You have GOT to be kidding me.

With all the rain, I didn't head out to dig bottles yesterday like I wanted to. I was going to head out today...except it's still raining...and out of nowhere I guess I came down with food poisoning AGAIN. I just had this two months ago...and it's quite unpleasant.

I don't understand how this keeps happening and it's not from eating bad meat...because I didn't eat meat at all yesterday! Last time I got sick we determined it must've been from eating combos that were sitting on top of the fridge for longer than we would care to admit...but what now? Drinking unrefridgerated Root Beer? Give me a break.

Or maybe it was cereal...dun dun dun...I know some people got salmonella from cereal in this country lately...but I still think that's ridiculous. If I die before I post again from salmonella found in cereal, feel free to put "...but I still think that's ridiculous" as my epitaph. And add an LOL to it.

-sigh- Might be heading out to dig bottles tomorrow, depends on how I feel. I need to get some serious jewelry making done, too. Right now I just want to sleep...but just like last time, my bed is down stairs and across the house from the bathroom. It hasn't been a pretty morning.

Guess I'll watch some movies. I hate vegging out in front of the TV...except when I feel terrible. Then I just cuddle with the blanket and the cat.

D.I.Y. ARCHAEOLOGY a.k.a. GIRLS WHO DIG ROCK!!!!!!!!

So what I didn't mention in my last post about the turn of the century bottle dump that I stumbled upon was this. And I wasn't going to mention it until I checked it out to find it either a) whole or b) broken. I spotted this the very first day I went to this place, IN the river. Of course that day my clothes were too nice to go tromping around the river, and even though I returned the next day...the thought of trying to haul this thing UP the riverbank if it was even whole just filled my head with thoughts of yet another shattered screw up. And since I left it for a good 4 days, I didn't want anyone beating me to it. (HEY, THERE'S A CROCK IN THE RIVER IN MOOSUP, I DON'T KNOW WHEN I CAN GET IT)...yeah...fantastic idea. So I kept quiet.

And there the little crock sat, half buried in the river muck. Let me say though that this crock isn't exactly little. lol. So I went back yesterday, promising myself that I wasn't going to dig for any other bottles and it would only take me like 15 minutes and I would be done. I was going to get it, bring it up the bank, I would return home and I could shower and do dishes. Oh...the perfect plans of mice and men...
So here I am, digging in the river. Dig dig dig. Over an hour later...dig dig dig... The damn thing would NOT come out. It was full of rocks and muck and it was buried pretty deep...though as much as I pulled on it, it didn't come out...which told me one thing: this baby is whole. If it were only half a crock I could have pulled it out right away. Finally I pulled it up...son of a bitch it WAS whole! No holes, no chips...and it was HEAVY. I was all shaky from the adrenalin of digging this thing and from being bent over for an hour, so then once I got it to shore, I couldn't lift it over my head! So "I'm going to hand this up the bank to you" became "ok, can you meet me half way? oh lulz still can't lift it".

Well somehow, I got it up the bank without dropping it or breaking it, or without breaking my neck. I had to put it in a large canvas sack, but that worked very well. I carried it on my lap for the whole ride home. No way was this thing going to roll around in my trunk!
Yeah, I'm proud of it. Even if it's not worth much.
Here it is before I started cleaning it...
And after! Still not done yet, in fact it's not going to be easy to clean the part that was exposed to the river for a good century...but WOW. Wow.

As I was cleaning it, I thought back to when I was 9 and so sure that I was going to be an archaeologist when I grew up. Well I'm not...but pretty close. And it feels SO good. :D

Spring's here! Get out of the house!

