We recently made a trek to our favorite antique mall, and as has happened quite a few times when I’ve left that place, it was with a new addition to my collection of Toby jugs.
Guess who the new fellow is!
Happy Birthday My Love!
As I keep adding to this post every year, and with cross-posting it and importing it from my old blog to this one, I suppose it gets a bit more ungainly each year. Well, that’s just the way it is. Today is The Wife’s birthday, and I’m celebrating. As always, new stuff added at the end of the list; also as always, I don’t edit what I’ve written before or revise anything that’s out of date. Think of some of that stuff as growth rings on a tree…part of the reason of this post is to preserve memories.
Today is The Wife’s birthday! Onward and upward, as always!
A brief slideshow of photos (some of which are already on this post, but I like them and it’s my blog, so there they are again!) follows. The song is “Live Forever” by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, a wonderful band.
And now, my annual list of memories and things from our years together. (New items on the list are appended to Number 97, alphabetically. I do this because I’m too lazy to renumber all the stuff after that one every year.)
1. Her hand fits perfectly into mine, as though our hands were fit for each other.
1a. That said, there’s a good chance that she prefers the dog to me.
2. The first time she saw Star Wars was with me. And ET.
2a. The first time I saw Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were with her.
3. She used to keep an aquarium before a bunch of moves made us give up the fish. Maybe we’ll do that again someday. But when we started dating, she had two fish, named Ken and Wanda, named after two memorable characters from A Fish Called Wanda. When Ken went belly-up, she called a friend and solemnly informed her, “K-k-k-ken d-d-d-died.” (One of the movie’s running gags is Ken’s stuttering.)
4. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I’ve converted her from someone who hated coffee into a regular coffee drinker.
5. For reasons passing understanding, she has always found Erik Estrada attractive. She and I used to have arguments over who could best the other in a fight: Agent Mulder from The X-Files or Ponch from Chips. (I think Mulder would have blinded Ponch with the beam from those giant blue-beamed flashlights he and Scully were always toting, and then beaten him into submission with his eternally-able-to-get-a-signal cell phone.)
6. One of the first things we cooked together was Spanish rice, which is to this day a comfort dish of ours. The first time we made it together was also the first time she’d ever cooked with actual bulb garlic, as opposed to garlic powder. The recipe called for a clove, but she thought the entire head was a clove, so into the rice the entire head of garlic went. That was the best Spanish rice ever.
7. A few years ago she baked a Bundt cake for The Daughter’s birthday, but the damned thing stuck in the pan, resulting not in a ring but a mound. So she just mounded it up, glopped the frosting right over the top, and called it a “Volcano Cake”. Now, every year at her birthday, The Daughter says, “Remember the Volcano Cake?”
8. Our first date was to see Edward Scissorhands. So, Johnny Depp’s been there since the beginning, from Edward all the way to Captain Jack Sparrow and beyond.
9. We used to go out for chicken wings and beer every Thursday night. We didn’t even miss our Thursday night wing night when The Daughter was born: her birth was on a Saturday, and we left the hospital on Tuesday, so at the tender age of five days, The Daughter entered a bar for the first time. This may have made us bad parents, but I don’t think so. A girl’s got to know how to handle herself in a bar, right?
9a. She’s not a huge fan of when I post photos of her sleeping.
10. She insisted on breastfeeding both The Daughter and Little Quinn, which in both cases required lots of pumping. Especially in Little Quinn’s case, since he was never able to eat by mouth. Every drop of breastmilk that entered his body went in via the G-tube, so for as long as her production held up, she pumped six times a day.
11. I’ll probably never completely understand how much of herself she sacrificed in fourteen months to keep Little Quinn alive and progressing. It seems, in retrospect, that every free day she had was given to him.
12. That same instinct in her kicked in again when Fiona was in danger. She didn’t question the necessity or possibility of spending months flat on her back with her feet inclined, if that was what it took. If commitment was all that was needed, Fiona would be here today. (Of course, if commitment was all that was needed, Little Quinn would be here and Fiona wouldn’t have happened.)
13. We used to associate certain teevee shows with the snack foods we’d eat while watching them. NYPDBlue was always chips-and-salsa. ER, when we still watched it, was often good ice cream. Now, good ice cream has been transposed to Grey’s Anatomy.
14. “Our” first teevee show was LA Law.
15. Subsequent teevee shows of “ours” included ER, Mad About You, The Pretender, Profiler, CSI, Firefly, and more.
16. On our first Internet account, we set up our combined e-mail identity after the two main characers on The Pretender. We were “Jarod and Miss Parker”. People familiar with the show wondered what that said about our relationship, since Jarod and Miss Parker aren’t allies. In fact, Miss Parker was initially a villain but as the show went on her character became much more complex.
17. She started roller blading, got me hooked, and then promptly stopped roller blading. Now she prefers biking.
18. It was almost without warning that I met her parents for the first time. We started dating late February 1991; a couple of weeks later was spring break, for a week, so I came home to Buffalo. At the end of that week I tried calling her, only to learn from the old lady she was renting a room from that she wasn’t home because of a death in her family. I remembered her saying something about a sick grandfather, and that’s what turned out to have happened; her grandfather had passed away from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. When I got back out to school, her entire family was there. So I met the future in-laws on the spot. Luckily, I seem to have made some kind of decent impression.
19. Our first long trip together was from Iowa to Idaho, to visit her family, a couple of weeks before school began in August of 1992. She had already graduated college, but I was in my senior year. While we were out there, the infamous Ruby Ridge Incident was taking place twenty miles down the road, so all week there were National Guard vehicles on the roads and helicopters overhead.
20. I am forever amazed at her ability to take some fabric and create a garment. This skill of hers looks like magic to me.
21. Her first pair of overalls were a gift from me. She thought the whole thing was goofy – maybe she still does! – but she wore them for years until at one point they became too small for her, and then a short while later they became too big for her. We didn’t start wearing overalls together until we’d been dating for about a year.
