Happy Kemmer Tiara Day!

Peeping Kemmer

Kemmer is visiting today, so I took her leaf peeping!

It started out cloudy, but the sun came out for us after a while. And we weren't the only ones there.

Happy Kemmer Tiara Day!

Another month, another Kemmer Tiara Day!

Above, Carrie gets Mother Nature involved.

At left, some of the people who missed getting in on the last photo of the CareerCenter's Kemmer Tiara Day celebration.

Happy Kemmer Tiara Day!

Kemmer Tiara Day relieves the wintertime blues!

Kemmer Tiara Day at the Augusta CareerCenter

I See the Icy River

cold but sunny day

ice doilies around the rocks

Snow and rain at the beginning of the week cleared things out for the holiday, but in spite of the bright sun, it is bitterly cold out.

Keith, Carrie and Kemmer all got Thursday off and we went out to a local restaurant where Carrie loved her scallops but Kemmer and Keith were less impressed with their turkey.

Friday, Carrie worked, so Keith took Kemmer out for a drive, stopping at Sabattus Pond, Lisbon Falls, and then pulling in to Miller Park in Lisbon. Turns out there is a walking/biking trail along the Androscoggin River here that we never knew about before this.

We braved the cold and walked along the trail for a while, encountering a few other hardy souls determined to avoid Black Friday shopping. We'll have to bring Carrie to see it soon.

 ice agate pattern

click on an ice crystal to enlarge any picture

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 We went off the detailed map Carrie brought and found that my state map was not just out of date, but rather inaccurate and we wandered a bit more than originally intended.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

We popped up to Popham

Seguin Island Light

you can see right through its nostrils

Kemmer wanted to be on a beach for her birthday, so we brought her up to Popham Beach State Park. The overcast Friday crowd was almost nonexistent. The waves were high, the gulls were hungry, and there was a lighthouse a little ways off shore.

In for a penny, in for a pond

Update on the water viewing. We were at the Androscoggin River yesterday. We just got back from the actual Allen Pond. There's no real public access to it, but we found an area with a few lots for sale and a big common area. The developer saw us arrive and assumed we were potential buyers and we didn't dissuade him of that idea. We wandered around the shoreline for a bit, then went off to a couple of produce stands so Kemmer could get more veggies above what Carrie had for her out of our garden.

Water You Up To?

 Kemmer came up for a visit this weekend, so we decided to bring her out to Allen Pond. We drove up Allen Pond Road, and pulled off at the boat launch past the bridge. We now think it was not Allen Pond, but just a wide point in one of the area rivers. We're going to check the maps.


It was still a scenic spot, with lots of little striped frogs. The stripe colors ranged from the bronze on this fellow to luminous green.

 
No swimming was allowed, so after we wandered about the shoreline for a while, we sat at one of the picnic tables and chatted. Carrie and Kemmer were facing the water and saw birds diving and catching fish. I was facing inland and saw this caterpillar.

click on any picture for larger views

Happy Kemmer Tiara Day

Kemmer Tiara Day at the Maine Department of Labor

Happy Kemmer Tiara Day!

Happy Kemmer Tiara Day

Kemmer Tiara Day at the Maine State Museum

A September to Remember

Summer's not over, yet we're seeing a few leaves starting to get their autumn colors. So where did the summer go? We have been busy, but not posting a lot. Partly because we've been busy, partly because I've concentrated on mailing out my PostKards since I don't have a camera. What I've posted here are photos off Carrie's camera, Kemmer's phone, and my scanner.


We went to Old Hallowell Days out in Hallowell. We were disappointed in the "big" church sale, but had some luck in the Library book sale. And the parade had a giant puppet as seen on the right. That night we stopped by Sheila and Fred's place on the river for a close up view of the fireworks shot over the river.


As you may have guessed we added a new cat to our household, Persephone. Named for this goddess of the underworld mostly because she likes to be down (in the sunken living room, down the cellar stairs) or under (under the bed, under the couch). Not that she's shy, she just likes to attack from under cover, or have a more three dimensional playing area. She is young. Officially she was listed as a year old, but we think she was a few months short of that. She has grown since we got her and is fitting in well with our household. She and Qwill play once in a while, when Qwill is willing, but otherwise she is almost always begging us to play with her. She isn't a cat who likes to be held, but we'll see if she stays that way come winter.


