madness, after a man used it to hypnotize people.

I think I'm going to have to make sure to catch the full concert on my next trip to Philadelphia.

Won't you be my neighbor?

I blogged earlier about my amazing neighbors but when someone needs to be recognized for something great, it bears repeating.

My friends came down for a day at the shore two Saturdays ago. They caught the bus from NYC and had a bit of a stressful day, so we were pretty amped to head to the shore.

Because the Jersey shore requires beach badges, and I only had two for the three of us, our neighbor to my right lent me one beach badge to use for the day. So we packed up my beach bag, umbrella, towels and other beachy items and headed down the street. As we passed my neighbor to the left, she called out to ask us if we wanted to use her beach chairs, since hers were sitting in the backyard in disuse. So we borrowed those chairs.

Now armed with chairs, beach bag, umbrella, we prepared to walk the half-mile to the beach. But we were waylaid by my neighbor two houses down to the left, who said "why walk, I'll drive you down! I'm headed out anyways!" So we piled into his open-air jeep and he drove us the short distance, saving our feet and shoulders a bit of stress.


I think for my friends from New York, seeing all this was like stepping back in time to Minnesota. Probably pre-Minnesota days, since they lived in downtown Minneapolis there. I know that I have pretty excellent neighbors, but I loved that my friends were also able to see how cool is my new homebase.

animal house

Check out this display I saw at the local CVS. Ping pong balls--which I normally don't think to get at CVS--right above Solo cups. And, Gasp!, next to hangover cure. Let's see, they wouldn't be trying to cater to a certain 20-something party animal element, now would they?

I'm a little under-the-weather with an ear/sinus infection today--I'll spare you the details--but I am hoping to be 100 percent by tomorrow, when my friends Ben and Liz come down to spend a day at the beach. The weather has been really nice--sunny but not too hot, with just the right amount of breeze.

Also, I went to Atlantic City the other day to see Harry Potter on the IMAX in 3D. It was pretty much awesome. Unfortunately, I had this little kid (maybe 10-12-years-old) sitting next to me who felt it necessary to keep a running dialogue of what was happening in the movie as it happens...and was often wrong. I think it was the wrong part that got to me. Since I'm not an aggressive person--especially not towards children--I didn't say anything (I did look at him in attempt to make him understand he was disturbing me) until he turned around to the person behind him and said "Could you PLEASE stop kicking my chair" in an exasperated tone.


!!! went I, in my head. OK now its on. If he sees fit to tell someone that they are disturbing his peace, I will do the same. So I tapped him and said "you asked her to stop kicking your chair? Now I have to ask you to stop talking through the movie." He looked at me and...DIDN'T STOP TALKING! He said "She's still 'effin (he used the real word) kicking my chair." So I said "And you're still talking."


YESSS victory over a 10-year-old kid! My life is complete. or something.

Hard day at the beach

Saturday I finally did the beach bum thing and spent 6 hours at the shore! It was a tough day of lying on a beach blanket, curled up under an umbrella while reading a book. (Or, if you are my lily-white friend, laid out flat on a beach blanket, roasting in the sun with your eyes covered.)

When we got too toasty, we went into the ocean to cool off. Well, or we just got excited by the fact that there is a giant beach and played in the water, splashing each other, giving each other boosts so you flew into the water and jumping waves. We walked out to the sand bar which is a cool feeling because you can't feel the bottom of the ocean and suddenly you can walk on water...or so it seems.

I went home at one point and brought back sandwiches so we could stay at the beach and not have to go home for lunch and brought back my goggles. With those, I saw tiny little sand crabs scooting along the bottom of the shore. I'm not going to deny that they were cool to see, but I wish I hadn't seen them because now I will be constantly conscious of the fact that there are palm-sized creature with pinchers just under my feet. Would they pinch me if I accidentally stepped on one? If I were them, I'd see my big toe as an enemy.

I applied sunscreen at regular intervals, determined a)to not get too dark and b)prevent skin cancer. Unfortunately, the bikiniied girls around me appeared to be applying something other than sunscreen out of their gold-brown bottles. I thought oil was so 1986? At least no one had one of those reflector things to hold under their neck!

At the end of the day we stumbled home and lay comatose on the couch. It is really hard lying on the beach all day! For reals, though, there is apparently some scienc-y thing (thats a technical term, you may not know it) about how being in the sun all day saps your energy. We mustered enough to grill some salmon (made with the sage and lemon thyme from my garden!), go see a movie (surprised we didn't fall asleep) and stop by a friends' house for a midnight margarita (okay, pina colada, but midnight margarita has a nice ring to it.)