22. Back in the 90s, on two different occasions, we picked out Persian kittens. Both were wonderful cats, both are gone now, and we miss them both dearly. The first was a beautiful tortoiseshell Persian named Jasmine; the second was a red Persian named Simba. Both died in the year preceding this blog’s launch.
23. Adopting Lester and Julio was The Wife’s idea. I’m still unsold on these two giant lummox goofballs.
24. The Wife also took The Daughter to adopt Comet, when The Daughter was only two.
25. Shortly after The Wife moved to Western New York to be near me, she adopted a cat from the shelter she named Lilac. That cat never really liked me all that much. Lilac died a few months after Little Quinn passed.
25a. She is directly responsible for all the animals with whom we currently live.
26. She loves to laugh, particularly at my expense. She is convinced I don’t think she’s funny, but that’s just not the case.
27. Things with which she has a deft touch include: a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, a kitchen knife, the mixer, bread dough, a screwdriver, a lug wrench, and a shot glass.
28. It irritates her that The Daughter has inherited my tolerance for sunlight — I tan, whereas The Wife burns.
29. The Wife likes to read, albeit not quite as much as I do. She always has a book going, and she reads every day.
30. She never used to use a bookmark, until I finally decided I was tired of watching her flip through a book looking for a passage that was familiar to her so she could find her place. I bought her a bookmark.
31. She loves nuts – except for walnuts and pecans, which I love. This makes it occasionally difficult find good brownies and similar items in bakeries, since many people default to putting pecans or walnuts in their brownies or other chocolate cookies.
32. When I first met her, she was a huge Anne Rice fan and read most of what Rice wrote until she decided that Rice’s output wasn’t interesting her much anymore. Since then she’s read a lot of other authors, including a lot of unfamiliar names whose books I’ve plucked from the stacks of offerings at library book sales over the years. Interesting how obscure even the bestsellers of yesteryear eventually become, huh? Currently she really loves Gregory Maguire, the Wicked guy.
33. When we first met, she was a Washington Redskins fan. So of course, the first Super Bowl we were together was the one where the Redskins knocked the Bills on their collective arse. Oh well, at least she hated the Cowboys.
34. She prefers her KFC “extra crispy”, where I’m an “Original Recipe” guy.
35. Movies that are particularly meaningful or nostalgic to us, in addition to Edward Scissorhands and Star Wars are Dances With Wolves, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Singin’ in the Rain, and the James Bond movies.
36. For some reason we didn’t take any pictures when we were on our honeymoon or when we were on our vacation to Disney a year later. I think we were between working cameras at those points…but lately I really wish we’d have addressed that at the time.
37. Things we did on our honeymoon to Cape Cod, Boston, and New Hampshire: road a boat out to sea to watch the whales; visited the New England Aquarium; ate dim sum in Boston’s Chinatown; bought lots of kitchenware at an outlet strip (don’t laugh, we still have some of that stuff); visited the Boston Science Museum. While doing two days in Boston we stayed at a hotel about forty miles out and road the train into town; on the second day, on the way back, we fell asleep on each other’s shoulders.
38. Our first argument as a couple resulted from a common misunderstanding between people when one is from Iowa and one is just living in Iowa for a while. I told her we’d meet for dinner, so she showed up at noon and got annoyed because I wasn’t there. Well, duh! I said “dinner”, not “lunch”. Except, remember, she’s a native Iowan, which means instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like most (ahem) normal folks, she ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Thankfully, I’ve converted her since then. Whew!
39. Our first wedding anniversary saw us spending a week at Walt Disney World. What a wonderful time that was! Even if she managed to rip her toenail out two days into the trip, thus requiring me to push her around in a wheelchair the whole time after that.
40. She had long hair when we started dating, and I had short hair. Now we’ve reversed that.
41. Before we started dating, I had a beard. When I became interested in her, I shaved it so I’d look better. Then, I learned that she likes facial hair. So I grew the beard back a while later.
42. Foods I’ve tried because of her: asparagus, squash, rhubarb, grapefruit, and more that I don’t recall.
43. She loves George Carlin.
44. She bought me my first cell phone, and my second cell phone.
45. When we were at the Erie County Fair in 2001, she wandered off to look at the Bernina sewing machines. When I came by ten minutes or so later, she was in the process of buying a Bernina sewing machine. I didn’t complain; I just stood there, kind of looking shell-shocked.
46. Leading up to our wedding, she rigidly adhered to the notion that the groom should not see the bride in her wedding dress until she comes round the corner to walk down the aisle. So I didn’t see her until she came round the corner to walk down the aisle.
47. Starting a family was her idea. Not that I was against it; I figured we’d get there eventually. She just picked the “eventually”.
48. She picked The Daughter’s first name, so I got to pick her middle name.
48a. And now, this:
49. Since Thanksgiving Break at college was only a four day weekend, I didn’t go home for T-giving my junior year; instead, I spent the weekend with her. We went to see her extended family out in Storm Lake, Iowa, which is on the other side of the state. Since she has family over there on both sides of the family, we ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners that day. Some part of me is still full from those two meals.
50. Iowa delicacies that The Wife and I share are pork tenderloin sandwiches and broasted chicken.
51. Some of our early dates were sufficiently cheap that we had to look for ATM machines that would dispense cash in five dollar denominations.
52. She bought Simba, the above-mentioned red Persian kitten, while we were on a shopping trip to Erie, PA. She fell in love with the kitten as soon as she saw him in the pet store; we then spent the rest of the day walking around the mall with me listening to her as she tried to talk herself out of buying him. (Persian kittens are pricey little buggers.) Finally, while we were at dinner at Red Lobster, she decided to pull the trigger.
53. Before Little Quinn, the most heartbroken I ever saw The Wife was the day we finally had to end Simba’s life. His kidneys were in failure.
54. Great gifts she’s bought me through the years: my current winter coat, a cupboard-full of drinking vessels of all types, candles, incense burners, the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD, my anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings with paintings by Alan Lee, my star sapphire ring, my current wristwatch, and many more.
55. The first thing she ever gave me: a stuffed bear, around whose neck she tied a lavender ribbon. I think she doused it with perfume. I named that bear “Bertrand”, after philosopher Bertrand Russell.