Remember when I said I was going to sew my socks to my steering wheel cover? Well here's the almost finished product. It's a little too sloppy at the moment but that cover is very hard to sew through, and any work I'm going to do on it from here on has to be done with the cover on the wheel. It does need some extra stitches, just to make it neat. (It's so comfy!) What else can you see in the car? 2-liter of Mt. Dew...bag for hunting sea glass and other things (I keep shovels and digging tools in it...lol)...and an Etsy order sitting there.
The Etsy order was for Number 18--the steampunk brooch I made the night before ITema laid me off. It was the first of its kind that I made so I was a little attached to it, but when I got this convo from Fyrecreek, it made it so worth it!

I wanted to let you know the broach arrived yesterday. I saw in your profile that this is the first one you made in this style. That was actually the deciding factor for me when I bought it. I had made a list of all the many things available that I liked the most, and then went through reading profiles to help make a decision on which I was going to get this time around. The Irish stamp and the cool little hand is what put this one on my list to begin with. But your profile mentioned it was your first, and I think no one's first piece should stay in the storefront for very long. Keep making them, you're very good.

Etsy has been good to me, even though I actually stepped back and took a breather from it for about a week. I need to post some new stuff tonight, actually I need to make some new stuff too. I will be moving into the last of the rooms downstairs soon so we're cleaning and re-arranging and it doesn't leave much time for jewelry making.

I've been loving the beautiful weather we've had all week. Granted, I guess we could use some rain as things have been catching on fire like crazy because everything is so dried up. For those of you who knew me in middle school (which is like ...no one who reads this blog...) the 3-story chicken coop across the street from my old house caught fire yesterday. Crazy, because 10 years ago Patrick and I were wandering around the woods over there (big bottle dump, and a "floating door"...I'll explain that some other time maybe)...and we just discovered this huge chicken coop that people were living in. Curtains and ACs in the windows.

I guess no one was living there now, as the newspaper said today that it was abandoned. Or was it?

Add this to the huge fire I saw while coming home the other night from a lovely Saturday. A huge McMansion burned about two miles from my house, and I saw it when I was driving down the hill in Wauregan (about 3 miles from the fire).


And that was my lovely Saturday. I came home and watched The Village (zip it....all of you...though I finally saw Scary Movie 4 where they make fun of it XD "Come Ezekiel, shall we have a foot race?")

Sunday's flea market day was a bit slow, so I think I'm going to bow out of there either this weekend or next (probably next weekend). I've had a great time during my 5 months there, but now I want to shift my focus, at least till the good weather is over.

Monday I went out looking for sea glass, for the first time in almost a month (because of the car problems, and now the price of gas is keeping me away as well...). I went to my two favorites and actually didn't find much. At Narragansett I found a huge bottom of a bottle or a jar, which is embossed "E.B. Co. Ld. 10710".



At Scarborough, I walked out a bit farther than normal and stumbled upon this odd concrete retaining wall, and at the back of it was a 1970's bottle dump...though everything's smashed to bits, against this wall. I found fragments which read "Liquor Bottle" and the bottom of a glass Sprite 2 liter. When I worked at Soda Warehouse (5 longggggg years ago...though pretty soon if I don't get a job I might go try going back there), someone actually thought they could get the redemption on one of those. (No, because the distributor who picks up the empties would not pick up something like that...so my boss put the bottle on his shelf along with other very old bottles people would bring back).


Total sea glass finds for the day; 158 pieces.

Tuesday was a bit of a waste...

Yesterday, after dropping off 3 boxes of magazines for recycling, I drove to Moosup so I could go for a walk in the shade. I decided to go to the place with the crystals, and when I got there I wanted to walk on the bridge (near the mill) to look at the river.

But while I was looking along the river banks, aqua shards of glass caught my eye. Now some of you can tell how badly I've been wanting to get out there and dig bottles like my mom and I used to back in 1996-1998...and when I spotted those shards I knew that might mean bottle dump. (These photos are like a reenactment...lol...the angle of the sun was different and they really popped).

So I madly went right down the riverbank, almost on my butt. It was a pretty steep incline.

There wasn't much down there that wasn't broken, and I scrambled back up the bank after about 15 minutes.

But!!!!!! I had plans to return today.

