We Know Stuff When We Pay Attention To Stuff

Another glorious night of trivia at Sip This! So glorious because I put together a spectacular team (which, might I remind you, is my job--to put the team together), and this team did not come in last!

The topic: Marvel, mostly movies but some comic books

The plan: Read wikipedia daily to learn everything there is to know about Marvel. Look on YouTube to learn about Marvel (and then stop watching because it's just way too complicated). Read IMDB for everything about all Marvel movies. Look up all of Stan Lee's cameos. Go see Doctor Strange. Write as many words on the answer board as possible so that one word might be the right answer.

After a month and maybe twenty pages of notes, I was prepared! Eddie was prepared because he has the ability to watch a movie and remember a lot of stuff about it simply by watching it.

Sidenote: When I watch a movie, I don't know any of the characters' names, and I pretty much forget almost everything it was about except whether or not I enjoyed it. I need to start eating peanuts or whatever it is that makes your memory better.

Also on the team were D and F. D doesn't pay attention to pop culture anything, so this was not her forte. F said he knew some stuff. Some stuff is better than no stuff, so our team was solid!

When Eddie and I walked into Sip This, he told me we'd already lost. He saw someone wearing a Captain America jacket in the back. Maybe it's just a fashion choice. Maybe he doesn't even know it's Captain America. Plus, Captain America is on our side because that's the movie we watched on our honeymoon when the weather took a turn towards torrential downpours, so, you know, that matters.

Trivia started with a question that may as well have been in Japanese because I didn't understand anything it was asking. Then F said, It's Guardians of the Galaxy. I was like, oh, yeah, the one movie I decided not to pay attention to. And so the next two questions were also foreign because they were about the same movie.

Then it took a turn. There was a question and I knew I knew the answer. I wrote it down. We got it right. A point! We got a point!

And on it went. We got a few right in a row. Then we made up a really good answer for a bonus question: What does Jarvis stand for? I could tell you that Jarvis was in the Royal Air Force, but I couldn't tell you what it stood for, so I came up with Just for the J. And then we all added in words. Turns out, we got pretty close, as noted the trivia host. No points for close.

In an attempt to earn points on wrong answers, I took to waving my hand in front of the answers like one of Barker's Beauties. I also waved around the whole board, to which the host replied, That's not working but if you flip it around and do tricks, then maybe. I did not flip the board around for fear it would hit someone in the head.

I also tried smiling really hard and keeping the wrong answer up, which simply led to the host shaking his head "no."

Eddie completed his self-imposed task of getting one answer right. He knew the thingie the Hulk spoke to was called Blue. Then he exceeded expectations during the written portion.

Yes, there was a written portion! They gave us the super hero name and we had to fill in the real name and then the actor name. For any actor I didn't know, I wrote Zach Effron because, you know, why not. Also, I now know his name is spelled Zac Efron, so even that was wrong. There were two or three heroes we'd never even heard of. For those, I made up alliterative names like Bill Bobins and Ned Nevers because most real people names of superheros are alliterative i.e. Peter Parker and Wade Wilson (Spider-man and Deadpool).

The last round was about the comic books, and the final question was about the sinister six, and I knew I had the answer written down on one of my many pages of notes, and I knew that Doc Ock was one of them. So we wrote Doc Ock and then a bunch of other names that may or may not have been actual names of comic book characters.

When all the points were tallied, we came in fourth out of six. Actually, we tied, which according to the host meant there was no last place because no one came in sixth. Sure, I'll go with that. We got 22 points. The winning team got 77. Hooray for mediocrity!

The best part about throwing myself fully into the Marvel world was that it's going to be really helpful for my next poetry collection. The one coming out in March is Liberating The Astronauts, which leans towards sci-fi and science. The one I'm planning after is moving towards superheroes, at least in part. Geekery and poetry and trivia--it all falls into place.

Finally, whenever I start to put a team together, I get a lot of suggestions for trivia in the future, like, I'll be on the team if they have this kind of trivia. So, here are the suggestions even though I have no control over trivia topics:

1. Chinese History
2. History in general
3. War history
4. Cars, as in the automobiles, not the movie
5. Another Seinfeld
6. Another Disney
7. The Big Bang Theory
8. Music
9. Indiana Jones

My only suggestion is me winning.

