What's Happening...
For this year's events from January to now, see this year's archive page
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07/16/11: Pitiful Disclaimer....
I'm sorry, but we're well into 2012 and I'm still showing past 2011 entries here. Well.... the reason for this is that I simply have not had the time to build the detail pages with all of the pictures that go with them. As each entry is updated, I'll leave it in place for a few weeks and then sweep it all into the archives file. Until then, bear with my lack of updating as I actually do all the stuff I'm mentioning in these posts!
Recent posts:
To be done:
- 07/16/11: Vacation to New Mexico [600 pictures Sue took to go through; this is going to be awhile...]
- 02/03/12: Photography Adventure To Mt. Desert Island, ME [200 pictures Sue took to go through; this is going to be awhile...]
- 04/28/12: Musketaquid Earth Day Parade in Concord, MA
- 05/05/12: The Great 2012 Cinco De Mayo Backgammon Tournament And Get Ready For Summer Rice and Beans Fest!
- 05/11/12: Mother's Day Weekend
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03/01/12: First Snowshoeing Adventure In Huge Winter Storm
It started snowing lightly late Wednesday afternoon, but it really stated to come down overnight. We woke up to over five inches, and it was falling pretty good.
I managed to get into work, but around 2:00pm I called Sue and said if she was up for it I'd leave the office and we could go over to Wagon Hill for my first showshoeing adventure.
It turns out, she was already over there hiking around and taking pictures!
She met me at the condo to get all of my gear, and then we went over for what turned out to be one of the best times I can remember having in a long time.
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03/17/12: The Great 2012 St. Patricks Day Backgammon Tournament And Blarney Stone Irish Stew!
Saturday the 17th Sue and I held The Great 2012 St. Patricks Day Backgammon Tournament And Blarney Stone Irish Stew! It was
such a nice day that we had all the doors and windows open, even though in the woods behind us you could still see large patches of snow remaining.
Though we had started food prep early around 3:45pm, I was still in there tending to things all the way until 7:30 when we finally ate.
I was able to hop out of the kitchen every now and then, but I was constantly going back in to mess with something. Fortunately, Sue was able to get in some backgammon and chat with everyone.
And even though I had made a huge pot of stew and Sue had baked a large Irish soda bread, the 12 of us did a pretty good job of gobbling most of it down! And for desert, the Nancarrows brought a wonderful ice cream filled cake that everyone enjoyed as a pause after the first half hour of the movie of the night, Shaolin.
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03/30/12: Friday Backgammon and Dinner Get Together
Friday night, 03/30, my friend and former student David Duquenne came over for delivered Chinese food and many games of backgammon with both Sue and I. It was nice to play David again; it's been awhile. And Sue really enjoyed it, even getting to practice her trash talk! She held up pretty good and we all had a good time.
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03/31/12: Birthday Celebrations
Saturday 03/31 we all got together to celebrate Colin's upcoming 25 birthday before he and Ren headed out for
their Caribbean cruise vacation. Ren's birthday is also close so it was a joint celebration!
Colin had to work the morning and do some other things, and so he and Ren made it over just before 6:00pm.
We had a nice time chatting, had dinner, and, after returning to the living room to talk more, Sue served the special ginger infused take on a Creme Brulee recipe she had found.
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04/01/12: April Fools Day Snow Sputter
After putting the dishes away from Saturday night's party, I spent most of Sunday morning in the library doing software development while Sue worked on getting ready for her art show and putting together most of the week's wardrobe selections so that she wouldn't have to try to figure it all out at 4:30am each morning. It's going to be a busy and very early morning routine for the next couple-few-many weeks for her work....
Around 1:00pm, we headed over to the Bellamy River Preserves for a walk through the woods. The ground was fairly firm, and so we hiked over to the river and back just to work off the meal from the night before and the frustrations of everything else. On the way back to the car, we felt just fine little splattering of sleet with just a hint of a few snowflakes.
When we got back to the condo, I spent about an hour watching some self defense and karate videos that I had ordered as comparative analysis. Sue finished up her stuff around 3:00pm, I poured us some wine, and we played a set (3 games) of backgammon.
But at 4:00pm we headed into the kitchen and stated dinner. While Sue worked on a feta cheese and tomatoe infused on-the-fly meatloaf, I got my on-the-fly white herb sauce for a side of egg noodles going. The only thing we did that was fairly straight forward was some parsley, black pepper, and sherry pickled beets that I concocted. Movie of the night was Happy Feet II, which was just okay; not anywhere near as good as the first one.
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04/06/12: Friday Night Dinner Adventure
At karate class Thursday night, Brian mentioned a new Vietnamese restaurant in Dover, Saigon and Tokyo. I've never had Vietnamese food, so I asked Sue Friday if she'd like to give it a try. We are both so glad that we did. It's just a very, very small place with $8 - $10 entrees that not only stuffed us, but amazed us with how delicious the food was. We plan to go back again soon as there were so many interesting sounding dishes.
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04/07/12: MNG: Movie Night At The Garrison Suspense Series: The Exorcist
Sue and I had everyone over Saturday night 04/07 for the next MNG: Movie Night At The Garrison Suspense Series: The Exorcist.
Now, I had set this up a couple of weeks ago and it
never dawned on me that this event was sandwiched in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The Exorcist. Terrific. Nice planning job, Peter. Gad.....
Regardless of that, the 8 of us had a good time playing backgammon before the pizza arrived. How can you not have a good time with pizza and beer and some rowdy backgammon? Well, you just can't!
