The Valentine's Blizzard of 2007

It has a nice ring to it, does it not?
We've already got a special weather statement for York (I love the urgency that the all caps conveys):

...POTENTIAL FOR A MAJOR NOREASTER TO HIT SOUTHERN AND WESTERN MAINE AND ALL OF NEW HAMPSHIRE WEDNESDAY AND WEDNESDAY NIGHT...

LOW PRESSURE WILL DEVELOP ALONG THE MID ATLANTIC COAST TUESDAY NIGHT AND CURRENTLY ALL INDICATIONS ARE SUGGESTING THIS STORM WILL INTENSIFY RAPIDLY AS IT MOVES NORTHEAST WEDNESDAY NIGHT.

STRONG WINDS WOULD ACCOMPANY THIS STORM AND MAY BECOME VERY STRONG WITH WIND GUSTS OF OVER 40 MPH LATE WEDNESDAY AND WEDNESDAY NIGHT INTO THURSDAY CAUSING SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING. STRONGEST WINDS WOULD OCCUR NEAR THE COAST.

SOME MINOR FLOODING AND BEACH EROSION MAY ALSO OCCUR ALONG THE COAST AT TIMES OF HIGH TIDE.

THIS MAY BECOME A VERY LARGE AND DANGEROUS STORM SO ALL INTERESTS SHOULD MONITOR LATER STATEMENTS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS STORM. THE TRACK OF THE STORM WILL BE CRITICAL ON HOW MUCH IMPACT THERE IS ON THE AREA AND WILL BE MONITORED CLOSELY.

We'll be bringing in extra loads of firewood, filling the bird feeders, laying in the supplies (must make a big stew in honor of the event), and making sure we've got a couple of unwatched Netflix DVDs ready.
Accuweather agrees it's going to be big:















It sounds like a classic nor'easter and should it materialize, we'll live blog the event from the time the flakes first start until they finish.

CENSORED

Google seems to have one standard for Christianity and another for Islam. Nick Gisburne has been posting videos questioning Christianity for some time, yet when he turned his attentions to Islam, You Tube banned him, saying "After being flagged by members of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature. Due to your repeated attempts to upload inappropriate videos, your account now been permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down."
When Google decides against you (be it your adsense account or your You Tube account), there's very little you can do.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin weighs in

Blogalicious: The Blogger Cookbook

It's out and available at Amazon.
Some bloggers who contributed recipes are: Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Power Line, The Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, Captain's Quarters, The Anchoress, Stop the ACLU, Crooked Timber, The Belmont Club, Black Five, The Mudville Gazette ... and Bitch, Ph.D.
Yum. Pan-seared Hillary and a little slow roasted donkey, anyone?

Oefelein Taking A Leave of Absence

Bill Oefelein, the astronaut who's one side of the love triangle involving NASA astronauts, has been granted a leave of absence to stay in Florida with his girlfriend, the second side of the love triangle, who was stalked and attacked by the third side of the love triangle, NASA astronaut, Lisa Nowak.

All Too Common

Four of the top eight stories on Mainetoday.com are about fires-three in homes, one in a business. Fires in winter in Maine are all so very common, and the state averages 5 deaths a year due to fires.

Causes range from a bad battery in a laptop computer (Biddeford on Tuesday) to mice chewing through electrical wires to chimney fires.
Wherever you live, please make sure you have a working smoke detector on every floor and check those batteries when you change your clocks.

UNH Hockey Rocks

Just ask Wild E. Cat. The women are 5th in the country and the men are ranked third.

Sunrise at the Nubble

Sunrise at The Nubble, with Boone Island in the distance (click to enlarge).

The Islander

The Islander Trailer

I've been viral marketed....but not guerrilla marketed and I'm not going to call out Homeland Security, either. Someone named Eben Cole has been commenting on this site for a while and has been posting to message boards in Maine, and earlier today, Eben, star of the movie was kind enough to leave a comment announcing the website for the movie, The Islander.

