I’ve lived on Pine St. in Portland Maine for about a month now and have enjoyed it immensely. I thought this would be a good venue to document the unusual and very entertaining happenings on Pine and the rest of The West End. Maybe it won’t be that entertaining for all or even some…but there are 500 million other blogs out there…so…there. I’m sure I’ll throw in some other topics too — movies, film, motion pictures and cartoons. The usual stuff.

Yesterday I woke up to the sound of a jackhammer at 7AM right in the middle of the Pine/Winter intersection. The gas company was drilling small holes in the street and then putting down rope/cord/pipe down the holes checking some sort of readings I guess. One angry neighbor across the street on Winter stomped out during the hammering and was obviously complaining although all I could hear was the hammering. Her gestures were very animated and she looked very disheveled in her mussed hair and hastily put on robe. The workers seemed nice to her — it’s really not their fault, especially if there was some sort of gas problem. She stormed off to a pack of cigarettes and a brandy spiked mug of black coffee (I made that up but she looked like she’d do that).

The hammering only lasted an hour and I went for my morning walk soon after. I noticed the same guys at the end of Pine as I walked and they were preparing to wake up that section of town too. They must get a lot of flack from people. But maybe they get free gas…so that would be worth it.

About 12 hours later, I was eating a scoop of coffee/oreo ice cream at the recently opened Bonobo ice cream window with the Kotzurs and we saw a guy riding a bike playing an electric guitar — he had an amp in his back pack. That was the coolest thing I had ever seen, and I’ve seen the Grand Canyon. During my 12 year stint in Falmouth, I saw nothing even remotely close to that.

The morning walk today had no unusual happenings, but it was nice. Foggy and cool and very quiet. I may check out the Old Port Festival later but right now I’m enjoying a Keuring coffee pod (Timothy’s Sugar Bush Maple) and listening to jazz by Bob James on Grooveshark.

Thus ended the first blog.