BZ Behind the Wheel

It's raining in Providence, so that means there is water coming from the sky as well as on all sides. Rhode Island seems to be mostly inlets and rivulets and bays that lead out to larger and larger bodies of water that all eventually become the Atlantic Ocean. So Providence, the capital city of only 200,000 in a state that doesn't have many more than a million people, was settled by seafaring people. They are still here and they have perfect New York accents, though they are several hundred miles from the Shmapple. Go figyuh. Portuguese and Italian names are everywhere, including some of the best old-school Italian food anywhere.

But you can't get there from here. You can't get anywhere from anywhere else. All the streets in Providence are one-way the wrong way, or they dead end into unmarked construction zones, or they've changed the access and not told anybody. Last night, driving Dixie Mae, her enormous 1993 Ford Explorer that would probably be illegal in Saint Plotniko but is ridiculously cool and fun to drive, The Great BeezieWeezie took Plotnik and Ducknik in what turned out to be a rather mis-shapen circle, searching for the middle of town. And they had started out in the middle of town.

It looked like a bad horror movie, where you keep yelling: "No! No! Don't try to turn around in that old, abandoned churchyard!" But they did turn around, and eventually found a gas station where Plot could ask the guy behind the bullet-proof glass: "Sorry, but we're really lost. Can you please tell us how to get to Atwells Street?"

"Ha ha. Dat's funny. Dis heah is Atwells Street," the guy said.

The restaurant was only half a mile away. And the food was really, really good, but Plot was so hungry he forgot to take any pictures.

Meanwhile, few of the colleagues of the researcher in this lab coat...



...realize that she has a secret identity.



Brown University is in East Providence. The homes are old and look lived in, as well as quite breautiful.







BZ took Plot and Duck into the space wing of her department yesterday -- that is, where they study the geology of planets. See these globes? You look at a globe and think 'Earth.' Right? Wrong. The one on the left is the moon and the one on the right is God Knows Where.