Amphigouri: varnished nonsense

Ok, so I’m not the star of my own Oakhurst milk commercial like some members of my family were, but I still made an appearance in one of the Maine news broadcasts over the weekend.
Red helmet + denim shirt = me. Also is me to the far right of the group shot. Check out who putt-putts past the camera with 8 seconds left!

Now I’m qualified to ride legally on the streets (well, once I take the stamped paperwork to the DMV and fork over some $ for the appropriate sticker for my driver’s license).
I highly recommend taking the 2-day, hands-on, safety class; I just can’t imagine going out on the road without that sorta training (hell, I still can’t quite grok the fact that after the 2 days *I* can go out on the roads… will be doing a fair bit of parking lot practice before heading to the roads with live traffic, I think). The school I used: A & J Motorcycle Safety School. Two thumbs up.

At least I am in our house:

(and yes, they have been known to call our names)

Upon returning from our Sunday Drive this weekend (and a hugely satisfying breakfast of raspberry pancakes at Bonnie’s Diner), we noticed a new resident in our pond. Phil’s taken some excellent pics:

Three weeks ago, as we returned from the lawyer’s office and 10 minutes of paper-signing, Phil groaned. “Please don’t tell me,” he said, “that this makes us into that type of people.” And by “that type” I knew he meant the kind David Sedaris describes in his book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, to which we had recently been re-listening in the car. You know, the type that say things such as:

“I’d love to stay a while longer and explore, but my home — well, one of my homes, is on the garden tour and I have to get back to Williamsburg.”

“Hah,” I replied. “Not unless one takes a very [and I mean very] broad definition of the word ‘home.’”

In the late 1960s, my great-great aunt sold a piece of her land on the coast of Maine to some friends while retaining her own lot (which is still in the family, is where we got married, and <shamelessPlug> is available for rent – a couple weeks in October of this year, all of June ‘08 and a few other ‘08 weeks as well </shamelessPlug>). Included in the sale was a deeded right-of-way across her other property to the beach, as well as to her drinking water/well.

Recently, the current owner had approached our family to let us know they were thinking of selling; they rarely spend time there and none of their children were in the area or interested in holding onto the property. In light of the fact that any other owner would be given the same right-of-way access to both shorefront and well water (something nobody in our family was keen on, particularly given the fact that we do rent out our existing cottage, and what renters would be keen on paying $ for a week or more of quiet only to have strangers tromping past and hanging out in front on the beach, OR sucking dry the well water?), Phil and I decided to purchase the land ourselves. With it comes a structure that on tax documents is apparently listed as a “shed” — a one-room building with no plumbing and no electricity (though with a small wood stove, table/chairs, propane-powered oven) — and an outhouse.

The Shed:

If you look closely, there really is a water view (fsvo ‘view’):

As I mentioned, a very broad definition of second “home” — but the surrounding area is lovely.

….or at least the Monday Mornings. It’s just a great start to the day when:

• The Nor’easter hammering the region is dumping buckets of rain in your area
• The zipper on your jacket finally gives up the ghost and refuses to zip even part way
• You don’t own a proper rain jacket, and can’t for the life of you find your old trenchcoat
• You end up being a little late leaving the house in the morning due to spending an extra 10 minutes trying unsuccessfully to zip the #!%*#!?@ broken jacket and then hunting in vain for the #!%*#!?@ trench coat
• Due to lateness, you grab the tax envelopes from the table without looking at them
• You chuck said tax envelopes into the drive-by mailbox at the post office, noticing at the last minute, as you watch them drift from your fingertips into the gaping blue metal maw, that they have no stamps

*cry*

Fortunately, the folks at the post office were quite helpful when I called and gave them the sad story of what I’d done; they found my envelopes when they sorted through the mailbox later in the morning, and when they opened to the public I was able to run down and stick stamps on the things. Crisis averted. I also detoured home at lunch and managed to find my old trench coat still in a box - somewhat worse for wear, but better at keeping out the wet than my other is at the moment. Also a plus (knock on wood), the work project I’m frobbing with at the moment is progressing reasonably well. Let’s hope that continues. Aside from the rain that shows signs of continuing through tomorrow(glub), the afternoon is shaping up muuuch better than the morning indicated.

From last week’s storm:

And now it’s snowing again - a big nor’easter that’s supposed to dump another 8-10″ in our area (update: turns out it was only a few inches of snow, then sleet, and now lots and lots of rain & wind). I feel sorry for the kids at school doing outdoor sports this spring - softball, baseball, track, etc. - to still have this stuff around a month and a half before the end of the school year has got to be the pits. Thank goodness for spring break, when a number of the teams travel to warmer climes in order to get some games in.

Has been a relatively event-free weekend for us; I discovered 6 or so more boxes of books that we’d overlooked and got those unboxed (though the proper organization and shelving of our book collection still remains to be done. I am slightly overwhelmed at the project), a dump run has been made, and we’ve entertained my brother with a few hours of Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II, which we purchased this weekend (brother bringing along his own axe to leave with us for multiplayer fun). I have to say, the games are quite entertaining, but seriously screw with my eyes. The notes one has to play scroll down toward the bottom of the screen for a few minutes per song - at the end of play, /everything/ looks like it’s moving. This is particularly freaky when the pattern in our curtains appear to be flowing.

