Popping In With a Picture

Obviously I took everyone's advice and have decided to take a little bit of a blogging break in an effort to regain some momentum and find my creative muse who seems to have wandered off somewhere on summer vacation. I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to get back to blogging on a regular basis but I couldn't help but pop in and post my favorite picture from the 100+ that I took Friday while up in my hometown of Canterbury.

This is in the area of Baldwin Brook and I just love the reflections in the water and the serenity of the whole picture (if you click on it to make it bigger, it looks even better!). Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day - I don't think we could have asked for better - and I'm so glad that I had the chance to spend some of it outside with my camera.

Popping back out again now - hope everyone is well!

I've Got the Blues ...

Where's a good blues singer when you need one because have I ever got the song for him or her!

I've got the blues ...
I've got the nothing-good-to-write-about,
don't-feel-like-visiting-other-folks,
need-to-take-a-break-away-from-blogging blues! ...

Maybe it's the time of year, maybe it's the fact that I seem to have no time, maybe it's just that I'm a little burnt out but I have really had no interest in my blog (or sadly pretty much the blog of anyone else) for a couple weeks now. I sit here and try to think of something to write that might be of interest and am basically coming up with zippola - heck, I don't even feel like posting pictures - which could also be because I haven't felt like taking pictures either!

I was chatting with Queen Mimi about it the other day via email and she suggested that perhaps I needed to take a Blog Break - rather like she is currently doing - just to rest, recharge, and rejuvenate. She might be on to something but the problem is that I have always felt an obligation of sorts to whatever readers I might have via The Norwich Bulletin (in spite of the fact that they never comment!) as well as all the other great people I have met via blogging.

However, that said and all guilt aside, I don't want to be posting something just to be posting something or leaving lame-ass comments on other peoples' blogs simply because I feel an obligation to visit. I'm pretty sure that's not what blogging is supposed to be about, right? Anyhow, while I kick this around for a bit and try to decide what I want to do, I thought I'd give you folks a chance to cast a vote and let me know what you think via a poll I came up with and/or you can certainly leave a comment (lame-ass or otherwise!) and tell me what you think. While you do that, I'm going to go see if I can find a harmonica ...

Sunny Sunday Morning

It seems that the sun has finally found us in New England and it's going to be a gorgeous day. Too bad I will be spending all of it in dispatch. Ah well at least it will look nice out of the window from the "Ivory Tower"!

Everyone have a great Sunday and a safe remainder of the holiday weekend.

Happy Birthday, America!

Best wishes to everyone for a safe and fun Fourth of July holiday weekend here in the States! And for my international buddies - Happy First Saturday in July!!

Looking at the Sky on Friday - Last Year's Version

Believe it or not I haven't been too inspired to go out and take pictures lately (perhaps the weather has something to do with that?!?) so decided to dig into my photo archives for something to post for Tisha's sky meme this week.

This picture brings back many happy memories of a week spent with some very special blogging buddies at Matunuck Beach in Rhode Island last September and I can only wish that I had something so wonderful to look forward to this year but a week-long beach vacation is definitely NOT on the agenda for this year. Rats!

Of course, I do believe I'm going to have the chance to meet at least one wonderful blog-friend this year when her trella brings her to points north and maybe, with any luck, there might be an opportunity to meet another blogger from the deep south should she return to her roots in Massachusetts for a visit. I do so love meeting blog friends as they generally end up being even more wonderful in real life than they are on the computer!

Maybe someday I'll even get to meet the mistress of this meme!

Daydreams and Queens

Today's daydream is brought to you by one of the most famous ocean liners in the world - the Queen Mary 2.

Sometimes I allow myself to have these silly little daydreams of things that I would like to do in life and yesterday I was thinking that one of the things I would really, really, really like to do is visit England and then come back to America in style via a TransAtlantic cruise. Doesn't that sound lovely?

Now granted, there are a lot of other cruise lines and ships that traverse the Atlantic but I was thinking that if one was going to do that sort of thing, it should done in style and how much more stylish can you get than the RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Queen Mary 2 of the Cunard line?

