What I Learned Today in School

This innocent(?) looking creature...




Plus this harmless looking path through the woods....





Equals.....


Mud faced Mira the Masked Avenger!

Out and About: the Epic Susan & Andy Wedding Weekend Post

Another weekend, another splendid wedding. This time we travelled down to Boothbay Harbor to get the nupitual groove on with chums Susan and Andy. It being Labor Day weekend, rooms in a tourist hotspot like Boothbay could have been tricky to come by and exhorbitantly expensive, but luckily the 04609 diaspora/travelling circus had thought ahead for once, and so almost all the rooms at the inexpensive and gloriously grubby Ship Ahoy! Motel had been booked by Bar Harborites eons before.

This suggests either "Do not steal the light fixtures" or "Prison tattoos available: ask at front desk"
While looking for directions the morning of our departure for Boothbay, I stumbled across this page of reviews of the Ship Ahoy!; alas, much of the information contained therein proved all to freakishly accurate. But no matter, we were going to enjoy ourselves no matter what, and everyone soon began chanting the mantra "Eh! It's $50 a night- what do you want, clean sheets or something?"

Jessie enjoying the Ship Ahoy! Motel to it's fullest
Oddly enough, only one person in our group of hardcore Mainers and hangers-on had ever been to Boothbay Harbor before (when he was 12) despite the town's reputation as a boffo vacation spot. It seemed nice enough, albeit less like Maine and more like Cape Cod. Downtown was a mixture of boardwalky things, t-shirt shops, and galleries but unlike Bar Harbor it lacked any discernible natural beauty behind it to draw the sting of the rampant commercialism. Apparently, it's better to arrive by boat.

A horribly un-PC picture of me being a mung outside the implausibly named "Mung Beans" (if you don't know what a "mung" is I'm certainly not going to tell you. It's infantile in the extreme and I'm ashamed).

Smudger the Trucker, Jessie, Allison, and the Fresh F.R.(hiding in wrap) make the footbridge all cool an' shit.

There wasn't a single boat I liked in the inner harbor. All gin palaces and floating midlife crises.
After a couple of hours this being tourists business wore thin but we could neither pop over to the wedding site to help set up as the families were still at the rehearsal dinner nor face returning to the Ship Ahoy! without a skinful. It was decided that a seafood and beer feast was in order.

Allison and The Fresh F.R. await the arrival of grub: her dinner of course involving solids, his unbuttoned shirts.

Moonie (l), Tyrannosaurus Rex (c), and The Coach (r) enjoy dinner. Note coach's headgear: it was a chilly day for September.

Everyone shivers their way through dinner.
After several pitchers of beer, some fried clams, and a mess of lobsters we wandered back to the Ship Ahoy! Everyone piled into room #9:

An "ultra-modern room" as described in the Ship Ahoy!'s promotional material. Actual room moderness may vary. From the motel's "accomdatons" (sic) page on their website

And Smudger carried in the supplies supplied by Amy and Pat (who wisely chose quantity over quality):

In a certain light, the Ship Ahoy! resembled a cruise ship or liner. Here Smudger struggles along the deck of the Titanic.
After a brief round of warm-up/top-up beers we headed over to the wedding site to help set up but the bride had departed for the evening and there was no work for us. Instead we gratefully drank the groom's offered dark & stormies, pre-met some of the other guests, and hightailed it back to the waiting budweiser. Things soon took a turn for the idiotic.

The author roach-proofs his head.

Amy tries to avert the gaze of the Fresh F.R.

In an example of her signature move, Fisher pounds on the author in salutation....

And then pulls a charming face.
And so to bed. the next morning we were up early, checking out the much ballyhooed Ship Ahoy! coffee shop. The establishment lived up to its name; a bright and airy dining room with incomparable views across the harbor, and a few gas station donuts and a pot of coffee for sale. We expected nothing more.

1st: Moving all the chairs to face the wall ain't throwing TVs out of windows, but we were cold. 2nd: The men try and reconcile the actual pool with the pool photo in the brochure.
And so onto the main event (at long last), Andy and Susan's wedding.

As befits a pair of professional sailors, the bride arrived at Andy's family's house by boat.

Mr. & Mrs. Allen.

The author and Rick ponder requesting a GG Allin number from the band. Meanwhile N Dawg embraces his public via the camera lens.

Bish and the G Unit.

The ladies catch up.

Colin and the J Man sensibly retreat beneath a tree as the afternoon winds down..

And there we leave it. Best wishes to Susan and Andy for a long and happy life together!