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Rural Ramblings: Restaurants

Thu, 02 May 2019 00:31:11 GMT

The town I grew up in has a ski resort in it, so there's a fair amount of shops and restaurants that have opened over the years for the tourists. A lot of the ones that were around when I was a kid are closed now, but I feel like talking about them anyway. (The closed restaurants will be marked as such, all others are still open.)

1. The Cupboard Deli: One of the most popular places in town. Everyone goes here for sandwiches, baked goods, and snacks. They have a huge variety of wraps, of which my favorite is the meatballs with marinara sauce. Their donuts are delicious as well, though those are put out in the morning and are usually gone by 10:30-11. The chocolate ones with whipped cream filling are the best. They also have a seasonal ice cream window that's open in the summer. Get the maple creemee.

2. Dinner's Dunne at the Windridge Bakery (closed): I'm pretty sure that's how it was spelled. This place closed when I was in middle/high school. It was open for breakfast and lunch, but my family mostly went to breakfast there. The one time I remember going there for lunch, I got chili. It was good. Usually, when we got breakfast, I got pancakes or biscuits and sausage gravy. It was good food. They baked all their own bread, too, so the toast was always tasty.

3. 158 Maine: The current restaurant in the space Dinner's Dunne was in. It's fancier and serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I've had their biscuits and sausage gravy, which is very tasty. At dinner, they have a really good scallop dish that's kind of like chowder, and it's topped with fried onion strings. Their hot chocolate is also really good.

4. Cafe Banditos (closed): This was a Mexican restaurant that closed in 2001ish. I went there a couple of times. I remember getting a chicken dish with cheese and salsa that was really good. There's an Italian restaurant where this used to be that I have never been to, though it opened in 2002 or so.

5. Brewster River Pub and Brewery: I haven't been here for a while, but it has good food. They have music sometimes (or did) and they have a volleyball court and a horseshoe area. The fish and chips are very good. They have a nice deck where you can eat if the weather is nice.

6. The Mix (closed): I loved this place and went to it a lot. It closed in the summer of 2016. They served breakfast and dinner; I was usually there for breakfast (often with my mother). I nearly always got the creme brulee french toast with drunken blueberries (seriously drunken blueberries, they made my mouth numb), which was delicious. Their omelettes were great as well, as was the breakfast flatbread. I did go there a couple of times for lunch, but I don't really remember what I got those times. It was always good food, though.

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Rural Ramblings: Mud Season

Tue, 19 Mar 2019 00:20:07 GMT

In Vermont, we have a fifth season, Mud Season. It's that time in the spring when the snow is melting and it's rainy, so there's mud everywhere. A lot of the roads in Vermont are dirt, too, so it makes going some places into a dirty slog. All-in-all, it sucks. But at least it means warmer temperatures are on the way.

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Rural Ramblings: School Bus

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 01:04:28 GMT

One of the things I always hated about where I grew up was the long bus ride I had to take to get to school, from kindergarten through 12th grade. It took half an hour to get to the elementary school on the bus (a five minute drive, otherwise) and nearly an hour one way to get to the high school (25 minute drive).

The wait for the bus was also hard. I was never one of the lucky people who lived in a place where they could see the bus coming from inside. I had to walk to the stop before hand or else miss the bus. At least there was a gas station across the street from my first bus stop that I could stand inside to wait when it was really cold. Starting in 7th grade, I was at different stops that didn't have places nearby where I could wait where it was warm. (Some of the kids who waited at my later stops got to wait in a car, but they never invited me to.)

At least I never got car sick, so I was able to read on the bus. I read a lot of books there, especially when I was in high school.

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Rural Ramblings: Maple Syrup

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 01:00:56 GMT

A lot of people associate Vermont with maple syrup and vice versa. The state tree is the sugar maple, the state quarter has a maple sugaring scene on it, there's a Maple Festival in Saint Albans every year.

It's for a good reason. Maple products are all over the state. Lots of people have sugar shacks where they boil the sap to make syrup. Pretty much every Vermonter kids learns how many gallons of sap are needed to make one gallon of syrup (it's 40).

Vermont's domination of the maple industry is because it, along with the other places that make syrup, have both sugar maple trees and the right climate for sugaring. Maple sugaring season starts some time in February, usually, once the temperatures rise above freezing during the day, but drop back down below freezing at night. It continues until the temperatures stay above freezing all the time and the trees bud. When the sap only flows during the day, but freezes at night, it stays sweet and tastes good as syrup. As soon as the tree forms buds, though, the taste changes and gets funky.

