Walking it off......

6:13 am - Thursday - June 14th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 54º F, 99% humidity, wind 8 mph out of the east....foggy.

After all the excitement of Tuesday we decided to stay nearer to home, so we took a walk into downtown Southwest Harbor.  This was the first time we have walked into town since the second day we were here.  The weather, once again, was beautiful, and the temp was in the mid 60's.  It's about 1.5 miles to the center of downtown from SDC, and it is essentially all downhill, so there is always that uphill walk in the back of your mind.  Our first stop on our walk was Carroll Drug Store just off Main Street to pick up a new prescription of my blood pressure medication.  

I'm not sure if I wrote about this, but when we were in Los Algodones in April I bought two 100 tablet bottles of the blood pressure medication I am taking.  I knew I would be running out of my current 90 day supply I got just before we left the Grand Canyon in late May, and didn't want to have to worry about renewing my prescription while we were in Main.  I just began taking the Mexican pills about two weeks ago and had noticed over the past 5-6 days that my blood pressure was slightly higher than my norm.  Like the Flagstaff prescription, these pills were also generic.  Now, I understand that some generics may not work for some people and I was beginning to wonder if the Mexican generic was not working properly for me.  To illustrate what I am talking about prior to transitioning to the Mexican pills my daily blood pressure readings were averaging around 127/75 for the past 5 months.  Within two weeks after starting on the Mexican pills my average blood pressure readings had risen slightly to 132/81.....not bad, but higher, nonetheless.  My plan is to begin taking the Carroll Drug Store pills Thursday and see if the average does not come back down over the next couple of weeks.  If not, then something else is happening and I need to visit a local physician.

After getting my new prescription we walked around town visiting some businesses we had not visited on our prior forays into town.  One was Southwest Liquor Locker.  One thing to know about Maine is that the price of all liquor (excluding wine and beer) is regulated and liquor costs the same no matter where you go in Maine.  What we were looking for was a much bigger selection, and Southwest Liquor Locker definitely has the selection!  We found many of the brands we prefer.  The other thing to know is that liquor prices in Maine are not too different from California which has some of the best in the country.....

.....next up was Higgens Antiques.  We had noticed this place the first day we were in Southwest Harbor, but it was not open.  Now that the summer season has arrived they are open every day, so we dropped in to check out their inventory.....

.....I ended up buying two lobster buoys to hang in our site back at SDC.  I've seen these buoys all over town in people's yards, etc. and kind of liked the look.  I plan to acquire a few more over the course of the summer to decorate our site.  The first two I hung over the firewood pile.....

.....in addition to the buoys I also acquired a Maine license plate to add to my license plate collection of states our Newell has visited over the years....I also need to find Massachusetts and New Hampshire license plates.......

.....after a quick stop at Southwest Foodmart we were back home by 2:30 pm.....we walked just over 4 miles.  I spent time hanging the aforementioned buoys and the license plate and then took a nap.

At 5:30 pm we drove back into town to have dinner at the Cafe Drydock, which had been recommended to us by other locals.......

......the Cafe Drydock is a very quaint, nicely decorated restaurant with a great ambiance.  We ordered some drinks and then our dinner....a salad for TLE, and their Mexican Burger for me......the first time I have not ordered seafood in over a month.....

.......the burger was good, but nothing to write home about (TLE did like her Mesclun Greens, Gorgonzola and Pears salad quite a bit), nevertheless, we did enjoy our evening there and would go back again.  Yelp gives them a solid four stars, so I will return and order something else next time.  I guess I should not expect too much when it comes to Mexican cuisine here in Maine.

We were home shortly after 6:30 pm.  It was a very nice two days off work, but now it is time to return to the workaday world for five more days.

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That really sticks in my craw......

9:14 am - Wednesday - June 13th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 64º F, 65% humidity, wind 12 mph out of the southwest......not windy here at all...another beautiful clear blue sky.........forecast high for today is 67º F.

TLE has not ridden her Cannondale F-600 for over a year.  Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon were just not conducive to bicycle riding.  I did some riding while in Yellowstone on the local highway running into Gardiner, but not in the National Park as there are no shoulders on which to ride a bike, and the traffic was terrible.  The same for the Grand Canyon.....no shoulders, and heavy traffic. I rode my mountain bike one time on a local fire road, but only rode my Cannondale Bad Boy while it was mounted on the bicycle trainer.  I did ride quite a bit while we were in Fontana on the Pacific Electric Trail, but TLE had no interest.  So, here we are in a place where there are 45 miles of carriage roads on which to ride, and TLE gave the go ahead for me to get her bike ready to ride Tuesday.....YAY!

