This Is Framingham

I spent the past few days in the lovely White Mountains in NH.  We also took a trip to Weirs Beach where they have a waterslide and I noticed an orange(ish) trailer in the parking lot.

Upon further inspection:

I don’t think they have a store up there but maybe just sell out of the trailer for bike week or something. Anyway, it was kind of funny to see something Framingham related up there and reminded me that eventually I want to go in the store and buy a big belt buckle.

Walking by this sign the other day I noticed something funny:

The “Happy” from “Happy Car Cleaning” had been removed, it’s the same on the other side of the sign so the business probably changed their name but, I thought it looked funny.

One night Ethan and I came home to find a family of geese crossing the street from the Framingham Union Hospital parking lot at Learned Pond, over to our yard.   This is funny because we’ve never seen geese on our yard and it’s so tiny that it seems like an odd choice to feast on but they did. 

Although we kept our distance, at one point they started marching right towards us.  It’s funny how much bigger they seem when they’re coming right at you.

We watched them for a while since they were taking their time crossing the street and it was at a dangerous corner that people like to whizz around fast sometimes.  I don’t know what we could have done if that hapened but I felt better watching them until they crossed back across the street.

Safely back across the street, returning to the pond.

Thus concluded nature night at our house.  They’re not great for the lawn but I’d rather this than the thing that went to town on our grass last year (who hasn’t returned - so far)

While I was waiting for my to go order at Green Tea II (which we have become faithful to for Chinese take-out) I noticed an interesting dish on their special board:

I know Frog is not such an odd ingredient in some cuisines and if I were to try it here, it would probably be good but I don’t know if I’d be curious enough to try it.
I would be interested to hear if anyone has tried the frog here (or anywhere else) and could describe what it’s like.

Whole Foods is about an 18 min walk or 4 min drive and I like that it’s right across the street from Trader Joe’s.
In general, I like their mission and “whole food” and “green” concepts.  I got these great re-usable bags from there that I use for everything and getting 2 for $3 was definitely worth it for me.

My mom is a die-hard fan of Market Basket and I like to go there for produce (their fresh dates are fantastic) and to look at their beautiful donuts, but she gives me a hard time if I buy anything at WF and says things like “Oh, must be nice to buy your groceries at Whole Foods“.  Like I’m so fancy that I only buy my groceries there, but I don’t.  What I like about Whole Foods is that it’s a place nearby that I can go get some specialty items for a nice dinner or maybe some chocolate chips that don’t have high-fructose syrup, things that I don’t use every day.  Although I admit, it would be nice to buy all my groceries there and that’s where I was introduced to soy whipped cream which is so awesome I won’t go back to regular whipped cream.
But, I like to point out to my mom that I have found several items at Whole Foods that are the same price or actually cheaper there than at Market Basket and they weren’t even on sale.  
The only real problem I have with Whole Foods is that when I wanted some extra money, I tried several times to get a part-time job there and they wouldn’t hire me.  They have this online application that asks you all sorts of questions/statements that you can only answer yes or no (or agree/disagree) to like “You feel you deserve everything you have”.  I answered all the questions honestly (as the way I tried to understand them) and they didn’t call.  I took a look around at the employees and  tried to figure out if they were exceptionally cheery or something but they’re not, some are, but some seems to be less enthusiastic to be there.  Just for kicks I filled out another application with an ultra cheery attitude, still nothing.  I saw they had an open house job night so I went and actually sat down with someone who, seemed to be about 10 years younger than me and didn’t seem interested in me from the start.  So I don’t know what the secret code is to work there. 
I ended up working my part-time job at the 400 Plus and there was a waitress there who mentioned that when she first moved here from Florida she worked at Whole Foods just to have something while she was looking for a job in her field and I remember saying “Oh my God, you did??  How did you answer the questions on the application??”  She laughed and said she really didn’t put much though into it and thought it was funny that I had such a hard time getting a job there.  So I don’t know what the deal was, but I still like shopping there.
Kind of ironic, just before I took this picture of the front of the store, I saw someone I kind of know through Town Meeting and he said “Oh hi, funny running into you here- Do you work here?”

While visiting the laundromat at sad plaza on Franklin St. we thought it was funny that they leave closing up the place to the last customer to get their stuff out of the dryer.   It’s good to see such trusting business-customer relations

Sometime last week, during our now seemigly daily trend of passing thunderstorms, we got a nice view of a rainbow over Route 9 by the Framingham pike entrance.