Thursday: The Friendly Toast for brunch (I had anadama toast, a New England specialty), Marginal Way in Ogunquit for sightseeing, The Rusty Hammer in Portsmouth for dinner (lobster roll #1).

Friday: Niece’s house in Northboro for lunch and a nice visit with family, Common Man for dinner.

Saturday: Red’s Eats for lunch (lobster roll #2 and still champeen!), Bob’s Clam Hut in Kittery takeout for dinner (lobster roll #3).

Sunday: Excellent homemade Indian for lunch and a great visit with Gupfee and family, Salem, MA for sightseeing, Nick’s Famous Roast Beef in Beverly, MA for dinner (will never want Arby’s again), quick jaunt to Wingaersheek beach.

Monday: Ceres Bakery in Portsmouth for early lunch, wedding day, cookout burgers at the reception for dinner.

Tuesday: Flo’s Hot Dogs for lunch, Odiorne Point State Park for tide pools, Crescent Beach in Wells ME (sunburn!), Newick’s Lobster House in Dover (lobster roll #4).

Also, I schmoozed with the car rental clerk and instead of getting a mere premium-level car that I reserved through Hotwire, we got a fully-loaded Ford Flex, an SUV that included voice-guided GPS navigation, iPod integration, three zone climate control, seating for seven, and probably a ton more features we never found.

Saturday on the way to Red’s, we stopped at the first native blueberry stand we saw, which happened to be run by a very imposing older man with what appeared to be two teeth – his lower canines. He was a mountain of a man in his blue shirt and red suspenders, and he told me, “My berries ain’t been sprayed in 18 years. When I say they’re ready for a pie, I mean you can pour them right into a pie. And ain’t no spray on my berries!”

Okay, then.

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When you rip upon a scarf
Makes no difference where you are
Every stitch of that attire
Will come unglued

If you come upon a seam
No hard tug is too extreme
When you rip upon a scarf
As froggers do

Fate is kind
She brings to those who tink
Ample reasons to think
They’ll be reskeining

If it’s laceweight or it’s bulk
There’s no reason you should sulk
When you rip upon a scarf
Your seams stay true.

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First, I logged on to my web account to cancel an auto refill. I got this:

Right. That doesn’t work, does it? So I emailed customer service to let them know. Logged back into my account to see if there was another way to cancel my refill and found, to my horror, that some other woman’s prescriptions were displayed in my account along with my own! WTF! So I know what medical conditions she has. I was absolutely horrified. Was she seeing my stuff? I called Walgreens and they promised to look into it. Uh huh.

A little while later, I actually went into my local Walgreens to pick up greeting cards to send the kids at camp. The pharmacist was shouting into the drive-through phone, top of his lungs, “OKAY, THIS IS A NEW PRESCRIPTION FOR CONCERTA! HAVE YOU TAKEN THIS BEFORE? THIS IS FOR ADDH (sic), DID YOU KNOW THAT, ABOUT THE ADDH?” WTF!

And lastly, I had sent an email to customer service this morning about the auto refill issue. I got an answer back at 1 AM. Thanking me for my product suggestion. WTF!

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl2LiSjysBQ

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7UmUX68KtE

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Have I introduced you to Red yet?

Red is Jasper’s littermate. How we came about him was this:

When we were out of town and had the cats boarding at the vet, Jasper developed a cough. The vet x-rayed his chest to make sure his lungs were clear and discovered that he had an enlarged heart. I took him to a veterinary cardiologist for a sonogram and she confirmed it.

Diagnosis: Possible early stage dilatative cardiomyopathy.

If you remember, Jasper came here to live after we lost Icey to a nasty battle with leukemia.

I called Jasper’s breeder and she was really upset about the diagnosis. Because of the cost we’d incurred with vet bills, and because she really liked the girls when we came to get Jasper, and because Red had a kink in his tail and couldn’t be a show cat, she wanted us to take him home with us. So we did, on a trial basis.

Red’s first few days at our house were not great. He was really freaked out and hid inside of the box spring about 23.75 hours of the day. But over time, he got happy (Feliway dispenser helped a lot) and now he’s a full-fledged member of the household. He plays fetch. A lot. And attacks my daughter’s pink poodle toy and carries it around the house, howling like a mighty warrior, and drops the nasty wet thing on my head while I sleep. Oh thanks. A gift.

Jasper still has an enlarged heart and we’ve started a beta blocker in the hopes that it will control or reverse it. Still not sure what this means in the long run, other than another cardiologist visit in six months. But he’s a happy boy who likes pats on the haunches and he pounces on people as they walk by the back of the armchairs in the living room. And for now, I’m just enjoying him.

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Do I have the signal strength issue? Yes, I do. And it’s more than cosmetic; a 3G speed test is 10 kbps down/1 kbps up/27414 ms ping when I lay a finger across the little black stripe on the lower left corner. When I remove my finger, it’s 1409/1265/293.

For now, I don’t notice the issue because I have a case on it. I had been considering moving to screen protectors though. I think that’s off the table for the moment.

Is it worth it? Well, with the new phones, we switched from T-Mobile to AT&T. And there’s been a noticeable difference there so far: less dead spots, like the one that was in my office; the ability to use data on Mopac; heck, the existence of 3G. And it’s just so darned much faster than our 2G iPhones. Plus, I took video the other day that just blew away the video quality from my Canon camera. So yes, worth it.

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In addition, I’ve been totally remiss in not mentioning my partnership with two of ARGdom’s leading lights, Michelle Senderhauf (a.k.a. Varin) and Marie Lamb (a.k.a. Gupfee), in the formation of Dog Tale Media LLC, a new transmedia house. We’re very excited about our venture and think we’ve got some great stuff in store, so stay tuned.

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So there was this one very very emotional scene when one (well, two) of the characters died to the song Letters from the Sky by Civil Twilight. (Here’s the scene, if you want to see it – spoilers, duh.) And I was so caught up in the moment that I went and bought the song and rated it high in my mp3 library and played it over and over for a couple of weeks.

And promptly went and forgot about the whole thing.

So in the last several days, Letters from the Sky has been getting a ton of airplay on the local alt radio station, and I would get all tingly and adrenalined and couldn’t figure out what was up. Finally tonight, I heard it again and started shouting, “That song — television show? People running? Something big happened? What WAS IT!!” and went and looked it up on my phone and realized what it was.

Isn’t it funny how wrapped up in Harper’s Island I was last summer, and this year I couldn’t even remember the character’s names or who died when? How fickle I am.

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When They Leave Us Behind

We quietly live out our everyday lives,
Assuming the world in its entirety thrives,
And it’s as if we are suddenly one day struck blind
When they leave us behind.

When they leave us behind, we freeze
In a bolt of dismay; feel the breeze
As a foul wind that sets our once-warm cheeks to stone.
We want neither company nor to be alone,
When they leave us behind.

When they leave us behind, we marvel
At the astonishing pattern their lives made in travel,
And we vainly explain – “‘Twas so bright and so far!”
But we’re describing the movement of a shooting star,
When they leave us behind.

When they leave us behind, we end
And reflect on those gone as our lives we suspend,
Then crawl into the light where the world still performs;
But that’s wrong, and will never again be our norm,
When they leave us behind.

When they leave us behind, we ache
In the missing pieces of us that they take.
Our phantom pain tingles and itches and races
Until we’re finally able to fill in the spaces,
When they leave us behind.

—-Dee Cook, 2010

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