The Walkmen Return

One of my favorite bands is coming out with a new CD on Aug. 19, but through the wonders of technology I just snagged it more than two weeks in advance.

No, I'm not a black-market buyer. In an arrangement similar to Radiohead's recent album "In Rainbows" download, the Walkmen put their new album online here and asked fans to pay $5 for the privilege. When Radiohead asked fans to name their price, I volunteered to pay 3 British pounds (about $8), so $5 for the Walkmen's "You & Me" sounded like a bargain, and proceeds benefit cancer research.

The download didn't take on my train ride into work, so I tried again on the way home. This time, success! I'm now in indie-rock heaven listening to the tracks as my train approaches New Haven.

Since this is my first listen, it's too early for full appraisal, but I can safely say that the Walkmen haven't let me down yet. Excellent!

If you're interested, the band's home page has some of its songs in rotation. As for me, it'd be a crime to miss the boys kick off their tour Aug. 18, when they play New York's Bowery Ballroom. Please, Liz, can I go? Please? Please?

Goodbye, Old Friend

Liz and I must bid a tearful goodbye to the red Honda Civic, which has given us so many great memories, from the road trip to Yellowstone to the time I side-swiped our garage on Second Avenue in Wausau. It carried me and much of my stuff to Poughkeepsie in October 2005. It carried our canoe everywhere we went canoeing. For a few weeks it carried me 45 minutes to the train station each day, back when we lived in Glastonbury and I had to commute to work from there to Manhattan. And it carried us to Bayfield many times, including, if I'm not mistaken, the weekend I proposed to Liz.

Purchased in October 2003 for about $5,000 from Sixth Street Motors in Wausau with just under 130,000 miles on it, we sold the car this morning at 195,000 miles for $1,800 to a nice older guy named Lee, who was buying it for his sister. He's picking it up this afternoon while we're gone, better for us lest we embarrass ourselves with an uncomfortable outpouring of emotion.

Is it odd to get misty over something as ordinary as a car? But we are Americans, dammit, and sentimental attachment to our vehicles is in our blood. I feel like a cowboy without a horse now that I am without my own car for the first time since college, though we still have Liz's car for the time being.

Completely unrelated final note: After our Cabin Weekend 2008, spent among the vast countryside of northern Minnesota and its lakes and farms, I found myself humming one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, "(Nothing But) Flowers," a kind of ironic fantasy of progress played in reverse, with urban real estate sacrificed for farmland and parkland. The song doesn't promote a "return to Eden" message so much as a contrary perspective on the "evolution" of modern society, that one day we might find ourselves nostalgic for skyscrapers and interstate highways and Honda Civics.

"There was a factory, now there are mountains and rivers.
We caught a rattlesnake, now we got something for dinner.
There was a shopping mall, now it's all covered with flowers.
If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower. ...

"Once there were parking lots, now it's a peaceful oasis.
This was a Pizza Hut, now it's all covered with daisies.
I miss the honky tonks, Diary Queens and 7-Elevens.
And as things fell apart nobody paid much attention."

Cabin Weekend 2008

'Twas another successful cabin weekend on Marion Lake in Perham, Minn.

Despite spending Friday night in the airport and catching only about three hours of sleep before arriving in the magical place that is Joy's parents' cabin, it was a good weekend of catching up with friends and drinking too much.

Thanks to Tim, Joy's b-friend, and his skunky beer, Dave got a little sick, but it wasn't anything a nap and two brats couldn't cure.

We were not able to attend the annual weekend last year because of a lack of available funds and time off from work due to our pending nuptials.

But we returned mainly to find that we all can't hold our liquor like we once could....

It was a short weekend but one hell of a good one.

Pepe's

Well, we finally did it. We ate at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. It's suppose to be the best pizza around, and we've been meaning to eat there since we moved here.

Believe it or not, New Haven is known regionally for its pizza, mainly at two places: Sally's and Pepe's. Both cook their pizzas in a coal-fired oven, producing a very thin, crispy crust. Pepe's is the original, founded in 1925 by Frank Pepe, an Italian immigrant. The restaurant is especially know for its white clam pizza.

The problem, however, is that you can wait hours for a table. Dave and I decided to go for dinner there last night, but the line was out the door and down the street. So, we decided to try again for Monday lunch, and thankfully, we had no trouble getting a seat.

We had the original pizza, which is just tomato sauce and mozzarella, and put some pepperoni on half. We ordered the medium, which by any other standard is a large.

It is good pizza, the thin, crisp crust, not too much cheese, but I'm not sure I'd stand in line for it. It is, however, propably in my top five pizza places.

At heart, I'm a deep-dish kind of gal. But this thin crust was good. And thankfully, it wasn't like New York-style pizza, of which I'm not a fan.

