The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming! Well ... One of Them At Least!

Ever since I had the pleasure of first meeting one Miss Claire Rachel Pitt a bit over four years ago, we've been planning on her coming back over to the States for another visit.  We've talked about places to go, things to see, people to meet while tossing out one itinerary in favor of another several times over but with only two weeks before that long-awaited and much-talked-about visit actually becomes a reality, I think we have finally settled on a rather busy agenda which will pretty much fill up every moment of the six weeks that Claire will be a guest in the United States.  Six weeks packed full of activities and honestly, we could have probably easily planned out another six weeks chock full of things to do and still had more left over on our list!

So, what do we have on that oft-changed, rearranged, and busy agenda?  Read on and you'll see that I need to put vitamins on the top of the list of things I gotta pack!

October 17th - While on her side of the Atlantic Ocean Claire will arise at the crack of dawn, get herself to the airport, and travel back through time as she hurtles towards Boston at about 500 miles an hour, I'll be doing my usual work routine having hopefully gotten all of my packing done so that when quitting time comes I can run home, change clothes, toss my suitcase in the car, and head north to greet her on the other side of Customs with her requested "coffee and vodka".  Lots of coffee, a little vodka, and maybe one of those silly little signs with her name on it just to make her feel important.  Hmmm, wonder if I can find a limo driver's hat by then??

Once we've got Claire's cases tossed in the boot along with mine, I'll point the car north and set out for Bangor, Maine about 4 hours northeast of Boston.  Upon arrival we're going to check into a cheap motel that will hopefully at least be clean and comfortable, let Claire attempt to sleep off some of her jet-lag, and then head out bright and early the next morning for an early morning jaunt past the home of horror writer extraordinaire Stephen King who reportedly has some wicked cool gates that I just gotta get a photo of!  

October 18 -19th - After hopefully not being arrested as stalkers, we are then going to continue through Maine to the most northeastern town in the United States - Lubec, Maine. While there we will be staying for two nights at the lovely Peacock House, a historic bed and breakfast overlooking the Bay of Fundy!  While there we've got lots of exploring planned including a tour of the local lighthouse that has long been on my list of lighthouses to see!

October 20 -21st - Passports in hand we're going to continue heading east and cross over the Canadian border driving through New Brunswick to Hopewell Rocks - home of the world's highest tides.  During our time in Canada, we'll be guests of the Innisfree Bed and Breakfast who have promised to make sure we see all there is to see in the area - sending us out with our bellies full from a hearty breakfast first.

October 22nd - 23rd - Leaving the wilds of Canada behind, with hopefully the closest encounter with moose or bear being from a safe distance, we'll start homeward bound stopping first for a night in the area of Acadia National Park with the hopes of catching the sunrise from the top of Cadillac Mountain before we make our way back to Connecticut.

October 24th - 25th - Claire will hang around the house chatting with the girls and keeping Tesla company while I go to work for a few days and rest up for the next phase of our wanderings.

October 26th - 28th - Back to Massachusetts and the North Shore where Claire will get her first glimpse of my beloved Salem - right smack at the peak of the Halloween madness that is the hallmark of Salem in October.  We'll be staying at Chez Lederhaus - home of my friends Walt and Juli whom I can't wait for Claire to meet and vice versa.  On the 27th of October Claire will be doing her best Simon Cowell impression as she takes on the role of judge at the uber-cool Hawthorne Hotel Halloween Ball.  As she gets to take a guest, that will be me along with my trusty Nikon and I'm sure it will be just as much fun - if not more so - than last year's Halloween Ball.  Hopefully there won't be any snow this year but you just never know!

October 29th - November 1st - Back in Norwich, Claire has talked me into a visit to Dark Manor which is supposed to be THE #1 haunted house in Connecticut. Fortunately it's located not too far from home so in case anyone needs to change clothing before heading out to the Harp and Dragon for a pint afterward, it will be easy enough to just pop by the house! I'm sure that on Halloween night, Amanda can find something spook-tacular for Claire to do - zombie makeovers may be included!

