In other news, I’ve been reading a lot of random books lately and will do my best to post a summary of what I liked. So first on this list is two series by Joseph Robert Lewis. So in the interest of full disclosure Joe works for me, but he is writing a lot of stuff in his free time. Not sure how he does it. He is self publishing his material for Kindle and Nook. They aren’t expensive, but well worth the read. It’s mostly sci-fi/fantasy, but it’s probably best to go to his site and really get a good idea. Really interesting story lines and well worth the money and time. I’ve forced myself not to pick up his two most recent releases only so that I can get through some required reading and studying of my own and will allow myself the pleasure of reading his new stuff as reward. So drop by his page and tell him I sent you.

On a side note, instead of posting this on Facebook I’m trying to diversify our social media so that I have a bit more control.  All these weird privacy changes of they keep making are getting scary.

I think I woke up first this morning.  I ambled my way to the restroom to cleanup and lit the citronella candles on the way out.  As I come back to the tent the rest of the party is gently rising from the tent, hungry.  We broke out some eggs, bacon, sausage, onions, mushrroms, and peppers.  While we ate we decided that we wanted to go kayaking.  We called one place and they said they were all booked up.  Now here’s the thing, instead of hanging up, he asked us to hold and CALLED the other kayaking companies around the island and found us a slot for 7!

We weren’t scheduled to kayak until 1530 that afternoon so we went back out to Cadillac Mountain to hike an easier trail up.  It was still a pretty difficult climb for us, and Jae/Jae turned back about a quarter way up.  As I moved further up my heels became blistered and by the time we were at a good halfwy point I pretty much couldn’t keep going.  We took a number of pictures along the way and turned back.  By then it was around noon and we drove up to the top of Cadillac Mountain (nature beat us twice, so we figured we needed an assist) and had sandwiches up top.  We took a great relaxing rest up top then proceeded to Maine State Kayak .

The tour was great.  We got in our shoes and put some stuff in the dry bags. They gave us a quick explanation of rowing and had us get into the tandem kayaks.  The rowing was farely easy, but many of the ladies would take breaks along the way.  Sarah was kind enough to keep her oars out of the water while she rested so I wasn’t rowing against the extra drag.  The landscape in the area is absolutely beautiful.  I can totally see getting lost just staring at the landscape.  We’re totally coming back with the kids in the future.  The tour was about 4 hours total, and we took a rest on a private island beach about halfway through.  Despite explicit instructions to urinate in the ocean, a few in our party decided to try and go in the bushes.  They got a little scolding from the guide.

Jane, our guide, is a Chicago native, who came out to Maine for the last few years.  She’s moving to Indiana to finish her education degree and will eventually be a middle school teacher.  Good luck Jane, it was a great tour.

It was pretty late and Jae/Jae had to get back.  She had a citizenship interview the next morning in Boston, so they had to leave that night.  While we prepped dinner, they built a fire to make S’mores.  Jae’s never had S’mores before so we insisted that they stay at least long enough for that.  We made rice and bulgogi for dinner and rested through the night.  It was a really busy day and we were all pretty exhausted.

So we’re back in Maryland now.  It’s good to be home, back to civilization.   The trip overall was great.  Good to be away from TV and computers for awhile and spend time with family and friends.  I think I’ll break up my posts so that each covers a day.  Hopefully this gets me in the habit of posting every day or so. 

It was decided that we would leave bright and early Monday morning.  My mom suggested that Sunny and Sam stay over at her place so that we didn’t have to loop into Manhattan to pick them up.  We all got up around 0300 and probably got on the road by 0400.  In the pitch black morning we fired up the GPS , and headed out towards New Haven to pick up Paul.  It was a really quick trip and got to New Haven around 0530 and proceeded our way up to Boston to meet up with a couple of Sam’s friends, Jae and Jae. (husband and wife, I can’t spell their actual names )

We met at the Cracker Barrel for breakfast at 0800. I had a giant breakfast of Country Fried Steak, white gravy, eggs, biscuts, and grits, plus enough coffee to drown a horse.  I got to sleep in the back on our way out and swapped halfway through at our next gas stop.  We borrowed my dad’s 1992 Toyota Land Cruiser .  We got an amazing 12 MPG out of it.  We got to the KOA around 1430, checked in, pitched our tent and made cheesesteaks for lunch.  The mosquitos were brutal and the bug spray didn’t seem to help out at all.  Within 20 minutes I had a dozen bites on my legs, and Sam had this giant bite on his forehead.

Around 1600 we headed out to the park to pay our fees (only $20 per vehicle!) and just survey the area. We wanted to climb a trail up Cadillac Mountain, but about 50 meters in I smashed my head on a rock and we decided it was too dangerous, given how dark it was about to become.  Besides, Sarah’s steel toe boots were not workinig real well for her.  We walked an easy trail for another hour and then headed out to find an LLBean outlet store we had seen on our way through Ellsworth.  We lucked upon a pair of boots which fit Sarah well.  We even got a great recommendation to a nice lobster house for the night.  What we weren’t ready for was that everything closes by 2100 in the area, so with only 10 minutes to spare we raced over for dinner at Union River Lobster Pot .  The meal was indeed satisfying, we all had lobster, and mussels, clams, and New England Clam Chowder.  They had a 4.5 pound lobster in the tank, and one of the wranglers even “hypnotized” it for us.

We made our way back to camp and settled in for the night.  At that point we had been up for quite awhile   A few of us took showers in the remarkably clean shower facility in the center of camp, soothing our sore bodies and relieving some of the itching.  We had made a quick stop by the Walmart on our way back and picked up some citronella candles, but it just seemd that the mosquitoes for the rest of the trip were just not nearly as bad.

I’ll have pictures up soon.  I’ve just been really busy catching up at work.  Good to be back!

So we had our semi-annual game night at work on Saturday.  It ran from 9pm to 1am and it seems that we attract a pretty good crowd.  We were able to setup the big projection screen ( 9′ x 12′) outside in the courtyard with StepMania.  We bought a couple of metal dance pads and it was really loud.  Inside the lab there was a group playing DOTA (a Warcraft III map) and we had Guitar Hero running in the lobby.  Eventually we got an X-box hooked up as well.  Looks like we got around 60 people through the lab.

During the night a few of us debated what Game Night means for the lab.  The Digital Media Center is around to foster the arts and promote the use of digital tools.  While Game Night gets a lot of students to come out and visit us, are we undercutting ourselves by having students think that we are a gaming location?  For the next few weeks we almost always get a string of students coming in to ask how to setup Warcraft.

But is that really a bad thing.  We get a lot of students who say, “Wow if only I knew about this place last year!”  It’s a shame seeing all these seniors graduating in two months and they never knew that the lab was there.  Does Game Night give us more in publicity than it does in difficulty promoting the arts?  Game Night does take us quite a bit of work.  We have at least 7 people working from 7pm – 2am, plus the cost of the prizes and food that we provide.  Each year we spend at least $200 to buy games and peripherals.  The night essentially runs us about $500 to run.  Could that $500 go to a better use?

This is the 4th time we’ve run some type of Game Night.  The first one paled in comparison to this in terms of effort and quality.  With all the projection screens and console games this is getting more extravagant each year.  Maybe next year we’ll have the entire courtyard filled out.  At some point we’ll have to spend some more effort evaluating if this is worth it, but for now the 60 students we got seems to be the best event we’ve had.  Maybe we can get our student staff to do more of the work, which would help with the cost.