In which it's literally everything everywhere all at once....

 

This coming Monday is the first day of spring. I need to keep reminding myself of that. 

Yeah, this was NOT what I meant when I was wondering if it was possible to sage someplace without setting off the sprinklers. This was yesterday morning. It was still snowing when we went to bed, but thankfully it wasn't quite as wet as it was earlier and enough of it is out of the trees that they're not as bent over anymore. I'm pretty sure throwing a snowball made from that first round would have ended in a capitol murder charge, but now it's just the type of snow that packs. And the Weather Channel had someone in Poughkeepsie. I'm just glad it wasn't Jim Cantore. Because, as much as I love me some Jim Cantore, when he shows up, you KNOW it's about to get real....

Then there was this. Note we are in the 0% area. Now, storms like this are hard to forecast. There's the problem of accumulations being elevation-dependent, bands of snow setting up within the storm, that sort of thing. But given that the next pic is what actually happened....

One of us should have bought a Powerball ticket....
 

But  I digress,,,,

Remember me talking about a road trip a few weeks ago? Well, it finally happened. And yeah, it was quite the happening. In the best way possible. But let me explain....

Originally it was supposed to happen on March 4th. The plan was that Beth, my person, had a civil service exam that morning and from there, we were going to jet (well, metaphorically jet. More like drive) across the Hudson to Woodstock. You see, there's this band called the Bongos who my person loved back in the 80s and still does, as a matter of fact. Their lead singer, Richard Barone, wrote a book about the New York folk scene in the 60s during lockdown, and it's out, and he was coming to Woodstock to talk about it and well, as she put it, her seventeen-year-old self would never, ever have forgiven her 2023 self had she not gone. 

However, March fourth wasn't to be. At least not for that. Unlike the county, Richard had the good sense to reschedule for the eleventh when it turned out that it might be quite nasty that day. She did make the exam, but the roads were quite unpleasant on the drive up, to say the least. Then everyone was made to park in the extreme back parking lot and walk across the street and up about eighty million stairs, So yeah, no fun.

So it rolled around to March 11th and OF COURSE it snowed again. We were going back and forth for a bit on whether or not the roads were going to be okay, but - we decided to go for it. So - we did. And someday one of us really needs to figure out what the HECK they did with the westbound entrance ramp to I-84 in Fishkill. We circled around twice, didn't see it and finally got on the eastbound one and went down an exit to turn around. I swear she's either the reincarnation of the Pathfinder or she can get lost in a driveway and there's no in-between. But anyway, we finally made it across the river and Woodstock-bound, only to discover that hey, there wasn't even any snow at all over across that way! Now that's the way I like it. (And someone really needs to repave the NYS Thruway. I was convinced we had a flat tire, but nope, just about twenty-seven miles worth of bad road.) Over toward Woodstock there was a bit more snow on the ground. It was just icky enough and just too-many-peopley-enough that our original plan to snag a bunch of pics beforehand didn't pan out. We were, however, not disappointed. We stopped in a coffee shop to regroup and grab lunch, drove around for a bit and finally headed back to the church where the whole thing was taking place. I was thinking we'd grab some pics of the place before anyone else got there, but that was not to be, in the coolest way possible. Because when we got there...

"Oh my God, Caroline, I think - oh my God, that's - him...."

Yup, it was indeed the man himself getting his guitar out of the trunk of a car. I didn't think my person's eyes could even get that big. She played it very, very cool, however, before parking behind the building and having a bit of a minor freak-out. 

I do wish we'd gotten a picture of the front of the building though....

We were still kind of early, so we waited a bit in the car. I think I was posting about it on Ye Old Book of Face while my person was wondering just what she'd let herself in for. Because up until now, I think the only famous person she'd ever met was the journalist who broke something she called the Iran-Contra story, Dale Van Atta. She promised she'd explain that to me someday. 