As usual, I’ve still got a list of draft posts, but they’re going to require more time and energy than I’m currently willing to expend. Back to hunkering down with another one of the books I bought while on our vacation, watching the snow, and waiting to watch the pilot for the new show, Drive, one of the creators/writers of which wrote four episodes of a favorite show of ours, Firefly.

Ah, Maine, how I love ya and yer wonky weather. Things had been warming up lately; for the past week or so, we’ve finally seen the deer we’d been told would frequent the grounds - counted up to 14 at one point, all hanging out munching on the newly-revealed grasses. Saturday morning I discovered a woodchuck-looking critter scuffling around in a flower garden:

… staring me down through the dining room window before making a dive for a nice big hole in the ground at the base of one of the garden walls (lovely).

Yesterday it all changed. Wet flakes, colder temps. This morning I awoke to a winter wonderland:

Lovely scene, but for early April I’d prefer the mid-40s and 50s we saw over the weekend. Even North Carolina is conspiring against us… we’re taking a long weekend trip to the Greensboro/High Point and Asheville areas as a kind of celebration for selling our MA house (closing was a couple weeks ago, several months earlier than we had feared, yay!). The weather there yesterday and today? Near 80, sunny. The weather when we’re there later this week? Barely breaking 60 (and according to one forecast, not even hitting 50 over the holiday weekend). Fortunately Husband and I prefer temps at the 60-degree end of the scale vs. 80 degrees and up (one of the reasons we’re heading to NC in early April instead of later in the year)…. and I figure 60 degrees is still better than 38 degrees here in Maine. Plus, they’ll all have green grass and flowers at this point, too. Can’t wait!

I have about half a dozen draft posts that need wrapping up and publishing, but I had to toss this one up quickly.

One of the things that struck us when we moved back to Maine was the ability to buy beer and liquor from the local grocery stores - not just from the liquor store next to the supermarket (or a couple miles down the road for the uber-packie, as was the case where we were in MA). After several months back in state, I’m still left somewhat gobsmacked when I wander down the aisles at Hannaford and note that they’ve got a better selection - both of wine and hard booze - there than did the small liquor store in our old neighborhood.

Even more surprising to me was to go to CVS to pick up a prescription refill, wander the store while waiting, and notice that even CVS sells wine and beer! See below (alas, my camera-phone skills are a bit lacking, quality even worse than usual):

I love how they’ve managed to shelve the wine under the “Juice and Water” sign.
(admittedly, the water is maybe half-way down the same aisle, but you’da thunk they’d at least put the water *under* the signage)

Born March 8, 3:57pm, at 7lbs, 9.2oz and 21.25″ long.
Hiya, Nephew! We’re so glad to meet you!

And wouldja get a load of those feet?? He’s got the Family Feet, that’s fer sure…

A month or so ago, I wandered downstairs on my way to work and heard the sounds of an overly active cat in the kitchen. Peering around the corner, I was mildly amused (once I got over the “gak, we just bought a house with mice!” gut reaction) to see one of the cats trying desperately to play with a little mouse that eventually disappeared into the base of one of our cabinets. Bah. That was the last we actually saw of it, I think, and my assumption was that Escher (and the others) managed through their constant vigils in the kitchen to drive the little bugger outside where it belongs. Turns out I was wrong.

Growing up, we had a family cat who, when on our summer vacations in a very wooded area, would hunt and bring back dead (and mangled) rodents and display them proudly by our back door for us to praise. Not so much with the Escher - “Hunter” really isn’t the best way to describe his attitude of “oh, look, a mouse! Here Mouse, don’t you want to play? *poke*poke*chase*chase* Whussamatta, Mousie? *poke* No move? *poke* Bored now…” - he’s not after the hunt so much as he is looking for a new playmate. Unfortunately, it appears that this particular playmate was a little too close to his food dish for comfort. Yuck. Thankfully we were present and heard the scrabbling in the kitchen and were quickly able to dispose of the evidence. Time to get a couple traps, I guess, to be on the safe side.

In other news, this past weekend marked what we expect to be our last trip ever to the MA house. w00t! We’d managed to put all the stuff destined for the dump into the garage and shed and hired a guy to dispose of it for us which saved a great deal of time on our end; all that remained, really, was Hubby’s old motorcycle, some yard equipment, and an office desk & chair - all of which managed to fit into a Uhaul quite nicely. We narrowly avoided disaster getting the bike off the truck once back in Maine (damn, those things are heavy), but all told, this whole selling-the-house/moving process has been much less painful than I had ever hoped. We’re still on schedule to close next week, which we’re going to do through our lawyer so we won’t have to make yet another trek down there (wanting to save up vacation days, as a nephew is soon to be arriving, and we’ve got a North Carolina mini-vacation coming up in April). Will be nice to have one less major thing to worry about so we can focus more on the new house (and all the unpacking I still haven’t done!).