Ahhhh... wireless

But not at temp home. Tsk.

I'm sitting at a Borders in the not-so-small town of Nashua, stocking up on reading material, downloaded episodes of Scrubs (but not the season finale of House yet, alas, not posted), and fast-loading webpages. Yes, that's right; high speed internet is more addictive than heroin, and removal from it causes seizures, headaches, crying jags, and a shuddering return to the written word.

I'm thoroughly enjoying New England though, largely because I've never spent a significant amount of time here, and it's pretty and about as far removed as you can get from the Caribbean without being in Siberia. Not that I don't like Grenada; don't get me wrong, but after the traumas of finals week and a long time on the island, you long for a pine tree. You'll see what I mean.

So far, my impression is that a great deal of the local New England (mainly, southern New Hampshire, northern Mass, and eastern Vermont) looks like a giant historical preservation site like Old Salem, Old Sacramento and other historical places with the initials "O.S.", but that doesn't end really until you get into outer Nashua, though sure enough, when you get into inner Nashua, we go right back to brick buildings, Bank of Americas in what appears to be an old farmhouse, and so forth.

I've been doing mini car trips to explore, and am hoping to get up to Maine to drive along the coastline and eat real Atlantic lobster to see how it holds up against the bugs bagged in SoCal of the spiny variety. It's hard to imagine anything tasting better than that.

Here's some New England:

















These are buildings I specifically liked, but for the most part, this whole area either looks like the above, or looks like heavy red riding hood type woods. Quite nice if not for the lack of high speed internet and cell phone reception, both of which, as mentioned, I can get in a developing nation in the middle of nowhere.

And here's one of the neighbors. He and his girlfriend visit the back porch around 7 every night (whoops, we're late!), occasionally tapping on the glass insistently to remind me that they'd like to be fed. I've gotten them both eating out of my hand, and in the female's case, eating my toe upon apparently thinking it was edible: