mixed bag today

I can't believe it's nice enuf out that I can have some windows open, finally getting some fresh air into the house!  My back yard is back, most of the compacted snow/ice has melted, and the world didn't end, in spite of the dire warnings put out by the town's emergency panic system the last couple of days.  We were supposed to flood due to melting snow combined with rain, then we were going to have thunderstorms and tornadoes.  Far as I can tell, we had one rumble of thunder and some rain.  Most of the snow melted and didn't overwhelm the system (we have a system???  news to me!), it pretty much seeps into the ground and joins its brethren in the ocean and/or river or otherwise helps out the water table.

Thanks again to my intrepid roofer, whose work has apparently prevented any of the snow melt from (a) leaking into the house, or (b) caving in the roof.  More stuff we got warnings about.

AND the DPW guys fixed the beach stairs across from my house, so we can now get onto the beach without breaking a leg or neck or other body part.  It's a great beach day, nice clean breeze and lots of sun and almost what you could call warm - tho you still need a jacket, a hat isn't a bad idea, and Pablo appreciated having his sweater on.  

We considered going to Sandy Hook, but as it's high tide on the bay side this afternoon, decided to stay in town.  It is now (finally) possible to walk on the splash pad without climbing over mounds of frozen gook, and as I mentioned, the beach is lovely.

Off leash training is going ok, too, in spite of the long hiatus between sessions.  Pablo is now waiting for me when I tell him to wait, and not running too far ahead.

 

 

Bluer than blue...some of my favorite shades.

Thursday evening I went out for dinner with a client, on the Upper West Side (aka the UWS).  I thought this street scene was very atmospheric:

 

I was playing with my new phone, which has almost as many pixels as my camera.  The textures of the cobblestone sidewalk and melty snow piles grabbed my attention.  I might like the new phone (Samsung Galaxy S4), if I can ever figure out how it works.  I'd be even happier if I could get the phone to work and play nicely with the car.  May have to start from scratch on that, erase the link and re-initiate it.  It's being a PITA.

The best thing about the new phone is it can go all day and not run out of battery!  What a novel idea!  And that's with me actually using it once in a while.  The old one would run down to dead just after lunch if I dared to use it for anything. It made me wonder why they ever called those things "mobile," since you had to have it plugged in most of the time.  Kind of like the early "portable" tvs - which required three strong men to move.

I hear it's going to be kind of cold again next week.  I don't mind cold, it's the incessant shoveling I could do better without.  And the invisible ice.  Glad nobody had a video camera on me the other morning when I did some kind of figure-skating thing (double axle half sowkow or something like that) while trying to get in my car.  Just about wound up under the car, rather than inside it.  Gonna file a complaint with the snow shoveling dept....whoops, that's me.  Oh well.

But right now it feels like spring.  Preview of coming attractions.

twice a week

....whether you need to or not.  That's the snow pattern we're in this winter.  One on the weekend, one mid-week.  So I'm jumping on opportunities to go to work.  Which I know sounds odd, especially coming from me. 

Last nite's installment was only 2 inches, and it was the light, fluffy type, which was relatively easy to clear off the affected surfaces.  More or less.  I didn't have time to do the front "walk" between last nite and leaving to catch a train this morning.  Oh well. 

Mind you, my front "walk" is mostly a path over the grass, so it pains me to have to (a) shovel the grass, and (b) maybe put down rock salt to make it not be icy.  I actually had nice grass this past summer, and now I'm going to have a stripe of no grass where it's been shoveled and salted twice a week. 

Maybe if I leave it unshoveled, the post office officials who won't allow me to move my mailbox to the back yard nearer the street (I have street frontage on three sides of my property - I'm my own peninsula) will have a change of mind.  But I doubt it.

And the next snow storm is supposed to be Weds nite into Thurs, or maybe Thurs all day, they don't know for sure yet.  And at the moment it is supposed to all be south of here, but that's not logical, considering the direction this all has been coming from, it ought to slide up the coast and whack us, too, on its way to New England, where they actually have some idea how to deal with snow.

As for me, I would LOVE an opportunity to go outside wearing sneakers.  I'm tired of boots.  Which also sounds odd, coming from me.  It's being an odd time.

Oddness is not new for me, tho.  I've always been odd.  In my family, the even kids are odd - I'm two of four, and four of four is also odd, while one and three are more "normal."  Go figure.  Odds are, it makes some sort of sense, in a very odd way.  But don't ask me to explain.

Time to go out and make yellow snow with Pablo.  I'll be back here when I have a chance.

This is not the anthem I wanted.

(With apologies - or maybe thanks - to Tan Dun.)

Ok, fine, Renee Fleming did a bang-up job of singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.  Given the parameters of the particular job. 

However.  This really is not the anthem I wanted to hear. 

The anthem I want to hear is when 4000 people in the Met auditorium stand up and sing it on opening night.  The anthem I want to hear is when 2800 people in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stand up and sing it.  Together.  When close to 18,000 people stand up and sing it in the Hollywood Bowl.  When 92,000 people stand up and sing it in Ohio Stadium.  That is a thrilling sound.

Not when some one person hired to jazz it up sings it for us.  Anymore it seems we hire out everything, even the singing of our national theme song, so to speak. 

A national anthem is intended to be a rallying cry of the people, not a set piece performed by a professional, don't try this at home.  Yes, ours is not easy to sing.  But then, neither is anything Andrew Lloyd Webber writes.  Or "happy birthday," for that matter.  And who really cares if all something-thousand people can or can not hit the high note?  People easily and naturally transpose down as needed.  It doesn't hurt the feeling created by all those people doing this one thing together.

Yes, the Star Spangled Banner was a drinking song, no doubt composed on a pub napkin.  Seems to me that suits the American way of life, no?  I think that hiring it out is symptomatic of a lot that is wrong in this country.  Because we don't feel "qualified" to sing our national anthem for ourselves anymore.  And there are so many other things where we no longer feel qualified to stand together.  We've hired it out.  And the results are ugly.  We have to live with them every day.

nice day for a walk

And we found where the ice goes when it leaves on the tide.  Piles of it in Sandy Hook, on the bay side, of course.  Tho I think technically it's still the "river" here.  Which is not a river, it's actually an estuary.  But, whatever. 

Looking back towards our other lighthouse, the Twin Lights.

Parts of the water which are shallower and out of the current are still frozen pretty solid, and gulls were dropping clams on the ice, to break the shells so they could get the food out.

Hard to see the birds, they're mostly white on a white background.  And I've learned that with Pablo, it's easier to carry the pocket camera, since I don't have two hands free to use the bigger one.  He's not terribly reliable off leash, especially when he's spent the last couple of weeks cooped up mostly in the house.  This was our first real outing in a while, where we got to take a longer walk.  He was brave, and even walked on some snow and ice.

By the time we headed home, he was all wet underneath, and sandy, and muddy.  Like a real dog!  But I suspect he had a good time, and he ate a whole plate of roast beef when we got in, after I did a moderately successful job of cleaning him up a bit.  My car is a mess, tho.  Oh well.  Fun never comes entirely for free.