The Pennington Family after Melinda bagged her first moose in northern Maine

November 17, 2013 – Sunday morning

51 degrees/cloudy/misty/calm

Pentoga Road

I’ve spent way too much time trying to adjust the “new” Yahoo mail to fit my needs and I’m just about ready to start shopping for a new email service. I’ve had the same account for well over a decade and for the most part, have liked the format. For $20 a year, I can keep all my correspondence in a secure place and no matter where in the world I may be, have always had access to any student information needed.

Yahoo hired a new person who’s in charge of the email and suddenly, there’s a new and improved format. No it’s not. It looks trendy, it’s different, and it’s lousy. Call it the Old Dogs/New Tricks Syndrome. I don’t really care. I may go shopping elsewhere and kiss my long (and mostly successful) tenure with Yahoo Mail farewell.

I began Saturday morning by working on the stream of papers and assignments that continue to flood my mailbox. Most are well written and I’m enjoying reading them. A few have been sent back, but overall, the quality is quite good.

Amazing, whether a student is six or twenty-six, there’s always one who tries to sneak a quick assignment through. I received one last night that was some of the best pile of poopies I’ve read in a long time. At first glance, I thought she did quite well. But as I read, it dawned on me that the paper made no sense what so ever, yet, it sounded really... scholarly. It was then I began to break it down, sentence by sentence, and in the end, I had an assignment that would have made even the best used car salesman proud. I won’t repeat the comments I made on the paper, but since it was a third of a final project, I’m assuming the young coed will be resubmitting a more appropriate work in the next few days. I repeatedly tell my students that I read each and every word they write. I guess some don’t believe me.

I’ve received some pictures from Luke and Melinda of their hunting ventures this fall. My oldest granddaughter, Abigail, shot her first partridge.

My daughter-in-law, Melinda, bagged her first Maine moose. It dressed out around 650 lbs.

What I like the best is they do those activities as a family. Whether it’s shopping or hunting, it seems the Maine Pennington Clan does it together.

Luke said he trapped a grey squirrel in a blind mink set a couple of days ago and his first words were, “It’ll give Coleman (my grandson) good practice skinning.”

With Saturday’s rainy conditions, other than take some maple syrup up to the guys at Neighbor Mike’s camp, I stayed inside. Even Brutus seemed content to slumber by the wood stove.

Sargie was home late last night after closing the Vision Center and we didn’t get to bed until midnight. That’s almost a record for me as I generally turn into a pumpkin past 10 PM.

Today… I’m going to back the vehicles from the barn and attempt to put a couple of the old garage door panels on the rafters so I can store Sargie’s patio goodies up high. I wanted to get that done yesterday, but decided to wait until Sargie was home so she could help steady things and hopefully keep me from tumbling over sideways while high on the ladder.

No doubt we’ll venture into town for our weekly drive and then there’re the Packers. As beat up and bruised as we are, I still have faith that in the end, the boys wearing Green and Gold will triumph and come out on top. We play the Giants today in New York. It could be a long afternoon.

Time to begin backing vehicles out of the barn and getting to work. Hmm, but first, I think I’ll have another cup of coffee, listen to the news, and think some deep thoughts.

After all, a man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…