Calvin was messing around with the camera last weekend. Here are a few of my favorites (the rest of the set is here).


Calvin has been trying for a few weeks now to get a good shot of this P-51 Mustang that flies out of nearby Stellar Airpark. We always have interesting aircraft flying over, which negates the annoyance at the noise.


Handsome Gadget! Big boy is getting old, he'll be nine on Valentine's Day.


Portia, racing around in the back yard. It is DAMNED hard to get a still picture of this dog.


Smiling Portia, with Marie to hold her still.


Calvin and the kids are convinced that there is a ghost or some paranormal entity haunting the stairs. They've claimed to have heard strange and unexplainable noises from the area ever since they moved in back in '98. Here Calvin is trying to catch them on film, ala Ghost Hunters. I inverted the picture to see if we could catch anything. The only thing I see that I can't figure out is a weird shape below and to the right of the pie-shaped window along the stairs, just above the railing. It looks like an amoeba.

Labels: Calvin, photography

Posted by Laura at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments

I stole some pics of the boys from Lilly's MySpace page and posted them on Flickr. God, I MISS these little guys.

Labels: kids, photography

Posted by Laura at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

Calvin and I are getting ready to go somewhere to watch the Patriots/Dolphins game (GO PATS!), so I don't have time to do the entry I was planning. That's forthcoming, but for now you can entertain yourselves with some new pictures.

See ya!

Labels: holiday, photography

Posted by Laura at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments

I woke up at 7:30 this morning, which is only a half-hour later than the usual 7:00 wake up time that I have on normal work days. Why I can't sleep on my vacation is beyond me, but there it is. It's not so bad, really, sitting here with Zoe perched directly behind my head on the back of the couch, Oz eyeing her from the floor, coffee at my side, laptop at hand. It would be peaceful and serene if it weren't for all the flipping barking dogs in the neighborhood. At this moment in time I can count five distinct barks. None of them are our dogs, who if not smart, are at least polite. I could close the windows and door to block the sound, but I rather like having it finally cool enough to wear my robe.

A FANTASTIC dream about me and McDreamy (apparently I can hold my breath underwater for a long time in my dreams) was interrupted by my walnut-sized bladder (hmm, come to think of it, that's probably why I was dreaming of water), and from there the brain kicked in with thoughts of all the things I need to get done today. None of the tasks on my list were inflicted on me by Calvin in a fit of protest over my time off, though that's what I fully expected to happen. No, he was going to allow me my week of sloth, but I have discovered that I need to live a purpose-filled life. Thus I compiled a self-directed honey-do list.

First thing's first, though, so I have to write an entry about it. ("Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.")

Ozzy's nose is out of joint because he just jumped up on the couch to discover that Zoe had moved to nestle against my hip. My lap is occupied by my computer, which means there is no snuggle space for him. He just raced off to climb up three separate doorframes and the column of the half-wall in the living room. Now he's trying to figure out other ways to get my attention and is playing Captain Explorer behind the television. With all the wires. A sure way to get hollered at. Any attention is good attention, I guess.

We're selling my motorcycle. I hardly ever ride it (I actually find that I prefer the bitch seat behind Calvin, because I'm a big ol' chicken in Arizona traffic), we could use the money, and I'd actually prefer owning one of these. I placed the ad last night and am grimly awaiting the round of telephone calls to begin. I hate that part about selling crap, but what are you gonna do.

Now Oz is trying to get into the cabinet underneath the snake's vivarium. That cat thinks that everyone in the household should operate under his schedule and won't settle down until I feed him. Bastard.

Okay, they're fed. Now maybe they'll leave me alone. CRAP. I forgot to grab the camera while I was up. Dammit.

OKAY. And now, for some pictures. Hover over them for comments.















Man, I'm REALLY putting off getting started on my list.

• Grocery shopping
  
• Go to the bank
  
• Sweep, vacuum, mop, dust
  
• Clean the kitchen & bathroom
  
• Laundry
  
• Litter boxes
  
• Adjust the sprinklers
  
• Take the movies back
  
• Dig up the motorcycle title
  
• Empty and clean the hot tub
  
• Work out
  

Alright, I'm outta here.


_{Momentary Thought: There's a massive amount of birds cheeping away in the backyard. I miss chickadees and whippoorwills, though.
High: It's actually chilly this morning.
Low: I have a craptastic amount of stuff to do today.
Obsession: I'm doing new pie recipes for Thanksgiving this year. I need to make them enough in advance that if they turn out like crap I can still run to CostCo and buy a couple.
Grin: The dream I had last night.
Playing: Birdsong and barking dogs.
Location: Living room.}

Labels: home, journal, listy goodness, motorcycle, photography, vacation

Posted by Laura at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments

Hover over the pics for captions.

Labels: pets, photography

Posted by Laura at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments

I defy you to find a more beautiful girl than my Heather.

Labels: best things, friends, photography

Posted by Laura at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments

First, let me (and Jen, nyah) say, THANK GOD.

Second, Calvin and Marie and I went to Kona Grill last night in celebration of Marie's birthday. Much food was eaten, and a good time was had by all. (I was going to write this entry yesterday but I promised Marie I would leave her "Happy Birthday" message up as the uppermost entry for the WHOLE DAY in her honor.)

Third, I got four inches cut off the length of my hair last Friday, and as a result I have the Best Hair In All The World.

Fourth, today is National Talk Like a Pirate day. Avast!

And now, the weekend.

So, Friday Lucy was tearing around her tank like a crazy person lizard, running back and forth and scrabbling up on the sides and digging digging digging. So I took her out of her tank and into the living room, where I set her on the floor so she could run around. The cat was fascinated, and she kept running at him to check him out, at which point he would squint at her and flinch like he expected her to spit in his face or something, and then run off to the nearest hiding spot. Calvin and I were mightily amused by this.

Then suddenly Lucy squatted as if she was going to take a poo on the rug. Calvin warned me and I scooted her off the rug and onto the tile, the easier to clean up the impending mess. Except that instead of poo, out plooped... an egg!

We must have stared at it for a full minute before I exclaimed, "Hey! It's an egg!" Commence with the scrambling around as Calvin went off to Home Depot to secure some soil (for a laying box) while I called Pets Inc. to see if they knew where to purchase an incubator in a hurry. Calvin came back and we used a giant Rubbermaid storage container to put the soil in. I moistened it and packed it down so Lucy could dig a little cave to lay in. We put Lucy in and put a couple of screens over the top and rested a heat lamp on the screens. We watched expectantly.

She stared back up at us.

We stared back down at her.

She just sat there and didn't seem interested in digging a nest. So I dug what is called a "starter hole" to see if that would get her instincts to kick in. Nuthin. She totally had no idea what to do. She layed a half-dozen eggs (non-viable, which is common for a first clutch) on the surface, then spent a lot of time scrabbling up the sides of the box trying to get out.

Throughout the entire weekend she would lay an egg here, an egg there, an egg in the tub when I soaked her, an egg in her and Cheeto's tank after I put her back in it because I thought she was finally done with all of this nonsense (we have since separated them into their own individual tanks)... here it is Wednesday and I'm not entirely sure that she's done with the egg laying yet.