56. The first thing I bought her: a little two-inch high figurine of a laughing Buddha. I think this confused her a bit.
57. Despite my best efforts for a while, she’s never much warmed to baseball. That used to bother me, but these days that doesn’t bug me much at all. I’m pretty cool to baseball myself now.
58. For a few years we went to Cedar Point each fall. We haven’t been there in a long time, but I always found being there with her in the fall, in the cool air, pretty romantic. I loved riding the Giant Wheel after dark, sitting up there with her hand in mine, looking out over Lake Erie.
59. At Cedar Point, she decided that she liked this one coaster that does loops, so I stayed on the ground while she rode it. I’m terrified of those things.
60. Why don’t we play mini golf more often? We both love mini golf. The Daughter loves mini golf. What gives?
61. One day in 1996, we were eating lunch in Buffalo when we had “The Discussion”. Any guy who’s ever been dating the same girl for a period of time measurable in years will know what “The Discussion” is. So I agreed, it was time for us to take the “next step”. Later on, while she was having her eyes examined at LensCrafters, I bopped over to Penney’s to buy her a ring. I chose a nice emerald one that looked really pretty. Sadly, they didn’t have it in her size, so they had to order it, which would take three weeks. So I figured, OK, I’ll get the ring in three weeks and make this thing official. Yay, Me!
62. The next day, she proposed to me.
63. Three weeks later I showed up to get the ring. They had it, but they couldn’t find the paperwork, so some poor guy at the pickup counter at Penney’s spent his entire lunch hour trying to find the paperwork so I could give my already-fiancee her engagement ring.
64. I don’t remember exactly when we picked out her wedding rings, but we each have an Irish wedding band, and each ring is set with the other person’s birthstone. So my ring is set with four amethysts, which is her birthstone; hers is set with four sapphires, which is mine.
65. For years I wore my ring incorrectly. Apparently there’s one way to wear an Irish wedding band that signifies being married, and another that signifies being single. I was wearing mine the “single” way. I was alerted to this by a guy I worked with at The Store; he said, “Yeah, you’re telling all the women that you’re available.” I replied, “Yeah, and I’m beating them off with a stick.”
66. On our honeymoon, it was important to her that she at least get to dip her toes in the Atlantic Ocean. So she did. The water was very cold, though.
66a. She replicated this moment years later when we took a trip to the Jersey Shore.
66b. We returned two years later.
67. It always bugged her mother that she saw Niagara Falls before her mother did. Later we took her mother to Niagara when she was out for a visit.
68. During the summer of 1991, when I was at home and she was still in Iowa, she came to spend a week with me. I took her to Buffalo and to Toronto, on the way to which we stopped to see Niagara Falls for her first time.
69. She was really confused the first time a Japanese tourist asked her to take his picture in front of the Falls.
70. At the time our beer of choice was Labatt’s. It’s pronounced “la-BATS”, but we had a family friend at the time who liked to say it “LAB-uhts”, which is how I said it at college just for fun and habit. So when she visited me that summer, we went to the bar where this friend hung out, and he was so impressed when she ordered a “LAB-uhts”.
71. Our favorite mixed drink in college was the sloe gin fizz. A few years ago I tried making these again, discovering that her tastes had changed and she now found them sickeningly sweet. I like them still, but yeah, they’re sugary. (And pink. When I told a friend at work who knows everything about liquor that I’d bought some sloe gin, he laughed and said, “Oh good! Now you can make pink drinks!”)
72. She taught me the right way to do laundry.
73. I taught her the right way to crack open crab legs so as to not mangle the meat.
74. Our first major mistake of parenting was taking The Daughter to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July in 1999. The Daughter was all of fifteen days old. This was the big display in Lakewood, NY, which is right on the banks of Lake Chautauqua. The Daughter did not respond well to the fireworks detonating right over our heads; the sounds were bad and for years afterwards The Daughter was very scared of loud sounds.
75. We always say that we should go camping. We never actually do go camping. We need to do more camping.
76. Once for dinner I made some frozen cheese ravioli with sauce, a favorite meal of ours that we hadn’t had in a long time. She said that she was looking forward to “eating some cheesy goodness”. Unfortunately, the raviolis were a bit on the old and tough side, and the cheese never got nice and melty, so after the meal, she commented, “That wasn’t really cheesy goodness.”
77. She likes eggs over-easy. I’m not a big fan of those, but I try to make them for her when she’s getting over being sick.
78. She makes fun of my over-reliance on boxed mixes in the kitchen.
78a. I’m much better about this now. Her main kitchen complaint about me is that I make way too big a mess when I cook.
79. In 1993, when Cheers aired its final episode, she bought pizza for my roommate and I.
80. She only swears when she’s really annoyed.
81. She is not happy that her nine-year-old, fourth-grade daughter is now the same shoe size as she is.
82. A while back she had her hair colored a brighter shade of blond than is her natural color. It was awesome.
83. Before that she experimented with red. I’ve tried talking her into doing that again, but no dice.
84. When my aunt met her the night before our wedding, she made a comment to the effect that I was to be commended for adding blond hair and blue eyes to our gene pool.
85. The Daughter has blond hair and blue eyes. So did Little Quinn.
86. I’m not sure there’s a variety of seafood she dislikes.
87. I love the way she looks when she’s just come home from work and changed into her PJ’s.
88. Adopting Lester and Julio was her idea, but she claims the upper hand on that anyway because she was helping out my mother.
89. For some reason, The Daughter and I like to bring up at the dinner table the fact that The Wife, as a kid, had to help the family out on Chicken Butchering Day. I don’t know why.
90. She thinks Orlando Bloom is really attractive. I don’t see it, myself, but you can’t argue these things.
91. For my birthday in 1992 she drove me to Dyersville, IA so I could see the Field of Dreams.
92. If I want to spoil her, all I have to do is buy her blush wine, cashews, olives and chocolate. Cake helps, too.
93. She spoils me by looking the other way when I go to Borders; by making me waffles or French toast or Spanish rice; by cleaning the kitchen after I’ve messed it up; by indulging my love of pie; and a thousand other ways.