I guess it could be worse.

Lazy summer days

The days really are flying by, I can't believe its June and I can't believe its been almost a week since I updated! I honestly felt like it wasn't that long ago. It looks like I've fallen into a weekly schedule of updating, despite having a mental backlog of posts.

I blame it on the lovely days we've had lately. I have no desire to sit in front of my computer. Even first thing in the morning, when I am gross and unwashed, I go outside on the front porch with a mug of tea and something to read. It's really amazing. I love where I live, for reals. The sky has been a beautiful blue with just enough fluffy, white clouds to bring out the absolute blueness of the sky.

Today I went to the dollar store and bought a beach mat, some beach shoes and a beach umbrella. I work nights now, leaving me free to go to--you guessed it--the beach in the morning. I'm very excited to learn the fine art of "laying out." I heard about it on "Laguna Beach," which I probably shouldn't admit I watch since I am over the age of 18, but I need a little junk food too!
From what I surmise from the show, this means tanning for most people, but since I'm already a burnt sienna color, I'll be using the umbrella and sunscreen to help me enjoy the outdoors minus the extra pigmentation.

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Its also been a weekend of a taste of home. One of my high school friends and her husband came down for the day on Saturday. We lazed around and grilled, then headed to the Barnegat Lighthouse. We also went through old high school pictures, teehee.
Then Monday my friend Chao, who still lives in Minneapolis, came to visit. I took Tuesday off to show him around the island, including, yes of course, the lighthouse. Back home in Minneapolis, we used to take most visitors to see some of the Lock and Dams along the Mississippi, but most people were more interested in the Mall of America.

This weekend was one of those times I was really glad the meteorologist was wrong. It was predicted to be heavy, heavy rains all day Tuesday. The rains came...but not until Tuesday night when we were already asleep. And by the time we woke up, they were already gone, replaced with that same blue sky and white fluffy clouds. Amazing.

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I made Chao into my little model...and he did the same for me. We had a lot of fun playing around with different techniques on our cameras. One of my favorite shots I did is on his camera, but I'll share it with you next time.

Lazy days in the lighthouse


Long way down (I know I keep taking pictures like this, but I love how it looks!)


Framed.


Portrait of the two of us. Can you find me?


Impending storm


This is Obadaiah Seagull. I call all seagulls Obadaiah after a book I read in 2nd grade.

Lies I told

I totally lied to you guys because I promised to tell you what potachos were on Friday, and here it is Monday and you STILL don't know.

Like all good liars, I have an excuse. This weekend was GOR-GE-OUS and any time spent in front of a computer was a total waste of time (aka work on Sunday.)

So what are potachos?
Like nachos, thick potato chips, covered with cheddar, bacon, tomatoes, onions, ketchip and chives with sour cream. In other words, perfection. They were just as delicious as anything with bacon can and should be. Forget how strange they sound and fly/drive to New Brunswick and eat them!

So let's get back to this past weekend thing. What a taste of life to come. Though, life to come will probably be considerably warmer than this, the idea of eating lunch in a sunspot on my back porch, grilling dinner, having a beer on my front porch and leaving all the windows open is definitely part of my future.

Of course, its only a taste as its going to rain the rest of the week, but I do plan on grilling again on Saturday (and tonight for that matter), so I hope it stops raining.

In more other news, this was one of those weekends where I loved my job. First I went to the top of Forked River "mountain" (its more like a tall hill), which is a private area. It was beautiful. Then I went in a rescue boat in a lagoon for a water drill.

Here are a few views from this weekend:

home on the prairie

Sorry I've been absent this week. I am at home in Minnesota, enjoying the warm weather, lots of snow, but mostly my family and friends. And food. We went to an amazing wedding last night, had a lovely, lovely time. It was nice because it was back at my alma mater, in fact in the alumni center. It was my first time being an alumni there...though I don't think my college thinks of me as one of the "alumni" in "alumni center"--that is reserved for alumnis with $$, which I don't have.

Anyway, hopefully today I will go play in the snow. But at the very least, I will be enjoying some CHIPOTLE. and then some awesome dessert at 2021. I already had a nice dinner at 112 eatery in Minneapolis and lunch at Noodles.

Okay, now I'm going to go sledding now! And throw snowballs, etc. Watch out!