Prior to leaving for our bike ride I spent time building a wooden platform to place between two trees on which to stack our firewood.  I wanted to keep it off the grass and/or ground as it rains on a regular basis here.  I found some scrap lumber (pressure treated) to use, got some wood screws and built the platform in about 30 minutes....I think it turned out well.....

.....previously it was just piled on the ground around our portable fire place....it was killing the grass, and getting quite wet when it would rain.  It looks like a lot of wood all stacked.  This is just wood that campers have left behind since Memorial Day weekend.....we won't have a shortage of wood this summer!

We left SDC to drive over to the carriage roads in Acadia National Park around 1 pm, and arrived about 15 minutes later at one of the trailheads off SR-233 (aka: Eagle Lake Road), quickly found a parking spot (this will be much harder in two weeks) and began our 6 mile loop around Eagle Lake.........

 These stone bridges are everywhere

 The signage for the various trails is quite good...we never were in doubt as to the proper direction to ride

.....since this was TLE's first ride in over a year we decided to keep it to 5, or 6 miles for her benefit.  She has stayed in shape the past year, but she has had no 'seat time' on her bike, and that is where we all feel discomfort when we have not ridden for a long time.  The carriage roads are all crushed rock just as they have been for over 100 years.  The road we traveled was well maintained, and had several elevation changes up and down as we circumscribed Eagle Lake.  We finished our ride in less than an hour with TLE still smiling.  I hope we can take a longer ride in the near future.

We were only a few miles from Bar Harbor at the Eagle Lake trailhead so we continued on into town to visit a local micro brewery called Atlantic Brewing Company.....what a cool place to spent an hour, or so unwinding from our ride!  We found seats at the bar and ordered a flight of brews (a flight equaling 5 samples in this case).  We ordered (left to right) Lil Guy IPA, Crack A Bone, Prohibition, Island Hopper (wheat ale) and Brewski's Stout.  We rarely like every beer we sample, but that's the point of a flight, right?  In this case we liked every single one, and we both found ourselves ordering a pint of the unfiltered Lil Guy IPA....to be clear, I am not an IPA kind of guy, but this was an exceptional IPA......

......it reminds me of Ballas Point Grapefruit Sculpin, and only has an ABV of 3.4%.....perfect for an after ride beverage.....

 Indoor and alfresco dining upstairs, also

.....to accompany the IPA's we also ordered an appetizer plate of their fish tacos.....

.....can you spell YUMMY?!  We sat sipping our IPA's and downing the fish tacos while talking about our day.  This place is very modern construction, and has a second floor, as well as alfresco dining upstairs, and has a very laid back ambiance.....Yelp gives them a 4.5 star rating on 116 reviews.....we would wholeheartedly agree!

We stopped off at the local Hannaford's grocery store to pick up a few things, and then were on our way back to Southwest Harbor arriving home just before 4:30 pm.  A nice day spent exploring the carriage roads in Acadia National Park.

We had picked up a couple of beef kabobs at Hannaford's to grill for dinner Tuesday evening so I lit the Sea-B-Que around 5:30 pm, and began grilling kabobs around 6 pm.  I had only taken a few bites of my steak kabob when I realized the first two bites were not moving down my esophagus towards my stomach.....they seemed to be stopped about half way down.  I was not in distress, but could not drink water, or eat any further.  I sat relaxing for about 2 hours hoping the food would eventually continue it's journey south, but it did not. About 9 pm I had TLE drive me into MDI Hospital in Bar Harbor to visit their emergency room.  We arrived about 9:15 to find a completely empty waiting room.....how often does that happen?!  I told the receptionist that I had some food stuck in my esophagus and a nurse quickly appeared advising 'this happens all the time!'.  Before I had even filled out my paperwork she took me back to the examination room.  While I was taking off my t-shirt and putting on the ubiquitous hospital gown she returned with a cup of Coke, which she handed to me while simultaneously telling me to take a big gulp.  I did so, but with a little skepticism......at first I thought it was going to come right back up, but then suddenly I could feel the stuck food begin to move and instant relief followed.....WOW!  I hadn't even completed my admission paperwork and I was cured!  The nurse advised this works 80% of the time.....not always quite as fast as it did for me.  She said it must be either Coke or Pepsi Cola....nothing else will do the trick.

