Last Monday, we took a ride in to city hall in Manchester to pick up a copy of Hannah's birth certificate. They've got fancy "pay and display" devices now, instead of parking meters on most streets in town. I put in too many quarters and bought an hour-and-a-half's parking time.
I had to run back out to the car to get the checkbook, and Heather told me that after I left them in the clerk's office, Hannah said "Where's Daddy?" instead of her usual "Where'dago? " She's growing up so fast... she's now putting words together!
We were actually in and out of the city clerk's office in less than 15 minutes, and I didn't want to waste the rest of my 75¢, so we decided to walk down Elm Street and some of the side streets.
Hannah enjoyed the walk very much, but she is always distracted by motorcycles. She has what I call a "motorcycle face" that she makes every time she sees or hears one go by. During our walk, three cycles were stopped at a red light right near us, and she was just staring wide-mouthed at them, and waved at them. The guys on the bikes got a big kick out of it - a little girl all dressed in pink was ogling over their bikes! (I would have put this post up sooner, but I've been waiting to get the motorcycle face on camera so I could attach it with this post... not been able to get it yet, and I wanted to post while it was still in the recent past!)
Elm Street has changed quite a bit from what I remember it being not that long ago. I guess putting the arena building where it is was bound to effect the local economy and the types of businesses that were located there. Lots of little coffee shops and restaurants in what used to be department stores and pharmacies. Traffic flow has been changed, too. Instead of two lanes of traffic in either direction, it's one lane each way with angle parking on each side. That would have been convenient when looking for spaces while I was taking trumpet lessons at Ted Herbert's 15 years ago!
We took a walk up a side street, past the Palace Theater and the NH Symphony Orchestra building (where I used to practice with the Granite Winds Youth Orchestra), and cut over to the City Library and spent the rest of our time in the kid's area there. Hannah was having a heyday! There were big signs all over the place that said "Please do not re-shelve books"... it was hard not to put books back where we pulled them off from, and I'm sure the signs were not created for people like us!
