That's All In The Past Now

Busy weekend, mostly errands and chores and such like, playing catch-up from being on vacation:

 

I had off Friday, which was spent shopping for food and other things (ie getting propane for the grill at Lowe's), doing laundry and cleaning the house etc; since we had the grill working again we grilled sausages and veggies for dinner, then hit The Mint with Doug and Lori. Saturday was lawn and garden stuff, followed by a medium-level road bike ride (30 miles or so, about two hours -- the GPS data file was corrupt so I couldn't document it) and dinner at Black & Blue, where we told Larry & Kelly-Jo about being married... Sunday was a brewing day, which meant a lot of downtime, so Anne spent some more time in the garden while I organized our vacation and wedding pictures, and Debbie came over later in the afternoon with her bike -- I cleaned it and lubed it and generally gave it some TLC while they pulled weeds. We did some grilled chicken for dinner, then ended the weekend with a trip to Brew Works.

 

Uh, Wedding? Yes that's right, Anne and I got married. (We did it secretly back on April 19th to avoid the fuss and commotion of a conventional wedding, then when we were in Ireland we picked up wedding bands so the secret is now out.) It was a simple but very sweet ceremony: Anne's sister and her husband were our witnesses, and a good friend of hers officiated (we got married in Philadelphia at the Federal Courthouse, where her friend is a judge), and after that we celebrated with an evening in Philly. Not much more to tell about the event but it was nice. Pictures to follow...

 

Yikes! Anne talked me into running a half-marathon with her in September. We have about 10 weeks to train, and our first training run was this morning. Pretty easy so far, 2 miles at a very slow pace, but that's likely to change soon enough.

Clare Days, Ennis Nights

On the train again, heading for Dublin and our last night in Ireland. I've had a great time, but last night I dreamed of leprechauns and I'm really starting to miss home.

Ennis turned out to be nicer than my first impression. The town is walkably small, with the town center, a commercial district in among medieval streets and lanes, being only a few blocks long and wide - this was not a tourist district, though there were plenty of pubs and restaurants, but the place where locals (probably including people from the nearby countryside) conducted their business. Downtown is where we rented our next bikes - clunkers again, unfortunately - and where we'd begin and end every day, with breakfast from a bakery and dinner in a pub.

During the day we'd ride our clunkers out into the Clare countryside. We had two days: our first day was an exploration of my maternal roots, going from Ennis to Killmihel on the tiniest roads I've ever seen, then on to Milltown Malbay on even smaller roads. We had lunch in Milltown Malbay, then returned to Ennis via a road crossing called The Hand, actually the mailing address of distant relatives even now. (There is no one and nothing there except a road marker, and I wasn't looking people up anyway.)

That was about 54 miles, and our second day was much less ambitious: we rode out to an unusual, rocky terrain called The Burren, and did a loop through the national park there. We took our time, stopped at a few archeological features, and took lots of pictures.

Evenings, which started and sometimes ended in daylight since the sun doesn't set until after 10:00, were spent checking the local "trad" music scene. We would grab dinner in a pub, and some musicians would wander in and start playing, our we'd find some bunch of people playing in the back of some bar. The music was uniformly good, and a lot like the stuff we'd heard in Dingle, but there was a political edge to Ennis that we didn't find elsewhere. It seems kind of silly to hear an Irish version of "We Shall Overcome," until you see newsprints on the walls from the 1916 uprising, and the statues of O'Connor and De Valera in the town squares...

And So This Is Ennis

A nice-enough town, and a nice central location for the last day-rides of our trip, but it's not a big town, or a tourist or college town, and after Dingle it seems a bit lackluster...

Luckily we stayed an extra day in Dingle. After all my bragging about how easy it was to navigate the bus/train lines, we came up hard against an unexpected setback: the June "bank holiday." Anne heard people talking about it and was curious, looked it up and found we had no public transportation out of Dingle on Monday (this was Friday might). So, we re-finagled our lodging arrangements, and made today our travel day.