In Which Putting The Team Together Was The Only Thing I Knew

Star Wars trivia is as intimidating as it sounds. You may think you know Star Wars until you meet those who really do know Star Wars. Then you can be like me and know really nothing about Star Wars and still enter into Star Wars trivia, and then really hope to win.

My officemates-turned-trivia-team joined together once again to compete. I was helpful in that I wanted to win. I also nodded a lot to support the team. I knew not one answer.

In fact, this is what happened right before heading to trivia:

I also was very supportive when my teammates challenged certain answers. Supportive here means helping to catch the attention of the hosts and then again nodding feverishly at their claims. I'm very good at, "Yes, what they said!"

When people challenge, it can get heated. Teams start countering as to why the challenge does not make sense. The hosts cringe a little inside. The thing about my team is that we all teach for a living. We are so used to a room full of people sending dagger eyes our way that challenging is really no biggie. We lost the challenges for the most part. I turned to my teammates, and seeing their faces, I realized that it was quite possible they were heading home to watch hours of Star Wars just to make sure the right answers were really right.

The tea I had was delicious. We came in not last. So, you know, mission accomplished. All good things happen at Sip This trivia night.

Wood

Anniversary Weekend means...

Wearing my harlot wedding shoes in 100% humidity

Giving each other cards and wood-related items for our wood anniversary (he got me a mug that has a photo of wood on it and I gave him a toothpick)

Visiting Tanglewood, which is now overgrown and even worse in humid weather

Heading to Plan B Burger in Stamford for what Eddie calls the best burger he’s ever eaten in his life

Back to CT

On the road, not Kerouac style

Excited to order

Free instead of bread

My turkey burger

Heaven is a double cheese burger and fries

Or a yummy side salad

 

Stopping in to Mackenzies a few minutes away for lava cake

Coming home to watch The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum.

Waking up and watching The Bourne Legacy, realizing too late that this was not necessary to watch when following the story line of Jason Bourne, and that this movie wasn’t as good as the others.

Going to the movies to watch Jason Bourne.

This seat is slightly broken but the movie was fantastic.

Our mini honeymoon after our wedding day was all about seeing Captain America. On our five year anniversary, we went with Jason Bourne. You'd think we were a couple of covert super spies or something.

Baby Supernova and Bud X 

Sabbaticalling: Weekly Roundup #19

As the end fast approaches, my sabbaticalling has revved up in an attempt to squeeze out every final moment of non-teaching time. My new focus on astro-stuff propelled me forward into all kinds of progress.

Reading-wise, I finished reading a poetry collection and read some works in a few journals I got in the mail. Sometimes when I submit to a contest, I pay the fee so that I also get a subscription. That's really the only kind of payment-to-submit I'm comfortable with. I now have two journals sitting in my living room that I can read through and choose to keep or give away when I'm finished. Also, and I think I've never mentioned this before, I read through online journals as part of my submission process. Whenever I submit to a new journal, I read it first. That's why maybe two submissions can take hours. So I read lots of new and different journals.

Which means I submitted to journals this week. I also found some new paying journals to add to my list of to-submit, and I updated my submission/acceptance/rejection tracking. I had a few poems accepted recently, which lead to the task of withdrawing from other journals.

I wrote a lot. I revised a lot. I tore apart the Astronaut collection. The creatures and critters are on the backburner for now. I workshopped with my artist friend, and that helped lead me to saying what I kind of already knew--the creatures and critters collection is not going to work as a traditional poetry collection, so as I write and revise those poems, I have to think about how I'm going to present them as a whole. So while that simmers, space is the place. The bulk of my writing this week was spent over the course of five days writing and revising a giant erasure poem based on Solaris. Well, it started out as a strict erasure poem, but now, it's kind of erasure and then reorganized. Perhaps now it's a found poem. I don't know. Eddie read it and said it's a poem about space, so that's a good start. It's recognizable as both.

Additionally, I went back and forth with my online poetry feedback group. We have a second Sunday of the month deadline for sending feedback and submitting a new poem, but that sometimes doesn't go as planned, mostly because realizing it's the second Sunday usually happens as a surprise. I don't know why it's surprising. We all know how to use a calendar.

I watched Home as part of my space exploration. It's an animated movie. For children. I love sabbaticalling.

