Hotels, Motels and Backseats

I have to go on a business trip this weekend. I'll spare you the details. My job has this policy in place that states you aren't allowed to commute more than two hours to an event and drive back the same day. It also has a policy in place that you can't stay in a motor inn, it has to be a hotel, with hallways. But it can't cost more than a hundred dollars. There are a lot of rules. While I'm packing for Labor Day weekend in scenic Bangor, I'll be thinking of the difference between motels and hotels.

Growing up, trips were few and far between. And therefore very exciting. Sleeping in a bed other than my own, in a place I'd never seen before was like the thrill of my ten year old life. Running down the long hallway, jumping on the bed, an ice machine and free breakfast, who could ask for anything more? But then, as an adult, I realized that there is something uncomfortable about the sterile-ness of hotel rooms. Everything is tucked in and wrapped up, and although I'd rather know that everything is clean and sanitary, I feel a little weird. I've stayed in more motels than hotels because it's more cost effective, but it also feels a little more like home. More friendly, the front desk has a cat, and a don't feel guilty if the room service sees my bottle of booze because they would do the same if they were me. I grew up in a house with wood paneling, so it sort of feels like home. So although it will be nice to have a bathroom with a mirror which will let me see 360 degrees of my naked body when I get out of the shower, and five different types of product for the shower, I really don't mind the cheap motel.

Which reminds me, the first time I stayed up all night was at Foxwoods Hotel and Casino. I was 16, didn't drink and couldn't gamble. There were four of us- two girls, two guys and two beds. It would've been very childish to insist on sharing a bed with my girl friend to avoid facing rejection of either of the boys, so I just decided to stay up all night. The hotel room at Foxwoods had the most powerful toilet I've ever seen in my life. It was like WOOSH!

The most momentous overnight of my life was not in either a motel or a hotel. It was that night the girls and I slept in the backseat of the car, on the side of the road, somewhere between Rhode Island and Connecticut, after seeing the most amazing Thursday show. I was underage, and my mom still doesn't know.

Meanwhile, look at the great website that I just found for this bed and breakfast in Montreal: http://www.lesimone.com/en/index.htm

Interlock Wrap Dress

My least favorite thing is seeing something in a store, but not on their website. Or seeing something on the website, and it's not in the store. But most of all, I can't stand it when you see a cute dress/shoe/earring in a magazine and then it's nowhere to be found either in the store or on the website!

My NEW favorite thing is posting things that I find (and buy) in this blog.

Simpsons!

Look! I'm a Simpson!

The Oob

At Old Orchard Beach today, I really wanted to eat a lot of fried foods, then not wait 20 minutes before running into to ocean for a swim, then whip Josh's butt at some games at the arcade, then have a margarita at some overpriced touristy place. But I had one slice of pizza, one soda, rode the log flume once (which is nothing compared to the log flume at Funtown, and I don't even want to talk about missing Canobie Lake Park this season, again) and beat Josh at SkiBall twice, which is unusual.

Tourist traps really work. It's really a trap. I love walking into a store and seeing a million things with "Maine" written on them and I want nothing more than a T-shirt with a lobster on it. Everything is so ketch and cheap! Who wouldn't love it? In Bar Harbor last weekend, I got this, and it was only $29.

Mount Dessert Island

We were talking about the pronunciation of that island that is home to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. Mount Dessert Island. All my years living in this state, I've only ever heard it pronounced "desert," like the Sahara. Then I'm informed that the correct pronunciation is actually "dessert," like ice cream. Although a mountain of ice cream does sound a lot less ridiculous than a mountain of dry, barren sand. The desert pronunciation evolved over time, bastardised from the French-Canadian (ahem, Acadian) dessert. Now you all know. To be on the safe side, if you're there, it's safe to refer to it as "The Island" or "MDI."

