Weekend of Fun Day 4

This is what the view of the river looked like when I woke up! We were above the clouds.


Tuesday we left or lovely B&B, but the main even of the day was horseback riding on the Jersey side of the Gap. I rode Ranger, and David rode Cody.

Weekend of Fun Day 3

We canoed the Delaware River. I mostly floated and drank beer. David paddled and drank beer. Life vests come with a built in beer koozie (ie: strap, see photo)! who knew?


Lunch was on an island all to ourselves. Actually, the whole river was practically ours. This is what happens when your weekend extends into Monday.

Click to Give

In the last month I got two emails reminding me about Clicking to Give sites on the web - you mouse click an advertisement box and it translates into donations for a good cause. I was going to compile a bookmark folder of the sites (and find more) and just try to run through it each morning and habituate myself to doing a good deed before I've even had coffee. That way, I'm done good deeding for the day and can proceed to be an asshole until bedtime.

Anyway, the sites are all with the same meta-site, GreaterGood.com, so I don't need a bookmark folder, and this is what I wanted to share with you all. Go to the site for Free Mammograms, or the site for Food For Rescue Animals and then run through the tabs at the top of the page, because all the sites are accessible through eachother. Make a click for the Rainforest or Literacy or World Hunger. And don't forget Child Health! It's easy to do, quick click. And you can click every day, but not more than once a day.

If you are a cynical, suspicious person like me, you can even check out the legitimacy of this fund raising on Snopes at this webpage on the Free Mammograms and you can see that it takes 45,000 clicks to provide one woman with a free mammogram. So get clicking. Also, at any of the fundraising sites, they have a RESULTS link on the left that tells you what the clicks have earned by day, month, or year. For example, on May 6, the clicks generated 19K pounds of food for Hunger programs.

And if you are an even more cynical, suspicious person than me, and you like to be an asshole well beyond bedtime, you can do the research one step further and find out if the companies that are paying to advertise, and therefore having 75% of their fees donated through a secondary LLC, the GreaterGood site, get a tax break for this and would be donating an equal or greater amount to charity if the site didn't exist. Maybe they are laundering their donations through advertisement, double dipping the same amount of dollars that would be used to get IRS deductions anyhow. I don't know, I'm writing a novel, not an investigative piece on the faux philanthropy.

Weekend of Fun Day 2

On day 2 of WofF, we drove a few hours north of Princeton to the Delaware Water Gap. Laurie had suggested it as a nearby vacation spot for us and she was so very right, it is absolutely beautiful. David had reserved a beautiful B&B for us near Shawnee, on the Pennsylvania side, but we wanted to get a hike in before arriving.


So we did a four hour loop up to Sunfish Pond (on the Jersey side of the Gap) and had a picnic lunch, saw a Hooded Warbler, and checked out some nice waterfalls.


Then we went to Santosha on the Ridge, where our bedroom was nestled up in the trees and I could bird from my window.


It's called the Sunrise Room, and each morning the light would flood in and the birds would sing and while David slept I crept around to each of the three views from our room with my binoculars trying to ID the little feather creatures. Then I'd go back to sleep, because breakfast wasn't served until 9.....

Weekend of Fun Day 1

There’s this place about 15 minutes from Princeton called the Grounds for Sculpture – it’s full of modern sculpture, ranging from “ugh” to “hey, that’s cool.” But more interesting than the art are the gardens you get to explore to find the art. It’s really charming. And HUGE, the place has hundreds of pieces of art.
It used to be a fairground before it was renovated and landscaped a couple decades ago. There are wooden doors hinged into tall hedges that lead to secret outdoor rooms where you can swing in a hammock, or make out with your boyfriend, whatever. And bridges to walk over koi ponds with misters shooting clouds into your face. And some fun water sculptures that are built into streams with little stone paths.
David and I had so much fun there Saturday, it was great. The photo above is me studying with a statue. If you are ever near here, you should definitely check it out – but don’t expect the Met, just think of it as a play ground – good for adults and little ones.

Genetic Bets

We know she is 100% adorable, but what are her actual breed percentages?

I’m taking bets on Kai’s genetic make-up. We swabbed her inner cheek this morning for epithelial cells, and soon we will receive results from her Canine Heritage ™ Breed Test. If you want to play the game, your admission ticket is one dollar. The winner gets the pot!! And yes, you can enter more than once.

Some background on the Chiral Spiral:

She was born around 11/05 in a litter of 4 pups. She was the 2nd most curly of the three females. The one male had short hair like a black lab. All 4 pups were pure black.

Kai’s adult weight is 36 pounds. Maybe a little less now that we gave her a buzz cut.

Her skin is white, fur is all black

Her tongue is marbled pink and black

Eyes brown

She is prone to ear infections and she has a sensitive stomach

She likes to retrieve and then keep (ie:balls)

She enjoys hunting for hidden objects – like an Easter egg style game

She will sometimes point with a front leg, she will always chase a squirel if she is off leash

Her bark is not totally small dog yappy, but not big dog low either

She loves food and is never satiated

She has shown a few “herding” behaviors in the past

She is not mellow. If we could harness her energy, the country would be freed from fossil fuels

The animal shelter we got her from described her as a Labrador and Spaniel mix. The impression they gave me at the time is that these were guesses.

