Good day everyone!

Everyone's heard the old saying "when it rains, it pours," personally, I feel like it's a flood! It's not all bad stuff, but it's stuff that we have to deal with and I have always been one to say, give me a hand, any hand, and I will play it to the best of my ability.

From the loss of our dog Mariah, to two teenage boys who are "feeling their oats", to an ice storm, to repeated snow storms, all while my full time maintenance person has been on vacation. Along with my other duties and responsibilities, I have spent many hours cutting trees, sanding and also plowing. It's always fun at first and it actually feels good to get back down "into the trenches" but eight hours in a plow truck is a little much, on top of everything else. Now the latest news, and I always say "everything happens for a reason."  I just received a call from my daughter Leslie and our trip to India, scheduled for Sunday departure has been indefinitely postponed at this time. I don't know all the details however there is a problem with my granddaughter Devi's passport and she can not fly back to India until the issue is resolved.

If it can be resolved in a week or so, I will still return to India with Leslie and Devi and just enjoy a shorter stay there, than originally planned. Our travel plans to Ahmedabad to see the annual kite festival will have to be cancelled. I guess it's just not meant to be and I can always see it another year.

Speaking of ice storms, great big THANK YOUS are in order for all of the CMP crews and their sub contractors who gave up their Christmas's to restore power to our area. We fed upwards of a couple hundred of the lineman and women who were working around the clock to restore your power. I know a lot of you had no power for five or six days and it can be a huge inconvenience or even enough of a "deal breaker" so that people had to leave their homes. This is bound to happen when widespread outages occur and it would be really nice, if everybody could afford a back up plan. This is the real world and in may cases, it is just not possible, so we do the best that we can. At the Dine-ah, we are fortunate to have "Back Up Betty", our 50,000 watt generator which powered the entire Dine-ah for the couple days that we were without power. We were lucky at camp and only lost the power for one day, unlike the Ice Storm of 1998, where we lost our power in Augusta for 13 days. We had a broken telephone pole which prevented getting power to the several houses in our neighborhood. My point is, as frustrated as some of us may have become, I believe the crews did as good a job as possible, given the hand they were dealt.      


 

 CMP crews and sub contractors at the China Dine-ah 

 

 

 

I recently had the opportunity to have lunch with Governor Paul LePage. We had a wonderful conversation and I came away with the same feeling that I have always had. Politics is not for me. It's a tough often thankless job with all kinds of notoriety, both good and bad. (And no David, I did not make a large contribution to his campaign, just a small business man trying to make a difference for all.)         

 

   

 Norm and Gov. Paul LePage

 

 

This coming Wednesday January 8th will be the return of our "world famous" Jon James and Wednesday Night Trivia at the Dine-ah

 

 

Just a reminder our NEW MID WEEK HOURS STARTING JANUARY 7th:

 

 

Tuesday - 11 am (NEW) to 8 pm

 

Wednesday - 11 am (NEW) to 8 pm

 

Thursday - 11 am (NEW) to 8 pm

 

I want to wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year