Race Point Beach...

The weather here has been amazing. She keeps going for walks without a coat and even sometimes without a jumper. Like yesterday. Race Point Beach... This is what she saw...

Even though it's the off-season, lots of people still use the beaches. In weather like this, there's always somebody out here, walking along the shore, often bending down to investigate shells or pebbles along the waterline. We saw some footprints - bird, dog and human, all pressing their little feet into the damp sand!

Oh, and just in case you've missed her bad hair days, here's Miriam (up close and personal) having a great example of one of those. Uggh.

The miracle of mobile phones

She bought a new mobile phone a while ago, with some fancy new features... In desperation one night, while needing to connect to the Internet but unable to get the plug in the wall to work, or find a wireless network that actually worked, she decided to click on the 'Internet Connection' button on the phone software that she'd installed so she could synchronise her phone's address book with the one on her computer.

Imagine her surprise when the Internet Connection button actually connected her to the Internet. So this is how it works. She's in Provinctown, with a laptop and a Telstra mobile that has Global Roaming and she just plugs em in and rips. It's slow. I mean slo-o-o-o-o-o-w but it's better than nothing. Lots better. No idea how much it costs. That's going to be interesting!

Here's a pic of the setup. Wireless keyboard and mouse, tiny lappy and the glowy blue mobile phone. Ye gods. Could we have imagined this outside Star Treck ten years ago??

Naughty Gumby

Can you believe those rubber toys? Let me tell you, this place really is opening my eyes. Look what we caught Gumby and Pokey doing on the New Yorker. Yikes!

Thanksgiving

Otherwise known as Turkey day! Miriam was invited to Jim's place where he and Rusty had prepared a feast. Free range turkey this year, since we enjoyed last year's free range bird so much. What a wonderful spread.
Here's the cheese and shrimp we started off with. Not surprising we felt full after all this plus a big dinner!

Neither Jim nor I could resist taking pictures of the food laid out in the kitchen.

And then we had to photograph the food on the plates. Eventually they got around to eating the damn stuff, washed down with some martinis in premature (albeit delightful) candy cane holiday glassware from the Christmas Tree shop!

About the pie:Miriam joined the gym here again, for the days between walkies when she wants to chuck some weights around, or whatever it is she does there. I don't care much what she does to be honest - at least she always comes back from the gym in a better mood. She had the nerve to suggest it might be a good idea for me to try it once. But I just gave her the look and she never tried that sort ridiculous suggestion again. Try buying tracksuit pants for a gnome whose legs are ceramicked together. Humph ANYWAY. She tells me she was puffing and panting away on the cross trainer and watching the subtitles on a Martha Steward cooking show (yes THE Martha Steward) and there was a thing about some 'Fall Pie Bake off' Or was it the 'Bake Pie Fall Off' haha. A winning pie from the town they held the competition in was a Chocolate Pecan Pie, and they had the guy whose invented the recipe (his name was Tom Ribando) in to cook it on the show. Well, it was making Miriam's mouth water, so she got onto the website, wrote the recipe down and made the pie.
Jim and Russell also get pies every year, buying them from a charity organisation who in turn get Boston restaurants to make them. This year they had a pie from a famous Boston restaurant - Ming. Here's what Miriam's pie and the Ming pie look like, side by side. Yum. (Miriam's is the one on the right)
If you'd like me to send you the recipe or a link to it on Martha Stewart's website, just leave a comment!

Momentous moment for Pilgrim Monument

So now you know why Miriam doesn't write headlines for a living - that's one of her better examples. She wanted to participate in the blog so I gave her a headline to write and that's what she did. She can wave goodbye to any future involvement, that's for sure! Thanksgiving eve and it's time for the annual lighting of the Pilgrim Monument. In November, a long long time ago, the Mayflower landed here in what is now Provincetown and the pilgrims hung about for a few days, assessing the place for liveability before moving on eventually to the now more famous landing place of Plymouth. They clearly didn't think much of it as a place to spend time in! How wrong they were, looking around at the town now :-)
The Pilgrim Monument, erected at the beginning of the 20th century is going to be celebrating its centenery in May next year, but for now, it's business as usual. Before the lighting, most of us wandered around and looked at what the museum has to offer. Miriam likes the monument museum. It's got cool little dioramas and stuff. Tiny people doing things that tiny people have been doing for centuries (I suppose!)

And it's been a while since we saw a picture of Zoe on the blog, so take a look at this! Zoe being musical and multi-instrumental in front of the Mayflower display.

Before being lit, the monument looks alot like this (i.e. hard to see on a dark night!)
And then, at 6 pm, the switch is flicked and yaaay! the lights come on. And there's the monument, as it will be all Winter, lit up and

watching over the town during the night.

