What Maine Does

  ...Sunset Strip. Ironically, you'd have to be 77 to get the reference. For you younger kids, 77 Sunset Strip was a late '50's ABC detective show starring, among others, Edd Kookie Byrnes.  The photo above reflects a moment in a man's life when he realizes that today he is turning 77. Don't get me wrong. Some people I loved dearly never got a chance to turn 77. I'm actually grateful to be 77, sharing life with a beautiful companion, spending the year in two magnificent parts of the country, playing a fair bit of golf with good friends, and, most days, solving Wordle, Connections, and Final Jeopardy in grand style. So, yes I'm grateful. Grateful and old. Oh, if you're wondering about the scar, it's actually a funny story. To celebrate the recent $83.3 million verdict against Trump, I walked into a local bar, viewed a sea of red MAGA hats, and offered up a toast to Jack Smith and E. Jean Carroll. I don't remember much after that.  Ed. note: Obvio...

  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...