ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

On our final day in Maine, my coworker friend and I met in the hotel lobby, having firmly agreed the night before that we were not going to eat another freaking Holiday Inn breakfast no matter what. We got our receipts and turned to the door. “I was thinking,” said my coworker friend. “I know we said last night we were going to do Dunkin’ Donuts, but…maybe we should do Tim Horton’s instead.”

My heart sang. “Yes!” I said gleefully. “We will have other chances to eat Dunkin’ Donuts, but Tim Horton’s will be a cultural experience of the north!”

Instead of going to the Dunkin’ Donuts a tenth mile down the road, we went to the Tim Horton’s a tenth mile down the road. When we went inside, I was surprised to see that it is in fact a lot like Dunkin’ Donuts, except that the Tim Horton’s was more full of cheer, early morning sunlight, and friendly senior citizens than any Dunkin’ Donuts I have ever visited. I ordered a low fat blueberry muffin and a Boston cream donut, and they served us coffee in real coffee cups, which I loved because they were my exact favorite shape and thickness. The muffin was perfectly chewy, and the donut was perfectly creamy. My coworker friend and I are now Tim Horton’s fans. It was all we’d dreamed it could be, and more.

When we went to the office we were auditing that morning, one of the office employees had had a recent fall off a motorcycle and was on crutches. Although a moose was not involved in this particular incident, it prompted me to ask about the many moose-related warnings I had seen on this trip. Up in Maine there are many signs and bumper stickers which warn about how if you practice constant vigilance and keep your foot on the brake, you may just manage to squeak through it, if and when the moose comes for you. I get the impression that moose here are like armadillos in the south, only more harmful to passenger vehicles. The other office employee commented that she had totaled her SUV once when she hit a moose, and that the moose was hit by several other cars and finally got confused and wandered off into the woods. This corroborates my overall understanding that moose are perhaps more dangerous than the kraken.

I’m going to miss Maine. It smells good and the people here say “a-yuh” when you ask them questions.