Oh, and here's a tricky shot from underneath.

More grumpy pictures and Fort Hill

A couple of posts back I showed you a picture of Miriam and me and a half-demolished plate of sugar cleverly disguised as Apple and Walnut French Toast (not sure if that should be capitalised so I've put caps in this post and avoided them in the previous one, to ensure I'll be right at least once!) Here's some other shots from that trip to Dennis, which we did with Jim.


Here's Miriam holding me up to read the sign at Grumpy's. She clearly thinks I'm blind. Which I'm not. And I can tell you I got sick of the snide allusions to grumpiness in me and how appropriate it was that we were having breakfast at a place that was named after me etc etc etc. Blimey she gets my goat sometimes. Anyway...

Then there's this shot of me on Jim's glass of coke. Very bloody funny. I'm an odd shape and I don't straighten up very well so everybody thinks they're so clever when they realise they can hang me off the edges of things. So, here's me hanging around with Jim. Ye gods.

On the way home we stopped by a place called Fort Hill. It has an amazing view, which your friendly Australian nutcase will show you in the picture below, and no doubt the place has some historical significance. No doubt there was a Fort. And I'm guessing the hill part was related to the slight lumpiness in the landscape... Whatever. She wasn't concentrating because of all the SUGAR. I'm glad she took a shot of these whale jawbones though. Makes you stop and think doesn't it. Perhaps we're all just krill, in the scheme of things. Jim certainly seems to think so! That's him playing Jonah.



And then Miriam decided to point to something. We'll never know what it was. Possibly an ambulatory sugar cube. Possibly a storm coming in. Possibly nothing at all. You know what she's like.

Hanging about in the Library

The Provincetown library has been a boon. For one thing, it has access to a free wireless network (yaay!) so M and I can come in here where it's warm and write and read and just generally hang out when we don't feel like going walkies or drinking :-) or sitting at home reading by ourselves or watching cable TV any of that stuff. She's writing a bit at the moment, and reading. They have a great selection of art, poetry and philosophy books here, which is what she appears to be a little bit into at the moment (yawn!!) and it's always warm and well, it just feels great in here. The one little thing that's a little bit perturbing is that the Provincetown Library is home to a ship - a 1/2 scale sized model of the fishing schooner the Rose Dorothea is perched on the first floor (or the second floor as they call it here. But what I mean is the floor above the one that's the same level as the ground) Here's a pic of the Rose Dorothea in al her sailign glory. Ain't she grand. I should get Miriam to take a shot of her from the floor where the ship is sitting, but this one is taken from the Mezzanine floor, which where Miriam hangs out when she's here, if there's space available at the big wooden table. Here's one of the reasons why she loves this table... look at the view. I mean check this out! She gets to come in here and read and write and day dream and when she chances to look up and out the window, this is what she sees. Lucky cow.


One afternoon, she sat there taking shots from time to time, every time she thought of it. Here's one a little bit closer up. The days are shortish here right now (sunset just after 4 pm) and she generally comes to the library in the afternoon so the light gets progressively softer and pinker during the course of the afternoon. There's something achingly beautiful

about the flats at low tide, with pink and peach coloured light coming from a clear sky onto the blue water and glistening sands, with pretty little human interventions in the shape of sloping rooves and empty masts sitting precariously on the surface of it all.

Look at that glow. Dontcha just want to ice it and have with a cup of tea? Where did that come from? [checks watch] ah... Miriam must be sending me afternoon tea vibes. It's 3:30 in the afternoon.

Grumpy update

I've been a bit slack getting to the blogs, I know. But she keeps taking me out for walkies, or sitting around reading, and forgetting that sometimes I need to be able to get to the laptop, while connected, and tell everybody what's going on her life. Sheesh.

Here's a quick one before they kick us out of the library. We went to Dennis. Yes the same Dennis where we visited Jim with Silverware two years ago or so. This time we visited Dennis with a different Jim, and our aim was to go to Eldred's Auctions, which is also where the other Jim was (the one who didn't want our silverware because it was all plated). Confused yet? I was, so she took me for a sugar hit to a place called Grumpy's that Jim (our favourite Jim, not the grumpy one who doesn't like epns) had recommended. She had Apple and walnut french toast. SUGAR. WITH FRIED BREAD. AND SUGAR ON TOP. WITH MAPLE SYRUP ON THE SIDE. I had some, and as you can see it put me in an all-caps state of mind. Here she is looking absurdly photogenic (thanks non-grumpy Jim!!) and also looking suspiciously like she is going to sweep me and the rest of that french toast into her capacious receptacle of a handbag. I stopped her just in time. But she was jittery all the way home, making up odes to sugar.

