Holiday Cheer and Reindeer

For any of our readers who are in striking distance of Stoneham, MA, we highly recommend Zoolights at the Stone Zoo. Sure, pictures with Santa are all the rage this time of year, but how about pictures with an actual live REINDEER!

Given Lucy's experience with Santa last year (also see here), we thought perhaps the reindeer encounter would be preferable. And indeed, it went quite well. But Zoolights is more than just reindeer: a whole area of the zoo is seriously covered in lights, and there's this path you walk through with all sorts of wacky animatronics in various Christmas and seasonal themes. The usual, a train set, penguins, various wintery animals and the like. Also, there was a large alarm clock with crazy hands that spun fast. I overheard a little kid walking by ask "A clock?" I kind of felt the same way.

Lucy loved the whole thing and ran about gleefully asking "What's that called?" (her new question, asked at a rate of roughly 4 times a minute).

In other news, 83 Durant has been receiving some exciting packages from Santa. And what I mean here is that for the past two days, we've received packages with no indication of who really sent them. We received some lovely bicycle-engraved pint glasses, and then a set of six beautiful glasses etched with a tree design. We love them! Secret Santa, wherever you are, thank you!

Conversations with Lucy

Second (?) installment

Grandma has been visiting for the past week, so things have been rather exciting for Lucy with an extra person around every day to entertain (and be entertained by) her. She enjoys spending time recounting past glories, such as Halloween ("I wear Carter costume!") and trick-or-treating ("I saw Curious George. He scared me." [true story]) and, more recently, the holiday parade downtown ("Kids gave me candy!"). This is great fun.

This evening at dinner, we were talking about an upcoming wedding we're attending in January, and Lucy, hearing the word "wedding" assumed (reasonably) that we were talking about the wedding we just went to a few weeks ago. "I go Christy's house!" she gleefully announced. To simplify the matter of where we were going for the wedding of Christy and Eric, we just told her we were going to Christy's house, so I believe that it's possible that at this point, Lucy believes that the whole of the church and reception hall where Christy & Eric were married, and perhaps even the hotel where we stayed, are "Christy's House." Sweet! Nice diggs, Christy.

Anyway, to get to the best part of the conversation, we asked Lucy if she remembered what she did at Christy and Eric's wedding. Here's a fairly accurate transcription of the rest:
Lucy: "I played!"
Me: "Did you dance?"
Lucy: "Yes!"
Me: "Who did you dance with?"
Lucy: "A little boy."
Me: "That's right!"
Lucy: "His name Nathan."
[It is true that his name is Nathan, but I really had no idea that she even knew his name, let alone that she would remember it three weeks later. We were all very surprised by her detailed information!]
Me: "Yes, that was Nathan. Nathan Laub. Those Laubs are good eggs."
Lucy [immediately]: "Good eggs come from chickens."

OK, so I really don't know why I said they were "good eggs"; though of course they ARE, it was a funny thing to say. But her response cracked me up. Like an egg. A good one.

So thanks again, Christy & Eric, for a super-fun time. I think there are some images on Flickr that show just how much fun Lucy had. And Nathan, you're on notice: you have an admirer!

Roof Fixed

Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers. We certainly have many things to be thankful for here at 83 Durant. For one thing, our roof doesn't leak! The roofer came on Monday, right in time for Lucy's nap. The leak, as you'll recall, went into her room, and the missing slates (the source of the leak) were above her room. Thus, there was NO! NAP! FOR LUCY! She made that quite clear to Grandma, who was babysitting. Yikes.

But all is well. Twelve slates were replaced, and now we're once again watertight (or so we hope).

Jake is cooking up a storm and Lucy and Grandma are having a grand time playing in the tent. Enjoy your feasts!

Roof Update

Our roof guy called and let us know that there are a few missing and/or broken slates up towards the roof ridge that are probably causing our leakage. So we'll be setting up our roof appointment very soon. But probably not soon enough to avoid Friday's 80% chance of rain. Argh. What to do about that? Towels in the attic? An elaborate system of plastic sheeting? A whole-house umbrella? Suggestions welcome.

Also, in other news, Lucy had her Birthday yesterday and will have her daycare party tomorrow. So far she has really enjoyed being the Birthday Girl.

Roof Results: Inconclusive

Jake went up the attic hatch, but sadly, has not been able to determine the source of the leakage into Lucy's room. We have a call into our roof guy, and we await further information. Or rain. So far, clear skies ahead until Friday. Updates as events warrant.

Roof Woes

There is a leak in the roof. We must investigate tomorrow. While we were away this weekend, it leaked into Lucy's room. This makes me very sad, because Lucy's room was the one we fixed up (insulated ourselves) and had drywalled just two years ago (yes, she's almost 2!).

Argh.

Further updates as we figure out what's up.

I'm gonna be on television....

I just realized that some of our readers might not know about my upcoming TV appearance, because I neglected to write about it on the blog before now. I find it very hard to believe that I failed to blog/brag about this, but I guess I had a few other things going on back when this all started, and then I kind of forgot about it until today. So now, here's the story.

In June, I got a call from a guy who works for the PBS affiliate in Western Massachusetts, WGBY. He was developing a program on "Haunted New England," telling tales of spooky scary stories from the area. He found out about my witchcraft research and asked if I would serve as an "expert." Well sure, why not?

The crew (a producer and a cameraman) showed up on June 17th and transformed our dining room into a TV studio. Somewhere, there are pictures of this, but I can't find them now. I talked about my witch research and he asked me some questions about haunted stories in the area. It was a fun afternoon, and very strange experience to see how TV gets made. Who knew that setting up lighting was so involved? They had to black out all our windows (and there are a lot of them). There were also some sound issues, in particular our fuzzy family member (Carter) had to be asked to leave the room because the jingle of his collar kept showing up on the sound. (I thought it could have stayed there as a ghostly echo.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun and both the producer and the cameraman were great.