Kemmer came out to visit us twice! The first visit we showed her the Sabattus Pond public beach area. Not very big, but not very crowded. She's thinking that maybe she'd like to live there when she retires. Not an ocean beach, which she prefers, but near us, which we like. Second time we went on a trail that follwed the Androscoggin river. Interesting tree trucks were seen on the shore. Almost spider like with the long roots as seen to the right here.

We survived Hurricane Irene. Power was out for almost two days, but since Carrie had the foresight to freeze numerous containers of water the only food we lost was some cornmeal that got wet from melting ice. Our yard is full of sticks and leaves and I anticipate a few more rounds of pick-up-sticks before I can safely mow.

How's your summer been?

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.

Happy Thanksgiving

Looking forward to Kemmer's visit today.

Family Ties

To my mind there are two kinds of family: family through blood and family through choice.

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You get born into a family with people you like or hate or a mix of both, but you're pretty much stuck with what you were given.

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My sister Kemmer is family like this, but it's okay because I like her. She was up visiting last weekend. We didn't do a lot, but she's one of the few people I seem to be able to sit and talk with for long periods of time, so we did a bunch of that.

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Many years ago, when I was managing a comic book store, I hired a guy named Shannon Slate. We became friends and apartment mates and I went out to his family's house a number of times for gaming sessions with Shannon and a few of his other friends. I am not always good with new people or authority figures, but Shannon's parents immediately made me feel welcome and a part of the family. Enough so that if they called me up and said I needed to come up that weekend to help with the haying, I would've. When Carrie made her first visit to me, I brought her there. They were family by choice. Decades later I still feel that way.

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Bob and JoAnn (Shannon's parents) were up in Augusta yesterday and managed to squeeze in a quick visit. It was, of course, great to see them. Except for JoAnn's hair being gray and Bob having less hair, they looked the same as I remember them. I got caught up a little on some of the other members of their extended family and then they had to move on.

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PS: I brought Carrie to see Kemmer during that first visit too.

Happy Kemmer Tiara Day

I forgot to post this morning!

Canned Laughter

Kemmer is visiting us this weekend. As a rainy day activity we went to the Maine State Museum. They had a giveaway comic there that I grabbed. The funny thing is, Maine had the last sardine cannery in the country until just recently. It closed down.

Fire Pit Stop

We're planning on a visit to Home Depot today to buy a lawn mower. While the 3.67 acres we own isn't all lawn, enough of it is that we want to get a riding lawn mower. It may cut down on some of the work, but it's still going to be a lot more than we had to do with the yard in Arizona. We'll be doing a lot of picking up of debris first. Pine trees, of which we have quite a few, shed a lot. Not just pine needles, which we'll want to move to keep both the grass and mossy areas alive, but pine cones, twigs, and branches. Pines are very brittle creatures with pieces constantly breaking off from temperature changes or just high winds. I've tried to do a little bit of picking up almost every day when I walk Pandora around the yard, but in spite of the accumualtion you see in the pic above, there is a lot more to gather. Like the fallen trees. And pine doesn't do well as home heating wood as it burns too hot and fast. We'll have plenty of other fallen trees to use for that once we have the wood stove set. We'll need to get a burn permit (good for one day or one weekend) to use that fire pit though. And we'll undoubtedly need to do it several times.

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Also at Home Depot, we want to get some hardware to mount wall shelves in the studio. We still have a lot of stuff yet to be put out. And after helping Kemmer with her spring cleaning, we ended up with more books that need to be put somewhere.

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And while we're looking around the store, maybe some adhesive to try putting the floor tiles back down in Ross's room in the basement now that the repair work is done.

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Creative things have not been a high priority, but I've done some envelope painting for the upcoming Sunday Funnies postage stamps, but I've already mentioned that. I'm also working on a mini-comic with somebody else's characters. I hope I'll have more to report on that soon.

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And we're both working overtime at our jobs.

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Happy Kemmer Tiara Day