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Ken Anderson: A Texas Paramedic in Maine

 

Public diary

  • April 14, 2001 Left Edcouch, Texas for Millinocket, Maine in two cars, accompanied by 4 cats, one of them pregnant. Bird was a stray born under a vacant house next to our ambulance station. I had been feeding her since she was a kitten, so we decided to take her with us. The pregnancy was unfortunate.
  • April 17, 2001 Arrived at our new house -- 146 Katahdin Avenue in Millinocket, Maine.
  • April 18, 2001 Began work, converting our 3-unit apartment building into a single-family residence.
  • April 24, 2001 Bird gave birth to 5 kittens, 3 girls and 2 boys.
  • July 1, 2001 Millinocket is bustling, with a combination celebration commemorating Independence Day and the city’s 100th anniversary. Bird’s kittens are beautiful. We’ve given 4 of the 5 away so far, and are left only with one of the females. Although she remains free for adoption, we’ll keep her if no one comes for her. If we do end up keeping her, at least Bird will have one other cat in the house that doesn’t hate her. All other cats are spayed, so this is a problem we shouldn’t have to deal with again.
  • July 7, 2001 I am bordering our front yard with a low rock wall, which will also allow me to build up the height of the yard. In Millinocket, pretty much everything is recycled or separated at the dump. Leaves and wood chips are composted, the resulting mulch available for the taking. I’ve been hauling load after load of mulch, filling in low areas in our back yard, and now I’ll be building up the level of the front yard.
  • July 18, 2001 Working on turning the front yard into a large rock garden, the major part of it done and planted. Planted some raspberry bushes a couple of weeks ago, and they are branching out nicely. It’s been raining here nearly every day for the past week or more, which is nice. We’re keeping one of Bird’s kittens, a female by the name of Obadiah. She’s a pest, but she’s our pest now.
  • August 4, 2001 It’s been hot here. Sometimes I wonder why we left Texas, if Maine is going to be as hot as it was in Edcouch -- then I realize that, while it has been in the 90s here, it was 108 in the Delta Area of Texas yesterday. Oh well. I built a work stand for the kitchen a couple of days ago. It came out pretty good. Yes, I am proud of myself. I put a cat door in the upstairs window today, so that they can go in and out through the fire escape, and built a monstrosity of a stand for them to be able to more easily reach the window. Most of them shouldn’t have a problem with it as is, but Baby Girl is getting old for a cat, and the kittens might not be big enough yet to make the jump. Yes, we have two kittens now. One of the ones we gave away has been returned to us. The kid just dropped it off in front of the house a few days ago, covered with fleas and flea bites. She’s acclimating now; although her sister doesn’t like her very much, her mother has finally realized that she’s one of her’s. I’m working on a separate area for cat stuff, so that I won’t use of so much of this space on them.
  • August 10, 2001 Everything is fine here. My wife’s mad at me. I’m not sure why, something about the washing machine.
  • December 28, 2001 Okay, it’s been awhile. Everything’s been pretty weird everywhere since September 11th. I’ll try to do some catch up. The day of my last post, on August 10th, we went on a Carribean cruise; which was nice. Then there was September 11th, which affected me, along with the rest of the country, far more than I would have expected. As my wife and I were trying to keep up with the news from throughout the world, we decided to share our efforts with others doing the same, and created http://11-sept.org which has a lot of things related to the attacks as well as the response. Frequently, throughout the day, I’ve been updating the News Update portion of the site while Michelle has been keeping the rest of it up to date. Moving on, Thanksgiving was nice. My step-daughter was here for a couple of weeks before going to Bosnia, so we celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and her birthday at that time. And did Christmas again on Christmas. Michelle gave me a digital camera, one that works great, and which will permit me to take even more pictures while saving a lot on development costs. That’s about it for now, I guess.
  • January 5, 2002 Not much to say. Been pretty busy with the 11-sept.org news updates, as well as adding to several of my other sites.
  • February 28, 2002 I haven’t written for awhile. I don’t know if anyone reads this stuff but, if so, I thought I’d bring you up to date. Our nephew, Dennis, is staying with us now. Denny is 12, in the 6th grade, and has been here since the middle of January. Although he’d rather be back in Seattle, he seems to be doing well here. I know we like having him here. On other matters, I don’t think I’ve mentioned earlier that we are members of the Millinocket Baptist Church, which is a part of the American Baptist Conference. We’ve been attending since the first Sunday after our arrival in Millinocket, and became members shortly thereafter. The church is not far from where we live, the people are nice, and we’re happy to have chosen it. As the Church Secretary, Michelle does the bulletins, newsletters, and other such things, while I’ve recently been appointed to the education committee, and will probably be putting together a church web site. Business is picking up, after a slow period following the September 11 attacks, so Michelle has been busy on her computer much of the time. And that’s all I have to say about that.