In 1839, Queen Victoria of England awarded Canadian-born Samuel Cunard the first ever license to deliver mail across the Atlantic, proudly granting his steamship the honored title RMS (Royal Mail Steamer). In 2004 RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Queen Mary 2 was awarded this privileged title and continues to celebrate this golden heritage that was started over 165 years ago.

The Queen Mary 2 is named after the earlier Cunard liner Queen Mary, which was in turn named after Mary of Teck. With a full name of Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes, Queen Mary was the wife of George V, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Emperor of India who reigned over England from 1910 through World War I (1914–1918) until his death in 1936. He was the first British monarch of the House of Windsor.

Victoria Mary (known affectionately as May by her family) was born on May 26th, 1867 at Kensington Palace in London, daughter of Prince Francis, Duke of Teck, and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge. By birth, she was a princess of Teck (a dukedom in southwestern Germany), in the Kingdom of Württemberg, with the title of Her Serene Highness. In December of 1891, May was engaged to her second cousin, once-removed, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and next in line for the throne. The choice of May as bride for the Duke probably owed much to Queen Victoria's fondness for her, as well as to her strong character and sense of duty. However, Prince Albert Victor died six weeks after their engagement in the worldwide influenza pandemic which swept through Britain in the winter of 1891–1892.

Despite this setback, Queen Victoria still favored May as a suitable candidate to marry a future king; and Albert Victor's brother, Prince George, Duke of York and now second in line to the throne, evidently became close to her during their shared period of mourning for Prince Albert Victor. In May 1893, George duly proposed, May accepted, and they were soon deeply in love. May married Prince George, Duke of York, on July 6th, 1893 at the Chapel Royal, St. James' Palace, in London and went on to have a very successful marriage as well as six children: Edward, Albert, Mary, Henry, George, and John.

Before her husband's accession to King, Mary she was successively known as the Duchess of York, Duchess of Cornwall and Princess of Wales. Following the death of King Edward VII on May 6th, 1910, the Prince of Wales ascended the throne as George V, and May became his queen consort. Queen Mary was crowned with the King on June 22nd, 1911 at Westminster Abbey.

Following a long and successful reign as king, George V died on January 20th, 1936 from lung problems and at that time their eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, ascended the throne as Edward VIII. Mary was now officially Queen Mother, though she did not use that title and was instead known as Her Majesty Queen Mary. Within the year, Edward abdicated the throne to marry his twice-divorced American mistress, Wallis Simpson. Following the abdication, Prince Albert, Duke of York, Mary's second son, ascended the throne in Edward's place, taking the name George VI. When Mary attended the coronation she became the first dowager queen (widow of a deceased king) to do so in the history of England.

During World War II in 1942, her youngest surviving son, Prince George, Duke of Kent, was killed in an air crash while on active service and in 1952, King George VI died, the third of Queen Mary's children to predecease her (her youngest son, John, had died at the age of thirteen in 1918). Following the death of King George VI, Mary's eldest granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth, ascended the throne to become Queen of England. Queen Mary died the next year of lung cancer (referred to publicly as "gastric problems") at the age of 85, only ten weeks before Elizabeth II's coronation on February 6th, 1952, Queen Mary is buried beside her husband in the nave of St. George's Chapel in Windsor.

Anyhow, after that impromptu history lesson, it may be easy to see why I'd love to sail across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 rather than just another ship that happens to be going that way! As a lover of history, I can think of no better way to travel as no doubt the story of the woman for which the ship is named could only add to the romance and excitement of the journey. Besides, I've already watched Fourth of July fireworks being shot off while on the deck the original Queen Mary - granted, she was docked in Long Beach, California as a floating hotel and museum and no longer sailed the seas but I was on board nonetheless!

Oh well, I guess I need to start saving my pennies if I ever hope for this particular daydream to become a reality! You gotta admit, it would make for a great blog post!