94. “You want me to hit you in the face with a pie?”
“Sure, it’ll be fun!”
“Kinda weird, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, but still fun, right?”
“I dunno, let’s find out.”
It did take her a couple of attempts to nail down her technique, but she quickly realized she didn’t need to be super gentle with the pie. And really, folks, if you haven’t taken a pie in the face from the person you love, well…I’m not sure what you’re waiting for!
94a. We haven’t done this in a really long time. Hmmmm….
95. I know I’ve found the perfect girl for me when she describes our Thanksgiving in 2006 as being perfect because, after dinner, we went to see Casino Royale. In her words: “We had a big turkey dinner, and then we watched James Bond kill people.”
96. We both love laughing at David Caruso on CSI Miami.
96a. Sadly, CSI Miami is long gone, but now we thrill to the adventures of Team Machine on Person of Interest, of Castle and Beckett on Castle, and we enjoy Alton Brown’s delicious brand of pure evil on Cutthroat Kitchen.
97. One time when we were working out at the Y, and she got so engrossed in what she was doing that when I approached her, she didn’t recognize me at first.
97a. She loves lilacs.
97b. She loves sushi, so for a while our Saturday night dinner tradition was I’d buy her sushi at The Store, and she’d eat that while I had a “charcuterie” plate of my own. (I think we can all agree that “charcuterie” is the fancy-schmancy word for “cheese and crackers,” yes? Kind of like how “grits” turned into “polenta” at some point and started commanding $15 a plate?) But she’d eye my cheese and ask for a bite or two. Over time this morphed into her and I both having the cheese plate.
But she still loves the sushi, and I still have to buy it for her! It just becomes her lunch at work on Mondays. No escape!
97c. While driving once:
ME: Huh.
HER: What?
ME: I know I’ve heard this piece but I don’t know what it is.
HER: [into phone] What is this song? [holds phone to speaker, then looks at phone] It’s the fourth movement of Mozart’s Eine kleine nachtmusik.
ME: Wow, I didn’t know your phone could do that.
HER: I’m pretty sure it’s standard now! Your phone can do it too!
ME: Whoa….
See? She teaches me things.
97d. For years she worked in the restaurant biz, which meant working just about all of the major holidays and struggling just to use her allotted vacation time. Now, she’s in banking, so not only does she get the holidays off, she gets off all of them, including the ones I don’t! (I have to work MLK Day, Presidents Day, and the other “lesser” holidays that are still “No mail and no banks” days. She gets ’em off now.) She is not shy about gloating about this.
97e. She continues to make fun of my previous claims that I “am not a dog person”. To my recollection I never made any claims along those lines, just that I was unfamiliar with dogs, not that I disliked dogs. She just shakes her head and keeps on being amused at how much Cane and Carla like me. What can I say!
97f. Her, a few years ago: “Hey, there’s this event where people who own greyhounds all meet up in the Finger Lakes and then we all tour around to wineries and taste wine and have fun with our dogs! Wanna go?” We just got back from our fourth time on that trip the day before yesterday.
97g. This last year has been different, I’ll say that. We’re eating out a lot and staying home and watching movies in bed and so on. Aside from our not being able to go out to eat or to see movies, and the cancellation of several of our favorite festival events, this crisis really hasn’t impacted our lifestyles much at all. I’m glad she’s the one I’m enduring the pandemic with!
97h. Exploring Oahu with her at my side was wonderful. We both kept getting amazed by the same things!
97i. Sometimes it’s hard to find a teevee show that she likes, but when I do find one, it’s a blast as references from those shows will creep into our vernacular.
97j. We tend to get mutually weepy over the more emotional reveals on The Repair Shop.
97k. This last year has had some difficulties of its own, over and above the COVID struggles, but we’ve weathered all of it and continue to weather it all.
97l. Our opinions differed wildly on No Time To Die. Hey, it happens! Kinda like her distaste for coconut. (Which is weird, let’s be honest.)
New for 2023! 97m. She’s had a couple of surgeries in recent years that led to some recovery time and bed-rest, which meant she watched a lot of streaming shows. I didn’t realize what kind of stuff she was streaming until one night we were watching Saturday Night Live and she started laughing knowingly at this sketch. I asked, “Are you watching a lot of murder shows these days?”
97n. On weekends I usually get up before she does, so I’ll come downstairs and make my coffee and get hers set up to go. My signal that she is getting up for good is when she actually opens the blinds in the bedroom; when I hear that, I’m to get up and turn on the coffee. (Sometimes I’m listening to music on my earbuds and I don’t hear the blinds and then she comes downstairs and gives me the “No coffee?!” look. Fellas, try to avoid the “No coffee?!” look.)
97o. No, it doesn’t bother me at all that Carla prefers to sit with her on the love seat when we’re watching teevee at night as opposed to sitting with me on the couch. Harumph.
97p. If I could go back in time and make exactly one change to our wedding day? Yup. We’re all doing the “Rock the Boat” dance made famous by Derry Girls.
97q: Related to 97n above, I’ve been up for 45 minutes while she was trying to doze a bit more. This was thwarted by our cats, who decided to have rompies all over the upstairs, including the bed with her in it. As I write this she has just come downstairs, called the cats assholes, and is now making her coffee.
97r: Stay tuned, but she has started the ball rolling for adopting another greyhound. Yes, I’m on board, but this one’s going to have some pretty big pawprints to fill. (This weekend is a little bittersweet because this is when we’d be on our annual greyhound-meetup excursion to the Finger Lakes wine country.)
97s. Maybe I mentioned this above someplace, I don’t know, but I love how she has chosen to approach her dietary restrictions with a sense of adventure and discovery. We have found more great places to eat and discovered more terrific foods to cook in the years since her celiac diagnosis than we did before, and it’s not like we were dull sticks-in-the-mud in the food department to begin with! She’s always loved trying new foods and spicing things up, which is a real blessing if you’re at all familiar with the Monument to Blandness that is the usual Iowa spice rack.
97t. I’ve come to really like coming home from work, looking up as I pull into the driveway, and seeing her in her home office. Sometimes there will be a dog looking back down at me, which is also cool.
