I know that having to skip a Bullet Sunday for my year-end wrap-up was tough, but don't despair... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts now...
• Bandersnatch! This past week all the internet buzz revolved around Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Netflix's new "Choose Your Own Adventure" movie. As the movie played you would be presented with choices which determined how the rest of the movie would progress...
Any guesses as to which music I picked?
This novelty alone would be pretty lame. Unless the story was really terrific, why would you want to replay it over and over to see how your choices affect things? But this is Black Mirror, and they took their excellence to another level here. First of all, the story itself addressed the idea of free will vs. control... and completely breaks the fourth wall by going meta with the concept in some story branches. It was really well done, and I ended up playing through several different scenarios to see where the story would land. Once I had gotten through the major different branches, the differences became more and more subtle, so I ended it. I'm told there are some other stories that are more hidden, but time time required to find them was too much for me. Overall, I loved Bandersnatch! It took full advantage of the concept, the performances were great, and I was entertained throughout. My only criticism was that I could play on my AppleTV (which was incompatible) and ended up having to watch on my computer. Other than that? Well worth your time to check out!
• Magic! Every once in a while, Disney's magic extends to their advertising. That's definitely the case with this wonderful ad that was airing for Disneyland Paris...
And now I want to go to Disneyland.
• Good News! If you're a little depressed with how 2018 ended up (Lord only know I am), here's the link for you: I’m Honestly Fed Up With All The Bad News So I Illustrated The Best News Of 2018 (And Recent Years).
And for all those people buying into President Trump's claim that the Mueller Probe is wasting tax dollars, here's more good news: Mueller Probe Cost $25 Million So Far, Report Says. It’s Pulled in $48 Million From Tax Cheats. It's paying for itself (and then some) as well as ripping into political corruption. What's not to like?
• Micropenis! I never suspected that Tucker Carlson has a tiny, minuscule, impotent, wee little penis... but here he is telling everybody about it. Study after study has shown that men who are threatened by women who make more money than them have tiny dicks... and who am I to question science?
What a pathetic, sexist, whiny, tragic, little pissant Tucker Carlson is. The amount of sublime ignorance as to how modern relationships work here is stunning. And yet, there are people believing this bullshit and faux science, so I'd imagine Tucker Carlson isn't going to be out of work any time soon.
• SCANDAL! Oooooh! Here it is! A SCANDALOUS video of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was just released from her school years! I wonder what it is? Sex with animals? Doing drugs? DOING DRUGS WHILE HAVING SEX WITH ANIMALS? My gawd... what a totally reprehensible role model. SHE SHOULD RESIGN IN SHAME!!!
Seesh. From they way some conservatives are (over)reacting, you'd think that she grabbed somebody by the genitals without consent... or cheated on her spouse with a porn star and tried to cover it up... or was defending white nationalists... or hiding her tax returns. The hypocrisy is blinding.
• Roller Kingdom! There was a time I wanted to be addicted to roller skating instead of crack too. But times change...
Alas, the local roller rink was torn down ages ago here, so I guess crack it is!
• Portland! Trying to end on a happy note, this is painfully accurate... and funny...
I miss having work trips to Portland. It is really terrific city.
Stay frosty, everybody.
My flight landed at Boston Logan International Airport at 5:30 in the morning. Needless to say, I was not able to sleep on the plane. I never can for some reason unless it's drug-induced. Problem is that sleeping pills make it impossible for me to deal with time changes, so I'm better off just doing without. I was tired, but the drive up to Portland (which I refer to as "Other Portland" since I am a West-Coaster and "Portland" to me is in Oregon) was dark, cold, and boring.
I arrived around 8:00am, which is way too early for hotel check-in (at least it is here in the USA... everywhere else on earth they always seem happy to check me in if I arrive really early so long as they have a room available). Since I was still not feeling well after being sick yesterday, I tried to book a cheap hotel room in Boston to get a few hours sleep, but they won't let you retroactively check-in yesterday so you can just stay the current morning. At least not online. I tried calling a hotel, but that was confusing for everybody involved and I gave up.
And so breakfast it is then.