The Vermont Maple Outlet is in my town. It's a store that sells mostly maple products (syrup, butter, candy, ect), plus some other foods and gifts. They make a breakfast gift basked with syrup, pancake mix, and jelly, among others. They also have maple creemees (soft serve ice cream) in the summer, that are very good. During the sugaring season, the family that runs the store makes syrup in a demonstration area of the store that they built when I was in high school. If you are in the area during the season, I recommend checking it out.

My grandfather had a sugar shack where he made syrup up until I was in high school or early college. These days, a guy who lives near the woodlot the shack is on taps the trees, so someone is getting something out of it. When I was a kid, my parents and I would go up to help my grandfather haul the sap buckets down to the shack and empty them into the holding tank. Grandpa was the only one who looked after the boiling sap, because none of us knew how to. One of the things we would have was sap tea, made out of hot, but not congealing sap. Grandpa would dip out the sap in mugs, and we would steep tea bags in it. They wouldn't need sugar, since the sap was already sweet.

I have always loved maple stuff. Maple candy, maple syrup, especially maple ice cream. My favorite Russell Stover candy has always been the maple cream. It's such a tasty flavor and it always reminds me of home.

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Writing vent

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 13:43:21 GMT

Did schools stop teaching kids that dialogue needs to have punctuation at the end of it? Because I see entirely too much dialogue in fics that is completely unpunctuated. It's just "I am an example", no period, no question mark, sometimes no commas. Why???

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Ben & Jerry's Seconds

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 19:23:45 GMT

Does anyone else remember Ben & Jerry's seconds? I'm not sure how widespread a product it was, since they stopped making them after Unilever bought them out. The idea of it was that sometimes batches of ice cream weren't mixed right, often with the result of all the add-ins glomming together in one clump. Instead of throwing it out, they marked it down to half price, put them in different containers, and sold it as seconds. I bought them at least once with a friend when I was a kid. It still tasted just as good.

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Rat Patrol Book 3: The Rat Patrol #3 in The Trojan Tank Affair by David King

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:55:41 GMT

Book 3!

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Rat Patrol Book 2: The Rat Patrol #2 in Desert Danger by David King

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 00:50:40 GMT

Book two of the series. Books two through six have a different author from book one.

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Cambridge Pharmacy and Gift Shop Update

Sun, 27 Jan 2019 20:44:59 GMT

I have found a couple of links here and here for The Cambridge Pharmacy, Inc., which was apparently started in 1980. I think it's meant to be the same place, though the info is, of course, outdated.

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Rat Patrol Book 1: The Rat Patrol by Norman Daniels

Sun, 27 Jan 2019 14:19:25 GMT

On my tumblr, I posted recaps of the first four (out of six) Rat Patrol tie in books. I figured I'd put all the stuff from each book in one post per book, here. (I read book two first, so there's a couple small references to that one. Nothing about the plot, just the different writers.)

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Rural Ramblings: 3 Shopping Places that Don't Exist Anymore

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 01:27:18 GMT

1. The Saddest Strip Mall That Ever Existed: This doesn't physically exist, there's a Lowe's superstore there now. However, from 2001ish to 2008, when that moved in, this was a decaying, mostly empty strip mall. In the late 90s, there was an Ames Department Store, a Grand Union grocery store, a Fashion Bug, and a Chittenden Bank (a local bank chain now owned by People's United). The bank moved across the parking lot to it's own building, and the Ames and Grand Union closed within a year of each other. For about seven years, then, all there was was the Fashion Bug. They were lucky if they got two or three people in the parking lot at once. I went in there with my mom to buy something once, it wasn't that great.

2. Champlain Mill: This one still physically exists, and I think it's trying to be a commercial space again, but apart from the new Waterworks restaurant, all the places that used to be there are gone. It's a building by the Winooski River that's mostly offices, but before they put a huge roundabout in downtown Winooski, there were a couple of floors of stores in it, too. There was the official store for the minor league baseball team (then the Vermont Expos), a sock store, and a stationary store (called the Paper Peddler), among others. The one I went to most was the Book Rack and Children's Pages, an independent bookstore that moved to Essex after the shops closed, before closing in 2008 or so. Brian Jacques, the author of the Redwall books did a reading and signing there that I went to, and got my copy of Legend of Luke signed.

