Megan and I have moved a lot over the past eight years — seven times by my count. It’s like one of us is in the military or wanted by the authorities (or both á la The A-Team!) and we have to keep stealing away in the midnight hours. I have to seriously wonder if all this relocation has given us an aura of displacement because my workplace, situated in the same Mid-coast town since 1990 and in the same cozy offices therein for the past 12 years, just up and moved last month. The move was only 8 miles down Route One, but still I feel somewhat responsible for our recent need of change of address forms and sturdy brown boxes.

Overall, I love the new office. The building is more modern in both its design and amenities and is only two miles from home, so I can bike to work, thereby combating both high gas prices and my carbon footprint. It has been kind of strange to make the shift from our old “single serve” bathrooms to the large, public affairs we have here. It wasn’t a huge leap back into my memory banks to remember that, even if you see someone you know in the men’s room, anything beyond a polite nod and quickly muttered salutation is sort of taboo. Like when you find yourself in a dicey neighborhood, keep your eyes forward, just keep moving, and for God’s sake don’t point.

We’re located at the topmost floor, the fourth, so this gives me great opportunity to exercise a little bit each day. But whenever I come across people on the stairs, any smile or friendly hello on my part is treated with surprise and even suspicion. Something about the stairs — closed in by cinderblock walls, narrow with lots of blind corners — spooks people. A frighteningly large percentage of the folks I see look fearful of some masher attack. It makes one wonder if something unfortunate happened in this building,  in the very stairs that are meant to connect floors.  But most likely it’s just the insular attitude that many people in Maine have. It’s not unfriendliness, but it certainly isn’t sociability.

Of course, I could always just sell out and take the elevator. I do periodically when something large or unwieldy needs to be moved up from or down to our basement storage area. But then you can be trapped with people in a little box, forced to decide between idle chat or staring resolutely at the floor number display as you ascend. But taking the elevator wouldn’t only betray my marginal fitness goals, it would also seriously slow me up. Several times, people who can clearly walk have gotten on the thing for a ride of just one floor. Trying to get from the basement to the fourth can be confounding enough, but running the gauntlet of one-floorers can be downright enervating.

Maybe it isn’t laziness though. Maybe these people take the elevator because of the Incident that happened in the Stairs. Maybe they know the elevator to be a safe haven, a story-spanning sanctuary. Perhaps that humble lift is this building’s version to the Headless Horseman Bridge: offering secure passage to those who reach it in time.

My work trip to Chattanooga ended very nicely. I even found time to walk around their downtown, which is darn nice what with the river walk along the Tennessee River, the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge, and the spacious, wide sidewalks leading to loads of quality restaurants. The nice thing about doing consulting work with schools is that you are typically done by 4 p.m. at the latest.  I am happy to report that many a Frisbee floated in the Chattanoogan sky that eve.  If that city wasn’t in the South, I could totally see myself living there.

While at our client’s school, I was able to admire some of the artwork in the library, including several prints by John Falter. In fact, I liked them so much that I did a little bit of research on a few of my favorites. “The Bridge” stood out for its chaotic layout and stark portrayal of a Revolutionary War era battle, soon-to-be Americans bayoneting the hell out of some British jerks (no offense, Dan) who were trying to cross some bridge, hence the title (no image online of this painting as far as I could find, dern it). After a bit more Googling, it turns out that the bridge in question is The North Bridge of Battle of Concord fame, a integral moment in American history and one of the reasons why I had today off from work.

For today is Patriots’ Day! Most of the workin’ folk of Maine and Massachusetts had today off from toiling thanks to those long deceased minutemen. I spent the day most patriotically, starting off with a nice three-hour yard raking session. “The Pond” has all but dried up in the back, and I am determined to make use of as much of our property as possible. Those American revolutionaries didn’t charge into battle with rifles that couldn’t shoot a man with his finger in the barrel just so I could sit back and let a full third of my half acre estate fall into forgotten disrepair. No sir. As a true patriot on Patriots’ Day, I left no leaf unraked, no fallen branch uncollected. I’m happy to report that the yard looks a large percent better and ready for some shade gardens and such. And I even unearthed an action figure — a humanoid camel who turned out to be none other than Sandstorm, the cool camel captain!

Following all this patriotic lawn work, I loaded the family up and drove us all over 40 miles to the nearest Target for some all-American consumerism. Truthfully, we just needed to stock up on some things for Hazel’s first day of daycare, which is tomorrow. Rather than just settle for our local Wal-mart, we made a day of it and head to Augusta, our state’s fine capital. How could we have better paid tribute to those fallen nascent Americans than by touring the cerebral cortex of Maine’s democratic government? No better, fair readers, no better at all.

