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A List: Things to Do This Summer

Summer summer summertime! Time to sit back and unwind.

Or time to get cracking on my latest seasonal to do list! You can see how I did on my Spring list here - not too bad! I'm going to carry over the two things I didn't get around to, because I've got a start on both of them and really want to see them through to the end. The rest of this is

1. Watch a Movie By Moonlight and/or Free Friday Flick while eating a picnic dinner (pizza & wine qualify as a picnic dinner)
2. Tour The Graves Light on Little Brewster Island
3. Take an architectural tour of Boston...from the water
4. Visit the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum
5. Attend a vintage baseball game on George's Island
6. See Ansel Adams: At the Water's Edge at the Peabody Essex Museum
7. Rearrange and decorate the bedroom
8. Look into (and start?) volunteering at the Quincy Animal Shelter

What are you To Do-ing this summer?


Looking for some inspiration for your own seasonal to do list? Check out some of my past lists!
Spring 2012
Winter 2012
Fall 2011
Summer 2011
Spring 2011

Number 2: Restart my running habit

I know you guys saw that photo and are wondering why I don't have people knocking down my door with fitness model job offers. I am, too. I mean, who doesn’t see legs that pasty and running form that amazing and feel instantly inspired to jump off the couch and work out? ;) (photo from The Squirrel Run earlier this month, stolen shamelessly from here. If you really want to, you can see photos from the Run to Remember here - including a video of me crossing the finish line while clapping for the first place male half marathon finisher who crossed the finish line at the same time)

Seriously though – the running thing. I’m running two or three days a week again, most often with our running club. I’ve also run two five-mile races in the last month, have another coming up at the end of the month, and am registered for a handful to keep me busy through October. Why yes, I do have an Excel spreadsheet that I use to keep track of races I’m thinking about/registered for! What can I say? I am my father’s daughter.

I'm as slow as always (I'm basically the caboose on our group runs - always bringing up the rear), but I'm out there and I feel good! Hopefully I can keep it up through the brunt of the summer heat!

Right Field Roof

Pete was given tickets to Sunday's Red Sox game by one of his coworkers, and we lucked out with perfect weather. The "seats" were actually for standing room up on the right field roof, which is one of the few sections of the park that we haven't been in before. I wasn't sure that I would like standing for an entire game, but I would do it again! It's much more comfortable up on the roof - you're not packed into the small seats and there's a constant breeze and plenty of room to move around. We were there early enough to snag a pretty sweet spot right along the small counter at the front of the space (overlooking the right field roof tables, which would also be awesome but are three times the cost), so we had somewhere to lean on and set our drinks. Maybe the best part of the right field roof is that the bathrooms are restricted so that only folks with the right field roof tickets can use them - there were never more than two women in line the entire game!

Number 1: Celebrate random (/awesome) holidays often

It's National Wine Day today, so I'm celebrating appropriately - with a bottle of Seyval Blanc from one of the wineries that Pete and I visited on our trip to the Farm Coast last weekend, Coastal Vineyards.

Got Wheels? Visit the farm Coast!

I first read about the Farm Coast a while back (I think on Lavender and Limes, but of course now I can’t find the post I remember…here is an article that she wrote about her day trip for Edible Rhody), and I filed it away as something that seemed like it could be nice to do some day. It seemed really far away at the time, but when Pete mentioned last weekend how he had been thinking about the afternoon we spent in Plymouth last December and that he thought we should do it again, I immediately said “oooooorrrrrrr we could go somewhere we haven’t been yet!” and started looking into the Farm Coast. Turns out it’s only about an hour from our house to Tiverton, which seemed like the right place to start our meandering for the day!

I didn’t really expect to fall in love with these little towns when I planned this trip, but I fell hard and I fell fast. We kept driving past properties with “For Sale” signs and I couldn’t help but wonder what these properties were going for. It would be a horrid commute and it’s totally unrealistic, but it was nice to day dream about living in such a beautiful place as I was driving along. I always say “rural is rural” – driving in rural Wisconsin where Pete grew up looks just like driving in rural Pennsylvania where I spent summer vacations as a kid, which looks just like driving in rural Virginia where my parents live now. Rural is rural. But this rural? Rural that is minutes from the ocean? It is not the same rural. There are rivers and harbors that sneak up on you as you go around a bend in the road, and you catch yourself gasping at the sudden change from lush, green landscapes to sparkling, blue seascapes. It is amazing, and it is an entirely different kind of beautiful than I was prepared for. If I had been by myself, I would have pulled over a million times to take photos.

