Maine Awnings

Sue's neighbor sent her this photo. It's a picture of Sue's house as seen from the neighbor's yard. This is called a "Maine awning." It looks like an awning protecting the porch from sunshine . . . until you look closely and realize that's snow that has slowly slid off the roof but stayed together as one giant sheet of frozen something and it's just hanging there. How does it do that??

Recycled Sled Contest

I saw this sign in the stairwell of my building last week.

Somehow I missed the first one last year, but I decided to attend this year! It was attended by a small but creative group of students. Here you can see two students riding their recycled sled down the hill by the amphitheatre (behind the student center).

I believe this is the sledder who used a snow shovel for her sled (the body in the foreground is a photographer).

This was constructed from a box that a mini-fridge came in (a dorm-sized refrigerator). That's a beaver (UMF's mascot) on it. One sledder used this as a sled with the beaver on the front and didn't get very far but the next sledder used the same sled but turned it 180 degrees and put the beaver on the back and was quite successful!

Cookies, music, warm beverages, and prizes -- it was quite a successful and very fun event.

Traffic Stopper

This is the scene in the parking lot of The Maine Mall. They plow the parking lot, but that snow has to go somewhere. So they picked this portion of the parking lot to dedicate to snow storage until it melts. Every parking lot in Maine has fewer parking spaces in winter than it does the rest of the year.

Resident Sand

I saw this area and the sign in the parking lot at Deering Oak Park. This raises so many more questions for me than it answers. I can guess, but I really don't know.

WinteRush

When I went to pick up the candidate at The Comfort Inn, I arrived earlier than we had planned, so I hung out in the lobby. I watched the news while I waited--that's a rare treat for me since I don't have any television reception in my apartment and I refuse to have cable. The ending story was on WinteRush in Portland. They were interviewing a team that was doing a snow carving and told of all the fun family activities that would be in Deering Oaks Park that day. It looked like fun but I didn't think much more about it until I happened to drive by Deering Oaks Park. So I pulled over and found a parking spot and checked out the snow carvings. Pretty fun!

After I voted for my favorite (I'll never tell which one), I headed back to my car and ran into Marisella, a friend from UMF! It was so great to see her. She was there with her family. Her little one had done the sledding on the hill and also the "book trail". There's a children's book about snowshoeing and they had made an enlargement of each page (poster-sized) and put them all around the park. The kids borrowed the snow shoes provided and followed the trail, stopping to read the book at each station along the trail. There were also snowball fights and hula hoop contests and many other fun events planned.

Portland Head Light in Winter

When we were at LL Bean, Dake bought postcards of Maine to take home as souvenirs. The very nice clerk asked her if she had actually seen any of the places on the postcards and Dake explained that she really hadn't had any time to do that but that she wanted to come back. The clerk said, "Well, you should at least see the Portland Head Light. It's not very far from here." Twice, I've been to Portland Head Light (one of many lighthouses in Maine), and both times, someone else was driving and it involved a lot of curvy roads through neighborhoods. So you can imagine that I was a little leary. The clerk assured me it wasn't difficult, so I let her give us directions which involved "The Million Dollar Bridge." After we left, Dake and I decided it was best to stick with our original plan and get her to the airport since I was unsure of this detour. But after I dropped Dake off at the airport, I decided to try the adventure. The directions worked! I think I could take you to the Portland Head Light if you came to visit me! (You better hurry though, 'cuz I'll forget pretty quickly.)

It was my first time there in winter. The gift shop wasn't open and the main parking lot wasn't plowed, but there were plenty of people walking around, braving the cold and soaking in the sight.

Driving a Fuel Efficient Vehicle

I volunteered to take the special education candidate back to the airport in Portland on Saturday morning. We agreed to leave an hour earlier than we needed in order to stop off at L. L. Bean in Freeport. I reserved a university car for the trip--it saves the university money and it saves wear and tear on my car. Turns out that at UMF, our university cars are Toyota Priuses. When we arrived at L. L. Bean, there was a great parking spot available right next to Employee of the Month...and we were eligible.

