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Category Archives: Mystic

Weekend Excitement

I was looking forward to our candlelight scrabble night. Eric is usually so busy with the mountain load of work he has to do and I’m just as overloaded with my duties that we don’t have those nights as often as we used to.

We watched the Eiffel Tower lights being turned off and then made sure we had all of our lights off for Earth Hour Saturday night. We were enjoying our scrabble game so much that we continued to play by candlelight until the game ended at midnight. We were just about to get ready for bed when we heard sirens.

Fire Two Doors Down

The view out our window Saturday NIght.
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.

The first police car pulled up in front of the bank, so we thought the bank had been robbed again. Then a second police car pulled up at an angle across our street, blocking our driveway. The lights were flashing right outside our window. Eight fire engines responded, including the Naval Base. Densmore Oil was on fire.

Fire Two Doors Down

Mystic Ladder Truck in front of the bookstore giving access to Densmore’s roof.
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.

We initially couldn’t tell if it was the apartments above Main St., Bank Square Books, or Densmore. We also didn’t know how bad it was or if it was spreading our way. The firefighters worked fast and kept it contained to the one building, but we watched and waited to be sure it was safe to go to sleep, which wasn’t until 2 a.m.

Fire Two Doors Down

Pump Truck and firefighters from three departments at the rear of the building clearing debris after successfully fighting the fire.
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.

Sunday we went to Connecticut College to see our friend Lauren perform in concert. She is a member of the Connecticut College Orchestra and plays the string bass. They gave a few family concerts as practice for their final concert coming up in May. We weren’t able to go to the previous ones, but made sure not to miss this last one. At one point during the concert they allowed people from the audience to walk in between the musicians while they were playing. Feeling the music like that was incredible and gives a whole new meaning to the term “surround sound”.

The movie “A Night at the Museum” has been recommended to us twice and we finally remembered to check it out from Netflix. We watched the first half before the concert and the rest when we got home. We had a hard time tearing ourselves away at one of the most intense moments of the movie. Eric was laughing, because I was just excited about it as he was the first time he saw it.

We all got into the movie, but Johann enjoyed it so much, he can’t get enough of it. Now he has plans to create his own wax figure museum. He’s working on a list of all the people from history that he wants to put in his museum. So many ideas, so little time! And here we thought we’d have a nice quiet weekend to catch up on things. What were we thinking?!

Holiday Sea of Trees

"Our" Tree

“Our tree”,originally uploaded
by eclectic echoes.

By the time the holidays are over, Johann will have helped decorate four trees: Grandma and Grandpa’s tree, our large tree for Ukrainian Christmas, our table top goose feather tree, and one at the Mystic Aquarium. Every Christmas Mystic Aquarium has the “Holiday Sea of Trees” as one of their holiday events. Local organizations sponsor decorating the Christmas trees that are placed throughout the indoor spaces of the aquarium. Bank Square Books agreed to do a tree this year.

Annie and Jane, the owners, got the idea of using little Dover books, scallop shells, and one of their origami sea creatures kits for ornaments. Jane took one look at the origami pattern book and decided they didn’t have the patience to do it, but I did. So Annie called me and asked if we’d like to help them with the tree.

The timing was perfect. We needed a fun project to work on. The chance to help the aquarium and the book store, while also helping friends made the project even better. We worked on it for about a week and a half. In the end we managed to make 50 ornaments for the aquarium tree and about a dozen origami for Johann to keep.

"Our" Tree 3

“Our tree 3″, originally uploaded
by eclectic echoes.

While we were busy folding, Annie called again and asked us if we’d like to help them decorate the tree as well. Johann was so excited, he could hardly wait until November 25. We met them at the aquarium in the morning and had the best time putting our ornaments on the tree. Boomerang, one of the young California sea lions, kept swimming over to see what we were doing. Bank Square Books’ tree is right in front of the observation window of the indoor California sea lion tank. We made sure to put ornaments on the back of the tree for Boomerang to look at too.

Please Vote For Our Friend!

Connecticut Light and Power is sponsoring a contest called “Live Green-Win Green” to get kids to think about the environment, use energy more wisely, and live a greener life. Participating high schools have to produce a 2 minute video showing the environmentally friendly changes they’ve made around their school and then write an essay explaining what they would do with the $20,000 grant money to make even more changes.

Our friend Annie, who has done Johann’s story time for the past 2 years at Bank Square Books, told us about it. Her daughter, Elma, has played a large role in entering the Williams School into the contest. Elma is a wonderful young lady and has come several times during her vacation as a guest reader to Johann’s story time. We want to help them win the contest. Please go and check it out. You can vote three times from one computer, so use all the computers that you have access to! The last time I checked they were ranked #7. Please go to www.williamsschool.org and click on the link to vote for the school. It will take you directly the William Schools entry at CL&P where you can see the video, read the essay, and cast your vote. The voting ends December 12!

A Time for Picking Apples

Saturday we went to Holmberg Orchards for our annual apple picking day. New friends we’ve made through the homeschooling group asked us if we’d like to meet them there, since it is a family tradition for them too and they wanted to spent the day with us. They are the first family in 6 years of living here to reach out to us this much and it’s been wonderful. Eric and I enjoy the parents’ company. Johann loves playing with their son and daughter. We have regular play dates with them and have plans to get together even more in the future.

The weather could not have been more perfect. After over a week of rainy and overcast days, a cool, sunny Saturday brought out a lot of people. The kids did pick some apples, but they ended up playing most of the time. They ran everywhere. They pretended the empty bags were parachutes. One of the low hanging tree branches became a horse they were riding. They sat and ate apples together, which eventually turned into an apple skin spitting contest. They created a maze through the pumpkin patch, which they crawled through multiple times. Later they did the same with the chrysanthemums. I’m just going to tell everyone that Johann’s knee patches were originally green. I seriously doubt I’ll get out the grass stains, but they had a blast. All three of them were glowing. They have their own language and they understand each other in a way that no one else does. In the greater scheme of things, dirty jeans are a small price to pay.

We always look forward to going to the orchard. Johann said this morning, while he was eating his third apple turnover for breakfast, that he loves the fall, because that’s when we get all the apples. I love watching the seasons change, feeling the crispness of the air, and the colors on the trees. Now we also have sweet memories of a special day spent with the Halls.


Twenty-Spotted Lady Beetle

This Psyllobora vigintimaculata (Twenty-Spotted Lady Beetle) was found on the underside of a leaf of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) we brought home from near the library to feed to Cater who is now eating so voraciously we fear he may start on the drapes if we do…ok not really but he is eating two to three medium sized milkweed leaves per day…

Before refrigerating the leaves we check them for predators and other hitchhikers. This Lady Bird Beetle was a scant 1.8mm in diameter. I checked it first under the microscope, then put everything I could into the macro to get a half decent shot. For hand held I think it holds up pretty well. Gotta work on flash techniques though.

Unlike most lady bird beetles, this tiny beetle feeds primarily on fungus found on leaves and stems of many plants.

Classification

Kingdom
Animalia
Phylum
Arthropoda
Class
Insecta
Order
Coleoptera
Family
Coccinellidae
Genus
Psyllobora
Species
Psyllobora vigintimaculata

Originally I had a special guest photo lined up for the Life Photo Meme, but somehow I forgot it’s Invert Thursday! The guest photo is definitely not an invertebrate. So I guess that posting will have to wait for next week!

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