More Dingle Daze: We got in two more rides in Dingle, one a climb up Conor Pass - like Blue Mountain, only on a tiny goat-path of a road, with two-way traffic, and since there are no trees you can see everything you have to climb - then back to town, and the other a ride through the interior of the peninsula, stopping at an ancient "oratory," or monastic chapel, made of corbelled stone, then doing our Slae Head loop in the opposite direction, and stopping again at the little tea shop overlooking the Blasket Islands for tea and scones.

In between those rides was a sort of wet and drizzly day, so we did a hike, which actually took us partway back up to Conor Pass before heading off into sheep country.

The Night Life: Most evenings we would walk around Dingle town, maybe going into a pub to catch some music - real Irish music is more like folk, and much better than the crap I was expecting, and the best place to catch it was Tommy O'Sullivan's - or to grab a bite and a pint. (A pint of what, you ask? We had our obligatory pints of Guiness, which truly is better over here, but we also sampled a few beers from several craft brewers on the peninsula, and our go-to drink actually turned out to be Bulmers Cider. One freaky night we got a bottle of wine with seafood. Me, seafood, wine, this place is full of surprises...) Once or twice we stayed out a bit later, and one night we had a lovely conversation about genealogy - the guy was researching his relatives who'd emigrated  to the US, who knew they did that? - with a couple from Galway.

Last night was another awesome meal, but the crowds, which had grown huge, were now thinning, you could see that the bank holiday was winding down.
We left town this morning, on the 7:15 bus to Tralee.

It took us until 1:30 (and it took us three transfers traveling by train, including one transfer we almost missed), but now we're ensconced in The Rowan Tree, an awesome hostel in the middle of town. We got some lunch, walked most of the town (it didn't take long), and now we're almost done with our laundry and itching to hit the local scene. Tomorrow we ride to my mother's ancestral homeland.

An Daingean

We've been on the Dingle Peninsula, staying in the town of Dingle (An Daingean), since Thursday afternoon; yesterday was our first full day and our first bike ride.

(I have to say, this idea of taking public transportation, then using bikes for day trips, has worked out well. The rail infrastructure is really well done, and it was nice to sit and watch the landscape roll by. The only part we couldn't do by train, Tralee to Dingle, was a bus ride and the perfect opportunity for some serious people-watching. The whole thing was one big, fun adventure - I'm really surprised more tourists don't travel this way.)

The biker part: we rented some tourist/touring bikes for several days, better than our Carlow bikes but not by much, and yesterday we rode out around the end of the peninsula. We rode out to a place called Slea Head, then around the north side and back in a loop (called the Slea Head Loop, appropriately enough).

It was beautiful, in fact it was almost silly how beautiful it was. The sky, and the water to our left, and the landscape to our right, were all constantly changing, and each bend in the road revealed another breathtaking vista more beautiful than the last. We stopped twice to explore some ancient ruins, and twice for tea or snacks, and a whole bunch of times just to look around.

The ride was about 33 easy miles, and took us a total of maybe five hours. We got back in time to pick up our laundry at the cleaner, grab yet another amazing dinner (the food here in Ireland is very good), and catch a folk concert - I was surprised by how much I liked this - in an abandoned church. Afterward we stopped in a few pubs on the way back to our B&B, and caught several more amazing musicians. Our latest night out so far, but completely worth it.

Bunclody

We are leaving Carlow now, taking an early train to Dublin as the first leg of our trip to the town of Dingle - our first Irish Rail experience giving us the confidence to try the rail transfers and a bus ride, rather than renting a car...

Our trip yesterday was by bike. We couldn't find any rentals anywhere in Carlow, but a small bike store basically loaned us two second-hand childrens mountain bikes, and off we went to Bunclody, a town about 20 miles away (via the tiny, and busy, main road) which was my father's paternal grandfather's birthplace.

