Saturday, December 10, 2005

hooray for the heating

Sunset the night before the storm.
The white spot is a half moon... >
Sunset
3:27 pm, Friday 9 December, she walks out of the Wired Puppy with a grin on her face, holding the regular post-walkies treat: Medium Mocha, No Whipped Cream (Note Initial Caps For Emphasis). She's just been talking to the barista-person about weather, because today in Provincetown it is the thing to talk about. It feels like she's heard a hurricane is supposed to behave... rainy stormy weather with trees bowing down under the strain of it, followed by a lull. And a big dirty sky hanging over the east end of town meanwhile, just biding its time. She doesn't have to wait long.

rainbow Here's a picture of the rainbow that appeared in 'the lull'

Halfway up the half-mile between the post office (some of you are getting postcards soon!!) and Wired Puppy, the rain starts. She loves it. As she passes the mouths of alley ways the wind nearly bowls her over. She giggles out loud and hangs on to her hat and clutches the plastic bag with padded postbags in it tightly to her chest. What fun!

And then she gets to the Wired Puppy and has the Weather Conversation. Her hurricane idea is dismissed peremptorily. What is apparently going on, says the barista is that there's a storm coming in this direction (he sticks his arm out) and there's another storm coming from over here (he crosses his first arm with the second arm) and then there's a bit where the two meet--that's the lull we just had, he says confidently. Makes about as much sense to her as a hurricane, so she nods and they have a little extra chat about the length of the days. They are short. At 3:27 it's nearly over... just over half an hour to go before the sun dips over the horizon.

The lights dim.

She leaves, waving. As she crosses the street, clutching not only the plastic bag with padded postpaks, but also a coffee, the snow starts. It stings exposed skin. What she doesn't know is taht the wind is travelling at somewhere between 35 and 60 miles per hour. That's the mile that is 1.62 kilometres in length. As they say in this blessed country... 'Do the math'

So she walks up Dyer Street (her normal route) and by the time she's half way up the street, she's squealing. Half delight, half (a little bit) scared. oooooohhhhh... the wind is blowing, the snow is stinging, she can hardly put one foot in front of the other. Visibility: approx. not a lot.

Up the stairs to her little pad. Notes screen door has been blown almost off its hinges... opens main door. Goes in side. Warm little pad. Dark little pad. Pulls the light cord. Dark little pad.

Power's off. Remember the lights dimming?

The wind howls and it gets darker. Snow is blown so hard against her front windows that she can't see the street and must look out the side windows. She lights candles and puts Robyn's crocheted rug over her knees. Reads by two candles and remembers what it felt like without power in the bush as a kid. Feels the room getting colder.

The phones work so she checks weather.com (gotta love the lappy with a charged battery!!) The wind is supposed to abate by midnight-ish (it did!). It is supposed to get down to -1 C and Saturday is supposed to be a sunny 3 degrees celcius (39 F). Walkies in store for us, methinks!

At 4:16, the power came back on, and it's now 5:53. She's sitting up in bed writing (well she actually ducked out to the kitchen to top up the coffee cup so that's why I thought I'd give you a quick update.

She loves heating. She loves electricity. She loves life. Billie Holiday is playing in her earphones. It's Saturday 10 December, and all is well in Provincetown.

That final picture is Snug Cottage across the road... looking pretty in the snow.

Friday, December 09, 2005

scatology

ha ha ha ha! I nearly fell out of my sock laughing when she came home from walking to the GU. A seagull shat on her. All across the front of her jacket, right across to the front of her jeans. The gulls are big here! They do big doo-doo.

Interesting fact: seagull kaka looks like milk and smells like dead fish.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Walkies!

Lots of photos in this posting. She got busy with the camera -- as did I, although I didn't do a terribly good job as you can see if you scroll down a bit.


Walking to the Beech Forest she decided to go the long way and cut through the graveyard.

Some of the headstones are heart-wrenching. So many small children died in the late 1800s. No explanations, just these sad little date ranges of 2 years, 4 years... So many of them too. It made us really think about how much things have changed in a couple of hundred years when you can have kids in our countries now and be pretty sure they'll make it.

