The Christmas roast Sherry found by working a contact in the restaurant business. The picture doesn’t really do it justice, but after feeding about 15 people to torporous excess AND providing big to-go slabs for those who wanted, there was still a whole bunch left over.
Merry Christmas 2016
We had a wonderful Christmas morning at home, with presents and treats for all. The cats are basically drunk with flowers and ribbons and paper everywhere.
Even the birds got a fresh batch of seeds.
The tree gained an octopus and a seal, because why not?
It was a snowy pre-Christmas, and today we’ll have more melting.
We are thinking of friends and family near and far, and how fortunate we are this day. We wish everyone who sees this a merry Christmas and a safe, healthy and happy new year.
What a difference a day makes
As the eye doctor would say… which is better, A 
or B?
Lick the pipe and let’s be irie
St. Martin Christmas is necessarily different than Vermont Christmas. The weather doesn’t change, you’ve got all kinds of cultures and traditions bashed up against each other, and like two thirds of the people here today won’t actually be here in two weeks.
Still and all , it’s Christmas for sure. The title of this post is a line from a song I heard on two different stations on a half-hour drive yesterday. Sing it to Deck the Halls, and if you don’t know what it means exactly, like me, I’ll venture a Freudian translation: sometimes a pipe is just a way to commune with Jah in a way that is recently legal in several states, and then again sometimes it isn’t.
On the boardwalk, there’s a giant ornament to take pictures in.
The Harbormaster’s office is a study in tasteful restraint.
And there are a few Griswolds among us…
High tech deco
Somehow my heart hasn’t been in the activities of Christmas decorating the past few years. I still love the ornaments and the swagged garland and the balsam candle and all of it. But the actual weekend of unpacking and installing makes me suddenly too tired to get off the couch. I’m glad that Lee had the energy and motivation to do all the work!
My new programmable LEDs allowed me to make a big impact with little work… yay! And I get to change them for every holiday!
Sunset
Woulda been even more enjoyable at 7-something than at 5-something. Thanks for nothing, eccentric axis!
A frosty cold night
A windshield, a lattice fence
And then a sunrise
In the heart of Hartford
Last week I took a lunchtime walk around Hartford, enjoying one of the few remaining warm fall days. It was drizzling, but still.
I crossed the tracks, literally and figuratively, into some neighborhoods I’d never been in. As we passed on the sidewalk, a young man admonished me “Don’t nobody need to be knowin your business.”
I headed down Asylum Street toward an area dominated by old insurance company buildings and an improbable collection of churches. There’s a multi-part installation of rocks with etched poems that contributed to the meditative and melancholy feeling.
A statue honoring the American School for the Deaf, and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. I stayed at Gallaudet University a while back for a meeting.
The striking, ugly St. Joseph’s Cathedral. I went inside, and there’s lots of nice stained glass, but it still felt like a tomb.
But I can always be cheered up by a nice pair of knockers…
Back home
Just in time for no trick-or-treaters
Peak Foliage
Early in the year, I heard some predictions that the drought-like conditions we have experienced would cause a lousy leaf season.
Instead, it has been spectacular. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been daily wondering whether we had hit the peak… it’s a tradeoff between having the most leave is still on the trees, versus having the most leaves at their most dramatic colors. Often, a storm will come along and knock some leaves down early, so if you are waiting and waiting for the most color, you might miss it.
On Thursday, we snuck out for a nice lunch at the Four Columns Inn in Newfane. The Newfane Square is about as picturesque as you can convenient we get, and the colors were amazingly vibrant under the perfect blue sky.
Tower Power
On Sunday, Sherri recruited someone who really knows their way around the Retreat Trails to lead us a short hike. The tower is always locked, but we ended up finding a view that let us imagine what must be like if you could get in there and go up the spiral staircase up to the roof.
Spring, Take 4
These fuzzy boots have been made redundant.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 