Starry Afternoon

We finally remembered to bring the camera along on one of our New Haven excursions, and whaddaya know but the security guard told us the main attraction was off limits to cameras.

The main attraction these days at the Yale Art Gallery is Vincent van Gogh's famous "Starry Night" and somewhat less famous "Cypresses." Hopefully you all already are familiar with "Starry Night" — awash in deep blue, village nestled among hills, dagger-like tree in the foreground and yellow and white stars sparkling overhead — since we have no pictures of it to share. (Or, I guess you can click here.) Impressive, as were many of the other paintings in the gallery's modern wing.

Liz has an aversion to some of the more abstract examples of modern art. I'm trying to break her of that, not because I'm a modern art booster, but rather because I think folks should approach art with an open mind and then decide for themselves if they like what they see. Sometimes it's hard to break down the barriers of rational, linear thought so that you can truly see modern art or any art in its proper context. For example, you may look at one of Mark Rothko's two-tone color studies and think, "That's lame, just some colored rectangles." And you'd sort of be right — but still missing the point. Some art is merely a study of shape and form and color and texture, and someone like Rothko is known for his instantly recognizable approach to that puzzle.

Then there is Jackson Pollock, one of the great devils in Liz's art-going experience. She is right that his wild drizzling on canvas looks like something a child could have done, but this is deceiving. Pollock makes it look easy. He, too, is instantly recognizable because no one else has done what he did and no one else could do it as masterfully. And what has he done? Well, that's open to interpretation, like all great art. Mostly I like it because the fury of lines suggest chaos yet also, splashed against a monochromatic background, seem to follow a mysterious order. Some metaphor for life perhaps.

At any rate, Rothko and Pollock are among the rock stars of modern art, so it's cool just to say we've been there and seen it up close.

New Haven

We seem to spend most of our weekdays getting to and from work. I travel up to Hartford, driving about 90 miles each day. Dave goes down to Manhattan, spending nearly four hours commuting on a train.

That leaves the weekends to explore, and we find that the more we explore - the more we fall in love with New Haven.

New Haven has two contradicting reputations. Both are true to a point. One, it's a crime-ridden city. So far this year, the city has had a dozen murders. And for a city of only 160,000 people, I'd say that's high. Like any city with higher crime, it's a matter of knowing where you are and where you are going. We live near downtown, close to Yale. The neighborhood is, for the most part, safe. The biggest threat is getting our cars stolen.

The other reputation: If you want to live like you are in Manhattan but can't afford it, live in New Haven. True? I see a truth in it. New Haven is a compact city centralized around Yale University. With Yale comes arts, theater, great entertainment, clubs, bars, parks, beaches and outstanding restaurants all within walking or biking distance.

Dave and I haven't ever lived in a city together that offered so much as New Haven. Over the weekend, after a hike in East Rock Park with clear, stunning views of Long Island Sound and even Long Island, we realized how wonderful this city is.

So, I guess this is my ode to New Haven.....

Junk Yard Turtle Wax

Anyone wanna buy a 1998 Honda Civic? Pushing 200,000 but in good shape. Sad to say goodbye to my individual transport module after nearly five years, but since I've become a practicing believer in public transportation and pedal transportation, it makes less and less sense to keep the Honda.

The only legitimate reason to keep it is as a backup for Liz's car, and for spare parts, since she has the same year and model Honda. And that doesn't quite justify the $100 car tax bill (Connecticut is weird) and several hundreds spent on car insurance.

So yesterday I bought a new battery (the old one died) and stopped by the local junkyard to salvage a small passenger door panel that somehow had disappeared one night into New Haven thin air. Then I picked up some Turtle Wax for $6 at Target and spent my evening washing and polishing the body into an impressive shine.

I figure I can get about $2,000 for the thing. Enough to cover my train tickets for a few months.

Happy 31st Dave!

Dave is 31 today!!! We plan to celebrate in style with breakfast at a diner before heading off to work.

It's also been a year now since I started at the Hartford Courant. Man, time flies when you move twice and get married in one year!

Closing the Book

Liz may wind up writing a little something of her own to cap our vacation journal, but here's my stab at summarizing a few of the details we've missed.

First of all, we made it back safely to Newark, somehow caught our connections into the city and now are heading home on the Metro-North train to New Haven with an ETA of 4 a.m. Not too tired but getting there. Mostly looking forward to the end of travel, after a six-hour car drive, five-hour flight and now a few hours on trains.

As Liz mentioned in her last post, we visited USC on Thursday, the first time I had been back to the campus since my roommate Hanvey and I sealed the final box of our stuff in May 1998 and pointed his rickety minivan in the direction of the Northeast. The campus hadn't changed much in a decade, though I don't know if I'd notice if it had. I still remembered the key landmarks and had a few boring stories to tell Liz at each of our stops, but the place doesn't really have much emotional resonance anymore. Even so, I bought an SC baseball hat and am wearing it now. Go Trojans!


