Random Thoughts…

1)  Because it is 3.14, today is National Pi Day, as I’m sure you know if you hang out on Facebook at all.  Me, I would prefer it to be National Pie Day.  But nobody asked me.  Actually, a friend on Facebook informed me that there is a National Pie Day and it was on January 23.  Personally, I think that pie is good enough to have two celebratory days in a year.  If today was pie day instead of pi day, what kind of pie would you go for?  Me…I like my donuts plain, my coffee black and I go for that old standard, the American Apple Pie.  In honor of the day, we are having vegetarian pot pie for dinner.

I took this picture of pi in 2007 on a visit to the San Juan Islands in Washington state.  It's cool, but you can't eat it.

2)  We got more snow here in Massachusetts yesterday.  Wasn’t much, but it did neaten things up around the edges temporarily.

A little snow never stops the intrepid Chickadee for long.

4)  If you live in a cold climate, you’ve probably heard a lot of complaining about the weather this winter.  To me, it seems like a big waste of energy to complain about things over which you have no power to change.  I think that the people who celebrate winter deserve big kudos…like our neighbors who have an actual igloo in their front yard.  I think that is just cool!  Absolutely no pun intended.

5)  I’m on Day 263 of my Flickr 365 that I started on my birthday.  I haven’t missed a day so far.  Today’s entry was one of a series of “self-portraits” that I am doing using the ABCs.  I am on the letter K.  It wasn’t easy coming up with something for K but I did it.  K is for key and here it is, the key to my Toyota Prius.  I love that darn car.

5)  I will leave you with a random poem from one of my favorite poets of all time, Shel Silverstein.  It seems like it’s been a Shel Silverstein kind of week.

THE VOICE

There is a voice inside of you

That whispers all day long,

“I feel that this is right for me,

I know that this is wrong.”

No teacher, preacher, parent, friend

Or wise man can decide

What’s right for you – just listen to

The voice that speaks inside.

Here's a raggedy Welcome to the weekend.  Have a good one, you all!

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RANDOM FIVE FRIDAY!

Home!

We returned from St. John, USVI on Monday night.  It seems like we were away for a long time, although in reality it was only eight days.  Now I am trying to catch up with this and that, including checking out what my blogging friends have been up to.

  I have been working on gathering my thoughts about the trip, but so far they are still far flung, maybe they are back on the beach watching the waves wash in.  I guess that’s what happens when you have a truly relaxing vacation.

  So what I have decided to do today is just put out a few photos from our trip.  I’m hoping that later this week, I might have something bright to say about the whole thing…or something to say about something else maybe.  Who knows?  But right now, I’m just trying to come in for a landing.

This is a sunset view from Reef Madness, the villa we stayed in.  Somehow, this view never gets old.

Fifty Shades of Blue...much preferable to Fifty Shades of Grey.

My faithful hat kept my nose from turning red.  Thanks, hat!

Greg daydreams in the pool.

Apple: Fine Purveyor of First World Problems…

On Tuesday, I was happily sitting at my computer working on editing some photos and listening to The Cuckoo’s Calling on my iPod when I glanced at the clock.  It was time for me to go downstairs to start dinner.  So I shut down my computer and went to turn off my iPod.  The computer shut down, but my iPod stubbornly refused to do so.  “Eek!” I thought, “What’s wrong with this thing??”  Panic set in.  In normal circumstances, I would just try to fix it, but we are going to be getting on a plane on Sunday to go to St. John, USVI, with good friends and I can’t imagine myself on a plane these days without the distraction my iPod gives me.

After quite a few minutes searching on the interweb for clues and fixes, I had to just give up.  My iPod was irrevocably broken, the on/off toggle was caput and there was nothing I could do about it.  Then the panic really did set in.  What was I going to do on a plane for four hours without the comfort of Bach’s cello concertos streaming into my skull?

Greg, who is much calmer about such things, said that we should go out to eat that night and we would go to Best Buy on Wednesday and pick up a new iPod.  And that’s what we did, even though I wasn’t too happy about it.

Well, my first two iPods were green so I decided that if I went with a blue one this time, maybe my luck would change.  I got the new blue one home, sat down at my computer to put my stuff on it and my computer wouldn’t recognize it.  I picked it up and looked at it.  The screen was stuck on the Apple logo screen and wouldn’t budge.  “I can’t frickin’ believe this,” I thought.  “What is it with me and Apple??”

