Miscellaneous

Leeks

Cathy isn’t hugely fond of leeks but I like them a lot. It’s not uncommon to find them in my kitchen but when you have a leeky kitchen, something needs to be done. Tonight I thought a creamy leek sauce would go well with skate wings. I’ve never actually cooked skate before and I was pleasantly surprised by the taste. They are not terribly fishy but have a nice, delicate flavour. The sauce went pretty well with them but I think something a bit tangier might be better in the future. I also happened to have some blood oranges, which I sectioned and put over the fish and that might be a better base than the leeks.

Fire

It’s a bit chilly today and we’re getting ready to watch some football game or other. I thought a fire would be nice so I laid one up and got it going. There’s nothing like a good fire to warm you in a comforting way (a controlled fire, of course, otherwise it is liable to warm you in a very non-comforting way). As the pre-game show droned on and on, I muted the sound and turned to the fire, instead, which was much more interesting. Getting a still picture of fire that is interesting, I think, can be pretty difficult. It’s mostly hit or miss, because the flames are moving so fast. This is my favorite. It’s what you get today, anyway.

Carpet Rainbow

I have a 70 gallon fish tank in our kitchen. Late in the day the sun hits the corner of the tank and, all the way down the hall in our family room, this rainbow appears on the floor and slowly moves away from the kitchen for about ten minutes before disappearing for the night. It’s pretty good size, covering about four feet by a foot and a half. It’s quite bright and very pretty, running the spectrum (literally) from violet through indigo, blue, green, yellow, and orange and finally to red (vibgyor).

Snow on Tree Bark

We had another snowfall today. It wasn’t enough to close school. Of course, around here, “not enough to close school” is very litte indeed. It just was enough to turn things white. There was talk of it being worse by the end of the day but it didn’t happen. They are also forecasting much more tomorrow. Still, it was pretty.

I took this picture near the parking lot of my office building. This is the bark of a black gum or tupelo tree (Nyssa sylvatica, also known as ). It’s a nice tree with a few things to recommend it including very good fall color a very bright orange-red. if you decide you want one, though, you will want to know that they have dark berries that will drop and be tracked into your house. Also, the birds eat the berries and if they then perch over your car, you might not like the results.

Eagle Statue

If you’ve lived in this area for any length of time then you almost certainly know where this eagle is. It isn’t a great picture, hurriedly taken before the light turned green for me to proceed. I do like the framing, however, even if the picture isn’t as sharp as it might be, having been taken through my windscreen. In any case, this eagle stands in front of the Jefferson Plaza at the somewhat complicated intersection of Rockville Pike (MD 355) with Veirs Mill Road (to the east, named after the mill owned by the Viers family, but the misspelling is there for good or ill) and E. Jefferson Street (MD 28).

Fruit and Whipped Cream

Our good friend Julia came over again this evening. Actually, Cathy had picked her up to help with a few things at her (Cathy’s) mom’s house. They came back here and Julia helped me carry in a new bookcase and move some books onto it. She stayed for dinner (panang curry) and dessert (fruit with freshly whipped cream). The fruit was apple, plum, cantaloupe, and mango. Not a bad dessert, if I say so myself.

The View from My Office Window

Traffic coming to work was light today. I’m not sure if the forecast of snow and the terrible traffic the last time it snowed combined to scare people into staying home or what but it had only just started coming down as I drove in. A little later and it was coming down quite hard. The flakes were large and fluffy and it accumulated to about three inches. This is a tree outside my office window (a willow oak) and you can see how well the snow is sticking to every branch and little twig.

Portal Guardian from the Palace of Sargon II

Most of us have bric-a-brac around the house. I find it quite interesting to see what different things people have. So, I don’t doubt, would consider the things we have to be a little odd. For one thing, there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to what we have. It’s fairly eclectic.

Take, for example the things on our piano in the living room. There’s a winged bull bookend, a miniature version of a winged bull portal guardian from the Palace of Sargon II in Khorsabad, northern Iraq (Neo-Assyrian, about 710-705 BC). Behind that is a drawing of Harold, the stylish cat, wearing his trademark Argyle sweater-vest and kilt (although you cannot see much of the kilt in this photo). Dorothy is the artist of the later work, for those not familiar with him.

In any case, I don’t know why anyone would think that was a strange combination.

Basement Bookshelves

We have a few books in our house. Those who have helped us move know this and to them I say, thank you and I’m sorry. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been working in the basement and that’s where a large number of our books are, probably half or nearly half of what we own. Today I continued working there and made some good progress. I decided to post a picture of one of the two large sets of shelves in the basement and, with apologies to Julia, who gave me the idea for the title of this post, I present you with a “shelfie.” They seem to be all the rage these days, although I’m not entirely sure why.

