What Maine Does

  Traditionally the most effective way to petition Santa regarding one's Christmas and/or Channukah wishes was to accompany one's mother to Jordan Marsh, Filene's, or Kennedy's, make one's way to the Enchanted Village or North Pole or Toyland, get in an impossibly long line, and eventually hop onto Santa's lap and tell the ol' coot which Revell model one was hoping to snag. Using this method, your lame blogger was able to score the U.S.S. Missouri and a  Bradley Tank in successive years. Not a bad haul. And to be clear it wasn't Santa's fault that I shmeared model glue all over the tank's turret rendering it completely immobile, thereby leaving the unfortunate crew at the mercy of some nasty Panzer Division. Oh well. C'est la guerre. But that was then and this is now. I don't need WWII models, or Miles Davis albums, or blue button down Oxford shirts from Filene's; however, Dear Santa, with all due respect I REALLY need any or all of ...

  I gazed out my window as our Boeing 767 made its way westward over the Atlantic toward home. TLOTH and I had just spent two glorious weeks discovering Lisbon, the Douro River, and Madrid. Now it was time to return to Destin. Still, one thought kept plaguing me. Why didn't I eat that last Pasteis de Nata offered to me by one of the waiters on the  Andorinha, our beautiful Tauck riverboat? For almost two weeks I had been consuming these delightful little custard tarts by the bushel. They're kind of a national treasure. You'll find them everywhere in Portugal. For two weeks I never missed an opportunity to eat one..or seven. Their simplicity is their secret sauce: some flaky pastry filled with a beautiful custard. That's it. No frosting. No decoration. No cake flavors. Pastry and custard all over Portugal. What a country! Why did I decline this one last Pasteis? I suppose we'll never know, but take it from this custard-loving chubby wanderer: If you ever have the goo...

  This is the inspiring and unforgettable story of two people who had a dream. That dream was to host good friends at their Maine townhouse for 47 nights over the summer and then to somehow muster enough energy to drive to Moosehead Lake and pay someone to show them where a moose was. Granted, it was a very specific dream. What follows are the details of those 47 guest-nights and the harrowing quest to see a Maine moose in the wild.  Some of what follows is true. TLOTH and I are blessed with many fabulous friends and relatives. Each of us managed to garner a gaggle of wonderful friends during our prior lives. We added numerous friends to our collection during our seven years together. Once we knew we'd be spending our summers in Maine, we decided that our vacationland was too good not to share with all those friends. "But what if they actually show up?" I warned. "Some will; most won't," blithely offered Nan.  Most did. To the tune of 47 nights between June ...

  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...