Just about then, our son Evan got home from work and informed us that his iPhone wasn’t charging.  So we repeated the steps of looking to the interweb for clues and fixes.  Long story short, his iPhone seemed to be irrevocably broken.  Now, I could actually live without my iPod if I had to, but Evan really does need his phone.  So he decided the best thing to do was to let the Geniuses take a look at it.

So off we went.  I retraced the 20 miles back to the Best Buy and Evan went off to the nearest Apple Store 40 miles in the opposite direction.

The nice young Geek at Best Buy thought it would be an easy fix, but after about twenty minutes, he admitted defeat and called someone over to get me a new iPod.  I stuck with the blue.  Geek said, with a sly grin on his face, that maybe now I should consider getting the extended warranty.  I told him that the other iPods lasted me four and three years respectively.  Again with the grin, he said, “Yeah, but this one only lasted you two hours.”  Well, I didn’t bite, but maybe I should have.  My times with my iPods keep getting narrower and narrower.

Evan got home a couple of hours later with the bad news that there was no way to resuscitate his iPhone.  The Geniuses were stumped.  Will wonders never cease?  He does have a “spare” with a broken screen that actually works so he may be able to limp along until we can figure out how to get him one that won’t break the bank.

Well, by then, it was pretty late, so we went out to dinner yet again and I had a little whine with mine.

It’s funny these days that we have become so dependent on these little electronic devices.  Heck, as much as I complained about my last iPod – it was too small, too hard to control, etc.—I took good care of it because I didn’t want to be without it.  I used it often.  I love the fact that I can listen to my books and to music anywhere and everywhere.  It’s a good thing….really.  But, you know, when I decided to write this today, I wanted to take some pictures of the three devices together, green iPod 1, green iPod 2, and blue iPod No. 2 in two hours, which I’m hoping will be my last for many years.  But, after an exhaustive search, green iPod2 had taken a powder and I can’t find it.  It’s on the lam.  So, it was a bad Apple after all.

All kinds of music…

When I was a kid, it seems like every house I went into had a piano in the living room.  We certainly did.  Ours was an old upright of indeterminable pedigree.  At some point in my teens or early twenties, that big upright got replaced by a nice compact spinet that still sits in the living room of my mother’s house. I took lessons on that old, big upright, but they never took on me.  I just don’t have a feel for the workings of musical notes.

I love this photo of my sister Susan playing the piano in 1960.

My Aunt Judy (right) with my sister Judy (left), her namesake.  Aunt Judy gave us piano lessons when we were young.

My mother’s family is very musical.  Of the eight of the siblings, almost all have had a relationship with music in some form or other.  But that music thing didn’t get handed down to me.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like music, but I really prefer the written and spoken word.

This great old photo of my grandfather Oscar, center, and his twin brothers is one of my very favorites.  A copy of it sits on our piano.

We have a piano in our living room now.  It’s a spinet that was Greg’s mother’s piano so we are emotionally attached to it and it does make a nice focal point in the room, but there really isn’t any reason for it to be there otherwise.  It never gets touched except when I feel like dusting it.  But looking at it sometimes takes me back to my youth and a time when it seems like everyone had a piano in their living room.

I’m not really sure what made me think of this today.  Could be that a neighbor of ours recently posted on Facebook that they want to get rid of their piano together with the fact that I’m reading a really fantastic book right now, A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin and listening to Robert Galbraith’s (aka J.K. Rowling) The Cuckoo’s Calling and the way those two can put words together is simply music to my ears.

Random!

1)  There are many things I like about winter in New England.  We get snow, but we also get a lot of sunny days here.  Today is a notable exception, however.  It’s foggy and drizzly.  But on those days that are sunny, the sky is BLUE.  It is bluer in the winter than it ever is in the summer and that blue may just be my favorite color.

2)  The icicles this year have been really amazing.  I managed to catch a few photos of them before they began to drip out of existence.  While I’ve seen larger ones that I didn’t manage to capture, I think a one-story icicle is still pretty impressive.

I titled this "Sick of Winter."  This is the public library in Brookfield, Massachusetts.