Great Blue Heron Taking Off from Partially Frozen Pond

As I got to work today I glanced over at the pond where I photographed some ice recently. The water level was low and it was no longer frozen over but there was still significant ice around the edges. I caught a shape that I was pretty sure was a heron so I got out my camera and went a bit closer. I need a much longer lens if I’m going to do this sort of photography, really, but I moved until the heron took off and got a few pictures as it lifted gracefully into the air. It’s a shame the photograph is so monochrome, I think, butcause it makes it a bit hard to see the bird so clearly, but it is what it is (more or less).

200,000 Miles

OK, after yesterday’s interesting picture, which I believe is one of my top comment-generating images in just over four years of taking pictures every day, this one will be a bit more mundane.

We now have two cars with mileage over 200,000. When you have cars as old as those we have, it’s a good idea to have at least one spare because the chances of one being in the shop at any given time are fairly high. Right now we have two spares. Because of that, the miles we put on them are spread around a bit. Nevertheless, we have two cars with a total mileage of 440,000. Not too bad. Oh, don’t worry. The engine was still running when I took this but I was parked in our driveway, having reached 200,000 miles just before I got home.

Nativity Scenes

We finally got around to taking down our Christmas tree yesterday. It was fairly dry and starting to lose needles in a big way. I put the ornaments on our dining room table and then took the tree outside, doing my best (which wasn’t very good, actually) to keep from spreading more needles around the house. This evening I took a few pictures of the decorations on the table. In the living room we had a few nativity scenes (or crèches, if you prefer) and I like the contrast of these two. The plain, carved, wooden set in the foreground was made by patients at a leprosy clinic in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The brightly colored one in the back is from Peru. The elephant on the right and a few others of that set are broken, but that’s a story for another time.

Blue Ice

Have you ever noticed that shadows are blue? It’s most obvious in the winter when they are cast on something white (e.g., snow or ice). This morning it was a bit chilly. Our thermometer ready 6°F. That’s cool even for me so I wore a sweater on my way to work. When I got there I noticed the ice on the small pond next to my office building. The water level had been considerably higher a couple days ago and as you can see, it froze over before it completely returned to its normal level. That left sheets of ice on the lower parts of the bank. In the shade of the morning it was quite blue, but as you can see, the sunlit area at the top is colored normally. So, those of you painting scenery, don’t forget blue for shadows.

Cloisonné Egg

I was looking around the house for things to photograph this evening. Among the things I came across were two Cloisonné eggs in a dish in our dining room. I took pictures of each of them and decided I liked this picture best.

It’s a pretty little thing with flowers, stems, and leaves. The other one has white storks on a deep blue background. I don’t expect they are terribly valuable but I don’t really know. We don’t have them for their value but because they are pretty, which they are. Other than that, I can’t tell you much about them.

Other pictures I took this evening were close-ups of two Venetian paper weights and of a Martian Popping Thing, because, well, Martian Popping Thing.

Our First “Real” Snow

We had our first “real” snow today. That is, it’s snowed already this winter, once quite hard, but we had actual accumulation this time, more than just a dusting that melted as it hit hard surfaces. This time it was about 20°F so it accumulated to about three inches. Not exactly a blizzard, but real snow. This photo was taken from our upstairs window just before I left for work. I got as far as the exit to our neighborhood. The car in front of me spun out going up a short hill. Then the main road was wall to wall cars and I decided I didn’t want to sit in my car for an hour and a half for a 20 minute commute. So, I worked from home, which is thankfully an option.

The snow stopped later and the sun came out, although it was never above freezing today. I like snow and found it quite beautiful out. Naturally I took more pictures but I think this one, of it coming down, symbolizes the day more than snow on leaves in the sun.

Plaid Flannel

I don’t wear plaid as much as I used to. I’m not entirely sure why. I think part of the reason is that the best plaid is flannel plaid and the it isn’t often cold enough for flannel. It gets cold enough outside, but when I’m going to work, I’m in an office where I cannot control the temperature and it’s almost never too cold for a light, summer-weight shirt in my office. At home it’s cooler but even there, I’m not usually in need of an extra layer. If I’m going to be outside in the winter for any length of time, I can wear flannel, but even then, it’s usually easier to throw on a sweater than to change shirts for a simple walk outside. This plaid happens to be on Dorothy, who spent the day in Philadelphia with Kendra. She’s wearing it as a jacket, the top layer of about three, which works well. I should buy flannel shirts that are too large, so they can be worn this way.