Me On The East Coast

I love Halloween!

Halloween is my absolute, 100% favourite day of the year. There's scary stuff and free candy. It makes me sad that now there are trick or treating curfews. And what is this crap about candy fairies taking your loot and leaving you a toy or book instead? That sucks.

Tonight is Daddy's night, so after the Boy is finished trick or treating I'm going to go home, fire up the jack o'lanterns in the living room and watch the new episode of American Horror Story. And dig into the bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups I picked up this morning, and whatever else I can manage to steal from the Boy's loot.

This is Peter's 2012 jack o'lantern masterpiece, Mama June from Honey Boo Boo. It didn't photograph very well, but it looks amazing.

HMS Bounty

I saw the Bounty sometime in the 1990s in Miramichi. What a beautiful sight when it sailed up the Miramichi River. And when it left, a young guy from home went with it, just decided on the spot he was going to crew on it, ran home and grabbed his things, and off he went. What a shame it's gone.

Acacia House Inn, Bar Harbor

My shopping buddy and I spent the May 24 long weekend shopping in Maine. We spent the last day in Bar Harbor, and spend the night at the Acacia House Inn.

The inn

The porn house across the street. I loved this house!

Where the coffee was!

The inside dining room

There was also dining in the porch.

We stayed in a room in a separate building. I was a bit disappointed at not staying in the main house, but it was fine. This little bed was surprisingly comfortable

Fruit course at breakfast.

Asparagus eggs.

The Fairholm Pornalicious Inn, Charlottetown, PEI

Peter and I went to Charlottetown for Canada Day/his birthday. We stayed at the Fairholm Inn. It looked pretty swanky on the website, but the pics totally didn't do it justice. I spent half the time there sitting in the second floor sun porch perusing the reading material. Oh, and Paul McCartney stayed there once!

Our giant lobster can beat your giant lobster

We have a giant lobster where we live. Imagine our suprise when we discovered Islamorada has one too. This is Betsy the giant spiny lobster.

This is our giant lobster in Shediac. It's a regular "American" (or Canadian) lobster, and I don't think it has a name like Betsy does. But it's bigger, and would kick Betsy's tail fin if they came to life and got in a fight.

I went snorkeling, too

Just as much fun as scuba diving and considerably easier is snorkeling. We took the a tour from Key West called the Snorkel and Sunset Sail Rum and Reggae Cruise. It was amazing. I saw a giant grouper, a great big barracuda, a whole school of blue Ellen Degeneres (Nemo) fish, and a slew of other neat fish. It was magical. Almost everyone went snorkeling, except Peter. Peter can't swim, so he stayed on the boat and got hammered. He seemed to have a pretty good time, too.

This is where they took us to snorkel, at Sand Key Light. Under the water is the third largest coral barrier reef in the world.

The captain said you could either take the stairs into the water or do the rock star jump off the boat. Feeling all confident from my scuba adventure, I chose the rock star move, even though I'm not a great swimmer. Thank Christ I had a vest on or I would have drowned. That's me with the pink snorkel.

I bought this snorkel set from LL Bean for the trip. I had to have it. It's so adorable and pink. And I fully intend to use it again at home this summer.

Preparing to snorkel! Those are our shadows.

I Saw Jesus in Key Largo

Christ of the Abyss, that is. It's a sunken statue of Christ off Key Largo. I went scuba diving for the first time ever and saw it. It was totally cool, along with all the neat fish and other stuff. It was cool until I went back up to the boat to find that a full half of the passengers were seasick and throwing up over the boat's railing. The beautiful tropical fish I had been communing with underwater were swimming up and eating it.