Great view of the Provincetown Monument (with headstones) Look at that blue sky with fluffy bits. Dontcha love it!!!

[by the way, as I type this, the wind is fairly howling outside the apartment and I am snuggled up in a blanky, with the laptop on my lap keeping me extra warm. So the weather may have turned, maybe.]


Here's me hanging around on the sign at the beginning of the bike trail we walked along today. She walked from home to the Beech Forest (via Chach and eggs benedict). This is the beginning of the Beech Forest trail.

Hi ho, hi ho, a walking we will go... no wait. That's what dwarves sing, isn't it. Not gnomes. I was never properly socialised, you see. I was brung up by humans, and spent my adolescence in a tomato patch, so whaddya expect. Don't judge me. I can't help being stiff and ceramic.


Oh, oh, oh, I nearly forgot. Then we found these cool mushrooms. They grow right out of the sand.

I tried to see how the hydraulics work. As you can see here, I was taking it very seriously, getting right down on the ground and investigating the underside of the funghi in question... to no avail.

Whatever mechanism they employ here, it's clearly quite intricate and cleverly disguised.



Here's what red leaves look like.


Here's what Miriam looks like when I move the camera away before the shutter has finished clicking.



Here are Miriam's eyes. Noice crows feet, girl.

Proof

Just in case you didn't believe she's been writing, here's photographic evidence. There's a restaurant on Shankpainter Road called Chach. They have good food, and the peeps are noice as well. Good Eggs Benedict, passable coffee... (for all the Provincetown residents reading this, that was an attempt at irony, or more precisely a joke!! :-))

It's a terrible dilemma when just days away from what locals say is definitely, absolutely probably going to be snow... when she has some serious writing to get into and when the days keep ticking away... that the sun shines. She just has to go out in it! Believe me, when it does start to snow, she'll be holed up in that apartment, just dashing out to dance naked in the snowflakes from time to time... (for all the Provincetown residents reading this, she'll only do it in the dark and only for seconds at a time)

But look how good she is!!! She took me, her manuscript and a pen that works (the gal can really think sometimes...) and she edited pages 33 to 52 before heading off on the big walk (see next entry for details)

Look at the sunshine in this photo. It was so deliciously warm on the table in the corner she chose to sit at. As you can see, I couldn't resist and stretched out for a nap. Mmmmm.

din-dins!

A house is just not a home until you've had friends over for dinner, or so she says. Oh, she forgot to put the flash on the camera. Ooops.

That's Chris on the left and me in the middle and then Jim on the right.

They were quite good company. We laughed, we cried... we solved the world's problems. Global warming, endangered species. Solved. But we forgot to write it down before we went to sleep, so now that's all been wasted!


On the menu? Chicken marinated in yoghurt, lemon juice, cumin and turmeric. Cous cous with roasted capsicum and fresh coriander. Roasted parsnips, carrots and aubergine. Followed by Raspberry cream cheesecake. yuuuummm. So now the apartment has been 'christened'.

And here I am in Jim's pocket. They think my hands look like boobs. Not a nice thing to say, really.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Rainy day...

Rain on the roof this morning - it's such a great sound. After writing in the morning, she went for a walk in one of the breaks in the weather. Of course the break didn't last and we got soaked... but hey, she loves walking in the rain. She thinks it's one of the best things to do after a few hours of writing.


First, she had a bite to eat at the Squealing Pig. Here's me helping her out with her glass of wine.










Derek is the bartender. He was doing a bit of a spring cleaning - wiping down the shelves and the bottles. (dreadful shot -- sorry Derek!)








We went down to the breakwater.

< Here's a shot of me looking longingly out along it. It's getting colder and wetter here now and I'm not sure when she's going to make it out along the breakwater to the Long Point lighthouse -- but hopefully she's going to do it soon!



< GU
And then, she went to the GU (Grand Union Supermarket) to get some supplies and the rain really started. By the time she'd walked home with a full backpack she was completely soaking, but you know, it was great. A hot shower and a pair of snuggly tracksuit pants and a fuzzy jumper and a cup of tea later and she was just about the happiest gal in Provincetown.