Sep 28 2007
Has It Really Been Two Weeks?
Holy cow. I just looked at the timestamp on my last post and realized that somehow two weeks have snuck by since then; my last post was about the weather, too, so it’s high time I wrote something. After my last post, I headed back to Albany for a get-together with some fraternity brothers I hadn’t seen in quite a while. This was only the second time I’ve left Maine in the two months we’ve lived up here, and it really felt like I was leaving home this time. As I reached the “Now Leaving Maine Wildlife Preserve” sing on 95 S, I actually momentarily contemplated turning around and heading home. It’s interesting how quickly this place has come to feel “like home” for me.
Other than the trip to Albany, the last two weeks have been fairly uneventful up here. The weather was gorgeous for most of it, but there were a couple of dog days thrown in to keep us honest. The rain came yesterday and finally broke the humidity, but I’m glad I didn’t pack up my air conditioner for the season over Labor Day weekend. She got her first cold of the school year, but it was fairly minor. Nonetheless, it limited our “date night” to picking up a video and having some homemade turkey soup to try to knock out the cold (which was successful, by the way).
One pleasant surprise is that I’ve found a pickup volleyball league to play in on Monday and Wednesday nights. Portland Parks & Rec. Dept. sponsors a wide variety of programs during the fall and winter, and one of them happens to be volleyball down at the East End Community Center (just off Eastern Prom on North Street). For $2 a night, I can go play volleyball and work up a decent sweat. It’s not terribly high level ball, but it’s not quite backyard family-reunion level either. Seeing as how it’s been two years since I’ve played indoor sixes, this should be a good way to get back into it. I did find out about two other leagues, one in Gorham on Tuesday nights, and one in South Portland on Sundays. I’m told the South Portland one is much higher quality play than Portland, so I’ll have to go check that out once I get my legs back under me.
Finally, work has been busy for me lately. Things are picking up and I now have two large projects to work on. In fact, I’m traveling to Kentucky next week to get started on one of them. Hopefully the evenings in the hotel will provide me the opportunity to catch up on some of the material I’d hoped to have posted here. I have two more restaurants reviews in the works and a piece about finding a church in Portland. I think we’ve narrowed our search for a parish to two, but there are a number of fine Episcopal churches around and it’s been fun and rewarding to meet them.