Miscellaneous

Burning More Papers

Photograph taken on Saturday, January 27, 2018 by Henry
Burning More Papers

Burning More Papers

It was another productive Saturday, getting a few things crossed off the top of my to do list. It was also, if you will, the opposite of productive (i.e. destructive). We burned another three boxes of “shred” papers. It doesn’t save a lot of time over shredding and in fact, if we took them to someone with an industrial shredder, it would much faster. Nevertheless, burning is relaxing. There’s something about flames. I won’t say they’re cool, but if I did, you’d probably know what I meant. The boxes today had, among other things, canceled checks from 1979. I think it’s safe to get rid of those now.

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Stone Rings

Photograph taken on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 by Henry
Stone Rings

Stone Rings

Our Community Group (our church’s small groups) met this evening at Kofi and Danielle’s apartment building. It’s a newish building and a lot more swanky than anywhere we’ve lived. I’m not complaining, mind you. We’re pretty happy where we are. All of the apartments we’ve lived in had doors off of (mostly open) stair wells. The first place we lived, which was in Chevy Chase, had an enclosed stair but the others had open stairs. That’s not counting the Quonset Hut we lived in when we first moved to Juneau. After that we moved to an apartment that opened off a balcony across the bridge on Douglas Island. That and the apartment we moved into back in Maryland after our around-the-world trip in ’88 were both on the third floor of three story buildings.

Anyway, we met in one of the common rooms in the apartment building because there were about fifteen of us, which would have been a crowd in their one bedroom apartment. In addition to this stone sculpture on a table, there was a gas fire burning in a long, low fireplace. Needless to say, however, the real warmth came from the people we were with.

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Rusty Chain

Photograph taken on Tuesday, January 23, 2018 by Henry
Rusty Chain

Rusty Chain

Outside my office, between the parking lot and the woods, there are a half dozen wooden picnic tables, stacked one on top of the other. They are chained together, presumably to keep any of them from wondering off (as it were). The chain is a little the worse for being out in the weather all the time. I didn’t really test it of course, and for all I know it’s still strong enough to stand up to average abuse. Nevertheless, it looks a bit weakened and a strong piece of iron inserted between the sides of a link and twisted might snap the chain quite easily.

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Rubber Stoppers

Photograph taken on Monday, January 22, 2018 by Henry
Rubber Stoppers

Rubber Stoppers

You can’t really call them corks when they aren’t made of cork. Note that box on the right, which says “Corks” on it actually contains real corks, made from the bark of the cork oak (which should be called Quercus corkus but is actually Quercus suber). These brown stoppers are made of gum rubber and are good for all sorts of stoppering needs. These are in a drawer in a small cabinet that has a fairly wide variety of things in it. As you can see, a few of them have holes cut through them. Dad used them in his home lab and I’ve found a few uses for them myself, over the years.

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Ashes to Ashes

Photograph taken on Sunday, January 21, 2018 by Henry
Burning Card

Burning Card

We’ve got a bunch of boxes in the garage marked shred—old bills, checkbooks, business correspondence, that sort of thing—and we’ve been meaning to get rid of them for a while. There used to be an outfit that allowed individuals to drop off boxes of papers to be shredded for free (making their money from businesses) but they are no longer doing that. Well, what’s better than shredding? Burning. This little fellow didn’t suffer as he was consumed by the flames. Four boxes done. Six or eight more to go.

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Don’t Look Back

Photograph taken on Friday, January 19, 2018 by Henry
Sunset In The Rear View Miror

Sunset In The Rear View Miror

It’s funny how a phrase can call up vivid memories in much the same was certain sounds and even more smells can bring you to a place you haven’t been in a long time. When I was growing up, we’d visit my grandparents in North Carolina a few times a year. It was something I always looked forward to eagerly. Their house was familiar and yet unfamiliar enough to be just a little exciting. It was an old house with lots of character and quirks. There was also a huge shed out back full of all sorts of treasures. One thing I can’t say I always looked forward to was going to church. It certainly wasn’t the fault of the particular church and had much more to do with my age, my inability to sit still for very long, and my general lack of interest. Nevertheless, I actually remember a few lines from a sermon given there, probably in the early 1970s. The phrase that sticks in my mind was “Don’t Look Back” and the sermon was on Luke 9:63, “But Jesus said to him, ‘No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’” I thought of that as I took this picture in my rear view mirror while stopped at a traffic light on the way home today.