I listened to two literary podcasts that I recently found. One is The Other Stories, which scores short stories and then offers an author interview. The other is Golden Walkman Magazine. I submitted to it and was accepted, and I'm catching up with the older issues now.

My getting out of the house came in the form of hosting a Poets in Nassau reading at Turn of the Corkscrew in RVC. Our Writers Raise A Glass series is going strong with some cross-genre features and an open mic that asks its participants to read one work by someone else along with their own work. I'm looking forward to finishing out the year hosting there. Then we'll see where I land after being back on the circuit as a host.

A touch of work came home to me this week as the 2016 issue of The Nassau Review arrived in the mail. I'm sabbaticalling not only from teaching but from all things working, which includes serving as Editor in Chief for the review. I left the task of getting it from layout to proofread to printer to the fiction editor, who is also my office mate and part-time trivia team member. And it's amazing. It made my heart sing. It did not make me want to return to work, but it did make me want to return to my office to hang out. That's a step in the right direction I suppose.

I have to go back. Not until September to teach, but I'll go back in August to prepare to teach and catch up on committee work and all things professorial.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The semester ends on Monday. Because that's when semesters should end--on the first day of the week. I think my sabbatical application goes through May, and I plan to keep on doing the kind of work I've been doing well into August. However, technically, a sabbatical is a break from the day to day task of being a college professor. That means, technically, my sabbatical ends on Monday, too. I might have a serious case of the Mondays when this weekend is over.

Sabbaticalling: Weekly Roundup #15

National Poetry Month has kept me busy, especially this past week. 

It all started with an afternoon poetry reading on Sunday. My workshop friend gave her final public musical performance, so I went along to listen. There were some main featured poets who read and also an open mic. There was also an interpretive dance to "Eye of the Tiger." Whole song. Start to finish. Yep, that happened. It was pretty amazing.

Monday night I hosted the Poets In Nassau reading Writers Raise A Glass at Turn of the Corkscrew. It's usually a cross-genre reading, but since April is poetry month, I slotted five poets and had an open mic. I asked all the poets and open mic readers to read at least one poem by someone else. I loved how it went, so I'm making that a thing for open mic moving forward. Everyone has to read a little something by someone else. We get to see other people's reading  habits. I've been posted Suggested Poems For Today on the Poets In Nassau group page on FB, and I'm going to keep doing it because I like it and others seem to like it, too.

Wednesday morning was workshop day where I gushed to my friend about her performance. We then did some poetry workshopping, which led me to revise a bunch of poems, and write some more. Then that night, I participated in a Beat Voices reading. I read a poem by Diane DiPrima and a poem by Anne Waldman. Then I read two of my own "beat" poems that I wrote probably sixteen years ago when I thought I was beat. They were okay. They weren't bad, but they weren't great. Still, that's the only beat stuff I have, so it worked. I found out at that reading that the music stand I'd donated to Sip This is kinda broken. Actually, thinking about it now, it might not have been the stand I donated. Perhaps someone took the one I donated and replaced it with this one because this one was wobbly and moved on its own. Whatever the case, it was a fun night of Beatific poetry, even though the host's camera died. I took moody pics, though, and shared with him to commemorate the event.

Moody selfie. So beat.

 Thursday I found myself and Eddie at Tribeca Film Festival. Okay, this has nothing to do with poetry month, but April is also TFF month. We went to see a group of shorts they call New York Then, which included his cousin's film Mulberry. I enjoyed all of them for the most part. The thing I miss most about going to TFF every year and seeing five films is being inspired. The buzz around the festival motivates me to write. Coming in closely at second of all the things I miss is the low-price tickets. They aren't so cheap anymore, which is why I haven't been going.

The event-going ended on Saturday where I participated on a panel for Reading Poetry Aloud. There were three of us on the panel. There were three people in the audience. So we wound up having an informal chat about readings and hosting and how to navigate the local scene and how groups can support each other. I got an awesome sticky-note pad for my participation, and given that I love office supplies, I was elated. Eddie also loves office supplies, but this is mine, all mine.