So! That was fun.

Friday night Calvin and I met a friend up at Iguana Mack's for some beer (and some more beer) and conversation. The weather, at least at night, is finally to the point where riding places on the motorcycle is comfortable again. I'm back to being a lightweight because I haven't been drinking very much at all, really, since we came back from the beer festival. So I got loopy and silly, as is my nature, and suffered a mild hangover the next morning. Phooey.

Saturday morning we watched "Invincible" on TV, and I drooled over Mark Wahlberg.

(pic courtesy of mark-wahlberg.org)
Being in a football frame of mind, Calvin secured tickets to the Arizona State/San Diego State college football game at Sun Devil Stadium. We left a couple of hours early in order to putter around Mill Avenue and the college district before the game. We ended up at House of Tricks (I once wrote an entry about it here). We sat at the bar and ordered drinks (whiskey and beer for Calvin, iced tea for me... stoopid hangover) and an appetizer, and just sat conversing and laughing and enjoying the cool-ish weather. We brought the camera with us and Calvin shot a few pics, then a nice man from across the bar came over and offered to take a picture of us together.









We left Tricks about a half-hour before the game started, and walked and walked and WALKED because we parked closer to the stadium than to the action-side of Mill. Now, I LOVE Sun Devil Stadium. I love the crowd, I love the college students, I love the atmosphere. I love the tributes to Pat Tillman, whom I was fortunate enough to see play when he was an ASU Sun Devil AND when he was a Cardinal.

I think I like being at a college game better than being at a pro game. There just seems to be more energy - the chants, the band playing, the students bouncing a blow-up doll among the crowd:



Some more pics:












The Devils beat up San Diego with a final score of 34-13. We left at halftime, though, to go back down to Mill (walky walky walky) and hang out at a bar for an hour or so. We watched the culmination of the game from a place called Coconuts.

We rode home. We wrestled. We went to sleep.

The phone rang at 2:00 in the morning. Calvin rolled over and grunted into the receiver - it was Marie's boyfriend saying they had a fight and Marie said she was going to our house, and was Marie there? Calvin got up and checked... no Marie. The boyfriend was informed, we knew Marie would head to a friend's house first, and we went back to sleep.

The phone rang at 3:00 in the morning. Calvin rolled over and grunted into the receiver - it was Marie asking if we had called her. Calvin said no. Marie said she'd gotten a call from our home number. Calvin said it wasn't us. He got up and checked the house to see if maybe it had been Michael who had called. Michael was at his girlfriends. We deduced that Marie's boyfriend called from our house to see if he could get Marie to pick up, having let himself in.

That caused some consternation. Not a lot, because we know this kid and know he wouldn't do anything wrong or rash or mean. But still. We shared an "Oh no he DI-INT" moment with Marie, and went back to sleep.

(Later) Sunday morning we woke up and discovered Marie asleep on the couch. The rest of the day was spent talking with her, talking with Marie's boyfriend when he showed up, watching TV, and napping. Currently, the boyfriend has moved out of Marie's apartment, and Michael is considering moving in with her.

(Snoopy dance!)

So! That was the drama of last weekend. This weekend is shaping up to deliver some NICE weather (supposed to be 88 on Saturday), so I'll probably have more pics to share of whatever trouble Calvin and I can find to get ourselves into.

Labels: booze, journal, kids, lizards, photography

Posted by Laura at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments

Courtesy of MSN Live Search, and Avitable made me do it. I did a search of the house I live in now in Arizona, but that was boring. This is a shot of Grandma's house in Maine, click on it to see full size and the commenty tag-like things I put in it.

Labels: Maine, photography

Posted by Laura at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments

New pictures, none of which are of the lizards having sex.

Labels: Calvin, home, pets, photography

Posted by Laura at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments

It seems that as I get older I don't want to get up early for NUTHIN. Back when I was a child I couldn't sleep the night before a trip, so excited was I. Now? The alarm goes off and I could be going for a month-long all expenses paid trip to HAWAII, and I wouldn't want to have to get up to make a 7:15 a.m. flight.

But make the 7:15 flight (to Oregon, not Hawaii), we did. Calvin and I have been doing a LOT of traveling this year, and the whole check in and security dance is getting quite old. However, we were duly entertained by angst first thing in the morning, as we waited our turn at the automated check-in station of Alaska Air. The lines were suggestions at most, and a lady ended up cutting in line. Which righteously offended this guy, waiting his turn. So angered was he that he approached the woman, told her off in a VERY LOUD VOICE for being rude, then stood behind the woman, read her name off of the check-in station, and said, "This is JULIE, everyone! JULIE is the rude woman who can't wait her turn! Let's hear it for JULIE!" Thereby succeeding in drawing everyone's eyes, originally staring at Julie, to stare instead at him.

So, that was fun.

Calvin and I sat to a very nice elderly lady (who was reading a naughty romance novel, which cracked me up) on the plane. She very helpfully filled us in on details of our destination, in between short naps and munching on a very strange "breakfast cookie" provided by the airline in place of actual, you know, food. We landed in Portland at about 10:00, wrestled with the luggage, waited for what seemed like an ETERNITY in the line for the rental car, and then waited for another ETERNITY to pull the car out of the parking garage as the people at the gate in front of us made the lady checking the paperwork trot back and forth to the rental desk.

That was an awesome run-on sentence.

The hotel let us check in early, and after dropping off our luggage we set off on foot to find sustenance and beverage. Nosh, if you will. Thing is? Portland Oregon is MUCH bigger than Portland Maine, a fact which I suppose I twigged intellectually, but not consciously. So, not knowing our way around at all, I'm sure we picked exactly the WRONG direction in which to strike out on our quest for food. BUT! We finally came across a Rock Bottom, which while not the quaint native hole-in-the-wall we were looking for, afforded us with an opportunity to hoover and guzzle and generally be hungry piggies. We ordered a beer sampler, were rather chagrined at the sheer amount of sample glasses plunked down in front of us, then found the consumption of said samples to be easier accomplished than originally thought (really, one gulp each x 8 or 9 samples = about a full beer for each of us).

(I do hope my judgmental anonymous reader comments again. I shall have more than enough fodder for him/her by the end of this entry.)

Okay! From there we decided to wander down to the Beer Festival (more beer! Beer is good!). There were no lines to speak of, Thursday being opening day, and most of the Good People of Oregon were still working. We bought our plastic mugs...



...then started down one side and up the other, stopping at whichever station had the funnest name. There was Sweaty Betty Blonde, Donner Party Porter, Bitch Creek ESB, Pliny the Elder, Whoop Pass Double IPA, and Noggin Grog, to name just a few. I'm a big fan of IPA's, so I think my favorite there was the Alaskan IPA brewed by Alaskan Brewing Co.

Along with our mugs we bought twenty tokens for twenty dollars. I kept 10 and gave Calvin 10. One token for a "taster" (about 1/4 mug), four tokens for a full mug. We pretty much stuck to just tasters, to sample the most amount of beers without having to buy more tokens. The weather was absolutely BEAUTIFUL - mid 70's and sunny, with a light breeze going. At one point we took our samples and sat in the (SOFT!) grass under the trees.



