Bad Blogger and Weekend Happenings

I have been pretty bad about posting lately so now you will have to endure a really loooong posting. The end of last week was actually really busy at work.
Things that I was working on last week:
Getting ready for the departure of our most excellent book cataloger, Mary
Writing up training info for my new circulation assistant
Attending meetings
Looking for another job
Watching Red Sox games
Booking a room at a B&B in Rockport for the weekend
Buying new underwear
Suffering from a particularly nasty bout of allergies/hacking cough.

Bryan & I headed up to Rockport, Massachusetts for the weekend. We had every intention of going to the beach upon arrival on Saturday, but it was kind of overcast and we saw a few drops of rain hit the windshield. Instead we drove into Gloucester (the town next to Rockport and best known from the book/movie The Perfect Storm), and sat on a bench in a little park right on the ocean. We ate lunch and watched seagulls and boats while the clouds decided whether or not they were going to block the sun for the entire day. That bench and its view felt worlds away from the hustle and bustle of Boston and I loved the calm it provided.

The sun did finally peep out, so we checked into our inn, The Sally Webster Inn right near the center of town, and then walked to a small private beach to catch the last of the afternoon rays. It was Bryan's first time on a beach in a few years and I felt a small tug of victory at having brought him to where sand and water and sun all meet. He even attempted to go into that water, but 10 seconds later he was back on his towel - gotta love the Atlantic Ocean in June. We walked into Rockport center, called Bearskin Neck and had a delicious dinner at a restaurant called My Place by the Sea perched at the edge of a cliff on the tip of Bearskin Neck. We were seated on the lower deck facing the setting sun and some sailboats just leaving the piers. We thought we were in heaven until the sun set and the wind picked up and we realized that it was freezing on the edge of cliff overlooking the ocean in June! We ate our tasty food as quickly as we could and escaped back to the inn after stopping to pick up an ice cream sundae to go so we could eat it in the warmth of our room. All in all, a relaxing and amazing day.

Sunday, we fared just as well in the food department since the Sally Webster Inn serves a lovely french toast breakfast thing in addition to fruit and other breads. During breakfast, Bryan and I met an older couple who were in Rockport for a wedding. Turns out the bride is from Framingham and her mother was my high school guidance counselor. When Eddie, the male half of the couple, found out that Bryan lived in Brookline, he assumed that I did too, that we were married and that we might have children who would certainly benefit from the "excellent school system in Brookline." Needless to say, we couldn't get away from them fast enough.

On our way home, we stopped at Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester for a few more hours of sun worship before heading back to our lives of Monday morning cubicles and pasty legs. Both of us were pretty surprised at the price of parking at the beach - $25! Yes, that was the amount we paid to park our car for 2 hours of laying on a beach. We got nothing else for this price, though I really do believe that the hours of soaking up sun and listening to waves lap the beach are worth 25 bucks every now and then. When we got back to Brookline, we tried to watch Red Sox dingers, but only saw a San Fran dinger, so we decided to hit our own dingers in the park. If I had been a boy, I think that I would have played baseball. Just a feeling I have.

And today, more coughing and being at work though I may go home early to catch up on some reading and sleep. I finished Waiting for Luciano, which I wrote about a while ago. It was decent and short. It tried a bit too hard to be deep, and really only came off feeling like an Oprah book club book (definition: fraught with meaning yet neatly tied-up and a little depressing). My mom still defends it as a great read and I will admit that it wasn't bad. I just started Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies which has been on my list of must reads for a while. It is a collection of short stories that won a few awards and has been well-reviewed. I like it so far, but I am only one story in.