Dreaming of a White Thanksgiving

Enjoying the morning together before Carrie heads to work.

I did 2 passes yesterday, and this is our third clearing of the driveway.

Morning light on the back yard.

Persephone watches our antics but stays warm inside.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'll try and post some pictures of this White Thanksgiving once the sun's up and Carrie is safely off to her job.

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

NOT burning bridges

Kemmer's hat admires the bridge

 Kemmer came up for a few days and we did our usual go out to a new oriental restaurant for a holiday dinner trip. We thought we knew where it was, but were not finding it. Carrie called them and when I heard "next to the post office" I didn't need any further directions. For some reason. The restaurant turned out to be mediocre, so we'll not be back again.

 Afterward we went to see our first covered bridge since moving to Maine. Babbs Bridge is over the Presumpscot River and judging from the graffiti, is quite popular. To one side are a couple of ropes and a launch platform.

 The Google Satellite view of the bridge showed a couple of kayaks, and Carrie exclaimed "Kayakers waiting to dive for quarters!" We were disappointed we didn't see any waiting for us. But heartened that one showed up as we were leaving, albeit too late for us to toss quarters.

A couple keen on photography

Will Carrie swing into the water?

"What does not destroy me, makes me stronger"

We had a very strengthening holiday weekend.

Wednesday morning we were up early in anticipation of needing to clear the driveway of accumulating snow due to the storm moving in. There was about 3 or 4 inches at this point. It was wet snow, so I needed to stop the snowblower to clear the clogged discharge chute. Restarting the blower, the pull cord snapped. The snow was still wet snow, so I still had to clear the discharge, but now I had to keep the blower running while I did so. Not as dangerous as it sounds as I could disengage the blades while keeping the motor running. However I had to keep a grip on the safety lever on the handle. You let go of the snowblower and it automatically shuts off. But the lever was diagonally opposite where the chute was, so a bit of a stretch and I was doing it one handed. A longer than anticipated time to do the driveway. Snow was still coming down, so by the time I was done there was another inch already on the part I first cleared.

In case you're wondering what Carrie was doing, she had a shovel and was doing touchup and clearing spots I couldn't use the blower on.

I had to work that day, so while I drove the hour and a half crawl in to work, Carrie first tried finding somebody to repair the snowblower. The machine is too big to fit in either of our vehicles, so we needed a housecall. The earliest anybody would get to us was Friday.

Carrie got to work to find somebody to plow the driveway. We expected about 12 inches on top of which the street plowing was sure to pile it in front of the driveway and I would need to get my car off the street. She did get someone who agreed to come out in a couple of hours. That was around 10:00 in the morning. A couple of couple of hours went by and she tried getting a hold of them again. Eventually they called her and Carrie now expected them at 5:30. Still plenty of leeway as I normally get out of work at 5:00 and was going to be driving slowly home afterwards.

As I pulled up to our driveway in the dark, I saw Carrie shoveling snow. I put on my hazard lights and got out to help. We cleared enough to get my car off the road.

The plower called later on saying they would be here in 15 minutes. They finally showed up around 7:30. And did a lousy job.

During the day, between calls, Carrie noticed her truck had a flat. She got out the jack and spare tire and started to change it. But for some reason, her jack would not lift the truck high enough for the spare tire to have room to be put on. I asked if it could wait until morning for me to tackle it.

Thanksgiving morning I got out my car's jack and used it on a piece of wood to raise the truck off Carrie's jack. I intended to put hers up on some bricks to get enough height to put the spare on. But the truck decided to shift forward, bending my jack and falling off it. Adrenaline rush as it topples in front of my eyes and I know I cannot catch it in my bare hands as much as my impulse tells me to. Argh! Guilt because it's Carrie's truck!

Carrie's jack caught the truck frame in a different spot before the wheel hit the cement floor. Whew! So I had to use the 2 jacks in a series of careful lifts to get the truck high enough and another series to lower the truck back down. My jack still works, but it's a lot more difficult to raise and lower it along the new bend. I went back inside and changed out of my now filthy clothes.