So today I got the call from the producer, and it's going to be airing tomorrow for the first time. Wow! It will be on WGBY out in Western Massachusetts, which sadly, we don't get, so I won't get to cringe (yet).

Here's a link to the trailer for the show (I'm not in this):
http://www.wgby.org/hauntednewengland/index.html

The producer told me that my specific witchcraft stories didn't make it into the TV-length version, but they do appear on the DVD. He also said that I DO appear in the TV version as what he called "the voice of reason." I found this hilarious. I found it all the more hilarious after I watched the trailer above, which is clearly lacking in such a voice.

The show should air on our local PBS station, WGBH Boston, sometime in December (for people who like to celebrate their Halloween a little bit later). Also, I'm supposed to be getting copies of both the DVD and TV versions once they're available. So for those of you looking to complete your media portfolio of 83 Durant stars, you'll want to get your hands on this. This shouldn't be too hard; I think WGBY is actually going to use the DVD as a pledge premium. Yes, dear reader, I will be used to strongarm viewers during a pledge drive. Awesome!

I hope to post again soon, but in case I am neglectful, have a Happy Halloween!

Both sides of the table

This is not a post about our house. The "table" I refer to in the title is the book-signing table. Yesterday, I had the rather odd experience of being on both sides of it, signing books in the morning and then having a book signed in the evening. Strange, strange, strange.

In the morning, I went out to Hadley to participate in a group signing of a collection about the history of Hadley, Massachusetts. You can check out the details of the book at the UMass Press website here. I didn't write the whole book; I wrote a chapter about Mary Webster, a "witch" who lived in Hadley in the 1600s. The book came out a couple of months ago, and it coincides with the Hadley 350th celebration (1659 - 2009). So there are a lot of people in Hadley who are interested in Hadley history right now.

I had never participated in an author signing before. In fact, I'd never really heard of author signings for academic books. It's not like we have fans (except our family members & friends, obviously*). I kind of assumed we'd just be sitting around talking to each other the whole time.

But to my surprise and delight, the place was hopping. We had a constant stream of people who wanted to talk to us and have us sign their books. It was very fun. We sat in a corner of the Barnes & Noble cafe with name cards in front of us (yes, I kept mine) and signed away. [One of the other authors had a camera; I'll hopefully get some images to post here from her.] We chatted with folks and heard their stories of Hadley. I felt almost famous. At least as famous as one gets in academia without being at the center of a scandal or running some major center or conference (all things I'd prefer not to do).

After my own signing, I went to see/hear one of my very favorite authors, Margaret Atwood, who was talking about and reading from her new book, The Year of the Flood out in Cambridge. Jake heard about it on the radio and bought me a ticket. Thanks, Jake! It was awesome. She played some songs that appear in the book, read from the book, sang a song from the book herself (I'm not kidding), and then answered questions from the audience. Afterwards, she signed books.

Now, I'll provide some backstory here: In researching the article I wrote about Mary Webster (the one in the collection I was signing earlier in the day), I learned that Webster is actually an ancestor of Margaret Atwood. In fact, Margaret Atwood wrote a poem about her. So I wanted to include an excerpt from the poem in my article. Copyright is a complicated thing. In order to include the excerpt, I had to contact (and pay) the various publishers of the poem. This meant that I had to get in touch with Atwood's assistant to figure out the appropriate people to contact for permissions.

In my exchange with Atwood's assistant, I found out that she (the assistant) is also related to Mary Webster. How crazy! So I suggested that both she (the assistant) and Margaret Atwood herself might both like to read my article. Assistant said "yes!" so I sent two copies -- one for each of them. Oh, and meanwhile, I paid the permission fees and everything was cool with getting the poem excerpt included.

A month or two later, I got a very nice, hand-written card from Margaret Atwood on her personalized stationary, thanking me for sharing the article with her and saying that she had enjoyed reading it.

Margaret Atwood read something I wrote.

Margaret Atwood *enjoyed* reading something I wrote.

Just to be clear, this, for me, is a Big Deal. I've been in literary love with Atwood since I was in middle school, when, while babysitting, I would read Atwood while the kids were napping (and always wish the naps would last longer). I've taught Atwood's short stories and her novel, The Handmaid's Tale, many times. I admire her. A lot.

So when I got to the front of the signing line, I was really nervous. The line was huge, stretching around the whole room. Atwood was a signing factory. Two bookstore employees stood beside her, one to take the book, the next to open it to the right page. Previously, we had all been given post-it notes on which to print our name if we wished to have a "personalized" inscription. It was some serious assembly-line production here.

Atwood had nearly finished signing my copy by the time I was actually close enough to the table to talk to her. Here is my rough approximation of our "conversation":

Me (flustered, talking too fast; I actually had to repeat myself because she didn't hear me the first time):I wrote an article about your ancestor, Mary Webster.

Atwood: Good for you! Where can I get a copy?

Me: I sent it to you....you read it, and I wanted to thank you for your feedback.

Atwood: Oh, lovely. Thank you.

And then she was signing the next book and I was moving along. It was somewhat anti-climactic and rushed and awkward. I'm not complaining here, just reporting. I definitely understand -- she had a HUGE line of people asking for her signature, so it's not like she could have a conversation with anyone. She did a fabulous reading, and now I have a signed copy (I'm just a few pages in, but I like it so far!).

