I'm Dreaming of a White Thanksgiving

One of the best things about living in Maine (and believe me, there are a LOT of great things about living here!) is the weather!

I know a lot of folks would disagree with me on this (even a certain member of my family - gasp!), but I stand by my love of this beautiful, snowy place.

If you're thinking to yourself that Maine is too cold, you should meet my sister Faith, who moved to Alaska, because she feels that Maine summers are too hot.  (true story!)

We got our *FIRST* snow this week!  I know that folks way down south have gotten a lot of snow already, but here in Maine, we got our first this week.

I watched flurries through the day from my office window, and when I went out to get in my car, there were a few fluffy flakes hanging out on the roof.

Lovely little flurries!

From work, I had to go to Walmart to buy some dinner food, and pick up some socks (when it started snowing, I knew it was time to stop wearing the damn flip flops).  When I walked out of Walmart, it had started snowing in earnest.  Weird snowball type things pelting you in the face.

Weird Snow Balls

Of course, none of that was still around by 10:00 the following morning, but we've been hearing about this big Nor'Easter that was headed our way.  This morning I awoke to a wintry wonderland!!! Sadly, it's rained some since then, and I didn't think to catch a picture first thing in the morning (I was too busy being sad about not having a snow day).  

Here it is - the first real snow of the season - hopefully there's lots more to come!!!

In front of my office

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Let it Snow Snow Snow!

We had a major snowstorm this weekend. Not nearly as major as I'd like (fourteen foot walls of snow were floating around in my imagination) - but it was a decent snowstorm - I'd guess we got about a foot and a half (before the stupid rain came along and patted it down quite a bit). Before the plowtruck came, I had been watching a wall of snow build up against the car across the driveway from me. I wanted to wait until the end of the storm to get a picture of it - it was above the wheels, and piled up close to the door-handle. Then, some BASTARDS went out and shoveled around it! I know it wasn't the car-owners, because those are the landlords, and I was getting their mail for them since they were away for the weekend.

So, I thought to myself - well, at least I'll get to take a picture of my suby-ru's snow-mo-hawk - NOPE - the same BASTARDS took it upon themselves to completely clean all the snow off my car too!! The nerve!

I know, I know, I should be thanking them for their kindness and saving me the trouble of cleaning the car off - but I LOVE the snow - and I particularly love photographic evidence of said snow. Whatever - hopefully this won't be the only big storm this year.

Granted, I'd prefer that the next big storm happen mid-week so that I can get at least one good snowday in :)

In completely un-snow-related news, I got an appointment for my surgery - I'm WICKED excited - at this point, I think I'm more thrilled about the week off of work - but I think that once my surgery is over and I'm feeling good - I'll appreciate the actual work the surgeon does more than the days off of work.

Number One Mom

I faltered there for a little bit. I had the eleven year old in door-slamming-you're-ruining-my-life style tears, but I fixed it. Why did I do a thing like that? Well, because I'm the NUMBER ONE MOM. That's right - all you other moms eat your hearts out - Jessy's in town.

The issue was this: back at Thanksgiving, Asrai made plans with her cousins down in Saco to spend New Year's Eve with them - this sounded absolutely perfect - I could meet Shane or Martha halfway on Thursday - then when Dad and I head down for the Annual Brainerd Post Christmas Holiday Party, we could pick her up and everyone would be pleased as punch. Unfortunately - Mother Nature (say it with a grimace, people) had other plans.

We've got a "perfect storm" headed our way - I put perfect storm in quotes to remind you of the movie "the perfect storm" wherein some sailor/fishermen got caught in a "perfect storm" off the coast of Maine, the likes of which has never been seen, you know, until this coming weekend. The forecast of a nonspecific number of feet of snow was enough to make me say - "no, I'm not driving you down there" - hence, the life ruining. I tried to explain that my concern wasn't around driving to Augusta on Thursday (today, the day of cloudy sky and no snow) - it was retrieving her, the trip to Mass. has been cancelled, since we'd most likely spend the entire weekend in a snowbank slowly freezing to death, not participating in a rocking yankee swap and some youtube worthy charades - I didn't really want to drive down and get her on Friday.

