Mainelife...thru the eyes of someone from away

And The Panic Sets In

The joys of a New England Winter.  This is an ice dam

and when it happens, the ice at the bottom of the roof forces water back up under the shingles and causes leaks in the house. 
Our leaks started this morning on the back side of the house as the temperatures warmed up.  Both sides of the house have ice dams; we consider ourselves lucky that so far, it's only one bedroom and the upstairs bathroom affected. 

We've hired a couple of guys to remove the ice: $55.00 an hour, per guy (how's that for making good in a bad economy? Classic supply and demand equation there).  They might get to it tomorrow, it might have to wait until Monday. They're pretty backed up.  Oh yea, so's our roof line, fellas....

We could have taken care of this by our own selves, at least in the front, but these rooflines are three stories high and they can't be reached without a ladder--which RG isn't going to wrestle through three feet of snowpack.  They can be prevented by buying a snow rake and raking the snow closest to the bottom of the roof line off the roof....except that NO ONE in the area has snow rakes right now. They're sold out because everyone has ice dams this winter.  

So, we've moved the furniture and we wait for the guys to come over while anxiously eyeballing the creeping line of water working its way across the ceiling.

Siberia

Ok, it's not really Siberia, but this morning it felt like it (-12 when this shot was taken) and it looked a bit like it.  I've been reading a wonderful book about Maine by Lewis Robinson called Water Dogs.  It was reviewed in today's NYTimes Book Review, which says

 "Lewis Robinson’s first novel, “Water Dogs,” is stuffed with snow. Open practically any page of this book and crystals will shake out. “There was a dark blue heaviness to the air,” Robinson writes, “that made it seem snow was minutes away.”

.....ayuh. 
The review goes on  to say

"Fiction writers have long turned to winter to advance bluer palettes, slicker surfaces and sharper contrasts. The sky darkens, the wind picks up and flakes start to fall. Horizons shrink. Couples bicker. Cars slide off roads. Obliteration tends to loiter between the sentences." 

On a morning like this, it's easy to understand why a Maine writer would invoke the bleakness of a Siberian landscape. 


After a long week of work in Ohio and some trouble getting home on Friday (I'm batting .1000 on air travel lately--if I'm on a flight, then it's going to be late), we got up early on Saturday and headed to  Cushing for a quick get-away.  RG wanted to go to an estate auction, where we managed to leave a substantial amount of money, but got some very good deals. Our best purchase is a room size braided rug that covers most of the bad 1982 linoleum in our kitchen floor.  The floor has been my avowed enemy since we bought the place, and we'd planned put in a wood laminate floor this spring.

But with the economy....well, we've decided to save that money.  The rug covers 99% of the area where the laminate has worn off and the dirt embeds and it looks halfway decent.   RG also managed to buy a pair of circa 1780's  push-up candlesticks for a very good price and a wonderful Bennington Pottery flask that looks like a book. 

We also got an 1820's Pembroke table and a Windsor chair from the same period for a song.

This morning we woke up to frost on the windows and a very chilly house.  So we built a fire and had a fantastic breakfast of pancakes, eggs and slab cut bacon (fresh from the Thomaston Grocery) which we worked off with a snowshoe expedition all over the point.

Just after returning home, a Pileated Woodpecker flashed by our windows and proceeded to work on a tree outside the front door for quite a while. He was kind enough to pose for a few shots for me.

UPDATE: More photos of the river this morning on flickr.

MLK Day, 2009

Will this day ever mean more than it does in this year? The day before Barack H. Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States of America. Let Freedom Ring!

-20 and Beautiful Seasmoke

We survived a night of sub-zero temperatures with only one frozen pipe, the upstairs guest bathroom toilet--but that freezes up anytime the temperature drops below 17 degrees, so we expected that. 

We took a quick ride past the beach (no walking Long Sands this morning, no sir) and snapped a couple of pictures, but any time spent out of the car was miserable. 

Brrr. It's time for coffee and some hot oatmeal.

 

Whirlwind of a Weekend

So, now that it's Tuesday, I'm finally getting around to asking how your weekend was.  Mine was full--full of snow; full of family and full of work.  Meetings on Friday and Monday meant a weekend in Ohio and an opportunity for a haircut and more importantly a chance to spend time with my family in northern Ohio.  For 10 years, Jody at the jacob neal salon has been my go-to guy for my 'do, but since moving to Maine, it's been difficult to find time to see him.  I've done crazy things like taking off an afternoon from work and driving the hour and a half from the office to the salon in Columbus or flying the $10.00 SkyBus from Portsmouth to Columbus on a Saturday to get a cut.  I know it's crazy, but Jody is totally worth it.

