MeSoFun Blog

This is an awesome use of our product. It's taken me over a year to write about this, in part because I couldn't figure out how to write about the topic without offending anybody. Well, there's only one person I would be worried about offending, but he gets offended by the tone of voice I used to use at 10 a.m. in a budget meeting, so I'm not going to worry about it. Moreover, I've learned never to write when I'm angry. You do your reasoning a disservice when you're angry. So I waited to cool down before answering the question in print. Not that the topic hasn't come up already. People, men in particular, think I'm nuts for leaving my job at The Salt Lake Tribune. I had climbed the ranks of the staff to the assistant sports editor position. To be sure, it was something of a dream job when I first started. When I took over the job in June of 2007, it was basically a Monday through Friday job. The job involved doing some planning work for the sports...

Crazy thing, this Irene. The storm's eye hasn't passed us, on a North-South parallel, and we're done with the rain. The damage thus far: a branch fell down the street, landing on the power wire but not breaking it; My phone will not email photos to my hotmail account, so that I can post photos on this blog. That is all. I'd say we are unscathed. I know other people, downcoast and inland, have experienced worse. I hope your power comes on soon and that your lives are more or less normal soon. We will be enjoying delivered Chinese food tonight and thinking of you. That's right. Irene is ending with hot and sour soup.

This will have to be a photo-free update, due to AT&T's lagging cell phone network. Primarily, you will be happy to know Daisy has relieved herself. I stopped by Duke Patrick Woods, the woods at the end of our street, and she simply can't help but mark her territory when she's in there. So crisis averted. Mainers are nonplussed by this storm. We drove about 15 minutes away to South Portland (SoPo!). We meaning the dog and I. It's raining pretty good, but it's not impressive. It's breezy, maybe around 30 mph around the ocean. It's certainly not weather to be out in. Unless you're from Maine. I counted six runners jogging through SoPo. There were more cars out than you would see on a normal Tuesday morning. We spotted a half dozen cars pulled over at the side of the road near a jagged, rocky beach. I rolled down the window to take a photo and the phone/camera got sprayed with water from windblown surf. My phone now smells like the ocean. Then we went t...

This from a glancing blow from last year's hurricane season. I am headed there now. Maine: Where nothing ever happens. Maybe my opinion is skewed from living in Utah. Trapped miners. Wives being killed by psychotic husbands. Wildfires. We had it all. Maine? Nothing ever happens here. Even a yoga class at my preferred yoga center is on as scheduled today. C'mon. Give me something to work with here. YOGA NOT CANCELED isn't the sexiest headline in the world. That's what you get for living this far East. A geographical primer for you: We are about 1,000 miles east of Gary, Indiana, and in the same time zone. As a result of being so far east in the time zone, the sun comes up at about 5:30 a.m. in August. In June, it's more like 4:30. Early to rise. Early to bed. That's the Maine way. The storm is tracking west of us, back to my old stomping grounds around Dartmouth College. So I'm going to take the girl for a little drive. We're going to the coast to see ...

My little soldier. Sunday, 8:52 a.m. Current wind speed: 10 mph. It's the little emergencies you can't prepare for with a storm. For those of you in the Midwest, imagine if you had a week to prepare for a severe thunderstorm. What would you do? Get some reading material for when the power goes out. Some ice to keep things in the fridge cold. Candles to read by. Food. Water. You're all set. And then, as the storm hits, you realize the things you forgot. Happily, that list is short at the moment, if you define short as about 18 inches tall. Daisy needs to poop. That's the big storm update for this hour. My dog, Daisy, needs to poop. But she doesn't like to go outside in the rain. We've gone out to the back porch. She sniffs at the air, looks at me, sniffs at the air, then gives me the, "Please don't make me go out there look." This from a dog that I've referred to as a sea otter. She loves water when she's floating in it and drinking it. W...

