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Monday / photo — Comments Off on Mid-winter week
1
Feb 21

Mid-winter week

It is sloppy and slushy out there. And cold, bitter, bitter cold. I went in a half hour later than normal. Let someone else’s car warm up the roads a bit. We live in the county, but the city limit is literally just down our road. Our road is never plowed, despite the man who lives on the street who has two trucks with mounted plows. I assume it’s a contractual and liability issue, and maybe one day I’ll see him out and ask him about it. Maybe I can take up a gas money collection to get a path cleaned on our road.

After that first residential street, you find that the next one wasn’t snow and slush and a touch of ice. It was just wet slush. The road after that was just wet. The one after that was basically dry. So, waiting for others to get out and about was a good plan.

Tomorrow it will all be melting. Oh, sweet optimism!

It will be cold, but perhaps not bitterly so. And! It will be sunny, and some of the snow will melt. That picture is from Friday, before the weekend’s weather, which gave us a full blanket. Seeing that melt away will be a treat. But you can’t take too much of that. It’ll get worse before it gets better.

The cats are taking it all in stride, because they stay inside. They don’t want to, but that’s just because they don’t really understand snow. They, of course, understand cold. They’re always burrowing into something, as you learned last week.

Phoebe had a casual Saturday night:

Yesterday, she had a big day of yoga:

This is how she gets down after a cuddly nap. She wants her belly rubbed, and then she’ll stretch out like this for a while and then push off the chair and roll forward. It’s quite athletic.

Poseidon wants you to know he knows how handsome he is:

Sometimes his cuteness makes up for what we’ve termed his high-spiritedness. Sometimes.

He’s listening to The Yankee walking around upstairs. It’s a very intriguing part of the evening. She’s getting ready to call it a night and if the cats didn’t immediately follow her upstairs we have a few moments of this.

Then it is a big sprint! Something more fun than this is happening up there!

Isn’t that just the way of things?

Friday / Instagram / photo — Comments Off on Let’s weekend
29
Jan 21

Let’s weekend

It snowed and then it stayed and then it finally melted a bit, just in time for more snow this weekend. But, today, I got back to the house at the end of the work day and found snow melting off the roof. It was a sunny, but cold, afternoon. The water poured off the corner in a great stream, a little more than the gutters could handle. And below that corner is a little bush. It faces north and sits in an almost day-long shadow, so we had a nice little shrubcicle:

Here’s the sun going down on the woods in the back yard:

And while I was outside watching that, I heard the honking of the Canada geese. They were flying northwest, away from Old Man Thompson’s place.

I’m not sure where they were headed. There is one retaining body nearby on their line of travel, or they could be moving over to check out some of the creeks. Too bad they aren’t going home for the season, because that would mean the seasons were changing. But, as we said, more snow this weekend. And sometime after that the real cold stuff arrives.

Here’s today’s sunset, and that’s a perfectly fine, meditative way to get into the weekend:

Any big plans? I know some of you have big plans. I’ve seen your Instagram accounts.

See you Monday. Until then, check out my Instagram. And did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Also, be sure to keep up with me on Twitter as well. And if you need some podcasts, On Topic with IU has plenty of helpful episodes for you, as well.

food / Monday / photo — Comments Off on The photos improve as you scroll
25
Jan 21

The photos improve as you scroll

It was this kind of weekend. Cold and damp and it could work almost to the bone. It was 32 at best, and that didn’t last long, either day. It left us with lovely views, like this:

Timing is everything in meteorological events. All that fog would be a great mood-setter around Halloween. But here, near the end of January, I’m close to over it. The good news is have 10 more weeks to get good and bored with views like this:

“But we’ll have sunny skies on Friday!” he said, exasperated.

We punctuated the evening with ribs, of the fall-off-the-bone variety. They were quite tasty. We should have had more. We should have them more.

A friend said on Instagram that he wants to have abs, but he likes ribs too much. I don’t see what the problem is. Abdominal musculature and ribs are located closely to one another. Why not have both?

I didn’t mention he’s getting to that age where that idea is a vanishing proposition. Let him figure that out on his own. And then he can enjoy his ribs in peace. If he’s lucky, they’ll be in pieces, not unlike the ones we had last night.