I was in the emergency room less than 10 minutes beginning to end, and then we were back in the car on our way back to Southwest Harbor.  We arrived back home just after 9:40 pm.....that has to be the shortest emergency room visit for me in my entire life!  If you have ever had the honor of visiting an emergency room you know what I mean....usually it involves hours and hours of your time.

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Remarkably remarkable.......

9:01 am - Tuesday - June 12th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 61º F, 64% humidity, wind 9 mph out of the southwest.....clear blue skies once again....4 days in a row!  Forecast high for today is 64º F and winds in the 20's.

We are in a stretch of remarkable, beautiful, balmy weather....hence I am remarking.  Regrettably, but somewhat predictably, the weather will once again turn stormy on Wednesday.  That, of course, is what June is all about here in northeastern Maine.  As Scarlett O'Hara oft said...."I'll think about it tomorrow.".....

Monday saw Tony, Alex and moi on duty.  There were ten sites which had departures, so Alex offered to take care of them whilst Tony and I gathered up the campground effluent for transport to the 'transfer' station.  Once all the available trash had been garnered we headed over to the transfer station.  

We were in and out in just minutes and on our way over to Lee's home (Lee is the father of Rain, and one of the owners of SDC) to pick up his mid sized Husqvarna zero steer lawnmower.  We use his lawnmower to cut grass around the cabins as the John Deere is a tad to large for that task.  Then it was into downtown to the local hardware store (McEachern and Hutchins) to pick up some metric bolts for  Todd to finish repairing the John Deere zero steer.

By the time all that had been accomplished it was nearing 10 am......we unloaded the Husqvarna, and Tony took off to cut the grass around the cabins while I headed down to the pool with a box of 2.5" galvanized wood screws to reattach about 25 fence boards which were loose.  11 am came with me about half done with that task....I would not return to finish it for about three hours.  First there was lunch, and then there were the restrooms.  

I did return to the pool area a little after 2 pm to pick up where I left off earlier.  Once I finished that task I headed over to site 117 to finish the repair the picnic table Alex and I had worked on the day prior......we could not find the correct length carriage bolts to attach the new plank to the table portion so we used some that were 3 inches too long to temporarily attach it.  With Todd's help we found the correct ones Monday morning, so now it was time to finish the task, and then repaint the entire table.

It was now 3:15 and I had 45 minutes to go before the end of my shift....I retrieved my favorite Stihl string trimmer and headed down to the cabins to get those areas Tony could not reach with the Husqvarna.  Todd was already down there doing the same thing so I joined forces with him and we knocked out the trimming around the 10 cabins by 4 pm.

TLE had the close shift so she had come on duty at 12 pm, and still had 4 hours to go until the end of her shift.  I gave her a kiss, punched the clock and headed for the barn.....not necessarily in that order.

For the first time in days I did not feel exhausted at the end of my shift.  I went home, changed clothes and sat down in my recliner thinking I would take a nap, but I wasn't tired.....amazing.  Maybe, just maybe, my conditioning has improved enough over the past 5 weeks to where I can see myself thriving at this job over the next 4+ months.  I hadn't written about it previously, but I was getting concerned with how tired I was at the end of each work day.  In retrospect I should not be surprised how out of shape I was......while I was quite active up until December 28th when I had my stroke I was quite inactive since then due to that (stroke), the weather at the Grand Canyon, and the fact that my 5 hour per day job as cashier was not very tasking at all.  I was just way, way out of shape......

Feeling full of energy once again

.....I returned around 7:15 pm to do the pool water tests, close the pool, and do my nightly patrol of the campground.  It was a beautiful evening......

......I was back at the office just after 8 pm to find TLE already turning off the office lights and locking the door.  Time for a couple of days off work, and some more exploring!

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Crystal clear......

6:14 am - Monday - June 11th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 46º F, 87% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the east......crystal clear, blue skies with a forecast high today of 62º F.....down almost 10 degrees in the last 3 days.  Looks like a couple of weeks coming with temps in the 60's, and a lot more rain....I'll enjoy the beautiful weather while it lasts!

I like Sundays here at SDC.....I really do.  The workaday folks are retreating back to their workaday lives, and the campground gets really quiet.  There is a kind of laid back feeling to the day.  All the hard work Monday through Friday has paid off with many compliments from customers about the quality of our campground.

