Guess whose house we saw?

 I met an On-Line friend in Bangor and we went to the Sea Dog Brewery/Pub for dinner.  Afterwards, she took me (in the pitch dark) to see one of Bangor's most sought after landmarks:  the home of Stephen and Tabitha King.  I too these pictures the next morning when the full splendor of the brick work, wrought iron fence and some of the sculptures could be seen.  I don't know of any King novels with frogs in them.  There was a central iron gate with a huge spider and web.

It felt a bit invasive to be taking pictures of a house because of the people who live in it.  Strangely, I do not feel invasive when I take photographs of architectural details on anonymously owned buildings!

 Then it was time to head home to meet the Darling Daughter for the previously described weekend of needlework.  It would have been great to have time to go to Bar Harbor, but that was kind of off the beaten path to Southern New Hampshire.  We ended up in Ellsworth for a late breakfast at the RiverSide Cafe.
Coastal Maine is hilly.  These town pictures look like a lot of the mid-coast towns we went through.  The towns tended to span rivers, or be at the end of an inlet, which meant that they were at the low spot between ridges.  I would be interested in knowing how deep the rivers actually are, because they are not especially wide.

 Ellsworth had a cute Irish Pub.

 The Riverside Cafe is in a building that used to be a hardware store.  I believe that the floor and some of the display cabinets may be from the old days.  Much of the bread was made on the premises... and the corned beef hash was terrific.

What my brain thought it saw...
a photo by Sultry on Flickr.

Somehow, I got a black eye last Monday. It wasn't until I was trying to "fix" my eyeliner (and it wouldn't budge) that I wondered what was going on. Later, in better light, I discovered that it wasn't make up it was a BRUISE. THEN I remembered something hitting me in the face... not that I could remember what. Sheesh. This is my eye after photoshop... to make it really dramatic.
And this is how it actually looked.
Of course, when you are near-sighted AND wear reading glasses, it can be hard to see what's actually there!

Quite a month.

Not Martha (or Marvin) Stewart. More amazed than embarrassed.
Originally uploaded by Sultry

Last week there was something creepy, black and sticky oozing around on a central shelf in the pantry. Don't you wonder what it was? We did, too. Eventually we discovered an empty and apparently exploded (!) can of mandarin oranges.
Darling Hubby cleaned it all up.
A day or two later we found more black, creep, sticky, yucky stuff PLUS little teeny tiny buggies. So we emptied the entire pantry and discovered:

• The orange syrup had made a fine mist that invaded the entire pantry
  
• The cannisters from the container store DID protect flour, grains, etc.
• A bottle of Dr. Pepper had ALSO leaked and misted.

So everything had to be washed and dried. My smart husband thought it would be smart to look at expiration dates. Can you imagine the age of the oldest, expired item?
The oldest was, um, TEN years out of date. EGAD! and at least half of the rest was well beyond their "best by" dates.

Good news: We have little to put away and not much interesting to eat.

2011-05-11_23-15-52_844-w

Cold Front Approaching with Moon
Originally uploaded by Sultry

The sky was heavenly again this evening!

You have GOT to look at this page!


Originally uploaded by Sultry

heard this fellow on "Think" (NPR) this afternoon and couldn't wait to come home and look at his photographs of Arctic (and Antarctic) animals and ecosystems. AMAZING. And as for the photography he claims he's self-taught. (With a long list of Canon equipment). But he studied to be a biologist so he really understands the mysterious and magnificent creatures he captures on film.
www.PaulNicklen.com

Storm approaching at dusk
Originally uploaded by Sultry

This is based on a photograph I took this afternoon. I want to try to do a painting ike this.

Illustration Friday: Blur
Originally uploaded by Sultry

Peet the Parakeet lives at Petland and watches his pals spin in circles around him.

Hope it isn't "cheating" to use a photo to this degree. But I'm learning the range of my camera as well as working on drawing and painting. I've included the original photograph for comparison.

Even Birdbrains get the Blues



Originally uploaded by Sultry

This guy just looks so human to me. Thinking about what is or could have been or might have been.