MeSoFun Blog

Locally raised, organic, handfed beef is once again for sale! Full disclosure: I bought four pounds for $22. Portlandia is real. You only have to watch a few minutes of the TV show "Portlandia" to get the recurring joke. Overwrought do-gooders want to drive to the local farm to check out the conditions before they order chicken at a local restaurant. Another sign of spring. My parents are visiting from Florida.  Though it's based on Portland, Oregon, Portlandia is alive and wall on the East Coast. A co-worker came in to work Saturday and said Portlandia is once again alive and well. "Oh, did you see the L.L. Bean Bootmobile (Slogan: Rated Highest Smiles Per Gallon) outside? They were playing cornhole next to the truck. Or was it the people rappelling off the building we work in? They're raising money for charity," I inquired. "No, it was the people in Monument Square roleplaying Lord of the Rings," he said. "They had actual swords. They were ...

This is cheating, I know, using a photo from a nursery to demonstrate Maine's colors. Shut it. Five years ago today, I can tell you exactly where we were. Or where I was, at least. I was riding shotgun in a 24-foot Budget moving truck around sunset as we pulled into Scranton, Pennsylvania. We were towing our Corolla on a trailer and we were pulling off the interstate into downtown Scranton. Matty was driving and Duke, my 85-pound doofus of a chocolate Lab, was wedged between us in the cockpit of the truck. Jimmy, my other friend helping us move, was right behind us driving our other car. This guy will drive your moving truck so long as you pay for gas and Buffalo wings. For our last night on the road, I'd purchased a room in the Hilton in downtown Scranton. You know, as a treat on the last night of a 3,000-mile trip. Somehow it hadn't occurred to me to think of one tiny detail: Where, exactly, did we plan on parking this 24-foot moving truck with a trailer attached to it? F...

I don't have a great picture of just the couple, so here's the couple plus grandma Toni. How does one officiate a wedding for the first time? Certainly not with a bunch of notecards. That would be sooooooooo 20th century. I decided to use Google Docs to write the ceremony, meaning I could just open it on an iPad during Monday's big ceremony. I downloaded the ceremony, checked and rechecked that it was fully loaded. Then, happy it was all there, I closed the iPad cover and took it to the Portland Observatory for the ceremony. Things were going fine during the ceremony. I was talking to fast but didn't really lose my place in the speech. I hadn't practiced enough to really have it nailed down but I'm confident nobody cared. There was only about 17 people there. We got to the vows. I was home free! But as I was scrolling through the bride's vows, I saw an ominous black page coming up. And an exclamation point. "Sorry! This page could not load. Please reloa...

A 1920s era newsboy, a bride, and a TW. I have been thinking a lot about what to say about the wedding I performed for Dan and Molly on Monday. No nicknames today. There were a lot of firsts Monday. But for all of the cute ways I can think to describe the day, the totally unplanned, ad-libbed speech I gave to kick off the toasts at dinner summed up the day better than any cute linguistic games we can play. The scene: Hugo's bistro in downtown Portland, arguably the fanciest restaurant in town. The crowd: 40 guests and about 20 of Dan's co-workers (today, and today only, he is Dan. You might know him better as Nacho Man). The Wife: smoking hot. The toast: "Okay everybody, I'd like to kick off the toasts this evening. I know not everybody was able to make it to the ceremony because it was held at the Portland observatory and there wasn't room for everybody. So I'd like to do a recap of the event for my friend Shayne in the back there. Shayne talking to you will h...

I have access to stock photos. That's what this picture proves. An email arrived last week that took me back. This wasn't a pleasant reminiscence. I wrote a blog a few years ago for spouses of PA school students, trying to help them through and let them know they're not alone. More than a few people have commented or emailed me to check in. What you say on the Internet lives on forever, they say, so here was the start of an email I received from a PA spouse whose husband had just started rotations. "My husband just started his clinical rotations away from home and I thought I had a handle on it, but I don't," it started. Immediately, my heart breaks. I know that feeling, except I never had the illusion that I had a handle on it. I definitely lost all my handles as the spouse of a PA student. That's just what it is. I know of not one single spouse that spent two years with a self-absorbed PA student and thought, "That really wasn't so bad." I...

Daisy later sprinted up one of the rows, ruining the scene. Sorry, perfect scene. As much as anything, this is a note to myself in August of next year. I love that somebody did this. Future self: Here's hoping you finally lost that 10 pounds you keep talking about losing, you handsome devil! I know you're dreading winter because it's August, and that's when you start spotting the premature changing of leaves. I'm here to remind you how good it can be. Christmas is Christmas. You don't love it, but people seem to be in good spirits. Don't forget to enjoy seeing other people be happy. The real fun comes in January. I know that sounds crazy, but really, we're in the worst stretch of winter and it's not bad at all. In fact, today was one of those days that you end every sentence with an exclamation point. You know what I mean! It was glorious! OK, enough of that. But seriously. The average high from Jan. 7 to Jan. 29 in Portland is 31 degrees. The averag...

Standard morning pose. Also, the chalk makes it look like I have hair. Sorta. People make New Year's resolutions. Or so I'm told. Gyms make a killing off the short-lived idea that "this will be the year that I get healthy," and so forth. Another girl in our lives, much to Daisy Duke's chagrin. Being a contrarian, I of course hate everything about this resolution business. But I don't think I'm perfect. Far from it. It's the Jan. 1 change that I object to. You can make a positive change any time. For instance, I wasn't happy with my 401(k) savings, so I gave the savings rate a significant boost. That was July 1. Or I wasn't happy with what I was doing at work, so I did something about it. I wrote a story for our newspaper. That was in September and October. And for the last six months of 2014, I did something more than a little obsessive. I got a phone with a pedometer in it and I averaged 15,000 steps a day. Every day. For six months. I'm c...