The ride was uneventful, though Anne kept having to readjust her slipping seatpost, and the town itself was very pretty. (It's hard to believe anyone would ever want to leave, until you factor in the starvation and political oppression.) We spent an hour or so exploring, got some lunch, and ride back to Carlow.

Once "home," we hit a pub whose owners may have been related to my great-grandmother (Byrne is a common enough name, especially here), toasted our adventure with some cider, then showered, got some dinner, and hit another pub for some Guiness while we helped the locals watch the England-Ireland soccer matchup. We left after a while, walking outside to a beautiful evening sky - the sun was just setting, though it was already almost 10:00. It was light out when we went to bed, but we had an early start planned.

When we awoke (just before 6:00) the sun was already high up and shining brightly in a cloudless blue sky. I have a sunburn from yesterday - this place is much sunnier than I expected.

Carlow Town

We got up a bit early this morning and, after breakfast and a final walk through Saint Stephen's Green, we checked out of out hotel and took a taxi to the train station. About one hour later by intercity rail, and here we are in Carlow (pop 20,000), with the approximately half mile walk from the station,  to our hotel in the center of town, giving us our first feel for the place.

Carlow is not your typical tourist town: about an hour by rail southwest of Dublin, it had a bit of a boom as a bedroom community in the Celtic Tiger days, it's a bustling enough town with plenty of nice old buildings, and there are a number of amenities but they're mostly for home use. There's a few pubs, and at least one B&B, so we're good.

We're in Carlow mostly for genealogical reasons. My father's paternal grandmother was from a village, now absorbed by the town, called Graigecullen - it's basically what's on the west bank of the River Barrow, which divides Carlow. No looking up graves or relatives, I just want to walk where she once walked. We did that this afternoon, walking along the riverbank, and tomorrow we'll bike the 20 miles to Bunclody, the village where my father's grandfather was born.

Dublin Days

Day two in Dublin - it's 9:30 here and we just got back from breakfast, and are about to do some more tourist things: buy an umbrella and a cheap local phone, visit the distillery...

We arrived yesterday morning, got through some fairly laid-back customs and took a bus into town, then walked over to our hotel, which is on the edge of a party-tourist-commercial zone (Temple Bar, Grafton Street), near Trinity College. It was still too early to check in, but they us leave our bags, and we went out and got some breakfast - we both got mini-versions of the Complete Irish Breakfast, which was awesome, even including the sausage items we we advised to avoid (black pudding etc).

After breakfast we went exploring. It was a beautiful day. We walked around town,  checked out Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells exhibit, strolled up and down Grafton Street, visited a pub for some real Guinness (definitely better here), and then went back to our hotel and took a nap. Out to a brewpub for dinner - I didn't realize they had brewpubs here, thought it was Guinness/Smithwicks or nothing, but these guys were awesome - then back for another "nap" that lasted until morning.

Today we awoke to what I think is more "traditional" Irish weather: it's a bit cool and a light rain is falling. We just got back from breakfast as I said, and soon we'll be heading out for some sightseeing, including a visit to the Jameson distillery.

Failte FAIL

We are now in Terminal E, on the "good" side of Security at Logan Airport, waiting with boarding passes in hand for our rescheduled flight, six hours from now and 24 later than what we were supposed to catch...

We got to Philly, and then Boston uneventfully, the only snag being that we couldn't get our boarding phases in Philly for our second flight. No biggie, or so they told us, but then when we got here we had to go to the Aer Lingus booth for the boarding passes, and there we were told (with an hour to go before our flight) that "the flight was closed." They probably hadn't even started boarding yet!

No amount of argument got us, or the other people there, on our flight, no hotel vouchers or apology, or even an explanation that didn't change from minute to minute; it was all we could do to get on this flight. Fuckers - they probably overbooked, gave our seats away, and wouldn't admit it.