Followed by three-and-a-half hours sitting in the hotel lobby trying not to fall asleep. At least not before I finally got a room and took a three hour nap.
Rather than go into a coma I decided on an early dinner.
There's a lot of things to love about Portland. The transitional period from Fall to Winter is definitely not one of them. It's windy. It's bitter cold. It's rainy and wet. And there is puddles of water everywhere in Old Town, which means you end up drenched from passing cars no matter how careful you try to be.
Other Portland is, however, a food paradise for me because they excel at three of my favorite foods...
I opted for a B.GOOD veggie burger because it was the shortest walk and many ice cream parlors are closing early in the wintertime. Not that ice cream doesn't make an awesome dinner, mind you.
I should have pushed my way through and not taken a nap because now I'm not tired and probably won't be able to sleep tonight. Oh well. I've got a day to recover because work doesn't start until Saturday.
Pleasant not-dreams.
The cost to fly into Portland, Maine during high tourist season is astronomical. Far, far cheaper to fly into Boston and drive north than to pay for the convenience of terminating at PWM.
And so... that's exactly what I did.
Even though the last time I did this, I nearly died.
The route from Boston to Portland is fairly straightforward and takes less than two hours...
Unless you're me.
I had time to kill, so I took the crazy 3-1/2 hour back roads route to see some bits of New Hampshire I hadn't seen before. And avoid tourist traffic. And avoid a bunch of tolls...
All in all... a lot more time on the road than I had patience for, but it was all worth it because Barbara's Maine Blueberry Crisp at Flatbread Co. was waiting for me when I arrived...
Other than my grandmother's apple pie, there is no dessert on earth I would rather have than this right here. Totally worth a five-and-a-half hour flight followed by a 3-1/2 hour drive. If you're ever in Portland during blueberry season, stop in and pray it's on the day's dessert menu.
After a late lunch, I had 45 minutes more in my rental car until I arrived at my job-site.
And now... since work starts at 5:00am tomorrow morning, which means I have to get up at 4:30am... I'll be taking my leave of you this evening. Good night! Blueberry dreams to you!
I wish I could say that my ambition showed itself today but, alas... I still had no desire to drive anywhere or fight the Christmas shopping crowd, so most of my day was spent catching up on sleep and working. An entire waste, I know, but this was never a vacation trip.
I did venture out for lunch and again for dinner though. So I guess that's something. For the walk back to my hotel I had my camera with me, which is always fun...
And now... I pack. For tomorrow I take the long journey home.
Traveling for work is something that people who don't travel for work will never truly understand. It's not like going on vacation where you excitedly pack your bags and skip off the the airport looking forward to fun and adventure. It's more like a necessary evil that inconveniences your life as much as possible. A drudgery in repetition that you endure over and over and over until you're numb to the horrors that a life of travel dumps on you.
Something I had forgotten about. Probably because this past year I haven't been able to travel much, and had blocked it from memory.
And now I have cats.
Cats who can sense when I'm getting ready to leave, and decide that's the perfect time to go bonkers on me.
Knowing I had to get up this morning at 3:00am, I went to bed last night at 8:00. Usually the cats follow me up to my bedroom, pass out on me or the floor when I close my eyes, and that's the end of it. But not last night.
Earlier in the day Jenny had caught a bug out in the catio and brought it in the house. Not my favorite thing, but it makes her happy, so I resist my urge to go running up with a paper towel, put the bug out of its misery, and flush it down the toilet. She batted it around for five minutes or so, happy to have something new to do. At which point Jake came sauntering in the room and ate it.
Jenny did not take it well.
She cried because the bug was gone, then ran back out to the catio to catch another one...
Alas, after over a half-hour of waiting, no bug came. So she decided to come in from the cold and cry about it. A lot. She cried as she laid on my lap to get warmed up. She cried as I got up to go to bed. She cried as we climbed the stairs. She cried as I crawled into bed. Then she sat next to me and cried as I turned off the lights to try and get some sleep...
After I didn't cough up another bug for her to torture, she wandered off. Jake decided to take her spot since she kindly warmed it up for him. Thinking all the problems in Cat World were solved, I closed my eyes.
For all of twenty minutes.
