Mansions

My lovely friend Renee acquiesced to my request of taking a road trip to tour the mansions in Rhode Island. She pushed off a day of furniture moving and other domestic pursuits to drive 2 hours to walk around someone else's house for 2 hours. She's a gem of a woman. It was a beautiful early spring day in Newport, Rhode Island. A bit chilly, but sunny. The story starts us here...




...at Salve Regina University. Why there? Cuz Tom Tom, the GPS told us to stop here. At first I was thinking it was the mansion...it's not, just a big fancy building on a Catholic university's campus. Why did I care enough to take a picture? Cuz Salve Regina is the name of the song Whoopi jazzes up in Sister Act. It's my favorite part of the movie, it's so great and makes me happy. My friend Ashley's singing group sang it too, which was awesome...so that's what I think of when I hear Salve Regina...not of some prestigious Catholic school...but of Sister Act, a great movie of the 90s.



Then we drove around some more, without Tom Tom and finally found the mansion we were looking for: The Breakers.

I don't really understand the name...all other house names are like surnames, like Pemberly or Netherfield--yes, those are houses from Pride and Prejudice. So, more info about Breakers can be found here, pictures too! I forget the whole history of the place...hence the link. But cool things I remember...the kitchen wasn't banished to the cellar like most mansions of its time, it was on the main floor. The owners had previously experienced a kitchen fire in another house that killed a lot of people, cuz they couldn't get out. So the kitchen was huge and open, with lots of windows, it was gorgeous.

Oh, and this was only a summer house! Can you imagine?! So the family, the Vanderbilts, would come from NYC or where ever they lived and bring 30 or so servants and then locals would take care of the yard and stables and stuff. There was 4 or 5 floors to the house, with the enough rooms for the servants to live on the top floor.

There was all kinds of original art, like old stuff, from the 1500s--just hanging (literally) out in the house. The formal dining room was amazing. The ceilings were crazy high with life sized marble statues of Greek or Roman guys...and the table was gigantic, this big square thing that could expand either way. The guide said the chairs were of some heavy wood (mahogany?) that you needed a servant to pull it out for you, cuz it was too heavy to do it yourself.

The fireplaces were the huge kind, you know from that movie The Haunting, with Liam Neeson...and Catherine Zeta Jones where he brought them all to the haunted mansion to "do a sleep study" but it was really to freak everyone out? And there were creepy children ghosts in the wood carvings? Remember the part where Owen Wilson's character walks into the fireplace and then gets beheaded by the swinging flue cleaner thingy? Well the fireplaces may not have been that big, but you could sure walk in them.

Oh, when Renee and I visited, I was still recovering from surgery, I still am, so I got tired from all the walking around. The tour guide was going to take us upstairs, but offered to take whoever needed it up the elevator. I raised my hand, and I think I will from now on. The elevator ride was sooo cool! It is original to the house. A lot of the time they'll add one in to accommodate everyone, but this was was put in when they built the rest of the house (which didn't take long to build, like a year or something cuz they paid for people to work on it all the time!). Anyway, old elevators are so neat! Behind a regular door, there's the grate thing that you pull closed...and it's all small and quaint. Anyway, super cool. I highly recommend it...feign illness next time you tour a fancy house just so you can ride in their elevator. Also, cuz we were then in another part of the house from the rest of the tour, we had to take all these short cuts through "restricted" areas to get to them quicker! Cool! It was just though a couple closets and hallways, but still, we got to walk right past the red ropes!

So that's the major stuff that I remember a month later. I had all kinds of cool facts a week after...but sadly those are gone now. I need to write 'em down quicker. Again, I'm sorry for the lack of pictures, there's hardly any online either, cuz they want people to pay for those expensive picture books. Dumb ripoff. Here are some from the outside though...

This is a view from the back, out to the ocean. Beautiful. Who knew Rhode Island was so pretty?

I think this thing usually has green vines growing all over it. We were there visiting off season, and remember, this was a summer house, so by the time the family got there, I'm sure it was all green and lovely.

I really liked this tree, with all the branches going every which way and the smooth, marble-like bark. How cute! A little elephant!