So it was off to rooms at the nearby Airport Hilton, and dinner and drinks at the hotel bar with a very drunk woman sitting next to us, telling us her life story. This morning we got up and did some breakfast & sightseeing in Boston's North End, before getting here good and goddamn early and ready for a fight at the Aer Lingus counter.

Well, things went a little better this time, and all we lost - I'm counting my chickens before they hatch - was one day in Dublin.

Hard Boiled Language

We listened to a "book on tape" while traveling to and from Knoxville. I'd never done this before -- it had never occured to me to do something like this, and after this experiment I'm not sure I'll do it again -- but Anne knew people who did this all the time and wanted to try it, and she'd picked one up from the library for our ride.

 

The book was Phantom, a Norwegian detective novel by Jo Nesbø, and the ninth and latest in the "Detective Harry Hole" series (though we knew nothing of any of this before listening). It was riveting, and exhausting -- driving twelve hours each way through heavy rain, trying to concentrate on both the road and the story -- and it lasted for the entire trip down and back, the Sunday drive to Jim Thorpe and back, and an hour or two at home Sunday night. (I though I was going to die on the way down when, after several hours and several CD's -- there were 13 of them, but I didn't know that until later -- Anne puts in the next CD and the narrator said "Part Two...")

 

The story was a classic hard-boiled crime drama: former detective Harry Hole, back from Hong Kong after several years away, is in Oslo to help clear the son of his ex-girlfriend of a drug-related murder he may or may not have committed (she was the one great love of his life, and the boy, now a junkie, was once his surrogate son). This investigation drags him into Oslo's seamy drug underworld, and onto a collision course with the Russian mob, with brief forays into government and police corruption, including possible double-agents among his ex-colleagues. Plenty of violence, some doomed romance, and enough plot twists to keep the suspense level pretty high for more than twenty four hours. Two thumbs up!

 

There was one weird thing though: it was a translation of course, with a British actor doing the narration. He would do the mobster voices in a heavy Russian accent, but otherwise it was impeccable British English. Until... personal and place names were still in Norwegian, and the narrator would do those with near-perfect (to my untrained ear) Norwegian pronunciation. After a while I was hearing those Norwegian names in my sleep -- I woke up this morning with the word "Trondheim," with rolling "R" and a dead stop between sylables, as my morning earworm. Was it even in the book?

 

This was the same thing that happened to me as I researched Ireland.  I managed to drive Anne crazy with my constant joke of an Irish brogue, but in truth the sounds and cadences of the diifferent place names started to get to me, and the words started to show up in my dreams. A lilting language, dancing quick...

 

Parting gift: here's a neat website of one American expat's experiences and insights, living in the Netherlands, Spain and Ireland.

Ten Years

Happy Mother's Day!

Today is also an anniversary of sorts: it's the tenth anniversary of my first blog post. It seems so long ago now, but that's only because it is... Anne and I have been together for more than five years now, and it seems like just yesterday in comparison, though in truth that point is closer in time to that first blog post than this one. Time is a funny thing, and time perceptions in our memory are probably logarithmic...

Knoxville: That's where we were this week. Travel day Wednesday and Friday, and Thursday in town for Emmi's commencement ceremony - she graduated last summer, and her official "cap and gown" walk down the aisle rolled over to this year. Beautiful day, and we had a great time hanging in K'ville, going to the commencement and having dinner with her old advisers afterward. Exhausting, rainy drives before and afterward though, and we spent most of a rainy day yesterday just recuperating.

It's a beautiful day today, and we're going up to Jim Thorpe, for a Mother's Day celebration with Anne's family.

I Tell Them About My Weekend But Nobody Gets A-Skeered

Well, the weekend -- what did we do Friday night? Anne was up in Ithaca for the day, and when I got home I got in a pretty solid towpath ride, then did a little recreational programming until she got home, we managed a short night at the Brew Works after that. Pretty crowded as I recall, it took us a while to get seats at the bar. I finally got to try their "15th Anniversary" double-wit, which was -- as I'd been told -- better than expected; still not my cup of tea or mug of beer but at least I can say I tried it.