I was struck by how different it was from my signing earlier in the day. At my signing, I had been looking for something to say to people, since they would often just come up and hold out their books. My usual starting place was "do you live in Hadley?" since the book is about Hadley and all. This usually set people off talking about where in Hadley they live, what they wanted to know more about, and so forth. But I kept finding it somehow odd that people were there, holding out a book, clearly wanting this connection (whatever connection one gets from having a signed book) and yet not really saying anything. It was fun and flattering to sign books, yet the people we were signing for seemed to feel bashful. When I asked them where they'd like me to sign, or what they'd like it to say, they'd say "where ever you want" and "you're the writer!" While the latter is true, I kind of wanted them to tell me where they wanted the signature and if they wanted an inscription. Since it was a group signing, in some cases, we would sign on our individual essays, while in other instances, we'd all just sign on the title page. When this happened (all of us signing on a single page) I started to feel like I was writing in a yearbook. "See you next year" or "Have a great summer" or "I can't believe you failed calculus!" were tempting possibilities. I mostly just signed my name.

Mostly, I was struck by how the physical book seemed to get in the way of an actual conversation. I think that if I had given a talk on my topic, a lot of these people would have had questions to ask or shared interesting things with me. In fact, this is what happens when I do give talks on this very topic (I did exactly this last weekend in Hadley). But somehow, because my thoughts were in writing, and inside a hard-cover book, it was like we couldn't talk about the writing or ideas, and instead, we had this stilted conversation about signing the object. This seemed odd to me.

But as I stood on the other side of the table, facing Margaret Atwood, although I actually had something specific and personal to say to her, I found myself stumbling and unable to speak up loud enough, unsure how to address her. I realize this is largely because I'm very much in awe of her, and I'm not implying at all that in this analogy, I am Margaret Atwood, but I saw a bit more clearly how strange the book-signing ritual really is. More importantly, I felt like there was something strange about not just the signing itself, but this relationship between reader, book, and writer. Reading can be such an intimate activity, where we sometimes feel we know the author. It's understandable that we want to meet the author, but then, what do we do? What do we say? It's not like we're meeting her characters. That would be another dilemma entirely.

My students are always talking about authors by their first names, as if they're close personal friends. I try to correct them (at least in their papers), but I realize that in some ways, it feels that way, like we are friends (or sometimes enemies) with our authors. Then, when we meet the author and he/she is or isn't all that we'd hoped and dreamed and imagined, it's an incredibly strange feeling.

On the other hand, for the author, we send these words, sentences, paragraphs, off into the world and we really have no idea what the hell they're going to do out there. Will someone love them? Will someone hate them? Will someone name a child after some character of our creation? So meeting those unknown someones, seeing the audience in a literal way, is just as much of a disconnect as the reader experiences when finally meeting the author.

My, my, my, this post has gone on quite long enough now on a non-house digression. Thanks for reading if you got this far. I'm happy to send you a signed copy of this blog post.

*note: family members will be getting a signed copy of the book for Christmas, so don't go buying one for yourself. I don't get any royalties on this anyway. ;)

Hood Ventilation in Real Time

9 - 9:30:
Our exhaust dude has just arrived, and hopefully by the end of the day, our hood will be hooked up. Let's see if I can keep up with the updates. So far, he's brought in a sawz-all, and has apparently hit something tougher than he expected. This makes us slightly concerned about what is actually in that section of the wall. Stay tuned.
10am:
There are scary sounds coming from the kitchen. Discoveries:
1. The red tile goes all the way up to the ceiling on that side of the wall, too.
2. The space we're hoping to go through with the ductwork appears to be filled with blown-in insulation. (not sure if this is good or bad yet)
10:30:
There's a hole in our wall. Usually a statement of this sort makes me terrified. But it's all good. It looks like that area is indeed empty (aside from the insulation) so he's going to be able to send the duct through and out to the back porch. Hooray!
12:30:
Ooops! So much for the live blog. Well, the project is pretty much done. It's amazing how the professionals can just take care of stuff. Nice. Photos to follow later. We have a functioning hood that blows the nastiness outside! Hooray!
Update: photos.
They're not great shots, but here's the hole in the wall:



and here's the length of duct work that goes through the hole:

The book is in the mail

I know, you hear it all the time. But this time it's true! It's in the mail!
We rode the tandem to the post office yesterday, and also enjoyed a celebratory breakfast at Shaw's. Yum! Lucy loved her pancakes.

Here she is doing her impression of me over the last few months:

Printing in Process

I'm printing out my book. It's very exciting. It's going to take a while. So while I'm waiting, I thought I'd post this update. No, I will not post the text of my book, as my publisher might get a bit upset. But up there above you can see a word cloud here based on it. You too can make a Word Cloud from anything you're writing.

I'm relieved to be getting this off my plate, although my plate is still pretty full. Now that this is done, I need to catch up on all the grading I've been putting off. I'm afraid my freshmen writing portfolios have been neglected and are now perhaps breeding with my American Lit students' papers. Who knows what horror they will create.

But thanks for your support, dear readers. We'll keep you posted on late-breaking news.

This just in: Carter got a haircut today! Film at 11.

Hood project, kitchen discovery, boiler check

Today's post is a catch-up on a few little issues of note.

Hood Project:
First, as you can see from the Flickr pictures, we got the hood up. Actually, our good friend Matt got the hood up. Thanks, Matt! So it's functioning as an air re-circulator and light. We're working on getting a guy here to hook up the duct-work, which is what those pictures are about.

Kitchen Discovery:
While Matt was working on getting the hood up, he discovered that a large part of the wall by the hood/stove area appeared to be magnetic. Weird. While digging around in that wall, looking to find a way to thread the new electrical connectors for the fan/light through the wall, he discovered some strange red metal:

Upon further investigation, it appears that this wall was at some point TILED IN RED TIN! Amazing! Here's a tile Matt managed to pull out of there:


Also, keep in mind that the floor (see earlier post) was a green marble-ized paint job. Whoa!

