For no better reason other than to test a new function I installed in WordPress today…

Books I Own But Haven’t Read Yet!

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Life of Pi

Brass

Fun with the digital camera…

You asked for pictures? You got 'em.

The Linden (our building)

The view of One Linden Place from the corner of Linden and Main

The courtyard (pic 1) (pic 2) (pic 3)

The original ad for the Linden Building back from the turn of the century

The den, facing the window – check out the wainscoating in the lower right hand corner of the pic

The built-in unit in the den

The first fire of the season (living room fireplace)

The Neighborhood

The Travelers Tower – one of Hartford's major landmarks (pic 1) (pic 2)

The Wadsworth Athenaeum

Hartford City Hall

A view of downtown from Linden Street

More downtown architecture (pic 1) (pic 2)

Yes, it's true. Three months after our last update, we post something new… which in this case is a sort of photo diary of Hartford. Revel in our digital photography skills as you see pictures of our condo, the neighborhood and the city.

Enjoy
– Avery and Janet

For all of you nosy sorts out there – here are the first shots of the new Condo della Glasser

The arts-and-crafts style fireplace and mantle in the
great room. The border and grill are most likely the original cast iron
pieces from the 1890s.

Our galley kitchen – complete with Jenn-Air convection oven and grill.

More pictures will be posted over the coming weeks – so stay tuned…

After almost a six month hiatus since our last update to Scowl, Nu?… we're back!

To all of our long time readers, thanks for all of the ongoing support of both Scowl, Nu? and ScowlZine… and to all of the new readers coming here for the first time… Welcome to Scowl, Nu? a slightly bitter slice of life from your gracious hosts Avery and Janet!

Ok, now on to new business. Previous visitors to Scowl, Nu? will realize that the format has completely changed to make it easier both for the reader to navigate and for the two of us to update. In geek terms, we're using a homegrown PHP3 and MySQL entry management system. All of the previous Scowl, Nu? postings have been migrated to the new system, but if you see (or rather don't see) anything from the previous from the old Scowl, Nu?… just shoot us an email!

Anyway, it's one of the first nice days of the season out here in Hartford… so why the heck are we in here writing this front page instead of going out and having a good time?

– Avery and Janet

Scowl, Nu? is a refuge for those of us who see both the dark cloud and the silver lining. This isn't a dark and gloomy place, but it is a place where you don't have to feel bad about feeling bitter.

Over the last year, we certainly had a lot to scowl about. We were living in one of the last few distinct neighborhoods in San Francisco… the Lower Haight. When we first moved to the Lower Haight in 1994, it was a unique little neighborhood filled with neighborhood bars and shops. By the time we started up Scowl, Nu? in June 1998, the place was becoming a yuppie slum.

By the time we left, the neighborhood was on the verge of becoming like every other homogeneous neighborhood in San Francisco, filled with conglomerate-owned bars, condos and chain stores. Mom and pop restaurants were being replaced by chains like Pasta Pomodoro and World Wrapps.

Damnit if we didn't get out while the getting was good.

In May 1999, we relocated to our ancestral home of Hartford, Connecticut, after bouncing around the country for the last ten years. Our lives haven't changed that much since we left San Francisco: we're a block away from the best beer bar in the area, we've scoped out our favorite delivery restaurants, and we settled in a neighborhood with some character: The West End. In Hartford, the grocery stores are better, the highways are better, and life just seems a little bit nicer here. Heck, now we're living in a two bedroom apartment that costs less than our one-room San Francisco shoebox of a studio!

So pardon us if we tend wax idyllic about our new lives.

But regardless of our feelings about our new community, there will still be tons of things that get our goats (which reminds us of the Jamaican Restaurant with the We Deliver Goat on Wheels sign in Downtown Hartford) and with the new redesign of the Scowl, Nu?, there will be more than enough things going on in our lives to write about.

Scowl is 100% non-fiction, completely autobiographical, personal, and updated regularly… so in that way, it is a journal. However, Scowl, Nu? is also an online publication. Though we are completely truthful in what we write on the site, we aren't completely open with you, our readers. This isn't the sort of site where you'll get our deepest, darkest secrets… or where we'll beat our breasts as we wail at the gods for the fate that they have dealt us. Sorry, we just don't know all of you that well… and what little of a private life we have is, well, private. Scowl, Nu? is our personal online publication that talks about that quirky thing called Our Life in Hartford.

Like we said on the first day that we started this site:

So, why do we call this Scowl, Nu?
Because sometimes there is nothing better to do in life than scowl.

So, come on, Scowl, why don't you?

– and
us@scowl.nu