 

Saturday was a beautiful sunny day, but it was also chores and errands day. We both had tons of laundry, so we took turns with the washing machine -- it ran continuously for about 7 hours, and Anne did a bunch of gardening while I worked on the bikes, and the washing accumulated on the lines... We also did a Wegman's run, and later we hit the PPRAC fundraising party in Allentown: full house at the West End Youth Center, standing room only (almost), plenty of food, good beer, two bands, and a bunch of old friends and PPRAC comrades... We hung out there for a while, then stopped by Caruso's, a new -- new to me, at least -- place just up the street, with John & Donna. Pretty nice place too, good beer choices and a nicer atmosphere than many Allentown venues, though when we left, around 11:00 or so, it looked like they were getting ready to close. Quiet, unassuming, boring to troublemakers: is that what it takes to be a "nice place" in my book these days?

 

Sunday was another perfect day. Anne did a run, and I got in an abbreviated Sals ride in the morning, then we went up to Jim Thorpe for her Mom's birthday. We took her out to dinner, along with Anne's sister & her husband, at the restaurant at Penn's Peak. A nice day, and then we came home and read -- we were in bed by 9:00.

 

Right now Ben and Jaime are home, passing through on the way from Florida to Massachusetts by way of Emmi's place in North Carolina. They arrived yesterday; I'm not sure how long they'll be around, but we'll all be having dinner tonight with my old work/bike/yoga friend Scott, so we'll have a full house at least for another day or so.

 

Reading: I picked up some "Portable Voltaire" reader in Philly the other day, and I'm working through that, as well as that collection of Cthulhu-inspired short horror stories (which I picked up in that same bookstore, several months ago), and the latest from Mark Leyner: The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack.

 

Listening: For some reason I went on a Negativland binge the other day on E-Music, and that led me to get a few King Missile songs too. I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one in the house that likes them.

 

A Shining Star For You To Call Wormwood

Happy Chernobyl Disaster Anniversary! Of course, that means it's time to revisit the Kid -- Of -- Speeeeed!!!!!

 

(Just as an aside, "Chernobyl" is supposedly Ukranian for "wormwood," or close enough, which brings to mind Revelations 8:10-11:

 

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven,

burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood;

and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. -- KJV

 

Wormwood is also the most famous ingredient in "real" absinthe, which I once drank in Russia. It's what's supposed to make absinthe so potent and dangerous, but I suspect it was the 60% ABV.)

 

Meantime, work's been really busy, and this whole week has been a blur. Our Sunday ride last week (towpath to Easton & back, and across the Minsi trail Bridge to the new Greenway for the Earth Day celebrations) was great, but ended in my chain literally exploding -- it broke into multiple pieces, it was totally unfixable, and we ended up walking the last little bit home. I picked up a new chain Monday night, but there were planes to catch and bills to pay, yadda yadda, and I didn't put it on until last night. Tonight we'll see if I did it right...

 

The Goose And The Hawk

Did a morning run along the canal with Anne, where we saw several families of geese, complete with goslings. The geese get aggressive when they're nesting, but we were all just sort of tolerating each other there on the canal, some sideways looks but mostly "don't mess with me and I won't mess with you"... until one set of parents started with the aggressive displays (opening up their wings, hissing, bobbing their heads) while we were still quite far away. One kept up the display while the other herded the babies into the water and sheltered them against her body, and then we saw the real reason for their behavior: a huge hawk glided over and landed on a tree branch just across the canal from the geese.

We didn't stick around to see the drama, but on our return leg we saw what looked like the whole family swimming along, so the hawk must have left empty-handed.

By the way, we spent Friday and yesterday in Philly with Anne's sister and her husband, sightseeing and window shopping. Drinks at Nodding Head, Tapas at the mid-town Continental, breakfast at the Reading Terminal Market, lunch at the White Dog...

