The Maineland

* This time I wrote the post and Charlotte weighed in here and there, adding some comments in parentheses. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think I unconsciously ramped up the "personality" in writing this post. Let me know what you think I guess, or don't, I don't give a shit. *

Day Five (Sunday, September 4^th)

Fuckin Maine. Apparently there are fewer than 60,000 people in the northern half of the state, less than a million people in the entire state (no, I didn't fact check, what the fuck do you think this is, a strip club?). The evening we arrived (Saturday) we had a fuckin great bath in the jacuzzi tub. Soaking in your own filth really does wonders. Like the wonder years. And Martha Stewart. That's who I named my sister after. Cause my mom decided to ask a ten year old for input on his sister's name. I was like yo Martha Stewart is pretty fuckin sweet, she's on TV and seems to really be on top of her shit, she's got all those things she does and her own line of nonsense cooking objects, we gotta name this potential baby after her. My mom was thinking Emilia. I was like no way cause they'll make fun of her! They'll say Emilia Badilia! Of course, my sister would have loved to be named Emily. Oh fucking well. Martha Stewart for lyf1!!!111.1.

Meanwhile, back here in sanity, 2016, we're in Maine. Mars Hill, Maine. We rested a bit on Saturday after that bath, but then we went up Bald Mountain on Sunday with Lorette and Darrell and a bunch of other people who are trying to fight Irving Oil (some Canadian company). That company is basically trying to mine for metal but first wants to change the law (for the entire state!) to make it more lax, so they don't have to pay as much for cleanup, because it isn't economical for them right now. There's already a lot of arsenic in the water around here, more than the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) recommends from industrial sources. If they pass the law it's gonna fuck with the fish river chain, it'll kill lots of stuff living in the area and nearby, it'll ruin some of the pristine lakes around, and of course all of that shit will leach naturally after the mine is closed. Sulfur is also terrible, and that comes from the stupid mine. There is already sulfur leaching out of the mountain from the tests they have done (just tons of holes that they never completely closed). Drinking water standards are pretty lax already in Maine. Lead appears everywhere. Just before we got there, the neighbors had tear gas injected into their field. One of the people working on the house here had to go to the hospital. He ended up having pneumonia, but I'm sure the tear gas in the air (for 36 hours after it is injected) had something to do with it.. Anyway. Then we made dinner!

Brown sugar carrots, rice, and swiss chard

Day Six (Monday, September 5^th)

On Monday we worked on the blog post for New York which took forfuckingever oh my christ. Just fiddling with pictures and spacing took me like three hours. We had BLTs for dinner which were wonderful. The bread was from some dope ass Mennonites, the tomatoes and lettuce were from like 50 feet away, and the bacon was from someone Lorette and Darrell know nearby. Delicious. MMMM SO GOOD YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW.

Day Seven (Tuesday, September 6^th)

The next day we had some fresh ass peas that Darrell graciously picked

said peas

and we made some mothafuckin french fries and potato chips! We used a really old french fry cutter that actually looks better than it works (but hey we still had fries so whatever).

old and shit

I sliced the potatoes for chips. We soaked the potatoes because that takes out some of the starch which lets you end up with crispier chips (british and american (no I'm apparently not capitalizing those words)). (we used lard and they really did turn out crispy like potato chips, I for some reason thought there was no way they'd turn out that great!) -C)

Took me like a fuckin hour

Some of these were hand cut

yay never buying chips again (not really)

We only did some like this, most were deep fried in pig fat :]

I made the burgers (and then overcooked most of them hooray) which ended up also delicious and we had a little bit of a feast for dinner. The only thing I didn't have was pickles with my burger, there was still leftover bacon which obviously went well with the other fried shit we were having.

salad and tomatoes and potatoes from the garden, bacon and beef from friends, bread and condiments from hell (store)

Day Eight (Wednesday, September 7^th)

On Wednesday we finally arched some arrows! Darrell graciously brought out a target they had and put it up against a tree in the enormous yard. We were pretty much eaten alive by fucking mosquitoes (even after trying some goddamn homemade bug spray) but it was a nice time. Charlotte's arm is now so fucked up, she's got super archer's arm (I don't care if that's not a term, it fucking is now). Basically, the arm that is holding the bow has a chance to be struck by the bowstring, depending on how bent you have that arm, etc. 