So there I am in bed dozing off at 8:30 when all of a sudden BOING! BOING! BOING! BOING! BOING! Jenny has discovered one of the few door-stops left in the house. Apparently she decided if she didn't have a bug to play with, this would do. Jake hears it and goes running to investigate. Now they are taking turns BOING! BOING! BOING! BOING! BOING!
I think I finally managed to fall asleep around 10:00.
Five hours later I'm getting ready to head to the airport. Snow had been falling, so the drive was a bit more treacherous than usual. But I make it with plenty of time to spare. Here is my view at 5:00am from my seat on the plane...
Exhilarating, is it not?
Once in Seattle, I have my morning Qdoba burrito and wait for my flight to Reagan National Airport in Washington DC. As we leave, I am thrilled to be parked next to the one plane I really want to fly on before I die... Alaska Air's Salmon Thirty Salmon!
The flight is okay, despite my ending up in a middle seat because I had to book with the plane mostly full.
While I have flown to Washington, D.C. many times, I have never changed planes there. Turns out that Reagan National Airport is just fine if that's your final destination. But a total pile of shit if it's not. In order to get from B Concourse to my next flight on C Concourse, I HAD TO EXIT SECURITY, WALK A MILE, THEN GO THROUGH A SECURITY CHECK ALL OVER AGAIN. Which is buckets full of stupid in a day and age when security procedures are such a major cluster-fuck. Come on, Reagan National, get your shit together.
And then... one additional plane-ride later... here I am in Portland, Maine.
Where it's cold.
And dark.
Which makes the fact that I am tired and hungry that much worse. But at least my luggage arrived this time. After getting to my hotel, I decide to eat at the restaurant there so I can have some fries and Maine blueberry pie before turning in. The waiter asks if I want my pie with my fries or after. I answer "Definitely after, thanks!"...
I'm guessing this is indicative of how the rest of my trip will go?
Got out of work around 4am, which was nice. And pretty much on-time. A pleasant change from last time when things ran nearly a day late. I celebrated by sleeping in early, then catching up on work back home.
I decided to spend the night closer to the airport, and headed back to Portland. Partly because I'm familiar with the city and comfortable hanging out there... but mostly because amazing dessert was calling me from the Flatbread Company. In the Summer they have a Maine blueberry cobbler that's to die for. in the Winter it's usually apple cobbler, which is almost as good...
But I'm getting ahead of myself...
Noon. Check out of the Hilton Garden Inn Auburn Riverwatch. Which was a lot weirder than usual. Even though I was specifically told it wasn't. There I was loading the trunk of my rental car in the hotel parking lot when a big black pickup truck comes squealing up beside me. A guy leans out the passenger-side window and is waving a yellow piece of paper. "HEY! HEY! YOU WOULDN'T HAPPEN TO WANT A HOME THEATER AUDIO SYSTEM INSTALLED, WOULD YOU?!?" — "Uhhhh... not unless you want to drive 3000 miles to my house..." — "THIS ISN'T WEIRD... WE'RE HOME AUDIO INSTALLERS!" — "And you're looking for business in a hotel parking lot where people you find probably don't even live in the area?" — "No... we're looking in ALL the parking lots!" — "Um... okay?" — "THIS ISN'T WEIRD! WE'RE INSTALLERS!!!"
12:30pm. Drop by the Home Depot in Topsham to see if they have the towel loop I was shorted when my local Home Depot ran out. And they did! If my luggage goes missing again, at least I'll have something to pack home with me.
1:30pm. Check into my hotel and have housekeeping barge in on me while I'm answering emails. At least I had my pants on this time.
2:30pm. I still have tons of work to catch up on, so I can't really go out... but I'm too hungry to avoid eating. So off I go next door to Micucci's Italian Grocery where they have this amazing slabs of Sicilian pizza I love...
4:30pm. Still full from pizza, but hot apple crisp from Flatbread Company cannot be denied.
Midnight. My new lip balm is Maine blueberry flavored. As a result, the entire room smells like a blueberry muffin exploded. This made me hungry again, so I went to the hotel gift shop to see if they had a snack. I am now eating an entire tub of DIBS ice cream snacks at midnight because it's the only thing they had that sounded good. This is not going to bode well for a good night's sleep... but oh well. What else is new?
