Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Next to the library in downtown Portland, ME there is an old red brick house which was once Henry Longfellow's. It turns out this famous poet lived in Portland for much of his life and even wrote about Portland in his poem "My Lost Youth" - just as uplifting as it sounds! I read through many of his works last night and my favorite was "The Arrow and the Song" which should bring a smile to your face. There are multiple sites dedicated to Longfellow and he was quite the guy. Interestingly, he graduated from Maine's first college, Bowdoin and he graduated with Nathanial Hawthorn.

Note in the picture above that Longfellow grew a huge sweet beard to cover the scars and burns he suffered trying to save his wife from a house fire.

Priorities.

Tonight we went to Flatbread for an incoming resident interview dinner. We've been to quite few of them now, and Claire knows exactly what to expect. So tonight as we were getting ready, she was goofing around and I told her she had to hurry, or we'd be late. She got very serious and said "Okay Mom, I'll get ready. I don't want to miss dessert." They really do have some amazing desserts. I'm glad to see my daughter has her priorities in line.

Break In

In 2006 Maine was ranked the second safest state in the nation and Portland Maine was named the sixth safest city. I have no idea what went into these rankings, but I do know that my car was broken into last night FOR THE SECOND TIME! As best I can tell these vicious criminals made off with approximately four-five CD's AND broke my $4 CD holder. As for the rest of the junk in my car, I am hoping someone will clean it out sooner rather than later. There are two interesting things that go along with this story.

1. My car was unlocked. In Milwaukee I had my car broken into and it cost me big bucks to replace the window which was used for entry, so now I leave my car open and a break in like todays only costs me about $10 (the CD's were all burned copies of a medical study aid which is so boring it could double as a sleep aid). Now I am not sure what to do. I haven't heard about any other car break-ins in the neighborhood. If I lock my doors like everyone else will my precious junk be protected? I don't think it is worth the risk of getting my window broken in.

2. The first time my car was broken into my neighbor Tim heard the burglers/punks/killer ninjas and pinned one against my car while his wife sang "Bad boyz, bad boyz, whatcha gonna doooo, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?" Eventually the police came and Sheila gave a statement. Wow. I'm not sure what I would do if I saw someone breaking into my car. I guess I will have to wait another couple weeks to find out - Ha Ha Ha

Make a Snowflake

This make-your-own snowflake site has sucked up too much of my time this morning. Its much cooler than the downloadable image here is.

Happy...

Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Black Friday, and Happy Birthday Nana!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. One of the other ED residents hosted Thanksgiving dinner last night, so we all went there and stuffed ourselves. Everything was fantastic.

Today Mike went back to work, and I went shopping. I slept in and went around 10am, so I missed the all-out craziness when the stores opened. Last night we drove past Best Buy around 4pm, and there were people waiting in the cold rain outside the doors. There must have been some great deals today. As for me, I was only shopping for myself. And I went grocery shopping. I think the Black Friday deal at the grocery store was that everyone else was at the mall, so the store was empty, which is a pretty good deal I think.

And lastly, Happy Birthday Teresa!

A Typical Wednesday

Its been brought to my attention that I'm just not posting as often as I used to. There could be a lot of reasons for that. Claire and I could be so darn busy that I simply don't have the time anymore. Or maybe Claire has figured out how to set up parental controls (after all, parental controls = control the parents, right?) on my computer so that the only websites I can go to now are pbskids.org and nickjr.com. Or maybe we haven't really been up to anything exciting, so things to blog about are few and far between.

Yeah, probably that last one. See for yourself.

Yesterday, I tried a new grocery store. We have two options as far as grocery stores go out here, Hannafords or Shaws. Up until now, I've always gone to Shaws. But then Hannaford started sending me these unbelievable coupons in the mail. Free bags of chocolate (they obviously know who does the grocery shopping). Free rotisserie chickens. Whole $10 off your total. So I tried it, and I liked it. Hannaford just has so many cool things. Like trees and 'wood' floors in the produce section. Like a huge floral section. I don't remember ever buying flowers from a grocery store, but Claire loves to run in and smell everything. Or like a bakery you can smell as soon as you walk in. Or like behind the delicatessen counter they have these big ovens (built to look like those domed stone pizza ovens) with big fires to roast chickens and whatever else. Or the seafood section where not only do they have the guy making sushi, but the entire section is tiled into this huge underwater mural. There are just so many cool things to look at. Its the kind of store that when I walk through, I'm not sure if I can afford to shop there. But then at the end, the total isn't any more than the average total at Shaws ever was. So there you go. Maybe its just something new, and therefore cooler, I haven't decided yet. But this is the kind of stuff I've been doing lately. Not all that exciting, really, but now there is a whole post all about it!

And a picture to offset the text. Its an old one, but when you do things like grocery shop during the day, there just aren't that many new pictures to use.

Boston

We spent this weekend in Boston, and we had a great time. Saturday was a fantastic day, mostly sunny and warm. It was a day of very fortunate mistakes for us. First, we completely stumbled upon our hotel by chance. We were just driving around thinking we'd figure out where we were eventually, and then get to the Museum of Science, when the hotel turned up right in front of us. So we dropped off our bags, got directions, and after a series of missed and wrong turns, wound up, accidentally, at Quincy Market. We stopped and took advantage of the mistake and the great weather. Just as we got there, the Veteran's Day Parade started as if it was waiting for us.















































After Quincy Market, we made it to the Museum of Science, and it reminded me a lot of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I loved it. And after that, it was back to the hotel (somehow it was more difficult to find when we actually wanted to) and to the pool. This was the hallway/sky walk from the hotel to the pool. I kind of expected the Cowardly Lion to run past us and leap through the glass.



















Sunday rained all day, perfect weather for the Children's Museum of Boston, which is by far the coolest children's museum I've ever been to. It was amazing, to say the least. We all had a great time, and I don't think we even came close to seeing half of the exhibits.





























































I'm sure we'll be doing this again soon.

the portland headlight

Today we had a weather alert for "over-splashing and flooding at high tide". Tides right now are higher and lower than usual because of "astronomical effects", and the ocean was rough by coincidence. The result was 9-12 foot waves crashing onto the shore. And on a beautiful day like today, I thought it would be a great idea to visit the Portland Headlight at high tide this afternoon and check it out.















































It was amazing. The waves pounded the rocks and made everything hazy and soft looking, as you can see in the second and third pictures. It was beautiful, and definitely not like any other time I've been to the Headlight.

I Voted Today.

Stickers all around.

Wow! What a lack of posts!

Its been almost a month! We've been having a great time. Jim was in town for a few days and then Claire and I were in Wisconsin for about ten days. We got to spend time in Green Bay, Sun Prairie and Waukesha. We started out in Green Bay. I mostly relaxed, but Claire worked. She helped mow the lawn and tried to teach my mom how to play computer games.




































We visited Elissa, Jalyn and Mason for lunch one day.














And then we spent Halloween and a few days after in Sun Prairie. Claire stuck with her first decision and went as a doctor, but she didn't want anything to do with the doctor pants (been reading Eric's blog, maybe?). Halloween night was cold enough that when all was said and done, you couldn't even tell she had a costume on. She got a good amount of candy, but in the end she just wanted to help Bapa hand out candy to the other trick-or-treaters, which lasted until the first monster rang the doorbell.



















It was really great to see everyone and good to be home. And now that the trip is over, its also good to be home. There are of course more pictures on Flickr, if you are interested.