Boiler Check:
Yesterday, our plumber came and did the check-up and clean-out of our gas boiler (it had been two years since we'd had it done). He also replaced the glass that lets us see the water level. Nice. So we're all ready when we have to put on the heat.

That's about it from 83 Durant. We're putting away the air conditioners, getting out the cardigans. I love fall in New England. My book deadline looms, but hopefully we'll do some fun things and have some blog posts next month.

Conversation with Lucy

This is my first transcription of a conversation with Lucy. I imagine there will be more to come.

Setting: in the car; we are driving to pick up our CSA share, which involves going past the Top Donut on 38.
Background: Lucy has had donuts from Top Donut. She has gone through the drivethru w/ Jake, and we walked there once together

Lucy [seeing the Top Donut sign]: Coffee?
Bridget: Yes, that's where Daddy gets coffee.
Lucy: Mommy coffee?
Bridget: No, Mommy doesn't drink coffee.
Lucy: Mommy sad?
Bridget: No, Mommy's not sad.
Lucy: Lucy happy donut.

Indeed. Lucy happy donut. And by the way, no, I did not stop for donuts.

Stove!

Here's the long-awaited post on the NEW STOVE! Hooray!

Jake did the research on getting a new stove way back before we left for vacation. We have gas (ha!) and Jake did research on Consumer Reports and whatnot to find what we wanted. He also did some sweet sweet bargaining, doing some internet sleuthing for a good deal, and finally taking that deal to Home Despot, where they gave us a price 10% cheaper than Best Buy was going to give us. Nice move! We also got a free delivery deal, and some kind of rebate thingie. All in all, good work on Jake.

Upon our return from vacation, we had the impending stove delivery to deal with, combined with the getting rid of the old stove, which is still actually functioning. Just for old time's sake, here's our old stove (with the final blueberry-peach crisp it baked for us sitting on top):


You may remember it from stories such as the time we used a bungee cord to fix it, or the time Jake fixed it with help from some random dude he found through the internets. Good times, good times.

We were very hopeful that we could find it a new home, and Craig's List didn't fail us. Magee stoves w/ built-in heaters actually are pretty popular out here for folks who want to heat small cottages or apartments. The company doesn't exist anymore, but the old stoves don't die -- they are built to last. We actually sold the thing for $150, which was a nice bonus. (Yes, we fully disclosed all info about the stove to the buyer).

The new stove and matching hood was delivered and the old one taken away; the only thing left was to hook up the new one. Should we call a professional for this job? Well, maybe. But instead, Jake took on the project, with the professional help of our good friend Matthew. Thank you Matthew, for overseeing the potentially very dangerous gas hook up!

So here's the stove, in action (cooking breakfast!):


We also have the matching hood, which we need to install. The old hood was the kind which recirculated the air right back into the kitchen. So in other words, it was pretty much useless. This means we have a bit of a project ahead of us, installing the new hood so that it actually vents outside. This will be a very big improvement on the kitchen (and hopefully enable us to start a kitchen painting project!), but will take some engineering. This will NOT be a do-it-ourselves project. We have professionals on board, and hopefully we'll be having it done in the next few weeks.

I know our loyal readers will be disappointed if we omit the gorey details and associated discoveries that the new stove hook up created. So for those of you who still care, here's what it looked like when we took the old stove out:




That black pipe on the left is the gas hook up. Jake (w/ Matt's assistance) took the top part off, and hooked up the flexible gas hook-up right above the shut-off valve.

And here's a close up of that hole:



The hole is where the heater vented outside, through the chimney. New gas stoves don't need this kind of vent, so now we just have a hole there. After we get the hood hooked up and whatnot, we'll close up this hole and tile over it. No one will ever know it was there. Unless they read this blog. We feel this is a better solution than what was done with another hole in this same chimney.

And here's a close up of the flooring underneath the stove:


Take a good, close look. Does that look like a piece of linoleum to you? Yeah, it did to us, too. We thought that was weird. But what's really weird is that that is actually a piece of plywood that has been PAINTED and made to look like linoleum. Someone apparently took quite a bit of time, using green paint as well as white and black, and various faux-finish techniques to make this look like marbled linoleum.

All that, for a piece of floor that is UNDER the oven. That seems crazy. Why do that? I am intrigued by the suggestion that Matt made that perhaps, at one point, the ENTIRE KITCHEN FLOOR was actually done in this way, and when someone came along and tiled it (which is what we see on the rest of the floor) they just cut away around the stove, leaving this piece un-tiled underneath. This actually makes a fair amount of sense, given the rough cut look of the edges. But seriously, can you imagine the entire floor being painted like this?

So far, the new stove has been awesome. It has several different-sized burners, as well as a huge center burner that can be used with a griddle (see above photo). It also has a warming drawer underneath for all those big dinner parties. Yes! The big thing is that it's BIG. Actually, the outside dimensions are smaller than the McGee, but without that heater on the side, the oven itself -- inside -- is MUCH larger. We're happy about this. We're also happy that, you know, the door closes, the light works, and we can see through the window to what's cooking inside.

I will say that one down side to the new gas stove is the fact that it relies on an electric ignition. This is probably safer, and perhaps more energy efficient than the always-on-pilot light that the McGee had, but, when the power went out, our McGee still worked. That was a nice feature. With the new stove, if we lose power, the stove won't work either. Sigh. But overall, this is a nice step up.

Welcome to 83 Durant, New Stove!

