11/22/08 Wintery Weather

It's definitely winter here. On the 18th of November, the high temperature was 35. It hasn't been above freezing since. It's not predicted to go above freezing until Monday, the 24th, when the high is predicted to be 36; but they're predicting enough snow to have a real accumulation on Monday, too. (They're predicting snow for today, but I think it's just more flurries.) So let's recap*:

Tuesday 11/18 high 35, low 21
Wednesday 11/19 high 28, low 14
Thursday 11/20: high 28, low 14
Friday 11/21: high 29, low 17
Saturday 11/22 (prediction): high 27, low 13
Sunday 11/23 (prediction): high 29, low 18
Monday 11/24 (prediction): high 36, low 27

A full week of temperatures below freezing and we haven't had Thanksgiving yet. The official start of Winter isn't until the winter solstice at 12:04pm on December 21st, this year. I think it missed the mark this year by more than a full month.

*The predition info is from wunderground.com for West Farmington which is technically in Farmington. The historical numbers are from wunderground.com for Wilton which is the bordering town to our west. Wunderground doesn't have data for Farmington per se. If you type in Farmington, they give you information from Waterville which is 30 miles east of Farmington. West Farmington and Wilton are obviously MUCH closer and more indicative of true Farmington weather.

11/20/08 mystery root vegetable

What is this? I've never seen these objects in a grocery store before. Maybe they were in the specialty or gourmet section of a produce department but up here, they must be pretty popular to be in a bin this big at WalMart. Upon close inspection, the sticker on each one says that this is a rutabaga, which is "a hybrid root vegetable of a cabbage and white turnip; usually prepared in casseroles, stew or mashed up with other vegetables" according to TheNest.com. Tyson.com says it is a member of the cabbage family but CookAdvice.com says it's a member of the mustard family. Either way, I think it's a funky root vegetable. I did not buy one. I'm hoping that I can find someone who cooks them frequently who will let me taste it when they prepare it. I wouldn't know what to do with it.

11/18/08 Picture Perfect Seasons

I stepped outside my front door today and there laying on the ground right next to my tiny porch was this pine cone. Scattered around it are a few dried pine needles and some pieces of old autumn leaves. Does anything say "winter" more than a pine cone on your doorstep? Well, freezing temperatures and snow might say it a little more profoundly. We're having the freezing temperatures but only flurries of snow, no real snow yet.

Check out the white patches on the pine cone. I've never seen that before in real life. I've seen fake pine cones with white on them like that. I always thought they painted it on to look like the pine cone had been found on a snowy day. I've seen bags of pine cones for sale as decorator items in craft shops that had white on the seed scale (yes, I had to look that up for the proper term for the pokey-outy things on a pine cone), but figured they painted that on before putting them in the bag to make them look snowy and wintery. I never knew that pine cones got white stuff on them in nature! So what is that stuff and how does it get there? Is it only certain kinds of pine trees that have cones with the white on it? Is that why I've never seen this in nature before? I'm guessing now that all those pine cones I'd seen in the bag with the white stuff were pine cones in their natural state, just not pine cones that were in the states in which I've had the opportunity to see pine cones in their natural setting. (I think I've seen most of my pine cones fresh off the trees in the East Texas Piney Woods and in Virginia.)

So much to learn! So much to think about!

11/16/08 Sunday afternoon at the laundromat

Now that I live at "The Verandah," I have to go to the laundromat. I still remember how excited I was 25 years ago when I bought my house that I didn't have to go to the laundromat anymore. And I smiled every time I did a load of wash in the middle of the night while wearing pajamas because I knew how great it was that I could. In my house, I never had a laundry "schedule". I had extra towels and sheets and pajamas that I could change any one of those and not feel compelled to do laundry right away since there were plenty of clean ones sitting on a shelf or in a drawer. My new minimalistic lifestyle has changed that, but so far, it hasn't been too bad. I schedule my laundromat visits for every other weekend (yes, sadly, I do have it on my calendar so I can plan ahead if something awesome comes up on a laundromat weekend). I can generally get everything done in 2 washer loads (though they do have different-sized washing machines in case I have a bigger load than usual). I hadn't realized it, but even though I schedule the weekend for doing laundry, I think I've always done laundry on the Saturday of laundry weekend. This weekend I came on Sunday and discovered something about Farmington. Sunday must be THE day to do laundry.