America, we breathed you deeply today, this glorious day, this Patriots’ Day. Amongst the olfactory tinge of the Union worker on the line, the immigrant family yearning to be free, and the odorous smoke of freedom-ringing fireworks, we sniffed fries and burgers. So, on the way home, we had a drive-thru dinner, like true American patriots.

Major happenings within the Family Rags this week. To start with yours truly, I’ve been keeping my nose to the grindstone at work for the past week or so, preparing for a test run of potential new and interesting responsibilities. Earlier today, I facilitated my first solo seminar for work - not to go into deep detail (though I am happy to do so via email for those especially curious readers), but we provide consultancy services which involve philosophy, storytelling, words and their meaning, as well as entertaining a group of people for four to eight hours at a clip. It’s not exactly my dream job…

My dream job would be a superhero whose mild-mannered alter ego is that of a comic book artist who just so happens to captain his local Ultimate Frisbee team. Hey, it could happen!

…but it’s darn close and nailing the seminar today - which I did - has opened up several doors which have the promise of lifting Megan and I up a bit financially. Being a former English major, I never expected to earn much. So far, nearly ten years out of college, those expectations were met very readily and frugally. I’m not saying to take me Porsche shopping, but I just might be able to treat Megan and Hazel to ice cream with two kinds of sprinkles on top this summer. Stay tuned for more on this.

On the Hazel side of things, she said her first word today. Well, not exactly a real word, but she used speech to communicate a desire, and that counts in my book. Up until now, if she wanted something, she has grunted or whined while eying whatever her determined target might be. However, today Megan took Hazel to visit her great-grandparents. Not Hazel’s, these are Megan’s great-grandparents - well into their 90s and still with minds as sharp as anyones. Plus, they speak in that stereotypically New England way (like the “Pepperidge Farm remembers” guy) which I could listen to all day for a month without the awesomeness wearing thin. Anyway, following the visit, Megan had a long drive back home. Halfway through, Hazel started screaming. Unsure of whether she was just tired, feeling hungry, or sitting in a dirty diaper, Megan kept on driving in the hopes that the bumps in the road would soothe her off to sleep.

No such luck.

Eventually, the screams started mixing with one syllable repeated in groups of two: “Ba-ba.” This, apparently, is what Hazel calls her bottle of milk. Sure enough, when they got home and I brought Hazel in, she was muttering “ba-ba” between sobs and snorts. Megan readied the bottle and Hazel was overjoyed. She ate a bunch of ounces and felt right as rain after. Like I said, she didn’t use a real adult word, but she used a specific term for a real-life object, so it’s good enough for me. The English language rallies on!

Since having Hazel, I keep asking my mom what my first word was. Either she doesn’t remember or I keep forgetting her reply, but I have no idea if I was a “ba-ba” man or not. Given this autobiographical oversight, I now have to focus my energies on what my last word will be. I sure hope it isn’t “moist” - I’d hate to give Future Megan the jibblies.

Last week we braved the wilderness of the Hannaford parking lot to bring home our Christmas tree. We settled on a seven-foot conifer trucked down from Aroostook County, the northern bulk of Maine. The money we paid went to Kiwanis International – an admirable organization dedicated to serving and strengthening local communities through goodwill and volunteerism. I initially thought the Kiwanis were dedicated to funding genetic research to finally fuse an iguana and a kiwi, but the Internet has proven me wrong once more.

After a week in our living room, I don’t have to fill the tree stand with water three times a day; we have reached stasis. Despite trimming the tree carefully—adding our bobbins, lights, and Spider-Man collector ornaments delicately—we still vacuumed up enough pine needles to build a quite decent scale model of Oregon. Neither Hazel nor the cats have managed to bring down crushing, festive injury upon themselves. With the gifts now wrapped and stowed under the tree, I’m sure the temptation will be even greater.

At work, our holiday card is ready to ship. We send out about 200 or so to our board and important contacts. When they arrived last week, the staff (all 13 of us) was asked to sign them using either blue, black, red, or green ink. I piped up asking if we couldn’t just use digital signatures in the future, but was told that option would be too impersonal and counter to the spirit of the season. So I went through and slapped my John Hancock on each card, trying my best to keep the scratching pen tip (I chose black ink – very festive) free of any undercurrent of spite I may be feeling about this task.

When we were all done, I flipped through the pile. Despite the excellent consistency I saw in my placement and overall appearance, I could not help but notice that my signature absolutely sucks. Not too give too much away to any identity thieves in my readership, but my signed name looks nothing like “John”. It starts out like the EKG readout of an epileptic man under attack from a troupe of rabid mandrills and finishes with said man flat-lining. I’d like to change it, but I think I am locked in by both legal necessity and muscle memory. I cannot create a smooth flow when signing my name no matter how many times I try. And I can’t blame the rising and falling length of my surname as the culprit as Megan has not succumbed to this after almost five years of signing her married name.