First order of business: re-caffeinate Pete at Coastal Roasters, which appears to be the place to be on a Saturday morning. Next order of business: visit the cheese store. I'm me, so the cheese store was a priority. Milk & Honey Bazaar did not disappoint, I could have spent a thousand dollars on all the tasty cheeses they had (and for the record, 10:00am is not to early to be sampling cheeses). I ended up buying two local cheeses - one from Massachusetts and one from Rhode Island - after being assured that with a freezer pack and an insulated bag they would definitely be okay in the car for the day.


We left the car at Milk & Honey and walked along to the intersection that is Tiverton Four Corners. After browsing through a few stores and a gallery in Tiverton Four Corners, we ended up skipping out on poking through most of the shops and galleries that were on our plan for the rest of the day and we focused on getting our drink on - three wine tastings and one beer tasting.

I could go on for hours about the wineries we saw, but I'll spare you the details and summarize: our first stop was Sakonnet Vineyards in Little Compton, RI. Everything we tasted was pretty great, and both of the women that poured for us were helpful and friendly. We walked out with a bottle of sparkling and a bottle of white, and I've already finished the bottle of white. I can't tell you how sad I was when I poured the last glass!

The next stop was Westport Rivers Winery, in Wesport, MA, which I knew was one my parents liked. They have three different sparkling wines, which I'm sure is why Mom is a fan! The wines were okay, but the tasting as a whole was the worst of the day (which is not to say that it was bad, just that it wasn't as great an experience as these others, which were great) - they were busy and the staff seemed to be a little overwhelmed trying to keep up with the tours and sales and tastings. We didn't love any of the wines enough to wait in a long line, so we moved on to the next stop, which was all about Pete.

Just Beer is owned by the same folks as Westport Rivers, and you may have heard of them by their former name, Buzzards Bay Brewing Company. The brewery was a five minute drive from Westport Rivers, and Pete was happy to try out the beers they had on tap. Meanwhile, I played with the brewery dog, who is pretty adorable. Pete ended up walking out with two cases of their winter stout (it was discounted so they could make room for a new beer).

Our last stop was Coastal Vineyards. Which is amazing...and in the owner's backyard and basement. It is, by no means, the quality of wine you would expect to come out of some guy's basement. It is, by all means, our favorite from this trip. I left with only one bottle of wine, not because I didn't want to buy more but because by then I had already spent most of the money I had set aside for the days adventure. I'll be hunting down these wines locally so I can keep drinking them. If you don't want to do the other two wineries in the area...fine, don't. But do this one. It was so much fun, and the wines were great.

I can't wait to spend more time along the Farm Coast...next time including the beach! If you’re interested in visiting the Farm Coast (and I hope you are!), I found the info on at farmcoast.com to be super helpful. I also found this guide for the area on Design*Sponge, which has a lot of duplicate information with a few additions. And if all you care about is the booze, you need to check out the Coastal Wine Trail.

In case you are too far away to plan your own trip, You can find more pictures from ours over on Flickr!


**I hope this post doesn't sound like an advertisement - it isn't, I swear! I just like to share when I find things I love, and I found a lot of things I loved on the Farm Coast!

Number 7: Ride my bike to Nut Island on a beautiful day

It’s on my life list to visit all of the Boston Harbor Islands (NPS site, more informative site), which is going to be tricky as there are 34 of them and less than half are open to the public. I’m still trying to figure out how to solve that problem, but in the meantime I’m trying to hit up at least one new-to-me BHI each year. Last year I made it to Long Island (not open to the public!), the year before I dragged Pete and a friend out to World’s End, and the year before that was when I first discovered the Harbor Islands with a visit to George’s Island while we had friends visiting from out of town. This year I’m hoping to add more than one island to me visited list, so I started easy with a bike ride to Nut Island.

I told you guys earlier, I’m riding the heck out of my bike! Nut Island is about 6 miles from home, depending on how you go. I was planning on a route that seemed like a compromise between scenic and direct…and brought me past Starbucks, because I hadn’t yet decided if I wanted an iced chai to kick off my ride or not. ;) I mostly followed that route, aside from missing a turn somewhere and then just guessing at turns – at one point leading me down a super fun hill (internal monologue: “weeeeee! This is going to be AWESOME, I’m gonna go SO FAST flying down this hill!”) that led to a dead end (internal monologue: “craaaaaaaaap! This is going to be SUCKY, I’m gonna go SO SLOW back up that hill!”), but that mistake was easily corrected and I was back to roads whose name I recognized soon enough. Then there was another giant hill. At which point I hopped off my bike and walked it, I’m sure significantly faster than I could have pedaled up it! Finally, on the other side of that hill, was that big, brown, National Park Service sign telling me I’d made it!