I hit the same spot on my arm 3 times-C

After bows, we shot some mothafuckin guns which was pretty cool. Two different shot guns. One a 20 gauge, which is the one Charlotte shot, the other is a 12 gauge. Charlotte was intimidated enough by the 20 gauge to not try the other, but I shot them both. They sure do knock your shoulder back! After every shot there is at least a three second period of just ringing in your ears. The 12 gauge seemed to have about twice as much knockback, but half as loud as the other. We were only shooting into some woods so we didn't really see where the bullets went, but they were shotgun shells anyway, so there really is no pinpointing shots. Eventually I'm sure we'll shoot pistols and shit.

yay shotguns (what's a trigger)

For dinner we went and got some mothafuckin pizza which was pretty good (albeit late as fuck – the other workers didn't tell this lady they were just about out of dough so we waited another half hour to get our food). We had one pizza called Almighty Alfredo, with alfredo sauce (duh), garlic, cheese, bacon, and chicken (cause I didn't want no fuckin onions and Lorette didn't want no goddamn broccoli) and the other pizza was named Black Pastrami with (you fucking guessed it) pastrami, bacon, cheese, mushrooms, and a special mustard glaze. Except the lady forget the mushrooms. Oh well, probably for the better (I like mushrooms, but who knows with restaurants). We also got fries because have you met me and also wings. We got a double order because the lady felt bad.

Day Nine (Thursday, September 8^th)

The next day (five months after my sister's birthday), we ran around doing some errands with Lorette. We visited Darrell's mom (over 90 years old, incredibly, who lives mostly on her own), went to a pitiful excuse for a mall (like a third of the stores were closed), went to a grocery store (AND I GOT SOME POPCORN OMG YES) 

NEVER FORGET ABOUT POPCORN

and then to a nice little ice cream place. It was called Houlten Farms or something and they had like 20 flavors of soft serve. I got blackberry with rainbow sprinkles (obviously) in a waffle cone that ended up leaking from the sides and Charlotte got butter crunch and strawberry cheesecake in a cup. It was good. We didn't do much for dinner cause laziness and eventually we had pink moscato

lil sweet lil fizzy!

and watched Juno (first time for me) before going to sleep.

Day Ten (Friday, September 9^th)

On Friday we made some delicious french toast for breakfast (this is me realizing I need to take pictures throughout the day to have something to fucking post for you assholes to look at) and then processed tomatoes. There was just a bucket full but there was enough to take us like 3 hours to go through. These just ended up being stewed tomatoes that Lorette canned for later use, but hey now we know pretty much how to can some shit. 

CAN IT AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

After the tomatoes we ground up some zucchini to eventually make into cookies and shit. Of course, I didn't take pictures of that so you just have to imagine like liquidy green shit, vaguely like weird baby vomit. The kind of baby vomit that might make you question your baby (searching in vain for answers). We also made pesto which is hilariously easy for how complicated the word sounds. It's really just basil and cheese and oil and nuts and who gives a shit about what else, you just fucking food processor it all together and voila! Mothafuckin pesto.

I just took a picture of it so you can see what it looks like. Yeah it turns brown, shut up it's just like guacamole which we also had one of the first days we were here.

Day Eleven (Saturday, September 10^th)

Now I've got a bunch of pictures of Saturday.

So many you won't even know what the fuck

adding machine lol

I'm showing you until I tell you

just old shit

ssssssssssssssso yeah we went to the Southern Aroostook [uh ROO' stick] Agricultural Museum, which also has a barn and a one-room school house and some nice land. The big reason I wanted to go was a presentation about renewable energy for farms and small businesses, but that turned out to just be a stupid sales pitch by some USDA lady. It was just kinda like hey we have this grant money from the government if you want to try to use it. Here's some shit about the application process. NOTHING ABOUT RENEWABLE ENERGY BECAUSE I'M NOT HERE TO EDUCATE YOU GO HOME AND GO TO BED. She wasn't actually that loud, but it was an unfortunately short presentation, just half an hour of the hour and a half time slot allotted to this lady. She could have spent even ten minutes talking about the different types of renewable energy and how they work/are installed, etc, but I guess that was too much to ask for. So I was pretty disappointed and the next thing we vaguely cared about was another hour and a half away, so we wandered around, eventually going into the museum to see some old shit (mostly a wall of tools, holy fuck how many tools can you have).

