10/18/08 frost on the field

It was 30 degrees this morning when I woke up and you could see frost on the field. It doesn't show up too well in this photo, but all those white/gray patches are frost. At 9am, I left the apartment to go to the Historical Society for the MCHP project and there was frost on the windows of my car. Lots of frost! I actually had to get in my trunk and find the ice scraper!

10/17/08 Maurer Meal

Maurer Meals are such a cool thing! Local restaurants serve them to "raise money for the Justin A. Maurer Memorial Scholarship at UMF while raising awareness of activities necessary to improve local community health nutritionally, economically, environmentally and spiritually." The meals are made all from local foods. Grace and her husband Tom and I went to The Homestead for Faculty Seminar and then ate dinner there. Tom had prime rib, Grace had a stuffed acorn squash (see photo) and I had blueberry pork marsala. Who would think of putting blueberries in a sauce with cream and mushrooms to cook pork in? Oh my goodness!! It was delicious!!

blueberry pork marsala

10/17/08 making sure it all works for the grant

Today MRM, who's also the head of the Farmington Cultural Heritage Project grant team that I'm a part of, and I met to get all of our equipment up and running. I purchased the laptop two weekends ago in Portland at The Apple Store and we ordered our high-end photo scanner from a reliable online source and it arrived Wednesday. It's a good thing we decided to do this trial run. It took a little longer than I expected. But we got it all running and the two pieces of equipment talking to each other so we're good to go! Exciting times ahead!

10/17/08 still autumn

There's more leaf droppage as autumn starts to wind down, but lots of leaves on the ground is a fun part of autumn, too. Meanwhile, there's still plenty of beauty on the trees. More crisp, clear, beautiful days. I'm trying to savor each one before they're gone for another year.

10/16/08 The Price of Gas

I bought gas tonight not because I needed it (I still had over 1/2 a tank) but because it was so unbelievably cheap and I figure after the election the Republicans will make sure it sky rockets so they can blame the Democrats. Anyway, it was only $2.89 a gallon! I went to write it down in my mileage book and saw the amazing change in prices in less than a month:

9/21: $3.71
10/5: $3.36
10/12: $3.04
10/16: $2.89

And though I didn't fill up, don't forget October 2 when the price was $3.49 a gallon at 8:30am, $3.48 a gallon at 2pm, and $3.47 a gallon at 8:00pm.

It's still outrageously expensive, but those are some amazingly fluctuating prices!

10/13/08 Maine Monday part 1

Today was a fabulous wonderful amazing day of Maine traditions. I started the day making Needhams. You've read about them, I've heard about them, but who knew I'd have a chance to make them?! I haven't had time to formulate my own blog entry about it yet (I have tons of photos and so much to say) but my friend Karen who was my hostess for my Needham-making morning wrote a blog entry, so for now, you can go read her blog. :-)

http://thirdfury.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/2008-10-15-2/

That's how I celebrated our Columbus Day Holiday from 10am to 2pm. Wait 'til you see how I finished out the holiday. :-)

10/12/08 Gifford's last week

JUST as I was taking this photo, they turned the lights out on the sign. So I'll tell you what this is a picture of. ;-) It's the Gifford's ice cream store and the sign says, "7 days until closing". This is one of the last seasonal ice cream stores to close for the season. They get a LOT of busloads of peepers through the autumn leaf-peeping season. Farmington is just a little past peak now, so the buses will stop coming through soon.

Last week the sign said "apple sundae" which means vanilla ice cream with homemade apple pie filling on top. I knew I wanted to stop and have some of that. But I didn't get by last week and tonight when I stopped in, they were out of that. But they did have apple pie ice cream so I got that. Oh yummmm! They ground up apple pie filling and a sweet crust-like crumble and put it in their award-winning ice cream. AND it was the special flavor of the week so I saved 50 cents. I hope I can stop by one more time before the 7 days are up. I'll even pay full price! Supposedly on the weekend (their last 2 days) they offer "buy 1 get 1 free" so I need to find someone to go with me. Of course, there is the alternative. ;-)

And then Gifford's will close and winter won't be far behind. Sometime in March the Gifford's sign will change from "closed for the season" to "opening day [insert date here]". That first Friday night they have free ice cream. I've never been but I hope to make it this time. 2009!

