Safe House, Cat In The Hat...
...and popcorn balls.
Performing as Steve and Darryl.
Pax and Pip are friends at last, and everyone, of course, likes Buddy.
PhD
Almost up to PhD level (piled high and deep). Not the best day to be a squirrel (or anyone else for that matter relying on travel by foot). Squirrels move through the snow in high hops until they eventually stomp the snow flat enough to create a path. On the downstroke of each hop they end up submerged, with nothing visible to the casual observer but tail and ear tips). Squirrels are at a distinct evolutionary disadvantage under such conditions. Pax, for example, with his longer wheel-base can move through the drifts much faster. Knowing this, I bang on the garage door prior to opening it so the freeloaders under the bird feeder are warned and can get a head start. Pax would have caught several anyway, if he had really tried.
Mystery Solved
The Great Toter Heist mystery has been solved.
Last garbage day two of our near neighbors woke up to find their Recycle Toter Bins missing—and the alert went out. It had been a windy night, but these heavy toter things don't blow far, and nothing was noticed under any bushes or other shrubbery. So, putting all the pieces together, I immediately decided that the culprits were the undesirables who used to live around the block in the corner house—until they destroyed it. These guys are still attending classes at the U. (which in itself is a stain on the concept of so-called higher education), and are now parking their big trucks illegally in the neighborhood. These dudes are the kind of lowlife who would think nothing of stealing a toter from a one-legged, destitute, half-blind centenarian.
But today we learned that the robot arm on one of the new garbage trucks servicing our neighborhood was improperly calibrated. Instead of lifting the toters along our avenue and dumping their contents into the truck, it threw everything in—contents, along with the whole darn bin itself.
It looks like the hawk is back. It seems to be here about the same time each year. Is it migratory?
Science Fair
At Greenland School.
In The Bleak Midwinter
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago…
—Christina Rossetti
Actually, not bleak around here at all today—rather...sparkling with brightness—until afternoon clouds—but hard and cold, for sure.
Sue helping out with the twins today.
In The Deep Of Winter
Cold, with steady light snow...justifying a certain amount of hibernation. A few odd jobs and projects moved forward a pace or two, and some reading got done. And some dog walks. But otherwise, not so much.
Today I made it through the "Our Director" march with only one flub. I love my Aerophone. I'm drawn to play it like a yellow-jacket to a partially empty soda can... while simultaneously dreading the the pain of learning.
And this from the Nite Iceboat website:
Nite Nationals gets Pluto'd. Explanation on the way
Feb 5, 2018
It was a regatta. And then it wasn't. Weather shut down the Nite Nationals after the minimum races were sailed, but the posted results do not include the Gold Fleet's third race. This left the regatta unsailed and the fleet wondering why.
With big wind and lots of snow Sunday morning, the fleet packed up and scattered before any announcement could be made. So stay tuned. It's coming.
Biggest Snow of the Year...
...and the death knell of the ill-begotten, and star-crossed Nite regatta.
On the up side, the regatta, as a result of weather quirks and management mistakes, didn't quite qualify as a regatta, so it actually has to be run again—and then conditions might be more propitious for me to participate in some way.
With the driveway shoveled, the Spaldings were able to get out of it on their way to O'Hare, London, and the English Lake District (the setting of Swallows and Amazons), traveling non-stop until arrival. Talk about jet lag.
A few hours after their departure we had to shovel again.
Some photos from Bri of the non-regatta.
Whiteout
To Madison to watch Bri and Tony race in the Nite national regatta. All we could see at the launch site, however, were trailers. The boats were lost in the blizzard. We heard later that the third race of the day was sailed in whiteout conditions with the skippers needing to use dead reckoning to find the marks.
The race was finished but improperly scored so eventually thrown out, meaning that the regatta will not count unless races are sailed tomorrow—and that's unlikely because the snow is now about 5 inches deep and still falling. Quite the snafu, followed by major uproar.
Bri and Tony were doing well, easily in the top ten of the gold fleet.
Back in Whitewater, dinner with the Spaldings and the Johns.
Jet Lag Diminishes
Quiet day of waffles, dog walks, pulled pork, and silly tv watching. Once again forgot to take a photo.
Spaldings Here
Groceries, cleaning, then dinner and conversation.
Cold, brutal wind all day.
Retirement Party...
...for Jeff Spalding, given by Fermilab friends. Good food and good conversation.