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04/08/12: Quiet Easter Sunday
I spent most of Easter Sunday morning programming some new features in my forex project and then most of the afternoon working on the new version of Sue's photography website.
But by 3:00pm it was time to start working on getting the ham going. I had planned on fixing Chef James Haller's version of ham from the former Blue Strawberry restaurant in Portsmouth. Though the ham prep is fairly straight forward, the cranberry, sherry, herbs, etc. sauce that would be poured over it to bake in the oven for the last half hour was a little more complicated.
While the ham baked, Sue and I poured a glass of wine and went into the living room and played through 3 sets of backgammon and damned if I'm not 2 down for the week so far! Not good.... Anyway, the meal was wonderful. We finished off the evening with the 1974 movie The Great Gatsby as Sue had never seen it and was excited to see how it compared with Fitzgerald's novel.
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04/21/12: Sue Exhibits Her Photography Work
Saturday 04/21/12, Sue exhibited some of her photography work at The Eighth Chakra Spring Health Fair in Eliot, ME.
She had been prepping for this for several weeks, getting 9 selected prints enlarged and framed as well as smaller sized works and organizing her catalog of photo cards.
I surprised her with a gift of a hand carved wooden Susan Lyndes Photography sign that I had commissioned from Signs of The Times in Exeter, NH. It hung proudly on the lattice room divider framework that we used to display 6 of her photographs.
It was a busy week getting ready for this, and then up early Saturday morning to load the car, transport to the site, and do all the setup; this all being done painfully with Sue's torn rotator cuff aggravating her all the way.
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04/28/12: Musketaquid Earth Day Parade in Concord, MA
[***pictures coming] Sue and I headed off at 8:15am Saturday morning 04/28/12 to Concord, MA for their Musketaquid Earth Day celebration. We stopped in at her friend Ellie Bemis home before heading over to the bridge where the water ceremony was to take place.
The wind was really strong and made the air quite chilly; we were both bundled up pretty tightly against it. It must have been really bracing for the woman who acted the part of the water spirit as she had to wade along the shore chest deep in the river to the gathering area next to the bridge.
From there, we walked downtown to the Emerson Umbrella Center For The Arts to see how Sue's photograph of the heron looked. We were surprised at seeing two of Ellie's works showcased as well.
We walked back downtown and sat on a bench and watched the parade go by before heading off to Authors Ridge at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where most notable are the grave sites of Emerson and Thoreau, among others. Sue pointed out the Bemis family grave sites that were also up on Authors Ridge as well as a huge monument at the bottom of the hill that was to distant relatives of hers, all brothers killed during the Civil War. From there, we headed off for a late lunch at The Cracker Barrel off of I495 on the way home.
And then, somewhere along I495, we decided that we'd take a side trip to Newburyport, MA and Plum Island. Though all of the beaches at Plum Island were closed due to some bird nesting going on, we were able to walk out along two of the boardwalks and up and down one of the beaches.
It was late afternoon by the time we got home, so I poured us some wine and we played a couple sets of backgammon between taking a dinner break for pizza. And to top off the relaxing day, we watched the first two episodes of season 2 of Downton Abby before turning in for the night.
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05/05/12: The Great 2012 Cinco De Mayo Backgammon Tournament And Get Ready For Summer Rice and Beans Fest!
[***pictures coming] I started working on the Santa Fe Rice and Beans meal that I was fixing for Saturday May 5th The Great 2012 Cinco De Mayo Backgammon Tournament And Get Ready For Summer Rice and Beans Fest! Sue had to work all day but got home in time to fix a pitcher of Margarita's for the party.
We set up the backgammon board and got right into that and playing through a set before Tim arrived. He was followed shortly by Rick, and then the Nancarrows, who brought bread pudding and fruit for desert. The movie of the night was the appropriate 1964 spaghetti western, Fist Full of Dollars.
After everyone left around 10:pm, Sue and I hopped into the car to go chase the moon. Yup, Sue had heard that it would be a super moon: 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than a normal full moons as it takes its closest pass to earth all year.
We got some shots from the Hannaford food store's lot, then drove down and parked along Back River Road for awhile. It was a good spot, but we had to wait a long time between shots as the cloud cover was really thick. From there, we scotted down to the water by the Scammell Bridge park, back to the Back River Road spot, the Middle School parking lot on 108, and 2 final shots right in the condo parking lot.
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05/11/12: Mother's Day Weekend
[***pictures coming] Friday night, 05/11, Sue and I drove down to North Hampton to look at some retail space. Sue is looking to possibly get a few other artists together and form a coop of some kind and this was a very interesting spot.
Since we were in the area, we decided to have an early dinner at Renaldo's Italian Restaurant just south of where we were. As usual, great food, nice red wine, and great conversation.
After dinner, Sue directed me to Bass Beach where we scavaged for decorative rocks. For what purpose, I don't know. But we got some real beauties!
Saturday Sue headed out in the early afternoon to photograph a prom over in Manchester, NH. One of my disciples and friend 3rd Degree Black Belt Sandan James Nancarrow came over at 5:30 bringing subs for dinner. After that, we sat in the living room for a couple of hours more discussing the work that he has been doing over the past year. Sue didn't get home until almost midnight. Whew!
Up and out the door early Sunday morning, Mother's Day, to head up to Ossippee, NH to meet her mother and her brother Alan and his wife for a Mother's Day Brunch at The Whittier house. What a crowd that was! But great fun. And afterward, we all headed over to Bear Camp Gardens where Sue used to work. We wandered around there for quite awhile and Sue found a great plant for the front porch area and a couple of plants for the deck and the garden in back of the condo. A good excursion!
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