Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Day 10.294: Halloweened

As usual, our neighborhood shone for Halloween and we had around 300 trick-or-treaters once again. Here are some scenes from the evening - including E5N1 giving out candy having collected a huge bag-full of his own and Exile #4 trading with her friends having been out with them on an extensive spree.


Exile #3 didn't dress up tonight - electing instead to help with the big job of dispensing candy, but here she is as Wednesday Addams ready to go to the dance studio Halloween party at the weekend along with Dobby (who did appear again tonight):


and here is Dobby's nemesis Bellatrix just before the festivities started tonight:

Monday, October 30, 2017

Day 10.293: Stormed

As evening fell yesterday, we knew a storm was coming bringing heavy rain and strong winds, but we didn't think much more about it than that it would make an autumnal mess that we would have to try to clean up before the Halloween hordes arrive on Tuesday evening.

It turned out that we, along with many in Maine were significantly underestimating this storm.

Overnight, we woke several times to loud bangs, incredibly strong winds and lashing rain. After I was woken up by a phone message that the schools had a two hour delay (they were later closed altogether) I glanced at the weather warnings on my phone:

As dawn broke, we were pretty relieved by what we found - we still had power and although there were a lot of branches in the 1 to 6 ft range and a lot of mess, the immediate impact was our bins and basketball hoop blown over and some chairs that had left the deck:


Then we started to hear what was going on around the state - more than half the people in our county without power and more than half of the electricity company's customers in the 14 out of 16 Maine counties that they were reporting outages for too.

It turned out that in the woods immediately behind the house  several trees had come down:


The bottom right picture shows a huge limb that had planted itself a foot deep in the ground when it fell. We are lucky that we were safely in bed and that all the large trees immediately around the house were able to survive. Others were not so lucky - with damage to cars and homes almost as widespread as the power outages.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Day 10.292: Exile #2's Sunday Column #178

Exile #2 writes...

We like to get creative, and perhaps a little geeky, with our pumpkin carving. We’ve carved cybermen, daleks and TARDISes, Pokémon and Minecraft creepers. We've covered Pac-man and Portal, and Game Theory even got a little nod last year. So, I was interested to see where we would end up this year.

I was keen to recreate a design I’d seen, where the pumpkin was carved with just four words - perhaps the most terrifying words imaginable to our resident teens..."The WiFi is down...". Instead we went for this low-stress, but fairly representative selection of the fantastic and puntastic.


Saturday, October 28, 2017

Day 10.291: Carving (but not like that)

Today was pumpkin carving day in our house. We had a good time, with a good collaborative effort. E5N1 had left (temporarily) by the time I remembered to take a photo, so I asked him to come back and pretend to carve.

It was only after I looked at the photo that I realised he had picked up the huge knife that I used to cut the tops off and was holding it like this:


The pumpkins turned out pretty well - one each for the kids with some help (except for Exile #3 who - as we recalled - is quite good at arty things and did hers on her own once the top was cut off).

Friday, October 27, 2017

Day 10.290: Teenagers these days...

...can't even be bothered to use the manual trophs. Apparently.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Day 10.289: Catch the light

On Tuesday morning, I came up from running on the treadmill in the basement (running in the dark is not appealing at the moment), to find the near-dawn light was quite dramatic. By the time I'd found my phone, the quality of the light was already fading, but I took these anyway:

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Day 10.288: Facing the changes

...or something like that!


Because their photos were taken on different days, I had no idea until today that Exile #3 and Exile #4 had dressed almost identically. They used to do that quite a lot until about ten years ago.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Day 10.287: Saco Bay and Casco Bay

 I also had some fantastic views as we arrived back in Portland. Starting with the Saco River estuary and Biddeford Pool:


Stratton Island and Bluff Island, a couple of miles off the beach there:


Then as we looped in towards Portland, views of Casco Bay. Peaks, Great Diamond and Little Diamond Islands:


Fort Scammel and Fort Gorges:


and then, Portland itself:

Monday, October 23, 2017

Day 10.286: Chicago - arriving and leaving

I was lucky with both the weather and my seats on the way into and out of Chicago last week:


I love the way the top one gives an impression of the city and the second one shows how completely dwarfed it is by Lake Michigan.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Day 10.285: Exile #2's Sunday Column #177

Exile #2 writes...

This week was exhausting for both Exile #1 and myself, albeit in different ways. While Exile #1 spent long hours on his feet, representing his company, hob-nobbing with celebrities, company mascots and cart horses, I held down the fort at home, taxi driving every which way and raking like my life depended on it (fortunately, it didn’t because now it looks like I was never there).

One of the jobs I did while Exile #1 was away, was to head over to the hardware store for a replacement for our garbage disposal which, having sounded like a chainsaw for a while, finally decided it could Insinkerate no more. The YouTube videos I found made the process of replacement look simple enough for non experts to attempt. As we soon discovered, however, the videos omitted the awkwardness of unwedging a unit that had been in place for some time, and more significantly, the difficulties of dealing with “idiosyncratic” under-sink plumbing. As predicted, another trip to the hardware store was required to find some appropriate pipework, but I’m pleased to say that Exile #1 came up with a fix, and we once again have a terrifying piece of kitchen equipment in our plughole.


