What Maine Does

  It's just a standard issue mailbox.  Cost: $24.99 at Home Depot. Its current resting place is on the front stoop of our lovely townhouse in Stockton Springs, Maine.  At this point the insightful reader is no doubt wondering how any mail will make its way into the mailbox given its current location. It won't. The USPS has some pretty specific restrictions regarding the placement of mailboxes. Poles are good. Posts are fine. Platforms will do nicely. Stoops, not so much. The mailbox represents just the latest engineering/mechanical challenge facing your lame blogger. I have tackled these kinds of challenges before. There are numerous epic fails and very few successes in my sad resume. The reason the mailbox is resting on our stoop is because the platform upon which it is meant to be attached is a sumbitch.  Out at the end of our access road sits a mailbox platform that was built to accommodate the 16 mailboxes for the 16 townhouses that make up our community called S...

  The beaming woman above, about to enjoy her first sip of a perfectly prepared cosmo, is, of course, Nan, aka TLOTH, The Lady of Two Harbors. At this point you might well ask, "Why is she smiling so broadly?" The correct answer is listed below. See if you can spot it:      1.The Red Sox are above .500.      2. Joel just said something witty.      3.There is a sale at Tommy Bahama.      4.Nan just sold her Miracle Ear franchise.      5.It's 2 for 1 cosmo night at Bijoux in Destin. While it was quite easy to eliminate #2, the other choices were more challenging. It is certainly true that the Red Sox are above .500 and playing much better than expected; however, that fact would never elicit such an expression of joy from Nan. The following would be the expected expression for such news: As you can see Red Sox success, as unexpected as it is, would be greeted by TLOTH with sleepy indifference. Choice #2 is so u...

  I have become a crank. A curmudgeon. An annoyed human. I say "have become" because I don't believe I have always been this irritated. As a matter of fact, I believe that for most of my life, in most circumstances, I manifested a more jovial, good-natured outlook. Not these days, people. Do you see the little hair that's jutting out of the top of my nose in the above cranky photograph? That is just one of the many annoyances contributing to my general crankiness.  No worries, you say? Cut or shave it off, you say? Gee, why didn't I think of that? People, I go after that little wiry scamp every few days but every time I think I have eliminated the sneaky follicle, he pops back up like Michael Myers in Halloween.  I tell you it's enough to make a jovial fellow cranky. Trump has singlehandedly raised my crank-o-meter since 2015. Like many of you, I've had to endure about eight years of crank-inducing behavior from the world's most dangerous buffoon.Will ...

  It's not often that I feel overly intelligent. Oh sure I do pretty well playing Couch Jeopardy most nights, unless the category is "Construction Techniques" or "Automobile Maintenance." And, yes, I do have sufficient math skills to determine exactly when I have no chance to beat Nan in one of our golf matches. (Usually around the 12th hole) But the idea of yours truly, Joel A. Getman, of the Dorchester Getmans, being able to successfully complete a 2022 online federal income tax form, submit it electronically, and have it accepted by the I.R.S. was beyond my wildest dreams.  You might as well ask me to build an attic or repair a Ferrari. Impossible. But guess what! This morning at approximately 8:00 am I clicked on the button labeled "Transmit Electronically," waited about 10 minutes, and received the following message from the I.R.S.:   Dear Brilliant Joel, In over 150 years of dealing with income tax filings, never have we come across  a submission...

   ...which is of course a little of this and a little of that. Warning: Do not attempt to find any cohesive theme or point to these seemingly unrelated tidbits. They seem unrelated because they are unrelated in every way but one: I thunk 'em all up. Wordle Woes  I start off every morning with a loss. I am down one by 7 am each day. It's very humbling and not a little depressing. The reason for this is Wordle, the enchanting word puzzle published each morning by the New York Times. I discovered Wordle about a year ago and have become an avid fan. I know I'm not alone. The game is elegant in its simplicity. No clues. No help. Just five blank spaces that require filling to make a common five-letter word. The only help you can muster is your own knowledge of the English language and the way letters work together. I solve Wordle virtually every day. You are given six tries and I get the answer usually by the fourth try. Sometimes I need a fifth try. Very rarely do I have to g...

  I had a great day today. A truly great day. So great I had to share it with you, the followers of these lame entries. I only hope that I am a skilled enough writer to make it clear to you why this day was so friggin' great. If you read this and aren't convinced that this day was simply wonderful for me, then I have failed as a writer. It's OK. It's happened before. So I guess we should begin with an examination of what exactly makes a "very special wonderful day." After all, your idea of a wonderful day may be quite different from mine. Your wonderful day might require extraordinary experiences, new people or places, bucket list items, or unforgettable events. As you will soon see, my idea of a wonderful day requires none of the above. Imaginary Faithful Reader : Joel, this is nonsense. How can you call something wonderful and special if there is nothing extraordinary about it? You've created an oxymoron.  Imaginary Joel : Who are you calling a moron? Ju...

  Ed. note: Avid readers of these lame posts may recall a recent entry entitled "Thanksgiving 2023"... This post was an attempt by your disturbed author to predict a disastrous first Thanksgiving in TLOTH's lovely Stockton Springs, Maine townhouse. It was ill-conceived, poorly executed, and almost unintelligible. Kind of like a Trump press conference. What follows is the actual account of a lovely 2022 Thanksgiving dinner. For what it's worth, the author hopes your Thanksgiving was lovely as well. The glorious sunrise pictured above greeted us on our first morning in Stockton Springs. It was Tuesday, November 22. Thanksgiving was rapidly approaching. We had two days to make this a Thanksgiving that didn't suck. We had flown from Ft. Walton to Boston the day before. I came close to ruining Thanksgiving before it had even begun. I had placed my suitcase and knapsack on the shuttle bus luggage rack as we headed from Terminal A to the Logan rental car center. I was ea...