(Beth - And Joe Clark. Remember the movie about that New Jersey principal? "Lean On Me" with Morgan Freeman? That one.)

And so anyway, around twenty of three, we decided to go in. She was thinking that we probably wouldn't run into anyone and we'd find a seat....

And I really need a cellphone of my own to take pics, because when we walked in, Richard Barone was right there, chatting with a couple of other people. He looked around, gave us this gorgeous smile and said "Hi, I'm Richard." I have to hand it to my person, she played it a whole lot cooler than I would have. But here she was, thinking that oh, she might get to say hello to him if she was really lucky, and instead, she ends up chatting with him and several other people while they were setting up. 

Yes, he's absolutely the nicest guy. 

I think my person knows more about music in that sense than I do, but it was really interesting. I know I learned a lot. And got to hear a bunch of great songs, And next time we're up there, I must make a point of getting a pic of myself with the adorable travel doll companion of the lady who owns the Golden Notebook (the shop that arranged everything.) It was even cooler not being the only travel doll there, It meant I didn't need to stay in her bag.

And as much as my person despises pics of herself, I am going to post this one. It's her, of course, me and Richard Barone. I think she'll forgive me, I also think she's still in total fangirl mode four days later.

And honestly, I kind of am, too.... 

So yeah, literally everything all at once, but at least some of it is beyond awesome...

In which - snow and roads and snowy roads and checkerboard floors.....

Sometimes it doesn't take much....

This was a couple of Saturdays ago. It was pretty unexpected. A 30% chance of snow showers morphed into a quick 2.5". With some rain we'd had a few days earlier, there was no salt on the road, and it got slick for awhile. There was even an accident down at the three-way intersection at the bottom of our road - the house on the corner had its fence partially taken down by a car for what Maddy said was at least the fourth time in seven years. (No injuries save for the fence.) It was about an hour and a half before the Highway Department was able to get a salt truck out, but by noon the road was clear. No more than a couple hours' inconvenience.

But this.....

Yikes.












All over the same amount of snow.

"Looks like they underestimated it," Maddy said as we watched Georgia officials stammering and blustering their way through a late-night news conference. "If you don't deal with snow and ice that often, you don't realize how much of a mess it can make. It really doesn't take much." She looked at me. "It reminds me a little of something that happened here back in, I think, December 1999."

"Snow?"

She shook her head. "Freezing rain. Even worse. We were supposed to have rain that day, but in the afternoon - after the temperature went above freezing. When I left for work around seven, it was cloudy, but there was nothing on the radar. Then, on the way in, I started seeing an occasional raindrop on the windshield. I also saw when I passed the time and temperature sign on the bank down by CVS that it was 26F. Well, I got to work about seven-twenty, pulled into the lot and parked - just as it started raining fairly hard. By the time I got to the door I had already almost faceplanted twice in my high heels because the rain was freezing as fast as it was falling. Had I been five minutes later, I would have been stranded. As it was, it was me and seven other people in the building for most of the morning, until they could get salt trucks out and treat the roads. Up until then, we'd had no snow or anything. By noon, though, everything was cleared out and by two PM, it was fifty-three degrees. But that really was unexpected. I hate to say that they told them so down in Atlanta, but they did. They had a winter storm warning. Just because it was issued early that morning didn't make it any less valid."

~*~

So anyway, I had a weird dream last night....

Remember the story from our Woodstock trip about John Ashton and the rest of the band nearly getting stranded when it started snowing while they were out at that bar? Well, I dreamed that we were hanging out in the bar with them that night. When it came time to go, it turned out that Maddy, instead of Red October, had her first car, Stormy Llewellyn - aka a bright turquoise 1993 Geo Storm.....
(Image courtesy of www,conceptcarz,com -couldn't find an actual photo of Stormy to scan in...)

"Wait..." Maddy said, looking over my shoulder. "You did?"

"I did. By the time we left, it was snowing. Now in the dream, I don't seem to remember John being drunk. You handed him the keys. We put Richard and Tim Butler in the back..."

