Here are some pictures from our weekend trip to Philadelphia a few weeks ago. We got to see a lot of cool things, notably the Phillies ( Citizen Bank ballpark – stadium #11) clinching a playoff spot, Reading Market (and a cheesesteak), the Liberty bell, Independence Hall, and walked around a pretty good chunk of the area around our hotel.
We forgot our camera, so these were all taken with my cellphone. 
Last weekend we took up Erin’s offer to crash at her family’s place and experience the Tunbridge World Fair with a couple other YSNers. And was it an experience. We saw tons of cattle, pigs (racing!), chickens, rabbits and about everything else that moves. I think I ate more fried food in those 4 hours than I had all year (photo documentation below). The historical farm part though is always great. It’s amazing to see the ingenious ways people make tools and components of life taken for granted nowadays by hand.
Yeah, I don’t know why, but apparently the local USMC (reserves?) runs the parking/tickets.
And… I’m tired after watching this guy do a few swings.
Interesting, but not nearly fried enough for me.
Now that’s just 400-some odd pounds of plain weird.
*** Disclaimer*** I did NOT eat all of everything below. I might have wished I did, but other people there stared at me funny after I said “sharing shmaring. That’s for kindergartners”.
Now these are vegetables I can get excited about.
At this point in time I had to remind myself this event requires pacing.
Can’t go to the fair and not have a corndog. The mustard was for Dad.
These are special fries. You want to know why they’re special? Because anything covered in gravy is special. That’s why.
At this point in time I’m feeling a little lethargic. I need something to wash that all down and get my system back on track. What’s that there? Sugar with a little bit of lemon? Awesome, just what I needed.
Ok, I didn’t actually eat this. But Erin got some fried dough, and I decided that the existence of fried dough the size of a plate needed to be photo-documented and shared with the world.
An in between heart-attack snack.
Dessert!
The only moderately healthy thing we ate while there, and with the amount of butter on there I’m not sure it still qualifies as a vegetable.
I’m still in a food coma…
and part of September….
What did we do that kept us so busy that we couldn’t keep y’all up to date? A little bit of this, a little bit of that, like berry picking, dog training (which is progressing noticeably), hikes, cookouts, staying up too late for the Olympics more than once and for periods – nothing. I can’t remember a whole lot of detail about most of those, so here, enjoy some pictures.
Blueberry/Peach picking.
West Rock park.
From the top of West Rock you can see East Rock in the background.
Maple (a.k.a. mapster, the stir, spazimodo, the beast, occasionally little shit, and most commonly Mapes)
Berry picking part two. Eli shared some of her raspberries with me. She was quite attached to them.
Yes, Erin’s shirt says Dogs – Peace – Fruits with a black fuzzball underneath. I’m not sure what it means, but somehow it’s an accurate description of our goings on this last month. Maple, Olympics, and Berries. Weird.
Next edition – Vermont and the World’s Fair.
It’s been a couple (alright a lot) of weeks since we last posted anything. We’ve been pretty busy over that time period, and have a lot of pictures to post. We’ll be getting to those all pretty soon along with stories.
In the meantime… we’ll be back in California December 19th for Christmas. Use the time remaining to prepare yourself.
Yesterday we carpooled up to Albany for Mike and Susan’s wedding. We braved the land of scattered thunder showers for the event and emerged a little wet, but very glad to have gone. The whole event was great. It spanned the whole afternoon from 2 to midnight! The food everywhere was great. We had fun spending time with everybody from New Haven and catching up with those we hadn’t seen for a while.
The reception was a held at the Crooked Lake House, which was pretty darn cool. Here are a few pictures from the event.
More photos coming as we receive them.
Elizabeth and I caught the Yankee game against the A’s today. The game was fun, but seriously seriously hot – low 90s, humid and in the sun for the first couple innings. One more stadium to cross of the list. Until next year that is and they move into their new stadium.
It was a really good game, Joba was good, and Gallagher was decent and worked himself out of jams. It was pretty entertaining, when you weren’t wiping the sweat out of your eyes. The Yankees eventually won 4-3 in 12 innings, but we didn’t make it that long. The heat was just too much for us.
It was hot.
Joba Chamberlain.
The new Yankee Stadium
I now have a new laptop. I crossed over to the Mac world, and so far I love it.
I also have a new haircut, I was ready for a change. It is the shortest I have ever had it. A big improvement with the heat and humidity around here… ahhh.. much better.
Here are some pictures using the camera on the new computer to catch a glimpse of the new dooo.
Despite Adams face in this picture he really does like my new hair cut. I swear.
Maple the wood and Maple the dog…
I seem to walk into garage sales and antique stores and find the little project that needs the most work. Last spring I found this nice wood side table for the living room that needed some TLC. It was outside at the antique store and had a bit of water damage. After several mornings of sanding over the last few weeks and help from Adam, the project is done. The funny thing is the finished project is markedly similar to the kitchen table I re finished. Here are some before and after photos:
Before 
water damage all over the top = lots of sanding
I sand in the back yard while Maple chases squirrels
After sanding and a coat of polyurethane = finished
Bye bye water damage look how pretty the wood is now!