We must have sat there for over an hour, just enjoying the weather and people-watching.

After departing the festival, we went back up to our hotel room for a (ahem) nap. The beds were incredibly comfortable - the kind you sort of fall into and get consumed by. We were up on the fourteenth floor of the building (the Marriott on the corner of Washington and Broadway, for those Oregonians following along at home), where we could look across at the busily dedicated workers pounding away at their computers in the offices of the building across the street. (This one girl in particular in the corner office of the top floor was there late every day and even all day Saturday. The weather was so beautiful and I was tempted to go over there and drag her away from her work.)

We departed the hotel again at about 8:30 pm, marveling at how light it still was outside. I don't think the sun went fully down until about 10:00. We had dinner at Jake's Grill...



... then just wandered up and down the streets. There were these funky lunch carts EVERYWHERE, advertising food from every known nationality to man (plus CREPES!) that, alas, we never got a chance to eat at... and I also didn't take any pictures of them, which is weird, for me. We stopped at Tugboat's, a VERY hole-in-the-wall (nearly literally) bar, and then another place whose name escapes me at the moment but which I will probably recall before I am done writing this entry.



The next morning Calvin and I got up reasonably early, and I went off in search of Peets coffee (a shop was adjacent to our hotel - BOMB almond croissants, by the way) while Calvin showered. This is the routine when we are traveling together - I get up first and get showered and ready, then wake him up to get him going, and go off in search of coffee. By the time I get back to the room he's usually showered and dressed. A properly caffeinated husband is a happy husband. A happy husband is a happy Laura.

We claimed the car from the valet (hello, $26 a day! yeesh) and drove west on route 26 toward Cannon Beach. Along the way we hit a rest stop that, upon exploration, revealed a connection to Rock Creek and a little hiking trail.







There's something about being outdoors that makes Calvin want to take pictures of my nekkid butt ("Here I am, mooning the great outdoors..."), so we did that, but I'm not going to show you. Use your vivid imaginations. Just... be flattering, okay? Heh.

Since a croissant doesn't go very far toward keeping OUR appetites happy, we stopped at Camp 18 for some KILLER burgers (and beer, natch).



We received some very helpful suggestions and directions from our waitress, and made it to Canon Beach without a problem. I was completely geeked to catch glimpses of the ocean and Haystack Rock (GOONIES!!! Remember the scene where they line up the rock formation with the medallion?) from the road, and was totally in love with the place by the time we (finally) maneuvered the traffic and pedestrians of the town, found a parking spot, and made it down to the beach.







After wandering around the village at Cannon Beach for a while, we got back on the road and headed toward Astoria. The only thing lacking from our drive among the cliff-side houses was Cyndi Lauper singing that "Goonies are Good Enough". It was totally surreal; I kept expecting Mikey and the boys to come racing out to let the air out of Brandon's tires.

We gaped at how BIG the mouth of the Columbia River is, and (after a couple of wrong turns where we were all, "We're over HERE and we want to be over THERE,") drove across the bridge over to Washington.







Back over on the Oregon side, we stopped at the "Ship's Inn", a restaurant recommended by our waitress at Camp 18, who's perfect and LITERAL directions ("...the road right before the Burger King in Astoria...") dropped us right there. Calvin had a crab cocktail, I got some short neck clams.

And beer.





By the time we finished up at Ship's Inn, it was nearly 5:00 and time to head back toward Portland. Calvin and I really enjoyed the entire road along 26. Lots of trees, rolling green fields and farm stands sporting cherries and fresh berries. We fail to realize just now NOT green Arizona is until we go to somewhere as green as Oregon. As long as we were there, the contrast never stopped startling us.

The next day (Saturday) we spent the entire day pretty much just walking around the city. We bought some more comfortable shoes at Columbia Sports, our feet having suffered from our poor packing choice of footwear. We had breakfast at Mother's, then went down to the open air market they hold every Saturday. We encountered a homeless man in a flowered dress and straw hat brightly decorated with fluorescent fake flowers, literally IN the dumpster we parked near, who had a very cheerful hello for us. We also were nonplussed to be confronted by a homeless man getting a BJ from a prostitute under some bushes literally two feet from the HIGHLY TRAFFICKED (by families with children, even) sidewalk.

They were too busy to say hello.

We only stayed for a few minutes in the market before leaving again - I think we were traumatized or something. So we drove around for a little bit, then took the car back to the hotel and hit a couple of restaurants and a brewery. We had dinner on the sidewalk (where most places had their outdoor seating area) at Jake's Crawfish and watched the comings and goings of the very fancy men at the gay bar across the street.



After dinner we walked around some more, and found ourselves back at that bar whose name I can't remember. SIXSHOOTERS! That's it. We sat outside (on the sidewalk again) and chatted with a couple of young men who were in Portland on an internship with Walgreens. While sitting there we deflected more requests for "compassion" from several more homeless men (and we would be more compassionate if they weren't buying BJ's and booze with their donated money - and I'm probably going to catch hell from someone for that comment). We also encountered two very fabulous ladies on their way to a party at Escape, who were kind enough to pose for a picture:



Sunday was our last day in Oregon, so after the wake up/coffee/checkout/valet routine, we drove up to Cameo's Cafe for a terrific breakfast (best bacon EVER), and got a parking ticket in the process. We spent the rest of the misty morning traversing the paths of the Rose Test Garden and the Japanese Garden in Washington Park.













Okay, so Portland? Is hard to get around if you're not familiar with the place. After we left Washington Park we went back down to the city proper to find this floating restaurant/bar that Calvin recalled from a trip he took back in the 90's. We could see it from the road but had a heck of a time figuring out which turn to take that would get us down to the riverfront. We finally figured it out, but we were cracking ourselves up with the sheer amount of wrong turns we took.

First stop was the Marina Fish House, the aforementioned floating restaurant. We sat outside on the dock and watched the ducks and geese competing for the french fries a posse of little boys were tossing to them. The movement of the dock was a little disconcerting at first. We enjoyed an hour of river watching while sipping some brews - my new favorite is now the Bridgeport IPA.



(Sometimes I just can't believe how handsome Calvin is.)



We walked up the riverside walk to the park end and made ourselves comfortable in the rocking chairs on the porch of Three Degrees. We could have stayed there all day long, rocking and sipping and nibbling on a cheese platter. Entertainment was provided by a huge flock of geese that was completely unperturbed by the multiple attempts made by small children to get them to scatter. As soon as we saw them we immediately thought of Marie, who as a little girl (and probably still now) would have made just such an attempt.





We still had a couple of hours to kill before we needed to leave for the airport, so we wandered back down the walk and stopped at McCormick & Schmick's for some lunch... and more beer.







Winding down to the end, now... we made it to the airport with time to spare... and then discovered that we had even MORE time to spare than originally thought - our 7:15 pm flight was delayed until after 9:00. So we hung out in one of the restaurants in the airport, looked at all of the pictures on the digital camera, had some munchies, and braved a nuclear neon drink.



