October 13, 2015

Something Scary: The Highwayman

October 13, 2015/ Hayley

I am not one who likes to be spooked--I have never been inside of a haunted house and I doubt that I ever will. I don't enjoy horror movies where ghastly ghouls and masked murderers leap from behind trees and I cringe at even the previews for exorcism movies.

I prefer my frights to creep quietly from the words on a page, or from a scratchy voice accompanied by the pop of a campfire or a twig snapping in the distance. I prefer scary poems to anything else.

October 09, 2015

Something Scary: Visit to the Apple Farm

October 09, 2015/ Hayley

Today, we spent the morning apple picking at Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, Connecticut. I started by taking pictures of the apples on the trees, the orchard views, and the changing leaves. The photos were pretty, but all exactly the same as those I took while apple picking two years ago.

With the "Something Scary" theme in mind, I started looking for a different angle. As it turns out, that angle was down.

October 06, 2015

Something Scary: The Heights of St. Paul's Cathedral

October 06, 2015/ Hayley

Truthfully, there isn't much that is frightening about St. Paul's Cathedral. The marble is bright and there doesn't seem to be a dark corner anywhere inside. Artwork meant to commemorate and inspire fills every space, from floor to ceiling.

But let's take a look at the statistics, shall we? See the stone balustrade (the fancy word for railing I learned just today) that curves along the base of the dome? That's called the Stone Gallery--it sits 170 feet above the cathedral floor and you have to climb 376 steps to get there.

October 02, 2015

Photo Friday: Fall is Here!

October 02, 2015/ Hayley

Fall came quickly here--temperatures dropped from 87 one week to 72 the next, and this week the rainy weather took us down into the mid-fifties. I must admit that, after last winter left us with frozen snow piles into the first week of may, the chilly weather has a cruel "too soon" feel.

Everything else around us seems ready for fall, though--leaves started to turn yellow as soon as the temperature changed and the squirrels have been busy collecting and burying acorns all around campus for the past two weeks. (Did you know that a squirrel can smell a buried acorn even through a foot of snow?)

I suppose I can get ready for fall, too--

September 22, 2015

Leaps of Faith and Roads Not Taken

September 22, 2015/ Hayley

I've been reading David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks this month, and while I'm nowhere near finished, I wanted to share a passage from the last page that I read today (no spoilers):

One of the narrators (there are a few!), named Hugo, is different; there is something special that distinguishes him from "the Normals," as he calls them, of the everyday world. At this point in the novel, Hugo is stopped in the street by a group of men in a white SUV who invite him to become someone/something different, an opportunity to evolve. But he must decide to leave the relative safety of the life he knows right now.

September 18, 2015

Photo Friday: Blueberries

September 18, 2015/ Hayley

The temperatures here are still hovering in the low eighties, which means that our air conditioners are still hard at work for most of the afternoon. But the nights are slightly cooler and we've watched our first football games of the season, so it seems that autumn's arrival is inevitable.

Before trading in the sweet, summer peaches for crisp apples, we headed to a nearby beach for lobster rolls and I picked up a pint of blueberries from the farmer's market to bake into muffins.

September 15, 2015

10 Answers to the Question, "So How's New Haven?"

September 15, 2015/ Hayley

We're 6 weeks into our 104(ish)-week stint in New Haven, Connecticut, we've attended more than 2 dozen get-to-know-(people/New Haven/Yale/SOM) events, and we're 2 weeks into what may be the beginnings of a routine. We've also traveled back to Atlanta twice this month, which means we've been asked, "So How's New Haven?" many, many times.

Here are my top 10 answers:

September 11, 2015

Photo Friday: Sisters

September 11, 2015/ Hayley

This weekend we're celebrating my sister Sarah's wedding! Last weekend, we sipped frozen margaritas and chatted about what we were like as kids--

September 08, 2015

Weathering the Storm: A Murphy's Law Vacation

September 08, 2015/ Hayley

We call it The Camping Trip, because it needs no further introduction.

We like to believe that everyone has one, a Murphy’s Law Vacation, when anything that can go wrong does go wrong, and then some. The one when your sister, skipping in the sunshine, trips over an untied shoelace and fractures her wrist only hours before your other sister perches on a rotting log that is home to hundreds of fire ants. Or the one to Maine in the summertime, when the seventy-eight degree air feels just warm enough, so you give into the temptation and take a casual dip into the crystal clear lake, only seventy-eight degree air doesn’t do much to warm up the water temperature and someone catches a slight case of hypothermia. Or the it’s-so-hot-you-can-fry-an-egg-on-pavement camping trip to Kentucky, when you finally cry Uncle after a week of sleeping in hair-dryer heat and check into a hotel on the last night.

We call ours The Camping Trip, and it started with rain.

September 04, 2015

Photo Friday: Back to High School

September 04, 2015/ Hayley

Today's Photo Friday is in honor of our 10-year high school reunion, which we'll be celebrating this weekend. I spent a good amount of time looking through pictures from high school--graduation, homecomings, proms, and halftime shows. But, I have to say, one of the things I remember most were the camo pants.

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