97u. Apparently she takes some of the chocolate from the home supply that I maintain to her desk at work, and some of her coworkers know she has a chocolate stash, so sometimes that gets shared around. I do the “I’m not feeding all the kids in the neighborhood!” thing, you know, the one where your kid wants to grab a dozen freezy-pops from the freezer for all the friends on a hot summer day and despite your protest you let it happen. Because hey, it’s chocolate and that increases the net happiness in the world.
97v. Our last cinematic disagreement came after watching Top Gun: Maverick, which I really liked (despite my general lack of enthusiasm for the original movie). She was distracted by the impossibility of Tom Cruise having perfectly brown hair at this point in his life. I’m hoping this doesn’t hurt our enjoyment of the upcoming Mission: Impossible flicks….
97w. We have developed a way of simultaneously groaning wistfully whenever an unexpected reference to Hawaii shows up on teevee, like the Netflix show we’ve been watching about American street food, and at the end of one episode the preview for the next said, “Next time: Oahu!”, with a big shot of Waikiki.
97x. Bam! The future of rock and roll! (No, this has nothing at all to do with The Wife, but come on, now.)
NEW FOR 2024!!! 97y. This last year was a struggle…my mom’s last months of struggles which played out amidst The Wife’s own struggles. Are things getting better? Who knows…but I hope so.
97z. Regarding item 97r above: if you’ve been paying attention, you know there’s a new greyhound in town. Unfortunately, his entry into our home has not been without its own ongoing challenges. But again, we’re getting there!
97aa. I’m just now realizing that I took zero photos of The Wife this past year. This is a big sign of what a rough year it was. It’s time to start turning that shit around!
97ab. No, wait! I did get a lovely shot of her just last weekend! Amazing that I own this great new camera and I haven’t taken enough photos of her yet. But anyway:
2025!!!
97ac. Her birthday present this year? We’re going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at Kleinhans Music Hall, with the Buffalo Philharmonic doing the music. Yay! But that’s not until May 2. I always feel a little weird giving tickets to something a few months after the gift-giving occasion for the gift-giving occasion, but it’s still a gift!
97ad. Note to self: Order the cake for this weekend.
97ae. See below for new photos with her and Hobbes. This post has become sufficiently unwieldy through multiple updates over the years, and multiple versions of WordPress, that it’s just easier.
97af. Accommodating her celiac needs is sometimes a challenge, but on the upside, I now know where to get a good breakfast sandwich pretty anywhere between Buffalo and Syracuse!
97ag. On work mornings we’re both often making our coffee at the same time. I usually let her use the creamer first. Yesterday she gets her coffee all dosed-up the way she wants it, and then she hands me the container, saying “It’s all yours.” There’s about a quarter-teaspoon left in there. She was amused by this.
97ah. For Christmas this past year I gave her the gift of warmth: a knitted cowl to wear around her neck, a plug-in seat-warmer for her car, and an electric blanket. I guess you reach a point where warmth is the best gift.
97ai. On a sad note…if I had to learn that my mother had died from someone, I’m glad it was her.
97aj. I guess in the end it’s all about relationships, and how the friends you surround yourself with help get you through the day–oh wait, sorry. I slipped into “J.D.’s episode-closing monologue” mode there. We just completed a re-watch of Scrubs last night. Next we’ll probably start a complete rewatch of Letterkenny. Pitter patter!
98. Maybe this is a personal failing on my part, but I can’t bear it when she cries. It kills me inside. But I’m trying to get better at this, since as Gandalf said, “Not all tears are an evil.”
99. I wish we were living lives that didn’t include so many tears.
100. I love her more than I did last week at this time.
101. Number 100 on this list will be equally true next week at this time. And the week after. And so on.
102. She makes me happier than I thought possible.
103. She…oh, I guess that’s where I need to stop. I love you, honey!
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The Saxhole of Chestnut Ridge (a repost)
This is a repost of a piece I wrote in 2015. I dig it up now because there’s been some discussion in social media lately of what appropriate punishment should be meted out against people who play their music, headphoneless, while on hiking trails in nature parks. This discussion made me remember a particularly odd instance of someone displaying a staggering degree of situational inappropriateness….
Every Sunday I take the dee-oh-gee on a nature walk. We go to a local park, usually one of our local county or state parks; our most common destinations are Knox Farm State Park in East Aurora and Chestnut Ridge Park (a county park) in southern Orchard Park. Chestnut Ridge is a big park, set amidst several hillsides, with lots of hiking trails and old roads and ravines with babbling brooks along with shelters for families to rent for picnics and a huge hill that’s the region’s best place for sledding in winter and a noted disc-golf course. We like Chestnut Ridge a lot. We’ve been going there regularly ever since Cane became a member of the family, and we still haven’t seen all it has to offer.
In addition to nature, Chestnut Ridge also offers some interesting people watching on occasion. When we go on Sunday mornings, there are often large groups of young people jogging through the park, and a lot of them don’t restrict their jogging to the roads, but also to the off-road hiking trails. This is always fun to watch, and Cane enjoys seeing the runners go by. There are also always lots of people with other dogs, which can make Cane either happy or nervous, depending on the dog. There was one fat brown dog who just kind of waddled around, once; this dog’s name turned out to be “Ammo”, which led me to advance my Law Of Dog Names: The more bad-ass a name a dog has, the less bad-ass the dog actually is. So a dog named, oh, Crusher will be a big whimpering softie, while a dog named, oh, Frankie will be an ass-biting menace. It’s just the way things are.
This Sunday past, we saw several groups of joggers, including one older group and one younger group. We also walked past two middle-aged women who were talking very loudly about their own medical problems, and then we took a side road that led past a small playground where two teenagers, figuring they were alone, were making out quite nicely. (They stopped when they realized Cane and I were approaching, and I turned my gaze aside and left them to their youthful hormonal fun-having.)