(not really) Giving up

I feel like giving up on meeting people. I had an incident the other night that sort of scared me off of making friends, despite all my efforts. Just some viewpoints and people basically invalidating my personal feelings and telling me I was wrong, I won't get into details because it wasn't worth fighting about then and not worth revealing now, because it was just sort of a personal realization that I am trying to make something out of nothing.

I have enough good friends in Philly and NYC and I'm too old to make friends "just to have someone to spend time with." Who wants to make half-hearted friends? It always ends up bothering me more because I feel terribly guilty that I am only friends with someone to hang out with them.

In a few more months, this island will be CRAWLING with people. I'll maybe be able to meet more people then. It's like one of those reasons I chose a larger college. I figured, larger college, more people, more chances of finding people I can really click with. (excuse the ending with a participle.) Right now there is a small population, period, down here, and when you think about the 20 to 30 population, its even less.

I should say I have made two friends that I enjoy. One is moving away, so that is unforunate, and one lives about 30 minutes away and works in the city, so he is generally busy, but I like getting together with him.

I'm not generally unhappy, so why push things? It's like a good relationship--you'll find it when you're not looking. So, I'm gonna stop seeing a friend in every person I meet and just let things happen. I feel comfortable with this decision, not like I am giving up on meeting people and shutting them out, but not forcing it to happen either. A good happy medium.

I am going to a card stamping class on Friday, that should be fun! This is a stay-at-home and nest and clean and catch up on things. It is much-needed...and next weekend? I will be HOME for four glorious days of family, friends and food! Oh and tons of snow, apparently.

Won't you be my neighbor?

I've written about feeling lonely, such as last week when I realized I had no place to stay when my heat went out. But I haven't written about how warm and friendly New Jersey has been for me.

I have some GREAT neighbors. My landlords, who live upstairs on the weekends, are nice and friendly and warm and responsive. And they share their beer. My right-hand neighbors are a retired couple and they are like grandparents--always there for me to borrow a cup of sugar or what not. They made some amazing, home-made from scratch, onion soup the other night and gave me a frozen batch. And, in return, I try to do things like wipe off their car of snow when I am dusting off mine, or things like that.

This morning, I was leaving my street as a car started to drive down, and the driver waved to me. Did I know him? No. Does it matter? Not really. That's just life on the island.

I know what some of you are thinking right now: "Warm and friendly? New Jersey? What?"

This state gets a bad rap. And most states that have bad raps have people saying they have bad raps (how do I unwrap myself from that tongue-twister?). But New Jersey is such an interesting state because it almosts has five eco-systems or something. North Jersey is a different beast from the Jersey Shore which is different from South Jersey and Central Jersey. Also, there is a chunk of Northwestern Jersey that is different too.

All this in a state that is 70 miles wide and 150 miles long. It's amazing!

North and much of Central Jersey strikes me as being very New York-oriented. Most of the people who live there work and play in the city, and drive/train home for sleep. That's the part that is a little more rough and tough, I think. Probably because New Jersey is ranked 47th in terms of size but 11th in terms of population, and the majority is crammed into that portion. I'd be watching my own too!

South Jersey (I only know Ocean County, not the parts closer to Philly) is a little slower-paced and some parts are a little backwards, to me. I've had some...racial run-ins...where people just don't seem to be aware that its not okay to use the N-word. (Some people call people down here "Pineys" which refers to the Pinelands, a large swath of greenery in the middle of the state. It's like the Southern Ocean word for "hick.")
I think its ignorance, not actual racism per se. But, besides that stuff, it reminds me of Minnesota in that its full of nice people who wave and stuff.

I wonder how things will change in the summer...I mean, I know its going to get mad-crowded and there will be all sorts of North Jersey/Philadelphia/New York people summering, so its going to be a lot more awake. I sort of like my sleepy little town without stoplights right now...

Oh and everyone drinks Yeungling beer likes its going out of circulation. Very Philadelphia.

Poor fishies.

Temperatures right now are hovering in the teens, and the windchill has dipped to below zero. This, of course, is nothing compared to Minnesota, where they are struggling to get the mercury above zero, but it is darn cold nonetheless.

And, my heat went out. Again.

It went out last week but was fixed enough to keep me warm that week. I went to Philadelphia this past weekend for three days of eating myself silly (Restaurant Week, BYOB and going-away party) only to come back to a heatless house on Sunday afternoon.