So, our opinion of Oregon is that we wouldn't mind living there, but definitely wouldn't live in Portland city proper. It's not small town enough for us. The countryside is beautiful, though, with a branch of AcronymCo that's located right in the middle of some farmlands. So transferring is an option, though not in the immediate future. All in all, we liked Oregon, though it wasn't exactly what we were expecting.

Labels: booze, photography, vacation

Posted by Laura at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments

Pictures are up from our Oregon trip. No text or descriptions on them yet - that will come over the course of this week. As will the full journal entry of our trip and associated adventures (and there were many). But Jen has been pestering me for pictures, and that's the fastest way to get me to do something!

Labels: photography, vacation

Posted by Laura at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

(This isn't the first entry on which I've used this title.)

So, I'm back! For those of you who want the short version, then I'll just say that everything went well and I should hear back from them with a yea or nay by the second week of July.

For those of you who want the slightly longer version, with pictures, here you go.

I flew out of Arizona at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday morning. It's a three-hour leg to Chicago, then a two-hour leg to Maine. On the first leg, I sat next to a lady that was laughing HYSTERICALLY, way out loud, over the book she was reading. On the second leg, I sat next to a little nine-year-old boy who was travelling by himself to a lacrosse camp in Maine. On the layover in Chicago in between, I sat at the Fox Sports Bar and had myself a beer and a crab cake. During both entire legs of the flight I studied my brains out, going over all of the Factiva information that I printed out about this company, its parent entity, and the industry. I took copious notes. Very copious. Also, I like to say "copious".

I landed in Maine just before 5:00 p.m., grabbed my rental car and swung by the hotel just long enough to shower and change. My hotel was right next to the airport, but could have been in the middle of the wilderness, there was so much greenery around. Plus, there's like three flights a day out of Portland (I exaggerate, but it's no O'Hare), so I could leave my window open all night long and not be disturbed by 737's flying overhead. Here is the view from my hotel window:



I then departed again, and followed the directions from the hotel to the company I would be interviewing with the next day. That discovered (after only a slight mix up and turn-around), I high-tailed it to the nearest Amato's for Mecca Moment #2 of 2007 (see here for Mecca Moment #1).



Then, not wanting to just take my sandwich back to my hotel room to eat, I decided to explore "down the road a piece" and see if I could find a place to sit by the ocean. Well, down the road a piece took me to Prouts Neck. I gawked at the OH MY GOD houses, then pulled into Ferris Beach, took off my flip flops, grabbed my camera, cell phone, and crack (italian and Humpty Dumpty "All Dressed" potato chips), and walked down to the sandy beach. I sat a few feet from the surf, scarfed my food, and called Calvin to describe to him where I was and what I was doing (and how it was totally surreal that I was back in Maine again, but without him this time).

Despite the fact that I was missing Calvin, I was HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY to be there at that moment in time. I can't even begin to describe it, but I think the other patrons of the beach were wondering why I had a constant and wacky grin on my face.

I walked up and down the beach for an hour or so, taking pictures and sucking in the wonderfully cool salt air (it was 116 in Phoenix that day, 68 in Maine at dusk, and I was trying very womanfully to NOT rub it in with Calvin).

















I REALLY didn't want to pull myself away from the beach, but I knew I had a couple of hours more study time to put in before my interview in the morning. So I meandered back to the hotel, got into my jammies, put some TV on in the background, ironed my suit, and wrote notes until my hand cramped. Then I called Calvin and went over the information I'd found and the questions that I'd listed to ask, just to make sure I didn't sound like a dumbass.

The alarm went off at 7:00 the next morning, and I got ready to go, had two cups of coffee, drove to the business, and had about a half-hour to spare before my 9:00 appointment. So I sat and fretted and listened to the radio until about ten 'til. I signed myself in and got a stinkin' badge, then cooled my heels for another few minutes before the administrator came to get me.

She sat me down in a conference room and had me perform a timed logic test. The type were there are a series of letters and/or numbers that form a pattern that may or may not be obvious, and I have to produce what the next letter or number of the pattern would be. For instance, if "aabbcc" was the pattern provided, the next letter would be "d". Believe me, they started out that simple but didn't stay that way for long. After a while I was scratching my head and muttering, "What the fuck?" I was relieved when the administrator reappeared to say my time was up.

At 10:00 I met with the man that would be my boss. We ran through my resume and I described to him my work history. He described what the position would entail and a bit about the company, and at half past the hour he was wrapped up with his questions, and asked me if I had any of my own.

Heh. So! I opened up my portfolio, set aside the stack of papers I'd researched, flipped through my PAGES of notes, and asked him a WHOLE BUNCH of questions. I kept him going on those for another half an hour. I think a couple of times he was surprised at what I knew and what I'd gleaned about the company from the reading that I did.

At 11:00 I met with one of the VP's of the company, and right off the bat he told me the first gent would be the one to make the decision, and his role was just to see if I would be a good fit, personality-wise, for the company. He said he could see that I was obviously "well qualified", so I was chuffed at that. We really just chit-chatted about the group, the person who'd previously held the role that I was interviewing for, his own tenure of over 25 years, family stuff, AcronymCo's industry versus the one they are in, and just basically tangented a lot. He asked me why I wanted to move back to Maine, and totally understood when I described to him how I just wanted to come home again.

At noon the first gent picked me up in front of the lobby, and we met two other folks from the company for lunch. They talked a lot about common acquaintances and common experiences, so I just basically nodded and smiled a lot. Then the gent and I went to take a tour of one of their facilities and inspect a project that was going on there. Finally at about 2:30 in the afternoon he dropped me back off at the lobby, and I was finally done.

I went back to the hotel and got out of my suit (and pantyhose, ugh), and called Calvin to tell him how it went. Then I called my sister and left her a message letting her know I was in town, and called my uncle's house to talk to his girlfriend (he was out of town).

I showered and dressed in jeans (thank GOD), and drove over by the mall to kill some time. I browsed through Borders Books and Music, and called my cousin to see if she and her husband wanted to get together with me that evening. We agreed to meet at LL Bean in Freeport at 9:00 that night, so I grabbed a quick beer at Uno's and went back to the hotel for a nap.

I got up at about 5:45 and was away again by 6:00. My plan was just to meander my way up to Freeport from Portland, taking the back roads and maybe stopping at one or two beaches along the way. Driving the roads in Maine is just so beautiful, even when you're not going anywhere in particular. It's wonderfully enjoyable to poke around the curvy, twisty roads, looking at all of the trees and beautiful farms and houses, with glimpses of the ocean beyond the foliage.

I got lost on purpose. I'm one of those people who HAS to know where a road leads. So I'd find a likely turn, wander down that road until another one caught my fancy, then steer down that one. I actually talked to myself, "My lordy, I am so lost. I don't even know what town I'm in anymore. Hey, I wonder where this road goes? It's got to come out somewhere. It's fun being lost..."

"La la la."

When I purposefully tried to get myself back to where I needed to be, I ended up taking a road that dumped me right in the middle of Freeport directly across the street from LL Bean. I am that good, people.

It was barely after 7:00 when I arrived at "Bean's", so I spent a leisurely hour shopping for clothes. I got myself a pair of light, white cotton pants, a baby blue camisole, a slightly darker blue knit button-up sweater, and a pair of Bean's signature slides. It was durn chilly by the time I was done, so I put the sweater on immediately, and wandered around talking with Calvin on the cell and looking for a way to kill another hour before my cousin and her husband showed up.

