A Day Out And About In Maine

Life - 

Friday was a good day, in fact, it might have even been a great day! And this is on a Friday that we went shopping at Wal-Mart, something that we never enjoy.

We started out simple, a couple of bagels and some coffee, both of us finally off work. We hit a few stores nearby, the Target for an air conditioner, Goodwill for random stuff, Home Depot  had parts for a light table I was building, PetCo for cat food. (The cats have been eating dog food for the last few days and not really digging it.)

Then we grabbed Lindsay's check and headed to downtown Brunswick to cash it. This is one of the perils of moving cross-country. Back in Idaho, we had two accounts, a small one at US Bank, Lindsay's since she was young, and my credit union account at the university, which I'd had since I was twelve. Well, naturally, every auto bill pay we have and my direct deposit is still set up for that credit union account. Partly because the people there usually treat me really well and partly out of laziness.

When we arrived out here, we discovered that US Bank is a Western chain, so we started yet another account at Key Bank. This has been a hassle. They've always been polite and friendly, but their banks keep useless hours and if you want to cash a check, good luck, buddy. They will only give you as much cash as you have in your account, regardless of it being a payroll check. So we left a bit annoyed, unsure how we are going to get the cash into my credit union account before the car payment comes due...

So we decided to eat lunch. First, we hit the Dunkin' Doughnuts, where Linz got an iced Latte. DD is YOOOGE out here, like everywhere you turn and we had only tried a less than impressive muffin from one in a Wal-Mart. Turns out their coffee sucks too. She drank about half and tossed the rest.

Across the street from the bank and the DD is a park of sorts, kind of a long strip of grass between roads, and every so often along the way, there are brick cutouts designed for food wagons. We'd seen them before and been intrigued. After all, our favorite mexican food comes from a wagon. And there was a mexican one!

HUZZAH!!!

But, as I'm sure you can guess, it was run by white people and the food was overpriced and designed like Amerexican restaurant food. Bah.

So we hit up Danny's, a red wagon next to it that had a line along the block last time we'd been by. Oh, man. What a great choice.

Lindsay chose the crab roll, which was really great. Fresh and mixed just right. I, in my infinite wisdom, chose the Steak, Cheese, Mushroom and Onion sub. This is what I got -

 Look at that thing. Steaming hot, crispy grilled roll, melty cheese, tender steak chunks... This was the best sandwich I have ever had. Seriously. Especially for five dollars. Linz and I split it and I was so full I had to waddle back to Stormalong.

After eating our most satisfying and delightful lunch on a park bench in the sun, I got us lost. Pretty much just picked a road that I thought might head to Wal-Mart and drove. Eventually, it became clear that we were nowhere near it, but there was ocean on either side.

Clearly, the ocean is FAR better than Wal-Mart so we continued, devising a plan to finally get a bit of the Atlantic on our skin and also, find something for my mom for mother's day.

 

Then we got sidetracked by a beautiful old cemetery, where we wandered for twenty minutes or so.

Back on track, we ended up in.... A town whose name I've forgotten and will have to add once his wife wakes up and reminds me. It wasn't much, just a few houses on a finger of land, pointing at some islands, a far off lighthouse and, eventually, Europe. Once again, we were surprised at how anti-tourist everything was. Not that we wanted an amusement park, but there wasn't even public parking or a tiny gift shop, just a decent looking restaurant in a bit along the finger. So we parked there and walked to the beach.

I touched the Atlantic for the first time. It was cold, wet and presumably salty. It didn't change my life, but it felt like some sort of vague accomplishment all the same. We bought some ice cream in the restaurant, which had only been open for a day or two for the season. The girl that dished our treats did not have the forearm strength needed for hard ice cream dishing, especially if they get any kind of tourism in the summer. It was amazing though. Super-creamy, rich, flavorful, adjective, additional positive adjective.

Afterwards, we bit the bullet and entered the grocery store into our GPS and let Homer Simpson lead us to shopping hell. The place was extremely packed, but we grabbed our carload quickly, actually got everything on the list and by some miracle ended up with a cashier that was both friendly and fast. Which I had assumed was impossible.

The rest of the evening we spent at home. I installed the A/C, built my light box, drew a picture for R3's weekly jam and relaxed. I whipped up some dirty rice for dinner, which turned out overly salty, next time I need to compensate for the salt in the creole seasoning, but was still good, and we watched Pushing Daisies.

A pretty great day.

Oh yeah, I also got a pretty sweet set of drafting templates and a pencil at goodwill for $5 bucks. Awesome!   (Don't you hate it when you load all of your pictures at the start and at the end of the post, you realize there's still one down here that you forgot about?)