3. Burlington Square Mall/Burlington City Center: This place only recently ceased to physically exist and is supposedly under redevelopment, though that's taking a while. When I went down to Church Street in Burlington, I'd spend at least some of the time here. It was a small mall, with a Filene's/Macy's at one end and the entrance to Church Street at the other. There were two restaurants as a "food court", a Chinese restaurant and a pizza place. The first Hot Topic I ever went to was there, as well as a Walden Books before that chain went out of business. There was an fye store, PacSun, a Spencer's, a Payless shoes, and I think there was a Claire's there, too, though that may have been at the University Mall. There was also a place called Tradewinds, that sold imported crafts and home goods. There were also a few other stores I don't remember.

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January Meme: Post 3

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:06:37 GMT

bluebaron what do you think happened to Dietrich and / or the Rats after the war (within show canon)?

Dietrich: He gets back to Germany and helps rebuild. I don't think he'd get a high status job, but he'd want some authority. Maybe he gets into construction or industry. Maybe he gets a job that allows him to travel. Maybe he travels to America and gets to meet the Rat Patrol in peacetime.

Troy: He goes back to his family. He and his brother start a business (maybe construction ;)). He keeps in touch with the other three.

Moffitt: He goes back to England, but only for a little while. He likes his parents, but he misses his brother too much. He goes back to North Africa, maybe as a teacher, maybe as an archaeologist. Whatever he does, though, he is happy. And he travels to America.

Hitch: He goes back to college, gets a degree. I'd like to think he gets a degree in archaeology, but he probably gets one in chemistry, or physics. Something where he can create things for the future. Maybe he works for Dupont. He and Tully live together.

Tully: Tully becomes a truck driver. Maybe a taxi driver, but he probably drives truck. Something that lets him uses his skills. He lives with Hitch.

All of the guys try to meet up as often as they can.

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Star Wars and Tea Parties

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 20:19:31 GMT

When I was a kid, maybe 8 or so, Star Wars started to show up a lot. In hindsight, it was probably because of the 20th anniversary of the first film in 1997 and the buildup to the prequels. At the time, all I knew was that there was this new thing that looked interesting, but I didn't know much about. I didn't see the movies until a couple years later, so all I had to go on was the character names and a very basic plot. Beyond that, I had to make it up myself.

One of the things I did was pretend that I was Han Solo's little sister. At the time, I had a tea party cookbook that I read a lot. It was sort of a picture book, and the tea parties were often illustrated with pictures of four kids, two girls and two boys. So, what I would do was pretend that the kids were Luke, Leia, Han, and me, having various tea parties.

IDK, it made sense at the time.

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Fandom Stocking

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 20:13:47 GMT

Here's my stocking. I got two Band of Brothers fics and one Rat Patrol fic, all lovely. Also a BoB wallpaper.

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January Meme: Post 2

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 19:51:12 GMT

muccamukk Three favourite scenes in Band of Brothers.

This is a tough one. These aren't in any particular order.

1. Speirs and Lipton in the church at the end of The Breaking Point. The lighting is wonderful, they both look great, and Lip finally gets acknowledgment that he was the leader of Easy Company while they were at Bastogne. He's all modest about it, but he earned that promotion and it's nice that Speirs tells him about it at that point.

2. When Bull gets back to the rest of Easy in Replacements. They're all so happy to see him, Johnny Martin in particular. And Michael Cudlitz looks fantastic.

3. Winters and Lipton telling Nixon, Welsh, and Speirs that their part of the war is over. Another very well lit scene where everyone looks good and there's humor. And everyone's grinning at each other. It's great.

Honorable Mention: Speirs holding Grant's hand while he gets brain surgery.

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True Detective and Gabriel Knight

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 00:43:58 GMT

This crossover occured to me today. True Detective and the Gabriel Knight games both take place in Louisiana. The first Gabriel Knight game came out in 1993, True Detective season one starts in 1995. Gabriel Knight investigates occult crimes, Rust and Marty investigate what looks like an occult crime. Not sure what the plot would be, but it would be interesting

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Growing Apart

Wed, 16 Jan 2019 20:16:03 GMT

Did anyone else have a best friend as a kid that they ended up growing apart from?

