"The Season" Is Here ...

July 4th looms and traffic has definitely taken an up-tick! I think the summer residents are now back and that the tourists have joined the natives, the come-from-aways, and the summer residents and that "The Season" is underway!

On this Island, there are several classifications of people: the natives (born here), the come-from-aways (not born here but have lived here a long time), the summer residents (those of us who arrive for the summer season, more or less), and the tourists. What your status is does not seem to matter: everyone is nice to everyone.

Now that we are all present, there is much to-do, and much of it is designed to support worthy causes in fun ways.

Friday evening in Southwest all the merchants have agreed to remain open until 7 p.m. and there will be live music on the Common. This activity will happen the First Friday of July and Augst and maybe September, too.

We have learned that the July 4th celebration is in Bar Harbor and will cover two days. Saturday is the blueberry pancake breakfast from 6 a.m. - 10 a.m., then a parade, then a seafood festival that is accompanied by numerous other opportunities to view crafts and purchase items. There is also a lobster race (NOT a lobster boat race as reported earlier) on Saturday. How they get lobsters to race, I do not know, but am told it is a fun event. Let us hope it is also fun for the lobsters!! Papa Bear suspects that the losers of the race may be part of the seafood fest, but we cannot find any supporting documentation for that suspicion. Sunday (the actual 4th) there is a free concert on The Green followed by fireworks over Frenchman Bay.

Tuesday is the Strawberry Festival in Somesville from 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.: a huge serving of strawberry shortcake and a drink are available for purchase at the Fire Station. This event benefits the MDI Historical Society.

Wednesday the people in Somesville with pies begin selling them at 10 a.m. until they are gone.

In a couple weeks there is a Quietside Festival that features pink flamingoes to benefit the Harbor House. This Flamingo Fest is in Southwest.

There are tons of other activities happening, too, but these are the ones that caught my attention when reading the local newspaper.

We have done our weekly grocery shopping (tonight: chicken enchiladas and strawberry sorbet!) and acquired some materials to do some needed repairs.

It seems that towel racks are usually 24 inches in length. This length worked great, no doubt, when houses were built with uprights on 12-inch centers. This house seems to have 16-inch centers for the uprights, so one end of the towel rack is in a stud, while the other is not. The one that is not in a stud is breaking away from the wall. We are going to work to try to correct that situation by putting a piece of wood between the wall and the bar, so that the wood will attach to studs and the bar will attach (on both ends) to the wood. We will see how well this works. My job is to make the edges of the wooden piece rounded. We do not have a router, and, had we thought of it, might have been able to find a decorative piece of wood at a craft shop, but now we have what we have and will see if it works.

We have also now experienced what Baby Bear and Boo Boo had shared with us: using the broiler triggers the smoke alarms. No smoke is visible, but the alarms certainly squawk! The alarms are also linked electronically to each other so if one goes off, they all go off. We have an alarm in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in the downstairs bedroom and one in the basement, as well as alarms in the upstairs. The four alarms downstairs and in the basement are within, I would guess, 10 feet of each other. We are well-proctected. We have done some research and now have, on order, new alarms that have a "temporary off" button to help alleviate over-sensitive responses. And we have learned that everyone is suppose to replace their smoke detectors every five years!! Amazing. And a great way for the sellers of smoke alarms to make some money. If I am not mistaken, I think the House on the Creek still has smoke detectors from when the home was purchased a long time ago. Need to put updates for those onto the to-do list for after we return there this fall.

Breezy day today, sunny with a few clouds. Tide is high. Temperature is a bit cool. We are contemplating a bicycle ride tomorrow and I seem to have a list of things to wrap, print and mail, in addition to completing the removal of the grass from the rock sidewalk and removing the edges of the boards we have purchased to mount the towel racks and reading my books! Best get to work!!