It’s Monday, so, to the cats! The cats are grand. Just had a nice little play session with one of them, in fact.

Poseidon, as ever, likes being under the cover. It’s a morning and nighttime ritual at this point. It might be too cold for him here:

Phoebe also likes cover, but she takes her cozy naps in the evening.

Poseidon got himself stuck in a box.

He was nosing around it, the top and the bottom had been opened up, so the cardboard wanted to fall over on itself. But if you stood on either side it would stack up nicely and he shimmied in, grateful for the help, until he realized his predicament.

As ever, he is an embarrassment to his sister.

adventures / photo / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Leave it
21
Jan 21

Leave it

On our walk late this afternoon, when it was unseasonably warm, you could hear it before you could see it. There was a breeze blowing and cars whirring by and it was all punctuated by our conversation but there was a crinkling, crunchy dispute of it all.

We’d already seen one driver, breaking the state’s hands free law, almost rear-end a pickup. We were making our turns based on maximizing the weak winter sun. We were talking about trips we couldn’t take when the dry parchment sound set upon the ears. Those dry, plaintive leaves, still hanging on in defiance, rustling in the wind.

It’s funny, the idea of trips. We had three scheduled last year that were canceled, plus probably three holiday visits. I don’t think I’ve been anywhere since Christmas of 2019. I mean anywhere farther than I’ve pedaled my bicycle. The Yankee has made a few trips to make appointments in Indianapolis, and that’s it for both of us. The curiosity of a staycation has been satisfied, and continues on. We, like the leaves, are still hanging on. But, lately, I’ve spent idle time planning other interesting trips that one might do. These don’t rise to the level of let’s make plans, but, rather ‘Wouldn’t that be neat?’ My favorite one was a four or five day bike-riding trip through New York … or a vacation home that’s both far away from everywhere, and yet easy to reach, and warm … or a B&B somewhere quiet. Crinkly, crunchy leaves would be required.

There’s another cold snap coming this weekend, and maybe some snow and ice, so a few more of those leaves may fall away before we find ourselves there again sometime next week. And while it is too early to think this way, in just 11 long weeks or so, those proud leaves will be replaced by a new generation of green sunlight collectors, and we can pretend like some of this never happened. But only some of it.

cycling / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Snow video and cats, what the web was made for
19
Jan 21

Snow video and cats, what the web was made for

I said it would snow, because the meteorologists said it would snow. And so it snowed, light flurries pretty much all weekend. We got maybe two inches out of the deal. Here’s some video proof:

And here’s some slow-mo snow, ponderous precipitation, facile flurries:

It was melting away in the early afternoon, yesterday, but more flakes fell, amounting to little of nothing and that will be the last of it for a while. Sun and clouds for the next few days. And Thursday we might hit 46 degrees! A delightfully mild week seems like just the thing, doesn’t it?

Let’s check in with the cats, who are a handful and just fine, thanks.

Phoebe is checking out something on that first sunny day we enjoyed after a long stretch of bleh.

Fortunately she was able to work in a bit of sunbathing into her busy schedule.

Poseidon spends a lot of his mornings contemplating the deeper things in life, like ‘What is spotted ball?’

He, too, enjoys the sun. Sitting on the cat tree lets him be taller than you, and he can really fill the frame.

Sometimes I think he understands the idea behind camera sense. Sometimes I think he’s a philosopher cat. Usually, he’s just … we call him high spirited.

Had a great bike ride, going up the Alpe du Zwift. I am so very slow, and it takes me forever. But I did hold off a couple of people the whole way up the mountain. They were the other slow climbers, like me.

Scroll around and look at this climb:

The map looks reminiscent of my Alpe D’Huez shirt, which I am wearing this evening in honor of my massive video game accomplishment. I found the photo function on Zwift, because on a long slow climb, you can discover new things. This is right after the summit:

This was on the descent:

That’s my second hors categorie, or beyond categorization, climb. I am so slow. It actually snowed on the climb. The app showed little drifts of snow scurrying across the road as I huffed and puffed. It has a lot of detail to it.

Twelve mile climb, 3,753 feet of elevation, and an average gradient of 8.5 percent yesterday, and a punchy little workout today, means I will feel them both tomorrow, too.

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