Obligatory car shot!

The fenced off remains of a building? Maybe?

So I stumbled upon this while poking around, looking for an easier way down the bank without sliding on my butt. Bottle dump..finally!
Too bad the lip on this one was busted. SAWYERS CRYSTAL BLUE INC. I took it home anyway.

Lots of plain, unembossed screw-top bottles. This dump's age varies a bit. And this bottle (below) was sitting right on top. Now I want to see one of these whole! lol

HENRY K. WAMPOLE & COMPANY. Whole. Sitting at a base of a tree.

A button!

The whole finds from yesterday & today.

The almost, but not quite whole finds from yesterday & today (that cobalt blue had me...oh..it was sitting right on the edge of the riverbank looking nice and whole...turned it over and there's a big crack. Bottles: 1 Megan: 0)

AND THE BROKEN MESS that I took home anyway.

Photo walks, missing purses, crystals, bones.

I finally got the Saab registered to ME. Which means the driving commences NOW. I've been driving around for the past few days with the sunroof open, and got my second sunburn of '08....though it's already faded nicely to a tan. Something tells me I'm going to get quite a tan this summer :D

So the day after the Saab was registered, I went for a desperately needed DRIVE. Yes, even with the price of gas the way it is. Actually I didn't go that far, didn't leave the state. Hardly left Plainfield, actually.

And I had a mission, anyway. Look for bottles. Didn't find any. lol

So I stopped at this abandoned church that Zack and I visited on August 8, 2003 around 11:00 at night after we'd gone to Dominos and ran into Ryan O'Day and his brother Kevin, sitting in a truck. Sad thinking back on it because Ryan died almost a year ago now and this week has oddly been full of reminders (I got my emissions test done at Plainfield Shell, where he worked and there's still a picture of him on the wall and the remembrance his boss wrote in the Turnpike Buyer).

If you want to see pics of the church the night Zack and I went, they're not posted anymore. lol.

So I took pictures of the church during the day. I don't know why it took me almost 5 years to do so, but here they are. I can't imagine the building is in too great shape because the door on the side was missing even when Zack and I were there.

I drove to Moosup in search of bottles. Didn't find any. Of course it doesn't help that I can't get my bike rack on my car and if I could take my bike places the car can't go, I could cover much more ground that much faster. Anyway, I took these pictures from an old railroad bridge, which has since been turned into a walkway, near Baker's Dozen. And Baker's Dozen reminds me of my last week of senior year, when Lindsey and I would go there after graduation practice.

Well, something I never noticed before was how the old mill here (now a rubber plant) still has this wooden walkway over the Moosup River. I wonder three things: 1. Does anyone really use it? 2. What's in there, anyway? Looks like storage. 3. Is it safe? lol

Turning back to where my car is parked, I caught a glimpse of the price of gas. $3.57. I don't think you can see it in this pic, but in the original you can.

Moosup was full of 19th century bridges. One of the bridges was relocated to Sterling as part of their town pedestrian path, and it used to look just like this one. Now it doesn't look anything like this bridge, which was a disappointment when I saw it finished in 2004. This bridge used to be unsafe & fenced off, or at least it was the last time I saw it up close in 1999. I was happy to see that now it's a safe walkway instead of a skeletal thing in danger of collapse.

View of the Moosup River.

This was the Brunswick Mill an abandoned mill that caught fire in 2000. Some kind of demolition/quarrying is going on here now.

