A modest proposal

Now that I'm back in the land of the flat, the straight, and the organized-by-the-points-of-the-compass, I will admit to having been positively charmed by New Hampshire's rolling hills, narrow-streets-that-used-to-be-cow-paths, and--apparently--random design. Then there's the heart-warming combination of tourist-attracting trendiness and crotchety frumpiness that is seacoast New England.

Not to mention that I ate quite a bit of seafood (steamuhs, sawdfish, and lobstuh) and drank some wicked good beer and also had some good ice cream--a scoop of coffee Heath Bar at some little ice cream joint in Portsmouth.

Which reminds me--in New England, the per capita consumption of fatty, unhealthy foods is off-the-charts high. This is a little known fact, but it's true. Everyone has this image of corn-fed midwesterners waddling through the fried dough area of the state fair, or southerners sucking down platefuls of sausage biscuits and gravy. But New England is America's junk food dirty secret.

For one thing, premium ice cream stores dot the landscape like mushrooms after a spell of heavy rain. In fact, the whole crucially important concept of mixing CANDY with ICE CREAM was invented in New England (at Steve's Ice Cream in Somerville, MA, to be exact ... not that I used to hang out there a lot or anything.) And leave us not forget that Ben and Jerry--who basically stole the idea of mixing candy with ice cream and marketed it nationwide--live in Vermont.

Then there's the fried seafood situation, which is, frankly, pretty scary. I remember this fish place called The Fish House (oh, those wacky whimsical New Englanders!) where I used to eat lunch when I worked nearby. I bet I ate either fried oysters or fried clams for lunch every day for a couple of years. It's a miracle I lived to see the birth of the blog.

And then literally everywhere you turn around there's another doughnut place. New England has doughnut shops the way the rest of the country has Starbucks. There's one on every corner. Dunkin Donuts is headquartered in New England, and this is a very big deal. Did you know that the professional sports stadium in Providence, RI is Dunkin Donuts Stadium?

So naturally, this has me wondering one thing. When the doughnut eating epicenter of the world is apparently somewhere around Worcester, MA, what the hell is Homer Simpson doing living in Springfield?

Homer should give serious thought to relocating. There are nuclear power plants in New England, so he could get a job no problem. And if people have safety concerns about having Homer working in a nuke factory--and they should--Dunkin Donuts could always hire Homer to eat donuts as a tourist attraction.

--P.

What the world needs now / is eth-a-nol

Stolen from Badger. But apparently Diane and I are much more adept researchers into the field which I've just decided should be called "ethanology."

Bacardi 151 Congratulations! You're 139 proof, with specific scores in beer (80) , wine (150), and liquor (113).

All right. No more messing around. Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which is most efficient.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 79% on proof You scored higher than 66% on beer index You scored higher than 97% on wine index You scored higher than 89% on liquor index

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Robert Frost, eat your haht out

There once was a midwestern mobster
Who had quite a craving for lobster;
So in spite of the hassle,
she bought digs in New Castle,
And now dines with the swells and hob-nobsters.

--P.

Back in the wholesome Midwest

Here I am, in Illinois again. ("Hi. We're in Delaware.")*

The real estate closing sorta kinda did finally happen, although it turns out there was a last-minute snafu and the loan didn't actually fund. Or something. So anyway, apparently they'll jigger around with the dates on the documents or some such, and eventually my husband and I will get a title or a deed or some other kind of assurance that we actually own this piece of property.

But you didn't hear anything about jiggery-pokery legal shenanigans from ME. I'm no squealer.

But I've got to say--it's occurring to me that if you were the editor of the law review at Harvard Law School and/or got perfect scores on your LSATs, you probably didn't end up practicing law in New Hampshire.

Not that I'm calling anyone a MORON or anything like that.


--P.

* I can never resist the opportunity to slip in a quotation from Wayne's World. And if you think this dates me, bite me.

You actually CAN get there from here

So here I am in New Hampshire. The closing didn't go smoothly (do they ever?) so I wasn't a property owner in The Granite State until yesterday afternoon at some point or other.

I wasn't actually there; I was frivoling away the afternoon at the Portsmouth Children's Museum, instead. So I don't know precisely when it was that I ceased to be 100 percent Wholesome Midwesterner and became 25 percent tax-allergic penny-pinching Yankee.

I'm hoping that this magical moment occurred when I was purchasing trinkets in the Children's Museum gift shop and not paying sales tax. Wouldn't that be poetic justice?

Speaking of poetry, now that I am at least a semi-resident of New Hampshire, before the weekend is up, I expect to write a sonnet about the local wildlife, if any, a la Robert Frost.

But don't worry; I won't post it.

--P.

p.s. Anyone have a rhyme for "lobsters?"

State taxes and the lack thereof

I feel I should warn my reading public (both of you) that I'm flying to Boston tomorrow morning way early. I'm heading to New Hampshire to close on a house and then spend Memorial Day Weekend with my family, no doubt freezing my ass off and being rained on.

However, I expect to drown my sorrows in lots and lots of lobster.

You know what's really, really ridiculous about this? I swear I'm buying this house because if I own a house literally steps from a place with its own lobster pound, etc., Joke will simply have to stop bragging about the freshness of the seafood where he lives. Won't he?

One can at least hope so.

At any rate, I shall return. Speaking fluent chowdah.

--P.

The badger tempted me ... but I resisted

So I head over to Badger's blog to check out the state of things in the state of Texas, and I find that Badger is suffering from a TMI attack. Apparently one of the popular Mommy bloggers has been treating the world at large to an apparently incredibly vivid and detailed description of her baby's poop.

Well, I'm not heading over there. Even though I'll bet twenty bucks that I know exactly which Mommy did it. I'm even sure I have the offending blog in my links list. I'm on record as not being able to handle ugly baby pictures. So I'm so not going over to go find out about the excrement situation.

I just want some assurance. Someone please tell me that the Mommies who post pictures of their ugly babies are not also posting pictures of the contents of their ugly babies' diapers.

--P.