The test results will provide primary (50% or more), secondary, and “in the mix” (low amounts but measurable) breeds. They only test for the 38 most common mixed breeds in North America. You can find those breeds here at their website.

Your guess can include one Primary breed, one or more secondaries, and one or more “in the mixes.” You can post your guess in the comments section, or email them to me. I know you are good for the buck, no need to send a money order.

Here are a few more photos to sleuth by. The first was taken when she was still a puppy. The second one I took this morning (note our lovely hide red wine and mustard carpeting). The last image is from a month ago, with a full body of hair and a bit of creek water.

Wegmans is from Hell

I am ready to rip someone a new asshole. With my teeth.

This is the state of mind a visit to Wegmans grocery store puts me in. I imagine that it is close to how a woman feels in the hours after her spouse of 20 years has informed her that he has been having an affair and is leaving her, for a younger smarter and more beautiful woman who speaks three languages, a woman whose vagina hasn’t been left gaping after delivering his five children, and PS he never loved you and was only in it for that crusted-pecan chicken dish you make so well. I feel like that woman, curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, shaking, with waves of acidic nausea licking up at the back of my throat.

And I did this to myself, voluntarily. I had visited Wegmans one time before, my first weekend here in Princeton. And let me assure you that a weekend visit to Wegmans is akin to being flayed alive. In salt water. Yes, I did cry after that visit. And no, I am not ashamed, because to not be moved to tears by that experience would have meant I was so far from reality and suffering from such emotional disconnect that I would be practically robotic and numb in my approach to the world. People who can survive a trip to Wegmans on the weekend are the same freaks that mall walk.

So this time I plotted my journey to Wegmans. I strategized. They open at 6am, I arrived at 7am. On a Monday. I was rewarded in that there were no other customers. Unfortunately, there were also no employees. Or produce. An empty supermarket and me. Thanks be to the Gods the coffee bar was open.

But I was on a mission, so I forged on, filling my cart with overpriced items that boasted 96% organic content. (is the other 4% pure pesticide poison?)

The heinous thing about Wegmans, and you really can’t appreciate how God-awful it is until you have to make a full, complete grocery store trip there, is that the store is divided into “sections.” I don’t mean produce, dairy, canned goods. I mean “natural” “wegmans” “kosher” “redneck” “fresh”. Okay, the redneck section isn’t called that, but it is basically the left-over section that resembles the food aisles at a Wallmart, it is the cheap section where they put the non-organic, non-Wegmans knock-off, non-freshly baked, plain old pop-tarts. The problem with these sections, is that you can find (or not find) an item in numerous locations. The store is clinically schizophrenic. It is like grocery shopping at a state fair, with little booths spread out over a 22 acre plot of land. Bread is located in at least 4 places. I kid you not: fresh bakery, “natural”, a random frozen aisle, and the redneck section. Oh my god! Ketchup? 3 places. Cheese? At least 6, including it’s own entire wing.

After 1 hour and 30 minutes of locating items on my grocery list, I lacked only the soy sauce and any earthly reason to live. I had already found rice and stir fry veggies and I wasn’t about to turn back on that meal. I looked in three likely places for it, even willing to pay for organic soy sauce in the “natural” section if only I could fucking find it. And understand, Wegman’s is not physically small. It takes about 3 minutes to walk from one end to another without heavy cart traffic. So zig-zagging around looking for the soy sauce is not a quick task.
I had no luck finding it. Anywhere. At any price. I had to ask for help. But there are no employees wandering around to assist me, because at Wegmans You Are On Your Fucking Own Sucker. So I go clear to the Customer Service desk, where a woman coughs on me and then asks how she can help.

“What aisle is soy sauce on?”

Her face falls as she grabs a multi-page key/map/legend/emergency evacuation guidebook. She looks through it, she sighs. She looks up at me. She sighs. I swear to God I thought she was going to ask me if I really needed it That Badly. Then she says, “The easiest way to get soy sauce, the way I would find it, is to look in the International section way up front in the corner.”
Holy Shit! A whole section that somehow slipped my notice! But wait, I found salsa in three places already: the olive bar, the natural section, and the redneck section….so is there even more salsa in the International section? Imported salsa? Actual Mexican mexican salsa?

I found the soy sauce. I found 8 different brands of soy sauce, some enfused with cold-pressed citrus. And I guess that is the thing, that is why some people swear that Wegmans is the greatest food store ever – it’s not that they are sick, twisted fucks, it is that once you know the store, once you have memorized where your items are, then it is probably fantastic in its scope. But the learning curve must take years – like memorizing all the arrondissement boundaries of Paris.

I grabbed a bottle of soy sauce. I waited in line and paid. My total was $200. So I basically paid $100/hour for the pleasure of Wegmans. I think that is about 50% more than I would have paid for the same food in Austin. So the cost of living IS higher here, financially, but also, and more importantly, emotionally.