P.S. For any of our readers who knew me sometime around 1990, this post may bring to mind an appropriate sound-track for reading this post: the song "Stove" by the Lemonheads. It's a rather charming, sad song about a guy who misses his old stove. Refrain:
I miss my stove. She's all alone.
She's right out front and looks a mess.
Unwanted guest. We lied to her.
I miss my stove. Feel sad I guess.

I suspect Mr. Dando wasn't really talking about his stove. At least we know that our old stove is living a useful life for someone else's house. No hard feelings, stove.

Past Mysteries Re-Visited

And just to follow up on a past post, a while ago, we asked our dear readers to tell us what this strange plug was about. Jake did some further investigations to find out what was behind the plate. Here it is:

There were no wires in there at all. Jake pulled out the thingy, and here it is, in all its broken ceramic glory (It was already broken before he took it out):

Readers, do you have any further suggestions?

The room formerly known as the pink room

Some of you already know about this and have been asking for pictures. It's finally done! While we were away, our wonderful painter came and removed all the final traces of the PINKNESS (and there was a lot of it!). Here are some shots:

The wall color is "Stratford Blue" and the trim is "Acadia White."

I realize that this news is really not as exciting as being in a movie, but it is pretty exciting for us. Now that Carter is a big movie star, we have to make sure his crib is appropriate to his film star status. The pink room was simply unacceptable. Here are a couple more shots. Unfortunately, there's a big nasty scratch or something on the lens, so that weird spot is not on the wall, but on the camera. [Camera lens cleaning suggestions are warmly welcomed!]

My mom is visiting and hemmed our curtains so that you can now see the woodwork beneath the window area (before there was pink trim paint there):

Jake has hung some of our pictures:

That's all for now. More posts are coming about our NEW STOVE and the adventures related to it. Stay tuned.

On Set, Again

So we thought our adventures in Lowell-Hollywood were over, but apparently, there were other plans. Apparently, David Russell (the director) was thinking about Carter last night. Seriously. There was, apparently, at some point, discussion of Carter amongst the people working on the movie. So much so, that they decided they wanted to use him in another scene, to provide comic relief. Seriously people, I am not making this up.

At 10:30 this morning, I got a call from Tim, a PA on the set. He asked if I was available to bring Carter over. I said that Jake could bring him, and he replied, "well, they want you." Huh? No, this would not be a re-do of the previous scene, but instead, this would be an entirely new scene from the film, and they thought they would like to have ME walking the dog down the street. They needed me immediately. What could I say?

I said yes. I grabbed some clothes and the dog, and Jake gave me a ride over. It was all hurry hurry hurry, and then...the waiting. Today's scene was a lot more involved (stunts and whatnot) and things got very delayed. Everyone seemed a lot more testy today, and there seemed to be some problems. I was taken to wardrobe two different times, and had to change into and out of the same costume three times. Insane. Finally, after several hours of sitting around, I was told that I was too young -- they basically wanted it to seem that the female dog walker was the wife of the previous dog walker (the priest who walked Carter yesterday) and I really wasn't going to cut it. But they still very much needed Carter

At that point, Jake took over, and he's over there now. I haven't heard from him yet, but I'm sure he'll fill us all in when the shooting is over. Apparently this is the last day to shoot at this particular location, so this should be our last film set report. We'll keep you posted about our next publicity tour.

And now for something completely different

Today was an unusual day here at 83 Durant. Some of you may know that recently, some movies have been filmed in Lowell. A while back, Ricky Gervais and a whole bunch of other actors we love (Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, Martin Star, Jeffrey Tambor) were in town to film The Invention of Lying. There was all kinds of craziness around town, and we saw the film trucks and lighting equipment at times. We talked about walking downtown and trying to get ourselves into a scene, but never did it. I did, however, go to the post-strike warehouse sale, where they sold all of the props and set dressings from the movie. Some of you may recall that I bought some pillows, a lamp, and a dress and a sweater. You may recall that I refer to this sweater as my "Tina Fey sweater" because I like to imagine that Fey wore it during the movie. Though I know it's far more likely that an extra wore it, still, it was a nice dream. Soon, we will get to watch the movie and see who (if anyone) is wearing the sweater. Also, it looks like it will be pretty funny.

But until now, aside from my Tina Fey sweater, the movie industry had sadly ignored the lovely residents of 83 Durant. Hard to believe, I know. You've seen the Flickr pictures and videos of Lucy and our dog. There's tons of potential there. Finally, it seems that we've been noticed.

A movie called The Fighter is currently being filmed in Lowell. There's a lot of info about the filming at this site. We knew it was going on, and that movie is about local boxing legend Mickey Ward (played by Mark Wahlberg) and his brother, also a boxer, Dickie Elklund (played by Christian Bale). But we didn't think much about it. Until today.

Yesterday, while we were walking by the reservoir, we noticed all kinds of signs and way too many cars, and lots of big trucks. We asked this young guy, who looked somehow official (he had a name badge on) what was going on, and he said "construction." Whatever. He was totally lying. We walked up and realized that they were filming right up the street. Cool! But we didn't stick around.

This morning, the same dude who told us it was "construction" looked at me and said, "hey, do you want to be in a movie with your dog?" Surely he was joking. He wasn't. He was talking a mile a minute to both me and to the people at the other end of the ear piece he was wearing. He asked me to get into his car with him and go to the set, and I said, uh, ok. Yes, I got in a car with a complete stranger who lied to me the day before, and who was now claiming that I could bring my dog and be in a movie. Hrm.