In the interim of going out, I did some necessary staying-in work. I finished reading a non-fiction essay collection, and began both a novel and a poetry collection. Then I read through some old and new selections in  Flapperhouse, Electric Literature, The Toast, Booth, Okey-Panky, McSweeney's and Queen Mob's Tea House. I listened to one more episode This Podcast Will Change Your Life, and then decided it's not quite what I want to listen to. The early episodes are difficult to hear, and I'm not sure if the quality gets better, but I don't want to be challenged to listen to something, especially when I'm driving, which is when I do most of my listening. I also listened to Catapult and PoemTalk, both of which had new episodes.

The most blogging I did was writing this. Instead, I worked more on my website, which is now fully functional. Save the blogging. Obviously, I'm still here to blog. Giving it a few more weeks. Or months. Change is bad!

I wrote a lot this week. I usually write during readings. It's not rude. I encourage everyone to do it. I revised a lot, too. Then I exchanged feedback with my online poetry workshop. That led to some submitting, both my full manuscript and individual poems.

On the business side, I updated my submission tracking sheets and my email list. I continued to plan a few readings and got myself invited to another reading someone else runs.

All this activity means I'm killin' it sabbatical-wise. I'm also very tired, but it's the good kind of tire. It's the poetic kind of tired. It's the freelance writer kind of tired. Plus with all this running around, Project Pants Fit should see some benefits. I'm using today to unwind a bit, maybe read a little, because this upcoming week is just as eventful. I figure I'll be going out a lot until the end of April when we poets all get to take a collective breath.

Who Knows Harry Potter?

I don't know Harry Potter. Trivia this month was all about Harry Potter, and I haven't read or seen a movie in more than a few years. I did what I do best concerning all kinds of trivia: I put the team together. This month's team was SD and B, my officemates. We didn't do so hot during movie trivia, but in not coming in last, we had a glimmer of hope here. Also, SD has listened to the books several times during long car rides, so this was all her wheelhouse.

The night before trivia, I went onto Goodreads and took all the Harry Potter quizzes I could find. I earned 2 out of 10 and 7 out of 20. Things were not looking too swell for me, so I did what any teacher nerd would do: I took notes. Then, because I'm really a teacher nerd, I made a study guide from my notes.

I went to trivia early the next night to get in some studying time. B was already there, studying from her own notes that she took while re-watching the movies. That meant SD had books covered, B had movies, and I had random notes that I couldn't remember. Sweet. SD showed up soon after and we were all ready, really psyched about our chances. Until two teams walked in dressed in Harry Potter attire. Then I pointed out that the rest of the teams were quite a bit younger than we are, meaning they probably had more Harry Potter in their lives during more impressionable times. As trivia began and we were called upon to show our answers rather quickly, I suggested that perhaps our team should get more time because we were older, and therefore, we have more stuff in our brains to sift through to get to the answer. That did not happen mostly because I didn't suggest it to anyone other than my teammates, who by the way concurred.

There was a written portion, again, and something about being able to write answers down for a lot of questions all at once speaks to me more than answering one at a time. Not that I knew any of the answers. I tried, though, by doing things like pointing at a quote and saying things like, That sounds like something Dumbledore would say. See? Helpful.

There were two questions that related directly to things I had written down and discussed with my team right before starting. So all that study guide making had come in handy for two solid points.

And in the end, we did not come in second to last. We did not come in last. We tied for 6th place. 6th! Things are looking up.

The Billiard Room!

Another round of trivia at Sip This has convinced me of one thing: I am really good at not coming in last. Trivia night consisted of movie trivia that we did not know, we being me and two of my office mates B and SD. I'd attempted to also get EA to join, but she was teaching a night class. Upon hearing that said class is Film & Lit, I'd attempted to get her to bring her class as a sort of field trip. She wisely declined.

Right before starting the night, I told B and SD, that the first question was usually something really simple. And then came this: what was the profession of the character Jason Segal plays in Pineapple Express?

And so began a very slow crawl to not-last-ness. Without even a glint of hope of winning, we scrappled to keep afloat as best we could. We were really good at envisioning actors and films in our heads without being able to name them. This does not work in trivia.

There was a written portion. We are teachers. We can work our way around a quiz, right? Wrong! Not even in written form could we get all the answers. We did get some, though. And some is more than none.

Most appallingly, B found out that neither SD nor I have read To Kill A Mockingbird. She found this out when writing the answer Atticus Finch and double checking with us that she was spelling it correctly. I was like, I don't know--I haven't read it. She gasped out loud and I responded with, I know, it's terrible. I mean, for an average person, it's not that terrible, but I teach literature at the college level. I should have read this book by now. I keenly distracted her from this distressful news by asking if she'd read Go Set a Watchman (she has not).