I went to Jameson Tavern and had a beer while enjoying the live guitarist, and left again at 8:30 to stroll back towards Beans. Calvin kept me company on the phone until they arrived.

My cousin and I used to spend a lot of time together when we were children. She is the only daughter of my mother's oldest brother. We spent entire summers together, a few weeks at her house, a few weeks at my house with Grandma, every holiday, and many weekends. She's a little over three years younger than me - we played hard, fought harder, then would catch each other's eye in the middle of a knock-down-drag-out wrestling match, and laugh hysterically.

Since we've grown up, and of course since I moved away from Maine, we've hardly seen one another at all. So I was very excited and really appreciated that they'd take the 45 minute drive, when they had to work the next morning, to come down to Freeport from where they live in Augusta, just to have dinner with little ol' me.

We went back to Jamesons and took a table in the restaurant side. We gabbed AND gabbed AND gabbed, about absolutely everything, trying to pack years of catching up into a couple of hours. My cousin and I are scarily alike, a fact that her husband commented on several times.

We paused to take a breath and look around, and realized it was almost 11:00 and we were the only ones left in the place. Which closed at 10:00.

Oops.

We went outside and sat at the little bistro tables they had set up on the front porch of the restaurant (a house built in 1791 and renovated), and talked for ANOTHER hour. We finally wrapped it up a little after midnight, since they had to work in the morning.

I took one more beeline through LL Bean to use their bathroom before getting in the car to drive back to Portland. They're open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, even Christmas. You'd be surprised how many people were there shopping at 12:15 on a Friday night/Saturday morning.

I forgot how dark it gets in Maine at night. There aren't many street lights around, so I practiced my high beam skills. Hit the high beams, watch for cars coming toward you going in the other direction, hit the low beams, wait for them to pass by, hit the high beams, watch for cars... hit the low beams... wait for them to pass... hit the high beams...

I got back to the hotel at a little after 1:00, called Calvin to let him know I was safe, and hit the sack.

I slept in until 9:00 the next morning. My flight didn't leave until 1:30, so I took my time getting ready and packing. I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant while reading a book, and checked in at the airport at 11:30.

During the leg from Portland to Chicago I got to have a row of seats to myself. But the guy behind me was such an obnoxious conversationalist that I put my iPod on in self-defense. I mean, he was going on and ON about how he would only hang out with people with "old money", never with "new money". WHAT ever.

Chicago O'Hare was an absolute ZOO. My gate information wasn't on the board when I arrived, so I checked in with customer service, then sat at the bar at Chili's for a beer and southwestern egg rolls. It turned out that my flight, that was originally supposed to leave at 5:10, didn't actually get off the ground until nearly 7:00. If I had known I was going to be that delayed, I would have called Heather and asked her to hang out with me. I paced, I read, I got Starbucks, I pee'd about fifty times, I read some more. Then when I finally boarded the plane, I got seated next to this guy that smelled of cigarettes and bad breath, and he wouldn't stop getting into my personal bubble space. He annoyed the hell out of the other person in our row, the flight attendant (he pushed the call button, like, ten times to ask her why the fasten seatbelt sign was on... EVERY TIME it came on), and even the people in the row across from us. And he was in the MIDDLE seat, so you know that he had to lean across the other lady (I was in the window seat) to annoy the others.

Feh. By the time we landed in Phoenix I couldn't get off that plane fast enough. I called Calvin, who was circling the area, when I got my luggage, and he pulled up in front so I could just hop in and go. We stopped at home long enough for me to change and freshen up, and then got dinner at the Elephant Bar.

So there you go. A whirlwind, 6000-mile round trip from (almost) coast to coast, in about 60 hours. Peppered with good food, good conversation, a nerve-wracking interview process, and many many calls home.

I'll let you guys know as soon as I hear anything about the job. Thanks again for all of your well-wishing and support!

Labels: journal, Maine, photography, work

Posted by Laura at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments

loloz! My take on the lolcats.

Labels: blogthings, humor, pets, photography

Posted by Laura at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments

The thing I couldn't recall about Wednesday of our vacation day is taking a stroll with Calvin along the Eastern Promenade in Portland, after doing laundry but before pub crawling.


Thursday (5/10 for those of you following along at home):

Thursday we spent the entire day driving up (and then down, natch) the coast of Maine, following Route One (murder during tourist season, but we were early by a few weeks). First we hit Waldo's ("Hey, I found him!"), a convenience store/gas station/ice cream shop/hair salon/small engine repair (I kid - but there are actually a lot of combo places of bidness like that in Maine) in Falmouth, to stock up on road-trip munchies and beverages ("All Dressed" Humpty Dumpty potato chips are THE BOMB). "Up the road a piece", we stopped at the Muddy Rudder in Yarmouth for brunch (MORE SEAFOOD, PLEASE), getting there a few minutes before they opened but not having to cool our heels long at all.

Our waiter was very, very swishy.

From there we drove north (and then south - peninsulas are weird that way) to Boothbay Harbor. Now this is definitely a town that's only awake during tourist season - nearly every place we checked was closed until the next week. We wandered into a gift shop (hello walnut sized bladder), where Calvin picked out a really pretty little starfish necklace for me. I love it when he does that. We bought a couple of little souvenirs and wandered around looking at the ketch that can only be found in these little hole in the wall places in Maine.

We discovered that McSeagull's was open, and we stopped for a couple of beers and tuna tartar.




We listened to the conversation of a trio of chimney workers just back from their morning stint over on Squirrel Island (man, you can find ANYTHING on Wikipedia). We conversed with them a little as we all enjoyed our beers out on the patio - that was one thing Calvin was exclaiming over during the trip, how friendly the people are and how often they just want to gab.

That's where I get it from.

Upon leaving McSeagull's we wandered around a little more, but not much was open. I got some ice cream (black raspberry! yes!), Calvin got a couple of cigars, and we got back on the road heading south. We detoured at around the Bath area to ooh and ahh at the destroyers in the shipyard at Bath Iron Works, where my uncle used to work. You can see the HUMONGOUS cranes stationed there from miles away; certainly a major fixture in my childhood memories.

We then went down along another one of the "fingers" protruding along the coast, to check out the town of Phippsburg and Fort Popham. I'd directed Calvin and the kids to Popham Beach back in '99 when the four of us were in Maine, but we never made it to the fort.

Our attention was immediately caught by the pod of seals just off-shore. They and the loons were having a merry old time fishing; there must have been a large school of fish in the area to keep them there as long as they were. We took picture after picture (after picture - 19 made it through Photoshop and onto Flickr, but there were many more), getting our feet and pants wet in the process as we failed to notice the incoming ("INCOMING!") tide.


We then wandered around the fort, taking another bazillion-and-three pictures (36 made the cut). I think the best one is this one, with Calvin peering into the pitch-black cell ("I am NOT going in there...") and me lighting it up with the flash behind him.