When I was 13, one of my old friends and his stepmother used to collect crystals from here, but when my mom and I went to check it out then, we only found a couple and they weren't the fantastic ones that my friend had found. But that was 11 years ago, so I decided to poke around. I was still hunting for bottles, but all I found was a piece of a broken insulator under that modern bridge you can see in the background of one of the pictures. And I found these lovely crystals, right in the path. (They are smaller than they appear...in real life, the tiniest crystal is only about 3/8-1/2 of an inch. ) Still lovely though :)
And that was it Thursday. Yesterday I had my second interview at the post office (yes!) and they sent me for a drug test, which I did right after the interview because...well, with the price of gas, it just makes sense. Come to find out, the Norwich postmaster and I have the same birthday (what's the chances of that???). When I got home, I spent an hour an a half looking for one sandal (never found it) and decided to throw on some sneakers and head out to the woods in search of bottles.
The first place I went was the location of a mill which burned in 1809 in Sterling. Once this mill burned, the former Revere Mill was constructed in a different location on a different river around 1810. The Revere Mill burned in a spectacular fire in 1980 (the owner set it on fire to collect insurance, he later went to jail), and even though I missed that fire, my bus used to drive by the ruins until the whole site was cleaned up around 1994. Anyway, that first mill in Sterling is one that most people don't know about, and it was located here.
(Obligatory car shot, lol). There's not much at the site, though I am dying to get my hands on a metal detector and poke around. I didn't find a bottle or a single shard of glass...unless it was new...as in "tossed out the car window last week". I know there has to be SOMETHING here...I'll just have to poke around some more.
Did I mention this spot is the most beautiful in all of my hometown? One of the least-developed roads, and the only road full of cedar trees like this.
BONES. OMG. Actually it's a deer or a cow. I'm thinking deer.
And the last find of the day, a purse. It was about 100 feet from the deer/cow, tossed down the embankment (most likely tossed out a car window). You know that's what purse-snatchers do, right? My mom had found another purse similar to this near the bridge that was on our old property in Sterling, but whoever tossed it out the window missed the river and it landed on the bank. I dropped the purse off at Troop D in Danielson. It was just full of makeup, car keys, and some photos that you couldn't discern at all because they were wet and it looked like this purse was down here for a couple years. No ID. No wallet, actually. lol So creepy that it was near a bunch of bones but YES, THEY WERE DEFINITELY AN ANIMAL. And I've seen lots of dead deer skeletons (Cedar Swamp Rd. in south Sterling had 6 of them when I was in high school) and these rib bones look about right, from what I remember. That said, any etsians need bones for any projects? Is it sick that I'm thinking of heading out there to collect the bones to sell as supplies to artisans? Just creepy? Answers appreciated. :)

Oh, and for those of you who were reading when I found that jawbone at the beach, it's disintegrating quickly and now it smells fishy so bad I don't want to go anywhere near it. I think it needs to be sealed with something.

Well, it's Saturday. I'd say it's time for some yardsales :D.

Resurrection of old

(Pictures in this post were taken with my old digital camera, which is why the closeup quality is lacking)

1996: I was 12 and went to my friend Conni's mother's house for the weekend in RI. We played in the woods and she told me of this bottle dump that was on the property. We were digging around and found a ton of stuff that looked like it dated to the 1930's (art deco glass...mostly broken).

I don't remember the moment I found this brown bottle (at right--my mom found the bottle on the left when she was little)...but it's a brown glass CLOROX bottle, and from that moment on, I was hooked. Last week I was able to identify the Clorox bottle...it's from 1929!

Naturally, this kicked off a ridiculous obsession. I picked up bottles from EVERYWHERE. If it was glass, it was mine. In fact, in a short amount of time that spring, I amassed a huge collection of peppermint schnapps bottles from the side of the road, and about a pint of peppermint schnapps, when you put it all together. (Gross).

And Sterling had its own bottle dump, right in the middle of town (ok, that's not true. But I'm not telling where, and it's quite picked over anyway.) My mom and I attacked it that spring, and found these prescription bottles.

I still have all of these. The dates, from left to right, are 5/6/55, 5/11/63 (hard to read except in person), 8/2/63, and 9/27/66. There had been a fifth bottle at the time, but it was broken and the label was illegible. Some of these have pills in them (gross). The dark bottle's pill reacted with the paper, which is why it's a different color from all the rest. Only one has an actual label of the medication inside, on the far right--Desoxyn. In 1966 it was used to treat depression and suppress the appetite in young women, but today it's used to treat ADD and narcolepsy in children, and in rare cases, depression.

