Back to the beach!

So...sea glass is starting to show up again on some favorite beaches of mine after their annual replenishment of sand starts to go away.

I had a wonderful time at Bluff Point in Groton, during which I found all this including another marble and a green blown crowntop bottle mouth (1/2). The marble is a real beauty too, especially since I hadn't found much that wasn't common and suddenly kicked this out of a pile of pebbles. A lovely aqua shard washed up at my feet too :). I hadn't been to Bluff Point since a field trip I took in the 5th grade and brought home a dead horseshoe crab...which sat around in our computer room for about 2 years and suddenly it started to stink really bad...so I sent it on its merry way in the stream that ran through our property. I'll bet that's going to throw some archaeologists off in about 30000000 years when they find its fossil among trout and dead deer. lol

So...sea glass!





And of course, last week I returned to my beach that never fails to show treasures (EXCEPT it actually did back in September...but I figured I just showed up too early and the annual supply of sand dumped on that beach hadn't been depleted enough yet and replaced by pebbles. Sure enough...another 3 weeks went by and that beach had changed quite a bit...)

Check these out...my first coins found on the beach! It's fascinating to see what the sea does to them. Only one has a readable date (1989).




Another thing I did was finally get around to organizing urban exploration photos I've taken since Insane Bunkers crashed in Feb. 2007. I just kind of left them in folders and realized that I kind of forgot certain photos, especially some cemetery photos because my camera couldn't seem to orient itself. This was about a month before the electronics went all wonky and buttons stopped working or stopped doing what they were supposed to do. (IE: Press review...and the camera takes a picture! And the menu button just doesn't work at all...so I can't delete photos off the camera without hooking up my camera to my computer and doing it there....but enough about my camera woes.)

So...speaking of pictures forgotten...here's an interesting photo.

This is a street sign embedded in a tree, as seen in 2004. As far as I know, it's still there, and I'm pretty sure I have better pictures of it but I have no idea where they are. lol

The media says the sky is falling but I look out my window and see a beautiful day!

Renita from VintageMomCreations suggested we all take a step back from OMGfinancialcrisisDOOMDOOMDOOM and say a little bit about ourselves. My blog lately has been a bit too Etsy oriented. So...if you're just starting to read now, who am I? I'm Megan, I run Mannequin Reject Emporium on Etsy, work for the United States Postal Service on the side (read: Saturdays and Mondays and some days in between).

I like to wear crazy socks, because I haven't owned a white pair of socks since 1999. I do that on purpose, because I think white socks are boring. My obsession with crazy footwear spread to shoes instead of black and white converses in 2006. And this is my latest pair of crazy shoes, which are wicked comfy.

I go to the beach in the winter to collect sea glass and dig bottles in the summer. I make jewelry, zines, all kinds of art but two of my bigger passions are writing (since 1996) and photography (since 2002).

This is what the economy looked like the second-to-last time I went to the beach.
And this is what it looked like on my way back from Canada earlier in September.
These are a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a Dodge Viper, a Saab, and a Porsche. The Jeep was mine so I parked next to these cars (all from Ontario) to feel special. Come to find out, the 3 owners of these cars were all friends on a roadtrip through New York state ...who knows where they were going. I thought it was funny that one of them drove a Saab, because I do too.

It's a bit older. But more special. HA.

It was nice to see windmills in NY! It's about darn time the US embraces alternative energies.

I also love to explore abandoned houses.
This house in particular is one of my favorites.

Problem is, it's somewhere in New York that I've only seen 3 times in my life, because I don't go to that part of NY all that often. I first spotted it in May 1998 and took these pictures with our family camera when I was 14 (made my mother pull the car over on I-90 so I could get it.)...but as you can see, the quality was terrible because the house was so far away. I last saw it in 1999 and wondered if it was still standing today.10 years later, it's STILL THERE! I think it's a shame it's gone to waste, but it's still beautiful.

So...that's a little about me. Yes, I think the economy is just as bad as everyone else does, but I do think we all suffer from the spin the media has put on it. I love to find beauty in everything and no financial crisis will make me think the sun won't come out tomorrow or that I'll wake up on the wrong side of the grass. This winter will be cold, no doubt, but we have a roof over our heads. Maybe we'll resort to a diet of Ramen Noodles and cut out meat because we may not be able to afford it. And I picked up two free badminton rackets and a birdie, which my mom and I had a blast with last night. We don't play right (net? who cares?) but we have a great time :).

