5/3/08 A little ale with that lobster?

I spent Saturday and Sunday at Old Orchard Beach working with Grace on school stuff. We had lobster rolls for lunch! YUM! She had some of this in her fridge:

Well, what could possibly taste better with a lobster roll than some lobster ale?! So I tried it. It's very yummy. It claims to be a red ale and though I'm not sure what that mean, I'm pretty sure this wasn't made with lobster.

5/3/08 Would you like fries with that?

"Would you like fries with that?" is a classic American fast food chain question. But at Tim Hortons, the question is, "Would you like a donut with that?" Tim Hortons started as a donut and coffee house in Canada in 1964. It now has an expanded menu and outnumbers McDonald's in that country nearly 2 to 1. Karen and I first met Tim Hortons on our trip to Ontario in 2005. We went in for dinner and were just plain "weirded out" at the idea of a donut with your sandwich.

This weekend I was in Old Orchard Beach to do some work with Grace and we went to Tim Hortons for lunch while waiting for my tire to get repaired* and that flood of memories came rushing back when I saw the menu. Now you can substitute either a cookie or an apple for your donut.

*Tire story: I had a tiny sliver of metal in my tire which gave me a slow leak . . . I must have picked it up on Tuesday on the way to Dixfield for my graduate class that I teach because I usually only drive on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I had AAA come put on my spare on Friday and was going to get the tire fixed at WalMart first thing Saturday morning (they're open 7 to 7, 7 days a week). First thing Saturday morning, 4 other people beat me to WalMart and there was a 2-3 hour wait. Then I went to VIP, a local auto supply chain store, but they only had one guy working all day and he was booked. Who knew you could make an appointment for your tires? So I drove to OOB and got it fixed at Sullivan Tire near Grace's condo.

5/2/08 You know you're a geek when . . .

So RBF's little brother emails and asks if we're going to watch Game #6 against the Hawks of the Celtics run for the championship. Sure! So he comes over a little before the game starts and we get to talking iPhones and MacBooks (we've done this before). The next thing you know, it's third quarter, MRM (in her Big Baby Davis #11 jersey) and RBF are waaaaay into the game, and Rodney and I are still talking iPhones and MacBooks. Now add Facebook to the mix and there's not enough time to cover it all. He and Melanie were talking about Myspace and she decided she wanted a Facebook account, too, so he sets up a Facebook account for her on her computer which is why we had a third MacBook at the table. My computer battery finally runs out of juice (I had my work computer at home) so I go get my home computer and we're up to 4 laptops and 2 iPhones at the table. Now there's a commercial break between the third and fourth quarters and MRM looks up and starts laughing. This is what she saw. Well, add another iPhone to the picture (it's not pictured in this photo 'cuz it's being used to take the photo) and you'll have an idea of what was going on. Where else would you have a 3:1 computer to geek ratio?

Fiddlehead Ferns

Look what's growing in MRM's back yard:

That's a Maine delicacy called a fiddlehead.

According to Better Homes and Gardens Complete Guide to Food and Cooking: An illustrated Reference for Successful Cooking, a fiddlehead fern is "the young, edible, tightly curled, green shoot of any species of fern. Most commercially grown fiddlehead ferns are form the ostrich fern. Fiddlehead ferns are 2 to 5 inches long and 1.5 inches in diameter. Their texture is similar to green beans, and their flavor is like a cross between asparagus and green beans. They can be eaten raw in salads, stir-fried in oil for about 1 minute, or steamed for about 1.5 minutes."

According to the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, "Harvest the tender little rolls of fern almost as soon as they appear within an inch or two of the ground." They go on to give recipes for cooking them and warn what can happen when they're not cooked properly. I guess these fiddleheads in the backyard are too big.

5/1/2008 OMG!

