Fall has a silver lining

It would seem that summer is over for 2009 - the mornings and nights are starting to cool down, pumpkins are on sale everywhere, people are talking about football and fantasy football rather than baseball and I'm putting on pants when we leave the house on weekends. I realize how that sounds and that's why I said it like that.

But fall seems to have a silver lining - the fall TV season. Now, at brief moments of time, there is something to watch amongst the hundreds of channels of crap on cable TV. How I Met Your Mother started last week and has so far had some funny moments. This Friday, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is back on CartoonNetwork. It will be the first time that we get new episodes of The Clone Wars since Cablevision/Optimum started offering CartoonNetwork HD in our area. So far the re-runs of Clone Wars have all been the 4:3 broadcast stretched to 16:9, which I am hoping will not be the case for first run episodes.

Last Sunday one of my favorites started with a double episode: The Amazing Race. There are 3 teams that I like, and a couple of teams that I really don't like at the moment. Over time my likings and dislikings for teams will slightly change, but I generally don't get over the bad first impressions that teams make on me. The teams I like are Gary and Matt, a Father/Son team who I can't quite explain why I rank in my top 3 but do; Zev and Justin, 2 best friends (one of whom has Asperger's syndrome); and Flight Time and Big Easy, 2 members of the Harlem Globetrotters.

As long as the weather is OK for going pumpkin picking for Halloween I'm OK with the weather cooling down. Halloween stuff is everywhere at the moment, and has been for a few weeks. One house is already decorated near work with Halloween stuff in the yard. One place we went last weekend actually had Christmas stuff out already (my Dad would boycott the place).

Yeah, fall is here, the leaves will soon be changing, but I wouldn't say no to a warm Saturday or Sunday if one got thrown our way!

Great way to start the day

This morning I (we) started the day with left over Mexican food. I like Mexican food. It was leftover burrito stuff again, but last night I also had some chicken called Pollo Juarez. It is good - slightly spicy molé verdé on chicken. For the molé they combine tomatillos, pumpkin seeds, nuts and jalapenos. Tastes good.

Block Island, Rhode Island

Block Island, is off the coast of, and part of, Rhode Island. It's also kind of off the coast of New York (Long Island); I included the above map to demonstrate where it is.

The reason for our trip was twofold: a wedding and a weekend away. I won't say much about the wedding, other than:

- it was on the beach and an hour late, so sunburn was common, and

- it is not comfortable to be at a wedding where it seems the bride and groom are trying to conceive their third child during their first dance.

As for the weekend away part, that bit was good.

Block Island is pretty large, but not so large that you would call it a big island. Above is the view

from one of the breakwaters that forms the harbor where the ferries from the mainland come in. Left is the on the main street. The buildings you see in the shot make up the main street, and pretty much entire "downtown" section of New Shoreham, the islands main town. There is one street back from that main street, which is where we stayed, and that's about it.

While you can bring cars from the mainland a lot of people get around on bikes or "mopeds". I say "mopeds" because I always imagined mopeds as being a bike with some kind of additional motor, where as mopeds on the island were scooters/Vespa style vehicles which were expensive to rent ($40 for 1 hour plus $2 for gas).

We had great weather while we were there - it was cold during the morning on Saturday, the wind was also adding to the coolness, but it warmed up in the afternoon. Cloudless nights and very little in the way of people meant that stars were quite visible which was also cool.

Places of note/highlights for me were:

- Mohegan Bluffs - cool beach at the bottom of some bluffs at the south of the island. It was the site of a battle between the native native Americans and some invading Mohegan native Americans. The Mohegans were forced back and fell off the cliff to their deaths.

- Southeast Light - the lighthouse at the south of the island was built in the 1800s, but was moved in the 1990s because erosion was threatening the spot that the lighthouse stood on.

- Crescent Beach - a stretch of beaches that was long and reminded me of beaches in Australia.

To wrap up here is a photo of me and my rented bike.

Edit: Liz took the Mohegan Bluffs photo. The map is from Wikipedia.

Salad for lunch...

...WITH BACON!!!

Bacon is great in salad. The salad also had homemade ranch-style dressing on it. I like the way that stray bits of bacon end up working their way to the bottom to be finished off at the end with the dressing that has meandered its way through.

Who am I kidding? I deliberately leave as much bacon until the end as I can.

Liberty/Legacy

I saw a new Legacy (I still call them Libertys) on the road the other day. I've actually seen it a few times - the person who drives it works or goes shopping near where we live. I don't like it so much; I'm just not impressed by it. I thought that the model my Dad had was better, but that could be bias, personal preference or just being used to what it looks like talking. Who knows, over time I may come to get used to it, but we'll see.

I'm not sure if they're on the road or in show rooms over there yet... you can see what they look like on the Subaru Australia website or the Subaru USA website. Or the Mo' Sho' is in a couple of weeks, so people may spot one there.

I'll be making a post soon about last weekend. We spent the weekend on Block Island, which is part of Rhode Island. Going to Rhode Island meant that I have now been to every state in New England. I spent very little time in New Hampshire (just enough time to eat Wendy's and buy some water) but it still counts!

Hawk Watch

We went this afternoon to the Hawk Watch at Audubon. At the moment they are counting the hawks migrating south for the winter (damn, winter is coming again), and the lawn at Audubon Greenwich is a really good vantage point for the count.

We saw a lot of birds. Today, well by the time we left, they had spotted over 255 Broad-Winged Hawks, several Osprey, a couple of Kestrels, a Merlin (we were there when it flew over, it was pretty low, and it was cool as I hadn't seen a Merlin before). We also saw a couple of Bald Eagles, and also a very near flying Golden Eagle. The Golden Eagle was cool - it was enormous. There was a group of around 50 Broad-Wingeds kettling at one stage (all circling around in the air) which was cool to see. Sometimes thousands of birds will be in flocks that do it. That will probably happen tomorrow... ;)

Cricket in Stamford?!?!

We were driving home today and we drove past one of the local playing fields. People were playing cricket. Organized cricket, with uniforms and everything. They weren't playing in whites, they were full on one-day style uniforms. Gonna have to research it now!!

Liz got a haircut

Liz and I were on the phone with Mum and Dad last night and Liz told them that she had had a haircut, and that she had gotten it cut short. Mum's response of "What?!" prompted the reply of "It's still long, but it's the shortest I have ever had it." Liz told my parents that I would post some photos on my blog so that they could see what length it was. They are below, along with photos of how her hair looked in Australia for reference/comparison. Australia/2007 is on the left, USA/2009 is on the right in all photos ;)

Figure 1: Normal hair. By normal, I mean not pulled back.

Figure 2: Pulled back hair.

Figure 3: Hair while posing in front of cake.

Looking at these photos, I'm beginning to wonder if they are processed when they are uploaded, because they certainly aren't as clear as they look before uploading... might have to check that out and if it turns out to be the case sort out another way to upload photos to the blog...