I have to say that it is so pleasing to work for people who really pay attention to detail.  The appearance of their campground is very important to them, and they go out of their way to make it look inviting.  They have planted flowers everywhere, as well as hanging baskets of flowers all over the pool and office area.  We keep the grass neatly trimmed in all the sites, and there are no overflowing trash cans, or trash anywhere on the ground, and the pool is always crystal clear...........

......each day the water in both pools is tested 4-5 times and the chlorine adjusted accordingly......

 The pool even has a slide!

......I do the last test of the day when I close the pool at 8 pm and text a copy of the log book to Todd for him to review and recommend any changes...... 

.......this campground reminds me more of parkland than a campground.  

On Sunday it was just one armed Alex and I (Alex, if you will remember, broke his arm skate boarding a few weeks ago) to clean 9 sites, pick up the trash, do site checks, reload the wood box, clean the restrooms and finally wash and detail all three golf carts.   Thrown into the mix was the repair of a picnic table which had a broken board.  Since Alex came in at 7 am to open the pool with Todd he left at 3 pm leaving me to return to my beloved string trimmer for the last hour of the day.  By 4 pm another work day had passed into history. TLE had the closing shift on this day, so I headed home alone to take a nap, take a long hot shower and then heat up an enchilada casserole TLE had prepared for my dinner......I am blessed!

I returned at 7:30 to close the pool, do the final water test of the day, and then escort TLE home after she closed the office at 8 pm.....it was a good day!

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Idyllic day.......

6:16 am - Sunday - June 10th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 50º F, 71% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the north.....crystal clear, blue skies....forecast high for today is 69º F.

As soon as I stepped out the door Saturday I realized it was going to be a beautiful, balmy, idyllic day.....the kind of day in which you pause often to proclaim how beautiful it is to anyone who will listen, and they will all agree with you instantly.  I had my jacket off within minutes and never put it back on the rest of the day.

As I arrived at the office I noticed that Todd and Steve were at the pool, so I punched the clock and headed over to talk to them as they finished opening the pool for the day.  Whoever opens the pool each day much arrive at 7 am.....I am glad I have only done that one time so far.....getting up at 6 am to be at work by 8 am is as early as I want to be awake.  We walked back to the office together to get a cup of coffee.  

They have a nice tradition here at SDC.  Each morning everyone working that day gathers at the office at 8 am to drink coffee for about 10-15 minutes whilst discussing what needs to be done during that particular day.  It's a nice way to begin the day, and the coffee is actually very good!

By 8:20 Steve and I were doing the daily site checks, bringing up 8 bundles of wood to top off the wood box, and then cleaning our first site.  There were only two sites to clean Saturday and we had them finished before 9 am.  Next up was the trash collection from around the campground, and then the daily drive to the transfer station to deliver our share of the local community effluent.  The effluent is sorted, and stored until it is transferred to large semis which transport it 50+ miles to a landfill near Bangor, ME.  It is a very efficient operation, but the smell resulting from all the local seafood waste from restaurants can be overwhelming at times as the weather continues to warm.

Now that we have been at SDC for a month now I am now qualified to drive the John Deere zero steer lawnmower, pump propane, and now test the pool chlorine and PH levels on my own, as well as deploy the 'robot' pool sweeper each evening when I close the pool.  I have become quite proficient at operating the string trimmers.  

11 am always seems to roll around pretty quickly each day, and we were on our way to lunch.   TLE usually prepares a half sandwich for me to eat at lunch, which she leaves in the Dometic refrigerator.  She stays at the office to eat her lunch as they do not have anyone to break her until the rest of the seasonal employees arrive.

The afternoons fly by quickly too as the first two hours after lunch are consumed with cleaning the men's and women's restrooms.  Once that is done we either have 1, or 2 hours left in our day depending on what more must be done before the end of the day.  On Saturday I stayed until 4 pm finishing up some more string trimming in the 70's section of the full hookup up sites.

On Saturday there were too many people in the office, so TLE offered to go home at lunch time for the day.  She went to the local market to do some shopping, and came home with a couple of chicken breasts which she marinated the entire afternoon.  My job was to grill them on the Sea-B-Que, which I began at 5:30 and finished just after 6 pm....they came out perfectly done......quite tender and moist!

Around 7:20 pm I walked down to close the pool which involves doing the required chlorine and PH tests, deploying the 'robot' and then covering the pool. All that takes about 30 minutes.  After that I picked up the office golf cart and made a slow run around the campground to be sure all was  in order and it was.  This is one of the quietest RV parks we have ever worked at....everyone is so well behaved and respectfully quiet.  Noise has never been an issue in the month we have been here.  We'll see how things go when the 4th of July arrives in 3 weeks.