In the end, the team that won the past three trivia nights did not win, and there was a tie between two teams. The tie breaker was to list the Best Picture Oscar winners for the past five years. The team next to us got them all right and won the night. Proof that we did not cheat in any way. Because we're teachers and we aren't allowed to.

My own stellar moment came with the question: In what room was the maid murdered in Clue? I can't remember who killed poor Yvette, but I surely knew without hesitation that she was strangled in the billiard room. I spelled it right and everything. Spelling did not earn us any bonus points, nor should it considering, again, we are teachers of English and should know such things.

Meaning we should know about literature, like Harry Potter literature, and SD has listened to Harry Potter lots of times. So, folks, I need two more Harry Potter people. I'm putting together a crack trivia team....

Morgan, Hemingway, and Me

The Morgan Library stands in midtown in NYC, a few blocks from Penn Station, which makes it one of the easiest museums to visit. Why I've never been there before remains a mystery wrapped in stupidity tinged with laziness. Hemingway's A Moveable Feast had me mesmerized as much as McLain's The Paris Wife had, only this time, it was Hemingway's own voice, and it was non-fiction. Then I came across the current exhibit at the Morgan Library -- Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars.

Serendipitous! I had to go! Of course, I found out about it two days before it was to close. I was free on a Friday. The Morgan has free admission on Friday nights from 7 to 9. Serendipitous again! I love free! I love libraries! I love Hemingway!

The Morgan Library's midtown location means a lovely evening walk to Madison. In my head, I repeated 1, 2, 3, Little Piggies Make 5 to make sure I knew how many more blocks to go.

Sidenote: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Lexington, Park, Madison, 5th. Mind blown? I thought so.

No stranger to overheating after a brisk walk in a winter coat, I arrived at the Morgan quite warm. The winter evening was not a typical NYC winter evening. The temperature sat around a balmy 39 at sunset. Inside the museum, you have to check your coat or wear it. I opted to check it because the building generated its own balminess at what felt like a mild 807. I stripped off my scarf, gloves, and coat and stood on line to wait. Then a museum official person came over to me and two people behind me to take us up the stairs and around a corner to a second coat check. So there's your tip of the day--go to the second coat check.

Fancy room across from the second coat check

Of course, once I found the exhibit, there were people walking around holding their coats. The coat check is free. Follow the instructions! Some were following instructions, wearing their coats. These people also generated a quite unpleasant stench. Again, the thermometer read, I'm estimating, 807, so they dealt with that while wearing winter coats.

I found myself sweating at first, too, because, well, I'm prone to sweating, but also because my feet were all cozy in new winter boots that are probably the warmest boots I've ever owned.

Flashback to like two weeks ago, I'm meeting S in the city to see Sisters (incredibly funny movie!). As I'm walking to the theatre, I hear behind me some guy say, Eskimo boots! Eskimo boots! He didn't so much say it as exclaim it. I looked around. Then I looked down. Oh. I was Eskimo Boots. It was the first time I was wearing them, so it was the first time I noticed how brightly white they were. The woman he was with agreed with him: Eskimo boots! Yes, Eskimo boots! Sometimes I acknowledge this kind of thing. This time, I did not because they weren't actually talking to me. They were talking to each other, and then they were off ahead of me, crossing against the light, and then hollering things about other people they clearly did not know. Anyway, I suppose what also made them Eskimo boots that our lovely couple could not know was that they were really super warm, and I'd arrived at the theatre practically doing a strip tease.

So while oohing and ahhing at the first set of journals and letters of Hemingway and his friends, I focused on not passing out. Lots of crowding and bunching happened at first, but then people found their own groove of looking and reading, so it thinned out, and finally cooled down.

We were not allowed to take pictures. I took pictures. I did not get caught taking pictures. I'm guessing two reasons we could not take pictures. Either everything was copyrighted or they wanted everyone to buy the $35 book from the museum shop. Thank you no thank you. I'll take my on the sly blurry pics any day over that. I also spent much time scribbling down interesting tidbits from the letters, the pictures, and the explanations. Because I'm not an asshole, I'm not going to post pics from inside the exhibit here. In fact, I feel so bad about it that I'm deleting them right now. (No, I'm not).

