Brunswick, Pt. 14

We left Meriden this morning and headed back to Brunswick.  A lot of my blog posts are titled "Brunswick" because we've made that our home base here in Maine.  We actually do a lot of things outside of Brunswick.  For example, today we went back to Old Orchard Beach.  We decided to go back because a) Chelsea wasn't with us the first time and b) Nothing was open when we went before.  Well, nothing was really open this time either.  And it was windy/a bit chilly.  Still, we had amazing food and were able to peek into a few shops.  I found an awesome Patriots towel to add to my collection.  I now have 2 L.L. Bean towels, and 3 Patriots towels.  I'll never need to use anything else!  I also found the most wonderful, fruity smelling candle made by Village Candle.  It was strawberry flavored and it filled the entire shop.  I didn't buy it, but decided I'd look for it at Fry's when we get back to Tucson.  

We have a little over a week left of our vacation before we drive back.  I'm still enjoying every bit of rain, mist, sunshine, green, and overall cool weather here in the northeast, but will be happy to return to Arizona and be back with the good folks at Valley Presbyterian.  I'll also be very happy to go back to Zona Fitness (I have so, so, so much work to do! haha), the best gym ever!  I haven't been able to touch a piano in 3 weeks, so it will be especially nice to play again after all this time!  There is still so much to see here in New England though.  Future plans are to go to Bar Harbor, Salem (MA), and Cape Cod. 

Old Orchard Beach, ME

Wendy's notes:

So after an OUTSTANDING lunch at JJ's in Old Orchard Beach (so good I had to review it on Yelp http://www.yelp.com/biz/j-js-eatery-too-old-orchard-beach?hrid=8SIvVqhTVQKA0gLAltYmmw), we decided to have something other than seafood for dinner.  We settled on Vietnamese and went to Little Saigon in Brunswick. Joel and Chelsea both ordered perfectly innocent bowls of Pho, but then three quarters of the way through dinner Joel says, "YOLO!" and drops a pepper, just like the one in the photo, into his soup. 

He proceeds to have a few more bites of soup but then I tease him about the pepper and how it can't possibly be adding much to the soup at this point, so he scoops the pepper up and eats it, seeds and all.  Crunch, crunch, crunch - and then suddenly his face goes still and he says, "Oh!" and grabs his glass of water as beads of sweat break out on his forehead. At this point Chelsea and I are nearly peeing ourselves from laughing so hard. We told him the seeds were going to make that one hot bite of pepper!  Anyway, Joel spits the pepper out, guzzles his water - and mine - then demands I go grab the water pitcher from a table nearby and refill his (which I did), and then gobbles several bites of my fried rice in an attempt to stop the incessant burning in his mouth - none of which put out the fire. This continued for several more minutes, by which time my abs were sore from laughing.  He wouldn't allow me to take any photos or videos of this whole process so I had to settle on the picture of the offending pepper.  I even offered him $100 to eat another one and let me film it, but he wisely said no, haha. 

On a completely different note, just in case anyone was wondering, this is what Chelsea looks like every night before we turn out the lights.  She's reading on her Kindle.