We just had an awesome breakfast, which included dandelion greens and wild onions from the yard, and now we're about to go on a mountain bike ride. It's spring, and it's beautiful out.

Happy Earth Day!

Maybe Thick Socks Are The Answer

Morning weigh-in: 191#, 14.5% BF (I'm pretty round right now, so I'd take that BF with a grain of salt.)

 

I got new shoes last week, along with two new suits, some shirts and ties etc, my annual trip to Men's Wearhouse. What can I say? I needed a new suit, but I went with Anne, and she and the salesman ganged up on me... My old "dress shoes" were pretty ratty, but they were comfortable (like an old cliche), which is not what I can say about my new ones: they're killing me, or they were until today; today I am wearing extra-thick socks, and they provide just enough extra cushioning to keep me sane. Hopefully they'll break in soon enough.

 

Nature Journal FAIL: I was all set to check out the Aurora Borealis, which was supposed to be spectacular, and visible even in Pennsylvania, on Saturday night.I put on some warm clothes and went to the top of South Mountain Park near Lehigh, where there's an open field at the top of the hill; I arrived a bit before sunset, and was eventually joined by a bunch of tweens with chaperones (think like Cub/Boy Scouts, but it was a mixed gender crowd -- a school Astronomy Club?), and some college kids, but we all were disappointed, there was nothing to see.

 

In Other News, It's April: Sunday morning I was up in Jim Thorpe. I rode the American Standard Trail, and did some exploring on the Young American, a new-ish set of additions/alternates to the main route. I was completely alone, the whole mountain was like a ghost town -- it was windy, and much colder up there than it was at home, at least at first. The trail conditions were awesome though, and despite feeling skittish (I'd been fooling with suspension shock settings, and the bike felt a bid weird), I had a really good time. Towards the end though I started feeling pretty ratty, and I was running out of steam on a lot of the climbs. One more wake-up call, bike season is here and I'm not ready.

 

Tonight I finish my taxes, right on time. I did them myself, for the first time in probably 15 years.

 

Halftime Report

So here I am today, the big Five Oh. Doesn't feel any different. I remember the hearing the adage "Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age," but I was told this weekend that fifty is The New Forty (or even The New Twenty according to one friend), so we'll see how it all works out.

 

I mentioned this to a few friends when the subject of milestone birthday crises came up -- "OMG you're fifty are you freaking?" -- but my big crisis year was actually when I turned 29. I always thought that my freakout had something to do with it being my last year in my twenties, one more year and it's all over etc, but looking back now I wonder if it wasn't something else: I remember at that time realizing, after years of physical inactivity, that I was fat and flabby and falling apart -- I'd been exhausted by the minor physical labor of a plant inspection not too long before, while my 70-year-old boss had breezed through it, and I bought my first bike only a month before my birthday. I suspect that there were other things in the air too, since I'd been out of school and into my new career, and independent living in a new area, for about two years; I liked these things, but I wasn't doing much with my life other than working, and I was starting to realize there was more to life and if I didn't find it before time passed I'd miss it. That's pretty much guaranteed to bring on an early "midlife crisis."

 

So anyway, my life changed over the next few years, and my thirties were much better than my twenties, and much richer, and things continued that way until about five years ago, when I met Anne and my life got richer still. And now...

 

By the way: rode last night (towpath), and may ride again tonight (Sals?) if the weather holds. Spring is definitely here.

 

After The Ball

Well the party's over, but I'm still forty-nine for one more day...

 

A good time was had by all by the way, and we had some really good eats and drinks -- we did a bunch of shopping at the Allentown Farmers Market on Friday, and started the bread oven Friday night to build some residual heat then had it going all morning Saturday, and after some amazing loaves of bread we roasted a huge piece of beef, and a leg of lamb, and some ribs. Meantime, Anne made me a huge birthday cake (four layers of chocolate, with coffee-cream-butterscotch icing). And of course, we had our sixtel of Irish Red ready to go in the backyard.