Gotta go - they're flicking the lights and kicking us out. I promise to post more soon!

walking in the woods

Another mild, beautiful day and Miriam decides she's going walkies in the shrubbery. She can't seem to sleep until very late (about 2:00 am) and it's driving her nuts as someone who normally goes to bed by about 11:00. Anyway, she figured a little stroll might get things back in order. So off to the Beech Forest. At the beginning of the walk, just near the entrance to the town dump, there's this helpful sign.

She hasn't walked to Herring Cove before, so this seemed like the day to do it. It was about a mile to get to this sign (1.6 km for those who prefer the metric) and then another 2 plus ish miles (3.2 plus ish km) to get back to town at the other end. So she figured that it would tire her out sufficiently to send her to sleep at a decent hour. 6.9 + 1.6 + 3.2 = 11.7 or 12 km if you round it up to include the plus-ish figures. Yep. That should do it.

Here's what we saw:

Squirrel and a bend in the track

Some yellow leaves and a lichen lawn

And then the ocean and on the way home, a beautiful sky...

She slept well that night :-)

comments, anyone?

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Gettin' reaquainted...

Jane took her home from the bus stop; Jim took her to the exhibition and then they went to dinner. And in the following days she met up again with Ginny, Midge, Suzanne, and of course the inimitable Zoe Lewis. Zoe's now with Sharon, the Miss Pacman fiend mentioned in posts from last year. Sharon's on the left, Zoe on the right. Here's Zoe's website: http://www.zoelewis.com/

Catching up with Zoe and Sharon was fabbo. Here they are at the Squealing Pig. Beer was drunk by all and stories were told and then we got on various bicycles (with plastic bags strapped to their seats because we did not want wet bottoms) and wobbled up the street to the Mews where the regular off-season open mic coffee house thingy was on.

Some great acts tonight. Zoe got up and played during the course of the evening. She'd brought her ukelele and sang a little ditty. Then there was the guy who played Hungarian Rhapsody #12 by Franz Lizst. Very serious music for sure. A guy who recreates JFK's speeches (dresses ina suit, does his voice and everything!) which was weird but cool. A guy who had never performed before AT ALL and made a good fist of it (except that his song was one about how life never turns out as one had hoped when one was young... and I kept waiting for the verse that said 'that's OK, though because I grew up and learned to be happy with whatever life did dish out to me.' Or something vaguely positive. But that never happened.) Then some folksy stuff from Janet Feld. She was the feature artist of the night, currently based in Boston. Great songs. Like little poems.

Later on in the night a couple of unrelated but similarly curly haired young men played some interesting blues on their guitars and sang. And that was it. Hugs all round and then Miriam and I walked home (she walked, and I bounced along in the pocket as per usual) and she dreamed that night of renovations on a beautiful house. It really was the most beautiful house. She only got four hours' restless sleep, still out of synch with Ptown's timezone - but it seems like all those hours filled up with beautiful images of just the sort of house she would like to live in. All she really remembers of it now is a sense of light and space and orderliness that felt perfect.

I may start getting soppy in these posts, although I will try not to. I've been thinking about matters of the heart. Jim has some new boarders at his house. Three of them actually but one in particular seems very nice. I've never met anyone who quite makes me feel this way. I made Miriam take his picture. What do you think? Doesn't he look nice? I can't wait to see him again.

The galah has landed

She's written this 'clever' 'witticism' in two emails so far... so I figured I'd pander to her weird sense of humour by calling her a galah as well. As you may have guessed, my postings are a couple of days behind reality. But that's what's supposed to happen when you're on holidays, right? I'd like to be able to tell you that the rest of the time she's letting me lie around on the bed and eat chocolates while watching cable (yup, there's cable in the bedroom of the apartment this year, tee hee!!) but no. She makes me come out with her and do stuff. Sheesh.


OK, one of the first things we did (obviously) was go and see Jim. And we combined that with a visit to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM or the Art Ass to those in the know, although the director does not appreciate the second option). There was an opening of an exhibition of recent aquisitions. Here's Jim and Mim standing in front of one of them. It's a (big) Littlefield. Remember the essay she wrote on the I Ching for the Littlefield cattle dog last year? It all comes together, you see, in the end.


Later Jim and Miriam went to dinner at the Mews and caught up on gossip, then it was over to Jim's house to see Russell, who had come up for the weekend. Miriam got a tour of the garden and here are some of the pics.

Russell flicked a switch among the shrubbery and like magic, a fountain lit up - it had been sitting stagnant for a while, so was a bit whiffy when Russell started it up, but it looked lovely. Check it out!