"Proving it was indeed a dream," she said. "You couldn't have fit comfortably in the back of that car, never mind two guys over six feet tall. Did we make it back?"

"Yeah. No problem."

"Totally a dream, then. That little car could not handle snow. We would have ended up buried in a snowdrift somewhere off of Mink Hollow Road." She went to find the watering can for the plants in the window.

(I'm NOT telling her about what happened with me and John in the dream once we got back. *Evil grin*)

~*~

In other news, we redid the living room floor. We had to cut and piece like crazy because we wanted a diamond pattern and the paper was printed straight across like a checkerboard.

Took some work but it was worth it.













I think I'm going to leave the bedroom floor as is, though.....

In which we start to plan our next adventure and Maddy tries to adjust her camera....

So, after our totally awesome trip to Woodstock - where to next?


















Something to ponder.....

We will definitely be visiting Woodstock again, though. Maybe even to stay someday....












In the meantime, Maddy Google-mapped Stockbridge, MA, just for the heck of it (for those who haven't heard, the Stockbridge Library is where our ancestor Hitty now lives) and found, to her surprise, that it's not much further than Woodstock. Turns out it's in the southwest corner of the state, almost at the NY border.


"We need to think about doing that trip soon, though, if we're going to. Like even next week," she cautioned. The (really) good news is that she's starting to get more and more job interviews now after a drought of almost two months - she has one for Monday again. However, this means that anything big we want to do in the meantime should probably happen soon...

Especially before we get behind one of these again. Two words you do not want to see on the back of anything with eighteen wheels - "Student Driver."

*Maddy's note - this was today on the way to the bookstore. I was stopped safely at a traffic light when I took this. Very stopped. By the time our intrepid student driver got the truck in gear and through the light, it was red again. Oh well...*





"We could also drive over to Beacon or do the Walkway over the Hudson for the blog," she said. "But not next week for the walkway." Part of next week is supposed to be hot and humid and the other part is supposed to be stormy.

"What's in Beacon?" I said.

"Paul Newman filmed a movie there in 1994," she said. "Nobody's Fool. It was actually filmed partly in Beacon and partly in Newburgh. I was working in Newburgh at a little weekly paper at the time and a woman from the crew stopped by the check out the building. They were thinking of using the upper floor for the construction company office, but the ceilings were too low for the lights they needed to use. But the little silver railroad-car diner in the movie is - or was - on Main Street in Beacon. And all the snow in the movie was totally real. We had seventeen ginormous snowstorms in eight weeks and two weeks straight when the temperature didn't get above zero, if I remember correctly. Not a fun winter. But a very good movie."

"Wasn't Beacon where they had the moose running around?" I said.

She nodded. "A friend of mine was living there at the time and said the police were all over the parking lot of her building looking for it."

~*~

Later....

"Okay, I really, really do not like the flash on this camera. Why can't it just show the room the way it is?" The room was quite nicely lit up from the sun at the moment - not that you can tell from this. It looks like twilight...









"What if we - no, not better..."

"What does that setting do? The little flash thingy in the circle?"

"I have no idea..."










"Okay, hold still, I - WAHCHOOOO!!!"

"Gesundheit..." Everyone tells Maddy she should take Claritan, but she insists it doesn't work for her. She needs longer-acting Benedryl.

"Thanks, I - oops. Well, it looks better, or would if I'd held the camera steady. Very Man Ray..."

Man Who?




~*~

 "Okay, places everyone. We're going to try a few settings. This is normal...."

"Vivid Color..."

Not really seeing a difference here, except that Maddy moved her hand....











"Black and White..."

















"Sepia..."

aka "Everything Turns The Same Color As Shel's Hair..."













And Cyanotype.

John-John: "More like Fifty Shades of Gray."

Maddy: "Cyan is blue, sweetie."

Shel: "That doesn't look blue...."