The guy is super excited. He pulls up at the top of the street where they're shooting (it's like two blocks from where he told me to get into the car) and insists to other dudes with similar name badges that Carter is THE dog. There is some back-and-forth among these guys (they're called, as I learned, PA's), who it seems, have some sort of bet going on the dogs that, from what I understand, involves $5 and a steak dinner. He gets the go-ahead, and tells me that he's taking me to wardrobe. Wardrobe! Seriously. Keep in mind, please, that I was out to walk the dog. I had not brushed my hair. I actually had not even brushed my teeth. I had no plans to be in a movie.

The wardrobe place was in a series of trailers set up in the parking lot of the local elementary school, the same elementary school, in fact, where we go to vote. Waiting for the wardrobe folks, I met another woman with a couple of dogs, and we were both looked over by someone I assume to be a costume/wardrobe person, who thought the other woman's outfit (tank top and shorts) was fine, but said that my capri pants and slides had to go. I was a bit mortified, until I realized that the reason was that the movie is set in 1990, so my clothes would mark me as way too fashion forward. I was asked to wear a short blue jean skirt and some blue cloth ballet flats. The other woman had to trade in her flip flops for an AMAZING pair of white vintage Reebok high-tops, the kind with laces at the bottom and velcro at the top. NICE. Then they drove us back to the set.

I should note that through all this, Carter was with me. He was amazing. He got a bit barky at a few of the other dogs, but he was great, hopping into and out of vans, and generally have a fine time being fawned over. Also, while hanging at the wardrobe place, I borrowed a PA's iphone to call Jake and let him know that I had not been kidnapped, but that I was going to be in a movie. He was surprised, to say the least.

Next, a bunch of us local folks -- maybe 8 or so people -- waited with our dogs at the top of the street where the filming was happening. At this point, the general sense was that somehow, they were going to use all of these dogs. That seemed pretty weird, but I have no idea how movies are made, and thought, well, maybe we each just parade down the street while they film, and whatever one of us gets into the scene gets in. That is not how movies are made, as I now know. In any case, there was a lot of excitement among the dogs and the dog owners. We saw a friend of ours who we walk dogs with, and she was trying to get me to take her dog, Ginger, with us. I would have, but Carter was getting to be a bit anxious, so I worried, but then a PA grabbed her and had Ginger join the gang. Hooray!

Finally, after much milling about (movies are a whole lot of "hurry up and wait") we were told to walk in a line down to the set, which was in a large house with a huge front porch. We walked down in a somewhat orderly fashion, about 8 people (I think) and 10 or so dogs (at least 2 women had 2 dogs each). We stood there, not really knowing what was going on, but sensing that something was up. I heard the word "Spaniel," then I saw the PAs looking upset and saying, "you mean all of them?" and then realized through various half-heard responses that in fact, only one dog was going to be in the movie, and all the rest would be sent home.

And more importantly, I realized that the one dog who was going to be in the movie was the spaniel. Carter.

O. M. G.

They sent all the rest of the dogs back up the street, and the PA's informed me that they didn't know there was only going to be one dog, and they all congratulated me, and then asked if I could stick around until about 3 or so. Many of you know that in fact, I had no business hanging out on a film set all day, and that by all rights, I should have been in front of this very computer, working on my book. But how often does a chance like this come up? I said yes, I could totally stay for the day. Then they asked whether Carter would walk with someone other than me, and if I was willing to let him walk with someone other than me, and basically, they said, the director has a friend he wants to feature as the dog walker, so would it be OK with me if I wasn't in the film, but my dog was? Yes. Totally fine. But could I please change out of my weird 1990s wardrobe? Sure....eventually. OK, let's go.

And immediately the star treatment began. Carter being the star. They actually called him "the talent." I kid you not. What does he need? Here's some water. He's so sweet.....and on and on and on. I have to say, everyone was so incredibly nice. I really couldn't believe it. There were something like 8 or 10 different PAs who would come by and ask if we needed anything, and make sure everything was fine. It was really interesting to be hanging around the set, watching SO many people working on every detail.

Next, we met the dog walker, a local priest who is a friend of the director, and then the priest and I were brought over to talk with David O. Russell, the director. He explained the movie and the scene to both of us, and talked about what we should do, and was really very nice. His attention was mostly focused on the priest, which is totally understandable, but he was very nice to Carter, and I learned that it was Russell himself who had picked out Carter from the line-up on the street. Wow.

I signed some papers saying I wouldn't disclose all the secret details of the movie, so I won't go into the details of the scene, but it involved Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Mark Wahlberg. So I sat and watched the three of them (most of the scene was Bale and Adams) do their scene over and over again, with the technical crew setting up all kinds of different angles and equipment and whatnot. It was amazing. Every so often, Carter was called upon to do his thing, and he did it very very well. He was incredibly well behaved. Occasionally, he had a hard time walking away from me, so they kept moving me to the opposite end of the set so that he would walk towards me.

I don't want to give anything away here, but at one point, Christian Bale (well, his character) NOTICES Carter and TALKS ABOUT HIM. In the movie. Or at least, in the filming of the movie, who knows what will happen once things are cut.

We worked on the scene until about 3:30, then there was a lunch break, which involved being shuttled back to the elementary school and eating a really very good meal in the gym. I was sitting with a bunch of guys who were there because their cars are being used in the movie. Wow. Everyone fussed over the Carter and offered him food, and was having a grand time of it.

Then we went back to the set to do a few more takes, and we were out of there around 5pm. It was a long, hot day of sitting around in the sun, waiting to be told to wait somewhere else. Carter had many admirers, and Amy Adams actually walked across the street to come over, say hi, and ask questions about Carter. She gave him some love and was really very very nice. The thing that struck me about all of the stars was how very SMALL and very normal they seemed. Bale has apparently lost a lot of weight for the role, but really, all of them, just seemed so much more normal and human-scale than we see on the screen or TV or tabloids or whatever. Also, they weren't all glammed up, since the movie is supposed to have these gritty characters from real-life Lowell. In fact, when the actors started rehearsing the scene on the porch, I actually thought (and actually said to someone else) "those must be the stand-ins for the actors" because these people did not look like famous people. I felt a bit silly when I realized that the weird skinny looking dude was not just some random stand-in, but was, in fact, Christian Bale. He was Batman. And now he looks like this.

