It shouldn’t be as easy as it is to really damage the bejeezus out of one’s side-view mirror.
Moving on….
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.
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Wifi? Iffy!
Contrails
This morning it fell to me to get up and take Hobbes out for his morning relief walk, which this time of year happens before sunrise. On the way back, I saw a jet contrail in the sky, and this one was neat because it wasn’t just a normal grayish-white contrail, but rather it was lit up goldren-red by the sun that was still beneath the horizon. I always like seeing the shiny contrails of early-morning flights, and sometimes the planes themselves are also catching the morning sun as they jet across the sky, carrying their passengers to adventures galore, some happy and some sad and some probably boring.
Ten minutes later, as Hobbes and I were getting home, I looked up again. That first contrail was much longer and was starting to spread out as they always do…but then I noticed not one but two other contrails, left by planes that were flying almost the exact same path. I had never seen that before. I briefly thought to run inside and check a flight-tracker site to see if I could figure out which planes these were and where they were going on their route that took all three right over our house, but I got wrapped up in dishing up Hobbes’s breakfast and making the coffee and whatnot, so by the time I remembered I had no chance of figuring it out. Oh well. Sometimes mysteries are better left unsolved!
Bon voyage, folks!
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Dispatches from the Faire
Last weekend, The Wife and I attended the Sterling Renaissance Festival. We went by ourselves and The Daughter stayed home, because we didn’t want to board the dogs overnight; but never fear, The Daughter was able to use the third ticket today. In fact, she’s there as I write this.
I took a ton of photos that day, so let’s just get to them. More are available on this Flickr album, including some images that I didn’t revise in Lightroom.
The Renaissance Faire continues to be a pleasant mix of the old and comforting with the new and exciting. I didn’t see as much of the Festival’s cast interacting with the attendees in impromptu displays of Elizabethan-inspired improv this year, but there was still quite a bit of that. Also, we seem to eat less at the Festival than we usually do. Lunch was a turkey leg (and I managed to eat mine without getting barbecue sauce on my white shirt!), later we had wine slushies and She had a pickle while I enjoyed a pretzel. We stopped for fried chicken on the way home. I do admit that I had plans on a slice of cake, but they were sold out when I got back just before the evening joust, and honestly, I’m not sorry about that. Much.
The weather for us this year was nearly perfect: low humidity, temperatures in the mid to high 70s, and decent breezes through the wooded Festival grounds. I continue to be amazed at my adaptation to heat as I get older. Years ago wearing overalls to the Faire would have been unthinkable, and yet, here I was!
And now, another year is over. Next up for us, Festival-wise, is the Erie County Fair, and then about six weeks after that, we’re off to Ithaca. This is a wonderful time of year.
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“Hey, why no posting for three days?!”
Well, let Inigo tell the tale here:
Yeeeeeeah. That was…a weekend. Friday was busy wrapping up stuff at work so I could enjoy a three-day weekend. Saturday we went to the Sterling Renaissance Festival, where much fun was had and many photos were taken, none of which have been edited yet. And Sunday was when…news happened. And yes, I have opinions and thoughts…but I’m still off today and I’m still in a state of Very Taxed Brain and I suspect that won’t start to finally abate until I finally get a full eight days’ vacation in early August. For various reasons I have had to go all the way from last Christmas to the second week of August without any vacation beyond a handful of three-day weekends, and one thing I know without doubt is that I am not made to go that long without vacation. So, my brain is an increasing state of steam-driving cog gears trying to muscle a train uphill in a fog.
And then, news happens. Processing the events of yesterday is a work-in-progress. I was going to write something about Aaron Sorkin, who showed up with a deeply weird op-ed yesterday, and maybe I still will at some point, but then about halfway through the day news happened.
So anyway…yeah, I took a few days off and then when I started thinking I should write, the world put my brain back in the scrambler. Anyway, how are you?
[A disclaimer: I feel that I should note that my long period without vacation time is in no way to be attributed to a fault of my employer! I had plenty of time but personal events last year, mostly pertaining to my parents’ health and Mom’s eventual passing, demanded the burning of most of it in pretty short order. It happens. Sadly, my date at which my vacation time renews isn’t until July 30.]
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Doggos: an update
Hobbes (the greyhound) and Carla (the pittie) are both doing fine! Carla has been struggling with some arthritis in her joints, but last week she went to the vet for an injection of fluid into one of her troublesome joints, and she’s been doing really well since.
Meanwhile, you may remember that Hobbes got hurt last fall and has been struggling ever since. Well, his physical therapy has been going really well, and the next step is getting an orthotic that he’ll wear on the “bad” leg when he’s oot-and-aboot, which will help stabilize that leg. He uses that leg most of the time normally now anyway, but it’s not a hundred percent and we’re told the leg will never be a hundred percent again, but he can live a decent and normal life as a pet, which is the plan, anyway.
The other day we took both dogs to Knox Farm for a nice walk, which they greatly enjoyed, judging by their body language throughout.
Oh, and I also got a few nice photos of this bird, which makes me feel good about my ongoing progress as a photographer!