Every Thanksgiving since we moved to Maine, Kemmer has come up to visit and this year was no exception. The drive up from Massachusetts was pretty easy until she got off the highway and noted how the roads could use another plowing. As she signaled her turn into our driveway she hit an especially slick spot and spun, almost into a tree. The poor plowing job left enough snow in the way to stop her car before reaching the tree. With the help of a neighbor we dug and pushed the car out of the snow bank and she got safely into our drive.

We didn't wait too long to head out for our dinner. Carrie had won a free Thanksgiving Dinner for two at the Hilton Garden Inn in Auburn. We figured to get a plush meal for three at the price of one. The main course of turkey was actually turkey loaf! Other parts of the meal seemed equally fabricated. They actually had some fresh vegetables and fruit for salad makings that was almost the only thing that wasn't extremely disappointing. It was buffet style and my first round I loaded up on meat and starch. My second round had fruit and veggies.

They had live music there. After my stint working in a mall I can usually tune background music out, but the faces Kemmer kept making about it made me alert to it as well. And it was pretty bad.

Kemmer and Carrie had a girls day out to go to a couple of farm stands' last sales and a visit to the Cora Shriner Temple's special christmas tree show. A very loud, crowded, and uninteresting bunch of trees it was.

Back at home, Carrie started a fire in our wood burning stove with a chimney we'd just recently gotten cleaned, only to have all the smoke pour into the house.

How was your weekend?

Happy Thanksgiving

Looking forward to Kemmer's visit today.

It's Snowtime!

It's been a while since anything got posted here, but that's because we've been quite busy. Carrie is very often putting in overtime at her job and the past couple of weeks has seen me doing the same at mine. The overtime actually makes the job less obnoxious because I'm not manning the phone bank during that time, so the percentage of phonetime goes down, even if the actual time spent on the phone is the same. It's all relative.

Thanksgiving Kemmer came up to see us as our first guest. She was even able to stay overnight! Kemmer surprised us with some belated birthday gifts (more Tarzan for me!) and we did the same for her. The Thai restaurant we had called earlier this year to ask if they were open Thanksgiving wasn't answering the phone when we tried to confirm, so we went with the same Indian restaurant we'd been to last year. Later we watched and made fun of the new Star Trek movie. As most reviews said, it's good fun if you don't think about it too much. The next day Carrie had to work, so Kemmer and I talked a lot, watched some more stuff, and I got to show off the acreage in back of the house.

Carrie then had both days of the weekend off, though only Saturday of this weekend. We get to do shopping for food and whatever new bits we need to advance on getting the house together, watch some cable tv (mostly Mythbusters and Whose Line, but we did Bollywood Sunday once!) and other domestic stuff. Recently, both Carrie and I have slipped on the steps going down into the living room. The day after my fall, we went out and bought a roll of no slip tread and Carrie cut it into a much less boring shape.

I sort of caught myself when I slipped, but not really because I landed hard and not quite straight on my left hand. Nothing broken, but it got a little swollen and painful. I cannot grip anything more than loosely. It's very much better today than it was yesterday, but it still is going to keep me from shoveling or using the snow blower. Which is bad because it snowed last night! Looking out the window we thought Carrie was going to be in big trouble because of how deep it was, but the driveway didn't get too covered at all. We think it must be the protective trees.

As always, click on a photo to supersize it.

It's What's For Dinner!

Coal Daze

But since Carrie has gotten out the down comforter, the nights have almost been too warm.

Still, the past several mornings I've woken up convinced I had a cold. As the day progresses, I feel better, but each morning I've felt a little worse than the morning before. I suspect I'll be fully sick for Thanksgiving and only just well enough to go in to work at Staples for Black Friday. (Staying home on Black Friday is a guarantee of getting fired.)

Maybe having Kemmer come up to spend Thanksgiving with us (and maybe even doing some Puppet Improv) will chase the blues (and cold) away and I'll be in fine form for Friday. We plan to continue with our holiday tradition of eating out at an ethnic restaurant. This time an Indian place up in Brunswick.

Today I'm working at Pet Pantry, so I should pick up something special for the kids to have for their Thanksgiving.