I was lucky and honored to be able to catch this shot of a mom and her cub off the coast of Chatham. This afternoon I also finally got to meet a little dog named Niko. What is it with me and dogs lately? I was never a dog person.
Month: January 2024
Lunar Landscape
Currently Reading: Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins―From Spices to Vices
Happiness is a Warm Puppy
Braved the ice and snow and rain falling today to take a ride up to Georgetown to see out friends who finally got a new puppy. Her name is Mollie and she is just the cutest, tiny little bundle of love.
Highlights for a Saturday in January
What’s been the highlight of your week? This image above was surely one of those. Can you guess where this was taken? I’ll give you a hint – it is in Massachusetts.
This morning I installed the rear wiper on my SUV. Easy peasy. You can find basically how to do anything on YouTube.
I saw a craft online where this person used some beach rocks to make a scene of a lighthouse and a sailboat passing by it. It looked really cool, I think I’m going to try to replicate it. We’ll see how I progress. The first step is obviously getting the rocks the right shape and size and in proportion to the other scene elements. Totally think I can pull it off though.
Note to self: I want to plan an outing back out to KBP in February to maybe check out some of the “Paint the Town Red” events. Maybe start the planning process now. (Yeah, it’s a marketing thing to get people to come there but it’s a cool place and we love it there- plus maybe we can tie in a Boomer visit).
In the early evening we went ahead and made a vegan-ish cheddar broccoli soup. Instead of dairy it uses raw cashews all mashed up. It was actually pretty tasty!
An Ordinary Thursday with Meanderings
Just playing around with some AI this afternoon. Doing a little face swapping on things. Like me on this Greek artwork. At least I think it’s Greek? Could be Roman I suppose. Anyways, it’s pretty good except I don’t think it got the hair quite right.
Not much to report on about today. Just shuffling around town doing my thing. It’s amazing that on the days you don’t think you’ll get a lot, you do, and when you think you’ll get a lot, you actually don’t. It’s so strange. Meanwhile, the head honchos want to have a meeting with us in a couple weeks to discuss some “issues.” Sounds ominous but that’s just the way these guys talk. Not sure what that’s all about but hopefully nothing too earth-shattering.
Currently Reading: Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom by Gypsy-Rose Blanchard. Looks like this will be an easy one, it’s only about 100 pages. I already know the story from all the television shows but it popped up as available, so I figured, what the heck. Give it a go You know the story, the one about the Munchausen by proxy.
See a Sunrise At Least Once a Day
Here’s a fun Cape shot that I took a while back. It was cold and I had to get up super early to catch it, but I think it was totally worth it!
When I get a chance sometime and the next time I’m in downtown Boston, I wouldn’t mind checking out some of these Winteractive exhibits. You know I’d have to check out the whale and clown ones at the very least! 🤡 🤡🤡
I went ahead and finally ordered a rear wiper blade for my SUV. Truth be told the rubber had worn out quite a while ago. I plan on installing that myself sometime this weekend.
Happiness is Sunday Morning Cooking Comfort Food
The highlight of the morning was making a pot pie with some ingredients we got yesterday afternoon. Lunch and dinner are now set. We also baked a blueberry oatmeal concoction, which turned out quite well. This was the first time that I can remember that we had all the cooking done by noon time. I actually enjoy when we cook together as a couple. I learn some things and get it done faster, but I also enjoy the process working together.
A low key evening, mostly occupied with catching up on my reading.
Embracing the Cold and baby goats
We took a ride out to Franklin, Ma this afternoon to look and admire some more goats, including meeting this cute little one week old named Nugget. They also had a farmer’s market there where we got some goods. I got an alpaca winter hat which is super soft and warm, and LD got some stuff including a homemade wooden bunny made by an artisan who works with wood that you can stick crayons into it’s back – really cool.
Currently reading: We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care
Missing of Summer Right About Now
A pic I took a while back that had been sitting on my hard drive, figured I’d post it up because I am missing summer and warm long days right about now. This is from Nauset Beach not too far from the lighthouse. You actually can’t access the location where I took this shot any longer, as I discovered the last time I was in the area, mainly due to the cliff eroding, sadly.
So That’s What It Is
So I guess this is what I’ve been dealing with lately. Joys. I’ve been hobbling around like Quasimodo, plus this cold weather doesn’t help it any.
Patellar tendinitis is a common overuse injury, caused by repeated stress on your patellar tendon. The stress results in tiny tears in the tendon, which your body attempts to repair. But as the tears in the tendon multiply, they cause pain from inflammation and weakening of the tendon.
And not just one, but both knees, although the left is probably a bit worse off than the right. Apparently the way to address it is nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicines, rest, elevating the knee, ice packs and stretching and strengthening exercises. None of those are easy for me.
Today was very cold outside, but I persevered!
Currently Reading: On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good by Elise Loehnen.
Covered in a Blanket of Snow
I captured the following photo yesterday afternoon while doing my rounds. Everything was coated with snowy white, which was lovely until later in the day when it began to rain and became slushy and nasty. Then it got chilly and everything iced over, but I was able to grab this great shot in the center of town before all that happened, so I’m happy.