Some of our most pleasant moments on the trip were spent on beaches, starting with the beach at Carlsbad, where my Aunt Liz works. No alcohol allowed on this beach, she says, so we tried to act sober. Ha... just kidding.

And of course, we had a wild time on the beach in Santa Monica, first walking down the boardwalk and stopping by the Mexican restaurant at the end of the pier. Liz suggested ordering the big margaritas, and by big, I mean the biggest you've ever seen. They were also the best I've ever tasted, and they cost the most money I've ever spent on a single drink ($22 a piece!!!). After dark, we followed up dinner with a walk along the beach, running in and out of the surf.


We also had a good time visiting Ginger and Gerard, who had opened their home to me in college when I needed to get away from Los Angeles and school for a weekend. They're good people, and they took us to their local Fourth of July parade, which was more fun than you'd expect from a small-town parade like that. They live in Arcadia, Calif., in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. My cousin Louellen, who lives about a half hour away, stopped by to say hello and have dinner with us last night.

There's plenty more I could write about, and certainly plenty more photos I could attach — we took a few hundred and will eventually post them in a Picasa gallery — but I'll leave it at that for now, with one last detail. My grandparents are buried in a Mojave desert city called Victorville, not far from where they lived, in Phelan. I wasn't able to get to their funerals several years ago, so I wanted to stop by on this trip and visit their graves, even though the cemetery is about an hour away from Arcadia. We drove up after the parade Friday, and because of the holiday the cemetery office was closed. So we didn't have any help in finding the graves, but after strolling the rows for maybe 20 minutes I finally came across the memorial stone. I didn't know my dad's parents as well as I'd have liked, since they lived far away away for most of my life, but it meant a lot to finally be able to say goodbye in person.

Vacation Coming to an End

Here we are, at the Phoenix airport. Boarding is expected to begin any minute now. So sad to see the vacation dwindling, but so happy that we did everything we set out to do. Will go into the details after we land, sometime around midnight on the East Coast. Newark here we come.

Aunt Sabra

I had the pleasure of visiting my great aunt Sabra on Wednesday as Dave and I made the trek from Vista up to Santa Monica. Sabra Fox is my Grandma Putnam's sister who lives in Fullerton. The last time I saw her was when my grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary when I was in high school.

Sabra has six children. I only remember her youngest, Theresa, because she is only four years older than I am. They visited us in Wisconsin at least once one summer when Nate and I were in elementary school.

We chatted with her and her oldest daughter, Leanne, for nearly three hours, catching up on who is doing what. I also got to see pictures of my great-grandmother that I'd never seen.

We are now in Arcadia, which is near Pasadena, visiting Dave's Aunt Ginger and Uncle Gerard, who are Dave's godparents. We drove north after visiting the great USC, Dave's alma mater. I'll let him blog on that.....

California Dreaming

Egads! We haven't blogged since arriving in California. I guess that old laid-back SoCal spirit has seeped into our souls. Whoa, dude!

No surfing yet, though I am typing this from a hotel room with a view of the surf next to the Santa Monica pier — or the end of the world, as I affectionately like to call it. I went to college a half hour east on I-10 and even worked here in Santa Monica during my last semester in California, at the Barnes & Noble on the Third Street Promenade. Coming back here I realize how little I appreciated how good I had it. Or rather, how good I could have had it if I wasn't working a $6-an-hour job, catching a bus home at 11 p.m. and wasting all my spare time studying for classes.

Returning to stroll the boardwalk and the beach and sip giant margaritas with Liz is a much better approach to Los Angeles living.

But more on all that to come. I must first get in a mention of our trip to Vista, Calif., just north of San Diego. My aunt and uncle and cousin and cousin-in-law were extremely gracious in putting us up for the night, taking us to what must be the best steakhouse in Southern California, showing us the local beach, showing us their pet rattlesnake (gasp! We decided not to tell about the rattlesnake we ate a day earlier.) and filling us in on the old Paulsen gossip. Now that we have picture-posting capabilities (go back and see the old blog entries updated) here's a picture with, from left, Aunt Liz, Victor, Liz, Uncle Richard and Estay. And yes, that's wine in Liz's hand.

And Then There Was That Rattlesnake

We didn't see one - we ate one. After a day of taking in the views of the Grand Canyon --perhaps the most spectacular sight I've ever seen -- we headed out of the park, looking for some grub. And nothing says grub like Yippee-Ei-O! Steakhouse, where our waitress sported a beer belly and every entree came with a bowl of beans. Without hesitation, Dave decided we needed to try the fried rattlesnake appetizer. And without hesitation, we ate it. It was good. It tasted like a chewy calamari.

We are now on our way to Vista, Calif., just north of San Diego, to see Dave's Aunt Liz and Uncle Richard.