Omnibus post

John came out of the shower this morning, as I was loading 80-odd images from the digital camera onto the MacBook, and asked if I was preparing for an omnibus post. I'll try to keep this succinct, but I recognize it has been a while.

I fueled up this morning with a luxe breakfast. Want the last bite?



It's an English muffin done French toast-style, with some boiled blueberries (not uniformly sweet enough for snacking) on top. Slobber. I love a warm breakfast, even in summer.

So, we were in Boston for a few days. We had such a great time! The weather was lovely, except for one afternoon, but we planned around it. We got in mid-day Saturday and headed to the North End for a ridiculous lunch at Neptune Oyster. So good. I had my first raw oysters.



I almost didn't, because my Dad had a bad (coma-inducing) oyster experience years ago and my Mom has always warned me off them. Oh, they were good. The one on the left was the ubiquitous Kumamoto, the other (I couldn't resist!) a Bee's River. I preferred the thinner, salty Bee's River (the Kumamoto was too gooey and sweet for my taste) and the server said this makes me a true oyster person. John and I shared a fried-oyster appetizer and he had clam chowder, then we each had a lobster roll on brioche. We waddled along the Freedom trail to work off some of our excess.

Sunday was our trip to Salem. You don't need to see Salem, do you? I didn't take any photos there, since the main reason for going was to see the Joseph Cornell exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum, and no photography was allowed. It was a great show in a gorgeous setting, though John and I both felt like we had reached a saturation point by the end of it. Of course, it left me with second thoughts about my recent destash, but I just buried them under the bulk of another lobster roll.

Monday we had a rainy day to kill, and we did it at the New England Aquarium. We got there just in time for the fur seal feeding.



Fur seals are not as cute as sea lions. Can you see the pointy weasel-like nose? This is Cordova, who vocalizes like a drunken frat boy hurling in an alley. According to the trainer, they don't all make this kind of noise. I can only tell you, it was genuinely freaky, and they should post warning signs.

Back inside, we admired the clever sprinkler system set up to wash penguin poo off the rocks. We cooed over the Rockhoppers and oohed and aahed over the Little Blues, then turned a corner to find some African penguins doing the nasty!



Monday night John finally made it to the Promised Land and we had great seats to watch the Red Sox beat the Devil Rays at Fenway. I got my cotton candy and all was right with the world.

Tuesday we had time to run up to Harvard to see the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, aka the glass flowers. I could have taken pictures, but I don't think they would have done justice to the real things. Without a doubt, my favorites were the models of magnified cross-sections of stems and ovaries. These don't seem as fragile as the full-scale specimen models, and they highlight the symmetries and patterns hidden in the plant structures.

Since we've been home, I've been finishing up some WIPs that escaped the destash and moving the real trash down to the basement. Five moving boxes of art supplies still huddle on the living room side of the pass-through, and John gave them a contemptuous look when he got home late last night. But it's getting there.