Maine is Heaven! Maine is Hell!

 Now I have a confession to make, me and my wife have had two yard sales in Maine, and yes our neighbors did know and we did not care that they did. Perhaps some of you might want to take notes as some of the information might save your lives, or at least make them somewhat easier. Once a year our town (like many others) has a town wide yard sale. Some townships only allow a certain amount of yardsales per resident per year. This is to stop people from turning their yard sales into ongoing businesses. This summer was a hot one, and the weekend that we chose to do the yard sale on was one of the hottest ones of the summer; but we decided to have it anyway and would simply close if it go too bad out. We decided to have the sale on Friday and Saturday. On Thursday we started to get everything together and priced. All of a sudden a vehicle pulls into our driveway and two men get out (now if you had read part one you would know where this is going). They started looking around at the stuff

Like shaking a box of Cracker Jacks looking for  the prize I went to the Facebook page for the Bangor Drive-In (which is located just outside of the Bangor city limits, as if it was both somewhat disreputable but needed at the same time). On Tuesdays they would announce the movies and showtimes. Each screen would have a double feature, however, sometimes on Mondays if you played around on the site they used for their online ticket sales (though it was cheaper to pay in person) you could see what was coming for the next weekend before they posted it on Facebook. However, on this Monday my search came up blank, which had happened every now and again, there was no need for panic. However, on Tuesday we received the bad news, there was a black and white image of a drive-in movie screen  on Facebook with the words "Closed for the season" on it. Though this was a disappointment we did get  bonus season time Last year the drive-in closed on October 6 after playing the latest film ve

 I know, I know. You see "part one" as part of a blog title and get scared. It's such a commitment, and we hardly know each other. But don't worry it will either be a fun trip or a quick divorce.  Yard sale season in Maine. This year it started in May and ended around the second week of November. The start was delayed until we got to a certain level of reopening  due to the virus. The actual opening, as well as the ending, is unofficial and is dependent on the weather. At the start of the season there would always be a sale or two each Thursday, with still more on Fridays and Saturdays. Seldom would there be any on a Sunday. What do you do in Maine on a Sunday? Basically breath. Most things are closed, except for corporate run businesses, but the people working there are generally not happy about being there and being forced to provide a higher level of customer service than they themselves are used to. Having been stuck in our home for an extended period going to yar

 A few months ago, as I began my banishment from Brooklyn, Lisa and I were sitting in our living room relaxing.  There is no television as we use it for reading, listening to music, and strange as it sounds: we talk to each other. Slowly we became aware of a scratching noise coming from our chimney, this was followed by a chattering; which I wrongly thought was coming from some birds taking shelter in the chimney.  This is kind of like when you hope that the grinding sound in your car is going to go away. And it usually does just before your tire goes flying off into the next lane. After consulting with my neighbors (who are both my gurus and jailers during my captivity) it becomes apparent that we have a case of the raccoons. Now raccoons are cute, if you are watching them in a nature film, a cartoon, or in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies; but in real life they are the bringers of ticks, property damage, rabies or at the very least some really painful bites that will lead to rabies

When I moved to Maine there were things I was expecting and there were things that nobody told me about. The weather, yes, I wanted to live someplace cold in the hopes of beating out or at least mitigating the effects of climate change. However, nobody warned me about the sultry summers and the black flies and mosquitoes that would form an angry halo around me looking for the one spot that I neglected to bug spray. The love for blueberries was self-evident, and I can understand the obsession for donuts which seems to run through all of New England; they love, I mean really love their donuts. I also knew that I would not be able to have the convenience of a dozen or more stores that were open twenty-four hours mere blocks from my house. Nope! In my town after eight in the evening the streets are deserted as if the inhabitants have shuttered themselves in awaiting a nightly attack of vampires. Let me be clear we are at the north end of America and everything is endued with a feeling of b