People watching is fun, but the main reason I love these nature walks is the nature — especially the sounds. I love hearing the knocking of woodpeckers at work upon the trees. I love the sudden flutter in the air when a bird I didn’t even realize was there takes wing. I love the whispering as the trees rub against each other in the wind, and I love the rushing of the streams, even as by this time of year they have mostly dried up to little more than a few trickles, here and there. Aside from the occasional passing car or truck engine — and sometimes not even those, if we’re far enough from the roads — there are no man-made sounds at all, save my own footfalls and the soft jingling of the tags on Cane’s collar.
But today…we were on another road, heading back in the direction of the parking lot, when I heard…music.
Somewhere in the distance, music.
I couldn’t tell where or why, but as we kept walking, I realized we were getting closer to the source of the music. I recognized the tune first: “Amazing Grace”. And then, moving forward, I recognized the instrument. It was a saxophone. And the person playing it finished “Amazing Grace” and moved right on to “Onward Christian Soldiers”. And then followed several more hymns and other bits of Americana. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and eventually, “The Star Spangled Banner”. We came around a corner, and there he was, standing next to his parked car across the road. He had a music stand set up and everything. This guy was actually playing his saxophone in the middle of Chestnut Ridge Park, on a Sunday morning. And he was playing it loudly. His sound carried.
Now, I must admit that the sax has never been my favorite instrument, but like all instruments, it’s a pleasure when played well. This guy, unfortunately, was not very good. He wasn’t “rank beginner” awful, but he played a lot of wrong notes and…oh, the hell with it. It doesn’t matter how well he played. If Thelonius Monk himself decided to set up a solo show in the middle of Chestnut Ridge on a Sunday morning, it would have been every bit as annoying and inappropriate. I found myself finishing our walk in some disbelief that there exists some asshole who is sufficiently narcissistic to decide that what people going to one of our area’s finest nature parks really need is to listen to his not-very-good saxophone playing. Who on Earth possibly comes to that conclusion?
By the time his playing was finally fading from my ears as I and the dog achieved sufficient distance from him, he was playing “Over the Rainbow”. I got Cane back in the car, but instead of leaving the park, I drove back in. I wanted to see this clown closer up. I wasn’t going to yell out the window or throw garbage at him (though both were tempting prospects), but I wanted to see what kind of asshole does this. When I drove by his space, he had evidently decided that it was time to move on. His stand was gone, and he was leaning into the hatch of his little red car, putting away his horn after his presumably self-booked gig. Older guy. Skinny. Had his shorts pulled up oddly high, and socks up to his knees. There he was, evidently quite satisfied. He’d accomplished his mission, see, forcing himself upon everyone in earshot in a place where “in earshot” is a pretty large area.
As I drove home, I thought about the saxophone playing asshole…the sax asshole…the Saxhole. The Saxhole of Chestnut Ridge.
I’m not sure I’ll take Cane to Chestnut Ridge next week or not. We might, because I really do love that park, but I love others, too. High are my hopes, though, that I have heard forever the last of the Saxhole of Chestnut Ridge.
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Scenes from a Winter’s Week
It was a very cold and somewhat snowy week here. Nothing we couldn’t handle on either front–the lake effect produced probably 18 inches or so, maybe a little more, over several days–but nevertheless, I’m seeing reports that the first week of February may bring higher-than-normal temperatures. Here’s hoping. I wouldn’t mind melting some of this off.
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An observation, for no particular reason
2024: The area between the dumpster fire and the tire fire
It’s the end of 2024 (or even the beginning of 2025, depending on when I get this finished; I’m starting to write it on the 29th, but this thing often takes me a few days to cobble together. To sum up my 2024 briefly: it was a strange year, not really great but not all that bad either, at least personally. But it was a year where I spent an awful lot of time feeling like I was somehow in between places I needed to be. Strange feelings, this year. Almost like an identity crisis, or maybe it’s a mid-life thing going on–which seems a bit odd, since I’m 53 now and I should be beyond the mid-life thing, shouldn’t I?
Anyway, more on the year that was below. First, my usual roster of pieces I wrote here that I enjoyed. I was wondering how to best indicate which posts in this list are more photo-centric than others, since 2024 saw me dig even deeper into photography as an artistic and creative outlet, and I have decided that I will indicate those posts with italics.
Scenes from downtown Buffalo and Canalside
If God had meant for us to shovel snow, we’d have shovels instead of hands
Remembering when I saw The Amazing Kreskin (who died just a short while ago)
Two Musicals: Eurovision and La La Land (I loved both)
On Character: Schindler’s List
Let the River Run (photos of water)
About Town
The trains don’t run anymore
Astro
The worst shopping center ever built
The Eclipse of 2024
At the Gardens
Thoughts on Nixon, 30 years gone
On the romance of old maps
Phil! (Rosenthal, that is)
Sometimes, ya never know
Aurora
Serendipity, part one
Serendipity, part two
Anti-serendipity
At the Pierce-Arrow Museum
People Looking At Art
In which I am made to feel older than dirt
Dispatches from the Faire
I scream, you scream…a quiz about ice cream
An abstraction from nature
Round and round and round: on roundabouts
Little Quinn, twenty years later
Lights and dogs and blurred motion!
Am I still a writer?
Scenes from the Snowy 716
So much depends on a red cableknit sweater
What is “value”? Thoughts on MVP awards
Go Bills, except….
I’m slightly embarrassed by this: I started two posts in January, one for capsule reviews of each book I read in 2024, and the other with the same idea but for movies. And I did fine for half the year! Here’s the post for books though July 1, and here’s the movies post. Then…I dropped the ball on this badly for the second half, to the point that I’m not even going to attempt recreating them at this point. I’m going to try again this coming year. We’ll see. I’m honestly annoyed at myself for this, because I read and watched some really good stuff in the back half of this year, quite a bit of which should have had notice in this space.
I am going to make a separate post containing favorite photos of mine from the year gone by, but that’s going to be separate. Otherwise you’d be here scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
So now, on with the annual quiz:
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.” To this I have added: “Take lots of photos!” Which is something I’ve always done, but I need to reflect my new focus on photography.
