Toilet Paper Cockroach

Sorry I don't have more pleasant pictures this week; this is just a present I found in the ladies room at work. The landlord of the building said, "It's just a beetle" and didn't even bother to remove it from the toilet paper roll. Luckily there are two stalls.

The clambake is over! Hooray! As much fun was it was, I'm glad it won't happen for another year. That's about how long I need to recover.

I woke up at 5:30 Saturday morning and went for a quick run - in the rain. It was pouring! I was really stressing over the weather: I had reserved the church gym for a couple hours in case of rain, but I really wanted the clambake at the beach. I checked several weather reports and most said light rain in the morning and gone by noon. I figured no one would show up until noon anyway since that was when we were serving lunch. So I made the call and sent an email telling everyone to head to the beach.

I picked up a friend's truck at 7:30 and drove to Gloucester. I went to Cape Pond Ice first and picked up 40 lbs of ice. Then I went to the Gloucester House Restaurant and picked up 125 lobsters and a bushel of clams (everyone here calls them "steamers"). I got to Crane Beach by 9:30 and the weather was fine at first.

I dried off all the picnic tables in the pavilion and 10 minutes later it started raining. The truck and trailer arrived with all of the equipment (grill, burners, propane, tables, serving stuff, etc) and we set it up in the rain. It stopped raining around 11:30 right when we were boiling water to cook all the food: lobsters, clams, hot dogs and corn. We also had watermelon, cornbread, chips, salads, and desserts. It was quite a feast.

The weather ended up getting better from there: by the time everyone was leaving around 3:30, the sun was shining. All in all, the clambake was a success. There were more than 200 people there even with the crazy weather, and everybody had a blast.

I didn't have time to pick up a camera but Ellen, who was in charge last year and knows what goes into planning this ordeal, brought her Canon and captured a bit of the magic.