Connecticut

I have always resented Connecticut, and it’s stupid silent “c” in the middle that cost me a perfect score on my fifty states test in seventh grade. But now our friends Julie and Dan bought a house there, so I have decided to make amends with the Constitution state, and also to make it the first stop on me and Ben’s New England road trip this week (woo, vacation!).

Julie and Dan’s new house is great! It has a squirrel on the front:

See, I am not kidding.

Even more excitingly, it has a lake in the back!

It was raining, but it's still a beach.

Also, Julie and Dan and their beach are all in Connecticut, but the lake (and the land on the other side) is in Massachusetts. This is great for Julie and Dan because it means they can easily drive to MA for cheap gas and alcohol on Sundays (despite CT's blue laws), but potentially bad for me because if they ever have kids, and then I visit them and take their kids swimming, I will be guilty of transporting a minor across state lines.

The other exciting thing near Julie and Dan’s new house is a Big Y grocery store. The Big Y grocery store is better than all other grocery stores, because instead of a lame customer loyalty reward system that revolves around an easily transportable plastic card, they use doubloons to reward their loyal customers:

See, once more I am not kidding.

Well, technically they aren’t called “doubloons,” but “silver coins.” When you spend enough money on groceries, the cashier gives you a silver coin when you checkout. Then later if you are shopping and you see an item marked as a “silver coin deal,” you just give the cashier your silver coin and she gives you the discount! Assuming you remembered your silver coins, and you have a silver coin for each silver coin deal, that is. Also, apparently there are also gold coin deals, but Julie and Dan haven’t bought enough groceries to earn a gold coin yet, so we can’t be sure what they look like. I’m going to assume they are just as awesome, if not more so, as the gold coins.

So Connecticut was a great success, despite the fact that Julie (whose husband’s last name is Spagnesi) got accused of being racist against Italians by the head of the Hartford Italian American Society (much in the same way my Jewish paternal grandmother used to accuse my mother of anti-Semitism whenever they disagreed, despite my mother having married my grandmother’s also-Jewish son).

Next stop, Boston!