 

People started arriving just before eight, and by 9:00 or so we had a packed house.  Many friends from the biker crowd and some from other circles, and It was good to see my brother and parents too, who came out from NJ. Most people brought desserts and veggie appetizers, so we were in good shape there, otherwise it would have been a very carnivorous spread, and great fun was had when Donna broke out her cupcakes with the X-rated decorations... There was a lot of drinking and carousing, but the basic format was "dinner party," and most people took off around say 11:00 or so, with a core group staying until a bit later. We did an abbreviated cleanup after the last guests took off, and were in bed by about 1:30.

 

The next day, Anne and I got up at the crack of 11:30, had eggs over the pork and beans that were the last thing cooked (over Saturday night) in the oven, did some more cleaning up, and then hit Nockamixon for some mountain biking -- it was a beautiful day, warm and pleasant though greenup still looks a week or so away, and the trails, though not overcrowded, were definitely getting their share of use. Home after that, for leftovers (roast beef and lamb sandwiches), a quick nap -- hey I'm old now! -- and a trip to Brew Works, for the punctuation mark at the end of a great weekend.

Daffodils

Here I am on the front porch, waiting for my birthday party - my 50th birthday party - to start, just chilling, watching the flowers bloom and trying a little experiment: I'm blogging from my phone using the dedicated app.

It's a bit laborious despite Swype, and the laptop is stored away until after the party, so I'll catch you on the Flipside...

Watersleep To Firewaking

Well, we're past the Green Cusp of Springtime, though you wouldn't know it from the dusting of snow on the ground around here this morning. Like the weekend's snowfall, and also Monday's, it'll probably disappear by afternoon.

 

Yesterday was a nice enough day, but I did pretty much nothing when I got home from work -- we'd been up late Monday (I picked up Anne at the bus stop around 11:00), then again on Tuesday (the VMB meeting -- my last as secretary -- and also Taco night at Brew Works, and a big chunk of the old crew was there), so last night was a night in, and an early one at that. Hot dogs for dinner, then I spent some time cleaning a whole bunch of music from my phone that I'd become tired of, and nhen putting a whole bunch of new stuff on, including a few of those eMusic samplers I got around Christmas, and one SXSW-themed sampler I downloaded last night.

 

Speaking of SXSW: How come Musikfest isn't cool like that? That's an example of a rhetorical question.

 

Anyway, no idea what we're doing tonight, but I have tomorrow off.

Spring Is Around The Corner

At least, that's what I keep telling myself -- we are now back in a winter wonderland thanks to yesterday's freak storm. Accumulation looks to be an inch or less though, so this should disappear after a couple of warm days, if we happen to get any soon.... I drove home through the depressing weather, felt like I was skunked again in terms of riding, but when I got home I said "aw, screw it" and went out anyway. Just a towpath ride, and shorter/slower than usual because of snow resistance but it was fun and I'm glad I went. Hung out with the laptop afterward, working more on that program among other things, and then picked Anne up at the bus station when she got in.

 

Anyway, I've been posting some pictures onto Flickr, working my way a few at a time through the backlog (I 'm now into December I think). Enjoy!

 

Still Winter

Saturday morning, and I got up sort of early (for a Saturday); I did some laundry, then took off for Easton with a stop at the drycleaner on the way. Right now I'm in the Terra Cafe, the old coffee shop I used to visit, Saturday mornings back in the day -- it's  changed hands, and names, over the years, but it has remained a nice place.  I don't recognize any faces though, on either side of the counter.

I had breakfast here, and did a little web surfing, then some programming and now some blogging; I'm almost done with my second cup, and then it'll be time to take off, out into the snow. (Just flurries, for now.) My next stop is the Nurture Nature Center, where I'll hit the Easton Farmer's Market, then ensconce myself in the next coffee shop and wait for the start of the Nature Journaling class at 1:00.