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Stringing me along......

6:10 am - Friday - June 8th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 52º F, 92% humidity, wind 11 mph out fo the south by southwest......cloudy with a forecast high today of 68º F.

I like Thursday, because it is payday......I don't like Thursday, because it is our 'Monday'.  While I wrote that it was partly cloudy at the time I began yesterday's post, it turned to heavy cloud cover by the time we reported for work, and remained that way all day long.  So much so that we all thought it was going to rain again, but it didn't.

After doing site checks I went to the 'garage' to pick up the Stihl string trimmer I like and thus began a day of trimming grass in all the full hookup sites.  We call them the 70's, 80's, 90's and 100's.....that's how they are grouped.  The 70's and 80's face each other along the back interior road (we are #78).......

......the 100's are in the middle, and the 90's are on the far side near the pool.  Like many campgrounds I have been in, including TVC, the numbering is not always logical.  I ran that string trimmer out of gas 5 times during the day.....and that was the extent of my day.  I pretty much got 95% of the sites done, and will pick up the last 5% sometime Friday before the weekenders begin to arrive.  

This will not be a real big weekend as most children on MDI* are still in school until next Friday.  After that the floodgates will begin to open, and we will look back fondly to these idyllic days of 10-15% occupancy.

Between TLE and I, combined, we grossed over $1,000 in pay for the pay period of May 31st to June 6th, and that is the weekly reward for working our butts off for another summer, and mute testimony to the extent of our toil.

We were both home by 3:15 pm......I was 'whipped' as they say, but it felt like a good 'whipped'.   I changed my clothes and sat down in my recliner for an hour before getting up to take another long, hot shower.  I tell TLE that when I wake up in the middle of the night with stiff, sore fingers it makes me happy.  I really missed working outside the last year.  Every day I am a little less sore, and can see my endurance increasing slowly, but surely.

Around 5:15 I turned on the Sea-B-Que BBQ to grill a petite filet mignon for dinner.   This one had been aging for about a week in the fridge and it time to reap the reward!  My system is to put the filet on the grill for 2 minutes to sear the first side, then turn it and sear the second side.  I leave it on the second side for 6 minutes, then turn it back over to the first side for another 4 minutes for a total of 12 minutes.  If the steak is thicker then I will probably do 7 minutes on each side, or more.  It comes out perfect every single time.......

 Grilling perfection!

 Time to dig in....

.....I then hand over the steak to TLE who lets it 'rest' for about 5 minutes, and then dinner is served!  On this night she prepared some hollandaise sauce for the asparagus and broccoli sides, as well as a baked potato......it was all delicious, and I cherished every single bite......

I mopped up the excess hollandaise sauce with the filet

......I am still thinking about that filet as I write today's missive....yum!  We were in bed by 10 pm looking forward to another day in northeast Maine.....thanks for stopping by!

*MDI = Mount Desert Island

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Friends......

6:14 am - Thursday - June 7th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 51º F, 100% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the southwest - partly cloudy skies with a forecast high today of 56º F.....a beautiful day today after almost 3 solid days of heavy cloud cover and just shy of 2 days of rain.

It was still raining when we woke up Wednesday morning, but it finally came to an end about 8 am.  We had planned to go hiking, but knew the foliage everywhere would be wet and that is not very conducive to hiking on a cold, heavily overcast day so we decided to stay home and do some chores like laundry, like dumping the black tank, like pulling up dandelions in our site, like finally cleaning the bugs off the windshield on the Newell.....we've only been stationary 3.5 weeks now, like reorganize your sock drawer......etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.....there are always chores to do, right?

That was pretty much our day, and sometimes you need a day like Wednesday.  We only had one obligation on Wednesday.....to meetup with our SDC friends and co-workers Steve and Tony and their spouses for dinner at Seafood Ketch over in Bass Harbor.  It is a favorite of Steve's (he lives right next door) and so even though Yelp gave them a tepid 3.5 stars we went on his recommendation........

Left to right: Moi, Janet, Tony, Steve, Lois and TLE

.....we arrived for dinner at 5:30 pm followed closely by Steve, Tony and their wives.  We had a nice corner table with a view of Bass Harbor, and what do you know?  The sun finally made an appearance!  In the month of June they run a daily special offering 5 different entrees.  You pick 2 entrees for $30 total and they also include a bottle of wine!  TLE and I both ordered their fried shrimp and loved every single bite.....a bottle of Chardonnay was included.