I've Got a Question - You've Got an Answer

Time seems to be something that we could all use a little extra off - at least I know I sure could! I can't quite figure out when time got away from me but it certainly has and I never seem to have enough time in the day to do all of the things I'd like and/or need to do.

That said, there are occasions when I just don't have the time and resort to picking up some type of fast food on the way home for the girls. They don't seem to mind (they're teenagers, of course they don't mind!) and it also saves on having to clean the kitchen and do the dishes and all the other fun stuff that goes along with cooking.

Norwich has all of the standard fast food joints - McDonald's, Wendy's Burger King, KFC/Taco Bell - as well as more pizza places than you can shake a large stick at not to mention quite a few Chinese take-out places. It's hard to pick a favorite but that's what I'm going to ask you today -

If you are going to get take-out for dinner, what's your favorite kind or favorite place to go?

Everyone have a nice first day of July - I'll be at work for 16-hours hoping for a peaceful day but if it's anything like the other night I doubt that's gonna happen! Oh well, it makes the day go by faster at any rate!

Tuesday Tidbits

It was one week ago today that Amanda had her two bottom wisdom teeth extracted so it's off to the oral surgeon for her follow-up appointment. She said that it's still a bit sore in places and hurts when she chews but for the most part I'd have to say she had a pretty easy recovery. Hopefully she'll soon find that with those two wisdom teeth out, she'll have less headaches and her jaw won't ache all the time.

I can't believe that it's the end of June already and I still haven't put my air-conditioners in! Truth be told I don't mind the cooler weather we've been having this summer as I'm not a big fan of hazy, hot, and humid - which is normally what we get here. That said, we could still have a few less rainy days - please!

Even though we had rain for 22 out of the 30 days of June, I was surprised to see that the water seemed to be down quite a bit over at Yantic Falls when I passed by there the other day. I guess the water levels go down in the summer regardless of how much rain you have.

Speaking of the Falls, I took a 911 call from one our of local ETOHs the other night who told me that he fell off Indian Leap and hurt his arm. Nothing for nothing but I've been up on Indian Leap and if you fell off of there - inebriated or not - you'd do a lot more than hurt your arm! The gentleman in question wasn't exactly very polite while requesting an ambulance either so the police joined us "just in case".

Just in case anyone was wondering, the wreaths that were in the pictures on my post from yesterday are on the doors of the First Congregational Church in Canterbury. I was there earlier in the month for a surprise party for my cousin and his wife who had just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary and I snapped some pictures of the church while I was there. This isn't the "original" First Congregational Church of Canterbury as the first First Church was destroyed in a fire but it's definitely your quintessential New England Congregational Church!

I've been kicking around a few ideas of where to take the girls for a road-trip or two this summer and it was mentioned to me at work yesterday by one of my fellow dispatchers that I should check out the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York. A quick search of the internet showed it to be only about 2 hours from here just up the Hudson River a bit from New York City. Apparently the cemetery offers regular tours and is quite the place with graves from Revolutionary War heroes to New York millionaires including the Rockefellers and the Helmsleys. In addition to that, the town of Sleepy Hollow itself - home of the fictitious Ichabod Crane - looks pretty cool and a great place to take my Nikon the girls.

Speaking of the girls, I wonder if they could behave themselves on a road-trip or whether I'd end up dumping them by the side of the road with a sign attached that read "Free to Good Home"?!? Amanda seemed to think a trip to Sleepy Hollow would be cool so maybe she could get along with her sister long enough to actually get there.

Actually, not to jinx myself here, they've been getting along pretty good the last few days so I'm hoping that perhaps a corner has been turned - or at least a temporary truce called! I keep hoping that like all of the others who have told me that they" never got along with their sister but now they're great" the same will happen with Amanda and Jamie. Hope springs eternal in the heart of a mother!

Speaking of mothers, congratulations to my friend Kevin whose wife just gave birth to their second daughter on Sunday the 28th. Kevin reports mom and baby are doing fine and should be coming home either Wednesday or Thursday. In the meantime he's taken some time off of work to take care of his adorable oldest daughter and enjoy the new addition to their family.

