I experienced a first this week.

Taking a crowded subway home from work, I saw a woman get on, sit down and open up a plastic bag with a takeout container in it.

Suddenly, the smell of garlic and potatoes filled the subway car.

I've seen people eat and drink on the subway before, but this woman took it to a whole new level.

She basically had a low country boil in her lap. She proceeded to peel and eat every shrimp in the container, and eat every potato, smacking her lips loudly and chewing with gusto.

20 minutes later, she wrapped everything up and sighed contentedly, while the other people on the crowded subway car looked at her in disbelief.

Over last weekend, after much toil and sweat, the Husband and I finally emptied out the storage unit that my parents had rented many years ago when they put everything into storage and moved to Asia.

Among the relics I found in the pile of stuff was my old Trapper Keeper that I used in junior high.

Remember those things?

Mine looked like this one, except it had kittens on it:

They were huge and heavy, but every kid had one.

My whole life was in mine - my class schedule, my notes, my pencils and homework.

If you liked a boy and you were bold about it, you would scrawl his name with yours on your Trapper Keeper.

At the beginning of each class, there would be a loud, collective Crack! as everyone yanked open the flap on their Trapper Keepers and detached the Velcro fastening.

Walking from class to class, I'd hug mine close to my chest. It represented my whole life.

And unlike the iPods, iPads and other little gizmos kids have nowadays, the Trapper Keeper could perform double duty as a desk if you wanted to do any work on the bus or on the playground between classes - you would just prop it on your knees as a surface to do your homework.

I think I'm going to start bringing mine to work in my briefcase. Maybe it will make me more organized in my professional life!

Yesterday I was driving in central New Jersey when I came up to a red light next to a guy in a pickup truck.

He had his window rolled down and was pouring the remains of a bottle of soda into the bushes on the median.

Euw! He made eye contact with me, and then looked away, obviously embarrassed that I'd caught him defiling nature with a carbonated beverage.

Then he reached with his arm behind him and into the back of his pickup truck, pulled out a blue recycling bag, and put the empty bottle into it. And drove off.

At least he recycles plastic!

We're home!

It was a nice trip. Here are some photos.

First, this is a sample of some of the beautiful New England countryside we saw - rolling, green hills:

Here's a farmers market we went to:

And here's one of my favorite photos - I took it in front of the Norman Rockwell Museum.

It was supposed to be a nice photo of the sign and the museum, but I inadvertently captured this woman who was lying in the grass in front of the sign. Priceless!