And the drummer was nearly naked

A couple of weeks ago I went down to Quogue NY because the restaurant my niece works at was closing for the season and they were having a bash called Drink Dockers Dry. At least I think that’s what it was called. It was what I called it anyway.

My partner in crime for this little jaunt was my sister, The Interrogator. We caught a 9 o’clock ferry from New London and got to Quogue at about 12:30. We had some time to kill before the party so we went to the Canal Café and had their killer lobster roll. We had manicures then checked into our hotel. We got to Dockers around 6 o’clock.

There was tons of food, plenty of people and a band. The Interrogator and I sat at the bar because it’s usually way more fun. And as a bonus, you can make friends with your bar-mates. This crazy woman was sitting next to my sister for half the night. She was dressed in ratty sweat pants and kept her cell phone in her bra. I think it was on vibrate, because she kept taking it out every so often to send text messages.  Maybe she was sending them to herself.  She seemed to be having a good time anyway because she was doing the shake, rattle and roll to the 70s music.

Also present was the Tomboy. She was a teeny-weeny woman who loved to dance. I couldn’t stop staring at her because she appeared to be in her 50s but had the body of a 10 year old. She had perfected the chicken-head-bob dance and spent much of the night on the dance floor in a crouch position with her arms flailing around. The Interrogator thought her dance was similar to Elaine’s on Seinfeld.

The band was pretty good. They played a lot of 70s and 80s music, which was fun. I was sitting only a couple of feet from them and at one point tried taking a movie with my point-and-shoot camera. They were playing Play That Funky Music and I thought my other sister (who was supposed to come with us) would like to see what she was missing. Unfortunately, point-and-shoot cameras apparently don’t take the best videos because it came out kind of stinky. Lots of background noise. The lead singer, who introduced himself to me as Bobby, wanted me to email it to him but the file is too big. Not to mention that I’m not sure I want Bobby to have my email address.

The Interrogator managed to get the lowdown on the band and everyone sitting within a 10 foot radius of us. She spent a lot of time gushing to the band about how fabulous they were. I think she was laying it on a bit thick, because they weren’t THAT good. She found out that ratty-sweat pant lady was actually a very successful real estate broker, despite the fact that she wears ratty clothes and apparently doesn’t place personal hygiene high on her list of priorities. And she’s pretty sure she scared away a couple of young men who were friends of one of the bartenders because she was asking them too many questions.

Despite the fact that it was a cool October night, and the restaurant is open to the outside, it was plenty hot in there. By 11:00 or so I noticed that the drummer was a little hot.

I don’t know much about being a drummer, but apparently you can work up quite a sweat. And I think he wanted his pants off too. After the band played their last song, he gets up and proceeds to button and zip his pants up.

And one final note. What’s up with New York drivers? Everyone says that Boston drivers are one of the worst, but I would say that in Boston we drive with purpose. We know where we want to go and everyone else is just in our way. I can’t tell you how many times I was behind someone in New York that drove as if they had no idea what they were doing or how they came to be the master of 3,000 lbs of metal on wheels. Stopping in the middle of the road was a fairly common thing. Good thing I had decent brakes.

The Amazing Trailer Transformation Part V

Well folks, it's been a while since I reported on the construction project going on next door.  The construction people seem very diligent about showing up for work at 7:00 am sharp and I could see some progress over there.  Finally on Monday I got around to taking a few photos.

This is the side of the house that faces mine.  So when I look out my kitchen window this is what I'll see.

This is the front of the house facing the street.  I've just realized looking at this photo that although this house looks like a cape, it might be a colonial where the first floor is actually below grade.  All I know for sure is that there are two floors below the one you see here and the bottom one looks like a typical cellar.

This is a shot of the first floor that is below grade.  I was mystified by that hole in the floor in the middle/right of the picture.  When I reached the back of the house it became obvious what it was.

It was the stairway to the cellar.  Duh!

This is the photo of the back of the house.  I think this fairly represents the slope from the street to the back of the house.  All I can think of when I walk around this property is "thank God I don't have to push a mower HERE!"  It is quite steep up that incline to the street level.

I hope my new neighbors (whoever they are) will appreciate this journey on the construction of their new home!

Old MacDonald's Got Nothin' On Me

I decided to grow potatoes in the garden this year.  I found this helpful thing at Gardner's Supply called a potato grow bag.  Apparently growing potatoes in the actual ground is quite a lot of work, involving hills and lots of dirt and god knows what else.  I prefer to plant things in my garden that I can forget about aside from the occasional watering and fertilizing.

This potato grow bag seemed right up my alley.  Put in some dirt, put in the "eyes"  (that's old potatoes with shoots growing out of them for the non-initiated) and pile some more dirt on top.  Then wait for them to grow a bit.  Throw more dirt on top then wait for them to grow a bit.  Then throw more dirt on top and wait for them to, well, grow.  The catalog said I could get up to 13 lbs. of potatoes!