Guess that about wraps up the tidbits for now; here's hoping everyone has a great Tuesday and last day of June!

A Quote For Monday

"The doors of wisdom are never shut." - Benjamin Franklin

Zuppa Toscana - The At Home Version!

Last Saturday afternoon the girls and I went to The Olive Garden for lunch and - for probably the 12th time - I said that if I could just find a recipe for it, I'd make my favorite Zuppa Toscana soup at home so that we could have it more often. Amanda likes it just as much as I do so I finally went in search of a recipe online.

Turns out there were quite a few from which to choose but none of them sounded 'quite right' as I couldn't for the life of me remember there being bacon in the soup. However, every recipe I looked at called for bacon in varying amounts so I figured that had to be right, right? I ended up using a little of this and a little of that from each of the recipes that I found and eventually ended up with my own recipe of sorts. When I made the soup I doubled the recipe as the way I look at it you can never have enough Zuppa Toscana and I knew Amanda would be looking for leftovers if it came out as well as the soup we love at The Olive Garden.

If you'd like to try it, the recipe I used was:

• 1 quart water
• 2 14.5 oz cans of chicken broth
• 4 medium-size russet potatoes
• 1/2 medium onion
• 1-1/2 to 2 tsp minced garlic
• 3 pieces of cooked crisp bacon, diced
• 1 pound spicy Italian sausage
• 3 cups chopped kale
• 1 cup heavy cream
• salt and pepper


• Cook the Italian sausage, crumbling it as you go (I used the non-link variety); drain and set aside.
• Lightly saute the onion in the same pan you just cooked the sausage in until soft.
• In a large pot, add water, chicken broth, garlic, sauteed onions, and potatoes; cook over medium heat until potatoes are tender.
• Add cooked sausage and cooked diced bacon to the pot and let simmer for another ten minutes.
• Add kale and heavy cream to pot; season with salt & pepper; heat for about 5 to 10 minutes; serve to rave reviews!

This was my finished product and Amanda declared it to be exactly like the soup at The Olive Garden; the only things missing were the grated Romano cheese on top and the breadsticks! Because Amanda dislikes onions almost as much as she dislikes needles, after sauteing the onions I put them through my mini-food processor so Amanda couldn't see them floating in her soup and she never even knew they were there until I told her after she'd eaten her first bowl-full!

Unfortunately Jamie didn't much care for the soup as she thought it was a little too spicy for her tastebuds and she's also not much of an Italian sausage fan but I thought it actually came out pretty close to the real thing. I think the next time I make it, I'm actually going to throw in a couple extra potatoes and see how it comes out and I might toss in another handful of kale, too, but other than that I'm going to give myself a pat on the back and call it buon abbastanza rammendato per una prima prova!*

*pretty darned good for a first try!

Looking at the Sky on Friday - The Bleh Version

Sigh ... yep ... that gray sky is pretty much what we here in Connecticut have been looking at all Spring and now into the Summer. I do believe there's more color in the reflections of the water on Beach Pond then there is in the sky! Oh well, Mother Nature is a stubborn cuss and it is what it is - bleh!

Speaking of it is what it is - today is Gracie's birthday so I wanted to make sure to give her a shout out way over there in California and send her wishes for a day filled with happiness! Stop by and wish her a good one and then pop over to Tisha's where I'm sure you'll find some blue skies and maybe even some cottony clouds!

A Moment of Reflection

On Route 165 in Rhode Island - straddling the Connecticut State Line - lies Beach Pond beach, part of the Arcadia Wildlife Management Area and a great place to go swimming when I was a kid long, long ago.

Unfortunately, swimming at Beach Pond was prohibited several years ago due to a cut in funding for lifeguards in the Rhode Island state budget. Since then, the bathhouse that used to stand on the beach has been torn down and the beach strewn with rocks so that people aren't tempted to swim there illegally.

