Tonight concludes my first weekend in Maine, and what a weekend it was. Friday was the closest thing I've had to a full day's work so far on this trip. The weather cooperated, and we got a lot done at work. The parts we've been waiting on have arrived, so we don't have that holding us up.
Friday evening I headed down to the big city of Portland (remember, Waco is bigger than Portland) for a swing dance that I had found out about online.
http://www.downeastdance.net/calendar.htm#two
It was advertised as a west coast swing dance, and since I've never danced west coast swing, I thought it would be fun to learn something new. West coast swing seemed to me like a combination of the lindy hop and latin/salsa danced to mostly hip-hop sounding music. The step count was similar to lindy, but you move your hips like salsa. The lesson was fun, and I picked up on it pretty quickly, but I didn't really care for the music. We learned five different moves over the course of an hour, rotating partners every couple of minutes. The size and make-up of the crowd surprised me. There were maybe 20 people there, and mostly older (middle age and up). There was one girl there that was in college and another that looked like she was around 30. Needless to say, I felt a little out of place. I danced for about an hour, and then decided to head back up I-295 since I had a early morning at work on Saturday. On the plus side, I found out about another swing dance next Friday at the same place (east coast swing this time around) and a lindy hop workshop on March 1st in Brunswick if I'm still in town.
On Saturday we only worked a half day because we reached a point where we needed the parts that were in the mail, and they arrived later in the day on Saturday. I spent the afternoon walking around on Maine Street where I stopped for some lunch at a deli and then grabbed some coffee at The Little Dog Coffee Shop (one of the 3 or 4 coffee shops on Maine Street). While at the deli, I was reading about this thing that Brunswick is having called Longfellow Days. Apparently, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an 1825 graduate from the local Bowdoin College (pronounced boh-din). After a little time back in the hotel room, I headed back downtown for some dinner. I enjoyed a meatball sub with homemade meatballs at The Big Top Deli.
http://www.bigtopdeli.com/
It was very good, and I'll be going back soon to try out their pizza, since that's what everyone else was eating when I was there. After dinner I went to the Gelato Fiasco (mentioned in a previous post) for some of their drinking chocolate, which is similar to hot chocolate, only much richer. While enjoying my drinking chocolate and reading a local paper, the front end of what was supposed to be a severe snow storm arrived. Fortunately, I was able to make it back to the hotel before it got too bad (as I had walked there from the hotel). After talking with my little brother on the phone, I stretched out on the bed to watch a little TV, and then it was 8:00 Sunday morning. I had passed out and slept for about 10 hours. It was really nice, except that I still had my contacts in (drat!).
Because of the predicted snow storm, the church that I was wanting to go to (The Rock Church of Portland) had postponed their service until 12:30pm. This turned out to be unnecessary, since the storm wasn't quite as heavy as predicted. I used this extra time to sleep in, and I stopped off for some Denny's on the way, and I still ended up getting there about 30 minutes early. This gave me some time to chat with some of the people at the church before the service started. The church was a bit smaller than I had anticipated. It turns out that they only have about a hundred members, but I really enjoyed the service and the company of the people I met. The associate pastor (Aric) preached today while the senior pastor (Eric) was out. You should be able to hear the sermon at the following link within a few days if you're interested:
http://portland.rockmaine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=7&id=22&Itemid=72
I also got invited to a men's movie night at the church on Tuesday, which I'll try to go to if my work schedule and weather allows. The church seems to be mostly young couples with kids with a few older couples, but after the past week, it was just nice to be around some of my brothers and sisters in Christ.
The snow finally decided to start falling at the end of the church service, which made the drive back interesting. There was one point on the way back where I couldn't see anything past the far side of the oncoming lanes of traffic on a divided highway (2 lanes going each way). I made it back without incident, but the weather continued to get worse. In addition to the snow, the wind really picked up with sustained winds topping out at 28 mph and gusts up to 38 mph (according to wunderground.com). The wind and cold knocked out power to some places in Brunswick, which I overheard from some people while eating dinner at Friendly's.
http://www.friendlys.com/
They were saying how they were eating out for dinner because it's kinda hard to cook dinner when the electricity goes out (there were 2 families there for that reason).
Thus concludes my first weekend and first week in Brunswick, ME. I hope all is well with you wherever you happen to be.
Doctory Moments
13 years ago
2 comments:
Ah Friendly's; I miss those places. There's a friendly's in Severna Park near my high school and it was a great hangout. They had great ice cream. I used to love their "sliced watermellon" which was a sherbet dome made to look like a slice of watermellon with chocolate chips standing in for the seeds.
I think that I would pay to see middle-agers swing dancing to hip-hop. I wonder who picked the music.
Have a good start to week 2!
you'll have to show us how to swing dance with hip-hop music. That sounds, um, exciting. i'll talk with brice about putting it on the calender.
back when i ate ice cream (well, i still can stomach a few bites of haagen dazs' irish cream if i must), friendly's ruled. Their reese's pieces sundae was a far-too-often treat. if you would have some steamed lobster (w/ butter) followed by such a sundae, you might not want to return to waco.
have fun in the tundra.
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