Look at all the people in this photo and there were probably 10 more people not in the photo. Also notice that all 16 dryers have clothes in them. I actually had to wait for a dryer. I have not had this experience on any of the Saturdays that I've done laundry. More people means a greater chance that I will run into someone I know, so of course, I ran into 2 students and a colleague on the Maine Community Heritage Project while I was there.

And that leads to a hysterical story of "What Are the Odds?"

So Wendy (the MCHP colleague) and I are both standing (probably more aptly described as "hovering") around waiting for a dryer. There's a nice waiting area at this laundromat, but for this stage of the Laundry Game with this many players, standing and waiting seemed the more appropriate tactic. Within minutes of each other, 3 dryers availed themselves. Wendy took the first one (she was waiting before I joined the queue) and I took the second one which happened to be right next to hers. Our dryers were in the corner, so we each had our dryer doors only open 45 degrees and were standing at a funny angle to try to put laundry in. Almost simultaneously, we both dropped some pieces of laundry. We both bend down to pick them up and we both reach for the fuzzy sock that looks like this:

There were 3 pieces of laundry on the floor, one was mine, one was hers, and one was this sock. It turns out, we both have a pair of these crazy-looking fuzzy socks! AND we were both washing them that day. We had no idea whose sock this one was!! Wendy said she would dry it and if she ended up with 3 socks, she would know exactly to whom she should return the extra one. As it turned out, since we both finished our dryer loads about the same time, we figured out the rightful owner before even leaving the laundromat. As we put our socks together, we discovered that mine had a tiny REI tag on it and hers had a tiny tag with an acorn figure on it. The socks are made by Acorn (I actually knew that part) but mine had been purchased at REI and I guess must have been marketed as REI socks. Wendy had 3 socks, 2 with acorns and 1 with an REI tag, and I had only 1 sock with an REI tag. A quick exchange and then we both had 2 matching socks. So ask yourself, "What are the odds?" If I had 14 days worth of laundry, I had close to 14 pairs of socks in the wash. So there was a 1 out of 28 chance that the one sock of mine that would fall was this particular fuzzy sock. I don't know how many socks Wendy was washing, but we'll pretend it was the same. But the odds get multiplicatively higher pretty fast when you start calculating the odds that we would each drop something at the same time and the one sock would be among the 3 articles dropped. Add to that the chance that we were both loading dryers at the same time and had dryers next to each other. All in all, it was a pretty comical, as well as highly improbable, moment.

11/16/08 Am I local now?

I've been here long enough that I can give directions by saying, "Where the Rite-Aid used to be" or "What used to be Howard's."

When the new Rite-Aid was built, they moved from the old one pictured below. And the new Rite-Aid is enough closer to town and enough bigger than the old one that it was pretty much the demise of Howard's drugstore. At least they hired the folks at Howard's when it closed. Progress?

11/11/08 Second Snow

It may look like dandruff or dust, but those white spots are really very tiny little snow flakes. Up close, they looked like tiny stars. It wasn't a real snowfall. These tiny white dots pretty much evaporated before they hit the ground, but this is at least the second time snow has been in the air. Winter's coming. :-)

11/4/08 Voting Day

Did you vote today? I did! In Farmington, you vote at The Community Center. We had paper ballots which we marked with black felt tip pens. We had voting booths with curtains (red white and blue curtains, no less--sorry I didn't get a picture of that). There were a LOT of volunteers making sure everything worked. You could register on the premises, I found that very interesting.

And look at the cool sticker you get after you vote!