The movie was filmed in Rockport and Vinalhaven, Maine and will open in Cambridge, MA on March 9 (although it's been shown in other theatres during the fall). The Portland Phoenix says it's a vibrant portrayal of island life, and judging by the trailer, it's at least a visually accurate picture of Maine island life. From the website:

On a small fishing island off the coast of Maine, families have lived and worked off the sea for generations. Everyone knows each other. Birthright is akin to law and men inherit their fishing territories. Eben Cole, like the other fishermen, continues his family’s legacy of harvesting lobsters from the waters surrounding the island.

Islander is a classic American story, portraying the gravitas in the everyday as one man learns to accept the consequences of his choices with grace. Eben discovers that self-respect is the hardest thing to earn and that in community he must find it. Islander is a authentic portrait of human weakness and human courage

.

A Real Reason to Stop Global Warming

Global Warming, Climate Change, call it what you will. All I know is that we've got two inches (barely two I should add) of snow on the ground and it's February in Maine.

We watched An Inconvenient Truth the other night (pay per view--another Mainely Entertainment that does not involve leaving the house) and were sufficiently convinced by Mr. Gore's data and statistics that this stuff is real. We're worried about the impact on low-lying countries, water supplies and farm lands and we especially worried about the polar bear. We'd already started to reduce our carbon footprint before seeing the movie---and we're so glad that we did.



Now I find this article:: Climate change could crush wine industry the headline reads....

OK--this is a real crisis. I'm going to have to ask each of you to jump in and help out here. No California Chardonnay? No Old Vine Zinfandel? What would we do?

A little recyling, a few energy efficient light bulbs to save the wine industry. It's not too much to ask is it?

Mainely Entertainments

We're always looking for ways to entertain ourselves during the long Maine winter. When the weather allows there are York High School B-ball games and UNH Hockey games. When the weather doesn't cooperate we've turned to Wii, American Idol, LOST, and books from Amazon.com. Now there's a totally new way to spend money and give us more reason to lay on the couch in front of the fireplace. Unbox:

Amazon.com, the online retail giant, and TiVo, pioneer of the digital video recorder, are teaming up to help downloaded movies and TV shows make the leap to television screens.

In a deal to be announced Wednesday, Amazon and TiVo will allow TiVo owners who shop on Amazon’s digital download store, called Amazon Unbox, to send films and TV shows to their broadband-connected TiVo machines, and pause and fast-forward through them as they do a regular TV program.

The partnership gives Amazon an advantage over other download services like the iTunes Store, CinemaNow and a new service from Wal-Mart. Moving video files purchased on those sites from the PC to the television is tricky, generally requiring the setup of a home network.

If you want to be notified when the service is ready for primetime, sign up at TiVo.com.

Eagle Cam Back on Line

The Eagle Cam is back online, and the eagles (at least at the time of this post) are at home.

What Was She Thinking?

Would you put on diapers and drive like a bat out of hell for 16 hours for a man with that face? Forget the pepper spray and plastic tubing, and whatever she planned to do once she got there. It's the diapers that have me all freaked out.

I might don the diapers for Brad Pitt. Billy O, not so much....

UPDATE: All joshing aside, there has to be more to this story, doesn't there? How do you go from a master's degree at the US Naval Post Graduate School to bunny killer?
(The WAPO reports:

Nowak studied aerospace engineering at the Naval Academy, graduating in 1985. She studied aeronautical and astronautical engineering at the U.S. Naval Post Graduate School, and received a master's degree in 1992.)

I'm not saying that smart people can't be crazy, but c'mon. What in the world could she have said to her husband as she sprinted out the door, diapered, disguised and weapon-wielding?

High Tide Mark

Frozen Sea Slush at the high tide mark.

Purple Reign

Did you love Prince's performance as much as I did? The FAMU Band was brilliant and the way Prince weaved songs together was masterful.
Or was that just me?

The rendition of "Let's Go Crazy" was edgy and then he melded a genius take on "Proud Mary" onto "Baby I'm a Star." But the best part of the night was his funky take on the Foo Fighters' "The Best of You." And then worked right into Purple Rain.

