Steff McKenney

The Creation Of Adam

(Fresco, ca.1508-1512, Michelangelo)

It’s all smooth saline from here.

Bumming around downtown like a certified tourist. There are many, many worse places to live.

Amazing. Giant sun shade covering your whole house instead of cute accent rug, maybe?

If Dario Argento "sucks" how come South America named a whole country after him?

This birder is pretty excited that Maine’s standard-issue license plates feature two of her favorite things:

pine trees and chickadees.

(Hey - it rhymes, to boot!)

Gamer Boy, the Dolphins’ coach (whom we dislike, a lot), is swaying along to the national anthem like he’s Willem Defoe in Boondock Saints.

Two short weeks ago; but considering the now-established hard frost and bare trees, feels like it happened last year.

Not that you need my input - but I did the same for VERRRRRY similar reasons and it was so worth the bureaucratic hassle.

Just finished: Dog Stars (Peter Heller);

Just started: Nor’easter (Cathie Pelletier) and Crónica de una Muerta Anunciata (GM Marquez) to test how much Spanish I recall.

How about yourself?

Four Random Facts About You:

- am both left-handed and of rare blood type (fancy!);
- trim my own hair with dog clippers (some may say it shows);
- clownishly large feet (no punchline, it's a bummer);
- Constant Reader (no addendum).

It's the way to go - hurtling head-first into the next season.

Let me get right into a crawlspace beneath groundwater level and soak up all these glorious forever chemicals and other toxic hazards.

I’m reading about EPA Superfund sites (large, hazardous areas being cleaned up through federal- & state efforts).

Knowing this whole place can ruin your health forever, tell me this small segment of one such site (Kittery/Portsmouth Naval Shipyard) isn’t straight out of a horror script:

We finally have a car!

In Europe, there was no need for one.
Then, in Seattle, public transport was good enough.
Moving to Maine, we needed one but pandemic supply shortages struck.

Now we’re vroom-vrooming for the first time in our SIX years together (UHaul cross-country move aside) 😂

Our only supermarket closed. Municipal buildings closed. Doctors closed. HOSPITAL closed except emergencies.

Welcome to Maine.

Active shooter in Lewiston; 22 dead and suspect still at large. Shelter-in-place in effect.

No words.

I’ve seen some weird eBay shit over the years, but finding fragile ornaments SHIPPED in just a Kirkland tissue box is a new one.

They… they really just jammed the ornaments through the slot, stuffed a supermarket flyer on top, taped it up and then affixed their CUSTOMIZED ADDRESS LABEL 😭

Five days’ wild growth.
This year is way, way beyond nuts.

The Disney movie Bedknobs & Broomsticks, as marketed in Germany:

DIE TOLLKÜHNE HEXE IN IHREM FLIEGENDEN BETT

(The foolhardy witch atop her flying bed)

Appreciate that!

Savoring these final days of waning foliage with my morning coffee. It’ll be snow shoveling season soon enough.

Been volunteering at a rescue farm these past couple weeks; it had been a good decade since I’d last mucked out styes & stables.

I don’t have noodle arms and spend all day being physical… but it’s true: once you’ve lost your farm arms, there’s no growing them back.

I am officially a townie wimp 🥲

These dugs, every single second I do not spend loving on them:

._-~ THE SADNESS ~-_.

We, too, love to play a game of Frostbite Chicken.
Heating oil up here is almost $4 per gallon and, uh, I'm kinda not in the mood to make $500 delivery payments every other month. Death by ice crystals it is.

Seven years ago:

Went on a RIDICULOUS 30h journey on a whim (three planes, four trains, six buses, two taxis, one lighting strike, one cow on the tracks), because life felt dead-ended.

I have since switched continents, lives, careers and gotten married to the reason for that journey.

Life: wild.

Only three things in life are certain:

1. Death;
2. Taxes;
3. The more revolting a porridge looks, the better it tastes.

No such thing as a bad autumn morning in Midcoast.

Yay, glad to help put (even more) mushrooms on plates!

Stroganoff, anyone?

(These grow in 3-5 lbs clusters on our property; my whole damn hand is SOMEWHERE underneath that fungus bouquet.)