Holiday: a photo essay

Back from vacation. Rather than bore you with endless descriptions, here are a few of my impressions garnished with some comments.

Yes, one does need an SUV to deal with heffalumps like these that crawl across the road and hog the left lane. You just know that a Smart car would be tantamount to suicide next to that.

Boston, North End, workers. NYC cancelled due to the kidney stone of my SO.

Boston, North End, New England Aquarium: sharks, turtles, seahorses, starfish, lobstahs, horseshoe crabs, harbor seals, you name it... Munchkin and cousin lapped it up greedily,although they had already dug clams, touched a horseshoe crab and chased hermit crabs the day before on the beach.

I have always enjoyed flying a kite. My dragon for this trip.

Eastham. A hidden beach. Coincidentally also the beach where my brother-in-law got married last Sunday, up to his knees in the water. Great day.

Queen Anne's lace. Brewster, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History.

Orleans. The sunset in our backyard.

Our backyard reflected in my "fly" glasses.

Edward Hopper's house in Truro. Some idiot real estate king is putting up a Macmansion on the dunes, killing the most famous sweeping landscape of Cape Cod.

The church near Snow cemetery in Truro.
A storm just weathered. Provincetown. MacMillan Wharf.

Return to Madrid Barajas airport. I found myself sitting next to a young Italian on the plane, decked out in a Harley D. jacket wearing a T-shirt reading "I heart lesbians". Little did the young man know that he was sitting next to two, and that the Italian couple behind us were also lesbians (of the not so child-friendly variety). All in all very funny.

Conclusion: favourite moment of the whole vacation is our sunset glass of wine with our friends M. and S. and their daughter on the sandflats at Skaket Beach in Orleans. Thanks, girls, for making this the highlight of our visit and for offering to marry us there and then.

Oh what a night!

Where do I start? Interesting mix of events in the last 24 hours.

Yesterday evening, news reached us that Ted Kennedy had a malignant brain tumour with approx. 1-5 years to live. As he is widely considered the patriarch of the Democratic party, and is of course a 'Cape Coddah', my SO was a little downcast at the news. Then this was followed by Barack Obama cinching Oregon, making him the surefire candidate for the Democratic nomination. I am unsure whether he is the best candidate overall (a lot of hot air, and good speechwriters, if you ask me, but can he deliver the goods?) and whether he can take on 'Ken' McCain and 'Barbie'.
Time will tell.

After drooling over Kate Hepburn ànd Cary Grant (C.K. Dexter Haaaaaven!) in the 'Philadelphia Story', we geared up for the first semi-final of the Eurovision songfestival, coming to us from Belgrade, Serbia this year. They might just as well have named this the Eurovision campfest. Some impressions: a bunch of vampire angels, an ice skater and a barefoot singer on ice, an Armenian cha-cha girl, lots of back-up dancers (not singers, mind you) in varying states of undress, a woman clutching a teddy bear, a turkey puppet, Gritney Spears, a Donatella Versace clone with teeth so white you could have probably spotted them from the back of the arena, etc.

Needless to say that the Belgian entry, with its Amélie Poulain simplicity, was doomed to fail. Next year, they should just select five or ten of the gayest guys possible, add a few pink feathers and make them sing a Kylie Minogue song like Wow or 'It's raining men'. Oh well, we had some seriously good giggles and a lot of text messages flew up and down.

In other news, you may remember the two girls, Yanaika and Stephanie, from the Flemish take on 'My Restaurant Rules', featured last week on this blog. Well, the Flemish public overwhelmingly voted these young ladies to the finale, over the entrants from my city, Antwerp. Of course, I was rooting for the Limburghettes although I forgot to vote.

One hangover and a lot of popcorn later, "this is one of those days that the pages of history teach us are best spent lying in bed"...

Oh she was gorgeous!*: Marcia Cross

OK, given the ravage on Cape Cod, Massachusetts this weekend, I thought I might do something good for the Bay State ;-) (Go Sox! and I hope power's up and running again, Mom-in-law, and that your move went well).

Today we give a shoutout to that phenomenal redhead, Marcia Cross, who is from Marlborough, MA . Most avid TV viewers will probably be familiar with her character Bree van de Kamp from Desperate Housewives (not her alter ego, I might stress, but rather a Martha Stewart on steroids). Those who are a little older, like myself, will probably remember the scene from Melrose Place in which Kimberly Shaw rips off that wig.



Then of course, there was the juicy gossip/rumour about presumed lesbianism, which started on Datalounge and took the world by storm.

Anyhow, I'm happy to report that the divine Ms Cross is since married to some stockbroker type and the mother of twin girls, Savannah and Eden.

And may I take this opportunity to express my hope that many more episodes of Desperate Housewives will follow... In the meantime, I will feast my eyes on that pumpkin mane and those wonderful curves for a while longer.