After five and a half hours of driving we were early to the show we went to see so we wandered around a bit. Shockingly I found a place to parallel park and we ankled it the rest of the way. I let my companion find a nearby eatery. He chose The Daily Planet, probably in the hopes of bumping into Clarke Kent.
Vermont is soooo cute by the way. This was the only city I’ve ever been in where the scary dark alleys had not muggars and monsters but the echoing peeps of a gaggle of baby chickens. Most adorable dark alley EVER. And it was near the restaurant!
The Daily Planet was just as quirky as I expected it to be. It had one wall that was clearly a garage door, oodles of sarcastic artwork on the walls, a tin ceiling, and the doors in the bathroom stalls were old wooden shutters. This place was a weird hodgepodge of old timey nonsense. There was even a lava lamp next to our table.
If you haven’t already guessed this place was peak hipster including the bar, also very hipstery. The menu reflected the same with cutesy names for common comfort food and an odd smattering of the hoity toity. I was tired from the drive and nothing was speaking to me so I just ordered something I’ve literally never heard of – Buratta. You know, when all else fails have a moment of ADHD joy going for novelty. (Yes, I know this could have back fired. Thank you for your concern.)
My companion got the nachos, as if he were a normal person. The nachos were listed as an apatiser but this place was… more expensive than I would have liked. He also got the Mac n Cheese to share and really liked the nachos which he said stayed crunchy. I found the Mac n Cheese good but not out of this world. Reminded me of the Mac n Cheese I made in Home Ec class in high school. Still comforting.
And then there was the baratta which was very pretty. I will give it that. It was indeed two big blobs of cheese, with creamy centers and toast to eat it on. I was really digging the toast part wondering why it tasted so fantastic before realizing it was just buttered and I was apparently just delirious from travel. I did put the cheese on the toast… but the cheese was decorated with some sort of sweet sauce and a sprinkling of brightly yellow herbs. None of this was bad per se, it was just confusing. It was like having four or five different flavors and textures all having a battle in my mouth with no clear winner. I didn’t dislike it… though I was struggling to figure out if I liked it and I still have no answer.
So yeah… if you are looking for a quirky hipster bar to meet fellow weirdoes this place did look great for that… loved the ambiance.
After being laid up for two days with a migraine I was just about crawling out of my skin this morning, desperate to go somewhere, anywhere. I’m still in central Maine with my mother and she’s still none too keen on going for a hike in 85 degree weather soooo I offered to bring her to a museum, which I figured had to be climate controlled. Usually I drive but since we were so close anyway, and she does need practice driving, I climbed into the passenger seat and off we went.
It was an uneventful drive until we were almost there. Then the GPS insisted we had to go down Rangeley Road to get there. Only problem was the road was closed due to construction. So I took the GPS down, zoomed out, and found an alternate route through the college campus. It was, after all, a museum on the college campus. And wow. I don’t want to sound critical but all I ever knew of Central Maine was poverty and a lack of education, so to stumble upon such a crazy expansive campus here, nestled in such a well kept little town…. well I was shocked. This was not the Maine I grew up with. I must have fallen through the Twilight Zone again.
The museum has a range of art and utilitarian items from the native peoples of both North and South America, everyone from the Inuits of Canada all the way down to the Mayan and Aztec Empires. It was actually quite impressive! Funerary dolls, textiles, baskets, and a series of interactive displays for children that my mother kept herself entertained with (as she forgot her reading glasses at home and couldn’t read any of the plaques anyway.) They even had a bunch of South American dress up clothing and a wee wigwam. OK, even I went inside that one… Because when else do you get to play a wigwam? All and all it was a lovely little trip and was happily surprised. If you’re in the area and into museums its well worth a look!
Well! As it turns out there’s a bunch of things going on in Maine I should really be up here for so last Thursday I packed up my car and braved five hours of dragon’s breathe (fog) to get to central Maine. I’ll be up here for a couple weeks…. getting into trouble and whatnot. So far it’s been wonderful. I took a photo of the dragon’s breathe and a new friend I found in the yard this morning. I’m calling him Tom.
Today’s little adventure was to a Steampunk Craft Fair and Festival in Dexter. For those of you not in the know Dexter is a tiny town smack dab in the middle of nowhere and a damn strange place to have such a thing…. which is obviously what made me want to go. It’d either be amazing, or amazingly bad, either way I’m happy! So off I went! (I was however not ballsy enough to attend the costume party at the adjoining bar the night before… Not that I had anything to wear on such short notice.)
I must say it is HOT and MUGGY today… and the little festival in the middle of the parking lot around the old factory building. TO my surprise there were a lot of people dressed up! Most were vendors, and the live music, but I think a few were just nutballs like me. I wasn’t totally dressed down – I did wear my octopus shirt which looks very Jules Verne-esque. And someone did compliment it… I think he was trying to say it looked like Cthulhu.
Anyway, I was happily surprised with the diversity here. There were a lot of crafters, a lot of gears, a lot of keys, all glued on masks, tiles, earrings, you name it. Even talked to one young woman making her own chainmail. Seriously. Hand-made chain mail. I asked where the hell she picked up that skill…. she said her school taught it. Wow. Maybe if my school were that interesting growing up I wouldn’t have prayed so hard for the building to “blow down in one good gust,” as one of the teachers lamented, “That’s all it’d take! One good gust!”
Of course I also went in the hopes of seeing local authors. I wasn’t disappointed. I ended up buying three books, all signed, for $35. One was a collection of short stories, another was some sort of whimsical fiction, and the third was a graphic novel which I am not known for buying but it looked so damn detailed… the woman who inked and wrote that one said she was used to doing comic con type circuits, indoors. I could see that. Everyone was super friendly and very passionate, what I would hoped to find in such a gathering. For the dead center of Nowheresville Maine I think this was pulled off pretty well! Especially for the first year in doing this. Maybe next year I’ll return as a vendor!