We drove back to Portland with the top down, adding to our wicked scalp sunburns. When taking a road trip in Maine, I highly recommend picking up one of these. Not only does it show every single nook and cranny of Maine's craggy coast (plus the rest of the state, of course), it has a ton of information on recreation and activities.

Upon our return to our room, we got cleaned up and then went right back out again for another meal at J's Oysters. Calvin got a double order of crab legs - MAN were we moo-ing that night.

Friday:

We slept in a bit on Friday morning, and I once again ordered us a bit of room service so I wouldn't have to stumble down to the Map Room for their complimentary coffee. We left at around noon to head back to New Gloucester to visit with my uncle, and also my old neighbors the Marshalls (Brad's parents). My uncle and his girlfriend hosted us to a "little lunch" - fresh shrimp cocktail, baked asparagus spears wrapped in filo pastry, softball-sized steaks, and baked potatoes.

Moo. Again. Seems I was stuffed to bursting for the entire vacation.

It was so nice to be home, in the house that I grew up in. Absolutely nothing has changed, other than a little paint and updated decorating ala my uncle's girlfriend. The years just peeled away from me as Calvin and I walked up the Marshall's driveway, the way I used to so often, so long ago. We sat in their kitchen and talked for about an hour. They're such good people, and I got to see Brad's sister Christine for the first time in years, too. And a bunny! And their black lab, who is a clone of Brandy.

And they still have the swing in the barn.

It is such a relief to know that nothing changes about home. I can go home whenever I have the opportunity, and other than a few new houses and a few new stores (and a few closed businesses - the Burger King I used to work at when I was first married to X(m) is closed, and good riddance), everything stays the same. Thank God for that.

We stopped back at my uncle's (it's weird to say it's his place now, rather than Grandma's) for a few more minutes, and I went through some of my old belongings to weed out what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to throw away. Calvin was cracking up at my old school papers (a two-foot tall stack of them dating from kindergarten all the way through high school), and I pointed out to him the multiple A's and 100's. I laughed at my old high school yearbook and some attempts at artwork (I was never artistically inclined), and my uncle and I discussed how best to ship my mother's sterling silver flatware.

Though maybe he should hold onto it, in case we end up moving to Maine in the near future.

We intended that night to meet my sister and her husband in the Old Port for one final pub crawl on our last night there, but she never returned my multiple voicemail messages. Nor has she returned the messages I have left since my return to Arizona. I'm kind of pissed off at my sister right now.

I was feeling kind of crappy come Friday night anyway, coming down with the cold that is still lingering as I type this, two weeks later. Calvin and I went to back to Gritty's and back to 51 Wharf, but I was wilting fast, so we called it a night at around 10:30.

Saturday:

More room service, and I packed us up fairly quickly. We took one last stroll through the Old Port to secure a couple more souvenirs - including T-shirts for Calvin, Michael, and Marie's boyfriend that feature a black dog in what I will call the "pooping pose" emblazoned on the back. It's that Maine humor.

We ate lunch at Mim's (decent, but not thrilling - here is one person's take on it), then checked our car out of valet for the last time. Back on I-295/95, we drove south and detoured over to Kennebunkport to check out the sights. We had some time to kill before we had to make our 5:30 flight out of Manchester, so we drove slowly through the back roads checking out the village and the million-dollar houses.

In Wells we stopped at the House of Pizza for some wicked good three-way (a three-item pizza, for you flatlandahs).

Another hour on the road saw us at the Manchester airport. By this time my cold had really set in and I was miserable. To make matters worse, by the time we finally meandered to our gate (after killing a couple of hours in the airport bar and gift shop), we discovered that our plane was delayed due to bad weather in Philadelphia (our connection).

Thus began the terrible saga of our journey home.

Calvin was in fine fettle, as you can imagine, by the time we finally boarded our flight to Philly, nearly two hours late. We arrived at around 9:00, a half-hour late for our connecting flight to Arizona. Mayhem ensued as we tried to find a US Airways rep to get us booked for the next flight out.

The following morning.

10 hours spent overnight in an airport terminal. Because weather delays are not the airline's fault, and no reimbursement would be given for hotel or airfare.

Did I mention I was sick?

Calvin and I got some truly mediocre pizza at the two-minutes-to-closing S'Barro's. Yeee-uck. Then we found our terminal and moved two blocks of chairs together, because they all had arms so we couldn't stretch out without combining two sets and lying down the middle. It was freezing, blazingly bright with the nearby TV at full volume, and I was miserable. I bundled into all the clothes I had - a hoodie AND a sweatshirt which Calvin described as my "baglady look". A couple of airport employees stopped by to give us scratchy airline pillows and paper-thin "blankets", and we huddled in a miserable pile from 11:00 at night until 5:00 in the morning.

GOD what a suck night that was.

Sunday (12 hours after we should have been home already):

The plane from Philly to Arizona left at 7:30, and Calvin and I had the very back, non-reclining row. Of course. We leaned, layed, and scrunched (fortunately, no one else had the third seat), and slept the best we could.

We waited for EVER for our luggage (which fortunately made it on the same flight we were on), then grabbed the first ride out of the airport that we could. We were finally home by about 11:00 in the morning.

I'll tell you what, I am NEVER flying US Air again, and I am NEVER taking a connection through Philly. The airport was in chaos, with terminals that could only be accessed between one another via shuttle bus. ONE shuttle bus, with fifteen other perfectly functional shuttle buses just sitting idle on the tarmac. US Air employees are indifferent at best, rude at worst, and remarkably disinterested in being helpful or kind or polite AT ALL. Fuckers.

So, it was a homecoming suitable to our mood, since we were huffed that vacation was over and we didn't at all miss Arizona one minute, not one little bit.

Labels: best things, Calvin, food, journal, Maine, photography, vacation

Posted by Laura at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments

Wednesday:

Let's see. Just a week since we've been home and things are already starting to get fuzzy in my memory. Wednesday morning I ordered us some fruit, pastry, and coffee from room service and spent the morning reading, photoshopping, and relaxing while Calvin did the same with the paper and the TV. Around noon we took the car to get some gas, then drove to Dimillo's (a short walk from our hotel but we didn't want to put the car in valet again) to have lunch with my uncle, his girlfriend, my cousin and her husband. We were there for over two hours, enjoying fillet (Calvin) and baked stuffed haddock (me), drinks, and conversation.

My uncle presented me with my mother's class ring, which had been lost at one point and then rediscovered and kept for me. I got caught up with my cousin, whom I hadn't seen since my Grandmother passed away. I don't know why, but it continues to startle me how well I get along with my uncle, when I was so fearful of him (out of respect and the threat of his righteous anger to get me to behave) when I was little. My sister doesn't get along with him at all - she has a different history with him than I do. But more on all of that in a different entry.

Anyway, we all parted company at a little after 3:00, and secured an invitation for lunch at my uncle's (my Grandmother's, where I grew up) on Friday.

Calvin was out of clean jeans, so we looked up the nearest laundromat and spent an hour or so futzing around with the more mundane aspects of living out of a suitcase. We may or may not have taken a nap after getting back to the hotel, I don't really recall.