November 2nd - November 4th - We'll be trundling southwest to Hazleton, Pennsylvania and staying at the Ramada while meeting up with one of Claire's blogging buddies from Pittsburgh as well as Lisa and her Macs (both big and little!), whom I have already had the pleasure of meeting up once a few years back - of course, that was pre-Little Mac! I believe a coal mine tour and a tour of America's oldest operating brewery are on the current agenda while there, as well as meeting up with Mod Betty from Retro Roadmap who is going to point us in the direction of some of the true Americana that Claire craves!

November 5th -10th - Back in Connecticut for a breather while I'm once again off to work and Claire keeps the home fires burning as she prepares some Doodologist-type things which she'll be attempting to peddle at a craft fair in Rhode Island being held at the Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge in Cranston from 10am to 3pm on November 10th.  We've rented a table at the annual event sponsored by the Rhode Island Chapter of the National MS Society and I'm sure as long as we have Claire do all the talking and mention that the crafts are from England, she'll sell out completely!

November 11th - Off for tea and luncheon at Mrs Bridges' Pantry in South Woodstock with Princess Patricia of Ansonia in the Valley and my friend Paula who is an amazing art teacher and occasional distracted sidekick joining us. Mrs. Bridges is an authentic British tea room but we won't know exactly how authentic until Claire gives it her authentic British seal of approval! I anticipate a jolly good time though I still think we should consider wearing proper hats!

November 12 -14th - A little more hanging around in Norwich while I work and Claire possibly meets up with another blogging chum of hers from nearby New London.

November 15th - 19th - Back up to Salem and the lovely Hawthorne Hotel for five awesome nights with lots of wandering planned so that I can show Claire exactly why I love the North Shore as much as I do.  Depending on if we can fit it into the schedule, we might even get down to Plimouth Plantation for a visit with the Pilgrims if our timing works out and we don't get distracted visiting too many retro-diners and sampling pie and coffee while Claire checks out one lunch counter after another and drops the occasional quarter in a jukebox. Diners, drive-ins, and dives are definitely on her list of "must-sees"!

November 20th - 25th - Off to the lovely Sunset Hill House located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire for five nights of ...  free! As Claire says, "Who says social media doesn't get you lovely things?"  Again lots of things penciled in, but nothing concrete other than helping them to decorate for Christmas and being able to take advantage of all the wonderful hospitality of the innkeepers and their staff as we take on the role of "embedded Facebookers".  Make sure you like their page, Sunset Hill House on Facebook, as we'll be live-blogging on both their page and ours during the time that we are there.

November 25th - 26th - Before heading home to Connecticut we'll be spending one night in a place that has been on my bucket list for a very long time, the beautiful Omni Mount Washington Resort which is a member of Historic Hotels of America as it has a truly impressive history - one that Claire and I will be learning all about on our private tour of the resort on Monday morning.  As excited as I am about everything else - and trust me, I am! - I am really looking forward to our one night in Bretton Woods as it will be the perfect way to end our whirlwind touring of the northeast.

We'll be arriving back in Connecticut probably late in the day/evening on the 26th with just enough time for me to catch a few hours sleep before it's back to work for me and a couple days rest for Claire before I have to take her back up to Boston and Logan Airport on the 29th so that she can climb on a plane and jet back to jolly old England. Provided she manages to get back through Customs of course!

Like I said, Claire's going to be here just about six weeks and I've got no doubt that the time will fly but hopefully not so fast that we don't get a chance to enjoy all of the things that we've got planned.  And yes, we do have a lot but you should see the list of things we had to shelve for another time! Yikes!

Hopefully Claire won't wait another four years before she gets back here so we can start work on that next list but in the meantime, I also want to start working on my own list of things I want to see in England as it's my sincere hope to get over there before Claire gets back over here.  Provided she doesn't like it so much that she finds a job and moves over permanently!  If that happens, we'll be making even more lists!