I made an appointment for 9 am on Saturday and then planned to continue on north to my parents' house for Saturday night and Sunday morning.  Friday's work day started at 7 am and ended at 8:15 pm.  Crazy nuts day of meetings, book planning (authors in from LA for the day), crisis management--a usual day in the office with the added joy of a planning exercise created by some diabolical financial beancounter in an office in Stamford. 

My best laid plans...northern Ohio started getting snow on Friday night, enough snow that most high school athletic events were cancelled, with significant accumulations on Saturday.  Columbus-south to  Cincinnati was to get ice and freezing rain; and sure enough they did. The drive to Columbus was sometimes slowed to a crawl of 25 mph or so; and there were plenty of accidents--mostly tractor/trailors jack-knifed, although I had the good fortune to watch a Kentucky State Trooper blow by me and then execute three perfect 360's right down the middle of I-71.  He ended up in the right shoulder, facing in the right direction and continued on his way after a short pause (photo from a Flip video).  

I made it to Columbus in time for my haircut and then onto my parents' house--where 6 inches of snow had fallen and more was coming down.  It was the perfect opportunity for some sledding with my nephew, followed by a hike in the snow and some hot chocolate. My five year old nephew stars in and helped me create this video. I suggested a bit more editing, but he felt that we needed all this footage. He also picked the music. I remain a fan of the Flip:

Sunday, after a morning of swim meet (my niece is quite a good swimmer, but has been sidelined by a stress fracture sustained during the Cross Country season--she had a good meet but needs more training to get back to top form) over in Amish Country, it was back to Cincinnati, more spreadsheet work and no snow.   

Now I'm back home in the land of 8 inches of beautiful snow, blue skies and my coffee maker, and so happy to be here.

OK, I'll Admit It.

We got a Flip for Christmas.  I didn't open it until just a few days ago, Christmas coming a little late in these parts.  I'm a little sheepish about admitting this because just after Christmas, Flip lust was a topic of conversation with some of my twitter buddies, and they already think know that I have too many toys. I didn't have one then, but I have one now.

Last night, RG and I went down to  Winnacunnet High School (every time I type Winnacunnet, I wonder if correctly spelling the school name is a graduation requirement) to see a girls' basketball game featuring two of the premier players in New Hampshire.  I took the Flip and within 3-4 minutes of uploading the video, created a movie on my Mac.  The music is pretty bad (rock bottom really), because I didn't have the external drive that holds my iTunes library hooked up.  I used the default music from the Flipshare software, instead.   I was really pleased with ease of use and Mac integration.  Oh, and remember the name Tiffany Ruffin.  She's the real deal.

Is It Really January 7th?

Yowza, my friends. Where has the time gone?  Unlike some points in my life, I know exactly where my time has gone.  On New Year's Day, S and her fiance arrived, just in time to watch Penn State get shellacked by USC and eat a bit of sauerkraut, spaetzle  and pork roast with us.  The next two days were entirely consumed by wedding reception visits.  We looked at the York Golf and Tennis Club, Wentworth By the Sea (shockingly more affordable than we expected), The Red Barn (surprisingly more expensive than we thought), The Cliff House, The Colony, and The Reading Room.   I don't think we've (actually not we, it's the bride's choice) yet reached a final decision, but I believe we're she's close.  Finalists appear to be the YGTC and Wentworth By The Sea, primarily due to available dates and costs. No matter what the decision, it will all be wonderful.  When you're this in love, how can it not be perfect?

In addition to wedding planning and enjoying a late Christmas celebration with the kids (we didn't open Christmas presents until January 4th), the job that pays the mortgage has been full out since the end of September.  As you might know, I pay the bills by publishing business texts for a college textbook publisher.  When the government bails out Wall Street, wrestles with bailing out the Big Three and the stock market loses one third of its total value, well, we have to react--and a standard old paper and ink text book isn't nimble enough to keep up with almost hourly changes in the Global Economic Crisis.  So, we've been working on a digital, web-based product that will provide professors and business students with just in time information on the crisis.  One component of that product is a blog.  It's been fascinating and challenging to hire a blogger, create a blog within the constraints of corporate parameters (branding, liability and myriad other issues come into play), and develop a digital product that I believe will begin to transform how college professors get their information from text publishers.   It's also been almost all-consuming.   The holidays were just a break between meetings, decisions and development.  The product launches this Friday and I'm optimistic that I'll soon get back to a more normal blog posting schedule and more importantly a more frequent blog reading schedule.  I've not quite had the time to drop in on y'all as often as I'd like. 

I trust that you all had a lovely New Year and that 2009 is off to a great start for you.