Learning how to stay while I walk around the house. By the way she is getting fat. She was 39 pounds but I think that she is over 40 now for sure (which translates to paying more next week when she gets spayed).
I think the floppy ear will be a permanent trait. But I like it because it will always make her look like a puppy.
We are going to a double birthday BBQ this afternoon. Here are my gifts for the birthday girls, do you think they will mind that the flowers are in Corona bottles?
About 2 weeks ago we took a day trip to Niantic a cute seaside town near Rhode Island. We went and got a seafood lunch and then went to the used book barn, this neat piece of property where they have all these little barns and buildings with different themes of used books. We spent hours there and came home with a lot of summer reading. We then got ice cream on the way home. It was a fun day.
Prepare yourself. Baseball blogging ahead in 3…
2…
1…
If you’re still here, you can’t say I didn’t try and warn you.
Yesterday Elizabeth and I took off early and went down to Shea stadium so that I could cross that stadium off the list (Oakland, SF, Seattle, LA, Anaheim, San Diego, Boston, Arizona in case you’re curious) and to see the Giants in their only trip to NY this season.
If you were really sharp, you noticed something wrong in the picture that I didn’t notice at all, and Elizabeth didn’t notice until we were on the train to New York. We went to the game last night, July 9th, the tickets we got online were for Tuesday, July 8th.
This was me after realizing I might have screwed up the tickets for a second time (The tickets were initially sent to my old home in Los Angeles. I gave stubhub my billing address, but forgot to update the delivery information as well since I was in a rush to get to work the morning I ordered them. But, my old landlord is a cool guy, and over-nighted them to me). After a panicked call to my brother, and forcing him to check the email reciept (I haven’t changed my password yet Al, so if anything funny happens I’m coming after you btw) I didn’t buy tickets for the wrong date. The seller just sent us the wrong tickets!
Stubhub is a pretty cool company though, and after not being able to contact the seller they gave us new tickets which we picked up at will-call just before the game. Our original tickets were on the second level just past 3rd base, not bad, but the new tickets were same level right behind home plate.
New tickets!
They weren’t quite what we expecting, but they turned out better situated than we expected (more on that later). We could see home plate quite well, and the rest of the field without issue, but anything about 20 feet over the outfield fence we couldn’t see. The scoreboard, pop-ups, jumbotrons and the rest were all completely obscured by the overhang from the level above us. It was like being in a cave a little, but we were in a great location, so it’s hard to complain.
Jonathan Sanchez for the Giants went up against Johan Santana. When you’ve got a punchless offense, facing the best pitcher in baseball will make for a long night. It was pretty good luck for us to catch both teams with such interesting pitchers starting the night. Sanchez, is finally getting his chance to start and doing well in the role, and like previously mention Santana has been the best overall pitcher in baseball the last couple years. Except for a little wildness and a mistake in the fourth, which led to a 3-run homer Sanchez was having a decent evening. Santana was his normal self and shut out the Giants (not saying much though).
Then it got better!
The first time I’ve ever mildly enjoyed a rain delay. Thank God for the overhang!
Nice and dry.
After the delay both starting pitchers came out and the bullpens duked it out for another 4 innings. Unfortunately, the Giants couldn’t muster up much against them either. The Mets managed to score another two runs against us though. And so the game ended, 5-0.
I was surprised to see the amount of Giant fans at the game; there was a large contingent of black and orange there. There were even a few elderly Giant fans who I’m sure are Giant fans because back in they day (pre-1958 ) the Giants were from New York. The new stadium is being built directly adjacent to Shea and looks like it will be a good park. It’s being built in the retro-early 1900’s look-a-like style, and as of now, looks like it will be an upgrade. Shea stadium, while alright, is nothing to write home about. We didn’t get home and to sleep until 2AM, but the whole evening was totally worth it. We had a great time.
Here are a couple photos before the downpour.
Not much to look at from the outside,
but the new stadium looks like it will be an upgrade and
Shea is actually much better looking once you getting inside.
Next Saturday Elizabeth and I are going to the Yankees/A’s game. Two games in 10 days! Woohoo!
Hi all,
Sorry for the blogging silence. I wanted to let you know that our wedding photos can now be viewed. Warning: there are a lot of them!
Go to http://cameroningalls.com choose “login” and the pass code is our new last name. (now the test is are you spelling it right?) email me if you have a problem.
Things are good around here, I can’t believe it is July already. Work is going well although I am finding I would take a patient for triage and giving an immunization over a dealing with patients over the phone any day.
The fourth of July was great but we realized at the end of the day that we didn’t take any photos.. except I took one of my bloody finger after I had a run in with our new knifes while making salad. (what can I say, I’m a nurse) We are going to a Giants Mets game tomorrow night which should be a blast. Not only are the giants playing but this will get Adam closer to his goal of going to every major league ball park, plus this is the last season at shay stadium so it is kinda exciting to go. I promise to post some photos by the end of the week. Our garden is prospering and we are already eating a ton of green beans, we basically get a small harvest every 2-3 days, not bad, until we get sick of green beans.
🙂
Elizabeth
Eastern Standard Time 