It was 45 degrees in my home. And my fish died.

Poor little Aoi and Akai. They were my buddies. They watched TV when I was watching TV, wriggling their little bodies towards the set. And I let them freeze to death. I gave them a proper burial at sea, and proceeded to huddle down under some comforters until my gas could be repaired. Again. Unfortunately, it took 23 hours before the gas company could make it out, so I drove back to Philadelphia, in time to see the Bears lose.

It made me sort of sad because I realized there were not too many places around where I live that I could turn to in a time of need. I have two friends in the area who I feel comfortable enough with to ask to spend the night. And both were out of town. So back to Philly it was. Back in MN, I would've had dozens of places to go...I guess that's a big struggle, is how do you make friends when you are out of college? You don't want to walk up to someone in a bar and be "hey baby, wanna be my friend?"

I am lucky to have such good friends only an hour away, but I wish I had friends only minutes away. And I wish I had my fish back.

(picture is of Akaiii, who is the new fish I bought today. I am keeping him at work. The extra i'd are to remember that he is the second Akai.)

local color

a really, really, really nice day
Yesterday we went for a drive. It was absolutely gorgeous, perfect weather outside yesterday--nearly 70 degrees. In January! So we left our coats at home. We went down Route 9 through Little Egg Harbor and Tuckerton and then we drove down Seven Bridges Road, which I wrote about for the APP as one of my first stories assigned to me.

It's a pretty little road-to-nowhere that ends abruptly. It was originally intended to serve as another route to LBI, but the seabed was too soft to build a bridge across. So it just winds through wild marshes, with only small marinas and abandoned fish factories along the way.

It has several "one-hoss" bridges that only fits the width of one car at a time. A stoplight helps regulate traffic, so two cars don't accidentally end up facing each other on a bridge, where the only way out is backing up. Scrubby pine trees, tall grass and brambly bushes grow alongside the road, which sometimes dips so low, it feels like you are driving on the marsh itself.

At the end of this road is an old red-and-white Coast Guard Station, now home to the Rutgers Marine Field Station. The bushes grow high at the turn-around. The road ends with a metal road barrier, but just beyond that barrier is a small path that goes through the curving bushes. The bushes are like a tunnel and, even if you've been there before, its sort of exciting to see what is on the other end.

Which is a small beach that opens out into the Atlantic Ocean. From there you can see the very tip of Long Beach Island, Atlantic City, other small uninhabited barrier islands and miles and miles of ocean. Seagulls dip and soar and scream and you almost think you can see them scooping up fish, but never manage to actually catch them in the act.

Out on this narrow beach, we spread my "dirty" blanket, huddled under my "clean" blanket and just sat there as the sun set. I thought we wouldn't be able to see it from that perspective because we would be facing east, but the sun set right in front of us, just west of Atlantic City. Luckily the sky was almost cloud-free. Unfortunately, the one place where there were clouds were exactly in front of the sunset, just above the horizon. Nevertheless, we enjoyed most of the sunset, rolling up our blankets a little early so we could enjoy the drive by dusk.

NYC

I discovered that I am only an hour and a half from Jersey City, which is the same distance that I am from Philly. Which means that I am pretty much two hours from NYC, assuming I park in JC and take the train into the city. Driving into the city wouldn't be bad, except for that whole parking thing. That is not easy, methinks.

Dinner was amazing. I love Indian-Chinese food; its just this amazing hybrid of tastes and it works so well. We had my favorite dish, Chicken 65. We also had some wine.

Ravi needed to catch a train at Penn Station, so we dropped him off there, after screaming random stuff out the window at him, probably mortifying him beyond belief. Then we drove back to Jersey City where Maya and Vikram totally twisted my arm into staying the night. And by twist, they just touched my wrist and I was like OKAY! I really didn't feel like driving an hour and a half at that point.

We went to their favorite local Jersey City bar, drank some more...then finally stumbled into bed at about 3am.

The nicest part about the weekend? Spending time with friends. I mean, two of the guys on Saturday night were Vikram and Maya's friends, but it just felt like normal. And it was exciting to "crash" at Maya's place and go home in my rumpled clothes the next day, like I had friends again. I know this sounds stupid, but it is silly little things like that that make a difference to me.

I am feeling the fact that I don't have friends here in town, but I am forging a tentative friendship with a girl who works in my building and also lives on the island. Maybe some of her friends will be cool too and then I can start my own little friendships!