So many tools, so few victims

Unfortunately they were apparently not actually opened (we only went in cause the door was slightly ajar and we also saw an old guy with a sweet beard), but by then we were on the way out anyway. We walked around for a little more before deciding to cut our losses (they took $10 from us for entrance fees which is fine cause I guess we just supported them in that case). Lorette told us about this model of the solar system this little county has, thanks to the University a couple miles up route 1, so we drove a little further south to the tourist information center where Pluto is housed

U AIN NO PLANIT

and continued north to find the rest of the planets. It's all to scale, and it's apparently one of the world's largest scale models, which really just meant that we missed a couple of the planets because we first saw the huge ones. We expected to see enormous things on the side of the road but Mars and Earth took us forever to find. We passed Mars like 4 times before we finally saw it. Here they are in order from furthest to closest (because it wouldn't make sense to show them in the order we took them).

brochure from idk where

Puny Pluto

Neptuuuuhgghllkkjjt

Uranus be like a martini...

Saturn and the ashes went all over

Jupiter (get stupider)

Mars (last planet we found, first thing I could think of)

Earth (cupcakes)

Venus (shoot for the M... wait I should have done this for Mars...)

Mercury (well hidden between two bulbous bushes)

"The curvature of the sun." Lame.

After reaching the sun (what a bust, they could have made at least a huge ring representing the size, to scale, of the sun!), we continued north about 15 miles to this wonderful little food cart called The Happy Belly run by a wonderful man named Jamie that Lorette would volunteer for. It was so fucking good, between how wonderfully toasted the bun was and how delicious the burger was, shit. I got a big bacon cheeseburger and a curiously red hot dog. The fries were excellent. Jamie had figured out the right temperature and time for cooking them and they were pretty perfect. There were such nice little touches, I'm sure I would have enjoyed cooking with him because it seems like he is as interested in efficiency and little surprises as I am. There was even a little Hershey's bar wrapped in a napkin! Such a nice meal from such a sweet man. We're already planning to go back the Saturday before we leave, this time with Lorette and Darrell. I'm sure I'll stuff my face again and sit in pure happy belly bliss afterward. Maybe next time I'll remember to take fuckin pictures of the food. (This might be the best burger I ever ate, it's hard to say, but at least you know it's so good it's in the running- C).

Day Twelve (Sunday, September 11^th)

On Sunday we didn't get up until I think after 8 which is pretty damn late, but I was like fuck it it's Sunday and turned off my 5:15 alarm (which I have changed to 5:30 cause 5:15 was a fool's dream). It rained all morning and some of the afternoon, with some pretty great thunderclaps. Better than the Thunder Hole in Acadia. We had brunch around 10 or 11, some bacon, eggs, toast, and maple sausage. Sausage I actually ate. It still tasted vaguely like sausage so I didn't love it, but it was the best sausage I've ever had. It wasn't in links, just loose (which sounds kinda gross when I put it that way, loose sausage meat) which might have made it better because Lorette just fried the shit up on a pan. After that we watched the movie Black Mass and then worked on the Acadia post. Holy shit almost back up to present day finally! (Black Mass was really good and the maple sausage was the best I've ever had, and I think I've had more sausage than Karol-C).

Charlotte and I went for a drive later in the afternoon when it was sunny, after playing some video games and sitting around. We drove around Big Rock Mountain, which has wind turbines on top of it and is a skiing mountain.

There are flies on the windscreen, for a start

We drove so close to the Canadian border that I kept being paranoid of border patrol (after Homeland Security happened, they apparently greatly increased the amount of border patrol fucks there are around here which only means that there are many of them just driving around with NOTHING TO FUCKING DO BECAUSE NO ONE COMES TO AMERICA FROM CANADA). Anyway. Here's the loop we made:

said screenshot

We drove right up to the windmills (can't decide whether this is incorrect and I also like the word turbine more anyway) which was so fucking cool. They are enormous. (just want to re-iterate how beautiful the turbines were, and super cool up close-C).

so big

so clean

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure two of them were broken (not spinning), but I'm sure even granted that these fuckers produce lots of energy. Hopefully one day I'll work more closely with wind turbines and renewable energy in general! I know at least one farm coming up has a wind turbine (maybe two, I think they were going to put up another one) so hopefully it's operational and actually worthwhile.

