Inspired by the caucus earlier this month, I decided to attend tonight’s meeting of the Brewer Municipal Democratic Committee. (I’m front and center on their website, as I’m in the middle of a picture showing Governor Baldacci addressing the caucus.) I was surprised to learn that it was one of only about 6 in the state — the rest are county-level, I think.

After the meeting, I asked Paul Davis, the chair, if there was anything I could help with on the web or database side of things. He asked me if I knew anything about blogging. :-) They’re looking for someone to do a political blog that’s associated with the Committee, but not officially of the Committee. It would be my own independent voice, talking about things hopefully of interest to local Dems. I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out.

And may your 2008 be all you hope. :-)

Erin and I went down to the celebration in Bangor — I have a bunch of pictures posted to my Flickr account.

While updating my mailing info at Powell’s, I came across a neat interview and Q&A session with Stephen King. My interest in him has been a bit revived since showing the girls his house and the Biography video.

Or, not.

Last night, I was too distracted at home to do the work I needed to do, so I decided that what I needed was a little time away from the net connection. I packed up my laptop and headed over to the Brewer Tim Horton’s, where I settled in at midnight with a coffee and a couple of Boston Cream doughnuts.

After about an hour of studying the code behind WordPress, which was not what I was supposed to be working on, I finally got into the groove, updating the database and completing my first pass through the app’s Setup Wizard. The nearly-empty restaurant was ideal for work: the only distraction was the Musak, easily countered with a little filk. I broke for breakfast around 5:00, when the breakfast sandwiches came on the menu, and continued until just after 6.

As I was getting ready to head home and wake up the schoolgirls (or at least, the one who wasn’t running a temp), the owner came over to my table. I was pleased to see him, as I had chatted with him in the past about such things as WiFi and possibly getting a job and training up through the ranks to management.

“I understand you’ve been here quite a while.”

“Yes, I had some work that I couldn’t get done at home.” (or something to that effect)

“Well, I don’t want this place becoming a hangout, so don’t do it again.”

Excuse me?

I’m sitting here with my laptop, with evidence on the table of multiple trips to the counter, and you’re complaining about me being productive? Do you not understand the concept of “coffee shop”???????

“Fine. I’ll be happy to take my business elsewhere in the future. All of it.” He walked away.

After the gentleman behind the counter made the mistake of wishing me a good day, and getting the short form of this rant, I left, never to return.

…I just found a gallery of pictures from the 2004 fire in Bangor when the Masonic Temple burned down. Amazingly, the photographer got there before the firefighters started spraying the water that made later pictures so iconic, and stayed there until the wrecking ball went to work the next day.

Ael stayed home from school today, thanks to some lingering queasiness from last night (too much lactose, I think). I decided that muffins would be good for breakfast, so after I dropped Erin off at school, I walked over to Paradis.

I was pleasantly surprised to spot Krusteaz muffins on the shelf. It’s hardly rare to see Seattle companies (besides Starbucks, of course) on the shelves around here, but they’re nice to find anyway. :-) It was over $2: the Betty Crocker muffins were .89. Easy choice, right?

Wrong.

After looking again at the price tags, I noticed that the unit price for the Krustez muffins was actually lower than the Betty Crocker ones. Checking back of the boxes, I found that the Krusteaz mix made 12 muffins, while the Betty Crocker mix made…

Five.

Anybody here have a muffin tin with 5 cups? Raise your hands, please. Go ahead, I’ll wait….

If they do, they might get fired, like the Maine State Tourism director.

See my previous posts and Lance Dutson’s more-current one for some history.

Thanks to Scoble for the pointer in the right direction.

Shel Israel recently took part in a photowalk that Scoble organized. A photowalk is when a group of people wander around, take pictures, and upload them to flickr (or similar site). He urges us to do the same for our areas: I’m thinking that once the weather turns nicer, maybe we can wander from Brewer over the Chamberlain Bridge, through downtown Bangor, and up past Stephen King’s house.

Any takers?

Well, for various reasons, we’ve decided that it’s time to move back to Maine, so we aren’t 3000 miles away from our families anymore. We’ve been preparing for a couple of weeks, choosing the stuff that will go with us, and the stuff that we’ll try to sell before donating it to St. Vincent de Paul.

We’ll be leaving on the 15th, since our landlord needs to start getting ready to rebuild on this site. Since we had to move anyway, we figured we’d do it right. :-)

I’ll miss Seattle a lot, but watching sunset from Cadillac Mountain should help make up for it. :-)

Hopefully, this will serve as a warning to all other overly-litigious companies that there are better ways to deal with internet critics than through the courts.

Now, the question is, will the Maine DoT cut them loose, or keep sending good money after bad?