You might remember that last year, I attended the annual faculty/staff appreciation dinner, held each year by the Campus Residence Council which is basically all students on campus. It was so much fun last year that I decided to go again this year. Imagine my shock and surprise when they announce the Faculty of the Year Award for faculty who've been at UMF for zero-five years! That's me with Becca, one of my students this semester who is on the Executive Board of the Campus Residence Council. She made the award announcement on behalf of the student body. All recipients of the awards received certificates but I was the only one to get flowers because those were from Becca herself. :-) Inside the rolled up certificate was a note that said, "Plaques are being shipped; you will receive yours shortly! :-) " So I get flowers, a certificate AND a plaque!

What an incredible honor! First of all, it's voted on by students. How cool is that to have students decide that you're a good faculty member! And secondly, there are a ton more faculty who've been here 2, 3, 4, and 5 years who are my peers in this category and I received the award with being here only 1.5 years. I am blown away. I am so excited.

The card on the flowers is pre-printed with "Congratulations!" To that Becca added, "You deserve it! Thank you for everything."

Becca read her speech (a copy of it is below) and then after I received the award, she gave me the paper that she was reading from. At the bottom of the page was a sentence in parenthesis that she did not read outloud. It said, "(Dr. Grace is taking pictures so you can blog about this tomorrow.)" LOL! Do my students know me or what. Wait, blog about it tomorrow?! No, I'm blogging about it tonight!!

Grace had originally told me that she wasn't coming this year and then later told me she had changed her mind. Becca had contacted her and asked her to take photos. So Grace changed her plans and did that. What a friend! She got Rod, our department chair, and his wife Margaret to come, too. All 3 of them were sitting at my table and no one spilled the beans.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Here's what Becca said:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It is my honor and privilege to present the Faculty of the Year Award to an outstanding member of the UMF community and to someone who has played such a large role in my future as an educator. This person is one of the kindest and most caring individuals that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. She has so much energy and is just a delight to be around. There is never a dull moment in her class and she teaches with such conviction because she truly believes in everything that she conveys to her students. She knows more about technology than any human being I have ever met. In the wise words of John Keating as quoted in the movie Dead Poet’s Society, I say ‘Carpe Diem’ which means ‘seize the day.’ Thank you for all of your hard work, dedication, and caring as you seize each day. Thank you for being a dynamic part of this unique community of UMF. A million thank yous to Dr. Theresa Overall for making our lives extraordinary.

4/28/08 Spring is Really Here!

It's our first day back from spring break and look what's blooming by the library!

4/29/08 Some Serious Snow Chains

I saw this machine a few weeks ago on my drive to Dixfield but couldn't get to it to photograph it. (It was off the main road and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get back if I drove down to it.) Today, it was right next to the highway, though I did have to make 6 U-turns (are you counting, Lindsay?) to be able to pull up along side it and photograph it safely.

4/19/2008 Happy Spring Break!!

It's spring break! I'll be on the road, so switch over to my travel blog to keep up with my adventures--I'll be on Long Island and then in Fort Lauderdale. I hope to come back to blooming flowers, but you never know. Before I left town, I stopped at the credit union to get some cash. They were having a snow lottery! Be the person who correctly picks the day on which there will no longer be any snow on the credit union property and you win a gift certificate for dinner at a local restaurant and two movie passes!

PS This is blog entry #350 just in "Life with the Mainiacs" blog! Congratulations to me. I personally would never have guessed that I would've been writing this long or made so many entries. And I never would've guessed I would've had so many different blogs. Just goes to show, "You never know."

4/16/08 Spring Frisbee

The snow has melted enough for these guys to be playing Frisbee! Of course, we've seen them play Frisbee in the snow, so maybe it's not quite the harbinger of spring one might think. You can see that there's still plenty of snow that needs to melt, but we're making progress. Today was a beautiful day! Gorgeous sunshine, temps in the upper 50's maybe even lower 60's, blue skies, no wind. Aaaaah.

4/16/2008 Symposium!

A really great event at UMF is Symposium. It started as a single day and is becoming a bigger event each year. This year marks the 10th Symposium. It's a time for students to showcase and share their research and creative works in a setting similar to professional conferences. Classes are canceled for the day and everyone goes to presentations all day long instead.