1:30am. I write this post then plan on surrendering to sweet slumber. Hopefully.
And... that was pretty much it. This probably sounds like I spent most of my day eating, but almost all of it was spent working.
Sadly, no time for pretty pictures like last time.
Get ready to bask in the City of Roses... because a Bullet Sunday from Portland, Oregon starts... now...
• PDX! How many airports do you know that have carpeting so famous that they have a Wikipedia page devoted to it? I have no idea. But if there's a list, Portland International (PDX) would be on it (seriously, here's the Wikipedia page). For years now, you can always count on seeing people photographing themselves standing on it. Like me today...
The pattern apparently represents the intersection of PDX runway lights as seen at night or something. In any event, it's a beautiful design and everybody seems to love it. Which is why the Port of Portland decided to replace it with a new design rather than a reprint of the old design?...
It's a nice enough pattern, I guess, but I don't understand why they didn't replace the worn out carpet with the same design, which didn't really need updating. Especially given how popular it is. A very sad day for PDX fans...
Including me. The next time I fly into Portland, all remnants of the classic PDX carpeting will be gone.
• Hooking! Is it just me, or does this advertisement from Alaska Airlines' inflight magazine look like some guy just hired a very expensive hooker?
Turns out it's an ad for a casino, but wow...
Enjoy your hooker victory, sir.
• Congrats! The reason I flew to Portland today was so I could see two of my long-time blogging friends, Oh Sarah Joy and Iron Fist get married...
Congrats to Sarah and Vahid!
• To Go! And speaking of weddings... this is not a real ad for Tide To-Go Pens, but it should be because it's really clever...
The ad may be fake, but that's the real Miss Yvonne from Pee-Wee's Playhouse!
• SuBullets!
And... my flight will be taking me back home any minute now, so no more bullets for you...
The Plan was to fly out today since my work ended yesterday so I could have more time on my upcoming Hard Rock adventure. But to follow The Plan would cost four times the money than a hotel stay, so I'm instead flying out tomorrow morning. Early.
The rest of this entry should be prefaced with the understanding that cold Maine is cold. Very cold. Biting cold. Cold with a side of cold and a scoop of cold on top.
It's really f'in cold.
And it's Sunday in the off-season, so there's not much to do in Portland, Maine. Thus my incentive to go outside is not very high. So I didn't until the hotel kicked me out at noon. At which time I checked into my airport hotel, returned my rental car, then took a taxi back into the city because pizza and apple crumble was calling at Flatbread Company...
To say I love this restaurant is a gross understatement. The location is great. The atmosphere is great. The service is great. The beer selection is great. The food? Beyond great. Especially the desserts, which are worth a trip to Portland all by themselves.
Did I mention it's cold?
Yet I went wandering downtown anyway like the fool I am. Despite wearing a T-shirt, thermal henley, hoodie sweatshirt, and a coat, I was still freezing. But I wanted to get a shot of the fence with locks on it in daylight, so off I went...
To profess their undying, never-ending love, a couple will write their names on a lock, attach it to the fence, then throw away the key. I have no idea if you come back with a bolt-cutter if things don't work out, but it's a nice idea.
I decided to explore somewhere new this time around, and left the Old Port area for downtown. That's when I saw... MAINE LOBSTERMAN!
Sculpted for the New York 1939 World's Fair, this piece has an interesting history (which you can read about here). At first I thought that the guy was giving first aid to a lobster with a hurt claw, but that's apparently not the case at all...
He's actually "pegging" the poor thing... which is to say he's shoving a wooden peg in the claw joint so it can't be opened (so he can't pinch anybody). This practice has mostly been abandoned, and now they just wrap a plastic band around the claw. Still a bit cruel, but I'm guessing it's not as painful to the lobster. At least until he gets boiled alive.
As I was walking, I saw a really cool painting on the side of a building that was meant to mimic a giant blueprint being laid over the structure...
Just across the street is a giant postcard painting that's also pretty cool...
If you look closely, the "lighthouse" is actually a spray-can...