So, how did I do? Not bad, in terms of reading and photography. Writing, though…this was tough. 2024 was a struggle for me as a writer, to the point that I struggled with my actual identity as a writer. It wasn’t Writers Block, it was…do I still even want to do this? I delved more into those thoughts and feelings in a post linked above.
Where am I now? Well, I think now it’s a matter of finding some balance in all this stuff as not just a writer, not just a photographer, but as a content creator. I think that’s where I’m heading, and I’m going to lean hard into this in 2025. I’m not getting any younger, after all. I did start making video content in 2024 (check out my YouTube channel!), though I didn’t get as much done there as I wanted to; one thing I’m doing now is putting together a strategy for that sort of thing in 2025.
As far as eating healthier, enh…maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. There’s always room to improve there, I suppose.
Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.
Did anyone close to you die?
No.
But…with Mom dying in November of 2023, it still feels like someone close to me died in 2024. It was a hard year, with that hanging over me the entire time.
And…well. Dad is…not gone yet.
What countries did you visit?
Just America. Here’s hoping we still can leave the country in the future.
What would you like to have in 2025 that you lacked in 2024?
A better sense of who I am right now. I think I’m starting to figure it out. Seems awfully late in life for a midlife crisis, but here we are.
Also, another year gone by without getting hit in the face with a pie. What am I doing!!!
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Developing my photography skills. This was the real goal I had for this year, and I most certainly got that done. In fact, that’s going to have a post of its own, sometime in the first week of 2025. In a year when a lot felt…off, somehow, including my literary work, photography is the one thing that felt absolutely right.
I also did start doing video work, though my efforts were halting…but they were there. I did some of the work. I got a bit more comfortable doing my thing in front of the camera, which is huge. I have high hopes for more consistency in that realm in 2025.
Oh, and I started using Lightroom for photo editing.
What was your biggest failure?
I don’t think it was a failure, really, but I had to do a lot of grappling and introspection around my identity as a writer. There was a lot to work through. I only think of this as a “failure” inasmuch as an awful lot of time got spent not writing that could have been spent actually writing. But sometimes you have to spend the time the way the time needs to be spent.
What was the best thing you bought?
If you really want to get technical, it’s not a thing I bought in 2024; it was a Christmas present for The Wife and myself in 2023. But 2024 is when we started using it: a Contributing membership in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Not only is the museum itself an amazing place and we love going there, but this level of membership gives us free admission to other museums all over the country and even other countries. We’ve taken advantage of that benefit just a little, but just you wait, folks. Just you wait.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Sigh. A year ago I wrote this in answer to this very question: American voters do seem to be less-than-sold on the creeping fascist behavior of the Republican Party, though.
Let me just say that this year has not left me in a celebratory mood. I have said a number of times that I’m bullish on humanity, but I am much less so on America, and nothing I saw in 2024 gives me pause to reconsider that stance.
So let me cite one thing that has brought unvarnished joy to Buffalo, at least: Josh Allen. It boggles my mind to think that there are people walking the earth who dislike this man.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I’ve been saying “Republicans” for years now, but this year? It’s the American people. Everything that is about to happen will do so because we collectively decided that it should.
Where did most of your money go?
Food, booze, and honestly? That’s about it! Paying down bills, too. This was not a big year for consumption. I bought very few books in 2024, because my focus was on reading some of my huge library for once (and supporting my local huge library). I did buy some overalls this year, because hey, I’m still a collector.
What did you get really excited about?
Photography. I had some amazing days spent doing photography this year, and the art has started to really shift and impact how I look at the world.
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
I don’t know. I’m definitely calmer, though. That’s something.
Thinner or fatter?
I’m pretty sure I gained a bit of weight. Not a lot, but just enough that I know it’s time to get some focus going in the other direction.
Richer or poorer?
Richer, but not by a lot. I have hopes and goals, though.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Even more photography! And I went through a lengthy reading slump in late summer and early fall. That wasn’t fun.
And zero pies in my face. I have got to get some of that scheduled for 2025.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating junk food. There were times when it was way too easy.
How did you spend Christmas?
Just the three of us: myself, The Wife, and The Daughter.
It was actually our second Christmas since Mom died, but she died in November of 2023. The feelings were still fresh and raw, and the activities were still going on, and everything was still a whirlwind last year. This year is the first one where the reality has had a chance to settle in: the traditions are just memories now, the voices and the laughter are only in my mind. I thought about that a lot this year.
Did you fall in love in 2024?
I wonder what the official count is on times I looked over at The Wife this year and thought, “Wow….”
How many one-night stands?
I always think I should just delete this question, and yet, here it is, every year.
What was your favorite TV program?
The Repair Shop marches on. We also attended upon the newest season of Bridgerton, and we found ourselves caught up in the flannel-clad soap opera of Virgin River, which is a lot of fun if you want a flannel-clad soap opera. (Nobody in it wears overalls, though! This I do not get.)
Food shows continue to make us happy: chief among those are Somebody Feed Phil and Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, which are both food-based travel shows (or are they travel-based food shows?). Both approach the world with wonder and love, and the Ramsay show is especially terrific because he ventures to places that aren’t the “usual suspects” of the food world. He did an amazing episode in the most recent season in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and now I actually want to go there.
It just occurred to me that I should mention YouTubers that I like in this space, but I think I’ll save that for another post, or maybe the Substack.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
If you’re a Republican who supported the incoming President, and I learned your name this year, guess what.
What was the best book you read?
I’m on Goodreads, by the way, if you want to see my actual reading rosters for this (or any other) year! I know that mostly we’re down on Goodreads, and many are moving to something else, but I’m lazy and Goodreads works for me. All I want is something where I can look up if I’ve read a book (if I don’t remember it) and see a little of what I thought of it. My “reviews” there aren’t really even reviews, honestly; other readers looking at my blurbs to see if they might like a book might not find me terribly useful as a resource.