What I DO recall is the BEST evening spent with my favorite person (that'd be Calvin), doing a pub crawl all over the Old Port. We went back to Bull Feeney's for a quick beer, then wandered down toward the wharf so I could show Calvin the spot that I took pictures from Sunday evening, while he was napping.


After rave recommendations from my uncle, we had dinner at J's Oyster Bar (the link is to another blogger who reviewed the place and took the pictures of the outside that I did not). The place is, like, three square feet and when I say it's an Old Port "institution", I mean that in the truest and most respectful sense. We went there more than once in our short stay. They had the best crab legs Calvin and I have ever experienced. Plus I got my much-craved steamed clams (and my yearly recommended allowance of sand). It's dim and crowded and shabby and fantastic. Real food with real people running the place, and the most unpretentious sort of clientele.


God, we loved that place.

Breathing deeply of the crisp night air, we set out with no particular destination in mind, and no plans other than to crawl our way through some pubs. We hit Gritty's and sampled some of their great house brew. I just have to say that I love the bars in the Old Port - all housed in old, old buildings with exposed brickwork and wooden beams, funny crannies and architecture that screams "converted".

Next stop was a bar on Wharf Street called "Cake" (can't find a link to it). It's newly opened and the bar tender (and part owner?) was eager to please. We sat on the whiskey bar side - the dance club side was empty in early evening awaiting clientele. We grabbed a couple of beers and ordered steak tartar and some crackers with cheese and caviar (very fancy schmancy are we on vacation!).


From Cake we crossed Wharf Street and went to 51 Wharf, a contemporary bar that was offering salsa classes that night, of all things. We declined the lessons and had a couple of Jamesons at the bar (after he tried to serve us SOCO. Yeesh.). The bartender was fantastically inattentive but we're low maintenance customers so after we got our drinks straightened around it wasn't much of a problem.


By the time we stumbled out of 51 Wharf it was quite late, and I honestly don't remember us getting back to the hotel room. Which means we had a GOOD night.

Labels: best things, booze, Calvin, food, journal, Maine, photography, vacation

Posted by Laura at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments

Monday:

We couldn't have asked for better weather for just about the entire week we were in Maine - a fact that the "natives" were more than happy to inform us on a number of occasions. After having the Patriot's Day Storm just a couple of weeks before our arrival, the nice weather we experienced was considered to be "freak".

Calvin and I went to Eggspectations for breakfast on Monday morning. This was the place that I took Marie and her friend a few times when we were in Maine during my Sabbatical in '03. I believe they were more enamored of the waiters than the food. Suffice to say, the food was acceptable but no more. A strange occurrence when you consider the RHAPSODIES we generally had over our meals during vacation. Ih, what can you expect from a chain restaurant. The ONLY chain establishment we ate at the entire vacation, by the way.

After breakfast we drove through Portland's West End, which is occupied by many stately manors and old Victorian and Colonial architecture. We had to stop at the State Street Church for about a thousand pictures (okay, ten that I posted, but a bunch more that didn't make the cut).


Driving on we took the Casco Bay Bridge over to Cape Elizabeth for the traditional and required visit to the Portland Head Light and Fort Williams (here is an interesting article on the Forts of Maine). We lingered for several hours at the light, exploring the tidal pools among the rocks below. I just sat and breathed for a long, long time. It felt so good to be there, and when it came time to leave I kept stopping and looking around to try to infuse my spirit and mind with the peace I felt there. The whole trip was filled with moments like this, as I tried to take away as much of Maine as I could, not knowing the next time I would be able to be there again.


We spend a couple of hours after leaving the light, exploring around Cape Elizabeth and gawking at the OH MY GOD houses there. Multi-million dollar properties perched along the rocky cliffs, owned by old money and old people who probably have rat bastard children who don't deserve to inherit the properties.

Hmm. Moving on.

Our next stop was The Lobster Shack, situated on the edge of Two Lights Park in Cape Elizabeth. Some adjectives: "cozy", "quaint", "teeny", "delicious"... and very, very typical of a Mom and Pop establishment in Maine. Complete with attack seagulls that whisk away your popcorn shrimp if you so much as glance in another direction, if you happen to be sitting outside on the picnic tables. Which we did not, but were vastly amused by a shrieking woman who did. Damn flatlandah didn't know bettah.


Leaving Cape Elizabeth, we headed back to Portland for a drive around Bayside and Back Bay/Back Cove, then north a bit to Falmouth Foreside for some more gawking at some more houses that we would never in our lifetime be able to afford. I guess any homes right on the ocean are going to be like that, no matter where they are.

We had a lot of fun with our little Audi A4 (and Calvin was devastated to learn how far outside of our financial reach its big brother the R8 is). We both got some pretty wicked sunburns on the top of our heads from buzzing around with the top down. Who remembers to put sunblock on their HEAD, for godsakes? But the weather was glorious, the roads beautiful with the trees just starting to bud their leaves, the ocean everywhere you looked, and the smell of the crisp salt air tinged with green, growing things. The best smell on the planet.

We went back to the hotel in the early evening for a shower, dinner, and then bed at a reasonable hour for us old folks.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was another early starter for us - who wants to sleep when they're on vacation? Except for the times when that is the point exactly. Anyway, we again grabbed breakfast at 20 Milk Street before driving south a little ways to Old Orchard Beach. We were early enough (in the day and in the season, come to find out), that very few shops and restaurants were open. We were okay with that, though, as we were mainly there to walk along the sandy beach. I love the fact that Maine has rocky coastlines to explore and sandy beaches to walk along. I took my shoes off to stroll barefoot in the FUCKING COLD sand dampened by the FUCKING COLD ocean. And there were actually people SWIMMING. Or, well, running in, shrieking, running out, then running back in again. Whatever, weirdos. Our stay was fairly brief (I had to GO, SO BAD, and no restrooms were around and/or open), and Calvin and I were suddenly struck with weariness, so we decided to go back to the hotel for a nap.



A couple of hours later we were awakened by the hotel front desk. Apparently there was a leak (we didn't do it, SWEAR) in the room below us, and in order to get to it they had to go in from above the leak, and would we mind terribly moving to a different room for the rest of our stay? Well, since it meant a free upgrade to a suite (we were in a standard king room), we said "Hell, yeah," and packed in record time. We left for a hour or so for lunch at Sebago Brewing Company, and when we returned they had moved all of our belongings to our new room. We ooh'ed at the flat panel TV and the skylight in the bathroom and the general increased roomyness, then unpacked and made ourselves at home again.

Departing the hotel once again (and the valet guys made a killing off us that week, I swear), we set off to see if I could remember the location of "that really old cemetery off of Stevens Avenue". I must say that Calvin gave me some rather strange looks when I told him where we were going. I believe his exact words were, "You're going to take pictures? Of graves??? That's just creepy, Laura. Why the hell would anybody think to go to a cemetery for FUN??? Oh, wait, this is YOU we're talking about..."

Huff.

I've always liked the Evergreen Cemetery - it's enormous and just seems to keep on going and going. And it's way old, with graves from the late 1600's and early 1700's, all the way up through present day. I find it very interesting to read the inscriptions and look for family associations - mother to child, sisters, brothers, husbands lauded with fancy inscriptions while their wives get just a name and "wife of...". Lots of babies dying in their first year, lots of mothers dying in childbirth, many people in general dying at an age we would consider to be young today. Evergreen also contains a lot of monuments to historic people - Samuel Wilde, Henry Goddard Thomas, and the Wadsworth Longfellow's are some of the more commonly known.