Hey iTunes, how about a Prince at the Super Bowl EP?

It's Super Sunday. Do You Have a Rooting Interest?

We're a conflicted household. It's heresy for a New Englander to cheer for Peyton Manning and it's unthinkable for a quarterback as mediocre as Rex Grossman to win a Super Bowl.

Then we have the whole Archie Manning pulling strings to keep Eli out of San Diego and that makes it even more difficult for cheer for Indianapolis, right? I mean, a "normal" family couldn't have manipulated the NFL that way. A normal family would have been happy to just have the kid drafted by anyone, forget caring where he went......

So, we've decided to wait until kick-off and see where our heart lies.

And while we're contemplating the Super Bowl and its spectacle, how about the NFL?
Did you know that they've stopped churches in Indiana from hosting Super Bowl parties? Aye-uh, it's a violation of the NFL copyright for any venue (excepting sports bars, that is) to show an NFL game on a screen larger than 55-inches or to have more than one TV in a room. Seems it messes up their Neilson numbers and the NFL brand doesn't like that.

Then there's the front page article in the NYTimes about what happens to those hats and shirts proclaiming the losing team the winner. The NFL is very strict about where the loser's stuff ends up. No eBay and no TV appearances, they are never to be seen on American soil. So they're given to World Vision and shipped to Africa:

"Where these items go, the people don't have electricity or running water," said Jeff Fields, a corporate relations officer for World Vision. They wouldn't know who won the Super Bowl. They wouldn't even know about football."

According to the article, the items are shipped to a major city, along with medical and school supplies, they driven to one of the villages where World Vision members work. They distribute the goods.

Random Super Bowl Trivia:

• The Vince Lombardi trophy is Tiffany.
• It's a myth that toilet flushing at half time has any effect on any city's water pressure.
• There's 60 minutes of game time and 30 minutes of commercial time.
• 2.5 million Americans bought a new TV for the Super Bowl
  
• 57% of American women will watch the game (I have no idea how many are watching just for the ads)
  

Oh and I'm leaning Colts. Retired Guy is leaning Bears, but we each reserve the right to change our minds and even, possibly to cheer for the same team.

Breaking News From York

Last month, it was a shooting. Yesterday, it was a fire at the lovely Stage Neck Inn. No one was hurt, but the inn, which had just opened earlier in the week after a month long renovation sustained about $50,000 in damages.

Fire trucks from Ogunquit, Kittery, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, York and York Beach lined Stage Neck Road and helped at the scene.

It's the lead story at WCSH (NBC News in Maine) and top of the fold in the Portsmouth Herald.

Next month we're hoping our breaking news is something good like a resident winning the lottery or Blackbeard's Chest washing up on Short Sands.....

Cape Neddick River Morning

Snow overnight on Friday and now the Arctic Clipper has arrived. Dangerously low temperatures for the next four or five days, they say.

Well, this will ruin an otherwise fine day

Quick......
if you just had to locate your income tax returns for 1995,1996, and 1997 could you do it? If so, congratulations.
If not, welcome to my world.
The Great State of Ohio thinks that I owe them income taxes for 1995, 1996, 1997, 2003,2004,2005.

According to the nice lady at the state tax office, the IRS reported some information to the state of Ohio that makes them think I owe them money. What that information is, she can't say, but I've got to prove that I didn't live in Ohio by proving I paid state taxes to someone else, or else I get to pay back taxes and interest to the State of Ohio.

2003 I get--that was the first year since 1998 that I didn't live in Ohio. I guess I can even sort of understand '04 and '05 because my employer is an Ohio-based company.

But why there is a question about the mid-'90's is beyond me. I lived in New Jersey in 1995 and Manhattan in '96,'97. My employer was New Jersey based. I had zero, nada, ditto zilcho connection to the state of Ohio, and I guarantee you that I paid enormous state and city taxes to my municipality and state in those years (I paid enormous taxes to the state of Maine in 03-05, but Retired Guy was in charge of the taxes in those years, so I can prove that).