You're All Invited ...

to attend the party going on over at
The Distracted Wanderer ... 

... where I'm serving up a good time at
the 2011 Hawthorne Hotel Halloween Ball!
Come on over and join the fun! 

Happy Halloween 2011!

Myself with My Winners, originally uploaded by Linda Orlomoski.

Due to my frightening work schedule for the next three days (46 hours between 5:00 p.m. Sunday evening and 3:00 p.m. Wednesday afternoon), it's going to take me longer than I'd like to write a post on my adventures as a VIP Judge at "Saturday Fright Fever", this year's annual Halloween Ball at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Massachusetts, but today being Halloween I wanted to share one picture from the night.

One of my tasks as a judge was to choose contestants for the Costume Contest in the categories of Individual/Couple, Group, and Theme. With over 850 costumed party-goers it was a pretty daunting task to choose two in each category (one in the Theme category) but as with any competition there are always a few that stand head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to originality, detail, and obviously not-bought-off-the-rack-at-the-local-iParty-store costumes. One of my choices for Best Individual/Couple was the Demented Dollmaker and His Doll pictured here with that skeery woman in the middle!

When I have more time I'll show you exactly why I was so impressed with this duo who put a lot of time, thought, and effort into their costumes and who walked away with First Prize for their category. The creative couple were thrilled with their win - not just for the cash prize that comes with it but for the certificate and bragging rights that go along with being a winner at the premier Halloween Party in the Northeast - and I was thrilled that my first foray as a judge was pretty darned successful. I can't wait to tell you about the rest of the party and show you more pictures from what was undoubtedly THE best time I've ever had when it comes to Halloween but I guess it's going to have to wait just a bit longer as duty calls. Rats.

Have a very happy and safe Halloween and may your day be filled with more treats than tricks!

Via Flickr:
The Demented Dollmaker and His Doll - winners of the Individual/Couple category at the Hawthorne Hotel's annual Halloween Ball, "Saturday Fright Fever" held on Saturday, October 29th in Salem, Massachusetts.

Judging From Things, It's Going to Be a Ghoulishly Great Weekend!

In spite of the dire predictions for weather this weekend ('ugh' is about all I can say to snow in late October!), Amanda and I will be heading for the North Shore in a little while as we point the car in the direction of what is undoubtedly the most popular spot for Halloween in the country - Salem, Massachusetts.  As a rule I would probably avoid Salem like the plague this time of the year as to say it gets crazy up there is a bit of an understatement but I've got a special reason for joining the masses this year as I was invited to be a judge at the Hawthorne Hotel's annual Halloween Costume Ball.

"Saturday Fright Fever" is sure to be a thrilling time and I am very honored to have been asked by Juli, the General Manager of the Hawthorne, to judge - a task that will certainly not be easy having seen pictures of some of the costumes from previous years.  The folks who attend the Hawthorne's Halloween Ball do it up big-time and go all out so I'm sure the competition is going to be tough but I'm also sure I'll be up to the challenge!  Not only do the party-goers get a chance to strut their stuff but each Department at the hotel is given a room to decorate for the event and from what Juli tells me, they take that task very, very seriously - and secretively, too!  All I can say is this is going to be fun!

Amanda will get a chance to attend the Ball, too, but not as a judge or a participant but as a worker; the kid will earn a little cash which will no doubt fund her constant costume-making activities.  She also has plans to catch up with a few of her Montserrat friends while we're in the area and considering we're staying at Juli's house which is in close walking distance to the train station, she should be able to do that. If she thinks I'm driving her anywhere though she can forget it as once I make my way through the crazy traffic to get to Salem, I am parking the car and it's staying parked until I head back home Sunday morning!