A co-worker suggested that this is a male/female thing, but I don’t think that holds up. One of the best signatures I’ve seen is J.R.R. Tolkien. This is a fellow who spent a lot of time writing, but his signature never suffered. It’s artful, it’s legible, and it’s everything I’d like my name to be. Of course, I don’t think I could get away with the tri-dotted delta flourish.

Megan and her mother went down to Portland for a day of chain store shopping on Saturday, so Hazel and I had a whole day to ourselves. In between naps (hers, not mine), we read books, played with plush animals, and even took in “The New Yankee Workshop” AND “This Old House”. If there is a better formula for weekend fun, I have yet to pluck it from the ether.

Just after dusk, I packed up the daughter and headed north to my in-laws’ for pizza and to pick up Megan. As Hazel snoozed in her car seat, I was left alone with my thoughts on the 45-minute drive. Most of the trip takes place on Route One. Instead of the Boston-Post Road of my youth with its movie theaters, mall, and Milford Amusement Center (we’ve got the fun!), this stretch on the First Highway of America has woods, trees, forests, and a few stands of pine and spruce. During the brief mile or so through downtown Camden, I was treated to many houses and B&Bs aglow with the holiday spirit. Megan loves Christmas but I always rein her in with the amount of lights we string up each year. Being festive is one thing, being the house that puts Clark W. Griswold to shame is certainly another. However, I think I’ve found a solution in the vein of a five year plan.

The Five Year Plan: Megan and I are going to buy a bed-and-breakfast. Not only will this allow for Megan to decorate her little heart out with yuletide abandon, but this is a business that would make the most of her loves of home decorating, cooking for large groups of people, and designing graphic media in the way of advertisements and such on a year-round basis. Plus, we live in the perfect place for such a business, as folks from far and wide love to come to Midcoast Maine and will need a place to rest their fanny-packed patoots. And even though there are quite a few places with rooms to let in the area already, I’m sure our youthful outlook will stand out in a world of doilies, wallpaper, and mounted moose heads.

Which brings us to what to name our future inn? Not counting a play off of the street or neighborhood our future inn is built upon, the names fall into two distinct categories:
Names Megan Has “Taken Under Advisement”/Suggested Herself:

• The Sleeping Inn
• The Stay Inn
• The All Join Inn
• Reynard’s Roost

Names Megan Would Bludgeon Me With If They Were Corporeal 

• The Seroton Inn
• Original’s Inn
• The Millennium Falk Inn

The last one is a name I think we can really make work in a deceptively dorky way. If the name is changed to the Mill Falc Inn, we can say that the building used to be a granary or something. Or, with the name Mlle. Faulk Inn, our business becomes surrounded in the colorful history of Mademoiselle Faulk, a French dignitary whose emigration to New England immediately following that unpleasant incident with the orangutan caused quite the stir among her fellow Parisian aristocrats. 

Additional names are welcome. Also, should anyone have the urge to own a stake of a soon-to-be successful hospitality venture, this five year plan could be moved up to three.

Carving one more notch into my Stereotypical Dad belt, I have been away all week on a business trip. These business trips may become more of a regular thing as I pick up new responsibilities at work, which is a real mixed bag. One the one hand, earning more for performing more interesting work is a great opportunity. On the other hand, I don’t want to miss out on too much Hazel time. Luckily, it appears that she still remembers me, so I think we can make this work.

My final destination was Austin, TX, but flying out of the Portland Jetport necessitates connections if you want to travel more than 33% across the country. So to get to Texas, I needed to change flights in Atlanta. My seatmate was on his way down to Georgia for the National Convenience Store Convention. Yes, they have a convention for everything. It’s reminiscent of Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) and his favorite niche publication, Chewing, the magazine for gum enthusiasts. If you have an interest or profession, no matter how random, there’s most likely a journal or association dedicated to it.

I had roughly ten minutes to make it to my connection gate in Atlanta. Now I know this is a constantly cited piece of trivia, but yes, you can make it from one end of the Atlanta airport to the other in less than seven minutes without having to full-on sprint. I owe a huge thanks to the moving sidewalks and their ability to “increase my ambulatory efficiency” without the need for perspiration.

Without going into much detail, the company we seminar’d is a technological bigwig and their main campus definitely reflects that. The lobby of Building One is huge and shiny and architecturally interesting. It feels like the not-too-distant future. I half-expected to see a teleport bay off to one side. But the illusion was broken when I spied a plastic analog wall clock of the type that you can by at the supermarket for three bucks hanging askew behind the reception desk. The devil is in the details, people, and you need to hire a new set dresser.

The event went well and things look good for a prolonged business relationship, so huzzahs all around. But, the best part of the whole deal was eating dinner at a restaurant that offers meals in bucket form. Having the option to request “buckets ‘o’” food items really makes you feel like a winner. I may be a culinarily simple man, but never pass up a chance to eat out of a trough. Buffets and buckets forever