01
Dec 20

The week with bad titles, part two

‘Tis the season. ‘Tis the season. Right?

I’m something of a purist with this. The season begins in December, after Thanksgiving if you’re desperate. Respect, as my wife says, the turkey.

But I’ve seen stores where the season begins before Labor Day. And this is right out. Respect, I say, the Halloween candy. And, you know, the joys of autumn.

Anyway, we have put up trees. Because cheer was needed, and how would the cats react?

We have four trees. The cats are fine with them. Minimally interested, actually. It’s odd. They’re into everything, using a sort of one-two, high-low concept. The two cats are like toddler-adolescent versions of the old Ali wind up punch. One is always bluffing for the other. It’s a study in discipline and small group communication, and it happens every day. Each distracts for the other so that one can get where we don’t want them to be, or chasing plastic or food, or the plastic which they seem to think is food. They can hardly be bothered to be in the trees.

I said we can’t put out the good ornaments because these monsters will destroy them. About once a night a cat will go under one of the trees. And you’ll see them sniffing around it then. Once, Poe was goofing around in the lowest branches, probably trying to figure out how he could use them to ambush his sister.

Still, we can’t put out ornaments.

Two are smaller things out by the front door. One has all white lights in the foyer, and that multi-color guy is in the living room, and I rather like the reflection it casts on the television screen.

Poseidon is back under that tree and rustling around it as I write this. So, no ornaments. Definitely adds some cheer. And happy December!


30
Nov 20

The week with bad titles

I’m sure this is some sort of king of the kitchen thing. Some sort of dominant cat of the kitchen island thing. Something I shouldn’t indulge — especially since he likes to jump to attack, who knows if he’s developing a penchant for leaping down to attack.

But he looks handsome doing it, so I guess that makes it OK.

Anyway, it’s Monday, so we check in on the cats and, as you can see, Poseidon is doing just fine. That’s a new posture for him. I hope it doesn’t take. That’s my breakfast and lunch seat, not his.

I will let him take naps in it at other times, however.

Phoebe is great, too. As you might know — or, if you have pussycats in your pad, you might have instituted something like — our failed rule about cats on the counter. Poseidon we’ll just shoe-shoe him off a counter. Or we’ll spray him with a nice little water bottle — which he actually loves, so you see, failed rule. Phoebe, however, we just pick her and hold her, which is a fate worse than nail clipping. But! We have the world’s greatest jailhouse jaguars and legal lions. They quickly found the loophole.

And we let this stuff slide. Any animal that can do the leg work on something like that deserves your approval.

Anyway, another Monday, another week. This is usually where I put something about the weekend’s bike ride(s) and so on. We did ride, a simple, basic, usually kind of ride, and it was cold. So I took no photos because retrieving my camera from within several layers of kit and two pairs of gloves seemed too risk at the time. But it was a nice ride.

And then I also worked on one of my little wood projects:

I’m toying with the idea of making a bowl. Everything, but the bottom, is coming along nicely. I’l; figure it out. In the meantime, it gives me a reason to stand in the garage next to a familiar bit of pareidolia.

It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon, seeing faces in things. It’s only weird if they answer you back.

Not to worry. Mr. Garagey is more the silent type.


27
Nov 20

Views from our walk

Slept in today. I woke up late, with the bedroom door mostly closed. So, I figured, my lovely and thoughtful bride went downstairs and took a noisy cat with her. See? Thoughtful?

So I lay there for a moment, having checked the time, thinking if I did that three or four more days in a row I might feel like a normal person.

The night before I fell asleep reading a history of churches. I’ve worked up to the middle of the 20th century and I’m ready for the book to be over, so I can just have something else to read. Ninety-five more pages to go.

This is my second time trying this book and I didn’t finish it all the first time. I’m much farther along now, and I’m glad for having tried it again and getting beyond my first effort. But not finishing a book twice seems wrong somehow.

And, yet, I have so many great books waiting to be opened. There are three on my nightstand. I have an entire bookcase, stuffed to overflowing, of other books waiting to be read. And, I’m sure, a good two dozen books waiting to display themselves as ones and zeroes on my Kindle app. The difficult part is always ‘What to read next?’

I just have to muddle through a few more chapters of the current monograph. (Notwithstanding a plodding style which, even for an academic project, leaves something to be desired, it is an insightful book.)

Anyway, it was a quiet day, and that was grand. Enjoyed a little football and took a nice long walk. Here are two pictures from our walk.

We did a bit over four miles. And here’s the barn.

None of the world’s problems were solved, maybe next time, but it was a nice walk.

And, now, we’re going to have our Thanksgiving dessert. (Cheesecake.)


26
Nov 20

Happy Thanksgiving

It’s a little silly how we concentrate, today, on the things that we have in abundance. We should do it every day, all year. And maybe you do, and this is just me. But I could do it more.

We went for a morning run, the now traditional turkey trot.

It was, of course, a neighborhood run, an unofficial trot, if you will. It was still good to get outside to do it, and I only survived by thinking of the food I’d get to enjoy this evening. And the food was wonderful. We made a delicious turkey breast that cooked and cut nearly perfectly. The Yankee found a new recipe for sweet potato casserole, messed up the proportions for the toppings and we found that we preferred it that way. I had some of my mother’s patented and traditional dressing:

We had green beans, just to change the color scheme of the plate.

Did a video chat this afternoon, and phone calls and more video chats this evening. And this is what I am abundantly thankful for: while we were not today with the rest of the people we care about, they are all safe and healthy and happy. That’s our greatest abundance.

I hope you and your family are safe, and that you have a lovely Thanksgiving.


25
Nov 20

A light Wednesday

My contribution to the cause today was cleaning up two inboxes, knocking a few episodes off the Netflix queue, a little house work and wiping out some leftovers.

Also, I reworked the front page of this website. And that’s why it was a light day. Would you like to hear about it? Oh, you’d rather just see it?

Click here to see the front page.

It has the same premise as the previous version — big on buttons driving you to social media or the key basics. The background moves, which is the point. The original iteration of this design had a video component, but I wanted to get away from from javascript. So I went to a still image. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but I liked the movement, and I love the variation. So I put in some keyframe animations.

And the delightful part is that the coding was only ridiculously frustrating for a day or so. (Also why it was a light day.) But, despite that frustration, it’ll be easy from here. I can quickly make changes to the art to keep it topical or fresh.

So I like this design. Be sure to check it out. (If it doesn’t feel like it works right, please let me know.) I need to add a few more buttons, but this is only a Wednesday, and that’s definitely a Monday kind of job