Carter is actually going to be paid for his work, too. I had to fill out paperwork for him, so he'll be showing some bling once his check rolls in, I'm sure. We had a long, exhausting day, but it was incredibly exciting. I never could have imagined something like this happening, but there it is.

Special thanks to Jake and my Mom for taking care of Lucy and everything else so that I could go hang out all day.

83 Durant Mysteries, Continued

This post is part of an ongoing series exploring the mysteries of 83 Durant. You may remember previous posts, like WHHHHHHAAAT part 1, part 2, and part 3. Whenever we take on a project, we always uncover new mysteries about the house.

The recent work in the pink room has raised some questions. Readers, we'd love to hear from you -- explanations, scientific or humorous -- are always most welcome.

Without further delay, answer me these questions three:

Question 1:
What kind of plug is the one on the left?


Question 2 (same as 1, but different picture):
What kind of plug is the one on the left here? I think it looks like cable, but there's no actual cable coming out of it. There are two of these in this room.


Question 3:
Have we made a serious mistake in covering up the box that's photographed here?
This is a mystery box that was in the wall, a little bit below where the doorbell is attached to the wall. It seemed to have no wires in it. Why is it here/what does (did) it do, and now that it's covered by drywall, are we in trouble?


Bonus Question:
What's up with this door?


I know, trick question. There are many things wrong with this door. First, there's the pink accent, which is not our fault. Then there's the red accent on that top section, which is our fault, because we were trying out a color that we thought we might be able to just paint over the pink (no dice).

If you look at that door, you may notice that something besides the color is off-kilter. It's just not-quite-right that there are three rectangles -- it just seems like they're not spaced appropriately, right? Yeah, now that you mention it, it does look kind of off.

That's because this door apparently is not an original door for this spot. If you look at the bottom, you will see that this door has been made larger with an extra couple pieces of wood attached to make the bottom 4 inches or so. This door was originally meant for a doorway that was shorter. Also, it's pretty clear that it's not really supposed to be an exterior door. It's not nearly as thick or sturdy as the other exterior doors in the house. This has me wondering what happened to the original door.

That's all for today. Hope you're having a lovely weekend. It's hot and rainy here. Sigh.

Appliance Death-Watch: Stove

We've had some trouble with our stove. You may remember our troubles with the door (and the bungee-cord solution) or the time it stopped working, but Jake fixed it. Recently, it's been on the fritz a little more frequently. A couple of time the oven pilot light has gone out, and we had another incident like the previous one, where it seems that the sensor was dirty (but Jake was able to fix it again). All this has us thinking that perhaps we should get a new stove before this one kicks it and we're left with a raw turkey on Thanksgiving, or some other such ill-timed demise.

There are some truly awesome things about our stove. The first is that since it doesn't have an electric ignition, even if the power goes out, we can use the stove and oven. This is a nice feature. There is also a heater in the stove. We don't particularly need the heater, but apparently, this particular model of stove is very popular here in New England, especially for small apartments and beach cottages, where the stove can also serve as a heater for a small space. We've been told that we should sell it, since it will be in demand. If you know anyone in the market for a McGee, let us know!

Meanwhile, we're on the hunt for a new stove. We're also hoping that when we get it hooked up, we'll also get a real hood. The current one just blows the greasy/smokey air right back into the kitchen. The stove is up against a chimney, so we're hoping we can vent such a hood right out of the chimney. Currently, the chimney is only used to vent the stove, but, as we understand it, the new model stoves don't need an outside vent. We're still looking into this, but, again, for all our mechanically-inclined and general home-knowledge-inclined, we'd love to hear your advice on whether such a venting via the chimney is possible/safe.

The room formerly known as the Pink Room

You may recall that we live in a house that has a BRIGHT PINK room. You may also recall hearing me say that I saw the PINK ROOM in the photos of the house way before we bought it, before we had even seen the house, and I said "I can't live in a house with a pink room." We bought the house anyway, and I figured we'd change it immediately. But for numerous reasons, we had not gotten around to doing anything about the pink room. For one thing, it's right in the middle of the house, making it a bit of a hassle to take care of such a project. For another, the room is old horsehair plaster with wallpaper, and then paint over wallpaper, and then a wallpaper border over that. It was going to be a project. A big one. And today, that project began.

Here are a few before shots. I'm not putting a whole lot of them up here, since I think most of our readers are well-acquainted with the pink-ness in question. If you're not, take a gander at some of the older posts (like this one or this one) or at our flickr pages, where you're sure to see shots of the pinkness in action.




If you're wondering about the wallpaper that was under the hot pink you can check out a small patch here:


Last night we emptied the room of all its worldly possessions.


Every other room in our house is now over-stuffed, and things are a bit nuts, but the pink room was empty, and ready for the arrival (at 7 am today) of our plastering team.

We're very happy with the work Brian Daly and his two workers did for us today. He was recommended to us by our good friend Matt, who's quite an expert carpenter and house restoration expert. The coolest part of the job was the fact that two of the guys wore stilts to do the job.

Our ceilings are 10 feet high, so this was kind of necessary. Lucy was fascinated by the stilts. I think she would have preferred to stay home from daycare today to just watch them working.