Lorette made pesto pork chops and risotto for dinner which was fucking delicious and we finished the Acadia post in the evening. Anchorman 2 was on so we watched that before beddy-bye.

Day Thirteen (Monday, September 12^th)

Yesterday (Monday the 12^th) we processed some more tomatoes in the morning, this time making a sauce, and Charlotte and I threw together a honey mustard glaze for the pork roast we were going to have at Darrell's mom's for dinner (or supper as they say, which I had decided a few years ago meant to me some meal around nighttime – dinner is afternoon, and supper is closer to bed time or something). It's so easy to make honey mustard I don't know that we'll ever buy it again – you just need honey and some fuckin mustard... (yeah who knew-C)

Charlotte and I brought the boatmobile to the mechanic for an oil change and found out we need a wheel bearing replaced. Woohoo! I remember doing this with my car! It was going to be around 250 for a wheel bearing plus like 40 in labor and I wanted to get both wheel bearings done (because chances were the other front one would go bad soonish after replacing the one that's going bad and would need to get done anyway and we are going to be driving the shit out of this car in about a week) which would mean around $600 for the job. With a sigh we said alright lets do that as soon as we can this week. But wait! How about that rockauto! I went on there quickly and found bearings for WAY less (obviously) so we just ordered two from there for a total of like 198 with shipping. I almost forgot completely about rockauto because it's a completely new situation – new mechanic, new state, different kind of society – but luckily I didn't and managed to find it right in the nick of time because the mechanic was on the phone with NAPA, literally about to order the bearings from them. So anyway those will hopefully get to him on Thursday and we can bring the car in Monday or something to have the work done (in lieu of retiring, this guy decided to just start taking Fridays off and doesn't work on the weekend – I've been so spoiled down in New Jersey). When we got back we mostly hung out, waiting for dinnertime. I wrote most of this post during that time, took a few hours (right now I've got a full five pages of words). Dinner was great with Darrell's mom, we got there around 5:30 (17:30) and stayed just chatting for a while. Charlotte and I went for a short walk outside just to see some of the land and maybe encounter some cats or moose or whatever. Here are some of the pretty pictures I took!

Day Fourteen (Tuesday, September 13^th)

We were going to go to Bangor today (and I was going to stop by this tattoo shop to talk about getting my travel tattoo continued) but Lorette is not feeling well so instead of a two and a half hour drive one way we get to just hang out and sit around and video games and so on. Now I also get to call Sammie's that's like 15 minutes away in Houlton, without having to half commit to people super far away, because that would be so much more convenient. (Except spoiler alert they're booked through October) I also really want to get this tattoo done soon so it heals at least partially before we leave next Wednesday. For some reason I didn't plan to get a bit of the tattoo done up here in Maine so now I'm admittedly kind of scrambling to get it together. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get it done somewhere. Probably this place in Lincoln that I made an appointment for after writing all of this shit. I'm nervous and I guess not looking forward to the pain and I really didn't feel like setting it up I guess, but at least it ended up being pretty simple: call and schedule. Woohoo!

Now it's past 10 pm and we trimmed some fuckin trees today finally. Darrell unfortunately found a hornet's nest, so we had to move to a different area, but then the chain came off of the pole saw

a chain gun saw would be horrifying

not long after that so we stopped for a while. Got a pretty good burn pile though! (I don't know why I enjoyed dragging branches so much but I did -C).

Pretty soon we're gonna be burning some treeeeeess

Actually, we went back again around 4, created another good burn pile. Then had mothafuckin wonderful ham and potatoes again for dinner :]]]

On the little trailer pulled by a little tractor

Now I'm going to fucking bed because it is way past my bedtime and my allergies haven't been this bad in years. Or maybe months. I don't know, I block this shit out, it's worse than being depressed. Holy fuck I wish I could just shut my entire face off from the rest of my body. Shed it even, so long as I get to silently (or, more importantly, painlessly) grow it back overnight. I don't really give a shit if it makes horrifying noises so long as I can sleep.