Frankie says Relax!

I said it in my last entry but it was buried. So at the risk of sounding shrill:

Dear visitors:
RELAX! Breathe! You are on vacation. Not only that, you are vacationing on an island. Getting two cars ahead isn't going to do much. There's no other place to go. We are surrounded by water.

Everyone wants to get to their beach/minigolf/bar/house as much as you do. Understand that. So please wait your turn. Gunning 5 cars ahead will save you, what, a minute? That's not much time and not worth raising your blood pressure.

Also, when you are at the beach with your wife and daughter, and the sun is warm and the wind is just right and you have your feet buried in the sand? Put away the Blackberry. Heck, don't even bring it to the beach. Nothing is so important it can't wait a few hours while you relax.

Talk to your wife. Find out how she is doing. You're likely always working and she might miss that connection. (Then again, maybe she doesn't and this is part of the arrangement! Who knows!)
Look at your daughter! She is gorgeous and sweet and smart. She won't be that size much longer, where she is still excited about playing with a toy dolphin in a bucket of salt water.

Your email can wait. Your daughter can not.

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.

BENNYs

EDIT: I wrote this post last week and for some reason it didn't post, so I edited a bit and updated it to make it pertinent after the Memorial Day weekend.

EDIT2: Ok, and by "for some reason" I mean user error. I hit "save draft" as opposed to "publish post."

One of the realities of living in a seasonal place is that eventually "the season" comes around. For Long Beach Island, that season is, obviously, summer.
This past weekend was Memorial Day, which is the traditional kick-off to all things summer and the start of the tourist/seasonal visitor parade to the island. One of the most noticeable changes is traffic.

During the winter months, I got used to careening around willy-nilly, with few cars or traffic lights to bother me. Let me tell you, this island was EMP-TY. Especially January through March-ish, when there are few holiday weekends to bring people to the island until Easter. (There were still regular visits for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, etc.)

I noticed the traffic start to thicken around April, I'm guessing people started coming out with the Easter weekend. I actually escaped the island this weekend while people poured in, heading to North Carolina to visit my cousin and his adorable twins.

Oh, and the title of this post is a name, somewhat derogatory I think, for what "locals" call summer people. The Wikipedia entry talks about the different possible etymology of the word, but either way its not very nice. I can somewhat sympathize with locals, because it does feel crowded, plus I hear there are some people who spoil the batch of apples by acting boorish and generally like their actions have no effect, but visitors to this tourist area definitely pump economic dollars, as well as tax dollars to the area. There wouldn't be as good of infrastructure if officials weren't constantly preparing for summer.

Nevertheless, I hope everyone pays attention to the second sign and DRIVE SAFELY. I really don't feel like being nosed on my way home from work, simply because you sat in the parking lot called the Parkway for 5 hours.

(PS Someone who is a "local" said I was a "local" now because if you are willing to spend winter on the island, that makes you a local. I dunno about that...what do you think?)