11/2/08 fresh apples

This is easier than picking your own. This apple orchard owner sets up a booth in the back of his truck in the Gifford's parking lot. Since Gifford's Ice Cream is closed until March, this works out well. I paid $4 for a bag of apples that had at least 14 apples in it. I can't eat that many apples. I made Waldorf Salad and gave some away and I'm eating a lot of fresh apples. I bought Cortlands. Yummy.

11/1/08 Don't waste time the day after Halloween

It's the day after Halloween and WalMart is just bypassing Thanksgiving and going straight to Christmas. They were playing Christmas music over the intercom system, too.

11/1/08 Early Bird Sale

Last year was my first Early Bird Special event. I had so much fun, I had to go again. It is a fascinating tradition. I arrived at Reny's at 6:03am so I didn't get any photos of people standing in line like last year. But I did get some good shopping done. I ended up spending nearly an hour in Reny's, then hit the Hallmark store and the book store. I got my movie passes, too. The local movie theatre, The Narrow Gauge Cinema, only charges $5.00 for its movies. And they have comfy stadium seating and a decent sound system in all of their theatres. They show first run movies. If $5 isn't bargain enough, you can buy a 10-pack of coupons for $55 which is $5.50 a coupon. Each coupon includes a movie ticket, a small popcorn, and a small drink. $5.50 for the ticket, popcorn AND a drink? How can you beat that?! Oh wait, you can beat that. During the Early Bird Special, you can buy a $55 10-pack for only $45. That's $4.50 for a movie ticket, a popocorn, and a drink. If you come visit me, we'll go to the movies and it will be my treat. I bought 2 coupon books today (there's no expiration date).

As you can see, Reny's is not the only store to celebrate the Early Bird Sale. It's now a whole town celebration. But I love the creativity in the celebration. :-)

10/31/08 Typical Autumn Sale Items

It's Halloween morning and here's what Reny's is featuring on sale today:

Take your pick--rake or snow shovel. And this is called a snow scoop, I think. Anyway, it will move a LOT of snow at a time. We don't have that much snow yet. We don't have any snow yet except for that one day of tiny flakes. But I guess we better get prepared.

10/30/08 morning sunshine

This looks like a bunch of golden trees, but in fact, there are no leaves on those trees, that's just the golden morning sunshine. I love the view from my verandah. :-)

10/30/08 Editor's Note

Hi! If you are better at keeping up with this blog than I am, then you need to know that I just got caught up with blog entries from Oct. 17-19. If you're going backwards, you might stop at the one for the Pumpkin Carving party on Oct. 18 and think, "Oh, I've read this. I'm caught up." But you'd be incorrect. I've added photos to that entry and there are new posts for both the 17th and the 19th that weren't there before. So just read (or for one entry, re-read) all the posts from Oct. 17 through 19 (9 entries total), plus the posting for Oct. 29 and THEN you'll be caught up.

Sorry for the confusion and thanks for being a faithful follower!

10/29/08 First Snow!

It wasn't very big and it wasn't the first time snow was predicted, but it doesn't matter. Today was our first snow! Tiny pieces of snow (I'm not even sure they were big enough to call flakes) were falling from the sky. One of my students got a text message during class (around 2:00) that it was snowing. We couldn't see it out the window and when class was over (2:20), we couldn't see it outside. But later (4:00) someone came in the building and said it was snowing. Then at 4:45, Grace, who had gone power-walking, came in with the same report. She also said it was really cold and windy. I had walked to school this morning but was not dressed for that kind of walk home. So Grace gave me a ride home which meant I actually left the office before sunset. In the parking lot and on the drive home, I could definitely see the snow for myself.

It was a VERY short autumn. But I think that officially closes the autumn season here. :-)

10/26/08 "more leaves on the ground than on the trees"

It's still gorgeous but to quote my friend Michael in his Facebook status . . . "there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees." Autumn is definitely coming to an end. This is at the bottom of my hill looking up towards my house.