Unfortunately, it is up to me to prove that last sentence is true and I have zero, nada, ditto zilcho idea of where those income tax statements are.
Heck, I can't even remember if I filed using TurboTax in any of those years and if yes, I know for sure those electronic files are gone. I'm relatively certain that my paper copies are gone as well, either lost with the 18 boxes of stuff that the movers lost in my Manhattan to Cincinnati move or just misplaced in the four moves I've made since 1995.

The letter arrived in today's mail. I have until February 16th to prove Ohio is wrong or pay up. Even my undying devotion to The Ohio State University Buckeyes is not enough to extract an extension of the deadline.

I know that I'm an adult and I'm supposed to be responsible for these kinds of things. And I've promised God that I will be, right after He miraculously places those tax returns in my sweaty little palms by February 14.

I've also promised God that I'm not paying one thin dime in taxes that I don't owe to a State that teaches Intelligent Design in its classrooms and who had a state congressman sponsor a bill that would make it a felony offense to transport a woman across a state line for an abortion, even if that pregnancy was guaranteed to kill her.

Nup. Not going to help pay for general silliness.

No Bunny Hugging Allowed

Does anyone know what Bunny Hugging is? Or at least what the 1922 slang definition would be?
Evidently it's "spooning beneath large umbrellas" and it wasn't appreciated down to York Beach.

I found this wonderful article in yesterday's edition of The York Weekly (aye-uh once a week on Wednesday York has its own paper). It appeared in the column called "Unknown History of York" written by Peter Moore:

Censors declare snappy bathing suits taboo at Maine resort

York Beach, Me. July 1, 1922 -- Petting parties and one-piece bathing suits may be alright for beaches in the South, where the rule "Let your conscience be your guide," has been adopted for the summer season, but York Beach will not tolerate the presence of either the beach vamp or those demonstrative of their affections. The York Beach Board of Assessors has decreed that conservative practice must rule.

Richard F. Chalk, York Beach's 74-year-old bathing suit censor, whose work last summer won him the commendation of the entire York Beach colony, is going to see that the mandate of the Board is executed.

Petting parties may be alright "" in their place "" but the beach is not the place. The fair maiden and her summer playmate are recommended by the "beach censor" to seek seclusion in the nooks and caves at the Nubble.

"We do not want to seem too severe," the Assessors say, "but we must provide the hundreds of children who play about the sands, and who are easily influenced by sights they see at the beach." The same regulations governing the beach last season will be in effect this year. Censorship will be moderately enforced.

Mr. Chalk will patrol the beach during the popular bathing hours in the morning and afternoon to see that the beach vamps are chased to the hotels for suitable attire, and what he calls "bunny hugging" is conspicuous by its absence. Spooning beneath large umbrellas is what the bathing suit censor terms "bunny hugging." This posture, which made its appearance early last season, was characterized by Mr. Chalk as unfit for public gaze.

Undressing in automobiles near hotels or cottages, promenading the stores, post office, and train depot in bathing attire, and midnight carousals come under the ban. "York Beach will be just as popular and we feel sure that our summer visitors will appreciate our beach restrictions," the Board of Assessors told the paper.

Does This Look Scary to You?

So, the big bomb scare in Boston turns out to be nothing more than guerrilla marketing for the cartoon series Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Boston Mayor "Mumbles" Menino is furious at Turner Broadcasting for causing the uproar.

He's also peeved that he only rated a call from a PR person and not someone at the executive level and he's vowing to bring the full array of charges at everyone and anyone involved, including suing Turner Broadcasting.

Should the outrage be replaced by embarrassment? I think so. The devices were placed in 38 locations around Boston two weeks ago. They were also placed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia. Of the 38 Boston, only nine were part of the panic. Kind of makes one wonder about the city's ability to defend itself against terrorists, eh? And like the commenter said on the post below, the other cities managed to realize that the devices weren't bombs, so what's up with Boston?

Many Bostonians agree. According to a Boston Herald Survey 51% of the people asked think Turner did nothing wrong and officials should have known it was not terrorism.