Earlier Pax an I got in some good walks, including one around the prairie.
Missed the rising of the super blue blood moon.
Almost The End of January
Prepping for visitors—Sue doing most of the work. Chilly wind, but from the south.
A Landscape
Carl Dennis
This painting of a barn and barnyard near sundown
May be enough to suggest we don’t have to turn
From the visible world to the invisible
In order to grasp the truth of things.
We don’t always have to distrust appearances.
Not if we’re patient. Not if we’re willing
To wait for the sun to reach the angle
When whatever it touches, however retiring,
Feels invited to step forward
Into a moment that might seem to us
Familiar if we gave ourselves more often
To the task of witnessing. Now to witness
A barn and barnyard on a day of rest
When the usual veil of dust and smoke
Is lifted a moment and things appear
To resemble closely what in fact they are.
At The Printer’s...
...Worzolla printing in Stevens Point, to watch KWiL Publishing's first book coming off the press (with the owner having to sign off on each run). The press used—an eight unit, four color, perfecting Heidelberg running at 18,000 impressions per hour. Four, eight-page signature sheets plus the dust jacket. (Unfortunately, each run was a bit less than a full hour, but future offerings are anticipated to require multiple hours of press time.) Ab caught a ghost image on one the the press runs, caused by an incompletely cleaned offset blanket. The head operator's response? "Great catch!" with the blanket cleaned manually, and maintenance scheduled on this multi, multi-million dollar machine.
Unfortunately, Worzolla is a very high security establishment and photography is emphatically not allowed. If it were, I would have posted shots of pallets piled with 150,000 8-page press sheets of Where the Wild Things Are—or other large stacks of Goodnight Moon, or Where the Sidewalk Ends. Etcetera.
You are known by the company you keep.
Ice Capades
Much fun despite lack of wind. Thanks to Ab for most of the photos (and for putting on and taking off lots and lots of ice skates.)
And here, Bri's boat, front and center in an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Although the article is about stern-steerers, all the boats pictured are Nites.
Shake, Rattle, and Roll
Hard but bumpy ice. Brisk wind. Nites 10 and 351 took advantage...for a shakedown sail. And shaky it was. On one tack I was running downwind at a high rate of speed with ice chips pinging off my nose when a yellow/red/black bullet whizzed past me so fast I could hardly see it. (351 is going to be rather competitive.)
We didn't stay out long, thinking it would be prudent to keep the boats from breaking apart.
And after the sail, we finally got in our long longed-for Sports Dock tuna melt. (But, being prudent, we ordered only one of the gigantic things, and split it. Still, quite a bit of yum.)
Back To Bare Ground...
...except for the odd pile of hailstones in shady places. And, reportedly, almost back to bare ice. I predict we will be sailing Sunday.
Gutters de-clogged today. And were they ever clogged—mostly leaves from Vi's big Bradford pear which doesn't lose its leaves until December. But also birch, oak, and maple; along with thick bundles of red pine needles.
I have a certain fondness for gutter photos, because, if I remember rightly, a gutter photo graced my first ever blog post.
And, speaking of gutters, they feature in two sights I find less than appealing—one, rain running down a roof and sloshing over the gutter as if it wasn't there; and two, eavestroughs festooned with luxuriant verdure—forbs, grasses, and saplings more appropriately found either on the prairie or in a deep, dark wood.
Reveling in the Past...
...otherwise known as recuperating. (No, we really didn't over-do it.) (But no chance of a timely, original photo today, either.) After a lovely breakfast at the top of the Pfister we stopped in, on the way home, to say hi to Becca, Ben, and James. (All doing well, btw.)
Still got a few blues bars rattling around between the ears.
Pax had a good time too. Last night he slept on Will's bed.
I tried to count the goldeneyes.
Night on the Town
Doing Milwaukee with the Habes. Pfister Hotel, Milwaukee Art Museum, Harbor House restaurant, Caroline’s Jazz Club for exceptionally great blues (Eddie Taylor, Jr. )
Throw a Blanket On It
And we were so close to perfect ice.
Lots and lots of moisture, in just about every possible form. I had thought that the temp-drop would happen after the precip was gone. But not quite.
There is, however, another warmup on the horizon, and still plenty of hard ice below the snow.
Thunder! Lightning!
Fog! Heavy rain! Hail! We've got it all. And the ground is frozen so hard and deep that absorption is out and runoff is the only option.
Oh dear climate, please stay sane.