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Mellow Mushroom

Photograph taken on Tuesday, January 16, 2018 by Henry
Mellow Mushroom

Mellow Mushroom

For more than two years now I’vebeen meeting regularly with a group of (mostly) young men. For over a year we met most weeks. Starting last summer we switched to every other week and during the holidays it was hard to organize. Three of us finally got together this evening for dinner. Mellow Mushroom sounds a bit sixty’s but the food is honestly pretty good. The decor is very much comic book colors and it makes for a good picture. There were not a lot of patrons there this evening, but a Tuesday in the winter isn’t likely to be busy in general.

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Walnut in Asphalt

Photograph taken on Friday, January 12, 2018 by Henry
Walnut in Asphalt

Walnut in Asphalt

I went across campus for a meeting today and on the way back, I walked around the building once to take a few pictures. I came across this black walnut that has been pushed down into a crack in the pavement. I think it’s really kind of pretty. In case you aren’t sure, the pavement is wet. Our weather has definitely warmed up (it was over 60°F today) but it’s very wet out. Tomorrow the rain is supposed to be gone but the temperatures are supposed to drop back to freezing and then colder into next week.

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Old Glory

Photograph taken on Wednesday, January 10, 2018 by Henry
Old Glory

Old Glory

It was a mostly grey day today. It’s still cool but it’s supposed to warm up for a few days. It’s also supposed to rain, so we’ll finally have temperatures above 60°F but wet. On the way home, I was sitting at the light and the large American flag at the Ourisman Rockmont Chevrolet car lot was blowing in the wind. The wind was coming out of the southeast, which is a little unusual so it was blowing farther behind the trees. Usually it’s blowing to the right, out from the trees.

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Computer Room

Photograph taken on Monday, January 08, 2018 by Henry
Margaret and Cathy In The Computer Room

Margaret and Cathy In The Computer Room

Now that Cathy’s mom has moved in with us, we needed to integrate her computer into our home network. The small office just inside our front door (and now just outside her bedroom) is where my computer has been for over a year and where Cathy’s has been since the construction started towards the end of October. Now Margaret’s computer is here, as well. By the time I’m writing this, on January 14), the table is gone from the middle of the room and it’s much easier to walk around. My computer and the printer is to my right, along with a tall bookcase. We need to put a few pictures up on the walls, but it’s coming together.

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Normal

Photograph taken on Sunday, January 07, 2018 by Henry
As Far As Anyone Knows, We're a Nice, Normal Family

As Far As Anyone Knows, We’re a Nice, Normal Family

Note the juxtaposition of this pack of tissues with the humorous message and the somewhat creepy heart with a little doll’s head on it. This was intentional, of course. Cathy came across these two things at her mom’s house recently and decided they needed to go together. So, they are in our powder room. I don’t know that it’s true, of course. I think the number of people who both know us and think we’re a nice, normal family is vanishingly small. But who wants to be normal, anyway?

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Move, Part 1

Photograph taken on Saturday, January 06, 2018 by Henry
Move, Part 1

Move, Part 1

Today was phase one of “The Move”. We’ve been so long getting to this point that it was a little anticlimactic. Well, maybe. It was still a big day. It went very smoothly, though, largely due to the overwhelming support of those who came and carried and organized and directed. I really didn’t do a lot other than drive the truck, which is about at my pay grade. This was only part one of the actual moving process and really only one phase of many. Nevertheless, thank you to everyone who came out to help on this cool January day.

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Eagle Lectern

Photograph taken on Thursday, January 04, 2018 by Henry
Eagle Lectern

Eagle Lectern

Back on Wednesday, January 23, 2013 I posted a photo titled “Lectern Eagle’s Talons” which was a portion of a wooden lectern carved in the shape of an eagle. This is the head of the eagle, which unfortunately has a chipped beak. There is also a large crack across the breast of the bird, but that adds character more than anything. Otherwise, it’s in pretty good shape. There was, at one time, a brass plaque (I’m assuming brass) which probably said who paid for the lectern or something of that sort. There really needs to be a small set of steps behind this, so you can get up high enough to read from it, as the whole things is well over six feel tall.