Dining Out

I'm on the special education search committee that's looking for a new professor to come to UMF to take over the spot that will be available in fall 2011 due to the retirement of Sue. We did phone interviews with all the applicants and we picked our top three to bring to campus. It's actually a lot of work, but one of the perks is getting to go out to eat a nice meal with a candidate. We had three candidates scheduled to come to campus over a three-week period. But the first candidate got iced out of leaving her home town (and would have been here for our snow day), so that candidate was rescheduled for the next week. That meant two candidates in one week. Four nights of dinner with candidates. Good thing we have some really great choices of restaurants in the area. Two dinners at The Homestead, one night at Calzolaio Pasta, and one at The Granary. That's my idea of a good time. :-)

Sunshine 'n Snow

This is what I love about winters in Maine . . . sunshine and snow. Cold weather without humidity and without wind. It's the best!

Big Snows

It hasn't been much of a winter so far. Titcomb Mountain didn't even get to open until January 8 and missed the whole winter vacation opportunities. But we are making up for lost time, now. These are snow pics from February 2nd and February 5th. About 3 inches fell on February 1st, starting in the late afternoon. By 6am on the 2nd, the University announced it was closed for the day. Many more inches fell on Groundhog's Day. Below is a lazy person's version of time-lapse photography. Every couple of hours, I stuck my head out the door to the apartment and snapped a photo. You can't really tell much unless you look at the garden wall in the lower left corner of the picture. There's not much of it to see with all the snow, but as the day progresses, there's even less of it to see.

Photo 1: Feb. 2nd at 9:40am

Photo 2: Feb. 2nd at 11:20 am

Photo 3: Feb. 2nd at 1:20 pm

Photo 4: Feb. 2nd at 3:10pm

Photo 5: Feb. 3rd at 8:00am

Photo 6: Feb. 6th at 8:00am

Wire Bridge in winter

I did it! Last night, I was inspired by the photography at the Orcutt gallery and today, I went to the Wire Bridge to take my own photos. I love the Wire Bridge and have been 3 times with friends/family. This time, I went by myself and just soaked it in and took photos. There wasn't lots of fluffy snow sitting on the wires like the Orcutt photos, but they didn't have gorgeous blue skies and big white puffy clouds in their photos, either. And they had to have Photoshopped out the warning signs that are plastered on the bridge. But that's okay. I will be back. Thank you Maine for preserving this wonderful piece of history and cool architecture.

Goldilocks' 3rd Birthday

Once upon a time, there was a very special young lady who had a very cool and creative mom and a talented dad. The little girl was named K-Locks and she was going to have a birthday. K-Locks Mommy wanted to have a very special birthday party for her. Since Mommy knew K-Locks loved the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, she decided to invite the bears to the birthday party along with all of K-Locks' friends. Mommy knew the bears loved porridge (she read it in a very special book that K-Locks loves to read) so she made some porridge. But it wasn't just any porridge, it was very yummy porridge and she served it with everything delicious that bears love to eat and things that can make porridge magical: raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, raisins, nuts, brown sugar, milk, orange slices, and grapes (and more).

When K-LOcks' friends came to the party, they wanted to help the bears feel very welcome, so they all decorated some magic ears in order to look more like the bears.



After eating their delicious breakfast, they each had the chance to build their own little bears. That way they could take their memories of their new friends with them.

There was singing (of bear songs) and dancing (of bear dances) and lots of fun.

And of course, there was cake (in a special bear-cake shape made by K-Locks' daddy) . . . and ice cream.

Happy birthday, K-Locks!!