I had about fifteen minutes left after seeing the exhibit before the museum closed, so I went to see some of the permanent rooms. The rotunda, the study, and the huge rooms of books are pretty and awesome and pretty awesome.

Gutenberg Bible

Phyllis Wheatley, the first published African-American poet

I checked out the museum store to see what Hemingway books they had. They seemed to have them all plus the aforementioned exhibit book of extraordinary cost. They also had this:

Because Hemingway lived in Paris and he drank a lot

Then it was time to go.  I allowed myself one corny moment on my way out.

The next time I go to the Morgan Library, Andy Warhol will be there. Can't friggin wait!

Golden Globes For The Win

Every year, we bet nickels with S, R, and whomever else might join in to watch the Golden Globes. I always lose. Eddie studies the categories and then loses. This year, Eddie didn't study, and I still lost. But Eddie won. So after a fun night in a new place with yummy food (Southpaw Sweets salted caramel cookies and buttercrunch matzah--seriously yummy food) and great friends, S capped off the night with this surprise:

It's a trophy, y'all.

Eddie asked if he could put his name on it. We decided, yes, that's a fun idea. The next day, S texted me that he can write Eddie 2016 and then next year we'll write the next winner. So I was like, you mean he needs to leave room for other winners.

We began the next morning with Eddie parading around the house with his winning ballot. For someone who does not watch much TV or many movies, he sure loves the Golden Globes. Now.

Fox Free Preview With Even More Free

Do I look suspicious?

I won free passes from Fresh 102.7 to go to the FOX Fall Preview at AMC in NYC.  I'd already had plans with my officemate to go to dinner, so we had salads in Bryant Park first.  I'd arrived at the park a bit early, so I sat by the carousel because I liked the music. I felt like I was kind of in Paris, and I'm in the middle of reading The Paris Wife, which is amazing, so it was as if I was in the book.

I was keeping to myself, reading my book, sipping my free Dunkin Donuts iced coffee (this DD gift card I have is lasting forever!), and listening to the carousel music.  Usually I'm one to avoid where kids go to scream, but no children were screaming.  It was a perfect evening to wait in the park.

And then came along imperfection.  Some guy came over and pointed to the empty chair on the other side of my table, asking, Can I sit here? I do not feel like talking to people, I want to be anti social, and you seem to be quiet and reading, and I don't want to deal with anyone right now.

Then he did a shaking shuddery motion as if to shake off the thought of talking.  I glanced up and said a quick, Sure no problem, and went back to my book.

A quick search on Bing will offer the definition of anti-social through the Oxford English Dictionary as "not sociable" and "not wanting the company of others."  This is what I understood this dude to mean when he said he didn't want to talk to anyone.

Apparently, he either forgot he wanted to be anti-social or he doesn't know how to look up words in a dictionary because after a few moments of silence, he piped up, Are you in the FDNY? You look suspicious like you could be.

Now I've been accused of being lots of things--usually by irate students--but a police officer is not one of them.  So I responded, Me? No, I am not.  I sipped my coffee, barely looking up.

Mr. I Don't Know What Anti-Social Means then replied that he'd been in a park and met a woman who looked like a tourist who was actually an undercover cop.  He said he never would have thought it because her cover was so good.  Then he indicated my sunglasses and large book and repeated that I looked like I was undercover NYPD.

Apparently, Mr. I Don't Know What Anti-Social Means frequents parks and asks strangers if they are undercover.

For the record, I wear sunglasses because the sun is bright.  I wear big sunglasses because I can't get over the fashion trend of wearing sunglasses the size of my head.  The bigger the better, really.  And I read books because I like books.  I didn't explain this to him, though.  I simply responded, Nope, I'm just reading my book, waiting for my friend.

The conversation ended there with him nodding and agreeing to accept the fact that I was not undercover NYPD (though I could have been a Russian spy or something! Maybe he asked the wrong question! But I'm not a Russian spy.  I have been asked if I'm Russian before, however.  See how it all comes around?)
A few minutes later, he once again spoke up, but this time it was more of his being a detective, saying, Here's your friend now!  Maybe he was relieved that I actually was waiting for a friend and not simply blowing him off.  SD appeared from behind me smiling, and I greeted her saying, He thought I was in the NYPD.  She laughed and we walked away, not really knowing where we were going except for away from him.

