Month: October 2000

Two nights ago on the way home, on a back road, I passed two police cars which were over on the side of the road. The first thing I saw was the one officer with a rifle. The second thing I saw was a deer lying on the ground behind the car. Then I heard the shot. From what I could tell, a deer had probably been hit by a car and was not able to live a happy life, so the cops were called in to put it out of its misery.

I added pictures from my trip to Rhode Island this past weekend.

Unfortunately this weekend I seemed to have picked up a bit of a cold. So I’m just going to keep drinking this orange juice and hopefully I’ll feel better by the weekend.

I forgot to mention that on the way home, we stopped off the highway in Mystic, CT for a bit of seafood. We ate at a fairly nice restaurant. One interesting item they had on the menu was a fried fish. Neither of us ordered this entree, but people sitting at some other tables did. When the plate was brought out, the fried fish was shaped like a fish, positisioned straight up as if it were swimming, eyeballs and all. This sufficiently grossed Alissa out, and apparently also grossed out the woman at the table next to us, who asked her server to return the plate, as well as the fried fish, to the kitchen. However, a lady at another table was content with eating the lifelike fried fish, though her male dinner companion, apparently not quite as open-minded, left her alone for the rest of the meal, and still hadn’t returned by the time our check came, we paid it, and we left.

I had a pretty busy weekend in New England. Friday night, Alissa and I drove to her grandmother’s house in Newburgh, NY. Sleep was the only order of business. The next morning, we went over to her relative’s house to see her two cousins (cute but rambunctious), her uncle, aunt, and her aunt’s parents. After a little socializing, we headed out for lunch at Sam’s, where the food of choice is meatballs.

After lunch, we began our drive to the show in Cranston, Rhode Island, at which I was scheduled to work. The three-hour drive was across Interstate 84, which was really pretty (the trees alongside, not the actual road) this time of year. Maybe less than a week past the peak, but still nice.

After the show (which is another story for another day), we realized we had no hotel reservations (well, to be fair, Alissa realized this long before we even left for the weekend…) so we had to spend some time driving around trying to find a place with vacancy. We couldn’t find a reasonable place, so after a few hours we gave in and stayed at the very expensive Crown Royale hotel, somewhere around Warwick, RI.

After watching the Mets lose to the Yankees for the first time in the World Series, and after sleeping, we headed over to the Friday’s restaurant for a nice Sunday brunch, where we planned the rest of our day.

We decided to head over to Newport to take a tour of the mansions. We ended up going to only one, The Breakers, but it was very cool. Our tour guide needed a little help, but after coaching her on the proper pronunciation of Euridice — several times — she seemed to get the hang of it.

After touring The Breakers, we went for a short walk by the cliffs on the shore of the island.

Then we headed back to New Jersey, eventually getting back to my apartment around 12:30 — right after the Mets lost once again to the Yanks.

And I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for my meddling mom.

A few things learned today:

1. Don’t drink the orange soda from Burger King anymore, it will make me see everything with an orange tint.
2. Listening to classical music in the car makes the drive seem shorter because the individual pieces are usually long. (The station’s pretty good and they play a variety of “classical” music from baroque through twentieth century. A nice change since I’ve been listening to my CD’s over and over again or the classic rock station that plays the same stuff over and over again.)
3. Once again, I need a haircut, but I have no time to get one.
4. It’s also about time I took my car in for some kind of semi-regularly scheduled maintenance.

Have you ever just had one of those days? You know — the bad kind?

Well I just got back from The City, where I saw Don Giovanni at the Lincoln Center. The show was great, but I was most impressed with the devices they had for subtitles. The opera, having debuted over 200 years ago in Prague, was written by an Austrian about Spaniards who communicated entirely in Italian, tonight was subtitled in English using a fancy display affixed to the chair in front of me. Everyone had their own display to look at, but you could only see the words on your own. This would be so you don’t get distracted as much, I suppose.

So, wouldn’t you know it, Kristen (who works in the office with me) knows Dar Williams. Not knows of her, knows her. They’ve been out drinking together. All I could say is that I saw Harry Connick, Jr. make fun of my friend while he was being videotaped for television, working with our college Jazz Ensemble.