Thank you for inviting me to your birthday party!

new hidden posts

I'm catching up on my blogging (well, at least for 2011) but I'm publishing each post to show up on the day that the events happened. So you'll need to go back to find these new postings. Look for:

2/4/2011
2/3/2011
1/27/2011
1/22/2011
1/16/2011
and 2 posts on 1/2/2011

Kingfield Artwalk

http://www.kingfieldusa.com/



Last night at the movie, Stephanie asked me if I wanted to join her and Margaret. I didn't really understand what the adventure was that I was being invited to, but I knew if I went with Margaret and Stephanie, whatever the event was, I would thoroughly enjoy it. So I accepted. I didn't even know what time or where, I just knew it was going to be on Friday.

Stephanie picked me up at school around 4:00, we headed to Margaret's and from there we walked to Sugarwood Gallery in Farmington for a little art gallery opening night. A local art teacher had the works of her students on display (many of which were also for sale). They will stay on display at the gallery for a month until the first Friday of March at which there will be a new display. Apparently, this has been going on for quite a while and I just never knew it. There were some beautiful pieces of art, lively conversation, light refreshments, and a lot of fun.

Then we walked back to Margaret's, got in the car (after helping push the car over the last hump in the snow-covered driveway), and headed to Kingfield. Tonight was their Artwalk. A travel site's article about this event states, "Unlike most Art Walks, which run during the warmer months, leave it to Kingfield, in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain, to schedule its new first Friday of the month Art Walks from December through March."

We ran into Joe and Doris, who both work at UMF, and about a million friends of Margaret's. We went to 3 galleries and an exhibit in the offices of a local real estate agent. The art was wonderful and the amount of people quite surprising. We started at a gallery that has a barn for one gallery and a small room for a second gallery. This was so weird to me, though I started to recollect that I've heard of it, but the barn was really really cold inside. It was colder inside the barn than it was outside in the elements. Each gallery had some kind of refreshments to offer and we met the gallery owners and even some of the artists. It was all so personal and so much fun.

The gallery in the old schoolhouse had beautiful nature photography. The gallery is owned by the Orcutts--the couple that takes the photos--so it's gallery, studio, and living quarters all rolled into one. Their photos were all of winter in Maine. They were spectacular. They had some of the Wire Bridge that I love so much. I've never been to the Wire Bridge in winter but now I'm inspired to do so. The Orcutts created these cool candle holders made out of ice. They were a beautiful way to welcome us to the gallery. As the 3 of us stood admiring them, we started talking about The Ice Hotel in Quebec City. hmmmm sounds like a road trip to me!!

We didn't go to one of the galleries or the Ski Museum or the antique shop. That means we'll have to go back, right? :-) But by now, we were hungry, so we went to Longfellow's, which I had heard of and has been recommended to me many times, but I had never been. I ordered the special-of-the-day pork loin and it was delicious. (This photo doesn't do it justice....bad lighting and not-so-hot photography skills.)

Spontaneity

Some people in Maine think I'm not very spontaneous. Friends in Texas would tell you otherwise. I'm glad to prove the Maine folks wrong but that comment also made me stop to analyze and determine that I think my spontaneity has declined since coming here. Partly because of fewer opportunities for spontaneity and partly because I get to engrossed in my job during the long semester that I only practice the art of spontaneity pretty much during winter vacation and summer vacation.

Time to seek out more opportunities for spontaneity!! It will help a lot that I'm hanging out now with spontaneous people. Thanks, Stephanie, for the call at 5:20 to see if I wanted to go see The King's Speech at 6:50. I did and I went and I loved it!!

I really need to go to the movies more often. The Narrow Gauge Cinema is minutes from my apartment and has great seats, great sound, and incredibly reasonable prices. $6 for a prime time viewing of a first-run feature film. You can't beat it. Oh wait, you can: If you buy a 10 pack of tickets, they're only $5.50 a ticket. And even better, you can buy a 10 pack of combination tickets for $70 which means I paid $7 for a movie ticket, a small root beer, and a small bag of buttered popcorn. And actually, I paid less than that because I bought my 10 pack during the Early Bird Sale which means I got 10% off of that.

Come any time and I'll spontaneously offer you a chance to go to the movies with me on the cheap.