By the by, if you're looking for a chance to stay at the Hawthorne Hotel next Halloween and maybe attend the Costume Ball yourself, you can find the details here though if it is something you want to do you need to act quickly as once reservations open up, they go quickly.  After all, it's THE place to be for a frighteningly good time!

My fingers are crossed and the Nikon's batteries are charged for the possibility of some good hauntingly good photos!

Halloween 2010

The Holy Trinity of Holidays Has Become Hallothanksmas

Way back in the time of the dinosaurs when I was a kid, holidays had a natural progression that spanned three months and didn't overlap at all.  Halloween was the first holiday and eagerly anticipated not just because of the sugary loot that we knew would be ours after ringing on a lot of doorbells but also for the excitement of what we were going to dress up as.  Carved Jack O' Lanterns, scarecrows stuffed with leaves, Kleenex ghosts, scary stories, and fun parties were all a part of one of the best holidays ever.

Thanksgiving was next in line with construction paper Pilgrim hats, turkeys drawn by tracing our hands, and a big meal where family and friends gathered around the table for the best feast of the year.  Mom's best dishes were broken out of storage, you could eat as much as you wanted without getting yelled at, and items like cranberry sauce, mini-gherkins, and olives made an appearance on the table for perhaps the first and only time of the year in a cut-glass dish that you always forgot even existed! 

Not until Santa arrived at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade did Christmas come into play.  The day after Thanksgiving was when Christmas lights began to shine all over the place, carols were sung on the radio and everywhere else, the Nativity scene appeared in front of the local church, pagaents were reheased and performed at school, and you could go to the store to visit Santa and climb onto his lap, tell him what you wanted for Christmas, and maybe even walk away with a small candy cane secure in the knowledge that he'd do his best to get you your heart's desire. Christmas Eve could never come quick enough or be over soon enough as you waited in anticipation of Christmas morning to see what might be under the tree.  It truly was magic and the most wonderful time of the year.

Now that I'm older the Holy Trinity of Holidays that I remember as a kid all seem to have blurred into one big holiday called Hallothanksmas - overlapping and wrapping around each other so much that you can hardly tell where one ends and the other begins.  I have to be honest with you - I don't like it.

I hate the fact that when you go into a store two weeks before Halloween you're confronted with shelves and shelves of Christmas items already jockeying for place next to the plastic pumpkins and costumes and I hate it even worse when even before the ghosts and ghouls have had a chance to return to whence they came, stores have now moved into full-blown Christmas attack mode and TV commercials have done the same.  Alas, Thanksgiving seems to be completely lost in the shuffle as the media starts to make their predictions for whether retailers are going to have a naughty or nice year and Hollywood pumps out holiday movies as soon as possible to also cash in on the bountiful spending of the season.

It's all very sad if you ask me and I want my separate holidays back.  I don't want my holiday cheer to be drowned in the commerciality of the season where the focus now seems to be more on what you want and what you get.  That's not what the holiday season is supposed to be about but retailers seem to run right over Thanksgiving in their hurry to cash in on their own tidings of great joy in the form of greater consumer spending.

I know it's never going to happen but I really wish that we could enjoy November and Thanksgiving before Christmas encroaches.  I don't know when the holidays all changed but I sure do miss having one in October, one in November, and one in Dcember.  I can't possibly be the only one, can I?

Derby in the Dark

Just a quick update for those of you on Facebook that knew I was going to do some ghost-hunting on Halloween night ... I did make it back safe and sound with some rather interesting pictures to show for the night but have yet to go through all of them what with needing to go to work and earn a paycheck and all that fun stuff!

My friend Amy and I went down to Derby on Saturday night to meet with some blogging royalty who had asked me to join her on a ghost-hunt at the old Sterling Opera House. Patti had been invited by Rich, curator of the building, and for some reason she thought I might like to tag along, too. Hmm, I wonder why?!?

Anyhow, because Derby is about 75-80 miles from where I live I asked if I could bring Amy along with me as she loves that sort of thing plus I'd have some company along for the ride back in case I'd managed to scare myself out of my wits! Rich said "sure!" so off we went ... on Halloween night ... to an abandoned building ... to see what we could find!

