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Lord Dudley Mountcatten likes to nap in the sun.
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He’ll happily follow the beams of light around the house and looks oh so cute doing it.
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As I was reading in the living room the other day, he snoozed in front of the television cabinet.
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So quiet. So innocent.
Until I heard a scraping sound…
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Cats.
They’re always up to something.
😉
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Of all the awful real life pickle abominations my algorithms make me view, I finally found one worth my time.
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The Pickle Sisters!
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This was just silly enough to be true…they didn’t call them the roaring twenties without reason…. but sadly it wasn’t. Further research showed it to be a complete fallacy.
Very disappointing, that.
I mean, look how beautiful they are in technicolor.
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Have you ever been asked to babysit a lemon?
I was.. and can now scratch it off the things I never thought I’d do bucket list.
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The lemon in question belongs to this little lemon tree owned and lovingly pampered by my neighbor who went out of town for a week. Though indoors, it’s a thirsty devil and requires a full pitcher of water every two days.
Living in the often frozen north, you don’t see many tropical fruit trees thriving in my state, even if they live inside… but this beauty is doing wonderfully well.
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If you look closely, you’ll see there are actually two lemons. And while I’m not sure what her plans are for these two precious pieces of citrus she’s been obsessing over for the nearly six years it’s taken for them to arrive…. but I hope it’s something special.
Never having grown a lemon tree, I was floored by the power of their blossom’s scent. It was positively divine.
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Ooh la la! I wish I could have bottled it and brought it home… but I dared not. With my luck plucking a flower would have disturbed some delicate balance and I’d be blamed for ruining the harvest.
😉
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Ox.
These big guys can be prickly,
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Like this one who head butted my husband right after I snapped a picture.
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When they’ve had enough, they let you know it in no uncertain terms.
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And standing behind them?
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Not always a good idea. Let’s just say this one had to do his business and leave it at that.
By 5:00pm, we’d been walking around the fair for 7 hours, it was raining and we decided to call it quits.
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Leaving the gate, we took a right instead of a left and opted for the long way home.
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Maine, by way of New Hampshire….
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Up and over Evan’s Notch.
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A pass cut through the White Mountains.
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Again, there was mostly muted foliage …
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And not the vivid bright colors we usually enjoy.
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But even muted, it’s lovely.
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Two brand new custom built windows…
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Installed and leaking air like a sieve through gaps on the sides.
So yesterday our contractor spent 8 full hours tinkering and tweaking, measuring and leveling, reading pamphlets and instructions, searching the internet for alternative installation instructions trying to figure out what was wrong. He’s a precise and careful worker and wanted to solve the problem.
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He took them out, he put them back in. He shimmed, he measured, he leveled 100 times. He completely exhausted his bag of tricks and still came up empty handed.
A testament to his honesty and character? He didn’t charge us for a single minute. He has a new wife and baby at home and lost an entire day’s pay trying to make it right.
When he hit a brick wall, he harangued the company where the windows were purchased and insisted their representative come inspect the problem.
So now we wait.
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While the other three uninstalled windows take up residence in front of my car.
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And btw…
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If anyone is in need of roughly 120 Life magazines from the 1940’s?
I can hook you up.
Just don’t tell my husband.
🤣
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As I mentioned earlier… the day we chose to go to the fair was overcast and gloomy, though you wouldn’t know it by the crowds.
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But as the day progressed it got darker and we were dodging raindrops by running in and out of livestock buildings.
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During a particular steady shower?
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Sheep.
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Some dressed in coats.
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The variety of wool was impressive and it was nice to find someone with curlier hair than mine for a change.
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But my favorites?
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The Jacobs with their ridiculously weird horns.
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They love a good scratch…
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But don’t tug on the headgear or you’ll get bitten.
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The little guys are so sweet.
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And while it may have been awful outside the building …
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It was dry and comfy under the big roof.
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Because it’s easy and doesn’t require any heavy lifting.
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An old dance hall on an island in Maine…. where ironically, lots of local residents have held their wedding receptions.
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How about you…
Where would your wedding be held?
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When I left you yesterday, one window had been installed, and clearly it had issues.
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Many calls were made by our contractor to the store, the supplier and the company rep, but while he waited for answers he decided to replace the other window of the exact same size to see if the same issue cropped up.
This being our house, of course it did.
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The framing was measured six ways to Sunday before installation and all was well. Plum, level and perfect.
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Yet when the new window was plopped in, there was a similar gap on the side. Our contractor is flummoxed. So much so, he called other carpenter friends for advice, but everything they told him to do… he’d already done.
Did I mention the husband is not pleased and kept going in to help (read… talk the ears off) the contractor?
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It was beyond aggravating… and at the end of the day we had two new expensive windows in the bedroom, neither of which were airtight.
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But hey…there was an extra long shim in place that did double duty as a clock shelf , so it wasn’t a total loss.
😩
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A few days ago I posted a couple of pictures of the annual Damariscotta Pumpkin Festival. This coastal Maine town takes its giant gourds seriously with a weeks worth of celebrations that ends with the most popular event…
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The Pumpkin Regatta. We didn’t go, but it’s so delightfully quirky I have to share some of the photos I saw on the news.
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Definition of a pumpkin regatta – oddly dressed people cut big holes in oddly decorated hollowed out pumpkins and take to the water.
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Sometimes the spectators are oddly dressed as well.
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The Regatta is well attended and covered by the local media.
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A Viking Longboat?
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It’s not long, but why not?
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There was even a gnome.
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I always wonder how this tradition got started.
Who looked at a big pumpkin and thought, put an outboard on that and you’ve really got something.
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Of course some entries do it the old fashioned hand powered way. And from the look of this picture, paddling slowly is not the way to go.
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Mainers.
Ya gotta love ‘em.
🤣
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It started with our contractor being 3 hours late. Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but he was pissed because the windows we ordered were supposed to be delivered for free the day before and weren’t. This meant he had to empty his trailer and go get them himself which cost him… thankfully not us … 3 hours of work time.
By early afternoon, we had a hole in the bedroom where the old window was removed.
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The hole of which I had to make sure Lord Dudley Mountcatten was unaware, lest he take a flying leap to freedom.
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According to our contractor the old windows were installed incorrectly without the proper tape, sealants and secure flanges which would explain the leakage and rotted wood.
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Properly taped, the new window was installed.
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Mind you, we didn’t cheap out here and ordered some pretty expensive Marvin replacements. I expected them to be awesome.
The first one wasn’t.
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Though everything was level, flush and plumb with the frame, the bottom part of the window not only had a scratch in the glass but showed gaps to the outside on either side.
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And while I enjoy looking out the window? I don’t want to be able to stick things out the window.
Clearly something was wrong.
Of course it was… because no project ever goes smoothly at Casa River.
The poor contractor spent all afternoon taking it in and out thinking it was his fault, but it doesn’t seem to be. A manufacturing error… on our custom made expensive as shit window?
Grr…
And because we needed more bad news? Even if the contractor manages to solve the gap problem, our existing sill and trim don’t line up now and will all have to be replaced. Which will be true for the other four as well.
More work. More expense.
Why is nothing ever easy?
😩
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River's world..... 