Today I went over to Earth-1; there were several concerns that needed to be addressed, including having the plumber come over and replace a faulty pipe in the basement. These pipes are fairly old, most likely from the early 1940s or before. I mean, the house was built in the mid-1800s, thus nothing in it is standard size, such as door frames. Anyway, they had to cut out a piece of the pipe and install a partial section to solve the problem, so everything is OK again, which pleased my mother, who couldn’t stop worrying.
All About that Winter White
It was a snowy day in Boston today. I spent quite a bit of that being outside in it all morning making my rounds. But now I am tired, so a shower, a dinner, and chill time is in the cards for me for the rest of the night.
Donning the Apron for an Afternoon of Baking Goodies
We did a bunch of baking on a snowy cold Sunday afternoon! I dug out these cool aprons that we got quite a while back. Other than that it’s been an uneventful back to the grind kind of week. Nothing earth shattering as of late. Just finishing up the confessions of Gypsy Rose, plowing on through season 4 of Nip/Tuck (by this point the show is going downhill imo, nothing as great as the 1st two seasons which were the pinnacle, although I notice a lot of famous actors now as guest stars appearing on the show). When you binge watch episodes back to back, it’s interesting how you can detect narrative lines that just vanished or didn’t make sense.
I’m actually a terrible baker, don’t let the picture fool you!
An Interrupted Evening
So we’re hanging out, chilling, just watching Nip/Tuck episodes when we hear this loud talking outside. At first we thought it might have been the neighbors kids just chatting, as they’ve been known to do in the past. But then it persisted and seemed to be getting louder. When I looked out the door to see what the commotion is about I see this dude stumbling about in the street, in our driveway where our cars are, in the neighbor’s driveway. all the while I seemed to think he’s yelling out “Michael” along with some other words that I couldn’t make out. This dude definitely seemed altered in some way – something wasn’t right.
So he’s going all up and down the street, yelling and yelling and at one point even faced planted in a neighbor’s lawn but then got right back up. The next door neighbor lady was scared as we were too a little bit because you never know what could happen or what a person could be capable of, especially when not thinking clearly. As this was going on for quite a while by this point LD and possibly others finally got the police to come down. I could see them all up at the end of the street for what seemed like a good twenty or so minutes. Eventually an ambulance also came and I assumed took him away and sectioned him.
While this is all going on a strange woman comes walking up the street, looking and finally finding her dog in the vicinity of our driveway. She mentioned that the man was her husband, “Unfortunely” I believe she said, leashed the dog who must have gotten away from the dude, and took off up the street from whence she came.
We assume that the guy was possibly walking the dog and it got loose? Who names their dog Michael, if that even was it’s name? Who is Michael? And if he was walking the dog in this altered state, why? When I first saw the guy I thought he might be plastered out of mind drunk and wanting to fight Michael. I’ve seen enough belligerent drunks in my day to know the behaviors. Anyways, apparently this guy lives right up the street. Hopefully he’ll get the help he needs, but it sure did make for a tense filled evening. So much for winding down. After all that, you’re a bit wired.
Snow Day Baking Day
Because today was a snowy day, we chose to spend the day baking, lots and lots of cookies. Actually, LD performed the majority of the cooking, and I only assisted a little. I went outside a couple of times to deal with the snow, and I ended up breaking one of the shovels, which I’ll have to replace shortly. I should have known better, but I pushed ahead anyway, and it broke under the weight of the snow.
Yesterday we were supposed to go to the sanctuary with a good friend of ours, but she was feeling a little under the weather so we decided to bag it for now, maybe take it up in another week or two. Probably just as well, as my knees have been killing me lately.
Currently Reading: The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal. For some reason it took forever to get this at the online library, but I’m not sure why as it doesn’t appear to be a particularly long read. And also a book that’s kind of morbid but I’m also finding quite fascinating and a pretty good read, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.
I Knee’d To Slow Down
I don’t know if it’s the weather or just the activities I’ve been involved in this week, probably a combination of both, but both my knees have been killing me a bit. The joys and rigors of aging I suppose. Still, I don’t like it very much. So in the down time of trying to rest them, I ended up playing around with some video and plowing through my current read. I’ve also queued up a bunch of new books so I’m off to a great literary start to the year of book reading, so there’s that..
Peace, Love and Hope
Going into the New Year with Peace, Love and Hope!
Had my Mom over today for the New Year and we made a brunch for her and us. It was a good time, LD created this amazing Mediterranean Frittata and we had blueberry pie for dessert. Yummy! Then after dropping her off back at Earth-2 we headed out to Revere Beach for our annual tradition of starting the new year at a beach and caught a sunset! Then we came home and made a delicious Scarborough Fair soup! Good day for it! Then it was to relax in for a night of binging old season 2 episodes of Nip/Tuck.
Yesterday I was able to pick up another Dedham pottery item for the collection! This one is a cat and the best part is that the location pickup was literally just a few blocks away and the woman was practically giving it away at a super price, so score!
Currently Reading: My Effin’ Life by Geddy Lee. First book of the year!