The Magical World of Harry Potter

Who doesn't love Harry Potter? I do, so when the Harry Potter Exhibition came to the Museum of Science in Boston, I just had to go. And luckily Nathan likes Harry Potter too, so he wasn't opposed when I dragged him along with me.
Now, unfortunately the exhibition didn't allow photographs! Lame! So I'll do my best to describe every exhibit. Haha, just kidding. We started out with a "British" wizard allowing some children to be sorted by the Sorting Hat. She asked them which their favorite house was first...and they all ended up where they wanted! Imagine that. Nate said I'd be a Hufflepuff and that he'd be a Slytherin. It's true. He's not evil, but he's very science and power oriented, in a good way. He'd be a good Slytherin. And I'd be a sweet, kind, lowly Hufflepuff. :)


On display were costumes and props from the movies. They had that big portrait of Lockhart, remember? From the second movie, I think, when the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is all into himself? So they had his big portrait, and other things from his office. OH! One thing that was cool was Umbridge's office. Remember how she had all those plates with kittens on them and how it was all overly pink? They had all that.
There were a few interactive exhibits. You could pull mandrakes. The weird root-like creatures that had the piercing scream. Yeah, that was fun. You could also throw a quaffle...or some ball through a Quidditch hoop. There was a dragon egg forever "hatching" in Hagrid's hut...Oooh, and they had the big huge model of Aragog...and some centaurs in the forest, it was all dark and creepy.
Oh, another part that was really cool was this tall wall covered in the notices Umbridge keeps coming up with, remember? She kept making up new rules and then they'd get nailed up on the wall. They had all those up, and you could read 'em, that was neat. At one point they also had newspapers, I think from the 4th movie...where Sirius Black has escaped, and maybe some were from the most recent movie...but it was cool cuz you could read 'em, and they had articles everywhere in this hodgepodge of words and articles, it was really neat. The pictures didn't move though...
Something I was surprised about was that they had Cedric Diggory's Quidditch robes, and no one cared. Do we remember who played Cedric? Robert Pattinson, aka Edward of Twilight fame. I'd think that girls would be fawning over a costume that he wore. But no one cared, weird.
Those are the highlights. Overall it was fun, overpriced, but fun. Some people came dressed up. And of course it wouldn't be complete without a big overpriced gift shop at the end with all kinds of Hogwarts memorabilia.

In Memory

My brother Stefan made this great video/slide show in honor of my younger brother Adam.

Christmas in Thailand

Who knew a Buddhist country would be so crazy about Christmas? I guess Thais just want an excuse to party. It seems like every building has their own gaudy tree, there are lights and Santas a plenty.



Even now, several days after Christmas, it's not dying down. At the aquarium today we heard the same string of 4 songs at least twice..."Feliz Navidad" was one of them...what's up with that?

Autumn in New England

Here in Boston Sunday we had beautiful weather...maybe our last nice fall day. It was sunny and warm and the leaves are all bright and colorful...So where do I choose to go on such a wonderful day? The cemetery of course! Look at the great photographs I got!









Here are some more artsy ones...I had fun editing them...Which one is your favorite?

A video for a friend

Nate and I made a video for our friend Mandie who got married this past weekend. We weren't able to make it to Colorado to be there, so we made a video. We got started late...so we progressively got sillier and sillier. Oh, for the dancing scene, I've gotta give Sam props for playing the piano. Sam also threw the bouquet and you can hear him laughing as Nate pummels me.



Here's the extended version of the throwing of the bouquet.

The Longfellow House

A couple weeks ago I went on a tour of what is now known as the Longfellow House in Cambridge. It's right down the street from where we go to church (at the Episcopal Divinity School actually. our building burnt down).

This house has a lot of history. It was built by a Tory, a guy loyal to the British, back in the mid 1700s. But when Washington and his men were taking control of Cambridge and later Boston, all the Tories left. Washington took over this house to live in and to be used as a headquarters.

Then much later (around the mid 1800s) a young Henry Wadsworth Longfellow rented a room out of the house while he attended Harvard (or he was a teacher there...I forget). When he married his second wife, Francis Appleton, he asked his father-in-law to buy that house for them. Francis' dad worked in textiles, I think he owned a mill...or was somehow involved with one. That's why there are all different kinds of carpets in the house. Not only was it the style then, but Mr.Appleton used it as a way to showcase his product. There was also a lot of colorful wallpaper used which was also so "in". I loved all the colors and patterns, hence all the pictures.



And what's really cool is that after the tour (which was done expertly by a park ranger lady who dramatically recited Longfellow's poetry) we were able to go down to the basement to meet the archivist! It was really neat. All the papers, documents and items concerning the house and the Longfellow family are all kept there. What's even cooler is that I get to volunteer there. H.W. Longfellow owned a lot of books and I get to do some data entry to get the handwritten cards which catalog all the books into a computer database. I'm really looking forward to going to this house every week!!