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.

TERRORISTS OF THE BEACH

Scarborough Beach, again.
OMG TITANIC VICTIMS WASHED UP ON THE BEACH. I mean, these are college students. I totally want to do this one day, take a bunch of blankets to the beach in almost-winter and stick my bare feet out. lol


I went to Newport, too

Too bad Brenton Point was really cold, otherwise I would have stayed longer. Instead, I went to some other beach in Middletown (no idea, but there's a wildlife preserve out there and when you turn the car around there's a HUGE CHURCH that looms on the horizon that you have no idea you drove by lol.) And that's where these pictures were taken :)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

SO what did I find while hunting for sea glass, anyway?

153 pieces!

My first piece of RED sea glass! It's shaped like the United States LOL!

And an awesome piece of shipwreck pottery, but this isn't all that old-the back reads CHINA. IT'S STILL AWESOME!

And the following, because I feel zany.



Auction tonight! Leone's Auctions

ACEOs...new addiction OH NOES

ACEO: Art Cards, Editions and Originals. Main rule: Flat-ish art must measure 3.5 x 2.5 inches.

As I've been on Etsy for just about three months, and selling for two, I've seen ACEOs for sale but for the life of me couldn't figure out what the attraction was. I saw someone say they were addictive, not so much to collect, but to MAKE. I can see this. Restrictions on art which therefore makes it a challenge and possibly more fun to create.

After reading this topic in the Etsy forums, I realized that many of the photos I took with my Sony Cybershot DSC-P31 which don't have a high enough resolution (2MP!) to be made into decent photographic prints could be sold in this fashion. Many abandoned house shots I could never take again (house demolished, collasped, etc) can still be considered art even though they look downright DREADFUL as 8 x 10!

And before I realized what I had done, in 2003 I resized about 200 of the original files and no longer have the originals. I just never thought it would matter; I cropped and resized and photoshopped, and that was it. Many of my late 2002/early 2003 digital photos are ruined in this way. Now they can find new life as an ACEO! (Wait for them to start appearing in my Etsy shop...)

Never made it to the beach today...wanted to because it is a BEAUTIFUL day, but we just started remodeling the last room of the three rooms in the basement that make up my apartment. So I helped my grandfather with that, he took me to lunch, and then I went to Salvation Army and beyond for job hunting.

Job hunting is discouraging. It destroys every bit of your ego and comes back to take your soul.

:-/

So I came home and posted new items on Etsy. I mean, at least it's a job, even if it pays 1/4 what Yankee Retail did for 500% more work and is 1000% more satisfying.

-sigh-

More than you or I ever wanted to know about sea glass.

Remember my last entry where I was climbing the walls because I wasn't at the beach looking for sea glass? My collection till today was rather pitiful because I had never gone out collecting it before.


Well my 9AM doctor's appointment was canceled, so I filled my gas tank (ouch) and bought a kitchen strainer, grabbed a bunch of CDs and some Mountain Dew, and took a drive to Watch Hill, RI.

Weeeee!

On the way, here's two things I noticed.

1. You can see the Newport Bridge (actual name: Claiborne Pell Bridge) from Ekonk Hill (Rt. 49). I lived in Sterling 13 years and never noticed this before till one night when I realized I could see two white solid lights on the horizon. I really didn't think it was the Newport Bridge till I actually could see those huge suspension towers. I would have taken a picture but it was a little too hazy for my camera to pick up. Here's what wikipedia has to say about the bridge: "The main span of the Newport Bridge is 488 meters (1601 feet), ranking it number 64 among the largest suspension bridges in the world, and making it the largest suspension bridge in New England. The overall length of the bridge is 3,428 meters (11,247 feet). Its main towers reach 122 meters (400 feet) above the water surface, and the roadway height reaches as high as 66 meters (215 feet).^[2]"

2. There's a bricked up root cellar far down Rt. 49 in North Stonington. I've driven by it several times and only today did it click what it was. lol.