At this point I was so cold that I could barely move, so I called a taxi while taking a few last photos as the sun set...
And that was that.
Back to my airport hotel room where I can (hopefully) get a few hours sleep before my early morning flight.
I left Auburn at noon and was back in Portland by 1:00... just in time for lunch.
But first I had to spend a half hour scraping snow and ice off my rental car. This included the tires, which had frozen to the ground...
The Ford Focus I rented is a pile of crap for many reasons. Primary of which is the horrendous gas mileage. Driving the 80 miles to Auburn and back killed... I shit you not... A HALF-TANK OF GAS! As if this wasn't bad enough, the car is just awful design-wise. Massive, glaring blind spots. A driver console that has no place to put your mobile phone. Uncomfortable seats. Utterly shitty "Sync by Microsoft" computer system that's as intuitive as a nuclear reactor to control. And then you get to the outside where you have this fucking huge gap between the hood and the windshield that is so cavernous and deep that it's extremely difficult to dig all the snow out of it. Even if you have a brush, there are ridges in there that makes it much more trouble than it's worth...
No wonder everybody wants a foreign car... their designers actually think about shit like this.
But anyway...
For reasons completely unknown, Portland, Maine has some really excellent pizza restaurants. This is nice because it takes the edge off the misery you experience when visiting in the cold, snowy, wet, days of Winter. A place I had wanted to visit but never got around to last time I was here was OTTO Pizza...
They are kinda famous for their Butternut Squash, Ricotta & Cranberry pie...
Sounds weird, I know. But it is pretty wonderful. Creamy with subtle flavors that taste amazing together...
It's important to eat it while it's hot though. As soon as it gets cold the texture gets kind of rubbery and weird.
OTTO's itself is a nice enough place. Kind of eclectic in a rustic way. Service is pretty good too. The only thing I hated is that somewhere in the restaurant there's a piano that kids are, apparently, welcome to bang all over. This makes an ungodly racket that completely ruins the experience of eating here. And I cannot fathom why in the hell they allow it. They must know that it's irritating as fuck to listen to that shit... so why put your customers through the agony? Stupid.
After some various errands, it was my plan to get some sleep.
Or not.
I made the foolish mistake of checking my email only to find a problem that required me to head back out into the cold, snowy, raining, wet misery I had just escaped from. At least I was smart enough to bring my camera along with me. I didn't have it on my previous trip, and really wanted to take a shot of the Harbor Fish Market (which proved impossible with my iPhone). It's a beautiful building with amazing lighting that has a steady flow of customers pulling up all day...
From there I wandered around for a while to see if I could find anything else interesting to shoot...
I finished up my evening at my favorite restaurant in the city... Flatbread Company. I was still stuffed with OTTO pizza, so dinner was out of the question. But Flatbread Company makes some of the best desserts I've ever had, so I decided to try their Apple Crisp...
Not as jaw-dropping amazing as their wild blueberry desserts (which are out of season, darnit!), but still fantastic. Fortunately their chef is smart enough to know that RAISINS HAVE NO PLACE IN APPLE CRISP EVER!!! I frickin' hate it when somebody ruins a good apple crisp by dumping raisins in it. BLECH!
And now, at long last, that sleep I've been trying to chase down all day...
During the winter months I always try to arrive at a job site a day early because you just never know. This week the New England weather is supposed to be okay, but last week Maine had a winter storm attack that left a lot of people without electricity. So... just in case weather delays or power outages happen to me, I plan a buffer day so I have time to get everything straightened out.
Today was that day. Except it turns out I didn't need it.
And so I worked in my hotel room until they kicked me out at noon then went to the Maine Mall so I could have lunch at Johnny Rockets. While eating my Streamliner Veggie Burger (no mustard, no grilled onions), I saw this...
That's pretty awesome. Babies need to eat too, yo.
After a drive up to the fine city of Auburn and an uneventful afternoon working I was going to go explore the area for a while... but decided I'd be better off seeing if I could find out where I could get some falafel. Turns out it could be found just down the street from my hotel. That almost never happens! Dinner was served...
Dessert from from the hotel gift shop and looked something like this...
Party in my room!
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