I was best friends with a girl who lived across the street from me from when I was just an infant through middle school. Then we went in different directions, and we weren't friends anymore. I had other friends, who I had more in common with, but it still kind of sucked.

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Rural Ramblings: Cambridge Pharmacy and Gift Shop

Wed, 16 Jan 2019 01:12:41 GMT

The Cambridge Pharmacy and Gift Shop was an odd place. I'm not sure when it opened, but it closed somewhere between late 2004 and mid 2005. There is, as far as I can tell/google, no trace of it on the internet. The Cambridge General Store, that closed a few months later, at least has a few outdated website pages come up when you search for it.

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Sky Bar

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 02:42:28 GMT

Has anyone else eaten Sky Bars? They're chocolate bars made by Necco, which closed last year (I only became aware of this when I googled them to post this). They were never the greatest candy, but I loved them when I was a kid.

Sky Bars had four filled compartments, one chocolate fudge, one vanilla fudge, one caramel, one peanut caramel. The mere fact that they had four separate flavors in one made them fancy. The fact that I could save my allowance fairly easily to buy them made them even better. I'd carefully split off each piece and nibble them starting at the skinny end, to make it last as long as possible.

With Necco no longer around, Sky Bars are probably forever gone as well. Too bad. I enjoyed eating them occasionally, even when I got access to better chocolate, for the nostalgia value.

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Aquaman fics/shipping

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 00:13:20 GMT

Well, I came out of Aquaman interested in various combos of Tom Curry, Atlanna, Vulko, and Nereus. I'm probably going to have to write it myself.

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Rural Ramblings: Intro

Sat, 12 Jan 2019 15:29:03 GMT

I was born in Vermont and grew up in the town of Cambridge, population roughly 3,000. My family never moved, so I spent all of my first 18 years there, minus vacations to other places. There's two villages in the town, Cambridge Village and Jeffersonville. I grew up in Cambridge Village, the smaller, more residential one. People mostly know of the town because of Smuggler's Notch Resort, a ski resort, though they tend to think of it as being in Jeffersonville (it's address is there, but it's not actually in the village, it's in the town).

I had what I consider a fairly idyllic childhood. I was allowed to go basically where I wanted around the part of the village closest to my house, as long as I told my parents where I was going. I had a couple of friends just across the street and there was a playground across the street as well. The store on our side of Route 15 was accessible by going cross lots, and so was what was then the Cambridge Marketplace, that held the Cambridge Pharmacy and Gift Shop, Cambridge Cutters (a hair salon), a Showtime movie rental place, and a couple of other stores.

I have a few vague ideas of what I'd like to post about, but does anyone have anything they really want to hear about? If it's a short thing, I'll just answer in comments, but otherwise I'll put it on a list of post topics.

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January Meme: Post 1

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 14:04:15 GMT

corvidology What do you think The Rat Patrol would be like if they made it now?

I think it would probably be a more serious show. Most action-oriented shows these days are an hour long and tend to be more arc-based, so it would probably follow that. There would be more character development and Troy's dead father and Moffitt's dead brother would be milked for more tragedy instead of being mentioned once or twice. Tully would probably be made darker and would match the roguish criminal type they seemed to originally want him to be. The whole show would probably be darker and grittier, really. Dietrich would either be more of a villain or made to be more sympathetic, in which case he'd potentially side with the good guys in the end. Or die redeeming himself, or something. There would probably be the same amount of explosions, though.

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Rural Life

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 00:41:48 GMT

How many people would be interested in reading rambling posts about growing up in a small town in the 90s and early 2000s? I'm thinking of writing some when I have the time, but I'm not sure how many people would read them.

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OMG, my gift has been revealed!

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 03:49:14 GMT

heart like yours is rare to find for LydiaJ
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Relationships: Carwood Lipton/Ronald Speirs
Characters: Carwood Lipton, Ronald Speirs
Tags: Angst, Fluff, Post-Canon, Misunderstandings
Words: 9,646

Summary: The year is 1958 and it's been 13 years since Ron last spoke to Carwood. Now stationed in Germany, his life in regimented and orderly, with no room for thoughts about the man he was in love with but never told so many years ago. All of that is thrown out the window one night when he runs into that same man on the streets of Berlin.

Go, read it! It's wonderful, I love it so much! <3

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Rat Patrol

Sun, 23 Dec 2018 16:02:10 GMT

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