Pictures and a post to come soon but in the meantime, I need to go do that whole "earn a paycheck thing" again! Hope everyone has a grand Monday!

It's 6:00 a.m., Do You Know Where Your Zombie Is?

Some of you might remember that back towards the end of July I did an I've Got a Question - You've Got an Answer post wherein I asked "Are you prepared for a zombie outbreak or are you just going to wing it?" I'd been having trouble coming up with something creative for my post that evening and Amanda suggested the question. The question generated some great answers but I personally never gave much thought to the actual concept of a zombie outbreak and figured I probably wouldn't survive one were an outbreak to actually occur.

Turns out that one occurred right at my own house this morning and when faced with it I did the only thing I could think of - grabbed my camera and took some pictures! Luckily, the zombie seemed to like posing for pictures and it was appeased from attacking me. As a matter of fact, it was so happy that it allowed me to go back to bed while it went to school ...

It's been said to me that when Amanda does something, she's not half-assed about it and apparently that includes turning herself into a zombie which is exactly what she did this morning in celebration of Halloween. She said that they were allowed to dress up for Halloween at school today but weren't allowed to wear masks of any sort so even though she had originally wanted to go as a Plague Doctor and wear the mask that she had made for that costume, she had to fall back, regroup, and go in another direction.

This was the direction she took ... I haven't gotten any phone calls from Norwich Free Academy telling me to come pick up my zombie and take her home so I guess she hasn't attacked anyone else (no sense in acting the part while looking it, is there?) and wasn't pulling my leg when she told me that they were allowed to wear costumes.

Ah to be young again and have some fun with Halloween rather than having to be worrying that it might be crazy busy at work tonight!

Speaking of fun - I had Amanda strike a couple of "Thriller" poses while I was taking pictures this morning. She was kind enough to cooperate ...

Here's hoping your Halloween is a real thriller, too - in a good way, of course!

I've Got a Question - You've Got an Answer

Could someone please explain to me how it got to be the end of October already? And no, that's not my question - that's just my prelude to stating that tomorrow is Halloween but I've not quite figured out how that is already! Then again, time has definitely become relative for me in the past year or so and there's probably no good answer even if that were the question of this post, which it isn't!

The real question of this post is this ...

Personally speaking, my only plans for Halloween are to meet my mother for lunch - the treat - before I have to go into work from 3 to 11 p.m. - definitely the trick! The only thing I'm dressing up as this year is a 911 Emergency Medical Dispatcher but trust me, that can be pretty scary in and of itself from time to time!

So how about you? What sort ghoulish goodies do you have planned for tomorrow??

I've Got a Question, You've Got an Answer

************************

With Halloween just two days away there are lots of things that run through one's mind - picking the perfect costume, carving jack-o-lanterns, bobbing for apples, things that go bump in the night, and candy - lots and lots of candy.

I have to think that the candy manufacturers take more delight in this time of the year than they do any other and thankfully you never hear them say things like "this year's Halloween candy sales fell short of expectations" like you hear retailers bemoaning Christmas sales. And thank goodness for that because Halloween is supposed to be fun. It's the one time of the year when you can go knock on virtual strangers' doors dressed in an outrageous costume and they give you something yummy rather than throw you off their property and call the cops! How cool is that?

And that brings me to our question -

I'm rather found of the miniature Mr. Goodbar candy bars myself but when I was a kid I absolutely loved the little wax bottles that had some sort of syrupy goo in them or the wax lips - anyone else remember those??

"Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light." ~ Dorothy Thompson

Of course fear is what Halloween is all about so in the spirit of the season Amanda and I went to the Nashoba Valley in Massachusetts last night to a place called Witch's Woods, a Halloween Screampark and Haunted House, that is apparently quite the popular attraction.

