Travel Tips: Lessons from Lake Placid, New York

If you are driving from Keene, NH, to Lake Placid, NY, Google maps will get you there.

If you are driving from Lake Placid, NY, to Keene, NH, on Thanksgiving Day in hopes of getting home in time for pie, it is best not to just try to reverse your old directions.

If you do, you will hit Route 4 near the top of the parabola (that's for you, Chloe and Brian and Christina), but you won't know it, because it will just be a road, and you will take Route 4 "South," which will take you way, way out of your way.

You will not realize it until you will have missed your chance to participate in the Thanksgiving family meal even for mints, and although your aunt and uncle will be very gracious and will let you in when you do get there and will even give you pie, you'll all be too exhausted to enjoy the visit as much as you should, and the rest of the family will all be asleep.

At least, that's my experience. You could also just take 87 all the way south to 7 and cut across the bottom of Vermont.

Travel Tips: Lessons from Durham, North Carolina

If you are hoping for lots of activities in an airport, or even for an open bookstore in an airport, you should not fly in or out of RDU on a Sunday morning.
Even late morning.

Travel Tips: The series

It's been a busy several months for me in lots of ways, and sorry if I've been neglecting the blog as a result.

One of the things that eases my transition to a quieter, countrier life, is liquor.

Kidding.

But only a little.

One of the things that really does ease that transition (but increases my busy-ness) is travel — to all kinds of different places, depending on what I can afford. I learn things, some more useful, some less useful. It seems like it is my obligation to share these findings with you, my readers, and so I shall, in this new and occasional series.

OK, I'll say it.

I liked Watchmen. I've had two weeks to think about it, and I still liked it.

Ya wanna make something of it?

Bang, bang. I am the Warrior.

Sorry, this will likely leave people who don't know me (or haven't seen pictures of me) out. I don't try to do that, but sometimes, you can't help it.

Do you have an opinion on whether I should get a bob with straight-across baby bangs? Factors to consider: How it would look, how much care it would take, whether my hair is a good texture for that look, whether I am too old for that look, whether I can pull that look off in the country, whether I can wear my current glasses with that hair, whether my widow's peak will alter the wisdom of bangs, whether it is smart to embark on something that radical when I can't find a hairstylist I like.

For those of you who do not know what a cardigan is, and therefore may have trouble with "straight-across baby bangs," see this picture. I am thinking of bangs more or less like that, but with slightly longer hair.

Oh, Uncle O'Grimacey

You might think a Shamrock Shake would taste sort of like watercress.

But you'd be wrong.

More like toothpaste.

Milk and ice cream

Tonight, I had dinner with a friend, and then went to see Milk with her, and then got ice cream with her. I know that you are more interested by the inner workings of my brain than with the contents of my dinner, movies, or dessert, so here is a brief round-up:

• Everyone should see Milk. And also Dustin Lance Black's acceptance speech.
• The most perfect, radical, simple piece of queer activism a queer person can do is come out. But you unqueers aren't off the hook in that department. Come out, often, loudly, in our support. Do it when we are around, and do it when we are not around, and do it especially when you think we might be around but for some reason haven't said anything. There is, I promise you, some reason.
  
• Apparently, one of the signs that you are a New England driver is that you refer to driving distances in minutes, rather than miles. Is that true? I mean, I do that, but I assumed everyone did. Readers from other places, do you live X minutes from work, or X miles from work?

One of those things is not like the others, but it is all, I think, necessary for us to discuss.