These were finds too, from left to right--a glass cup found in the woods in Sterling, a Pepsi-Cola bottle found at the same place as the prescription bottles, a Vicks Vapo Rub bottle and nail polish bottle found at the site of the abandoned house on Newport Road (which was demolished and built over in 1999).

Today I was floating around antique-bottles.net and came across this topic, where some guy found a Connecticut colonial copper coin in an abandoned house (I always wanted to find a coin the way he did) and that reminded me of this find when I was 9 and poking around old foundations. I found this bone and metal fork in the foundation for a colonial house in 1993. Today, that area has been bulldozed and built over (the area was so cool, there was an old well to fall into (you couldn't see the bottom!) and a foundation...today it's someone's front yard, so maybe they have unknown treasure. This is very close to where Mom found that soda bottle in that first picture (actually, she's found tons of things around my grandparent's yard).

Sorry about the quality (or lack thereof) in these pictures, if enough people complain I'll take new ones. LOL

Stuck at home

Yesterday's post office interview was very interesting.

8:20- Out of the shower and ready to leave! Just had to grab a resume that I left on the dashboard of the Saab!

8:21- OMG, the windshield leaked all over the resumes. Sh..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where is my flash drive with my resumes, and I have to print another one? Where's the stapler?!!?!?!?!?!

8:35- Turned the truck on and prayed a bit.

8:55- Arrived at post office facility. (FYI, for people in CT...if you know how far it is from Brooklyn to Norwich...well...YOU do the math. Just how fast was I driving, anyway?)

So I arrived early. There were two other people in the lobby, so this turned out to be a preliminary group interview.

Of 7 people who eventually showed up for the interview, I was:

1 of 3 who showed up on time. Some showed up 20 minutes late, with no excuse (one guy had a flat tire, so ok).
1 of 2 who obtained my driving history from the DMV, as requested in our appointment letter (in their defense, several of the others tried to obtain the records that morning but couldn't because the computers were down at the DMV...I had gone on Saturday.).
And I was the only one in a suit.

It's not like all of these people were younger than me, either. And why do I dress up for interviews at some places when I don't need to? The answer is simple. They have a job, and I don't. They have a job that's possibly for me. It's a show of respect.

Anyway, there is only one position open at this time at the PO, so only one of those 7 will get it. We'll see what happens next...

Today I can't go anywhere. Saab's still not registered. Guess that means I'll be doing a massive Etsy upload (like the rest of the earrings I made in March, and some other goodies I picked up this weekend :D)

Hustle

So yesterday was almost my last day at the Flea Market. The jeep broke down on Friday and we can't afford to keep fixing it...

...

Not to mention the fiasco with the saab, which I won't get into but there's a problem and I actually haven't been able to register it yet because of this problem...which will hopefully be resolved in a few weeks (SOONER WOULD BE NICE). I had to borrow my grandfather's truck this weekend because of all the problems.

The good news is that I'm hoarding sterling silver junk jewelry and junk gold like crazy, or at least trying to. And copper too. If you knew what metal was going for, you'd hoard too. I mean, I just sold a 10K gold ring for $33, which paid for this week's groceries.

Anyway, I had a good weekend at the flea market, which enables me to stay hopefully through the end of April (I'm planning to get out of there by the summer, and possibly return in the fall).

I have an interview with the post office tomorrow...wish me luck that I land this one! $17.98 per hour!

I've perked up in the past couple days, which is good because I was getting pretty sick of myself, moping around the house because I couldn't drive my saab. At least now I have wheels again (temporary, but wheels!)...and I need all this car crap to resolve itself NOW because I'm fed up with it. I mean...enough is enough already.

And is this a bad thing to say that I can't wait till my neighbors go back to rehab or go to jail? It was so nice without them around for those few months they were locked up. lol