Snow Business like Shoe Business

Today's snowfall requires at least one pass of the snowblower on the driveway, but it also gives Carrie a chance to practice using some snowshoes she bought when we were living in Arizona.

Columbusdriver

the legendary Road Less Traveled

View from a post office

Kemmer came up for another visit Saturday. Carrie had to work, so I took Kemmer up through Belgrade, Belgrade Lakes, New Sharon, Vienna, and more for some leaf peeping. I made sure we included water features, hills, windy roads, and picturesque little towns.

the Kennebec River

an artsy shot

next to the Post Office Cafe

 Sunday it was three of us driving up through the Waterville area to check out more of the same and an antique mall. We went off the detailed map Carrie brought and found that my state map was not just out of date, but rather inaccurate and we wandered a bit more than originally intended.


We still made it back home before dark.

Did the Masons warn about the Creeping Red Menace?

Paul Bunyan's paintbrush

the Frank J Wood bridge

Monday was just Carrie and I for her birthday. I took her down to Brunswick for some gellatto and a little bit of walking and looking at the scenery.

click on a red spot to enlarge a photo

Happy Hallowe'en

We used these two figures one year for a Hallowe'en photokard. Carrie converted them from store bought figures to be us. She added glasses and hair, even giving me a ponytail. The dog on top didn't make it onto the kard though. It was intended to be Miriam, our dog at the time.

We definitely miss the Dia de los Muertos celebrations we got to see when we lived in Arizona.

Antique Lawn Comics

It's been a very rainy past few weeks and the yard loves it. You can see how well it's growing with Pandora just peeking over the grass. We pulled out our riding lawn mower last week, on one of the few not raining days, and discovered the battery was dead. We now know we should bring the battery inside during the winter. Carrie bought a new one, now I just have to figure out how to get the thing primed again. Hopefully we'll start the mowing process again over this long weekend.


Last weekend we went to the Maine Comic Arts Festival in Portland. First convention type event we've been to since we moved up here. We bought a handful of comics. Actually, Carrie bought most of them. I made sure she saw the ones I thought she might like and she bought all but one of the ones I thought I might also like (that were not overly expensive.) So I did buy one.

Carrie got a free Tiki drawing from Daniel Edwards. He had an interesting children's book, that we'll probably want to investigate once he's turned it into comics or a cartoon. He's been drawing some tarot cards to use in the story line so we chatted for a bit about comics and tarot and Sita Sings the Blues. Tikis are getting featured in his next book.

Another artist was giving out free sample panels of his comic. A couple got Carrie to laugh out loud, so she bought a copy of his sampler, Secret Harbor.

Upstairs was even bigger and more comics were bought. Kitty Hawk had the best cover in the place, and I want to read the webcomic now. A couple of books had artwork very similar to Jeff Smith's work. Grune was the one we picked up. The Underburbs looked good enough to buy the first collection, but they were sold out, so only issue one was purchased.

Carrie bought a mini-comic about cats from Gynn Stella, but what brought me to the table was the banner hanging from the front, especially the art you see to the right. Back in the days when I was playing in fantasy role playing games, I had a character named Meep who was a were cat. Guess this is from one of his as yet untold adventures...

Weather was cool enough to wear my Love & Rockets the band hoodie, and this time I wore my Love & Rockets the comicbook t-shirt underneath. The shirt got a lot of compliments. And a couple of people even noticed the hoodie.


This weekend we started by traveling down to visit Kemmer in Massachusetts. We went to a few antique stores and ate at a Thai restaurant. And I am contemplating the purchase of an expensive toy. It's made out of wood, just over 3 feet high, 4 and a third feet long, and in need of severe TLC. But expecting to be quoted a price in the thousands, I was stunned to get one in the hundreds. Carrie and Kemmer both seem to think it would be a good buy for me. I'm still a tightwad, so am sitting here today talking with Carrie about where to put it. We already think we can do enough repair work to it ourselves to make it look good enough and not fall apart. But if it cannot be placed somewhere safe and yet well displayed, there is no sense in spending the money. If I can talk myself into it, I'll go again next weekend and see if it's still there.

As always, click on a photo to get a bigger view of it.

Spring Runoff

In May of 1988 Carrie came out to Massachusetts for our first actual face to face visit. One of the things I set up was for her to get to participate in an SCA type event held on Lyle Gray's family's farm. Trees were just starting to bud, but the grass was already gung-ho green.

No, Carrie didn't run all the way from Arizona, she flew most of it. She ended running because her arms were tired.

Happy Valentine's Day

We are in, and on, Love!

Where's Carrie?

Click on the Lion's nose for a larger view.

Fishmas Shopping

We spent the weekend doing shopping and yardwork. While at LL Bean, where I bought myself a nice hat, Carrie found an Eskimo Trout.








Yes, those are live fish in this picture.

Spam I Am

Several months back we heard that Spamalot was coming to Maine and we were determined we would go see it. Well before it was to play I went to the theater's website to check what the prices for tickets were. I quickly realized that it was already close to being sold out, so with Carrie at hand I reserved a couple of seats for us. Good thing, too. That weekend they were sold out.

First thing I thought as I was watching the theater fill up was how old the audience seemed to be. Aren't Monty Python fans younger, college or high school age like I was when they first were shown in the US lo, these many years ago? Oh. They'd be my age now. Right. Nevermind.

The show itself was fun. We both are glad we went, but have no desire to see it again. Carrie thought it didn't bring enough from the movie and deviated from the movie too much. I thought it drew too much from the movie and didn't have enough original material.

