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moonrise at the abandoned hotel
Sunday, January 12 2014
Susan the Artist and her partner David the Illustrator arrived in the mid-afternoon with their two small pit bulls Darla and Olive. After snacking on the bagels Susan and David had brought (but before it got too dark), we all took a walk down the Farm Road. As we approached the abandoned go cart track, Susan said something about how we should show David the old abandoned hotel, which she'd seen but he hadn't. Since there wasn't enough hours of daylight left for us all to walk there and then walk home, it was decided that one of us (me) should run home and get a car to meet us there so we could then all drive home. When I got back to the house, I realized that the Subaru was badly parked-in behind Susan & David's rental car, and of course they hadn't left the key where I could find it. So I had to maneuver the Honda Civic out of the way to give myself enough room to maneuver the Subaru out around the rental. The first thing I did when I reached the quarry (near the hotel) was load a few choice "sticks" (long, narrow pieces of bluestone) into the back of the car. Meamwhile, the waxing gibbous moon was high over the eastern horizon and very bright in the not-especially-cold air. Here are a couple pictures from the quarry just before we left:
The face of the bluestone quarry. (Click to enlarge.)
David takes pictures at the abandoned hotel. (Click to enlarge.)
From left: Susan, Gretchen, David (Click to enlarge.)
There was some weird car aggression between Ramona and Darla on the drive home, but of course (despite the close quarters) we had to make it work somehow.
Gretchen had prepared another of her big multi-course meals, this one involving a noodle bake and a salad. But the smell in the air of the fancy green olives I'd bought for Gretchen the other day from the Hannaford olive bar had me feeling a bit off my feed. This was perhaps the first time that olives (which I don't much like but also don't especially hate) ever did that to me.
While hanging out in the living room, I felt the need to do a quick Google search, so I grabbed my little MSI U123, which serves as my living room internet station. Susan (who has almost no exposure to computers that are not Macintoshes) was perplexed by the little device, thinking at first that perhaps it was an Apple Newton. At this point David volunteered that he had once had a Newton, and that the little bastard had somehow managed to lose all 700 of his contacts irretrievably. The last he'd heard of that particular device, it was sold at a yard sale for $25 by a friend he had given it to. It turned out, though, that David had a certain nostalgic fondness for old portable technology, so I went upstairs and retrieved first my Psion 5Mx (which I used for a few years when it was a contemporay device) and then my Tandy Model 102 (which Gretchen got me as a gag for Christmas last year). Both had dead AA batteries in them, but both fired right up after I installed fresh new ones.
Later Gretchen introduced Susan & David to her new favorite comedy show, Keye and Peal and then we all sat around talking about one of David's long-time (but problematic) friends, a guy with whom he used to like to "eat steaks, drink scotch, and smoke cigars." Meanwhile, I was drinking a strong cocktail of apple cider spiked with vodka from a coffee cup. David had brought some grapefruit-flavored Schöfferhofer Hefeweizen "beer," which he was drinking. Don't get me wrong; I love a good grapefruity IPA, but that stuff tasted like soda pop and I am not a 14 year old girl.
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