Nut Island is one of a handful of harbor islands that is no longer an island. It’s been joined to the mainland for some time now, and is home to a sewage screening facility. You can read more about that here, including a paragraph which I’m going to start quoting whenever people question my refusal to swim at Wollaston Beach: “The old Nut Island primary plant, which had been in service since 1952, has been demolished, ending more than 100 years of waste water discharges to the shallow waters of Quincy Bay.”

Nut Island isn’t huge, but it is beautiful. There are a number of trails for walking, running, or biking. There is a pier for fishing. There are benches with amazing views to the Boston skyline, Quincy’s adorable Hough’s Neck neighborhood, and a number of the other harbor islands. There are also stairs that lead down to a very rocky beach, where you won’t want to swim (see above) but you can easily spend a lot of time skipping rocks and searching for sea glass and shells. Or, if you’re the crusty old man I saw, you can spend a lot of time hiding amid the rocks tanning yourself while chain smoking. Small island, plenty to do! I was kicking myself for not having packed a snack and my Kindle so that I could lie in the sun and read for a bit before heading home. I was also kicking myself for not having packed lunch so I could enjoy a mini-picnic!

In fact, that’s what I think you should do! You can drive to get there, by the way, you don’t have to ride your bike. ;) Pack yourself a picnic lunch and a good book, and head to Nut Island. Don’t pack dessert, because rumor has it that Ginger Betty’s is pretty amazing and you’re going to pass right by it, so just stop in there to pick up dessert on your way. After you park, walk up the hill a bit to the big, grassy, open area with a great view of Downtown Boston, throw down your blanket, and enjoy your picnic lunch (and dessert). Maybe read a bit, maybe nap a bit, and then once you’re ready for a stroll drop your picnic leftovers at the car and head along the trails until you find the stairs down to the water. Practice skipping rocks, find a few pieces of sea glass and a few teeny tiny sea shells to take home as mementos. Then go home, happy to have found such a beautiful little slice of nature hidden in Quincy, of all places.

**You can see a few more photos I took while I was there over on Flickr

Good Morning

This is what mornings look like around here lately...sometimes reversed, with Champ in the window and Barley on the chair, and occasionally with both of them sharing the window.

In A Box (Again)

Even after 6ish years, this guy never ceases to make us laugh every day.

Boldfacers

I was at an event tonight at the Boldfacers studio, home to this awesome display hanging from the ceiling. I have more to say about the event itself, but as it revolved around a book that I haven't read yet, I'm going to wait and say more about it once I've at least started, if not finished, the book!

Keep Cup

I've been wanting a Keep Cup for at least a year now, but they're made by an Aussie company and for a long time the shipping to the US was pretty expensive. A few weeks ago Leyre pointed out to me that they were on Fab, a flash sale site, and I immediately went and bought one. I love that they have smaller sizes (Eight ounces is a tall at Starbucks, and is very hard to find in travel mugs! Keep Cup even has FOUR ounce mugs!), I love that you can personalize it to mark your drink, I love that you can mix and match colors. As small part of me loves that it's an Aussie company, so I get a little reminder of my Aussie friends when I look at it and see "flat white" as one of the drink options you can choose to mark.

It turns out, I love my Keep Cup even more than I thought I would, which was already a lot! Even better, all the baristas at my most frequently visited Starbucks also love my Keep Cup, and I'm pretty sure I'm working my way quickly up the ladder to become their favorite customer. :) They love that the cup is already marked with my drink, and on the inside is a mark showing where to fill to 8oz, so they know exactly what size drink they need to make. Every time a new barista sees it they get all excited and talk about how cool it is and ask me where I got it, and I won't lie, it gets me all giddy that I found this awesome product that people haven't seen before.

And so now I'm making it my mission to spread the word. Buy a Keep Cup! Buy two! I don't need a travel mug at home, but I'm totally buying one that is all white with an orange band and plug on top. Then tell everyone else you know to buy one, because you'll love it as much as I do.

Overdue Number 1: Eat at Cafe Polonia

This is overdue, but I'm so glad that we made sure to do it! Number one on this past winter's To Do List was to eat at Cafe Polonia, a well renowned Polish restaurant located in Andrew Square in Dorchester - the heart of the Polish Triangle. This kept getting delayed over the winter, and the one Saturday we did make it there we were turned away because they were fully booked. I knew that the place was small and popular, but I certainly didn't expect to be told to "make a reservation and come back another weekend". I think that in the end, that actually made me even more determined to get there!

