Fire…

Our new Harman Accentra pellet stove. More or less heats the whole house, so far we love it. We bought the stove at Bernardston Farmers Supply, and they were great… knowledgeable, down to earth, fair price…

Also note the recently completed river of tile…

Googly eyes at Whetstone – some Sherrys are laudably spontaneous.

This wonderfully evocative puppet stands in the lobby of Sandglass Theater in Putney where we went last night to see Richard 3.5, which was a wonderful, if hard to describe, interpretation of Shakespeare’s Richard III. But I’ll try anyway. It was part history lesson, part puppet show, part dramatic reading, and two parts corny Vaudeville song and dance. Now is the winter of this uncomfortable folding chair made glorious summer by these two grizzled troubadours…

Finally we understand the purpose of giant pickups with giant tires… They’re bird sanctuaries!

I make it a point to pick up money I find on the street, whether I’m running or doing errands or whatever. Turns out there’s a whole subculture of people who do this, and it turns out to be skill that you can learn and improve.
Today I did a couple laps around the ginormous parking lot of the Katy Mills Mall, and this was the haul.

The quarter is as old as I am… Makes you think, how did I and this quarter both spend 47 years waiting to meet each other in a mall parking lot on a foggy Christmas Eve morning in Katy Texas (home of the state champion football team) (and my brother in law)?

Have a holly jolly, b-b-b-blue, red-nosed Christmas

Most mornings I walk to work with Lee and we get a cup of coffee from the hospital cafeteria. It’s as good as what I can get downtown and cheaper too. We’ve struck up quite the pleasant morning chit chat with the cashier, to whom there is more than meets the eye.

Today, prepping for the festive employee lunch, she was sporting a singing, dancing hat… Really, both hat and wearer were crooning. And then she reached down beneath the register and pulled out another one, and another, and……

Signs of the upcoming apocalypse

Even though the world is about to end, you still have to keep your feet off the wall. And the well- dressed lobsters will be the first to be rounded up and eaten.

On the one hand, it’s very cool that the hotel elevator lobby mirror has these inbuilt lighted weather indicators. On the other, it’s Vancouver at the end of November, and so there aren’t a lot of surprises. Seeing the current conditions makes that 5:30 AM run just a little bit less appealing.

Holding off a late challenge in the Red Clover Rovers 2012 Turkey Trot, our hero cruises in comfortably ahead of his goal time. A perfect fall day, one more thing to be thankful for.

“Informational Picket”

It’s union contract negotiation time at the Retreat, and things have gotten difficult. Union claims that mgmt. has squandered millions in surplus funds; bosses respond by laying off over 30 employees. So far, lose-lose.

RowBOC docks out. 11/11/12

On on!!!

So I’m getting out of the boat on Saturday after the final row of the season, and I see a small group of people standing in a circle near the trailhead.

They’re colorfully dressed.

There’s chalk marks on the ground.

They’re singing.

I had stumbled on the newly formed Connecticut Valley New Trotters just downing their pre-trail beers.

Hallelujah!