But Call Me Betsy

Took a trip to Montreal with Dan and his family and returned to discover that I didn't take very many photos at all, and the ones I do have largely feature animals or insects. No dogs or cats, because for the entire time we were there, we saw about 4 dogs in total which of course was a bummer for me. We left on a Thursday morning and stopped in for breakfast at the Airport Diner. The menu had everything you could ever want on it, and, as a consequence, the food all tasted the same. Please note that Dan is embarrassing all of us by wearing a New Jersey t-shirt. And then we stopped for lunch at some place called the Cricket Restaurant. Name was apropos as no one was there and it was so silent that you could hear... Bruno traveled with us and here is being abused in the parking lot of the Hyatt Hotel where we stayed for four luxurious nights. Luckily, we were also able to enjoy the comforts of corporate America as there was a French-ish Starbucks directly across f...

We saw some sheep this weekend at the Howell Living Farm and I was reminded that sheep aren't the smartest farm animals you could ever hope to have. But here is a video of a cute lamb who hops:

The guy sitting behind me on the train back from Princeton yesterday had an entirely personal cell phone conversation that lasted about ten minutes. Summary: "Why you gotta throw me out my house into the snow, huh? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Oh, I am, am I? Okay, if you say so. My dad did not say that. I decided to leave, not him. Okay. Oh, right. Yes, here we go again. You did too! I never said that. But you're the one who threw me out in the snow, not me. That's right, act like that. You don't listen. Why'd you got to keep all of my stuff then, like my sofa? Okay. Okay. Oh, okay. Well, I'm not stopping by then." I couldn't see his face, but I pictured him as a 17 year old kid. When he got off at the Bridesburg stop, imagine my surprise to find that he was a fully grown adult man with tattoos. I just hope they don't have kids together. Here is your next selection of photos to choose from. This is Tilly, who belongs to Lex. Tilly does not like ...

Just got my copy of Philadelphia Noir in the mail on Wednesday. That's the series of short fiction put out by Akashic Books--they focus on a particular city and ask writers in that area to write a noir piece about their neighborhood. I covered South Philly. Two other writers from one of the Philadelphia Stories classes were also asked to write stories--Halimah and Laura. I am so proud of us! I don't think my story is the greatest--the character is pretty unlikable and the situation isn't very plausible either, but it was fun to write. Why don't you buy an advanced copy ? I'll also be starting another Master's program this fall at Penn and my first class is called Research for Fiction. Here's the course description: Images and the figures of speech called imagery bring language to life and abstract ideas to light in the mind. They are what create the physical world of fiction and convey the subjective realities of poems and the arguments of essays. In th...

There was some panic from the last blog entry when I claimed there was a winner of the Cat-in-Hat competition, but I was just kidding. We still have my cats to go, plus Padhraig's cats, plus a few assorted dogs I know who would like to be entered in the contest, and Jenn Bing's cat, Bella. In the meantime, please take a look at our next beauty, Tucker, who belongs to my friend Emily. Tucker is a sweet little thing, but watch out. Here, he seems to be lounging quite easily. And perhaps interested in eating the feather. On the move. I like this--he looks like he's about to attach something/someone. And he is. When Emily finally took the hat off and left the room for just a brief blink of a moment, Tucker had his revenge. The hat had to be re-glued together.

I have to say that Wayles' photos of her cat, Ashes are the best I've seen so far. Very poetic with a hint of tragedy. Here is the bio that she sent about Ashes/Genevieve (name changes when she's wearing the hat): Genevieve is a Virgo and from the Brandywine Valley.She would love to frolic outdoors, but being the lady that she is, she takes elegant baths and keeps her silky hair clean and pressed high above the city in her penthouse suite. And then the truth comes out about Ashes: Ashes is almost 7 years old and was born in a McDonald's parking lot in Wilmington, DE. She thinks she is a lesbian dog. She likes the rain. She likes rolling around in dirt. Total smooch-fest.

Actually, I don't think fairs/carnivals are that much fun. Maybe I used to, but they seem depressing to me as an adult. We took Luke to the New Jersey County Fair and he had a good time, but all I could think about was how much it must suck to have to work on the rides. Like, over and over and over you let kids on the ride, you watch it go around for awhile, you hope no one throws up, and then you get those bunch off and another group on. For ten hours a day, for ten days in one town, and then you move on to the next crappy town and do the same thing. We talked to the guy who ran the shooting game and he said there next stop was Schenectady, NY, then Erie, PA, a couple more small towns in PA, then Delaware, then Pensacola, FL. He also had to tell the other guy working with him to stop talking about asking a lady if he could sit on her face because kids were around. The thing about the carnival that most stuck with Luke was the attraction for the smallest woman in the world. So smal...

This is Kristina's cat, Si, as in Siam the Siamese. I imagine that the children named her/him. Siamese cats often get a bad rap because they are inherently snobbish looking and acting. And they are usually very vocal--will meow until the other cats come home. My friend Wallis Payne had a Siamese named Diabla when we were growing up. She wasn't the nicest cat, but I still loved her. She would claw you in a second, but she was pretty on the outside. Here is Si, pretty on all sides. And again. S/he seems to be taking the hat in stride, like royalty.

I've been meaning to post photos from our trip to Newport, Rhode Island. These are all in opposite order of the actual vacation. Here is the interior of a restaurant where we at on the last night. We had almost uniformly good meals, most of which consisted of sea food of some kind. The bed and breakfast where we stayed. I liked it okay--though it kind of did have a more hotel-y feel than a homey one. We had a giant hot tub in our bathroom though. I enjoyed it more than Dan, who suffered from heat stroke in it. Here he is looking handsome in the $4 shirt I bought him from Circle Thrift. Lemon sorbet for him, chocolate martini for me. These are the grounds of the Vanderbilt mansion. We took a guided audio tour (everyone got his or her own headset). The funniest part was when you got to hear about the life of a Vanderbilt vs. the life of a Vanderbilt maid. The Vanderbilt girl was like, "And the bath was drawn for me every morning and tea brought up on little golden trays......