And so I went to Watch Hill. The day was beautiful and the beach was deserted, sun was out, etc etc. The reason I chose Watch Hill was because that during the Hurricane of 1938, 36 houses washed into the bay and every once in a while artifacts turn up from them. I also figured some of them went in the drink with Depression Glass, which would possibly turn up the some of the rarest colors of sea glass (red, orange, black, milk white, electric blue, etc.) In fact, the electric blue piece I have was from 2003, when Zack, Brandon, and I went to Fort Mansfield and I found it. Zack was jealous. lol.

This marks one of the few times I went to Watch Hill without intending to go to Fort Mansfield, but every urban explorer knows the one thing you should never do is explore a place like that alone.

August 12, 2006

It lies 2 miles out at the end of the beach, and no ambulances can reach you if you were to fall two stories off the roof. I've been there a dozen times, no need to go alone. (Wikipedia entry on Watch Hill/Fort Mansfield here).

So I spent the next 4 HOURS there, combing the beach. I walked up one end and down the other side, collecting little bits of glass that glistened in the light. And I picked up a few other odds & ends, and found some things that I WISH I could have taken home...

Like this boat, for one.

What's this white thing farther down my path?

Another boat!

Ok, I'll fess up I knew about this second boat, that's been here more than two years, but I never saw it in person till today. Insane Bunkers originally hosted the photos from the person who discovered it, but they had a hard disk failure and lost all the pics. This boat apparently broke free from Stonington Borough (across the bay) and ended up over here. I wonder if its owner knows? lol

I left this for a child to find :).

After leaving Watch Hill I debated heading to Misquamicut (sp) but I couldn't find a place to park that wasn't fenced off for the season. Besides, I was hungry so I stopped at McDonald's (rare for me, but it's cheap and fast) and headed up Rt. 1, not really sure where I was going to go. I saw the signs for Charlestown Beach and decided to go for it, since it was only 2:45. I haven't been to Charlestown Beach since 1995 and had no idea how to get to it, but I found it anyway. It had become overcast and a lot more cold since I left Watch Hill, so I only stayed at Charlestown till 4:00. I ended up going to a third beach but I have no idea where it was and it was freezing at 4:30 so I took a quick look, found a large dead fish (gross!), and called it a day.

WATCH HILL FINDS:

In this lot you can see some kind of piece of bottom jaw of something with teeth. Above that is a piece of a slate shingle from one of the 36 houses. There's some other stuff there but most notably is a piece of BLACK sea glass. It's not as beat up as it should be, but I couldn't just leave it, lol. I also found a milk white piece, which is crazy in itself. I also found the thick bottom of an old Coca Cola bottle and this shell.

Charlestown BEACH FINDS:

In this lot you can see the rubber sole of a very old shoe, a metal label of some kind, a grey bird bone of some kind, a fishing thing, a large rock, and another piece of a coke bottle. There is one piece I found that I'm dying to get under a black light because I think it might just be Vaseline depression glasss (!!!), and then there's two olive green glass pieces.

All sea glass found today!

All sea glass is one big happy family.

Meanings of colors of sea glass and possible history (this is why I love it!):

BLACK: Possible origin: Tableware or flasks dating back to the mid to late 1800s. Its rarity is due to the obscure materials that were used with glass to make the bottles, which increased its rate of decomposition.

MILK WHITE-- Possible origin: Milk jars or Ball jar lids made between 1910 and 1936.

OLIVE GREEN-- Possible origin: Wine bottles pre-1900.

ELECTRIC BLUE-- Possible origin: Tableware, antique flasks or art glass. This makes sense because there's some kind of design on mine.

SEA FOAM GREEN (Coke bottles)-- Possible origin: Coca Cola bottles, ink jars, fruit jars, baking soda, and other soft drink bottles.

COBALT BLUE (3 pieces)-- Possible origin: Old medicine or poison jars, Vicks Vapor Rub, Bromo-Seltzer, and Milk of Magnesia products.

Clear, Brown, and Emerald Green are colors of common glass and beer bottles.

More info? Wikipedia's entry on Sea Glass. And this place, which helped me out with info for the colors.

So....did I mention I want to head back to Charlestown tomorrow? lol

EDIT: Yours truly just discovered that she has a SUN BURN. In WINTER. This, my friends, is a first.

Also a first: I made Thai sticky rice with coconut sauce, peaches, and custard. A+++++++++.