Saturday, October 21, 2017

Day 10.284: Saco Pumpkin Festival

After a fairly slow start to the day, we got down to some jobs around the house, but took a pause in the middle of the day to go down to Main Street for the Pumpkin Festival. Exile #3 and the rest of her dance company were premiering one of this year's dances - a high energy hip-hop dance to an edit of Beyoncé's Run the World (Girls):


We also checked out the rest of the festival - costumes, a game from a new Krispy Kreme that just opened in town involving speed-eating donuts hanging from strings, our last Elementary School pumpkin (from E5N1's class) and the surprising sight of a tortoise walking through the crowds:


We fortified ourselves midway with a drink and a slice of cake at The Rugged Spruce (Exile #2's favourite of the recently opened cafes) and then headed home to get another job done (more on that another time!)

Friday, October 20, 2017

Day 10.283: Home from the trade show

This morning I said goodbye to Chicago:


It's safe to say that this was a trade show experience unlike any other I've had. In part this was due to my role at the booth, but there were other things too. CeeLo Green was there as were the Monster Energy Girls, the Energizer Bunny and the M&Ms. As I sat at the booth waiting for the show to open, the Budweiser Clydesdales were walked through the show between the working car washes and hot-dog roller grills.

Anyway it was a fun and somewhat bewildering experience, but I'm very happy to be home.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Day 10.282: Lakefront morning run

Some pictures from yesterday's morning run along the bank of Lake Michigan.



Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Day 10.281: Automatic blog post

I'm traveling, so I made this in advance in case I needed it. Another picture from our walk on the beach on Sunday.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Monday, October 16, 2017

Day 10.279: Bar Harbor mist

For the last of my catch-up posts from our trip last weekend to Bar Harbor, a little recap of our final morning before we drove home through the rains of post-Tropical Storm Nate.

Once again, we got going as early as we could, knowing that rain was expected. In the end, the weather app on my phone kept counting down to the rain being 5 minutes away and then suddenly jumping up to 2 hours away again. We managed to not rush our walk and stay dry.

The mist in the harbor was quite thick when we arrived - the moored boats, the cruise ship and the tenders bringing in its passengers came in and out of sight according to the mist's whims.



We still managed to see quite a few birds, a chipmunk and a harbor seal as we walked.


and I liked the views along the coastline as the mist created interesting contrasts.


My parents have made it safely home - where they are presumably experiencing some effects from Nate's little sister Ophelia - although far from the main path of it in eastern England.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Day 10.278: Exile #2's Sunday Column #176

Exile #2 writes...

We have gradually been settling back into the humdrum of daily life after the visit of Exile #1’s parents. It being mid-October, the neighborhood has transformed into a wonderland of pumpkins, chrysanthemums, and Halloween decorations. It’s been slightly difficult to accept, given that much of the week has felt like summer, but the trees seem to know what’s coming and have been dropping leaves and acorns all over the place. Exile #1 picked a load up with the mower yesterday, but you’d never know it today.

E5N1 and Exile #3 had a fairly long dance rehearsal this afternoon, so Exile #1 and I went for a beach walk (Exile #4 opted out this time).


Various families were enjoying the ocean, and although I may not have wanted to join in, it was probably warmer than many of the times I splashed around in the sea on holiday in the UK. Many seem to be predicting a tough winter, so we’ll enjoy it while it lasts! Hopefully it will last until the end of the month, however, as someone round these parts is planning to spend Halloween in little more than a pillowcase. More on that soon...

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Day 10.277: Windy at Eagle Lake

Although the rain had passed by the time we'd finished eating lunch, we'd had a weather warning about strong winds and now we felt why. We tried - in vain - to find the parking at the southern end of Eagle Lake that we'd used a couple of years ago - at the Bubble Pond carriage road trailhead, but we could not find an entrance to it, so we ended up (after a navigational blunder) finding our way to the opposite end of the lake, where we found a very angry looking lake:


We also experienced the strong winds, and how effective a few rows of trees can be at blocking them.


and that was the end (well, give or take dinner) of last Sunday - our last full day in Bar Harbor.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Day 10.276: Asticou and Jordan Pond Path (twice)

With rain and strong winds expected later in the day, we got out as early as we reasonably could on Sunday morning to walk a trail before the weather hit.

We chose the wonderfully named "Asticou and Jordan Pond Path" which starts at the Asticou Map House (mid-left) and ends with at the Jordan Pond House with its lawn overlooking Jordan Pond (bottom right). The trail was entertaining - with steps and streams breaking up the woodland trail with its apparently seaweed-covered trees.


When we arrived at the far end, we decided that it would be best for me to go back along the trail and bring the car around to meet the rest of the party. I had my trail running shoes on so I left everything except my phone and the car keys and set off to run back along the trail in jeans and t-shirt. I passed a couple of surprised groups, then decided I was getting too sweaty in the pre-storm humidity and took my shirt off. I really surprised the next group.

It didn't take me long to get back to the car or to bring the car around the island to the Jordan Pond House. Meeting up with everyone was made harder by there being no parking spaces, no cell phone signal and lots of other people cruising for any spaces that might open up. Astonishingly, the girls spotted me and then Exile #2 found me on one of my passes through the parking lots and we were able to get everyone into the car as the heavens opened and head into Bar Harbor for some well-deserved lunch.