Last weekend was another long road trip, but instead of heading southeast to Boston, we headed Down East, to Ellsworth and Bar Harbor. I found a lot of similarities between Portland as a tourist destination, and Bar Harbor as a tourist destination. I will henceforth compare:

	Portland, ME	Bar Harbor, ME
	Booze Cruise with the Awesome	Whale and Puffin watch cruises
	Cool as a Moose store	Cool as a Moose store
	That guy in a lobster suit	Lobster Pounds, where you can hand-pick your live, thrashing lobster, and get terrific meal deals!
	Bars with decks	Bars with decks
	Lots of affordable housing	Lots of affordable Motels
	More bars than anyone could ever go to	More T-shirts and Ice Cream than anyone could ever want
	Serious art in Museums and Galleries	Not so serious art- priced so people like me can afford (including sweet frames!)
	The Space Gallery, The Soundpost	Timber Tina's Great Maine Lumberjack Show, Dr. Wilson's Memory Elixir Medicine Show
	WABI, TV5	WGME 13
	The Portland Press Herald	The Bar Harbor Times
	Scenic Cityscape	Scenic Landscape
	The Downtown Lounge	Geddy's Pub (has a "Jeter Drinks Wine Coolers" T-shirt in the shop downstairs.)
	$53 Average dollar amount spent on a Josh and Amanda seafood dinner at J's Oyster Bar	$78 Average dollar amount spent on a Josh and Amanda seafood dinner at some place we picked from a tour guide
	Maine Narrow Gauge Museum	Whale Museum
	Maine College of Art	College of the Atlantic

Chocolate Oh My Gods

I was just fortunate enough to attend a cookie swap party, where there were dozens and dozens of cookies. I brought pumpkin chocolate chip, but the best ones were something called "Chocolate Oh My Gods." They weren't kidding.

Anyhow, in the apartment next door to my friend's apartment this



was unmistakably hanging in the window. When we realized it was there, we gawked and shuttered, not necessarily because we thought Freddie lived there, but because what kind of a creep show would have that thing out, on display?

With a full belly, sugar high and achy cheeks from laughing, Kai and I walked downstairs, and looked up at the second floor window, where we saw the glove earlier that night. It was gone. In wordless unison we ran back upstairs as fast as we could and yelled that the glove moved to the people still milling about the party. They looked, it was still there, and we all laughed at how foolish and seriously scared we were that the Freddie Kruger glove was on the move.

Those summer days

This weekend had to be one of those fantastical summer weekends that Portlanders dream about all winter, including possibly the two greatest summer pastimes: beaches and baseball. The beauty of Portland is that temperatures hardly rise above 80, there's an ocean breeze, very few insects, and in addition to the nightlife, entertainment and dining in downtown, and there are half a dozen beaches twenty minutes from the city limits. Heck, the ocean is three blocks and a grassy knoll from my apartment! The water might be cold, but we're Mainers, we're used to being almost completely frozen. A good beach, in my opinion, has a bathroom, a snack shack and a lot of Canadian tourists who are just as pale and as unprepared for bathing suit season as I am.

For reasons I'm not quite sure I understand, as a young adult, summer fun is generally equated with the consumption of lots of alcohol, mainly fancy, fruity-tutti drinks. The kind with little umbrellas that taste just like Kool-Aid until you stand up. My boyfriend suggested we take a bottle of champagne to the beach, but reasoned that making mimosas would be a more logical choice: the vitamins in the orange juice would counteract the dehydrating properties of the booze. They were delicious, but we still became dehydrated and sleepy over the course of the afternoon. We were also doing some serious rule-breaking, there is absolutely no alcohol allowed on the beach! Not to mention the seagulls. There was this one seagull who stared me down like he was a junior high big kid trying to wordlessly threaten me to give him my PSP. I didn't want to give it to him, but I knew there would be consequences if I didn't. I continued eating watermelon and sipping mimosa, and eventually he and his cronies left. It was almost five dollars for each of us to get into the state park, but I see it as an investment in the beautification of my state, or at least conservation of.

