Miscellaneous

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.

A Very Christmasy Christmas

As usual for Christmas day, we had Christmas activities in three phases today and in four stages. We started at our house, opening (or emptying) stockings. Then we went to Cathy’s mom’s house, where this picture was taken. We went from there to my mom’s house where we spent the afternoon with my family. Finally, back to our house where we opened presents from and to each other. All in all, a very nice day.

I often post pictures of family on Thanksgiving and Christmas but decided I’d go with atmosphere this time. So, just the tree in the living room, presents waiting around it to be unwrapped, and the large nativity scene on the table, with the morning light streaming in through the window behind it. You can get this from the photograph, of course, but the smell of bacon, which we enjoyed with pancakes, eggs, sausage, and coffee, adds considerably to the ambiance.

Happy Christmas to all and God bless us, everyone!

Foggy Day

It was very atmospheric today in the sense of the second definition in Webster’s, “having, marked by, or contributing aesthetic or emotional atmosphere; also : marked by an emphasis on impression or tone.” Basically, it was foggy all day. After yesterday’s rain it was fairly welcome. This is the view out my office window, which for a suburban office building, is actually pretty nice. Today it was soft and gray.

Christmas Lights

I know this is a bit cliché but I do like out of focus Christmas lights, at least in small quantities. I try not to take pictures like this more than once a year but, well, here’s this year’s version. I find it interesting how small movement of the camera between images makes such a big difference in the resulting image. It has to do with some lights being behind branches that small movements reveal. Also, the interaction between adjacent lights change a bit.

Fire

I’ve had fires a few times so far this winter. Today I burned some of the wood from the fig tree outside mom’s kitchen. It died back pretty severely last winter so there was a small pile of wood in the driveway from that. It burned quite well. I took a bunch of pictures of fire, which is one of those things that often looks so much better in reality than in a 1/30^th second slice (in this case). Still, I like this image.

Kielbasa, Pancetta, and Lima Beans

Just a few days ago, on Tuesday (December 16, 2014), I posted a photo of lamb with edamame, which I fixed myself for dinner. This evening I had a similar meal, although only one of the ingredients from the earlier meal was actually involved in this one. This time I had a section of kielbasa (slightly improbably from the Lancaster County Dutch Market), two slices of pancetta (Italian bacon, basically), and lima beans. The ingredient they had in common was garlic, which I sautéed a bit before adding the meat.

Christmas Tree

I’ve been described as The Grinch and as Ebenezer Scrooge because of my attitude towards Christmas decorations. Those titles aren’t entirely fair—I quite like Christmas, I certainly don’t want to rob others of their joy, and don’t even mind Christmas decorations—but it’s true that I could do without a lot of what I call the “winterization” of Christmas. It isn’t just the secularization of what is, first and foremost, a Christian holiday. It’s the transformation of it into a religious holiday of non-Christian form. That probably makes no sense to anyone and I don’t feel like writing a long dissertation on what I mean, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Anyway, we generally are lucky to get our tree up enough before Christmas that the decorations are on by the 25^th. This year, however, a week before Christmas and not only is the tree up, but it’s got lights, decorations, and even wrapped presents under it (which are usually done late on Christmas eve). So, Happy Christmas, everyone.

A Simple Meal of Lamb and Edamame

Sometimes simple is all you want and when it comes to fixing dinner after a days work, simple is always appreciated. This evening I had just such a meal. Cathy was going out to play indoor soccer so I was just cooking for myself, which means I can have exactly what I like. This is lamb which had marinaded in a peppery sauce with plenty of Mediterranean herbs. I sautéed a little garlic before adding the lamb to the pan. To accompany the meat, I cooked some frozen edamame (soy beans) and then added them to the pan to get a bit of the flavour from the meat. All in all, I’d say it was as satisfying as any restaurant meal and it was dead simple.