The day after I got the book at the library, I had a pretty bad day (migraine – ugh!) and slept all afternoon. That meant that by midnight, I was wide awake and not ready for sleep. I picked up How to Knit a Love Song, started reading, finally got tired, and didn’t put the book down until 3 hours later when I was done with it. It was pretty great, not what I was expecting from a romance novel. Thanks Rachel!

Amy planned our summer vacation around the list. Isn’t she awesome?

In order of how we visited them on this trip (not their place on the list):

Great Lost Bear, Portland ME

Gritty McDuff’s, Portland ME

Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown NY

Clark’s Ale House, Syracuse NY

The Blue Tusk, Syracuse NY

F.X. Matt Brewery Tasting Room (aka Saranac Brewery), Utica NY

Besides these five, I’ve already been to these places on the list:

1. Monk’s Café, Philadelphia, PA
2. Hofbrauhaus, Munich, Germany
3. The Brickskeller, Washington, DC
4. French Quarter during Mardi Gras, New Orleans, LA
5. Andechs Monastery, Andechs, Germany
6. Goose Island Brewing, Chicago, IL
7. Cooter Brown’s, New Orleans, LA
8. Sunset Grille & Tap, Boston, MA

Other places we visited on our trip included:

Ithaca Brewery

Empire Brewery

Middle Ages Brewing

Beer is awesome.

After the initial shock, I got out of the water, much to the jeers of my friends. So I jumped back in, and it wasn’t as cold that time. All told, I was in the river for about 15 minutes, just long enough to lose all feeling in pretty much every extremity. Some of the crazy ladies actually swam from the dock over to the area where the lobsters were getting cooked (including lovely Laura W. with her can of Narragansett…) but I was done. Too cold for me.

It was awesome!

Boulder Dash is a wooden rollercoaster that has been rated very highly by wooden rollercoaster enthusiasts in the past several years. It’s long, it’s fast, and honestly? It’s fun! I’m not a huge amusement park fan, having a tendency towards turning lovely shades of green when I get thrown around too much. However, we got to the park and made a beeline to the ride so we could ride it and be done with it even if we did get sick. The photo above was taken on our second (of 4 or 5 – I forget) ride. We made sure to ride in the middle, the back (this photo – love how there isn’t anyone else in the car behind us since there was a wee bit of a “little kid getting sick on it right before our ride” kind of issue happening), and the front (but not the very front).

We only rode two other rides that day – the log flume that didn’t soak us even though we both really wanted it to (it was about 98F out that day) and the ski lift to nowhere (which was slow, but provided lovely views of the surrounding area on our way down). The rollercoaster was definitely the best part of the day. And now I don’t need to ride one again for a long time.

Megan and Amy each pose with Sox, the female Paw Sox mascot (yes, there are two).

Me, lurking behind Paws, while he was signing little kids’ programs. Yes, I’m a dork.

My wiffy and our great friend!

Me and Paws. I swear, I didn’t shove any kids aside to get this photo. At least, not too viciously.

Playing with the tilt-shift function on my camera – made the field look pretty cool! And yes, our seats were great – right behind home plate.

Amy and I had such a great time at the game that we decided to base our summer vacation partly on seeing minor league baseball games. The other part? Based on my 40 in 40 list… but you’ll have to wait until the vacation is done for me to tell you what fun things we’re planning on doing!

On the Fourth of July, Amy and I went to visit her sister in Maine. We went to the town of Perkins Cove for the afternoon and walked along the coastal shore until we found a beach area. On the way back from the beach we took photos in The Climbing Tree. This is me in the tree with Cameron and Maddie.

We also saw a spectacular sunset over York Beach before the fireworks.

Waiting for full dark, full moon in the distance

Side note: go see Toy Story 3. It’s great!

The Toy Story gang on the big screen, full moon in the background

I didn’t plan on doing this the week of June 14, but on Monday afternoon it struck me that it was a good week to try it out. So I wore the outfit again on Tuesday.

Do you know that only one person said anything? Erin noticed at 10:42 on Wednesday morning. She leaned over to me in an all-staff meeting and said, “Did you wear that on Monday? Is this THE WEEK?” I told her it was, and  also told her I’d washed everything the night before so she didn’t need to worry that I was starting to smell or anything. She laughed at me.

By Thursday I have to admit, I was glad we work flexible schedules in the summer so I didn’t have to face the same clothes on Friday.

Yes indeed. I made myself laugh. And if Erin hadn’t said anything, I’d have gotten away with it scot-free!

As a twist, we decided to bowl in skirts. Which meant we needed to buy skirts. Which meant a trip to Goodwill after lunch and before the graveyard adventure. Behold the shopping. (Amy does not like wearing skirts.)

And behold all of us in skirts (looking reasonably happy, even though none of us are really skirt-wearers.) (Aside: Amy coaches outside. Can you tell? The rest of us are pretty pasty white, but she’s looking all tanned.)

And behold some action shots of us bowling/posing.

Amy (l) and Libby (r) bowl

Jen (l) and Megan (r) pose

I LOVE candlepin bowling – it’s significantly more fun to me than ten-pin bowling, and not just because you get three shots on each frame. There’s something about the small ball, the shape of the pins, and the fact that between shots the deadwood isn’t swept away. That can really help, but it can also hurt. So hooray for candlepin bowling! I suspect I’ll go more than once this year…

At first I was unsuccessful with the rainbow-colored stunt kite. Perhaps we were making things too hard with that one. Amy and Jen didn’t have any success with it either, although I’m attributing that about 99% to user error…

But then I had success with Spiderman! Spidey always saves the day! And really, there is nothing like flying a $5 kite on a beautiful summer day.

Other things we did that day include hopscotch and jump rope, eating food we’d never tried before (in this case, pork bellies and grilled pineapple, both of which are totally on my “eat again” list), doing some exploring in a graveyard and finding good epitaphs, and something I’ll blog about later, because it is also on my list of 40 things to do in my 40th year!