I stopped by Beach Pond briefly on way back from dropping a friend and her mother off at the airport near Providence, Rhode Island this morning and snapped a few pictures of the once lively beach area. I had hoped that maybe - just maybe - the sun would make an appearance and I could capture a sunrise while I was up at the unprecedented time of before dawn but alas, the sun chose to hide behind the clouds yet again.

While walking along the abandoned beach, I thought this one tree was quite fascinating as its roots are obviously growing above ground while it hangs on tenaciously by the edge of the pond and it reminded me of the Bible passage about the sower and the seeds where Jesus tells His disciples His very first parable:

“Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” - Matthew 13:3-9

Sometimes it's hard not to look at nature and remember the words of the Lord, isn't it? I wonder how deep the roots of this tree run and how long it's been hanging on to the edge of the pond?

I've Got a Question - You've Got an Answer

Rumor has it that it's summer and even the calendar proclaimed it as such on June 21st but you'd be hard-pressed to believe it here in New England where a lot of us are beginning to think that somehow the country was spun around and we are now living in Seattle! The sun has been virtually nonexistent this year - or so it seems - and truth be told, it's getting a bit depressing - particularly after the brutal winter we went through.

Mother Nature occasionally teases us with a nice day, though, just to give us a glimmer of hope or a reminder that the sun is still out there - somewhere - doing what the sun does best in the summer so I thought I'd take a moment just to ask everyone -

What are your summer plans?

Personally I've been craving a train trip of some sort but that's probably because I've been taking way too many pictures of train tracks! Currently, though, there aren't any plans to go anywhere in particular or do much of anything except perhaps a short visit to see the cousins in Massachusetts while Jamie is here.

How about you? What are you up to this summer?

Open Wide!

In just a little while I'll be waking Amanda up so that she can take her prescribed dose of Xanax prior to her oral surgery which is scheduled for 9:30 EST today. Whoever thought of giving patients something to relax them prior to having their wisdom teeth removed is a genius as I think Amanda is most definitely going to be nervous - not so much about the extraction itself but about the IV that they are going to be putting in her arm to administer the Versed used to send her off to LaLa Land during the procedure.

Yep, our own Miss Delirium is deathly afraid of needles. Go figure! I guess everyone is afraid of something and if it isn't ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night, it may as well be needles! I personally have no problem with needles in spite of the fact I have horrible veins but I make up for that by having a nice healthy fear of heights. Heck, my palms sweat just watching a high-wire act on TV!

My friend Andrew, who is a paramedic, checked out Amanda's veins the other day and told her that she'll have no problems as she's got lots of available sites (thank goodness she didn't inherit my sorry-excuse for accessible sites to sink an IV) and that she probably won't even feel it when they put the needle in. The doctor has told her that they freeze the site prior also so as long as she has her iPod earbuds firmly in place and looks the other way, she should be fine. That dose of Xanax will probably help, too!

If all goes well, she should be in and out of the dentist chair in less than an hour and back home before she even knows it. As a matter of fact, if she has the same reaction I did to the Versed, she probably won't know it! I've jokingly told her that I was going to bring a video camera to record how she reacts to the drug but I'm still debating whether to actually do it or not. Truth be told, I wish someone had videotaped me after my surgery on the 12th as I'm still wondering whether I did or said something more embarrassing than asking about cute guys in the waiting room!

Anyhow, happy thoughts and well wishes for a speedy and relatively painless recovery for Amanda would be greatly appreciated today. As someone who has all of her wisdom teeth still intact I'm not sure exactly what Amanda will be going through but as her mother, of course I hope it's a simple procedure with an easy recovery period.

Update! Amanda is sleeping soundly (in my room, of course) after what the dentist said was a very easy extraction and two teeth that just "popped" right out. At the end of surgery she was laughing and giggling and acting quite like she'd had way too much too drink (and yes, I have video!). Her first request was her cellphone so that she could twitter an update - oy! -with her second request being a shake from McDonald's because she was starving. It was too early for Mickey D's so she came home and had a small glass of milk with a Tylox before deciding I was right after all and she really wanted to sleep for awhile. That was close to three hours ago!

So far so good, right?