12/7/2008 Dead Fred the Fly

This is the view from Heidi's window (see the edge of the "Under Construction" sign in the top left corner?). And that big black fly is stuck on the outside of her window. Or is that a really big fly on the wall across from the window? He was stuck there for over a month according to Heidi. She named him Fred . . . Dead Fred.

12/7/2008 Window Conversations

When I took down "Let it Snow" so suddenly (at the request of Mary who was blaming me personally for all the snow that was falling in Maine), I put up my usual "Under Construction" sign. Next thing I knew, the windows across the way had a reply. :-)

11/9/2007 - 12/7/2007 Let It Snow

I love this window design! I pictured it in my head for a long time before I went about to make it a reality. There are lots of little silver snowflakes hanging in it that barely show up in this picture. I'm still learning about the scale of the window and what shows up and what doesn't when your audience is so far away.

I put it up in November but by middle of December we had had so much snow, it was requested that I take it down.

12/18/2007 Good Luck Heidi!

Heidi is my "across the way" neighbor that always spotted my windows first. She was a big fan of the windows. She was offered a job in her local school district which will cut down on her drive time (a big consideration as the price of gas keeps rising) and has her working the same schedule as her kids who are in school. How could she resist?! We'll certainly miss her at UMF. This window was in her honor.

1/10/2008 New Year's New Window

What better way to start off the new year than a really large text message?!

4/4/08 New Spring Window

It took 3 days to change the window, but this was the plan all along. I couldn't have picked a better day to put up the new window with all that snow going on outside. Even though it's been getting warmer and things have been melting, it's not really spring yet--no matter what the calendar says.

4/1/08 April Fool's Day Window

It wasn't snowing on April Fool's Day when I put up this new window, but it was pretty cold. There's a comma after "Spring" but I guess it doesn't really matter.

Fond memories of Easters past

Look what came in the mail! It's a nighttime egg hunt kit! David and Virginia sent it with fond memories of many "Easter Egg Hunts After Dark" from days in Dallas. Someone is commercializing on our idea. But it's such a fun party, I don't mind sharing the concept with the world. This kit has 20 glow-in-the-dark eggs filled with candy and 2 flashlights. I made folks bring their own eggs and flashlights. Then we divided into 2 teams. Team A would count all their eggs, then go hide them in the front yard. Team B would count all their eggs and then go hide them in the back yard. Once all the eggs were hidden, the teams would switch yards and look for eggs. So as grownups, you got to hide and hunt Easter Eggs all in the same night. I had no trees in my yard and not much other place to hide eggs. But when you're searching for eggs by flashlight, it doesn't matter that they're not well hidden. They're still hard to find! So much fun! I hope everyone who gets one of these kits has as much fun as we did.

3/22/08 Easter Vigil

Here's the choir at St. Joseph's for Easter Vigil. There were two new singers that I've never seen before but who obviously had sung with this group in the past. You can also see our cozy choir area. Andrea is at the keyboard, Patty (pink sweater) is our cantor, Ruth and Randy (guitar player) are both backup cantors. There's another choir that sings at the Saturday night mass. During Triduum, they sang Good Friday and Easter Morning and our choir sang Holy Thursday and Easter Vigil.

2/27/08 really damp snow

Look how thick the snow is on the tree limbs! It's so damp, it sticks really well. Fortunately, it didn't get so heavy that it broke tree limbs.

4/9/08 A new blog

I started a new blog today. Check out "Write On, Wipe Off". It's about the messages that college students (and others) leave on my message board on my office door. I'd been collecting the photos for a while, though I was never sure what I was going to do with them. I just knew that I wanted to capture the fleeting moments.

There are 14 entries to get the blog off to a jump start. Mostly this blog will be about the photos but there are stories to go with the photos sometimes. It's actually an extension of this Mainiacs blog because it's still about life in Maine, but the new blog will be specific to UMF Mainiacs that I know personally. You'll have to check it out to see what I mean. ;-)

4/6/08 It's Baaaaack!

Here's the sign at church! It's almost visible again. :-)

4/4/08 Out the Classroom Window

It's Friday so here's more snow for the weekend. This storm was actually more than a dusting. It was about 2 inches and it really stuck. It was in a slush state for a long time on the ground making for pretty bad driving. The reaction from my students when we saw the snow start out the classroom window was NOT "Oh goody! Snow!" But it has made for a nice and extra long ski season (and snowshoeing and cross country skiing, but snow mobiling is pretty much over--a man died when he was going home after a day of snow mobiling and crossed a frozen river that wasn't frozen anymore).

Buried Political Preferences

The spring thaw really is happening. Check out this political sign that hasn't seen the light of day for a while but now is slowly emerging. These photos were taken over a period of 3 days (one photo per day).

Wow. That really was buried for a long time. He's not even running anymore!

3/31/08 Not Wednesday

Well now it's Monday and it's snowing. You can't see it very well in this photo, but trust me, it was snowing. I guess it's not so much that it snows only on Wednesday as much as it is that it seems to snow more often on Wednesday than the other days. Actually, the real problem has been that the Wednesday snows have been the worst and we've had more school cancellations on Wednesdays than any other day of the week. Makes it tricky for classes that only meet on Wednesdays, or in my case Monday and Wednesday.