The Auld Sod

(Source)

As some of you may have noticed, I was on the road this past weekend. While I was able to finish up "Bayonet Week," as juvat called it (I mean, come on man, it was two posts, not like it rivaled Skunk Week, which was three posts) on Saturday, you did get a rerun on Sunday. A wicked funny rerun (at least I thought so), but a rerun nonetheless.

As I deprived you of a new post on Sunday, I thought I might regale you with a tale of my weekend, wherein I returned to The Auld Sod, the land of my birth (sort of*). While I have, according to a DNA test taken by The Olde Vermonter, a great deal of Irish blood running in my veins, all the ancestral Gaels went to Scotland. No doubt one step ahead of the law.

Anyhoo, I digress.

The weekend started in grand fashion with Yours Truly attempting to find the leftover chili in the fridge. For you see, The Missus Herself was out visiting some of her elderly friends and left me to fend for myself. I mean how hard is it to nuke a bowl of leftover chili? (A recipe from The WSO which The Missus Herself had given a Korean twist, very tasty.)

Well nuking it was the easy part, finding it wasn't so easy. I mean how hard can it be, no doubt thought the love of my life, "I'll leave the chili right here, I mean it's red, it's right in the front of the fridge, even an idiot should be able to find it."

Well, this idiot did eventually find it. After carping on the phone to The WSO for a good five minutes as I searched high and low in that refrigerator. Which no doubt inspired my youngest to post the following on the Book of Face -

Ha, bloody ha. (The truth, it can sting.)

At any rate, after dining on the chili, it was off to the computational device to write Saturday's post and then search through the extensive archives here at The Chant to find a tidbit for to post on Sunday. While you may (or may not) have found that post amusing, I found it to be just as funny/embarrassing now as when the incident occurred and again when I wrote about it.

At any rate, Saturday's post had some good comments, which I answered Saturday night (near enough to midnight as dammit) on my cellphone with a rather spotty cell signal. Now Mom does live in the boondocks, so to speak, surrounded by lots of mountains, hills, valleys, and maybe two or three cell towers in about a thousand square miles. Yes, I am exaggerating, but not by much.

Big fat fingers, little tiny cellphone "keyboard," and maybe one to one and a half bars of connectivity. So of course, Beans has to make a crack about my loquaciousness rivaling PLQ's. Damning with faint praise right there. I thought I was being polite and succinct. I mean, I like letting you folks out there know that I read (and yes, cherish) your comments. (And I like to think that PLQ's comments are succinct, ya know, to the point.)

Anyhoo (again), up there in the north country of my birth (sort of) it is still winter. While I was expecting that, I hadn't expected the dearth of snow not thirty miles south of the Homeland. I mean, normally we start seeing beaucoup (pronounced boo-koo, heh, not) snow when approaching Worcester (pronounced Wustah, really) in the Massachusetts snow belt. Not much at all did we see, not even as we approached the New Hampshire line.

Sure, there was some back in the trees and on the side of the road that gets very little sun, but I'm used to seeing much more. (Like in that opening photo, that place isn't too far from where my maternal grandparents lived.) Even north of Keene the snow seemed sparse. Heck, the Connecticut River wasn't even frozen south of Bellows Falls (town of my birth, in  Vermont, nicht New Hampshire).

Just north of there the Connecticut was frozen. Solid enough where I saw a couple of ice fishermen, not out on the river proper but in one of the setbacks. The Missus Herself opined that "surely they must be crazy people" to be out there. Well, the wind was blowing and the "feel like" temperature had to be in the teens. So she had a point, especially as they had no shelter other than the leafless trees along the shore. Ah well, northern New Englanders (of which I am one) are a bit daft. In a good way mind you.

But the visit to my Mom's house was pleasant. We had a nice meal at The Sumner House (a local eatery) on Saturday night I had a New York strip steak with a bourbon glaze topped with caramelized onions, green beans (or haricot vert when I'm "putting on airs," which is often), and a very nice baked potato. All washed down with a Sam Adams (the variety of which I don't remember). Afterwards we retired to the Elks Club where fortuitously some of my Mom's and our mutual friends happened to be, where I sampled a local brew called a Rainbow Red Ale from the Trout River Brewing Company of Springfield, Vermont, the place I was raised. Quite tasty, though it tasted neither like trout nor like river (which was a good thing). I was sore tempted to have another, but as I was the driver, I opted to behave.

The trip, though short, was grand. The sky was blue, the roads were dry, and the scenery was lovely. I do so enjoy going up north to the ancestral homeland. As we weren't able to make it up there at Christmas time nor in January (due to weather, ill health, and the non-availability of the feline staff's Godmother, which is what our next door neighbor calls herself, she is a most excellent cat sitter as both Anya and Sasha really like her, something which doesn't apply to many humans).

Monday it was back to work and back to eating "healthy." The Missus Herself has declared a fatwa on my substantial bulk and is determined to get me down to a weight where I won't be mistaken for a beached whale when I get near the water. For once I am attempting to comply for reasons which will be revealed at some time in the not so distant (I hope) future. (Think happy thoughts, no dire premonitions here, all will be revealed in due course.)

At any rate, I'm back and I shall endeavor to avoid reruns for the foreseeable future. I do get so lazy at times...

Good song, good album.



* I keep writing "sort of" as I was born and raised in Vermont, just across the river from where Mom lives now. Same neck of the woods though dontcha know? As my Mom and Dad are both from New Hampshire, and both sets of grandparents lived there, I consider the Granite State to be every bit a part of The Auld Sod as Vermont.