Cape Cod

Check out the new Nathaniel photos, including first birthday…

Why didn’t I know this before? Edward Gorey lived in Yarmouthport, Cape Cod for 25 years. The Edward Gorey House, where he lived, has exhibitions of his work. A book called The Elephant House (not sure why) has photos of the house taken just after he passed away and gives insight into how he lived. So now I have a non-beach attraction for everyone who comes to visit!

The workers have started painting the walls, so it’s time I shared the plan and some pictures. Basement photos

So a few weeks ago we all made the final decision to go ahead with remodeling the basement into a playroom, bathroom and multi-purpose room that will have closets, a couch or two, exercise equipment, and my office.

I set up a temporary office with the minimum I need to work upstairs in the back bedroom. I’m testing to see how little I actually need to work. When the project is complete, I’ll be able to leave unneeded books and files in storage and have a reduced-clutter office.

Here’s a picture of where I’ll be spending the next six weeks. It’s nice to be up high and have more of a view.

Last night we had a blackout from 6:30 to 7:30. It’s been a while since I’ve been in one, so it was a strange feeling. It was about dinner time so thankfully the carrots were mostly cooked and Andrzej was cooking the salmon on the grill. We managed fine: found the candles, had a non-electric phone, ate the asparagus when we could cook it later. It’s strange to call the power company to report an outage and not reach a human being–just report your outage by pressing the right keys– not reassuring. At about 7 we found out there was a fire in the power plant in Sandwich by calling local police.

And today we had our first real snow! Not quite a whiteout. Just a couple of flurries. Unfortunately it’s the one day when Maggie could not postpone going in to work.

View out my office window, featuring 2 new trees

According to WordSpy:
Falloween (fawl.oh.WEEN) n. An extended celebration or observance of Halloween, often beginning several weeks before the day; the retail season that extends from the beginning of fall through Halloween and Thanksgiving in the U.S.

Out here in Massachusetts, it seems as though over half the people have some kind of season-oriented decoration up 100% of the year. Did this happen in the Bay Area? I don’t remember all this hoopla. How about in the rest of the country?

“Falloween” is a big one around here. It could be for the obvious reason that they have the nice fall colors. You see people putting out hay bales, corn stalks strapped to their mailbox, pumpkins scattered around the lawn, scarecrows, etc. It’s as though they live on a one-month micro-farm.

Halloween decorations can get elaborate. My favorite is the cottage that constructs a graveyard every year, with cobwebs all over and one corpse crawling half out of the ground. Residents of a new house that is not finished yet put a 10-foot diameter (I am guessing) purple spider above their door. It looked deflated a couple of days ago. I just hope it is not like Christmas lights and it actually comes down before Easter.

And don’t get me started on people who abandon neon-colored toys all over their yard…

Christina asked me the other day what I’d like for my birthday. I always make it so hard on everyone because I can never think of stuff for the list. This time I am going to make a short list on the blog and I’ll update this post as I think of things, so check back!

I recommend other people do it too–Christina or I can help anyone who wants to. And maybe these options will give ideas for others, because you’re ALL so tough to buy for!

Websites with possible gifts
The Gadget Box: cool and useful gadgets. Products are sorted many ways, making it easier to browse.
ThinkGeek: geeky gifts
The Museum of Useful Things
Kate’s Paperie: nice paper and related things in NYC
Amazon Gourmet Foods
A.G. Ferrari sells through Amazon now! also through A.G. Ferrari Foods‘ own site
Mac Warehouse (now CDW)

Ideas

• For Nathaniel: Savings bond or other money-equivalent or useful item
• Things to keep we warm in the basement office and outside in freezing Massachusetts
• Foodie things: cheese, nice balsamic vinegar, whatever’s hot these days… maybe something I haven’t tried before?
• Video/Photo: to send photos/video/other from East coast to West coast
• Mac/Computer software/accessories of course…
• Colored lamps/lights to give my office a colored glow: Mathmos SoftLight or Uncommon Goods Lighting or similar

Massachusetts named smartest state

I knew Mass. has a lot of colleges and universities, but this ranking was based on elementary and high schools. It’s heartening to know. I admit I was a little concerned that Mass. would rank somewhere in the middle. Of course you still have to look at your specific local school. I think Provincetown High is not outstanding but Nauset High in Eastham does pretty well. Have to check it out some more. Oh, and California is #44 .

Cape Cod photos from Christina - August 2003

New feature: Sandy Lane Webcam Pictures When I tell my webcam to take a picture it will save it on my iMac, then automatically upload it, and this link will show the current list of images with thumbnails.