Here's a mid-project shot:


The drywall (before it was covered with plaster) was this dark blue-gray color, and we actually liked the way it looked. We're thinking of a dark slate blue as a possible color for the room (but we really have no idea what we're going to do color-wise).

The last time we did a drywalling project was for Lucy's room, but back then, we actually demolished the plaster. That was an incredibly dirty and trash-producing job, and we swore then we would never do such a thing again. This time, we sensibly decided to just put the drywall right over the plaster, making it an easier job for us. It did make things a bit tricky though, since the wallboard had to go on top of the bottom molding. We could have removed the molding, but this too would have been quite a project, and quite possibly would have ruined some of the molding. We think it turned out pretty well.

We're especially pleased with the ceiling, which had a lot of cracks in the plaster and is now nice and smooth:

Here you can see some of our nice, sharp corners:


As you can see, there are still some PINK spots, as illustrated here on the medallion. We're hoping to be able to paint over them. The guys did a nice job of trimming the drywall around the medallion, and bringing the edge right up to it. A few pieces broke off, so the guys suggest that we spray paint it, since it's in pretty delicate shape.

The room is filled with dust and smells funny, but we're pleased with the job. We have to wait at least a week, and probably two, for the plaster to completely dry before we can paint it. So we have a pretty much empty room in the middle of the house, which Lucy is really enjoying.

Do you have a color you'd like to suggest for the room formerly known as the pink room? Do you have a new name we can call the pink room, besides "the room formerly known as the pink room"? We look forward to hearing from our devoted readers!

By the way, I wrote most of this post on Tuesday, but didn't have a chance to get it finished. So all the "todays" here refer to Tuesday, June 23rd, for those of you documenting and keeping track of such things.

A Visitor from the Past

This afternoon a stranger knocked on our door. She's the niece of the two ladies who once owned this house -- the Crowley sisters, Veronica and Madeline. We invited her in and she looked around the house, telling us all about what the place used to look like. Apparently the craft room/spare bedroom was once charcoal grey and red! The sliding glass door in the kitchen wasn't there, and there was in fact a door at the top of the basement stairs, and then another, smaller door that went outside to the back porch from the kitchen. The built-in cabinet in the dining room used to have glass doors (oh how I wish it still did!). It was pretty neat.

Garden Update 2009

Here's our little array of plants for this year. We kept it a bit smaller and are trying to focus on stuff that will keep coming back, hence, rhubarb!

Speaking of things that come back, last year, we planted some Jerusalem artichokes. We harvested them at the end of the season. When we dug up some of the garden to put in the patio, we discovered a ton of new Jerusalem artichokes...apparently they send out a lot of "volunteers" and it's likely we'll never be rid of them now. Anyone have any good recipes for Jerusalem Artichokes?

Since the backyard is a bit of a jungle, we decided that it made some sense to move the grill around to the front. Since it's hard for us to find much time to spend in the garden, we thought we'd give over some of our garden plot space to the grilling area. Jake put in a small patio area using some randomly shaped flagstones. It looks great and it's very convenient to the kitchen for grilling purposes!


We got a few tomato plants -- sunny yellow little ones, something called "Mr. Stripey," and "Sweet 100s"


Here's Carter, checking to make sure we've put everything in the right place. This is the herb patch.


We put in some oregano and some loveage (yup, that's really the name of a plant!). Last year's sage and tyme and chives came back -- they're actually pretty huge. Nice


When we put in this year's plants, we discovered that last year's strawberries had really taken over the plot (along with the mint!). We dug up a bunch of the strawberry plants and put them in this lovely strawberry pot. They are thriving in their new pot. YUM!


We did all this on Mothers' Day weekend. Everything is looking good so far. We're still trying to find a couple of tomatillo plants. We grew some last year and they did great, providing us with green salsa well into October. If you get lead on tomatillo plants in Lowell, let us know!

New Orleans Retrospective

Ahem.

It's been way too long since I've posted, so I thought I'd set about rectifying that situation. A month or so ago, I went to New Orleans to attend a conference. I'm just now getting around to sharing some of my photos from the trip.

I was struck by how completely different the architecture was from anything I've encountered elsewhere. For instance, the house where I stayed, with my kind and lovely friend Shannon, was a BRIGHT cheery yellow:
(yes, it matches her car)

Here's a fairly traditional scene:
Yes. It's really that bright.

I took a lot of photos of things I noticed on the streets. Here are a few:
Many of the downtown streets have these street markers imbedded in the concrete at the intersections.

Instead of filling this tree-root area in the sidewalk with gravel or bark mulch, it's filled with oyster shells.


I thought they looked like ears. Ew.

Here's some art-y graffiti:



And an art-y piece of metal in the sidewalk:


And some disturbing art:



OK, so this isn't a terrific shot, but I was stopped short while waking by this on the street. Look closely:


that is the H. W. Johns-Manville Co.'s building, which, apparently, specialized in ASBESTOS. Sign me up for an apartment in that building!

The crazy display below is made up of tiny filled macaroons of various flavors. This is in the window of a candy-maker and sweets shop called, appropriately, Sucre:


And yes, we did order a few macaroons and they were delicious. I had chocolate and orange, Shannon had chocolate and hazelnut (I think). Yum!

I was also struck by the VERY different flora in this neck of the woods.


I think it looks like that tree has hair and tusks. It might be a wooly mammoth in disguise.


Some lovely purple flowers. Everything was in bloom!

Below is my favorite shot. We saw some weird things in New Orleans. Among them was this man walking down the street in a top hat. Tamara, this one's for you:

{I was trying to be all discreet about taking his picture; we actually saw him close up and he looked a bit hobbit-ish. Strange.}

That's about it for today. New Orleans is very beautiful and quite unlike anyplace else I've ever been.