But here are a few books I liked a great deal:
Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created NANCY, Bill Griffith
The Innocent Wayfaring, Margaret Chute
Lost Spells, Robert MacFarlane
Kind of a Big Deal: How Anchorman Stayed Classy and Became the Most Iconic Comedy of the Twenty-First Century, Saul Austerlitz
The Sun Over The Mountains: A Story of Hope, Healing and Restoration, Suzie Fletcher
I also started reading through the Ian Fleming James Bond novels (part of a possible future project) and a Guy Gavriel Kay re-read, of which I have thus far only re-read The Fionavar Tapestry.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
I’ve known about The Killers for years, but this year I really started listening to them. (And I did so before “Mr. Brightside” became an improbable stadium anthem for the Buffalo Bills.)
What did you want and get?
Time shooting photos.
What did you want and not get?
A nation where fascism is not a tolerable option for the majority of voters.
What were your favorite films of this year?
I loved Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, La La Land, and Woman of the Hour.
What did you do on your birthday?
We made our annual trip to Ithaca, and a great time was had by all.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2024?
It’s just all-overalls, all-the-time now. I also added a ballcap to my hat collection, which now numbers…two. Go figure!
What kept you sane?
Long walks with the camera. Petting dogs. Good food and drink. Museums and the Botanical gardens. Reading. Music. I suggest “burying myself in art” is going to be more and more of a thing now.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I already mentioned Josh Allen, so I’ll mention Josh Allen.
What political issue stirred you the most?
Abortion, climate change, and America’s ongoing flirtation with shitcanning democracy.
Who did you miss?
My mother.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2024:
I always recycle this, plus some things I added last year:
Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!
To this I’d add: The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.
And, via Letterkenny: “More hands makes less work!”, and “Pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er!”
For 2024, I would add: Take pictures. Lots of pictures. And if all you have is the camera on your phone, who cares? Take the pictures!
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
I’m going to defer this one to my Photography Wrap-up post, which should be along sometime soon.
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I mentioned The Killers above as my big “musical discovery” of the year. I tried to–and did!–listen to a lot more new and unfamiliar music this year, but one album I kept returning to was the live album recorded from a Killers concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It just sounds like it was a fantastic show, and I love the band’s sound: optimistic technopop, is how I’d describe it. Or, to quote Mr. Clark, “It’s got a great beat and you can dance to it.”
Anyway, I waffled on which Killers song to mention here. Their biggest hit, I think, is “Mr. Brightside”, which has more recently become an unofficial stadium anthem for the Buffalo Bills. They play the song at the stadium and put the lyrics on the SuperJumboTron and the whole stadium sings it. We were out walking the dogs one night (I think it was the Chiefs game), and the weather and the winds were such that it was one of those nights when we can hear the stadium like we’re there, and let me tell you, 70,000 happy Bills fans singing “Mr. Brightside” is a hell of a thing.
But no, I’m going to go with the song that’s something of an anthem for me, personally. It’s the song that leads off that album: “Human”.
I did my best to noticeWhen the call came down the lineUp to the platform of surrenderI was brought, but I was kindAnd sometimes I get nervousWhen I see an open doorClose your eyesClear your heartCut the cordAre we humanOr are we dancer?My sign is vitalMy hands are coldAnd I’m on my kneesLooking for the answerAre we humanOr are we dancer?Pay my respects to grace and virtueSend my condolences to goodGive my regards to soul and romanceThey always did the best they couldAnd so long to devotionYou taught me everything I knowWave goodbyeWish me wellYou’ve gotta let me goAre we humanOr are we dancer?My sign is vitalMy hands are coldAnd I’m on my kneesLooking for the answerAre we humanOr are we dancer?Will your system be alrightWhen you dream of home tonight?There is no message we’re receivingLet me know, is your heart still beating?Are we humanOr are we dancer?My sign is vitalMy hands are coldAnd I’m on my kneesLooking for the answer
Are we humanOr are we dancer.
So, that’s 2024. I don’t have great feelings about 2025, if I’m being totally honest. But there’s going to be plenty of time for that, isn’t there?
“The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart.”
–T.H. White, The Once and Future King
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Scenes from the Snowy 716
It took a while: we recorded one of our latest initial snowfalls, if not the latest initial snowfall, ever. It didn’t actually snow until November 30, and then last weekend we had our first trademark lake-effect storm of the year. This one didn’t clobber us too badly where we live, which is kind of a change from recent years; we got maybe two feet plus some change. That sounds like a lot, but it fell over two days and really, given some of our recent experiences, two feet is pretty much toward the “inconvenience” end of the scale. (Areas to the south, called “Ski Country”, got the brunt of it this time, and honestly? Good.) And as I write this, we’re in the upper 30s and nicely melting, and we’re going to be in the 40s the next few days. That’s the cycle we like to see: we get popped with snow and then melt a lot of it off. Lather, rinse, repeat–until March or April.
Photos:
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Thanksgiving 2024
I used to write and post a long list of things I was thankful for each year, but I haven’t done that for a few years as it got to be an exercise in copying-and-pasting. I’m still thankful for an awful lot, but this holiday hits different anyway. Last year, Thanksgiving came less than two weeks after Mom died, and since then Dad has gone to an assisted living facility, so this is the first Thanksgiving that truly feels like it’s being spent without my parents in the world. Worse than that is the state of my country; it’s hard to summon up warm and fuzzy Thanksgiving feelings in a nation that has apparently chosen authoritarianism.
Still, it’s Thanksgiving. I hope it’s happy.
“Thanksgiving”, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
And conquers if we let it.There’s not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.
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Morning skies
Sorry about the radio silence of late, folks, but I’ll be honest: Current Events are consuming more of my brain cycles than I want to admit, and while I could fill this space with my thoughts as to how the Election For All Time is going…I just don’t want to write about that. But I also can’t find a lot of mental energy right now to write about anything else.
So, you get pictures. I took these of the morning sky. The first is of Orion the Hunter, partly shrouded by clouds; this was taken on a morning when I was up at 6am to walk Hobbes. The other two I took when I got to work! That’s the view from behind The Store, just before sunrise and only a few minutes before my shift started. That sliver of moon captivated me. I love the sky, and the morning sky is just as wondrous, many times, as the night one.
Expect light posting, if any posting happens at all, for the next day, two, or three…basically until we know if Americans have risen up against fascism once again.
