sighclub is on flickr

I caved and decided to put photos up on flickr. Over the years I’ve used different photo sharing sites. I have photos all over the place–from buzznet, which ended up appealing to a much younger audience than I am a part of, to facebook and everything in between. But from now on, you can find my most recent photos at flickr. Of course, I’ll always pull photos out on occasion and write about them here.

Check out my flickr profile here.

Summer painting

One of our tenants is painting the side of our house to help pay off some of her rent. For some reason the previous owners decided to paint the house a few years ago using paint that was not meant for brick. Over the course of the summer, the tenants have been chipping away at the paint, filling in holes with cement and reconstructing bad bricks. One day we discovered that an advertisement used to be painted on the side of the house. This must have been from when the storefront was a grocery store many decades ago. We thought it was pretty neat. But I still like the after photo better.

martha’s vineyard

Read more »

Western Massachusetts photo dump

I take my camera everywhere I go – even on simple walks to get lunch. Sometimes I get time to post these photos. Sometimes I don’t. When I don’t, I put them into file folders called “MMDDYYphotodump” and then I forget about them. I just went through a few of these file folders and am pulling out some images of Western Massachusetts. I hope to do this more often in my blog. We’ll see.

The first photo is of the exterior of the Wistariahurst Museum. I took it on the afternoon that I went to hear a talk on Holyoke resident Anna Burns Sullivan. Sullivan was a prominent union organizer for the local mills in the late 30s and continued to be an activist until her death in 1983.

Read more »

Holyoke Sox girls open thread

Cold River

My ladies and I took a day trip up north to take a dip. Earlier in the week, I had scouted out a spot in the Cold River in Charlemont. As we pulled up to the area, Brittnie, yelled out, “they’re naked!”

We spent the early afternoon dipping in the cool water of a small river. Rapids sang above us while we waded and chatted and co-existed peacefully with the nudity.

Afterwards, we headed over to Shelburne Falls for an early dinner at the West End Pub.

I have such highs during the weekends that it’s hard to get motivated to get ready for work this morning.

Holyoke Giants… err Sox

I went to the Holyoke Sox opening dinner last night and put up a couple of photos here.

Some things that are new:

- The Holyoke baseball franchise now has its own “dance team.”

- The mascot is a dog. His name is Big Red. The team still seems to be working through the color problem, since Big Red’s jersey is red and white.

- At least the team will be wearing blue. Presumably.

- I get that it’s the socks themselves that are blue, but I don’t get that the dog is still Big Red. I suppose I could have asked at the event, but everyone seemed so excited and happy, I didn’t want to rain on their parade. For the record, I’m wicked excited. Home opener is June 11th. Are you going?

happy marriage license request day

Matt and I headed to City Hall on Tuesday to “apply” for a marriage license. I use quotes around “apply” because although that is the standard way that one might describing going to the City Clerk’s office with the intent to acquire a marriage license, there appears to be no application involved whatsoever.

There were papers to sign, but there was no real need to prove that we’re worthy of a marriage license. They didn’t even ask for any identification, a fact that chilled Matt and me to the bone.

Fact: We are the 100th couple to declare our intent to marry to the city in 2008.

We were way more prepared than I thought we’d be so that may have contributed to the quickness of the experience. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts no longer requires a blood test, so that wasn’t necessary. We did have to raise our right hands and swear that what we wrote down on the application was true. I think I said yes. Matthew confirmed later that he had replied “yup.”

Read more »

where have you been?

These past couple of weeks have found me doing a bunch of things – getting ready for vacation, planting things in our front and back, celebrating someone’s birthday, working, taking photos, going to picnics, successfully not getting too many bug bites in the process, visiting family, watching what I eat. I promise to have something up here on this blog soon (besides this pathetic post).

rainbow reader

Whenever it rains but the sun is still peeking out from behind the clouds, I look up at the sky searching for a rainbow. Matt likes to make fun of me for this.

But look!

Not one, not two, but three photos of rainbows popped up in my google reader this morning.

This emboldens me to keep my eyes on the sky from now on.