First of all, my beloved and I stumbled upon a Freihofer's bakery outlet on Outer Hammond St. If you have not been to a Freihofer's outlet before, get your butt out to the one in Bangor. And if you don't live in Maine, there's an outlet locator on their website. I love Freihofer's bread, but I usually have to pay $2-3 a loaf for it in the grocery store. In the outlet, the loaves were about $1 each. They also had Thomas' English muffins and bagels (again, about $1). And cakes. And pizza crusts. And all sorts of other goodies. I left with a massive bag of baked goods for about $6.50.
I probably shouldn't be eating most of this, but it's so good!
Two years, and I didn't even know this place existed. As Jenny Boylan would say, "It's possible to live in the same town as a monkey house ... and never even know it."
After purchasing our delectable comestibles, we stopped by the Civic Center for the What Women Want Expo. We weren't sure what it was (I was hoping for lingerie), so we looked it up online. The advertisements featured many pictures of shoes and smiling women (almost certainly happy about their shoe purchases). And, of course, this beauty:
My apologies for the glare. If would like to see better pictures on this blog, you may donate your used digital camera to me. Anything would be an improvement upon my old Nikon, which is the 90s brick-sized cellphone of digital cameras.
The answer to the age-old question? "Extra Money to spend at your favorite stores!" (I'm not even going to go into the grammar issues.) I suppose I should have known, then, that the expo would be bordering on offensive. Still, it surprised me when the very first booths were for plastic surgery. I understand that these companies market to women, but do the Pampered Chef and Mary Kay and other such companies have to rub their sexist assumptions in our face? The entire thing was a shrine to commercialism in all its glory. Trust me when I say that it was spectacular.
Of course, I was one of about seven men in the entire place, and I was promptly ignored by all of the vendors, except for the Pampered Chef girl, who struck up a conversation after K. told her that I was the cook in the family. Also, the very nice lady at the Passion Parties booth explained the whole process to me. I had never heard of them before (in case you're similarly ignorant, imagine an erotic Mary Kay and you have the gist of it), so she explained to me that they do things "tastefully. Sometimes the guests can get kind of wild," she said, laughing quietly and tastefully, "but we don't force anyone to do anything they don't want to do." Good to know.
After the excitement of finding things to do in Bangor, we capped off our night with Spruce Run's silent auction and dessert party. My good friend A. Fiercehair was one of the "local confectioners, businesses, and artisans" featured in the event. She baked miniature strawberry cupcakes, and they were delicious. I overloaded on cheesecakes and truffles and other fancy desserts. There was jazz. And a silent auction! Considering the crowd at the event, I was expecting everything to be expensive, but it was quite affordable. We left with four pictures frames and a floral arrangement for $20.
Ah, the irony of taking a picture of flowers and of a picture frame with a picture of flowers in it.
Needless to say, we had a blast. I'm still a little amazed that such fun can be had in Bangor. Like most mysterious yet good things, though, it's best not to prod too much, lest it all collapse.
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When I got home and collapsed in my comfy chair last night, K-dog pulled me right back out of it and into the bar. Where there was a band. A pretty good one! And some pretty awful dancing. But the "awful" was really my fault.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the most important part here is that I danced. In Maine. Not at a house party. It really was a good day for Maine.