Hey! Someone tooted at me the other day. Someday the newness of this place will wear off, but right now it’s fine. Someone in the local newspaper was complaining about road rage appearing more and more on Portland area roads. They equated road rage as someone pulling around you at a stop, because you didn’t move fast enough, and maybe even tooting at you. Nothing like D.C., I mean, no one pulls a gun and starts shooting. Still, you seldom hear car horns in the Portland area. Well, for one thing as road signs state unnecessary vehicular noise is against Maine state law. And really, it’s against most Mainers nature to toot their horn in anger. They reserve the toot to acknowledge friends and acquaintances. Yep! as it turned out while walking back from the supermarket, someone I knew recognized me, tooted, and we both waved. On returning I related this story to John and he noted, “Well, we have arrived!”
Also the other day, Queen Elizabeth was here. Well, not Her Royal Majesty, but Cunard’s MS Queen Elizabeth after travelling from Southampton, UK, New York, and Boston, and will travel on to Bar Harbor, Halifax, and Quebec City. This was the Queen Elizabeth’s first visit to Portland and it dropped about 2,000 visitors into Portland’s Old Port area. Actually, as we find out, it is cruise season in this region, I suppose because of the cool weather and the start of fall colors. There seems to a new cruise ship berthed in Portland on every day of the week. Portland isn’t a really small city but when you see these ships from a bridge that crosses the harbor everything around them is dwarfed. They are really huge 10 and 12 story behemoths. With each ship discharging passengers Portland sees about 20,000 visitors a week at this time of year.
Well, the Queen was not here but Michelle Obama was here this last week for two fundraisers. She stopped in Portland and Cape Elizabeth. The first fundraiser was at the new Portland airport terminal. It was a good piece of timing. She had the fundraiser in the morning and the ribbon cutting for the new building was in the afternoon.
Around the time all this was happening John and I closed on our new home in Yarmouth. Our few pieces of furniture and other belongings will arrive on Monday (tomorrow). There really is little in terms of repair to the house. It’s only six-years old and has a lot of the bells and whistles already. Surprisingly though, there was be much to be done to make this our home. Our Seaton Street house was small and this house in considerably bigger, so there is a question of furnishing it. In our Seaton house, we had to choose between a guest room and an office. We chose an office. This house has room for both and then some. In D.C. we had one shovel for snow, which a couple years ago got some use, but little for the most part. Here, we are thinking big snow blower or snow removal company. At Seaton Street, John had two major gardening tools, an old butter knife and a pair of scissors, and occasionally pruning shears. Now, we need to think about a lawn mower (a small one, though), rakes, and other heavy duty garden tools. Needless to say, we are buying furniture, furnishings, and tools. Today, we bought a 100-foot hose. I mean really! At Seaton Street we could have wrapped something like this around the house and tied a bow!