After walking a loop to check out the food stands, one of which had a delightful selection of waffles, we settled on salads from Pax and eating al fresco.  And then it was time for the previews.

Only no one knew where we should check in.  Neither of the tables set up in the theater's lobby was for FOX.  I asked someone at the box office, and they told me to go up to Customer Service.  I asked Customer Service and they told me to go up to the theatre where the preview would be.  Then after waiting around a few minutes, someone told us to go outside because there was a line.

 When we went outside, we saw a line that was totally not there before.  We waited on this line for about 45 minutes and I didn't have a ticket like everyone else.  When we got to the front of the line where the guy told us to have our tickets out, I explained I had no ticket.  He said, Did you win passes?  I said yes, and he said to go into the lobby.

There in the lobby, where I'd first gone, was a table set up with FOX stuff, and the woman who had told us to go outside on the line was at the table, checking IDs.  So really, we were back where we started.

Really, it didn't matter because we got in before they had to turn people away (they always give away more tickets than seats to ensure that the theatre fills).  They also gave us each a free small popcorn and a free small soda.  SD was like, I'm glad we didn't have waffles for dinner, and I concurred because once we got into the theatre, they also gave us ice cream. So let's recap so far: FREE tickets, FREE popcorn, FREE soda, and FREE ice cream.

Then when we found our seats, we saw that we had swag waiting for us.  A tote bag for Scream Queens, a t-shirt for The Grinder that has Rob Lowe's head on it, and a hat for Grandfathered.  All that for FREE.

The staff encouraged us to take selfies and spread them on social media with the hashtags for the shows.  Then they told us about each show and I think we run in different circles from some of the girls who were there because the staff was announcing the names of some of the actors and girls were cheering and shouting and we were like, Who are they talking about??  BUT we knew Fred Savage and John Stamos and Rob Lowe.  We also knew Emma Roberts and Ariana Grande, so that bridged the gap.

We really liked Grandfathered, we kind of liked The Grinder, and we had no idea what to think about Scream Queens.  That show is supposed to be funny thriller killery, but mainly, it was over-the-top mean and offensive.  Like, the girl kills someone in a fryer in a kitchen, and that's not the mean, offensive part.  The mean-offensive part is how she talks to everyone around her and then there's a character who's deaf and sings Taylor Swift songs and the joke is that she's deaf and then SPOILER ALERT she gets killed.  The only part that was remotely funny was when Ariana Grande's character was fighting with someone who was trying to kill her, and instead of screaming at each other, they were texting each other. 

Every time a show I watch ends, I do my best to not replace it so that I have more time to read and write.  This whole FREE passes thing might make me check out some FOX shows this season, which is totally the point, but even so, free is free is free.

Beacon, Bannerman, Fishkill, New York

Anniversary weekend!  A trip upstate, which is not really upstate or even central state, but it's norther than we live, so upstate it was.  What should have been about an hour and a half was two and some minutes, which isn't all that bad considering we've taken like three hours to go to Staten Island.  I drove, which means Eddie was in charge of Taking Pictures of Fun and Pretty Things. He's getting the hang of it.

This is where bears live. -- Eddie

I near flipped out when I saw this bridge.  Because it's pretty.

Then we saw our first piece of art when we got to Fishkill.

Plus a pretty lake thingie!

We settled quickly into our hotel and headed to the diner across the street because we like diners.

Then we headed into Beacon to take in the town.  It's a small town and very artsy, so it's really cute.  They have public art.  I love public art!  Eddie loves that I love public art!  They also have some galleries.

Okay, this might not be art.  But that kinda makes it art, right?

There are also a bunch of small independent shops, which I love.  They have a bookstore that supports the library.  It's very small, and though the shelves are labeled with genres, there's no real system of organization.  Some bookcases were labeled All Books Here $1.  There was a case in the back that had plastic bags next to it and the sign said we could fill a bag with any books from the case, and the bag would be $2.  We actually spend a whopping $10, but not on these.  I found a book about football and showed it to Eddie jokingly, and he was like, I want this.  Then I found a book entitled Texts From Jane Eyre, which ponders what if characters throughout literature texted each other, and I had to have it.  They were each $5.  Later on, I noticed that the plastic bag was from a grocery store and not from the actual bookstore.  Awesome.