10/10/08 embarrassing before photos of the office

I swear I'm going to clean this place up. This is about what it looked like when I skipped out of town before Memorial Day. I was planning to clean it up and get it all organized this summer but elected to do Celebration Tours instead. (Smart smart move on my part! Hindsight tells me that I made the wisest choice.) So it still has that disheveled look.

See that flat box on the floor in front of the basket of magazines? Probably not, but there is one there and inside is an Ikea file cabinet begging me to put it together. I better get to it pretty quickly because pre-registration starts next week and I need a chair for my advisees to sit in while we talk about the upcoming semester!

10/10/08 falling leaves

This is kind of a funky photo. It's of the side of the tree. I was trying to capture how blue the sky was. But look closely, you'll see I captured the blue of the sky, but I also captured a falling leaf! I definitely was not attempting to capture that, it's just a coincidence. When I got to school and emptied my book bag, I found a leaf in the book bag. Murphy's law must be running rampant right now. What are the odds of either of this leaf-catching events, much less two in the same day!

10/10/08 Moonshadow

I remember the Cat Stevens song, Moonshadow. The lyrics included "I'm being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow." I liked the song, even though I had no idea what any of it meant.

Tonight I figured out what must be a moonshadow. I was walking home and there was a shadow next to me most of the way. There was an additional shadow that kept coming in and out. I finally figured out that the one constant shadow was a shadow caused by the moon! I don't think I've ever seen my shadow created by moonlight! The second shadow was caused by the street lights which was why it kept moving. As I moved into the streetlight, the shadow was behind me. As I started to walk towards the light, the shadow moved to the side and got very small; as I walked away from the light, the shadow was in front of me. I only got startled a few times. ;-)

10/9/08 Autumn Album Entry 2

Well, this brilliant plan of documenting Autumn every week from the same place is out the window. We had our initial meeting back in September, but the group decided to skip two weeks before we started, so that killed my kickoff. The first class ended at 5:45 (early) but I stayed for the ribbon cutting ceremony and it was dark when I got out. I was able to get this photo today after class but it's getting dark pretty quickly now. By next week when I get out of class at 6:15 (the usual ending time, we just got out early last week due to the ribbon cutting ceremony), it'll be too dark to take this photo.

Oh well! Hope you enjoyed this album of two pages. ;-) If you can't tell from the photo, autumn is gorgeous in Maine this fall!

10/6/08 Autumn at sunrise

Well, it wasn't quite sunrise, but it was before 7:30am and it was beautiful. There are two banks on Main Street that each have a time and temperature sign. When I walked by (about 3 minutes before I took these photos), the one to the north said it was 30 degrees and the one to the south said it was 31 degrees. I guess it could be that the one further south was a little warmer. Frankly, all I know for sure, is that it was C O L D for October 6. But it was a great brisk walk on a crisp autumn day that was beautiful.

10/5/08 Apple Store comes to Portland! (Maine, not just Oregon)

This is big news. Now you don't have to drive 4 hours to Boston to get to an Apple Store. You can do it in 2 hours by going to The Maine Mall (get it . . . the main mall?? and it pretty much is the only big mall in the state) in Portland. I'm part of a team from Farmington that was awarded a grant called the Maine Community Heritage Project. It's very exciting and I promise to blog more about it later. But we needed a computer, so I volunteered to go pick it up. w00t!

10/4/08 Autumn from my driveway

That pretty much describes it. If you stand in my driveway (or near the driveway), you can see this view to the south . . .

...and this view to the north...

and this is the view to the west, or down the sidewalk to my humble little apartment (The Verandah). The Verandah is closed for the season. The landlady gathered up the plastic lawn chairs and table and the cute little grill they loaned me. I have folding camp chairs in the house and plan to sit out there on any unseasonably warm days and maybe even on a cold day or two, just to soak in that view. But otherwise, like the ice cream stands . . . when summer's over, you settle in for a L O N G winter's nap.

10/4/08 storm windows and jackets

It's beyond brisk today. It's still gorgeous sunshine and autumn leaves blowing, but the high was only in the mid-50's. The landlady came and replaced the screen in my screen door with a storm window. I guess my screen door is now a storm door. I went through the house and traded out screens for storm windows in all my windows. I wore a jacket most of the day and it was very chilly in the house this morning. I put flannel sheets on the bed several weeks ago and I'm already sleeping under a down blanket and a comforter. But I haven't turned the heat on yet. It's definitely about time for that. It's not quite hot chocolate time but it's definitely hot apple cider season.