Who Be Illin'?

I be illin'. Once again I have received sickness for my birthday. At least this year I shouldn't need an MRI, it seems to just be a head cold, not an eye-virus.

I also received a USB turntable from Val, and some awesome books. Val gave me Taking Things Seriously, which looks right up my alley, and today a package arrived from Stella & Miles with a copy of ABC3D, which can only really be appreciated in person. It's an alphabet pop-up book, but I won't spoil it for you. There is one spoiler here, it has one of those plastic foil (maybe mylar?) mirrors on one of the pages that makes for great self portraits. Camera in one hand...



...book in the other...











Thanks to all the b-day well wishers!

Duckpin update.

On Sunday we attempted to go bowling in Old Saybrook, CT, approx. 30 minutes south of us. Almost as soon as we arrived, we heard of power issues and then the entire alley went black. We ended up heading east to Waterford and Family Bowl. It was awesome.



It combined duckpin and ten-pin (on separate lanes, of course) and everything was galaxy bowl (or neon bowl, or space bowl, or glow bowl, or what-have-you). We expected ten-pin, but chose duckpin since it was available.

So, if you're ever in Waterford...



HIGHLY recommended.

Got VD?

A quick trip down Rt. 9 yesterday brought us to the River Tavern, in Chester, for lunch.



A Stella and Orieto later, we were eating artichoke dip on toast.



Followed by a smoked salmon sandwich for Val,



and a tavern burger for myself. Both accompanied by potato salad.



Which made us pretty happy.



Then we placed our order for the "baked-to-order" date bread pudding, which takes 20-25 minutes, so we had some coffee while we waited.



It was worth the wait.



After a brief recovery period, we bid farewell to quaint little Chester and hit the road to Putnam for an afternoon of antique browsing. We saw the elusive white horse.



And I got an A.



A dirty, craquelured, reflective A.



Val found some classy vintage knitting patterns.



And this tintype, where we're not sure what is going on.



Maybe siblings sitting for a parental portrait? Better yet, young duellers competing for the lady's affections, moments before the pistols (or sabers, or whathaveyou) were drawn?

Thoughts?

inspired is the key word here...

ATTENTION!

This blog now available WITH or WITHOUT bacon!

As is every other website.

(Note to self: read more books, post more blog...)

Hi there blog!

I've been busy, with work work, and working on a website:

http://www.valerielaken.com

It was a fun last minute kind of project, but Valerie Laken was great to work with remotely, and the book looks like a good read!