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Frost

Photograph taken on Wednesday, January 03, 2018 by Henry
Frost

Frost

It’s finally become what I would call cold. When it gets down into the single digits (Fahrenheit) I’m liable to wear a sweater. So, I wore a light one for my commute. I left it on for the walk across campus to a meeting. A lot of folks are complaining about the temperature in my office building but for me, it was too warm to leave my sweater on. The car windows were all frosted this morning and a few times while stopped at traffic lights, I took pictures of the frost on the passenger side window.

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Miscellaneous Foreign Coins

Photograph taken on Tuesday, January 02, 2018 by Henry
Miscellaneous Foreign Coins

Miscellaneous Foreign Coins

We’ve been going through boxes recently, throwing away old papers, etc. and Cathy came across a small box full of random, foreign coins. We started sorting them and by the time we were done, we had envelopes marked with more than 40 country names from Afghanistan to Venezuela. Most of the coins are from the 1960s but there were a few older coins, like the one with George the Sixth. The coin on the left with an eagle under a sunrise is a 2 Afghani coin from 1961 (۱۳٤۰, 1340 in the Solar Hejira calendar). I see Pakistan, France, Brazil, Vietnam, Peru, West Germany and Great Britain, as well as a 2 Euro coin at the top edge of the photo (the bi-colored coin).

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Bird Footprints

Photograph taken on Saturday, December 30, 2017 by Henry
Bird Footprints

Bird Footprints

We had a light snowfall overnight. The forecast is for clear or mostly clear skies for a while so we aren’t likely to get more but the forecast is also for relatively cool temperatures for the next week or so, probably below 20°F for the duration and getting well down into the single digits. I’ll probably need to wear a sweater one or two days this week. These footprints are on the back step, just outside our kitchen door. We have a birdbath with a heater in it that keeps the water from freezing, so birds are never in short supply this time of year, particularly when it gets to cold.

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Super Balls

Photograph taken on Friday, December 29, 2017 by Henry
Super Balls

Super Balls

Cathy was going through some boxes of small objects this evening and among other things, she found a bunch of super balls. I’ve always loved super balls and they are a real fixture of my childhood. What I didn’t know is that I was among the first generation to enjoy these highly bouncy balls. On August 25, 1965, Norman Stingley filed a patent for what he called a “Highly Resilient Polybutadiene Ball” (patent number 3,241,834, issued March 22, 1966). The Super Ball® was sold by Wham-O® and was an instant success. I know my brothers and I got many hours of enjoyment from them. They are made of a synthetic rubber called Zectron® that is primarily polybutadiene molded under high pressure and heat. All I knew as a kid was they really could bounce.

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Colors

Photograph taken on Tuesday, December 26, 2017 by Henry
Colors

Colors

Cathy, Dorothy, and I went to Home Depot this evening after dinner. We went to pick out a couple colors of paint for the living room. In case you don’t know our living room, three walls are white and the fourth, the end opposite the entrance, is painted a somewhat ugly green. The crown and base molding and the molding around the entrances and windows matches that wall. Likewise, the curtains are a similar green with large box valances at the top. The plan is to pain the one non-white wall some new color and also to paint he molding a different color. We decided on a blue color for the wall and a fairly bright white for the trim. That, plus replacing the curtains should transform the room. This photo, which looks a little like chairs in a stadium, are color sample cards.

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Peruvian Creche

Photograph taken on Saturday, December 23, 2017 by Henry
Peruvian Creche

Peruvian Creche

We went over to Cathy’s mom’s house this afternoon and set up her Peruvian Creche in her living room. If you look closely (and you don’t need to look that hard) you might notice some less traditional visitors to the manger this year. That’s completely appropriate if not historically accurate. All are welcomed to come to Jesus, young and old from every language, nation, and race. Animals, too, came to adore him. If they hadn’t, the stones themselves would have cried out.

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Doll Cataracts

Photograph taken on Friday, December 22, 2017 by Henry
Doll Cataracts

Doll Cataracts

We’ve been going through a lot of things, both at our house and at Cathy’s mom’s. In the process, we’ve found a few things worth keeping amidst a fair amount of things to be thrown or given away. Cathy came across two dolls and they have been sitting on a chair in our dining room for a few weeks. This one seems to have some sort of problem in her left eye, a cataract, perhaps. We may need to take her to see a specialist.

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