  • March 4, 2002 Detailed photographs and textual comment relating to the attic renovation can be found on http://kenanderson.net/attic
  • April 26, 2002 Not much to add. It would be nice if we had a little more money, but otherwise things are well. Although it didn’t stay on the ground, it snowed today. The attic renovation is on hold until we can gather the funds to continue, which should be soon. It’s great to have Dennis here. He’s off at a teen center tonight, but should be back in a half hour or so. He was off from school all last week for spring break, and was sick for most of it.
  • April 29, 2002 Good news! I’ve just learned that, tomorrow Tom Ridge will have some new colors for us. I can hardly wait till morning!
  • June 6, 2002 We’ve decided that we’re going to homeschool Dennis next year. We really liked his teachers this year, but we think we can do better with his education as our only task. Despite good teachers, the public school system is designed to fail. Or so it seems.
  • July 13, 2002 More than a month since my last writing. Next week, Michelle will be going to New Mexico by train. While she’s gone, I think I’ll take Dennis on a trip to the UP of Michigan, to see where I grew up and to meet some more of my family.
  • July 18, 2002 Yesterday, while her car was parked in front of our house, someone rear-ended it, pushing it 204 feet down the street, totalling her Chrysler Sebring. This changes things. While Michelle will still be making her trip to New Mexico, Dennis and I will remain here. Perhaps another time.
  • July 21, 2002 The news story about the wreck of Michelle’s car can be found at http://magic-city-news.com/
  • August 2, 2002 We bought a 2003 Chrysler PT-Cruiser today, a black one, very nice. $21,000 fully financed, but still with payments less than we were making for the Sebring. We’ll probably be able to pay a big chunk of it off once we get the insurance check.
  • August 21, 2002 The insurance paid off the Sebring, leaving something to put toward the PT-Cruiser, so we’re pretty happy with that. I tried to set up a blog to replace this page which, if I wrote more often, would be unwieldly, but I’m having some trouble getting it working. Eventually, I’ll find something that’ll be workable.
  • September 25, 2002 My brothers, Gladwin, Sheldon, and Harland were here a little more than a week ago - Gilbert was here in May. That was nice. It was great seeing them again, for the first in a couple of years, much longer for Harl. On another subject, I’ve had to remove both my public links page as well as my guestbook because of spammers abusing it for page rank. Since we’ve become a PR-7, I guess there’s value in having their URL’s on my pages somewhere. I wouldn’t even mind, if they’d have taken the time to leave some sort of a message as well, or a non-hype description in the links page. Oh well, I guess it’s the pains of success.
  • January 20, 2003 I’ve been trying to get a blog to work, but either I’m stupid or there’s some other reason why neither of the three types of blogs that I’ve tried here will work. If I actually added to this page every day, its size would quickly become unwieldly, so a blog would be the best answer, I think.
  • April 4, 2003 Not much to say. I’ve been pretty busy with my Magic City Morning Star news site, and another new one that I’m working on, as well as homeschooling my nephew and trying to find some time to sleep in between. I’m certainly not retired.
  • April 16, 2004 Okay, so I don’t update this page regularly. Not too much has changed really, although I’m sure I could have thought of something along the way, had I thought of it. My wife and I will be leaving tomorrow morning on a trip to Boston, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Nevada, before heading back, after retrieving our nephew, who we will leave in New Mexico for a few days. It’s a business thing, really.
  • June 22, 2004 My brother, David, and his family visited a couple of weeks ago - which was terrific, considering we hadn’t seen each other since he was a kid, and this was the first time I’ve met his family. Very nice people. If you go to our photos page, you’ll find a few pictures.

I haven't added to this in the past few years, because I have had too many other avenues of doing pretty much the same thing, but to a greater extent.

See:

Aroostook County, Maine - Photos from Soldier Pond, Maine - Photos from Wallagrass, Maine - Photos from New Canada, Maine
Photos from the Delta Area of Texas - Hardtack - Pasties, Plain & Simple - Overview of Bible Resources - Cats, Cats, Cats, Cats