Every time I drive north over the Piscataqua River Bridge into Maine, I pass a sign that says “Welcome to Maine, The Way Life Should Be.”  Directly beneath it is a smaller sign that says “Open For Business.”  It always catches my eye and I think about Maine’s current governor.  Making Maine a friendly place to do business hasn’t been an easy task for this pro-business politician.

Do the words “friendly” and “business” even go together?

As part of my move home, I needed a technology upgrade.  It’s one thing to find a place to live and move all kinds of stuff; it’s another thing to live somewhere with all the amenities of this modern age.  I will also admit there was a little part of me which said “maybe the sale of The Coop will fall through.”  In order to mitigate this potential financial disaster, I postponed making technology decisions until the last minute.

I reasoned that if I should end up with a seaside condo AND an apartment in my hometown, I could probably swing it for a year while I worked on an aggressive plan to sell the seaside condo.  I would sleep on an air mattress at the condo during the work week and drive home to Maine on the weekends, just like I’ve been doing for the past few years.

That’s not how it all turned out and it’s been a race to get all the parts of my technology installed.

There was a little glitch with a local telephone company last week, installing a landline.  They sent an IBEW member yesterday and he fixed it right up.

My first outbound phone call was to my mother and she promptly invited me over to supper!

Yesterday was also the first appointment the local internet service provider had available.  A friendly and courteous technician arrived, but his ladder wouldn’t quite reach the switch box on the telephone pole across the street.  He had to call someone with a bucket truck, who promptly fixed it right up.

No more blogging from the Maine Turnpike!

Finally, I went to Uncle Bob’s to talk about fall garden work.  I hung around in the garden for a while, dead-heading marigold and nasturtium seeds for a spring planting project.  Uncle Bob was nowhere to be found so I left him a note on the porch.

This transition home hasn’t been easy.  There are quite a few half-done projects.  I keep chipping away at them and before I know it, I’ll be ready to send out some kind of metaphorical sign that says I’m “open for business.”

I am in the business of living a local life.