Saturday was a transition day. It was the day we were to leave the Rockland contingent of the family and the day we were to drive to East Livermore to Dad and Kellee’s house. We were in no great rush, so while Mer visited with her family, I looked at Dale’s printer. He had not been able to print, and I found out that it was because he had left the power cable at home. It was a special non-standard cable that I guessed was going to cost twenty or thirty dollars to get and not be easy to find. I recommended buying a new printer instead and leaving it in Maine. To that end, I want out to Office Max in town. They were not open yet, so I drove down to the breakwater and walked along it for a few minutes before heading back to the now-open store. I was looking at cheap inkjet printers, but I came across a sale on a twenty-four-page-per-minute Brother laser printer for really cheap. I could not pass that up, so I bought it. The salesman warned me that the printer did not come with a USB cable to hook to the computer, but I had seen that Dale had two in his computer bag, so that did not worry me.

I got back home, unpacked the printer, and powered it up. I hooked up Dale’s computer, and it “saw” the printer and started to load the software. It then had an error. I tried a bunch of things, and after a long and frustrating hour, I tried Dale’s other USB cable, just out of desperation. The computer saw the printer and loaded it just fine. That was kind of how my summer with computers had been going.

We then packed up the car, took our leave and then Route 17 to Augusta. Once in Augusta, I decided to try to find the Maine State Library, which I actually managed to find after a little hunting. I wanted to see if the archives had the old newspapers from the late 80s so that I could look up my old cross country race times. The library had the Lewiston Sun papers on microfilm, so I spent about forty-five minutes looking through old newspapers while Mer read. Although I seem to remember seeing race results in the paper, I found very few of them, and those tended to be large races where only the top twenty spots were reported. So, sadly, I gave up without finding too much more than a few stories of old friends who played football.

We got to Dad’s in the mid-afternoon, and we sat and talked out on the back porch. Dad made some burgers for supper. The, in a surprise to me, Mer announced she wanted to take me to the Theater at Monmouth. I had heard of it before, vaguely, but I was game to go. It turns out the theater is only about twenty minutes from Dad’s house, and is located in a wonderfully strange building with bright colors and turrets. It is also home to a professional theater group that this night was doing Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing.

I was fairly astonished that there was a classical professional theater so close to my house, and that I had never been. I was eager to see how it was. It turned out to be excellent. Much Ado is a fun play, and the leads were very strong. In one scene, the male lead “accidentally” overhears how the lead female is supposed to be in love with him, and it was great fun watching him “hide” behind a bush, under a bench, in the audience, etc. The set was basic – just a backdrop of a terrace, and on the stage were a few benches and shrubs. It was a very well-done production. They were doing several plays in repertoire, one of which was King Lear. Mer indicated that we would be returning the next night to see that play.

We got back to Dad and Kellee’s around 11:00, and the stars were out and were amazing. We stood in the driveway and just started. You could even see the Milky Way. I forget how much light pollution we have, even when we don’t live in a major city like Chicago. It was great to see the stars so clearly.