Stand Up Comix

The light shining through the hole in my head makes my eyes glow.
Click on my glasses to see better.

The first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book Day, so that was the basis for our plans that day. Carrie wore her Hellboy t-shirt and I wanted to wear my Superman shirt with a Love and Rockets hoodie over it. The hoodie I won at Cover Me, a music blog I visit once in a while. In case you didn't know, Love and Rockets is both a band and a comic book. The band was named after the comic, which annoyed one of the creators of the comic as he wanted to form a band with that name. So you can see how I wanted to show off my geeky knowledge to the crowd. But, in spite of cool weather before and after that Saturday, it was a darn nice day, too warm to wear either a sweatshirt or even multiple layers. Needing to wear long sleeves because of my sensitivity to sun exposure, I just wore the plain blue shirt. I have no long sleeved comics related shirts. But I did wear a small Usagi Yojimbo pin.

Our first stop was J & R Comics and Cards in Brunswick. We discovered them last year when they had a person parading around a more main street with a sandwich board announcing free comics and free food. Their selection of comics is pretty small, but they were such nice people I wanted to try and give them some real business. I bought 2 comics while there, but they didn't have the storage supplies I wanted. I'd held off on buying them, hoping to give J & R the money. They didn't have any free food this year, but did have plenty of free comics.

We met up with one of my coworkers, Sheila, and her husband Fred at the store. I'd gotten Sheila hooked on Carrie McNinch's minicomix and wanted to expose her to some more. Fred turned out to be a long time MAD fan, so I picked him up an issue of Groo. After the shop we went over to Bombay Mahal and had their buffet. Carrie and I think this is the better of the 2 Indian restaurants in Brunswick. The four of us got to chat for a while before heading off on our separate errands.

Next shop to hit was in Topsham. A new gaming and comics shop that we saw a few months ago. At that time they had next to nothing in comics, waiting for the shelves they said. Well, even though they weren't on the Free Comic Book Day website, they were still participating. We went in, saw they had little improvement, and left.

So third and final comics stop was Casablanca Comics in Portland. That's the shop in the above photo. They give out a good selection of free comics, their choice mostly. We usually get our comics here because it is the largest comics shop in the state, even if it seems small compared to the ones we used to go to in Arizona.

We did other things that day, but why talk about them when this was a celebration of Free Comic Book Day after all.

Eerie Deer

It's Sunday and finally sunny, so we took advantage of it by first raking up all the piles of grass left after mowing last weekend. Then we took Pandora with us to the Brunswick Common, a pine barren with lots of walking trails. She didn't seem to notice the deer, so Carrie took her further along the trail while I got closer to the deer for a better shot.

Yesterday it alternated between rainy and sunny all day. Except for the brief hailstorm. So I mostly hung out at home doing a few chores and playing on the computer. Carrie had to work both Saturday and Friday.

Friday, Kemmer came up for a visit. And the weather was pretty nice then too. We also went to Brunswick, but stayed in town visiting a few favorite shops and having lunch at the Bombay Mahal. Kemmer bought a bunch of books at the bookstore and a few items at the health food store. All three of us agree that Brunswick is a nice little town.

Power Arrangers

As always, click on the photo to enlarge it.

Freezing rain was falling all yesterday and today. At some point last night I woke up to think there was something wrong. I couldn't figure out what it was though. I looked over at the clock and couldn't see it. The power was out. All the small electrical humming from the dozens of electric and electronic devices one owns that makes a constant background noise was gone!

Okay, so no power, no alarm clock. And no lights. No radio, tv, or computer. No microwave, but the stove? It's electric too. Electric hot water heater, so no hot shower. No cold shower either, since the pump that gets our water out of the well is electric. So no flushing the toilet more than a couple of times. Thank goodness we have oil heat. Except that the apparatus to make it work is electric. No heat.

When we finally decided to get up, we used our flashlights to get out the candles and matches after rummaging around for a long time trying to find them. Carrie went off to work a little early because the roads were a bit slippery. I went shopping.

Home Depot had their emergency generator going so I could see what I was looking for and pay with my debit card. I got some batteries for the radio, a propane heater, and a propane tank. I went off to the rental center nearby since they had propane. They didn't have an emergency generator though, so had no way of providing the propane. I got directions to a home supply store in Brunswick called Downeast. They not only had propane, but were up and running with full power.

I called the landlord a couple of times during the day. Cheery news was he also had a power outage. And he said last time, people went 3 days without power. I called Pet Pantry, since I saw the main drag in Freeport was lit and I knew they knew what was happening in town. Everybody on duty today had their home power out also. The boss had called the power company and been told it would be a couple of days before power was restored.

But an hour later, just before 5, I heard the heat start up and saw the power buttons on the tv and dvd player glowing! Power is restored! And I'm blogging this in hopes I get the tale posted before we're down aga

Puppets of the Carribbean

Carrie and I were up at a store in Brunswick we liked (but had gone in too close to closing last time to fully explore) and found they had even more puppets than last time.

When I first was playing with him, he had the usual gruff stereotypical pirate voice: "Avast ye scurvy dogs!" But then Carrie put a pair of glasses on him and suddenly he had a refined English accent: "Piracy is my avocation. No, sorry. What I meant was, Piracy be my avocation. We must get the correct pirate grammatical structure in there, musn't we."

I'm thinking his name might be Thaddeus.

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.

2 handed bridge

We poked around Brunswick today, including checking out the historic footbridge.


Carrie doesn't always approve of my need to climb...