Free Comic Book Day

Carrie takes her comics seriously.

We headed out early for a long leisurely drive down to Portland's Casa Blanca Comics to take advantage of Free Comic Book Day. A national event that has been happening every year since 2002, though this is the first year I've actually been able to participate.

We planned to stop at a Post Office or two so I could buy some Animal Rescue postage stamps as well as the new Flags of Our Nation series. About five Post Offices later I finally get the Animal Rescue ones. Still no Flags of Our Nation, even though this is the second weekend we've been trying to find them.

We also stopped at a lot of yard sales. I got a wig head, a Darth Vader mask (that is now on the wig head), and a binder of more than 150 First Day Covers! Though I actually bought that at a store. But its contents looked like a yard sale.

While we were in Brunswick we got diverted by a guy with a big sign proclaiming Free Comic Book Day and BBQ. Carrie had a little to eat while I picked up some comics at JRs Cards. We never knew there was a store that sold comics so close to us. Unfortunately their selection is very limited.

Casa Blanca Comics has a pretty good selection of new stuff and we got our usual titles along with a bunch of free comics. Since they were having a buy 1 get 1 free sale on hardcovers, I picked up 4 volumes of Starman. They didn't have any of the titles I am already collecting in hardcover.

We also stopped at a cemetary Carrie found on one of her recent ventures. It's a locked cemetary, but the bookstore across the street has the key. I hope all the people that wandered in while we were there wandered out before we left. We locked up after ourselves. New to us were the rather Celtic take on the old skull design. Some knotwork along the sides of the stone are visible here as well.

click on the headstone to make it larger than death

Turtle Dreams

A few years ago, Carrie got me this drawer/cabinet knob. She wasn't quite sure what I might use it for, but thought it too neat an item not to get.

Well, in our new house, one of the few things left behind by the previous owner was a computer desk. It has a cabinet that was missing a handle. Yesterday Carrie put this on in its place.

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Kleaning

I have attempted to clean that photo up a bit.

Bizzy Winter

Looking out over our driveway toward the road.















I drive 45 minutes each way to work, work an 8 hour day with another hour in there for lunch, then usually work at least an hour of overtime. With the days getting longer I'm now seeing daylight in the morning, but the drive home is still in the dark. And Carrie has a longer drive and a lot more overtime than I do. In other words, we don't have a lot of free time these days. When we do, we're often doing needed errands or chores.












We had a bit of snow during the first part of the winter. Carrie has even done a few turns at the snow blowing. But it was up to me to shovel off the roof. I hadn't been keeping up with clearing the edges with our roof rake, so an ice dam was starting to build up. We weren't certain how much the next precipitation, a rain storm, would wash away the ice or add to it, so I had to get up there with the shovel. Fortunately, that was all that was needed to ensure the rest got melted in the rain.







Inside, with no photos to post just yet, we've got a lot of shelves up in the studio and all my comics are now accessible. I just have to put them in order.

The main part of the house is starting to feel like it's actually ours now that we've been putting out our bric-a-brac and hung a few things on the walls.

Snow Trouble Et Al

Carrie took this photo on our property earlier this week. We got some more snow yesterday, and it is snowing even as I type this. There is a big weather system sitting just off the coast of Maine, spitting at us right now, but we are expecting a couple of feet to land on us tomorrow.

Now that it's cold again, our basement is fine, but just after Ross left, it was leaking. One crack in the walls we knew about. the previous owner said she'd had it fixed. It created a big puddle, but didn't really impact on anything important. The other crack, which we never knew about, is behind the finished walls of what we've made Ross's room. We're glad it didn't occur while Ross was here and the portable electric heater was on the floor.

Carrie has contacted our insurance company and a repair guy. Hopefully it is repairable without too much destruction needed to get to the cracks.
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Happy Anniversary

18 years of wedded bliss!

Happy Valentine's Day

We both had to work, but still got to start and end the day together.

Family Values

We flew Carrie's brother Ross out from Arizona christmas eve so he could spend the holiday with us. It was nice that the snow didn't get all washed away by the rain and warmer temperatures. We took him out through our meadow in an attempt to do some sledding, but it didn't work out quite as easily as we'd hoped and devolved into a snow fight.

Pandora enjoyed it.

Afterwards we went for a stroll around the area. There are lots of deer tracks all over the place here. Even in our backyard. It's nice to know they're around, even if we didn't actually see any.




We also took Ross down to the Freeport port. Those are piles of lobster traps behind him and Carrie.

Then it was lunch time, so we headed to Mikado's. After lunch we went in search of a movie theater Carrie had looked up that was showing The Spirit. We're still feeling our way around the area, so it took a bit to actually figure out how to get there. We arrived in the middle of the previews, but didn't miss any of the film itself. I had a difficult time getting past it not being The Spirit as I knew the character. When I finally did, I started enjoying the movie. I want to see it again so I can watch it from the beginning in the right mindset.

Click on any picture to supersize it.

Snow News is Good News

Wednesday we got snow. Wednesday I was at Pet Pantry shoveling their walks. We still have snow on the ground and there is more on the way today. It looks like we should have a white christmas after all.

Also on Wednesday, Carrie's truck slid into a guardrail. Minor damage to the truck and no damage to Carrie. She'll be getting snow tires soon.

This picture is the view from our window of our neighbor to the north's barn. You can see the remains of a couple of our sunflowers in the foreground.