I should note that usually when I have a notion to try a new restaurant or to some type of ethnic cuisine, I have to do a certain amount of convincing to get Pete to go with me. This time around it was much easier - Pete only had to look at the menu once and he readily agreed to go with me. This time he even pulled a me and was scoping out the menu in the afternoon, planning what he would order! He may have done that with the intention of scoping out their beer list, which they don't have online, but it still made me think that maybe he was as excited for this as I was - and when it comes to food, that's just about never the case.

I got the Polish Plate, which is a sampler of pierogi (three different fillings - the potato and cheese were by far my favorite), kielbasa (tasty!), stuffed cabbage (I thought it was bland, we weren't fans), and bigos (lots of sauerkraut - not my thing). Pete got the Gypsy Pancake, which is two potato pancakes with goulash sandwiched between. It was INSANELY delicious. Pete also got the only dark beer they serve - a porter (seen above) that he absolutely loved. He basically wouldn't shut up about how good it was, and if you know Pete you know that "he wouldn't shut up" is not something people say about him, so it must really mean something!

We've already got our return trip planned - one order potato and cheese pierogis, one order kielbasa, and one order gypsy pancakes to share, leaving some leftovers to take home. Pete, I'm sure, will have at least one of those porters, and I'll be making sure to leave room for the chocolate babka cake for dessert!

Protective Custody

I can't keep my hands off my camera now that it has that new lens on it, and it was a slow morning at work, so here's a picture of one of the plants that I took custody of. It's a Christmas Cactus that was left behind by someone that now works from home, and some of the girls in staffing told me they would be happy to take care of it. They lied, and I got tired of walking to other side of the floor to water it (when I would remember), so I finally brought it back to my desk to add to my little jungle and (hopefully) bring back to good health.

Fiddy

I took my camera to Bromfield Camera (best photo shop in Boston!) the other day to have the sensor cleaned - for one because I was tired of having to photoshop a million little flecks of dirt and dust off every picture I took, and for another because I was pretty sure that the dirty sensor was causing a lot of problems with my focusing. I figured I'd get it cleaned to see if that would fix my focusing problem before I looked into a new lens.

Well, I have no idea if it did/would have fixed my focusing problem, because I asked the guys what it would cost to upgrade my lens (a manual focus 50mm) to one that would auto focus with my camera body, and it was a lot less than I expected. And they would take another $40 off for my lens (almost 40% of what I paid for it). So I left the store with a clean sensor and a new lens.

AND I LOVE IT.

AND THE CATS (AND PETE) HATE IT.

Music & Memories: Guster

Guster is, hands down, my favorite band. I loved them the second I first heard them, and I haven't stopped in the fifteen years since. As a result of listening to them constantly for so long and having seen them live a number of times, I have about a million vivid memories that come flashing back to me when I hear a lot of their music. Some of them are really awesome memories - like hearing Parachute, when all I can see in my mind's eye is the three of them standing on stage at The Bayou in Georgetown on an October night in 1997, my friend Christina standing next to me, and the crowd mesmerized while the dude running the lights (a fellow Catholic student!) put on a hell of a show -  and some of them are totally random and uninteresting – like hearing Architects & Engineers and picturing the barren parking lot at the Wollaston T stop, which I was walking across the first time I heard it. I added new memories this time around, thanks to Pete’s resolution to see more live music this year. J The picture above? Where they were standing at the edge of the stage ten feet from my face (did I forget to mention that we had awesome seats)? Yeah, that’s going to be in my head every time I hear Jesus on the Radio.

I was skeptical when I bought these concert tickets, because the tour was billed a “night of acoustic music and comedy” I was totally on board with the acoustic music, but I was not excited about the comedy. I am NOT a standup comedy fan, although I think that may have made Pete a bit more willing to go to this show with me so I should probably have been happy about it. It turns out that I had nothing to worry about – the opening act was a very green comedian from LA who was okay. Then Jeff Garlin (who you may know from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Or Daddy Day Care.) came out. And he was HILARIOUS. I loved him, I laughed the whole time, and I was happy to see him come back later in the show.