I'm on the University Culture Committee and one of its charges is to organize and carry out Symposium. There are programs to print, refreshments to order, rooms to organize, volunteers to recruit . . . all in all, it's a big day and a big job. Fortunately, there's a fabulous committee to work with and we pulled it off.

Here's a group of interested faculty and students interacting with students who are sharing their work in poster sessions. There are also paper sessions where students present in a more formal fashion to an audience.

This year we had t-shirts made for all presenters and their faculty sponsors--a first!

4/15/2008 spring thoughts

Welcome Spring. Goodbye Snow . . . Please!

That's the message on the bank sign in downtown Farmington. LOL. It's soooo true. As you can tell from the temperature, it's definitely getting warmer. This picture was taken right around 2pm so it was probably the warmest part of the day. But they're predicting highs in the 50's tomorrow (Wednesday) and maybe even the 60's by the end of the week. Whooop! I still don't mind the snow but I know that if we get to have 3 more seasons before the snow comes back again, I'll appreciate the snow even more. So I am looking forward to spring, short as it may be.

4/15/08 an odd parade

I'm not sure what this was about and this picture doesn't do it justice, but this "parade" was on the street moving ever so slowly in front of our house. Waaaay in the front is a street sweeper. Behind that is a front-end loader/tractor kind of vehicle. Behind that is a dump truck. And not in this picture 'cuz it just turned the corner, but behind the dump truck was a City of Farmington water truck. The street sweeper was cleaning the street but I don't understand what all the other vehicles were there for. I hope someone will comment and fill me in.

4/13/2008 we're a church again!!

Look how much of the church sign you can see now! The snow is really melting. (And look how black it's gotten over time from all the sand that was once on the roads but got plowed up into the banks and splashed up on the banks by passing cars.)

4/11/08 Dance

Friday night I went to the UMF Dancers' Spring Concert. One of my advisees, Katie Rose, a junior, is a member of the troupe and actually choreographed one of the numbers in the show. It was very cool. The concert was a lot of fun. I sat next to Geoff, a student in one of my classes last semester. He had been to the winter concert and told me that this was the best concert of the year. We both really enjoyed the show . . . a lot. There was a Red Sox game that night and many of the audience members were wearing Red Sox paraphernalia. Actually, that would happen anytime / anywhere in New England even if there isn't a game on, but I overheard several of them talking about the "sacrifice" they made to come to the concert instead of staying home to watch the game. However, I never heard anyone after the concert say they wished they had watched the game instead. There was a little girl on the front row who was watching everything very intensely. During a solo performance that was particularly beautiful, I noticed that she was mesmerized. AND she was dancing in her chair. Her little leg would stick out with a pointed toe, then she'd raise her arm just like the dancer did. She was copying every move the dancer made. It was so cute. I expect to see her enrolled at UMF in a few years and auditioning for the UMF Dancers.

3/10/2008 Town Meeting

It's that time of year again. If it's spring, there must be town meetings. Here I am at Farmington's Town Meeting. It didn't last nearly as long as last year's. One of the big items on this year's agenda was the library budget. For the first time in the library's history, they were paying insurance benefits for the employees. Seems more than reasonable to me. Yet some people objected. There were some pretty heated debates in the budget committee and selectmen meetings that led up to the Town Meeting. Fortunately, it was approved. In this photo you see the budget committee on the left and town officials (town manager, head of the police department, a few selectmen, . . . ) on the right. They had the same guy as moderator. He's really good. He knows his Robert's rule of order, kept everything straight, knew practically everyone's name, kept his sense of humor, and got us through everything.

The state passed some law that mandated that certain issues be voted on by secret ballot. Even though it was pretty obvious what the vote would be, they voted by ballot because they had to. The issue was raising the taxes in order to have a balanced budget since they had approved more expenditures than last year's budget.

They have a pretty clever system to make this go quickly. The ballot box has obviously been around for a very long time, but for ballots, everyone got a white card approximately 3x5 that had "YES" on the left and "NO" on the right and a perforation down the middle. So you picked up your ballot, tore it in half down the perforated line, put the half with your vote in the ballot box and put the half with the side you weren't going to use in the trash can.