Oct.14.2007

spent 2 days with mike up in the white mountains. he was there to scope out a condo. i was there to buy a coffee cup and an urn. he didn't buy the condo and i came home with a new hat, but no coffee cup or urn.

we had a great 2 days. ate at nice places ... (noteable was flapjack's for breakfast.... but have them back off the hollandaise sauce if you order the poached eggs on ham with fries and muffin) .... we roamed nice stores.... bought nice books. i was bad only once when i walked out of a store because the line was too long and i got pi$$ed. but i paid the price in that i gave up a very very nice handmade cup.

i got a book by doris kearns goodsomething ....i actually know who she is and like her and the book is a memoir and it is just excellent, especially since she is from BROOKLYN !!

the condo mike looked at is in very nice condition and needs no serious work. the immediate area is very nice. 30 years ago, i would have killed a person to have a condo up in the white mountains.... but my life didnt go that way. but then mike's life is extremely different than my life was, so how relevant is my opinion here?

we discussed the topic endlessly.

had a great drive home .... stopped in Concord and i decided i liked the place and we had lunch at the bagel something and a supremely fine cup of french roast coffee.

a bottle of stewart's root beer carried me the rest of the way home.

notes from hilton head

HH is prettier than you imagine.... homes and condos look like they grew in the forest .... it is pretty just about everywhere you turn, and it's hard not to buy property down there, except of course for the $$$$ !!

B and R have a one-week-a-year 2 bedroom apartment on timeshare.... very nice setup. we met their friends who have a whole house for a week / year.

you can get a 2-bedroom apartment for 1/4 year (13 weeks) for about $50k, but the killer is the maintenance fee, which is something like $7000 / year (that amounts to $7000 for the 3 months that you live there !). that is tough to live with.... it's more than our total annual real estate taxes, oil heating bill, electricity and insurance back home.

we started in Savannah since we landed there. went to the emerging "riverwalk" .... it needs more emerging..... lunch was excellent.... had the local beer on draft... was very good. then 60 minute drive to HH. on the highway we saw the immediate aftermath of a horrible accident involving a motorcyle (broken in half) and a truck (furniture scattered all over the road).... i looked at the bike and knew he was dead .... he was.

we spent the week hopping from bistro to shopping to beach to shopping to bistro, and i enjoyed every minute. the night in the hot tub and pool was memorable.

deb got seriously ill (she had a flu shot the previous week) but she held up like a trouper .... bicycling wore her out for a day, but she medicated and bounced back.

i medicated also (using a comforting southern elixir), so i wouldn't get sick..... but try as i may (with R helping out) i could not finish all the elixir before the week was done.

but .... i didn't get the flu either !!!

we ate at many nice places and the food was always very good, and the ambience .... was always nice.

HTML : turns out that N (who stayed home) wants to learn HTML to create web pages. his photo-artwork is excellent, but he needs HTML tutoring..... right up my alley..... we got him a good book (that B spent all week reading!) and i will do some on-line teaching if N stays interested.

cameras : i had the leica D2 in its bag and the little panasonic FX-30 on my belt. the FX-30 took 99% of all my pictures because it was always with me and incredibly convenient to pull out snap-snap and put back. and for web-page pictures, the FX-30 is out-f^%$&ing-standing and is now my favorite user...... the leica pictures are better, but for a web page (96 ppi, width=600px), the little FX-30 is just as good.

also learned to get the GIMP to do a drop-shadow around the image and have it blend into the page background.... i like the effect and used it in the HH picture page.

when i was a kid, i spent halloween with my cousins gus and iani (aka john in later years). we watched horror movies until we dropped, and slept in their bunk bed, and iani was a crazy kid.... he was so afraid of vampires that he marked crosses on his neck and held garlic leaves in his hands across his chest and he looked like he was dead in a coffin... and thats how he fell asleep at night.

to this day, i still watch those old horror movies (just ask deb if i'm lying) and remember those times.

last night i watched frankenstein meets the wolfman .... things were simpler in those times .... i wished gus and iani were there with me.