If you look closely, you can see the fear on their easels. This was the scene outside my workplace at 4:30 p.m. Terrifying, to be sure. Saturday, 5 p.m. Weather Channel says: Exclusive Threat Level for Maine is Extreme It's possible the threat of Hurricane Irene has been a tidge exaggerated. Just a bit. Extreme threat level for Maine. Really? From 60 mph winds? WE GET 60 MPH WINDS EVERY WINTER. They're called Nor'easters. These storms are so beloved, my wife's school mascot is the Nor'easter. Still, I bought 25 pounds of ice. Let me explain. Some people are coming over tomorrow to play cards/cribbage/drinking games and I really need 25 pounds of ice ... in case the power goes out ... to keep the beer cold. Warm beer is the disaster that concerns me the most. We rent. We have renter's insurance despite owning nothing valued at more than $200, and that's a rarely-used Kitchen-Aid mixer. We're not responsible for anything at the house. Our newer, less-dr...

I'll be live-blogging Irene on Sunday. Of course, I have 15 pounds of ice in the freezer, so the live blogging might be slurred. But live-blogging I will be. Until we lose power. Then you're on your own.

The name, for the record, is the Big 20 Bowling Center, not the Big Bowling Center. That'd be dumb. One thing I am not is charitable. It isn't often that I take part in charitable events, anyway. I don't like crowds and pomp doesn't work for me. Candlepin bowling, however, I cannot resist. So, when Hal, a friend and co-worker (I accidentally typed cow-worker first. That would have been embarrassing) invited me to bowl with the Sea Dogs, I accepted. The Sea Dogs are our local Double-A baseball team. They are a Red Sox affiliate and play in a fun litltle ballpark, complete with a replica of Fenway's Green Monster in left field. They were doing an hour-and-a-half charity fundraiser at the local bowling alley today. Hal asked me if I wanted to join him. Who am I to resist the siren call of candlepin bowling? First, a primer on candlepin bowling, for you non-Yankees. The lanes are about the same length, width and wood composition as in a regular bowling alley. Key dif...

The most bizarre place to have been Sept. 11.  A drive through Vermont is a trip down memory lane. I don't need much excuse to wax nostalgic, and Vermont's landscapes are so striking that they make an impression. Sometimes, you wonder if people remember things the way you do. I've written about this before. Dramatic car accidents. Fires. A few people are intensely important for a short period, then you never see them again and you wonder if anybody else remembers it the way you do. Fresh out of college, one of my jobs was to cover high school sports. In early September on my second year on the job, my boss wanted an enterprise piece, a feature on Whitcomb High School. This high school is small, with about 160 students. No school that small had ever repeated as state champions in boys' soccer. It was my job to write a story about that. I, along with a photographer, was assigned to cover their game on Sept. 11, 2001. You'll read a lot of Sept. 11 remembrances over ...

Home. True fact: I am afraid of trying new things. This will surprise my wife and pretty much everybody who thinks I'm a wild and out-there trier of new things. Gastronomically, that is correct. Otherwise, not so much. Skiing didn't start until 25. I was in Utah and friends and family were coming to visit. They all wanted to go skiing. I wasn't going to NOT go skiing, so I had to learn. I fell in love with it on my first day, in the worst-possible conditions. Cliff diving was new. I've never jumped into water from more than 20 feet. That changed yesterday . Maybe it's a normal part of the human condition. We don't like to try new things. Or we don't always like to try new things. Which is why sometimes we need a shove. My push comes from T-Dubs, who doesn't get nearly enough credit for getting me to try new things. That's why tomorrow I will be a member at the Nonesuch Golf Club (named, of course, for the scenic Nonesuch River, which I'm guessing...

That isn't me, but this is the cliff I jumped off today. You almost didn't get to read this. That's not a cute way of saying I almost leaped off a cliff to my death today. I didn't, though I did leap off a cliff. How else to entertain a pair of teenagers? No, you almost didn't get to read this because it has been an exhausting vacation. Not for me. My cousins are in town. Yes, those cousins . They're 13 and almost 16 (which is freaky, as I was living in Florida with my aunt when the 16-year-old was born). But that's another story. The great part, as always, about visitors is I get to be a tourist in my own town. We do the favorites, like bacon fries and buffalo wings. We try a few new things, like giant sky swings, water parks and aquariums. You won't be bored with the day-by-day ins and outs here. Nobody cares, I figure. Let's skip straight to the good stuff: Cliff diving. The spot was off a rock in Sebago Lake, known as Frye's Leap. It's so...