Marie Javins's Blog, page 6

A Cheaper Time

I lived at the house next door to this rowhouse in Jersey City for some of my formative years in the early nineties. Marie Alice, Otis, and I paid $950 for a three bedroom duplex. Friends lived across the street at 58 Mercer, others lived down the block or nearby on Jersey Ave, and a guy from the band Codeine lived about three doors down. Friends, bands, and friends in bands were forever residing in the living room of our duplex. 

Marie Alice and I both left Mercer Street for our condo purchases in an old tenement on Avenue B in Manhattan, so don't feel bad for us that our attempt to buy this building didn't pan out. But wow, $4.4 million for the place next door! It has a carriage house and highly coveted parking under an extra apartment.

The Boss

The raccoon rules the yard. He's the big dog!

Hoover

Here’s (wet) Petunia cleaning up after the cats in the backyard. She’s a good janitor!

Poor Charlie

We aren’t sure what he ate, but Charlie suffered explosive diarrhea right before I left my mom's house for the airport. Shit happens.

Border Flashback

I'm reposting this old story from MariesWorldTour 2011, because a former colleague was asking me a few questions about travel, and I went back and read this story about hiking through the mud at the Tibet/Nepal border.

What a glorious day. Absurd day. All the best travel days are glorious because they are absurd. (Except for the submarine, that wasn't absurd.)

Final Look at Curacao

Here's my last photos of Curacao, and then we'll get back to our regularly scheduled business of raccoons and Bundt cake.

Willemstad

Here's a look at the neighborhood I am staying in here in Curacao. I like it--it's definitely easier to stay at a resort where you have everything you need, but I prefer to be in town where I can wander around.

600 Feet Under the Sea

Why, you might be wondering, did Marie go to Aruba and then to Curacao if she doesn't like the beach?

Valid question! Aruba was just how I could set up the flights so I was only flying during non-office hours, and then I hung out there a few days to check it out and acclimate to the time zone. Then I flew prior to work hours to Curacao on Friday morning, clocked in at 1 pm/aka 9 am Burbank time, and worked to 10 pm (6 pm in California).

All this was so I could do something I saw my friend Lynne do and it looked so cool, I decided to do it too.

Here are some photos of today's submersible journey to 600 feet under the sea! The deepest I ever got with SCUBA was 60 feet, and that was only when I got certified off Roatan in 1998. (Coincidentally, my Roatan trip was part of the Central American overland truck journey where I met Lynne in the first place. She was going from Alaska to Argentina, and I was on for the Guatemala to Panama leg.)

I was lucky that one of the other sub passengers was a Northeastern University marine biologist doing research on Curacao. He told us all about plankton and krill and various corals, as well as a lot about micro-plastics and drug runners setting off in their own submarines from Venezuela. Apparently that's a big problem for Curacao. He also works with Fabien Cousteau, and talked about Jacques Piccard, who voyaged to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 1960. Added bonus: He was on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con as an expert to talk about Aquaman the year the movie came out. He wasn't allowed to cosplay on the panel, but afterwards, he dressed as a coral polyp and his wife wore a micro-plastics hat.

Most of us know what we know about submersibles from James Cameron, who has himself been to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

This was an incredible day. It's not like there were a million fish and sharks and I got to see mermaids, but it was just such an amazing thing to hop in a submarine with no skill and pop on down to 200 meters under the sea.

To Aruba

On Tuesday, I took home my Bundt cake carrier and got a Lyft to LAX.

I flew to Aruba, where I stayed until this morning, doing work from "home" from a rental apartment. I had a little rental car and used it in the morning to take a GPS/phone tour of the island. I'm four hours ahead of Burbank here, so my job hours are 1 pm-10 pm.

Aruba was a lot dustier and more lived-in than I thought it might be, but there sure were a lot of cruise ships.

Now I'm in Curacao before heading to my mom's for Thanksgiving.

2022 National Bundt Day Part 2

Much cake was consumed. Not posting people eating cake photos to protect the identities of the guilty.