We sat talking and laughing until almost 8 pm before we called it a night and headed for home.  What a great evening with good friends!  TLE and I would give Seafood Ketch a solid 4 stars.....I'm really glad we went.

Thank for stopping by!

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Flying Solo......

7:43 am - Wednesday - June 6th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 48º F, 96% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the northeast.....heavy cloud cover, no rain (finally) and a forecast high for today of 57º F.   It just stopped raining about 30 minutes ago after raining continuously for 44 hours.  Fortunately it was a gentle rain....never really poured.

We were not out of bed until after 8 am Tuesday......just because we could.  It rained all night Monday night, and was still raining Tuesday morning.....never hard....never loud......just a gentle, rhythmic pitter patter on the roof.  We love falling asleep to the sound of rain on our riveted aircraft aluminum roof!

We lazed around most of the morning thinking it would stop raining late morning, but it never stopped.  We wanted to drive into Bangor (pronounced Ban-GOR by the locals) to see a movie......seemed like the thing to do on a wet and cold June day.  We were hoping it would stop raining for the 52 mile drive, but it never did so we were off driving in the rain to Bangor a little after 11 am.  The movie we wished to see had a start time of 1:45 pm, but we were concerned about the rain causing traffic to be worse than normal....it wasn't, and we arrived at the movie theater (Hollywood Cinemas) a little after 12 pm....okay....an hour and 45 minutes until the movie begins.....what to do?

I had mentioned to TLE that I was not happy with the performance of our windshield wipers, and would like to replace them.....well, there was an O'Reilly Auto Parts store right across the street so we pulled in there and I went in to get some new wipers.  They had two brands of wipers......Bosch and the 'other' brand I had purchased a couple of years before and never ever really liked.  The Bosch are twice as expensive at $16 and change per wiper (over $33 with tax for two), but I decided to splurge for a change and went for the Bosch Pure Vision ones.....

.....I don't know about you, but I never look forward to changing my wipers as the installation of same is never intuitive.  It always takes me about 15 minutes to figure out how to get the old ones off, and the new ones on, which by the way, have a totally different way to be attached than the old ones.  So, here I was in the O'Reilly parking lot in a gentle rain, with poor lighting trying to install the new wipers.  Of course, they give you 5 different attachment clips (4 in a plastic bag, and one already attached to the new wiper), none of which look remotely like the one on your old wipers.  On the box it says "Quick and Easy Installation"....that is the first clue that it will be anything but "QUICK" or EASY".  It is always the same.....I struggle for about 15 minutes to install the first wiper, and then suddenly I see how it works, and wonder why on earth it took me so long.  The second one goes on in a flash and you are back in the car out of the rain muttering to yourself.  If you ever begin to feel really good about your intellect, and really sure you've got your stuff together just buy some new windshield wipers and try to install them in less than 15 minutes.....you will be quickly humbled, and wonder how you ever made it to the age of 68.5 years.

 Too many choices.....

Installed!

So, now it was around 12:30 and we still had over an hour until movie time.....well, right next door to O'Reilly was a Tim Horton's so we went inside to get a cup of coffee, and for me a couple of sour cream glazed donuts.....yum!  By the time we finished with our coffee it was moving on to 1:20 pm so we drove back across the street to buy our tickets to the movie.....

.....which was (drum roll) .....'Solo: A Star Wars Story'!!  We lucked out in that it was $3 Tuesday, so it only cost us $6.  I've seen every Star Wars movie, so in spite of the negative reviews I had been reading I wanted to see it anyway, and we are both glad we did, because we loved it.  I didn't realize until the credits at the end of the movie that Ron Howard had directed it.  I have liked all of his movies.  So, don't let the reviewers deter you from seeing Solo.....this movie fills in a lot of blanks regarding Han Solo, and I thought the story was well told.  I didn't pick up on any political, or social preaching that the 'reviewers' complained about.  To us it was just a an afternoon spent visiting with old friends and coming away with a smile on our faces.  The movie is exactly 2 hours and 16 minutes, and we were walking back to our car a few minutes after 4 pm.

The drive home in the ever present rain went a little faster than the drive into Bangor, and we were home at almost exactly 5 pm.....by the by.....the new wipers worked wonderfully!  We didn't do a whole lot on our day off from work, but it was just perfect for a rainy day.  Wednesday promises to be dryer, and I am sure there will be some new ground explored.....stay tuned!

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