But, as usual, I have come up with a delightful solution. I will just drive her all the way to Portland tonight, I'll hang out with the grownups at Shane & Martha's, while Asrai gets in some cousin time, and then we'll head back up north in the morning - hopefully avoiding the storm of the century.

Perfect? Yes, I do think so. I am hoping that the jet-engine sound my car's been rocking lately can be entirely attributed to the snow tires (don't as me how, I'm just going with the idea) - and not something wrong internally. As long as we have some blankets and yummy treats to eat (in case we end up in a snowbank) - I think we'll be fine.

I think my automotive bravery is going to earn me some serious cred for the new decade.

Paring Knives and Subtitles

This weekend was the last one I'll have off between now and Christmas, and I had grand plans to do lots o' baking. I did not, in fact, do lots o' baking. On Saturday we pretty much just laid low around the house, and I planned on starting my barrage of baked goods when I took Azi to a birthday party at 4:30 - but I decided to swing by and drop off all of Sarah's mail that's been accidentally forwarded to my new house and we ended up playing Monopoly and watching True Blood (which I'd never seen and is absolutely laden with sexy, sexy, sexy vampires and non-vampires - good stuff). I finally made the pumpkin cheesecake streudel squares when I got home around 10:00 - they were QUITE yummy.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day - I finally watched Persepolis, which I've been waiting to see since the Oscars last year - it was as good as, if not better than, I expected - I totally give it many, many thumbs up - it was incredibly well done and I love the fact that it's from a woman's memoirs and that even though it's an animated movie, they kept the original voices and went with subtitles. My second subtitled movie of the weekend was Mongol - I'd started it on Saturday night after I finished making the cheesecake squares, and had fallen asleep. It's never good to watch a movie with subtitles as you're going to sleep - there's just no way to keep up unless you speak the language. Mongol does not get two thumbs up from me. It was an okay movie - but I was expecting more from it - and wasn't impressed. The costumes and visuals and everything were INCREDIBLE, but I just wasn't in love with the story.

Last night, Dad came over to eat some of the fish chowder I'd made earlier in the day - this is where my paring knife comes in - my nice, new, little pampered chef paring knife - while I was cutting up the last piece of pollock for my chowder, I sliced into the end of my thumb instead of the fish - or maybe in addition to the fish. Of course, the first aid kit I keep in my kitchen for just such a situation is in some unknown box (probably in the storage room) - so I went the fancy paper towel route for staunching the bleeding. I raided the first aid kit at work this morning and bandaged it up nicely (don't tell the director, we're facing big budget cuts and I did take a couple of bandaids home with me so I can replace them after I take a shower tomorrow - shhhhhh). That's my big life threatening injury story (okay - not life threatening, but my fingerprint on my left thumb will never be the same).

Dad and I got to talking about Night Watch and Day Watch - a couple of crazy russian movies. I gave him Night Watch for christmas a couple of years ago and was telling him that Day Watch is available on Netflix to watch on the computer. I decided I needed to watch Night Watch again before I could see the sequal - so after he left last night, I settled down and watched it - once again with the subtitles. That's when it hit me that it seems as though I've seen an extraordinary amount of subtitles in the past few days - weird, right? I might watch Day Watch tonight, but, I'm thinking I should probably - instead - go to bed at a reasonable hour because I've got both jobs tomorrow - YUCKO. At least I have a couple of hours between them, that's good - Azi and I can actually spend a little time together.

I'm starting to make my battle plan for Black Friday. According to my old landlord, I should be getting my security deposit back on Wednesday - which might allow for a wee shopping budget - we can only hope!

OH! The most important thing of all - we had our first real snowfall on Saturday - don't worry - I took pictures!