Maddy said the good thing about a digital camera is that you know right away if you screwed up the photo or not. She's still not sure about this flash setting. It does wonders for the overexposure problem, but it looks a little blurry.....











So until next time.....

John-John: "Caroline, quit hogging the frame..."

In which we go to Woodstock, NY!

Today was the day!

One quick pic before we leave....













We had absolutely perfect weather today and almost perfect road conditions. The drive up went quicker than expected, even if we did end up having to navigate that notorious traffic roundabout that Maddy got lost on trying to get to Delhi last year. However, since she actually had her GPS hooked up this time, we got through it no problem.

Although a friend of Maddy's had warned us, somewhat snarkily, that we'd never find a place to park, we found a municipal lot almost right away. We even had this dude out in the field nearby to watch the Rogue for us.

As you can see, we had perfect weather to just walk around and look.

This is right across the street from the muni lot.
















Me in the town square. I don't think Maddy's little Nikon does sunlight very well. That pic in the muni lot got pretty overexposed, too.












The square, again. I think I could live in this town. I think Maddy could, too. She's something between an eighties punk, a goth and a hippiechick. She'd fit right in.

 Tannery Brook....

You have to hit at least one totally touristy place when you go somewhere new - provided there is one, that is. This place was a blast. We found a larger version of that "Hippies Use Side Door" sign that Maddy has as a magnet among other things.

"Take another little piece of my heart..."

We both love Janis.

Love the phone box. Too bad it wasn't a TARDIS...

Just in case there was any doubt about where we were....

In case you're wondering, the famous three days of peace, love and music actually took place at nearby White Lake. The shop above had a milk bottle box from Yasgur's Farm,, but they didn't allow pictures in the shop.

Nevertheless, I think we were both thinking of stopping in here and asking about available properties. It's hard to explain, but the atmosphere here is so cool and laid-back, plus it's just gorgeous up here. I can see why John Ashton fell in love with it and left England for the Catskills.

The town square again. The next few shots are some random pics from around the town square.

There were a bunch of these around the town....



















We're not sure, but Maddy thinks this might have been the place John Ashton was talking about in Beautiful Chaos. Apparently he, along with Richard and Tim Butler headed out for a night on the town while they were recording Forever Now back in the eighties. (They were in nearby Bearsville, working with Todd Rundgren.) As John tells it, he woke up the next morning with no idea how he'd gotten back. Turned out it had started snowing big-time while they were at the bar, and they all got pretty hammered and well, John decided he was going to drive them back....luckily, someone they knew took over and drove instead, or they would have probably ended up in a snowdrift somewhere on Mink Hollow Road. (Maddy said that, for the record, she can think of several occasions when she had to drive home in a snowstorm and has no idea how she got back. Unlike John, she was sober at the time and actually remembers it, but still has no idea how she did it....)

*Maddy's note: it's not the sort of thing you forget - at least not without several years of therapy.*


Told you it was gorgeous...

Yes, we got a picture. No. I didn't get a Harley, darn it. But someday....













The drive back wasn't bad, as you can see - this is somewhere on the NYS Thruway (I-87.) At least, not until we had to go through Newburgh. Maddy said it's always a mess going through there, and today was no exception, with the left lane of the Newburgh-Beacon bridge closed. But all in all, it was a blast. (I'd say it was a great trip, but well - not that way... :)






Okay, I like this travel doll stuff.....

p.s. - Obviously, no, we didn't meet John Ashton. Oh well.....and no, we didn't find the bead shop, either. It's not there anymore. Still, a really cool trip. :)

In which tomorrow is the day!

Just a quick entry - Robin has a new dress, the camera is charged and, barring any unforeseen developments, Woodstock is a go for tomorrow!

Me: "So, are you psyched?"

Maddy: "Yeah, totally. Bead shopping...."

Me: "Maybe we'll meet John Ashton."

Maddy: "Will you stop?"

