Voracious Readers

Some of my children are such voracious readers they always insist on sitting in the library to be read their story of the day! I  think  antique dolls and books are natural together and having a couple of pink flamingos watching over is a good thing. I find I can fit more books in this bookcase by storing them horizontally. I must have at least 1,500 books of all types and ages. I think the Mets uniform is shrinking, lol.

A Fun "Lobstah" Lunch at the Shore

My friend, Mary, took me out to lunch the other day at the Guilford Marina's Lobster Pound. Guilford, next door to Madison, is the town I grew up in and where Mary still lives. The marina is a great place to hang out on a summer afternoon, and as a child when my family owned boats, I spent a lot of time there. I brought my friend, Mike Urban's newest book, Lobster Shacks, along with me. The book includes entries for New England's classic roadside lobster restaurants, including the Lobster Pound, so I thought it would make a perfect little photoshoot. The lobster rolls were delicious, and as you'll see in the following photos, you can't get much closer to the water without swimming! Thank you, Mary!

• To read more about Lobster Shacks, click over to Amazon, here. It's a great read even if you aren't going to be traveling around New England this summer.
• To read more about the Lobster Pound, click here. Boat tours are available, too. 
• This just in! Publisher's Weekly has favorably reviewed Lobster Shacks, here!

Looking east from our table, this is the view of the Guilford Marina. Just to the right of the little wooden clubhouse in the background is where my family's various boats were moored as I was a child. It looks much the same today despite many updates throughout the years.

Each picnic table at the "Pound" has a flowerbox filled with annuals such as marigolds and begonias. The hefty boat rope is a great touch. That's a classic saltwater marsh in the background.

Looking out into the Long Island Sound. I can't tell you how many times my father piloted our boat out this very channel for a day on the water. You can moor a boat on the right and let your guests off for lunch.

The unassuming entrance to the Lobster Pound. Featuring a minimal menu, several types of chips and non alcoholic drinks are available to go with your freshly cooked seafood.

A vintage ship's wheel awaits seaside guests as they step off their boats.

Shade or sun, it's your choice at the "Pound."

Busy day. The tables filled up as quickly as they emptied. The food arrives quickly and couldn't be any fresher. Local fishermen supply the seaside "shack" with their goods.

Seagulls keep a lookout for any crumbs that may fall their way!

Just a lovely Connecticut shoreline day in the sun, everyone is enjoying the quintessential New England seashore meal.

Me and the Gold-Plated Porsche

Yours truly, stylin' in a Dolce and Gabbana black, gray and olive striped knit cap, Calvin Klein black long-sleeve T, and A&F olive-drab cargo pants, peering under the hood of Stephan Wilkinson's bright yellow Porsche 911 race car, 2004. Hah! I always wanted to walk down a red carpet and have someone ask me who I was wearing, instead of asking me who I was stalking and escorting me out. None of my clothes had paint on them at that point. Rips and tears, and in some cases duct tape and staples as I don't sew, but I didn't start painting until late fall 2004 when I stopped working full-time.

B O O K S — The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures, Globe Pequot Press, 2004. This is a book by my publisher, but I had nothing to do with its design or production. Stephan Wilkinson is a former editor of Car and Driver, a graduate of Harvard and contributes a monthly column at Popular Science, "Man and Machine." The car isn't a product of a Las Vegas shopping spree gone wrong, it's not actually gold-plated; the title refers to the obscene amount of money the author spent to have the car made race-worthy after buying it for next to nothing. 

I was still working full-time in 2004, about to quit actually, when the author dropped by with his book's namesake Porsche. He was a really interesting guy to talk to, aren't all car people, lol? The car's six-cylinder 'pancake' horizontally opposed engine was L-O-U-D and stripped out as race cars tend to be. It was good weather, a great afternoon to gather outside for an impromptu car show of one, and I always enjoy the times I can tell someone associated with a book or magazine I've read forever, just how much I appreciated their contribution to my car-fueled adolescence. We have a few Porsche lovers that read this blog so I thought you'd appreciate this post.

For a link to the Amazon write up of this now out-of-print book, click here.

Here's what Car and Driver said of the book:

". . . this isn't a book about Porsche restoration. It's about Wilkinson's colorful life. . . . That, along with elegant writing, is what makes this book so endearing--the tales are told without ego. Wilkinson is amused by life's inevitable disasters and humiliating blow-ups, trotting them out so everyone can laugh. This is . . . less a tale about a machine than a tale about a man enjoying a machine."