Mystic

Saturday we drove about 2 hours east to Mystic Seaport Village. This is an area that is kind of frozen in time around the 1800s. It was a huge shipbuilding village It was kind of interesting to see how the village was built up around this industry. There were a couple of ships we could explore.

Here is just a nice shot across Mystic River. I think it's a nice display of the fall colors.


This lighthouse wasn't very tall, but the light could be seen by ships from ten miles away.

This was the church in the Mystic Seaport Village. Jim and I were having fun experimenting with the camera and its manual settings.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Mystic Pizza - from the movie - was something we could see. Apparently the town and the pizza place are what inspired the movie. A lot of it was shot on location. However, being in the pizza place, it looked like nothing of what I remembered from the movie. Although it had been a while since I had seen the movie, I thought I would recognize something. And they were playing the movie in the place and once Jim saw it, he agreed that it looked too different. We went to buy some souveniers and asked the lady at the counter if the pizza place was also shot on location. Long-story-short, she didn't really know any information we could count on. So we'll have to see if we can figure more out ourselves.

So, it was a full day, but we saw a lot of Connecticut and had a nice time.

Travels East

Jim and I are on our easterly trip. We left early Thursday morning and took all day getting to Newark, New Jersey. We had a layover in Chicago and our flight got delayed due to winds in Newark. Once we finally were in flight we circled around a lot before being allowed to land. Then once we landed we sat on the tarmac for a while waiting for someone to let us into the gate. Then the shuttle to the rental car place seemed to go in circles just getting there. So were pretty dizzy and tired by the time we got to our hotel. But at least the hotel was pretty good.

Then we headed north this morning for New Milford, Connecticut. We specifically took a route that led us through the infamous town of Sleepy Hollow. I just have a fondness for Sleepy Hollow because my second grade class performed The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and I had a line! We didn't know what we would see but just wanted to check it out. You can see the welcoming sign below and all the street signs are orange with black lettering and a silhouette of the Headless Horseman.
And in our driving around we found this sign for Ichabod's Landing. So it was just kind of fun to see it.
This isn't the greatest picture, but you can see some of the fall colors going on. The next couple days should give us great opportunity to see much more and get great pictures.
It's so nice that Connecticut welcomes me. I feel so loved already. Thank you, Connecticut!
We're staying the next five nights with Jim's cousin to do lots of sight seeing and adventure having.

Farewell to Friends

This week I had to say good-bye to one of my life long friends. Darcy and I grew up down the street from each other since my earliest memories. We grew up in school together, went through girl scouts together and got into trouble together. She was always the cool kid while I was more on the outside. But she pushed me outside of a lot of my boundaries and made me a better person. And she made me the godmother of her first born.

She and her family packed up and moved to Colorado on Saturday. I think this is a really good move for them and I think their family will really thrive.

The Wednesday before they left, we had a little farewell party to spend some time together.




I will miss her and her family tremendously but I look forward to the many visits and the new excuse to travel to Colorado.

The Big Bang Theory

Tuesday Jim and I drove to Burbank to see a taping of The Big Bang Theory. This is the show's second season and it has become a new favorite of ours. We always say we live so close to these things (and they are free) that we need to go see more shows, it just is few and far between. We got there pretty early so got pretty good seats. But the seats were tiny and really cramped (and the boy next to me was kind of stinky). I looked around and whipered to Jim: "There are a lot of geeks here." :0) And I half expected that because is a show about geeks essentially.

We arrived around 5pm, were in our seats around 6pm and the taping started at 7pm. What killed was that the taping lasted until almost midnight. I could not believe how long it was. The comedian host did some funny stuff and that helped to pass the time. But then he started mentioning something about pizza and water and napkins. I was waiting for the catch because I have never been fed at a taping before. But sure enough, they fed us. I guess it was because the night was lasting so long. Later one of the directors apologized for how long it was and explained it was because the had an unusually high amount of costume changes.

The show itself was pretty funny. Sheldon has a "labradoodle" fan that is somewhat obsessed with him and forces him to concentrate only on his physics work. He's shouldn't be wasting his time on Halo, paintball or Battlestar Galactica. Penny and the boys are perplexed by this "relationship" and love watching from the sidelines.

Jim has guessed that the show should air November 3 or 10. So keep your eyes out. The episode title is The Cooper-Newinski Theorom.

Fireproof

Jim and I went on a double date last night. It's been quite a while since we've been on a real date. Sure, we go out to dinner and that is always nice. But we got a little gussied up and had an official plan. After dinner at one of my favorite Italian restaurants - A'Roma - we went to the movies and saw Fireproof.

I didn't really know much about this movie. I knew it was a "Christian" movie and that Kirk Cameron was in it. People would reference "Facing the Giants" when talking about this movie, but I'd never seen that one, so the reference meant nothing to me. Once Fireproof came out all the people I heard talking about it said they really liked it. And only a couple days ago did I hear that the movie was about marriage.

Well, I really liked this movie. Yeah, the acting wasn't top notch, but the story was very real. It deals with a couple who have an unhappy marriage and are on the brink of divorce. Caleb's (Kirk Cameron) dad implores his son to hold off on divorce for 40 days while he does a Love Dare. The Love Dare is one day at a time of working on the marriage. The wife is not aware of the dare and she shuts him down a lot. Everything in the movie was relatable - the emotions, the reactions, the frustrations. What surprised me was the amount of laugh out loud humor. There was just enough mixed in to keep this movie from getting too heavy and depressing. The Christian story is brought in in a very effective way.

While this movie can be amazing for a couple that is struggling to see, even relationships that are doing pretty well can absorb a lot. It was a good movie.

Sheila

Jim and I took a walk tonight to In-N-Out for dinner. On our way there, we passed a neighbor’s house, about four or five houses down, and the lady was outside in her old-lady-dress and curlers. We smiled as we walked by.

We had a nice dinner at In-N-Out and ran into one of the families from church. Then we went to Fresh & Easy to get a couple ingredients I needed to make my Amish Friendship Bread tonight.

On our way home, the neighbor lady was still outside. She seemed to be looking at us and walking towards the sidewalk as if she wanted to say something. She asked if she could talk to us a moment.

Sheila – as we learned was her name – told us about her husband (of 49 ½ years) who had died two years ago and how in love they were. She wanted to tell us about their love because she could see that Jim and I had that love. Sheila and her husband lived as if there was no tomorrow and she wanted us to live that way too. She told of how they would write to each other every night and now that he is gone she reads his words every night with a laugh or smile. Francis, her husband, would complain about writer’s cramp sometimes. She went on and on and gushed about how in love they were. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t leave the house upset. Francis would go to the store and call her while out to tell her he missed her.

And the dear old lady still had her spunk too. She talked about how her husband would give her a massage every Sunday…then he would get his “reward.” She would realize later that she probably should return the favor and give him a massage, but he was too anxious for the “love making” to care. She told Jim about five times that he should give me massages every week. And she told me that I needed to give him his “reward” when he was done.

I could tell that she was probably a little bit lonely and enjoyed being able to share her stories. She also gave examples that made it clear that she tells stories to probably anyone she comes across. I hope that I can push myself to interact with her more. Maybe bake some stuff sometimes. Remember her at Christmas. Just go sit with her and hear more stories. She told Jim and me that we were welcome to come visit her anytime.