Word Association - July 3rd

When I was a child we would sometimes go to a beach in Salisbury, MA.  There was a small amusement park, arcades, seaside restaurants and the Atlantic Ocean.  The smell of salt marshes mixed with fried seafood, sound of waves and children playing, the feel of sand between my toes, and dates out at the arcade playing Skee Ball are all the thoughts and memories I have tied with that one word-Salisbury.  Yesterday, while out and about I drove through a town called Salisbury in NH.  It is a quiet looking town, filled with rolling hills and farms.  Beautiful in its own way, but still I could smell in my memory the marshes and hear the echo of waves in my mind of the other, more familiar to me Salisbury, miles away.

Wow, I feel that I did really well with that paragraph.  I wrote it last night, when I couldn't sleep, trying to cool myself down with an ice pack.  This morning this has reminded me of another word association that I hesitate to write about but feel the need to.  There are social constructs in the SCA called Households.  They are basically groups of people that join together as family or friends or fighters.  Some common thread usually brings them together.  Households sometimes get a reputation such as fighters that have all been trained classically or that household is full of cooks that will make a feast to die for.  Within any given household are individuals.  I can't speak for all SCA households, but in the household I belong to, we value a person's service.  We are people that volunteer and get things done.  We all have different places that we excel at.  We have different ideas and ways to achieve our goals.  Our household does not define who we are.  Just as each household has particular strengths and differ from one another, I too am different from the members of my household with different and new ideas to bring to the table.

Thank you for reading my rant.  I will post more and get my happy for the day in later.  Tonight is a late night for me, just wanted to get these thoughts down and out there.

Edit to include happy for the day.  The heat got to all of the performers tonight.   None of us were on point.  It was still fun though.  One of them played his character very different and that challenged me a bit.  Every week it is a little different.  Some of us went for ice cream after and I stayed even later to listen to another friend sing.  These are my happy things for today.

Charles River so...

Dirty Water song

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Rail Trail Walk- with pictures

The heat is still overwhelming today. Despite the high temperatures, I decided to go for a walk in some random woods around the city prior to putting my car into a long term lot so as to avoid getting a ticket.  I headed towards a spot I had gone to before but didn't use the GPS'  As I drove by the street I should have taken, I knew it didn't matter.  Rather than turning around I kept going, and going, enjoying the air conditioned drive through the back roads.  Eventually I pulled over at the kind of small grocery plaza that can only exist in small towns, and looked at the GPS for a place to hike. 

What I found was a trail that started with just a pull-off on the side of the road.  It appeared that I could hike up Mount Kearsarge from this, Lincoln Trail, and avoid the State Park fees and probably avoid people too.  When I got there, the lot was empty and the trail had Keep Out signs posted with brush spread over the opening.  I wasn't really prepared to hike a mountain and would have just gone a little way and then come back, so I really didn't want to pay a fee for one of the other trails and so, I drove on, enjoying the AC. 

At some point I came to an intersection and instead of heading away from the city I went back towards it.  If I made it back and still didn't find a place to walk, I could go to Planet Fitness and walk in an air conditioned building.  I did find a trail, the Northern Rail Trail.  I parked, let K know where I was, and set off. 

There was just enough shade that it wasn't as completely hot as it seemed in the city.  Different flowers speckled the sides of the trail with oranges, yellows, purples and whites popping through all the green.  Bees were flitting from flower to flower pollinating.   Getting out for this walk is my happy for today.  The rest of the day I pretty much melted with the heat.  

A slow moving stream made its way away along one side of the trail with occasional back yards between woods on the other.

Not all the tracks were torn up.

 

I can't decide which of these pictures with the track I like better...  ↕

Teeny tiny strawberries.

Stacks of railroad ties were left to rot.

↑ Wilmot - Andover ↓ line.

This pile of railroad ties is being taken over by a tree.

Fairly certain that these are marking the miles between ↓ White River Junction, VT and ↑ Boston, MA.

Blooming rose...

Buzzing busy bee...

So hot

sweat drips

lick lips

salty

sun block

flavor

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Home again--Picture heavy

Most of the things that were scheduled to happen at the event this weekend for today were canceled because of the heat.  It took us about three hours to pack up what we probably could have done in about one except that we had to rest every few minutes.  Admittedly, I had to rest more often than my friend, most likely because I am dozen years older or so.  I ate way too much junk food this weekend but also did a mess of sweating so I am curious if there will be much of a change on the scale tomorrow.

My happy for today is that someone told us about a nearby Sonic restaurant and that is where we went for lunch.  I got a drink called Tiger's Blood which was a red cherry type flavor of Snow Cone Slush.  It was yummy but I kept getting brain freeze.


Here are a few pictures from this last weekend.  Most pictures are sky.

June 28, 2018:

June 29, 2018:

June 30, 2018

July 1, 2018

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