This evening’s entertainment features … Uncle! At 7pm at the University of Maine at Machias, Unc and his poetry group appear as the “Salt Coast Sages.” It’s the group that he has taken classes with for about the last three years. Frank, Berta and I heard them read from their work last April at […]
Frank used to play Solitaire on the computer. Now he does sudoku. His favorite site is websudoku.com. He learned about sudoku last Labor Day at Star Island’s Pelican reunion, when Annie, Lynn and John Stewart gave him his first puzzles. But here’s what I don’t understand. He’s still playing ‘easy’ on the website. Last time […]
This morning the thermometer read -1.5 by the time we finished at 6am. Brrr indeed. It’s been the coldest morning yet, a good 8 or 9 degrees colder than any previous for delivering the papers. Tomorrow promises to be similar. It was a face-biting cold, so scarves were in order.
That said, I can remember much […]
Sniff, sniff, sneeze, sneeze. Nobody wants what I’ve got. It’s not about having something, but rather living with it … the slightest chill or change in a few degrees’ temperature gets me sneezing. Incessantly, too. Then the sneezing gets me completely blurpy, and the rest of the day is history.
I’m having one of those days. […]
We are thrilled to report that we have received a “save-the-date” announcement for Sept. 16 in Chestertown, Md., the Eastern Shore (Kent County) destination where Gail Cooper and Carl Stahle will be married. We knew this was coming up since her Christmas letter indicated a recent engagement (after nearly three years together).
Gail, of course, […]
Maybe it’s not the cat that’s so dumb, but rather my intention to write about the cat for this blog. Things really must be just so mundane and routine around here.
“Bunny” is really not a dumb cat. She has all the normal cat behaviors. What’s aggravating though is her constant angst about whether she […]
Frank says that anyone needing mitten repair should say so. All family mittens have now gone through three winters, and holes that emerge and grow larger can be fixed easily. Just send them this way, and he’ll apply his knitting magic.
My grey mittens recently developed holes in both of them. Then again, I am a […]
Frank — a lifelong devotee of “the comics” — made the observation on Monday, President’s Day, that “Blondie” has gone political for the first time he can ever remember.
Reading the paper with the dog beside him in the chair, Dagwood says: “It says President Bush is putting together his new budget proposal for Iraq […]
We had the pleasure of going Saturday evening to yet another church supper — read about it here. It was a lasagna dinner and “time and talent” auction for a Machias couple that is going to rebuild Hurricane Katrina-damaged homes in Biloxi, Mississippi.
A good time was had by all. One of the church members in […]
Sunday morning was cold — 0.7 degrees in fact. Good thing Frank and I were snug in bed and not out delivering papers. Sunday is our one day off when we can sleep “late.” (Frank thinks 6am is “late”). Sunday’s 0.7 degrees was the coldest temperature we’ve had so far this winter.
We feared for another […]
Now we know that our Frank Cassidy leans toward good form (as well as the formal), but we just don’t see how he managed to refrain from doing the Victory Dance (where one punches the air with the No. 1 sign repeatedly, arms alternating) in the courthouse hallway after winning his case. Yes, dear audience, […]
Frank has had a jury trial yesterday (Thursday) and today in Washington County Superior Court. So he must appear in his very best three-piece suits. Yesterday he wore his gray suit and this morning, he’s going off in his navy suit.
But the other person who must appear his best is his client, the defendant. Frank […]
The Machias Historical Society held its monthly meeting last night. (Honest, that’s how things get reported in the local weekly around here). There were 16 members and two speakers, both University of Maine at Machias professors (history and anthropology) who gave a very engaging talk on the “lost” black Atusville community all but forgotten in […]
The Chocolate Fling on Valentine’s Day has come and gone — and I mostly missed it. Frank was there for the duration, however, from setting up at 3pm to cleaning up at 10 pm. I think several board members were there that long, too — and all of them had already worked a full day […]
You can’t trust all those mostly female, mostly elderly neighbors up on Cooper Street. Frank happens to shovel three front stoops or porches on the morning of the foot-high snow, and two days later, everyone’s talking about it. Last night at the Chocolate Fling (see entry above) two women who live on North Street — […]
Wouldn’t you know it … with foot-high snow for our Monday paper delivery, and drifting higher in some places, Frank took a bit longer on Cooper Street. He has nine houses there, and some of them happened to have shovels on the front porch. So after putting the paper between the doors, he ended up […]
Frank has sewn himself another bow tie — this one a fanciful one with doodles of red valentines outlined in black against white. This is the newest addition to his holiday and seasonal collection. He also has shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day, American flags for the Fourth of July, and appropriate Christmas ties for Christmas. […]
At the church supper held three days before Valentine’s Day, the bonus during dessert (pumpkin pie for Frank, blueberry pie for me) was an impromptu performance of the barbershop-like Clam Flats — but eight men rather than a quartet. They passed out words and played the piano for the sing-along part:
Let me call you […]
Two hours to go until we can head over to the Centre Street Congregational Church for the best public supper in the world. They set the tables for 100 people on the second Saturday of every month, from October through March or April. We have gone each of the three winters we have been […]
We pondered something this morning as we delivered our papers: How will we work out the five or six days of delivery during Camp Cassidy in July? Chances are slim that, on all five days, all three campers will be bright-eyed enough to rise at 4:06 and be busy alongside us for the next two […]
“Eggs and Issues” — a clever name for a breakfast gathering, until you realize that Chambers of Commerce across the country all refer to their monthly “Eggs and Issues” meetings as such.
This one for the Machias Bay Area Chamber of Commerce — second Thursday of the month — was especially good. The Next Step, […]
One of our unexpected delights so far in 2006 has been the grandmother clock that Frank found in Portsmouth in early January. We were returning from Brooklyn, having parked in Portsmouth and taken a bus to the train in Boston. We did a quick detour into town to the consignment furniture shop we discovered a […]
We have good news from Down Below. The “Lobsterbacks” — the red-coated soldiers from Massachusetts who attended the first Margaretta Days as reenactors of the British in Revolutionary War times — have agreed to return for the second Margaretta Days.
It was a fingers-crossed moment when I opened the email from the contact for the group […]
What, my growing audience of, now, 4 has expectations of entries daily? Goodness - not sure there is enough news of interest beyond our abode each day. But we shall try.
There we were in Best Buy, one day before Super Bowl Sunday. We have no television. We generally like our life without television, but we thought we would check out Life With Television.
We came away without buying — or even coming close to any decisions. You see, it’s not TV that we want and miss. […]
Yesterday was scary - 37 degrees at 5am, when we delivered our papers. The day before was almost as bad, 35 degrees. I mean, what’s with February? Where’s the cold, the snow, the wind? “Wait until February” were Frank’s words of warning back in December and January, when I kept repeating just how mild a […]
Yes, hello world! This is our first-ever post on our first-ever blog. How absolutely self-indulgent. Whether I generate an audience beyond my parents will be a thing to watch. Even Frank isn’t sure why “we” are doing this: “What’s a blog?,” was his question, once I told him that Bobby had prepared a blog for […]