And here's a pic of a piddling statue:












And here's a bay window, looking spooky from the outside...

not funny or interesting

Blogs are supposed to be interesting, right. Funny, maybe? Well the problem is that I've been a bit jet-lagged and uninspired. But after a couple of days in the flowerpot, I'm starting to feel like things are coming together again. Hopefully I'll start finding somethign interesting to say -- soon. OK, now where were we in the narrative? Ah yes. The train from New York to Boston. It's a good trip, actually. Easy peasy. $78 one way and there's a dining car and a dunny. She booked us into a hotel in Boston that she's stayed in before. It's one of those fancy pants ones with broadband and room service. But she spent most of her time there feeling like crap. So I just hung around in the sock because she basically neglected me. One little walk on Friday morning before catching the bus to Provincetown. There's a bar just up the road from the hotel that she hasn't quite made it to, but would like to sometime. It's called Bukowski. There's a sign on the side window 'Dead Authors' Club'. Trouble was, just the thought of alcohol and she had stomach spasms. Or food. Or water. She just wanted to quietly and slowly dehydrate as long as nothing else had to ever pass her lips. i.e. she didn't go into Bukowski's for a drink :-)

Oh, and she went shopping for jeans and found out her butt has shrunk another dress size. Yip de doo dah day!

On Friday afternoon, she caught the bus to Provincetown. She had a seat to herself until about a minute into the trip when a gentleman she had seen in the waiting area decided to move down the bus and sit next to her. He scratched an instant lottery ticket and she had herself all geared up to tell him it was a bus rule that you have to split instant lottery winnings with anybody sitting next to you when you scratch the card. But she buttoned her lip when she saw that he hadn't won anything. He seemd upset, sighing and squirming. But the sighing and the squirming continued long after the pices of the instant lottery ticket had gone into his back pocket. He was clearly uncomfortable. He took a call on his mobile phone from a prospective employer and Miriam loaned him a pen. This apparently also constituted permission to embark on some intimate sharing time and he revealed that his hemorrhoids were really bothering him. Wow, it's been a really interesting trip so far. First the self-confessed premature ejaculator in the bar in New York and now the jobless dude with roids. Ye gods. http://www.answers.com/topic/hemorrhoid

In Provincetown again

Yup. It's a cliche, but she says it's like she never left. Whatever. I could say the same, I guess. This year, it's a little warmer than last year, and so she's put me in the flowerpot to make up for the endless hours in the sock that I had to endure to get here. Regular readers may be interested in the sock. It was black. Newish. Clean. Intact. i.e. not very interesting. Here's me in the flowerpot beside her front door. I'm the colourful little thing you can just see if you have super powers in the vision department. No really, she cares. I know she does.

The trip here was long, as you'd expect. 14 ish hours to Los Angeles then an hour and a half in line to get the passport stamped. I am not kidding. Shockin' Then a sprint to the domestic gates at the terminal, and a 5 hour flight to New York. Leonie had booked us into a nice hotel in New York... Mmmm... Here it is...





New York was... interesting. She left me in the hotel room at about 8:00 pm and came back at Midnight a little the worse for wear, and was very very ill from about 5 am until she had to get the train at Penn Station (3 ish blocks away) at 1:00 pm the next day. Maybe a recurrence of that tummy bug she had? Maybe something else? She has her theories. Some of you will have heard them. 'nuff said.


Anyway, the train trip was nice. She spent most of the four hours with her head on her back pack, trying not to throw up. Good company, I don't need to tell you. Here's a view out the train window.

A post from Kew!

Not that thinking about them helps... If she wants to tell somebody she misses them, she should just tell them. They can't read her thoughts. But there goes another day in sunny Melbourne (it's perfect here at this time of year) -- it's 11:23 pm (a bit later by the time I post this, no doubt) and Miriam's about to go to bed, still thinking about the good times she had in Massachussets in December and not doing anything about it. But while she faffs around doing the toothbrushing etc etc, I thought I would sneak in and have a go on the laptop.

She should probly write to them herself, shouldn't she. But this is for them if they log in to take a peek. Hellllooooo from Miriam!

We've been back for six weeks or so, now. It's been busy. She's now working three days a week as a technical writer, about to sign up for two more semesters of study at the University of Melbourne (Masters in Applied Linguistics) and writing away, busy busy busy. Despite a couple of minor hiccups and few dental appointments that would not have been entirely necessary if she hadn't waited FIVE YEARS between appointments, she's genuinely happy. I haven't seen her like this for ages. What is it? She's exercising regularly, eating right, taking time out to cultivate and nurture friendships and relationships with family... could that be all there is to it? Could it be that easy to create happiness? Interesting question.

And of course none of that helps me. I'm ceramic, mostly grumpy and have a very short and uninteresting spectrum of emotions. About the happiest I get is when she keeps me out of the sock. Hmf. I hang out in the herb garden and beat the snails off with a stick. I like my life. Really. NO, really. I do.