3)  I’ve seen a lot of American Robins around in our yard this winter.  To me, that seems like a new phenomenon, but I have a friend who claims that Robins have always been around in the winter, they just change their habits and spend more time in the woods where they have more natural shelter and food and spend less time out in the open.  I truly believe Dianne because she tends to know about such things, but it still seems strange to me to see them wandering around the yard throughout the winter.  I grew up thinking of them as harbingers of spring.  These days they don’t really bring any good news with them.  Still, I must admit, they are nice little flashes of color when they are around.

4)  Yep.  It’s a foggy, drizzly and generally ugly day today in Central Massachusetts...a reminder that we aren’t really that far away from Mud Season.

5)  I am an exceptionally messy cook.  I definitely need an apron.  I used to have one.  What the heck ever happened to that thing??  Anyhow, I was perusing Crate and Barrel the other day and they happened to have one on sale.  I bit and ordered it.  Here it is.  I love it.  The fabric is a Vera design.  I think it might make me want to cook more vegetables and even if it doesn't, it will help save my clothes.

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The Difference between Capital and Capitol…

Ahhh, which to use where?  What exactly is the difference between capital and capitol anyway?  Well, I have to say I never gave it too much thought in recent years because in Massachusetts we call it the Statehouse.   But on our recent trip to Texas, our route took us through six different state capitals. And when I decided to write something about it, I decided the best thing to do was to make sure I knew the difference.

Here’s what About.com has to say on the subject:  The word capitol is used to refer to the building where a legislature (such as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives) meets while the word capital refers to the city which serves as the seat of government.

You can remember the difference by thinking of the "o" in the word capitol as a dome, like the dome of the U.S. Capitol in the capital Washington D.C.

That’s good advice unless you think of the capitol building of Tennessee that really doesn’t really have a dome.  It has more of a big, round column that sticks up.  But it’s still the capitol.

Capital, on the other hand, has many meanings.  As a noun, it means:

1a. a town or city that is the official seat of government; 

b. a city that is the center of a specific activity or industry, e.g. the financial capital of the world.

2a. wealth in the form of money or property; 

b. material wealth used or available for use in the production of more wealth; 

c. human resources considered in terms of their contributions to an economy

3. an asset or advantage

4. a capital letter, meaning C but not c.

As an adjective it means:

1. first and foremost; principal, which means main or key (as opposed to principle, which means rule, belief, tenet and theory)

2. first-rate; excellent

3. relating to or being a seat of government.

4. involving death or calling for the death penalty, e.g. a capital offense

5. of or relating to financial assets.

Phew!  Capital really runs the gamut from a pile of bricks to a pile of money, from being the most important and the greatest to being the absolute. Capital is one capital word.

So now that I’ve got it straightened out, here are the capitols of the capitals we passed through on our trip to and from Texas.

Montgomery, Alabama

Austin, Texas

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Little Rock, Arkansas

Nashville, Tennessee

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Random Five Friday: Snow Days…

1)  We got around 10 to 12 inches of snow in this last round of wild winter weather.  But we were very glad that it was all snow and not the dreaded wintry mix.  Snow is much easier to deal with.

2)  The weather has caused us to have a couple of unusual visitors to our birdfeeders.  Yesterday and today, I saw what I think is a Carolina Wren.  I am not positive of the identification though so if you know, I would appreciate it if you could tell me.  We also had a crow who was slumming under our feeder but he wouldn’t turn around so I could get a good picture.

3)  Here’s what it looks like at the end of our driveway.  I feel sort of like I’m living in a shopping mall with that big pile, but my trip to the grocery today made me realize that there are much bigger piles of the white stuff around town.

4)  I like snow and winter but I find it rather amazing that there is such a HUGE difference in comfort level between 15 degrees and 30 degrees.  Today felt rather balmy around here and seeing the sun is almost always good.  I guess that shouldn't really be a surprise.  After all, there's a HUGE difference in comfort level between 72 and 85, too.

5)  So today is Valentine’s Day.  Do you celebrate it?  Early on in our relationship, Greg made it clear that he wasn’t one to celebrate “Hallmark” holidays, so it’s just another day to us.  I minded a bit at first, but it also lets me off the hook, so these days I am okay with it.

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