Monday, 26 November 2018
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| today's route |
Norwich
For some reason - I have absolutely no idea what - I'd gotten the idea that Norwich was a nothing kind of place that mostly just deserved to be bypassed. I couldn't have been more wrong if I'd tried. Norwich, a town of about 40,000, still shows evidence that it was once a thriving prosperous place - and may still be, for all I know. If I ever come back through Connecticut, I'll definitely want to spend a little time here.
Norwich, I learned from good ol' Wikipedia, founded in 1659, was already a major shipping center by the late 1700s, because it sits on the Thames River which flows into Long Island Sound. And part of what was shipped were the products of the mills that were established nearby.
The result of all this money (from shipping and manufacturing) were some beautiful houses that are still in town. I don't know anything about architecture so I may be wrong, but I think of this style as Victorian, though it may actually be Queen Anne - lots of porches and turrets and gingerbread - really beautiful still.
The town is built, at least in part, on the sides of hills, with steps leading from the street to the houses built on the up-sides of the hills. Only once you get to the house, you have to walk up another 10 or 12 steps to the front porch. My first thought was that the folks who live there must have legs of iron. Especially because all those houses had 3 stories, meaning lots more stairs.
I also learned from Wikipedia that the word "hello" had its first recorded use in the Norwich Courier in 1826 (and now you know), and that Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson developed the first repeating rifle in Norwich in the 1850s. And that both Benedict Arnold and Edward Land (inventor of the Polaroid camera) were born here. Just a little hot bed of innovation.
Today's weather was pretty crummy, though, so I wasn't at all tempted to stop and check things out more closely. But with better weather and more time I'd like to.
East Hartford
As I've noted before, Lily seems to be pretty smart, and when I brought in the cat carrier from the underneath storage she seemed to recognize it immediately and tried to hide. The odd thing about this is that the carrier I use is cardboard and folds flat, so it looked nothing like a carrier when I brought it inside. But she sure reacted to something about it.
I left it flat on my bed for the ride to the vet, and after a while she relaxed and came out of her semi-hiding spot. Good thing because she could have slashed me to ribbons with those claws I'm going to get clipped. But by the time we got to East Hartford, she was lulled into a false sense of security, so I was able to get her crated without damage.
Banfield put her information into its computer and then clipped her claws and microchipped her. And after watching the vet and her assistant, who was wearing very thick gauntlets, only barely be able to clip all Lily's claws (they threw a towel over her head to help ward off her biting them), I gotta say it was worth every penny of the $16 they charged for that.
I'd noticed when I was at that PetsMart before that there's a grinder (aka sub) shop nearby, and today I decided to try them out. Nordelli's - serving grinders since 1922 (they say). When the guy wanted to take my order, I told him I'd never been there before so it would take me some time, and he just lit up. Never been here before? That's great. We've got some wonderful things here - some kind of chicken, a special eggplant, some pastrami - I picked the pastrami. And it was good.
After lunch, I still had time before I needed to head back for the dogs, so I went ahead and registered Lily's microchip number with Home Again. I'd been meaning to call them anyway to update my address and take off Momma's phone number. Then I went back into PetsMart (good thing I hadn't driven away already) and got a tag for Lily's collar with my phone number and her name and microchip info on it, plus some Milk Bones (we were out). And then I got a new tag for Dexter's collar, because the one he's been wearing has Momma's phone number on it, so that needed to be changed. And then I went back again to get a replacement for the long leash Dexter wrecked a few weeks ago - this time a heftier one that may last longer. So between the vet and the consumer items, PetsMart did pretty well out of me today.
Dogs
After being boarded all weekend, I'm pleased that both my puppies were glad to see me and that both acted like the RV was home. I'm also pleased that I asked them to give the dogs a bath, so for at least a few hours they and their beds will smell clean. I always give groomers my own preferred pet shampoo, billed as odorless, which actually means I can't smell it, even if the dogs can. I got tired long ago of having my dogs come home smelling like a perfume counter and I'd have to wash them again so I didn't gag, so why pay someone else to get them that way in the first place? Now I just skip that step. So clean dogs and clean beds and clean smells. Pretty great.
I was interested to note that having the weekend with the RV all to herself gave Lily enough confidence that she didn't hide behind the TV when they came in. In fact, she's started claiming territory by hissing and swatting when the dogs come within 4' (hard to avoid in a 24' RV). At least she can't do as much swatting damage now with her claws shorter. I defend the dogs when she gets unreasonable, and they're clearly curious but generally respectful, so I think things'll settle down pretty soon. Especially once we start traveling more.
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