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Looking for Travel Advice

Okay. I think I'm asking for the impossible here. I nicely approached The Lady of the Lake House about finding a rental on the same lake and she mentioned one b&b and that was it.

I love the Adirondacks, but most of the hotels I see online look like someplace where Larry, Darrell and Darrell would hole up.

So here's what I'm looking for. If you know of anything like this or just have a glimmer of an idea, let me know:

- Within 200 - 300 miles of NYC (driving distance).
- On a lake
- Small-ish
- Not closed in mid-October. I don't do that 'Shining' thing.
- Not $200 a night

Sigh. My options are running really low right now.

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The Greeting Card of Death

Did you see the story about Oscar, the hospice cat, who has predicted 24 deaths? Oscar will curl up with a patient and within four hours, said patient is singing with the choir immortal. The staff at the hospice now calls the family of a patient when Oscar cozies up to him.

I myself have an uncanny knack for killing people with get well cards.

This has happened three times. I have sent get well cards to people and they died on the day the card got there.

This is why I no longer buy get well cards but do keep a stock of sympathy cards on hand.
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Take a Load Off

Fireman Fred now has someone else to pick on. Ted was out of the office for a couple of days. Girl Wonder, ditto. But they're both back now and Ted was in Fred's office for at least three hours today.

Whew.

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Skint

Well, not really. I just have no ready cash at hand and so will have to make do with what I have. It's my own fault. I bought a couple of whimsical things I didn't really need (a set of prints from a store going out of business, the new bike rack for The Bullet) and I've been throwing a couple bucks here, a couple bucks there around for most of the month.

I took my coffee to work today.

Yech. I really miss the souk - er, I mean Coffee Heaven West - where Mohammed hands me my medium light and sweet the instant I walk in the door, then smiles and says, "Habanizeday."

Hudson, Take These Back to the Box Room

We will not be going to Zermatt this year. Nor will we travel to Deauville, Paris, London, or even Buffalo. No. We will summer in Pleasantville, that picturesque and quaintly post-Industrial-era hotspot. And we shall winter there as well.

And spring and autumn there, too.

Yesterday, I ran through the exercise of seeing where I would pass my measly ten vacation days.

My Visa bill is outrageous and I'm still paying for the furnace and central a/c that got replaced in Ma Maisonette three years ago.

I also know I'm about to add to my burden by buying a new car. I know, I know, I don't have to buy a new new car, but there is some stubborn mental block in my head that won't let me buy a used car. I wish it were otherwise.

So here's yet another aspect of the circle game - I buy a new car and then I can't afford to go anywhere.

These days, a hotel room seems to go for a flat hundred bucks. You can fiddle, cajole, plead, play all kinds of games on Expedia, but in the long run, it always turns out to be a hundred smackers. And I have to have someone come in to watch the cats, which turns out to range anywhere from $20 - $40 per day.

So vacationing will be done largely at home this year. It makes me slightly queasy to think of a year trapped in Jersey.

I had hoped that I would get to go to a trade show in London in the spring. I knew exactly what I would do if the siren song of Paris didn't get to me first.

I have always wanted to see Harrogate in Yorkshire. A friend of mine at work had a calendar of garden in Harrogate, in full bloom, and it was breathtakingly lovely. It's also in the general vicinity of Bronte country. And I chanced upon a lovely, quaint inn in a village called Masham. I priced train tickets from London to York.

And more than that, I wanted to stay at the Dean Court Hotel in York.

In 1974, I was turned away from the hotel because I was young, alone, and wearing jeans. It wasn't cheap, but I was willing to fork over the money because I was alone and feeling addled and wanted nothing more than to spend a night in cleanliness and a bit of luxury. Instead, I was turned away.

I ended up spending the night at a B&B in a row of condemned buildings. There were stuffed birds in bell jars everywhere I turned and when I went up the stairs, doors opened a crack then slammed behind me.

There will be no Dean Court Hotel this year. I am planning on my annual pilgrimage to Richmond in the spring and that should pretty effectively wipe out any float I manage to scrape together between now and then. But at least I'll get to drive there and back in a shiny new car.