After my fears of hating the opening act were not realized, I was even more psyched when Guster  came out…with a violinist and a cellist, who were ridiculously amazing. The idea was that it’s a very chill, intimate show. They played a set with the strings, then the ladies left and Garlin came back out to emcee the “weird part of the show”, as Ryan called it – requests submitted online prior to the show, requests from the audience, requests from twitter. It was hilarious when someone requested a song off one of their early albums and they couldn’t guarantee that they remembered it. After finally remembering how it started, they promised to play as much of it as they could until they couldn’t anymore. I’m pretty sure I won’t listen to Love For Me again without picturing Adam and Ryan laughing at each other as they tried to play that song. After the “weird” (and also hilarious) part of the show, we traded Garlin for the strings once more, and they played another set that was equally awesome.

Am I the only one that has such vivid memories attached to music? It’s almost overwhelming sometimes to hear certain songs!

Snack

Some of the girls at work put together an eight week Healthy Living Challenge, and we're in week two. This has become one of my favorite snacks - an apple with almond butter. It doesn't always help me stay under my calorie goal, but it does get my points for eating my fruits!

Root, root, root for the RED SOX!

...If they don't win it's a shame.

And it was a shame. But we had fun anyway! Pete picked up a few tickets from a co-worker, and I snuck out of the office for a few hours to join he and Jamie for the game. The seats were awesome - immediately against the fence of the Tampa Bay bullpen, where there was a ton of hilarious interaction between their pitchers and the crowd.

The seats were also hot! It was 90° out (poor marathoners!) and we were in full sun for the entire game. I sweat my face off and managed to get sunburn on a small, crazy shaped patch on my back. There's always that one sunburn every spring just to remind you exactly how thoroughly you need to apply sun block, isn't there?

Being in the sun at Fenway, though...I'm not sure there's anything else that feels more like summer in Boston.

Nerd Fest 2012: Part 2

Earlier this week I came across information about a screening of Morgan Spurlock's latest doco, Comicon Episode IV: A Fan's Hope (watch the trailer), followed by Q&A with Spurlock himself. The Coolidge may not be local to us, but it's a great theater and we were more than happy to make the trek out there for this one! After all, our first date was a (super romantic!) Spurlock doco. And this one is about NERDS. It was like we had no choice but to go.

Castle Island

Remember when I put "buy a bike and ride it" on a zillion of my seasonal to do lists before I actually did it? I've been making up for lost time and riding the heck out of that bike lately...even though the front gear doesn't shift properly so going uphill is significantly less than enjoyable.

I knew I wanted to go on a longer bike ride today, and I prefer to ride on some kind of scenic bike path whenever possible, so I mapped out a few options before I left the house. Because I'm crazy, I chose the longest loop. Eighteen miles, from Quincy along Dorchester Bay and then Boston Harbor to Castle Island, and then home again. I brought my T Pass with me because if it all proved to be too much, I could bail around mile 11 and hop on the T to get home.

And yet I knew when I left the house that I wouldn't do that, that I would be too happy riding my bike to "cheat" and take the T part of the way home, no matter how tired I was. And I was tired! I stopped halfway to wait in the looooooong line at Sullivan's and get a frozen yogurt (you need to fuel for a ride that long!) and I climbed up the hill and found a patch of sunny grass and enjoyed the view while I finished my yogurt. I had plenty of water with me, and even with a headwind all along the beach in South Boston, I wasn't ready to stop riding when I got to the peninsula with the JFK Library and UMass Boston...so I just kept riding. My quads were killing me, my butt was sore, and there was no way I was getting off my bike yet. I took another short break around 15.5 miles, once I got back to our old stomping grounds at JPII Park, then made my way home.

And collapsed from exhaustion.

Number 4: Attend a live taping of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

I have more laugh out loud moments while listening to Wait Wait than I do watching any show on TV (possible exception: Big Bang Theory), so I've been thinking that it would be fun to visit Chicago sometime when we're already in that neck of the woods visiting Pete's family. Because we're planning a trip out there in June, I went to the Wait Wait ticket site and it turned out that they were going to be in Boston...and tickets were going on sale a few days later. I put it on my calendar, recruited friends to go with me, and then stalked the ticketing page for days until I was able to snag four seats. And then I waited approximately forever for April 12th to get here.

You guys! This was so fun that it makes me want to move to Chicago so I can go every week. You should make it a point to a) listen to the show as often as possible, and b) attend a live taping. There is so much that is edited out of the show that is equally hilarious. After two hours of watching them tape, my cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing so much. It was so awesome.

For all my DC Metro family and friends, they'll be taping in Bethesda on Thursday, June 7th. Go here and read about tickets, and then be sure to buy some and go!