We got back Saturday night from a terrific trip to New England, catching the end of “leaf season.” The centipede of the trip was an excellent Laura Cantrell concert in Groton MA in their gorgeous new music hall. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many is a video worth?
Driving from I-can’t-remember-what-town to I-can’t-remember-what-town, we passed a road sign that said “Entering Harvard,” and I said to Linda: I finally got in!
On Friday, our plan was to catch a movie in Littleton MA. It had a 2:20 PM start time, so we snuck in a two-mile loop hike after lunch. “It’s just two miles,” I reasoned. “We’ll have plenty of time.” It started out ridiculously easy. A trail marker seemed to adorn every tree on the path. “This may be some sort of kindergarten trail,” I complained to Linda.
Thirty minutes later: “Do you see the next marker?” “Is this the trail? — there are so many leaves — did we take a wrong turn? Shouldn’t the lake be on the left?” But we only got a teensy bit lost, which is pretty good for us, and we made it back to the car and enjoyed the outing very much. (The lake was on the “wrong side,” but the trail looped us around it nicely.) To hell with the movie — we’d be late anyway. We sped back to the room for a nap.
We drove home through Hamden CT so we could catch Quinnipiac’s women’s hockey team taking on Brown. The ponytails were flying! QU is a powerhouse, ranked #5 in the nation, and Brown isn’t. But the game was great. It finished at 8-2, but Brown held their own and were only down 4-2 about midway. I had a feeling Brown would be in for a long afternoon when the player introductions informed us QU skaters were largely Canadians, while Brown’s were from small towns scattered around New England.
Here’s a pretty Bobcat: Bryn Prier. She assisted on one of their goals.
Don’t let the pretty smile fool you. She’ll gouge your eyes out with a stick if it would clear her path to the net. These hockey babes are a breed apart.
Insanely, not too many fans were in attendance, but the pep band and some very sexy cheerleaders plied their wares the whole time and drew this fan’s rapt attention, for sure.
Before the game we had lunch at The Wright Way Burgers and BBQ, where the brisket is good and the house-cured pastrami even better. On the way out, I told the guy his pastrami was world-class, and noted that I grew up in Brooklyn. He thanked me and said, “Yes, we make two big batches a week and could sell more if we had more room in the smoker.” Worth a stop — Hamden is near New Haven. Don’t let the unassuming storefront fool you: The pastrami is the real deal.
I made up a joke: How many Impressionists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Ans: Not Manet.
Manet himself was not an impressionist, but made it clear in his writings that he would not object to being labeled as one in bad jokes.
Worth noting, from yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac: The first medical school for women opened in Boston on this date in 1848. It was started by Samuel Gregory, who named it the Boston Female Medical College. The first class — 12 women in all — graduated just two years later, in 1850. Gregory’s own formal medical training consisted of a summer lecture course that he had taken in anatomy and physiology. He wasn’t remotely a supporter of women’s rights, but he believed it was unseemly for male doctors to assist women in childbirth, so the college was mostly intended to serve as a school for midwives at first. In 1856, the school’s name was changed to the New England Female Medical College; it named among its graduates Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African-American to earn a medical degree, which she did in 1864.
In today’s puzzle two of the answers (unrelated) were NEEDY and WARTS. They opened these little doors for me, which I shared with the Commentariat on Rex Parker’s blog.
Years ago, Garrison Keillor came up with a bunch of limericks honoring his kids’ teachers, whom he felt deserved more praise for their hard work than they were receiving. I was able to commit this one to memory.
There once was a teacher named Dede
Who came home to her squeeze and said “Sweetie,
I’m so tired, I’m wobbly
So pour me some Chablis
And don’t be emotionally NEEDY.”
Since we lost a friend to skin cancer a while back, we have been more diligent about periodic dermatology visits. We loved our doc who retired about five years ago. During one visit, he noticed that my wife developed several WARTS. He told her they were harmless and could be removed easily. She said fine, and then jokingly asked: “Doctor, does this mean I’m turning into a witch?” He didn’t know that bad jokes are the lingua franca in our home, so he answered very seriously, “Oh, no — I would not say that.”
Hope you’re enjoying retirement, Dr. G. May all your moles be benign!
For wordplay, I took on CHICKENWIRE (“Hexagonal mesh used to fence in poultry”), and TOWS (“Tugboat tasks”). There was also a clue for ACID (“Drug you can trip on”) and, from Saturday, the clue for CARILLON (“Instrument in a bell tower”).
Drug you can trip on: Dramamine.
Emergency hotline for the cowardly: CHICKENWIRE
Festive lighting for tugboats: Twinkle TOWS
Instrument in a bell tower: Bell.
Caity caught this amazing shot of Romeo, at only five days old. She concedes it’s not a “real” smile — just something he settled into. But mine upon seeing it was real.
Gotta run — we’re popping over to Caity’s for some Romeo time. See you tomorrow — thanks for dropping in!
