APPEASING THE CLAM DEMON

What a lovely weekend DOing NEW things.  I received a call from my friend Linda on Friday afternoon inviting me up to her place for the weekend.  She had moved to Salem quite awhile ago but I have been traveling and hadn't visited her there yet.  Staying at her place in Salem would be a a NEW DO.  Our thoughts were to stay cool going to a movie, visiting the shore and eating Mexican food.  On Friday night I received another call from her.  As she lives by the Common the town called to notify her that due to the North Shore Gay Pride Parade some streets would be blocked off.  She checked to see if I still wanted to drive up.  HECK YA!  Mayberry RFD meets GAY PRIDE?  You betcha your photo opp I do.

We especially loved The Boston Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence -Convent of the Commonwealth. 

 

After the parade and checking out the booths we were hungry and decided to get some lunch. Linda plugged in the address of THE CLAM BOX into her ancient GPS and we headed up to Ipswich.  We had to wait in line to get in but it was worth it.  We ordered two combo plates.  When they called our number and we saw the size of the combos we both said, "What were we thinking?"  It was a massive amount of fried clams, scallops and shrimp, french fries, onion rings and cole slaw.  IT WAS FANTASTIC.  I think it was some of the best cole slaw that I have ever had.  And the other wonderful thing is neither one of us felt greasy icky sick after we ate.  We compared notes in the morning too.  Neither of us felt yucky at all even after eating the leftovers later.  Now THAT IS A NEW DO!

I have this powerful little demon inside me that awakens any time that I cross the Cape Cod Canal.  I am not more than a few feet over the Bourne or Sagamore bridge when this gremlin awakens and screams "FRIED CLAMS WITH BELLIES" at me and he doesn't shut up until I comply.  It doesn't matter which shack I go to or how many clams I eat I always feel greasy icky sick afterward.  Then the demon full and content goes back to sleep until the next time I cross over a bridge to the Cape.

This time I felt absolutely fine.  Perhaps it is the energy of the North Shore and Ipswich (the demon seems to reside on the Cape) but I doubt it.  And then I remembered.  As I was sitting on the bench just inside the order area at the Clam Box I read a sign begging apology for the 15 minute extra wait in the afternoon as that is when they change the frying oil on a daily basis.  Nice.

We did some more touring around Salem checking out odd junk art and private parties, we watched a bad movie on-demand, hit the hay early and in the morning took a thermos of coffee to Winter Island to chat, breathe some fresh air and take in the beauty of the harbor.  Sundays are a "good thing."  My clam demon was appeased, my brain perked on strong black coffee and my liver on auto-pilot.  It was time to drive back down RT 128.

I did something else that was NEW for me.  Linda and I had been having fun driving around with her GPS.  Neither one of us liked the Jill voice that informed us of each turn.  She sounds pushy so I got into the voice settings and we toured around a bit with Daniel from the UK and then with Lee(land) from Australia.  I think we were pissing Lee off after awhile as we were not following his directions.  We had a lot of laughs taunting him until we realized that the HOME button was programed for the former GPS owner.  No wonder it kept steering us to Rhode Island.
 
For my return trip to SE MA I reprogrammed the voice of my new GPS.  I changed the language to Spanish.  My voice choices are only women's voices.  The English to Spanish translation is lacking.  Many words are just plain wrong.  POND STREET is  "POND S-ay Tay"  plus Paulina sounds a bit pushy too.  This won't last long. :)

I hope you had a perfectly wonderful weekend of DO NEWS.

Happy July 2012!  
2012 IS HALF OVER! 
Time flies when you are DOing NEW stuff and even when you aren't.
POOF!