I was not nearly so optimistic, but I decided to give it a go.  I chose to grow red potatoes.  I would like to point out that the picture in the catalog of the nice full, healthy-looking green leaves above the grow bag does not in any way represent what my green leaves looked like.  Mine were taller, scragglier, and ugglier.  But nevertheless, I had a successful harvest.

That's right.  Here is my harvest fresh out of the garden.  I washed most of the dirt off and as you can see most are a pretty decent size.  One or two cute ones are about the size of a marble, but for the most part I would be proud to find these in the produce section at the grocery store.  The final take?  A whopping 3 lbs. 12 oz.

Not too shabby, I say to myself.

The Amazing Trailer Transformation Part IV

Finally someone has shown up at the trailer lot.  It was the big digger operator and his job appears to be to backfill around the foundation.

Despite the astronomical amount of dirt that has been spread here, there is still a pretty good slope from the street to the foundation.  I'm going to assume that more dirt will be added, otherwise the rain is going to run directly from the street in to this cellar.

I wonder if all that plastic crap is buried under there...

The digger operator has been back every day this week doing his back-filling thing.  Unfortunately, I haven't made it home in time to take pictures of his progress, but I plan to as soon as I can.

The Amazing Trailer Transformation Part III

There's been no action over at the trailer lot for quite some time.  I'm not sure if the concrete foundation had to cure or what, but every day I anxiously awaited something to happen and was disappointed.  But I needed to get over there to take pictures before something did happen and I figured my time was running out.

I don't think it's going to be a terribly large house and the slope of the lot accounts for the odd shape of the foundation here.

One good thing about living on a slope is the liklihood of a walk out cellar.  To the right of the plank on the right side of the photo is where the door to the cellar will probably be.

Here we have some trash in the ditch around the foundation.  I expect that in a few hundred years when some students from Bridgewater State University begin an archaeological dig of this site, they will find the plastic bottles and plastic wrapping and speculate and theorize about how we used them.

The Amazing Trailer Transformation Part II

The lot was cleared without much fanfare.  I wish I was there to see it.  But the other day, when I was mowing the lawn I heard someone calling a greeting.  Turns out it was Joe from Heritage Homes Real Estate, the godsend behind the amazing trailer transformation.  He wanted to introduce himself to the neighbors.  I assured him that I was over the moon about everything he was doing.  He told me the foundation would be poured soon.

Luckily I made it home from work early enough to take some pictures.

This is what I found just a day or so before the foundation went in.  I'm not sure what its purpose is.  It was definitely poured concrete, but also definitely not the foundation.  I had to wait to see what would happen next.

 This is a view of the forms from my yard looking at what will become the side of the house.  The lot slopes quite a bit down from the street (as you can see in the left of the photo), so it will be very interesting to see how this all turns out.

This is a view from the back of the house from what I would guess will be the "walk out" cellar.  No need for bulkheads on High Street!

This is a view from the side of my yard diagonally toward the street.  The yellow digger at the top of the photo is basically at street level.  It's almost like the foundation is buried in the bowels of the earth, but it's really not.  I've got some pics to post of the foundation once it was completely poured, so I'll post them sometime soon.

The Amazing Trailer Transformation

I have lived in my house for nearly 18 years.  It's a fairly old house, a colonial revival of the sort that was popular in the early 20th century.  I have neighbors on one side that live in another old house, but more of an arts and crafts shingle style house.  On the other side was the TRAILER.  I have no idea how it got there, as this style of home is not usually allowed where I live.  But be that as it may, it was there.  An older couple lived there and aside from the fact that they didn't really do anything to pretty the place or the yard up, I didn't take much notice of their property.

Then one Sunday morning in 1993 (I think that was the year), the trailer caught fire.  The neighbors were inside.  After an amazing and daring rescue by this guy, they both made it out alive.  The older woman never quite recovered and went on to a nursing home, the older man continued to live there (in a replacement trailer) for many years.  We referred to him forever-more as Burned Out Bernie.

Eventually Burned Out Bernie passed away and he left the property to a friend of his, who didn't want it.  He sold it to a woman from Maine who attempted to live there with her very odd son.  They only lasted a couple of years before the call of Maine proved to great to overcome and she left.  Soon the property became overgrown (mostly from thistle plants that the birds kindly planted thanks to an abundance of thistle seed from my feeders!).  I despaired at what was to become of this unsightly situation.

Then one day last week as I was getting ready for work I heard a commotion in the street.  A giant backhoe had arrived and seemed to be positioning itself near the trailer.  Could my prayers really be answered?  In fact, YES!  Before I left for work that day, the backhoe was happily demolishing the trailer!  I could only hope that a house was on it's way!

Here's what I found when I got home from work.

Trailer gone!  Although satellite tv dish oddly remains.  Just below this sloping pile of dirt and sand used to be a retaining wall.  It too is gone. 

This is a big pile of dirt at the back of the property.  I can't wait to see what happens with that.  I've never been this close to a construction project that I can monitor its progress on a daily basis.  So far, the light has been good when I get home from work so I can take some decent pictures.  I'm anxious to follow the progress.