Under normal circumstances, there is no way that I would even consider driving almost 100 miles on a school and work night to go to a converted ski area with the express purpose of being scared but the circumstances were special in that the outing was part of Tegan's 16th birthday celebration. Tegan is one of Amanda's cousins who lives in Shirley, Massachusetts with my cousin Becky and her husband Glenn (my former brother-in-law) and their other daughter Vicky. As they live a little over an hour from here, Amanda doesn't get to see her cousins nearly as often as she would like so when she was invited up for this outing I couldn't very well say "no". Well, I could have but I knew she really wanted to go and what kind of mother would I be to deny her child the opportunity to get the beejeebers scared out her so I could simply sit home and watch Desperate Housewives? Sigh ... That said, it was off to Massachusetts shortly after I got home from work.

As a side note here, let me just say that I absolutely positively hate driving through Worcester, Massachusetts. Hate may seem like a harsh word to use but in this case, I feel that it is truly justified as that is one of the worst cities I have ever driven through. I've driven in New York City, I've driven in San Francisco, I've driven in Seattle, I've driven in Chicago and countless other big cities. I have mastered the intricacies of driving in Southern California which generally involved switching between the 5, 405, and 210 at very high rates of speed. But out of all the places that I have driven, I despise driving through Worcester the most. Talk about taking your life into your own hands as soon as you hit the City limits! My father always said that Massachusetts had the worst drivers in the country and it seems like every single one of them drives in Worcester! If it were possible, I'd throw the car into auto-pilot, close my eyes, and cower in the driver's seat until we got to the other side but unfortunately that's not possible so instead I grab the steering wheel a bit tighter, pick a lane, and hope for the best. For me the scariest part of the whole night was simply the drive through Worcester!

By the time we met up with the cousins and over to Littleton, it was good and dark (thanks to that hour-early thing we previously discussed it was really dark!) and the place was packed with people looking to have the daylights scared out of them. The first major fright came at the ticket booth when Glenn shelled out $22 each for 15 tickets! I'm sure Glenn would rather have a vampire sucking the blood from his veins rather than having that kind of cash sucked out of his bank account but his oldest daughter would only turn 16 once and he seemed to handle it quite stoically with only a slight grimace rather than the blood-curdling scream that would have escaped from my throat!

From there it was off to the four various parts of the Screampark - Castle Morbid, The Keeper's Crypt, The Haunted Hayride, and Nightmare Mansion. Various screams and moans could be heard as we waited our turn in line - and that was just from the kids that had come to help celebrate Tegan's birthday! Amanda had no trouble fitting right in with Tegan's friends and seemed to have an absolutely wonderful time. Even though I was freezing, hungry (stupid me forgot to stop to get something to eat on the way up), and not even remotely scared it was worth the trip to see Amanda having such a good time with her cousins. Even though I'm far from being her age anymore, I remember how much fun it was to get together with my cousins for special trips and events.

Around 8:30 we took our leave from the group as we had over an hour and a half to drive back to Connecticut but if Amanda could have had her way we would have stayed right until the very end and beyond. She took quite the liking to Nate, one of Tegan's friends, who seemed to like most of the same things that she did and even knew how to dress (i.e., he had chains on his pants and a shirt that Amanda declared she wanted to steal). Again, even though it's been a very long time since I've been 14, I haven't forgotten what it's like to meet a cute guy and hate to go home but alas, that's exactly what we had to do so after good-byes to her new friends we started began the trek home.

Driving south through Worcester wasn't nearly as bad as the trip north as it was getting fairly late and everyone else was apparently home watching Desperate Housewives so I was able to relax my grip on the wheel a little bit. We arrived back home around 10:30 and even though it was late and we were both tired (and I was still cold!), Amanda declared it to be a great trip and she was glad that we went.

Oh, and for the record, she wasn't scared at all - as she said "it's kind of hard to scare someone when they're into Goth anyway, Mom". Oh yeah, I forgot that! Happy Halloween!