Serendipity?

So here’s a crazy story… When I arrived at my Tuesday writing group tonight, one of the members, Cheryl, handed me a beat up copy of The Great Gatsby. She’d been downsizing some old books and found this one on her shelf. When I opened up the cover, there was my name. This was the copy I’d read while at St. John’s (summer reading 1993?). I’m pretty sure I would’ve sold it to another upcoming senior, and somehow it had found its way to a used bookstore (Another Story on Main Street?), and then onto her shelf. Twenty years since I’d last seen it, she gave it back to me.
Weirdly, I had just finished reading this book (well, the audiobook) about a month ago. Is F. Scott Fitzgerald trying to tell me something?

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Ready to Go….

Coffee…. Sharps container…. Ready to Go!

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Welcome to Waltham

On the first day of the 3-Day Walk for Breast Cancer, my team was assigned Pit Stop 4 on Beaver Street in Waltham. Fellow AmeriCorps alum Jodi Landry lives close by, so she came by to visit with her two daughters.

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Higgins Armory

My nieces Emma (11) and Siobhan (8) are visiting this week from Philadelphia. Today I took them to see Higgins Armory. It’s the second-largest collection of ancient and Medeival armor in the country (after the Met). They had been here a few years ago, but this is the last time they’ll be able to see the museum, as it’s permamantly closing its doors in December. Sad.
After the armory, we came home and had a little cookout that turned into a cook-in since the grill wasn’t cooperating. Then we went to the Leicester Drive-in to see Despicable Me 2.

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Futurama!!

The building I work in was built as a private residence in during Worcester’s roaring 1920’s. It’s a very cool, unique mansion converted into offices in the 1990’s (and yes, my I.T. office is in the basement, of course). Last month we had some serious plumbing problems… The line from the city’s waterline had finally collapsed, causing a larger-than-normal puddle underneath our basement copy machine. The whole pipe had had to be replaced. A DPW guy came in with this ancient-looking sheaf of papers and said the building may have been built in the 20’s, but the pipes actually date from 1869. (That’s old!). Replacing that main pipe was a pretty big deal, involving jackhammering up from the middle of Cedar Street, through an old brick sidewalk, into a storage closet (shown) and to the hallway where the pipe came up (next to our photocopier). Plus, the original sized pipe wasn’t made anymore (I think it was an inch and a quarter, so after the city ripped up the street and the sidewalk with the backhoe, they had to cover everything back up again until the piece came in). Anyways, the i have to admit i had my doubts, but the contractors and the DPW got everything back to normal in just a few days – much shorter than i had expected given the summer and the holidays. The bricks were replaced in the sidewalk, a new pipe installed (i think this one is durable plastic) and the copier moved back. If anything, it was a good reason to clean out the storage closet that had been collecting old snow shovels and extension cords and boxes of brochures and the occasional rodent dropping for a decade.

Anyways, seeing that the floor of this room was torn up and was going to be re-cemented, to be opened up again if and when the pipes broke again (maybe in another 150 years?) I had the idea to bury a Children’s Friend Time Capsule. I started the idea before i left for the Red Cross, so Mary Jane oversaw the actual burial.

I’m not sure what my co-workers placed in the cookie tin… I think a 2013 penny and some literature on Children’s Friend (don’t laugh, our organization has been around since 1849, so there’s a good chance we may still be around when this tin is found).

For my part, i contibuted a few things I had lying around… A Worcester Sharks Hockey Ticket, the photo of me and President Obama, and my namebadge/credentials and lanyard from the 2013 Boston Marathon. I thought this last piece, especially, may have some historical value.

Age well, my time capsule.

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Happy Birthday, Rowan!!

Hanging out with my best buddy Rowan on his 7th birthday. At the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, NH.

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The New Exhibit

There’s a new exhibit at the Zoo-tica. Mora asked what animal was going to go in here. “That’s easy,” I said. “Carpenter ants!” BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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World’s Largest Watering Can

I never woke up this morning thinking I was going to see The World’s Largest Watering Can, but I did at the Utica Zoo (the Zoo-tica, I propose). Guinness Book of World Records says it’s 15 1/2 Feet tall. Water actually comes out of its spout.

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Utica Zoo

Utica Club Brewery: Check. Utica Library: Check. Haunted Utica Hotel: Check. Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute: Check. Utica State Hospital: Check. One more attraction to see: the Utica Zoo. Mora and I arrived about 20 minutes before closing, but the nice woman at the entrance let us in for free (we explained we didn’t have any kids with us so we could zip through it).
And no one was very impressed with my proposal to change the name to the “Zoo-tica.” Oh well.

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Gesundheit!

Is that a Jackson Pollock or did you sneeze? It’s Pollock (Number 2, 1949), along with works by Picasso, Kandinsky, Sargent, Warhol, O’Keefe, Homer, Hopper, Saint-Gaudens, and one of my new favorites, Thomas Cole’s “The Voyage of Life, all at the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute.
For a compact museum in a small city, the MWP has a pretty strong collection, as well as an attached School of Art, Film Series and Performing Arts Division. They even have drop-in yoga classes in the galleries on Saturday mornings!

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