(I should note she picked out a majorly cute outfit for tomorrow, just in case...)

In which we make plans for Woodstock!

Guess what! Maddy said she's planning on making the drive up to Woodstock next week! I am soooo psyched! (For the record, no, I don't expect to actually meet John Ashton up there, but I really want to see the place for real.)



I even have a new dress for the trip (no pun intended!) Maddy made it from the sundress pattern on Julie Old Crow's site, but made a tiered skirt instead of a one-piece. She said she used to have one a lot like it.
















While she was at it, she made Robin a new dress, too. I like the fabric, even if only the flowers are pink. I might ask for a dress out of it.

"You're really going up there?!" Emmaline sounded shocked.

"Yeah, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday," Maddy said. "Depends on how Monday goes." She has an appointment with a staffing agency Monday - they called her Friday and said that although the job she applied for was already filled, they still wanted to bring her onboard. She's happy. She knew the job was a bit of a stretch (she's worked in a lot of very different places, but not in a medical office, which
 

this job was) but she actually wanted to get her resume in front of someone at this particular agency.

"I didn't want to just drop it on them out of the blue," she explained. "But I've been waiting for an opportunity to get on their radar, so to speak. They're a really good agency."

"But isn't that dangerous, going up there like that? What are you going to do?" Emmaline said.

"I don't really know. Look around, take some pictures, check out a bead shop that's up there, just hang out, you know?" Maddy shrugged. She looked at me. "Sort of a mini-vacation, I guess. I don't know. I don't think I've ever taken one like that."

"Mini, you mean?" I said.

"No, a vacation. I mean, we went on "vacation" for two weeks every summer when I was a kid - same two weeks, same drive down the same roads, stopping at the same motels on the way to visit the same relatives in the same order for the same number of days each year. No stops along the way except for one year - my father wanted to see the rose gardens in Hershey, PA, so we stopped there for exactly one hour. That's all we saw - the rose gardens. Nothing else."

"Where were all your relatives?" I said.

"Arkansas. Jonesboro and Fisher. Not exactly the vacation capitals of the world. Although I do vividly remember spending some memorable nights in my grandmother's storm cellar thanks to the tornado sirens." She smiled wryly. "I also remember it being really, really flat. Like pancake flat. That was weird for me, coming from the foothills of the Taconics. Of course, one year, we got to watch news coverage of that big blackout in New York City with all the looting and everything. I think our power was out for awhile, too, because when we got back all the food in the freezer had defrosted and the few things left in the fridge were spoiled. That did not smell good..."

I admit that going the same place the same way every year doesn't sound like much of a vacation to me. "I don't know, Emmie, that doesn't sound like - where is she?"

I hoped it wasn't something I'd said....

~*~



"Shel, did Emmie come by here?"

"She was headed for the bedrooms," he said. "She looked kind of freaked out. Hey, nice outfit. Very sixties."

"Thanks." I glanced at the book. "What are you reading?"









I don't know. As much as Maddy loves him, I don't think she's going to go for the idea of converting her computer room/fabric storage room/walk-in closet/bead storage room into an iguana habitat.











~*~

"Why does it scare you so much?" I heard John-John saying.

"It's just that - well, we never did anything like that. I was always told that wanting to, you know, do things was too dangerous. It wasn't what good dolls did. So - I didn't." Emmaline sounded confused. "And now I'm finding out that I'm supposed to be adventurous and wanting to do things and all and - I don't know."

"But do you want to?" he said.

She thought about it. "I don't want to be like my parents were, afraid to do anything for fear of getting hurt."

"So start now," I said. "Come with us to Woodstock."

"I can't..."

"Who says?"

"Why not?" Maddy said. "You never go anywhere. It'll be fun."

She considered it. "I - okay..."

"Yaay! We're going to have so much fun!"

"Uh, Caroline - put me down...."

"Sorry...."


This trip is gonna rock!!!!