Saturday, after filling our stomachs with homemade savory crepes, my boyfriend and I were off to Fenway Park in Boston. Anyone who has ever been to a professional sporting event knows that sports fans are insane about their teams. The Boston Red Sox fans can be described as particularly fanatical... "Regular Rob", who is running for President of Red Sox Nation, explains it best in his blog: "They experience unparalleled euphoria when things are going well, but are vulnerable to deep depression when the team disappoints." In 2004, when the Red Sox broke an 86-year losing streak and won the World Series, people actually died in celebration riots. Kid of like Brazilian soccer fans. Since Boston is one of the most popular baseball teams ever, tickets are hard to come by. Josh and I found our opportunity to see the ballpark from the inside without paying hundreds of dollars to get in: the Portland Seadogs, our double-a Red Sox affiliate team, were playing the Harrisburg Senators in a special double header at Fenway. It was also clear to me now why the Boston Red Sox are like the Vatican of baseball franchises, and can pay the Japanese like fifty million dollars for exclusive negotiation rights, let alone the millions of dollars for the contract itself: seven dollar bud lights. I never would have guessed the most expensive beer I'd drink in my life would be bud light.

Like most people who grew up in northern New England, Boston is sort of my city. It's where I took public transportation for the first time, where the best bands play, and usually the major sports hub of the region. People from Indiana have Chicago, people from Maine have Boston. This being my case, I've always considered myself a Red Sox fan, but just a fair-weather fan. It's almost part of my genetic make-up. But since I started dating a serious baseball fan, it was in my own best interest to keep tabs on what's what from April to October. I knew I caught baseball fever when the five Harrisburg fans sitting in the section next to us started yelling "Portland Sucks" in our general direction. Portland, the team and my town, however, does not suck. Before I knew it, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "YOU SUCK!" I was as shocked as everyone around me that such a thing would come out of my mouth... it was almost an epiphany, sort of like, "I am one with baseball, I am a fan."

All in a Morning's Work

This dress was purchased on my lunch break today at Macy's for the wedding we're going to in Chicago. I think it's a very smart purchase- brown and black in one dress, which means more shoe and accessories possibilities, plus it was 70% off. Whitney is going to take it in for me, in exchange for a case of moxie. When I brought it home to show Josh, he asked if I was sure it wasn't too casual for a black tie optional event. I might have scowled a bit, because he quickly piped in, "I don't know. I don't really understand women's wear." Unlike my friend's boyfriend. Before they left the house tonight he advised her that black shoes didn't match the printed dress she was wearing. I laughed out loud.


Last week, it was a rat in the car. The calamities continue. In the first ten minutes after I left the house this morning, I unknowingly left my debt card at home, had no cash, and left my barista no choice but to take pity on my foolishness and give me coffee for free. I then checked my bag to see if my debt card was floating around in the bottom somewhere, and there was a bug crawling around! I turned my bag upside down on the passenger seat, started driving, but was so shook up at this point that I took a corner too sharp spilled my coffee on a considerable portion of the dashboard. In less than ten minutes.

The bug sort of looked like this, and was black:
I was just thinking... you really should be careful how much of yourself you put on the Internet. There is a young man who is volunteering at my job, and when we told him that we saw he had a MySpace page, his response was, Uh-Oh. (I didn't actually see his page, I found it when I searched for his first and last name.) And I just saw on this girl's MySpace page today, photos of her on the job teaching and slightly S&M photos of her tied up with rope (though fully clothed.) All I could think was, Wow, I would really not want my boss to see that on my page. It's highly possible that my boss has seen my profile on MySpace, it's possible that she's read this blog. Although it might be less revealing and therefore less engaging to express intimate details of my personal life, I have to keep in mind that members of my family and people at my job have access to all of this. This is just a reminder to to everyone else not to put things on your MySpace page that would cause you to say Uh-Oh if someone mentions it.

They, whoever They is, really need to add Myspace to the dictionary.

Seagulls

I love the Internet. Posting things like this is one of my favorite reasons for having a blog. I think I've told just about everyone how funny I find this image, especially to reiterate why Justin Ellis is my favorite columnist/blogger.