The inscription portion of the photo contest still has yet to be won, by the way.

We left the cemetery after taking fifty million pictures (34 of which made the cut) and drove north to my old stomping grounds of Gray/New Gloucester. We had some time to kill and stopped at Cole Farms to satisfy another one of my, "When I'm in Maine I have to eat HERE," cravings. My mother worked at Cole's up until she passed away, and I spent a lot of time there when I was little. Plus it was a popular employer of the local high school students, and one of the few restaurants close enough to where I lived to warrant a mid-week visit if the craving struck. Calvin got himself a burger, and I ordered fried clams with french fries and a side of their house dressing. Dipping fries in this dressing (when I was little I called it "doodle sauce") is something I used to get cravings for when I lived there. Calvin ordered dessert just because he knew I wanted a slice of their chocolate cream pie (to. die. for.) but was going to deny myself because I was, once again and perpetually during this trip, full.

We moo'ed our way back to the car and drove "out Poland way" to visit my sister and her husband and four kids. Their driveway was inaccessible without a four-wheel-drive vehicle (which we DEFINITELY weren't driving), so we agreed to meet them all at her neighbor's, who kindly opened up the use of his garage (heh, a Maine thing) for us to congregate, drink, and be merry. It's a distinctly Maine trait to fix up one's garage/barn/shop before "finishing" the actual home.

Propane tank behind the garage - left side's ladies room, right side's mens.

Calvin and I took turns taking all of my sister's kids out for rides in the convertible, and I got to have a little bonding time with my niece, who is 14 and taller than I am. My sister is fond of accusing her of being, "just like your AUNT LAURA." As if that could possibly be a bad thing. She is a lot like me, though - same sense of humor, same sarcastic mouth, same inability to NOT make little zinging comments about everything in general. I love the hell out of her.

We hung out for a few hours just gabbing, reintroducing my sister and her husband to tequila, greeting my sister's friends who have known me since I was born (she used to drag me to her parties if she was stuck babysitting me), and gawking at the stars (which are SUPREMELY visible in Maine and nonexistent in Arizona). It being a Tuesday, though, we didn't want to keep everyone up when they all had to work the next day, so we excused ourselves at around 10:30 and made plans with my sister to go partying in the Old Port on Friday night.


Okay! Next part will be up sometime this weekend. And I have a TON more I could have written about this trip so far.

Labels: best things, Calvin, food, journal, Maine, photography, vacation

Posted by Laura at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments

I didn't provide too much detail during the week Calvin and I were in Maine, because, well, I wanted to be OUT DOING instead of IN WRITING. So you got your little drabs and your BIG amounts of pictures, which I hope helped to tide you over. That is, if you needed tiding. Perhaps you were completely and entirely disinterested. Who knows what goes on it that brain of yours, anyway?

Moving on.

The problem with going home is that at least two days out of every vacation are fully occupied with travelling. We left Arizona at 7:30 in the morning Arizona time on Saturday, and got to our hotel in Maine at 7:30 in the evening Maine time. That's flights, layovers, and the drive from Manchester NH to Portland ME. Coast to coast travel is a bitch, people.

Saturday, The Remainder:

The hotel (The Portland Regency, and I doubt we'll ever stay anywhere else, the place was AWESOME) was a MUCH WELCOME sight when we finally rolled in, even though we only paused long enough to shower up and change clothes, then we were out prowling the Old Port.


We stopped in the Armory Lounge, the hotel's bar, for some alcohol soaking food (Chicken Gorgonzola for Calvin, lobster salad on a croissant for me), and then went down the street and around the corner to Bull Feeney's, an Irish Pub that was packed and happenin' (and did YOU know that lobsters love Guinness? I didn't.).

I already mentioned the oddity that is Cinco de Mayo in Maine, with the Irish drinking songs and the VERY WHITE GUYS sporting very black fake moustaches and sombreros. There was "Fred", who loved everybody, and told everybody that fact repeatedly. There were these two guys that were wasted and standing, weaving, calling catcalls and encouragements to the live entertainment, and trying with little success to sing along. Calvin and I enjoyed ourselves hugely, drank tequila (which is per our standard, but the folks in the bar thought that was Very Authentic of us), got hugged by Fred about twelve times (who, it turned out, was just back from Iraq), and finally stumbled our way back to our hotel a little after 1:00 a.m.

Sunday:

Tequila = ow.

I already described how I woke up ridiculously early and how Calvin was forced to get out of bed against his will. How he could sleep through the constant calls of the seagulls was beyond me - they woke us up pretty much every morning. If I lived there I'd probably get sick of it, but at week's end it was still novel to me. The hotel is one street up from the harbor, and with all of the fishing boats coming and going, there was a lot of seagull conversating going on.

"Mine? Mine? Mine?"

We ate breakfast at Twenty Milk Street, the restaurant in the hotel. They had a very fancy-schmancy Sunday Brunch going on, but we ordered more standard fare. Calvin had corned beef hash made with actual corned beef (not those weird little Dinty Moore cubes) and poached eggs Benedict, and I had eggs over medium with bacon and toast. Good LORD people, can I just rhapsody a moment over the bacon? I don't know what they do to the pigs in Maine, but whatever it is makes the bacon taste like meaty strips of heaven.


You do know that this entry is going to be primarily about food, don't you? Maine is very VERY big on producing and selling locally grown produce, dairy, meats, and of course seafood. Very little (if any) of the food we ate was from "away". Except for the tequila (and some guy randomly told us in Bull Feeney's that there's a tequila manufacturer in Maine. I'm not sure I believe him. A cactus would never survive the Maine winters, even indoors.).

Anyway. We took the car out (valet parking at ten bucks a day plus a fiver tip every time you take it out) and drove "out New Gloucester way", taking the drive I used to commute every day to and from work (and whoever thought I ever would have wanted to do that for fun??). From there we drove the back roads to Freeport, stopped briefly at LL Bean for the required souvenier gifts for the gang back home, then wandered back toward the Old Port. Lunchtime rolled around and, utilizing the directions we got from the bartender at The Armory the night before, we went to the Amato's on India Street for my Mecca Moment. I tell you what, we had to wait for over a half an hour for those darned sandwiches - the folks behind the counter couldn't get their acts together and misplaced our VERY SIMPLE ORDER (one large regular, one small roast beef, guess which one was mine), like, three times. But we finally made it back to the hotel room with the Italians and the Humpty Dumpty salt-n-vinegar chips (an institution, and what an awesome website MaineGoodies.com is!!!), and the Sam Adams.

I think I ate that entire foot-long sandwich in three bites. Oh, the pickles! Ohhh, the bread. Ohhhhhh, the fact that I'm three thousand miles and God knows how many months away from having another one...

Ahem.

After lunch we went looking for a sports bar with a TV that would sport the Suns game ("The who? What game are you looking for?" ("Basket. Ball.") "Uhhh... the Red Sox are play