The rest of the town was basically pretty, quirky, and pretty quirky.  We walked it all in about an hour and a half.  It got to be boiling when we were on the sunny side of the street, so we headed back to the hotel to go through our amazing purchases, which included the aforementioned books, a small notepad for writing, and some stickers, but not the hip hop cookie pressers that Eddie debated about.  By the time we got back to the hotel, it was mid afternoon snack time, so I grabbed a healthy-looking cookie which was out of this world delicious and some free tea. FREE!

Art?

At dinnertime, we took in downtown Fishkill.  It's smaller than Beacon. It offered a few restaurants, so we chose Five Guys so Eddie could eat a burger and I could eat FREE peanuts--and they were giving away free samples of milkshakes so I took one.  I shared his fries because Five Guys gives you about a gallon of fries and then we went to Frozenberry for froyo and it was yummy.

I devoured the milkshake before I could take a picture of it.  Because it was free AND delicious.

That night, we watched The Interview on Netflix.  Because that's how we party.  We laughed out loud and hysterically and often.

The next day, we were ready to go to Pollepel Island to see Bannerman Castle!  We woke up early, got ready early, lazed around for a while, and then headed to breakfast.  We ate bagels as slowly as we could.  We were still super early to the dock, so we took in the local park first.

We found our way to the dock and camped out until people showed up.  We were there so early, but then everyone kind of arrived at once after us.  Our boat came in and we were ready to sail!  As we waited for 12:30, the time to shove off, the boat got extremely hot, but once we were on the water, the breeze felt cool.  Then the island appeared ahead of us.

On the boat!

Now I could go into the history of Bannerman Castle, but really, that's what the tour is for.  All you need to know is that there's a broken down castle in the middle of the Hudson, and it's Uh. May. Zing!  What I will tell you is that while the website warns that you have to walk up 75 steps from the dock on the island to start the tour, what it doesn't tell you is that those wooden steps are the easy part.  There's lots of narrow trail walking and rock crumbling and curvy windy path following.  AND if you go on a day when it's like 103 degrees out, it's friggin hot at the top.  I enjoyed it all very much, but in the heat, it was a little long.  I would love to retell you every single detail, but I missed some of the details towards the end when all I was thinking was, Get me off of this island.  It was that kind of hot.

However, the tour was still fantastic.  I chose to go with the tour guide who was wearing a Yankee cap because I figured if Eddie was completely uninterested in what the guy was saying, he could talk sports.  And what we learned was really interesting, and our tour guide presented everything to us in a gossipy kind of way as well as an informative one (he told us that Polly Pel wasn't much of a looker as he passed a picture of her around--he was really entertaining).  There was a second guide with us who knew some other stuff, including why there was a flag emblem engraved into the stone of the house, which is a secondary structure aside from the castle.  When asked what the square footage was of the house, the guide replied, It's a round house so there's no square footage.  This was my kind of tour.

We saw the ruins of the castle.  We saw the ruins of the house.  We saw the gardens.  We saw what used to be an outhouse.  We saw the remnants of a well.  We passed around newspaper clippings and posters about the island from the past.  We stood in the shade as much as we could.

Castle

Side of the castle

Around the other side

We have about 87 pictures of the same thing.

Zen!

The house. We learned a lot about the stone and the flag but I don't remember any of it because I sweat it all out.

Pretty garden under the beating hot sun

This is what the living room looked like.  Then there was an explosion.  I'm missing some key elements of the story.

There are some places that look really iffy.  Thankfully, they don't let you go near them.

Around the side of the house

At the end of the tour, the boat came back to pick us up.  We saw a lot of activity in the water as we made our way down.

The guides were deciding who was going to stay behind for the next tour.  Fun fact: If you don't want to visit the island via boat, you can kayak there.  That's someone's idea of fun.  We did not see the kayaks when we were leaving.

Once we got back to the mainland, it was time to head home.  But first, we blasted the air conditioner in the car because we were gross. Oh!  And before leaving, I saved this little squeezy chicken from certain death in the parking lot.  I lodged him in the mirror of the minivan next to us, assuming that if you have a minivan, you have kids, and this probably belongs to them.  Changing the world one kindness at a time.