Josh and I went to Willard Beach in South Portland yesterday. Willard Beach is great because it's fifteen minutes from my house and has a snack shack. Sunday however, the beach was wrought with confrontation. I'm really scared of birds that are bigger than kickballs. Like, wild turkeys, eagles, ostriches, flamingos, pelicans, and in general anything that is taller than me, could out run me, or has huge talons and could gouge my eyes out. However, the sheer number of seagulls in existence is quite enough to do the trick. They're everywhere. I'm lying on our beach blanket, enjoying a watermelon slice. It was part of the picnic we packed, also including mimosas and chickpea salad. Josh and I are listening to the ball game and a flying seagull lands three feet from where I'm lying. And it proceeds to look me square in the eye and stares me down. It felt like death rays were shooting from it's eyes, and they were saying, "Give me the watermelon... or die." I got scared, and threw an ice cube at it. Causing it and it's two backup goons to fly away, only to cue two other birds to fly over. I really hate seagulls.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Josh and I went to the coolest museum today in the middle of nowhere, i.e. outside of Skowhegan. Here's the link: http://www.gwh.org/museum/museum.htm

Could this dress be any more Audrey Hepburn??

Cross out the Eyes?

I just had the biggest blast from the past. Ever wonder what happens to all of those bands that you see play for five bucks at American Legion halls and local college campuses? Some of them make it. As most of you know, I'm a MySpace fiend, I check messages, comments and bulletins on the site constantly. Much to my surprise, the featured band on the site this morning was The Receiving End of Sirens or TREOS, to the real fans... and it all came back in a flash. Before discovering indie rock, before Courtney moved to Texas, before I moved to Vermont, before I started eating hot dogs again...

I was a straight edge, emo kid with a facial piercing. This tattoo that I have? It's from a band that most my new friends and readers have never heard of. They're called Thursday, and their second full length record came out two days before my birthday in 2001. I don't mean to sound cliche, or trite, but seeing them live was an experience, an overwhelming rush. In all honesty, I think it changed my life. Imagine being in a hot, dark room, packed in so tight it feels like you're whole body is in contact with someone else. The band takes the stage, and the music starts- a wall of sound that resonates through your entire body. Whether you like it or not, you start moving. Your feet leave the ground and you stumble in unison with everyone around you- swelling and retracting like waves of the ocean. To your left, to your right, and as far as you can see everyone is screaming the words to the songs at the top of their lungs... but you can't hear them, you can't even hear yourself... and it feels unbelievable. People weren't crowd-surfing, and only a few jerky hardcore/metal kids were "pit dancing" or "moshing." That's when Courtney, Laura and formed a lifelong friendship (with matching tattoos to prove it) before I left for college. The freedom of the open road, the adventure, the rest stops, the shows, the bands, the boys... the first time I ever spent the night in a car was with them somewhere between Rhode Island and Connecticut. Here's a map of the places that we drove, up to five hours in the car to the furthest points in CT. We saw Thursday 13 times, if I remember correctly, and more bands than I can even think about. Looking back, sometimes I can't even tell some of those other bands I saw apart. The Receiving End of Sirens, mentioned earlier, is a band that a friend of mine used to manage, therefore I saw them a lot. Since then, they faded from my memory, and sort of blew up, I guess, so when I saw them on MySpace this morning, I was flooded with the memory of those summer nights.

Coincidentally, I don't think there is a single person that I've gone out with since then who doesn't own a guitar.

I wish I was Japanese

I'm pretty sure I came close to crying when I saw that this bag was sold out at Fred Flare dot com.

I guess I'll just have to move to Tokyo, were money is falling from the sky.

Can't Tell Me Nothin

I'm a little bit obsessed with this video. You have to watch it- I think I have at least six times now... Will Oldham can't stop laughing in the backlighted scene. And Zack Galifinakis is so spot on I can't even handle it.

Oh, and who would have thought that there was a place like this is Portland? "Here's to being single, seeing double, and sleeping triple." Really??