Technology Is Your Friend--Sometimes

And sometimes it isn't.  Like when you come home from a weekend away to discover that your internet went away too (and isn't coming back no matter what you do) and the tech guy isn't coming until nearly 5 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon.  So that's why the radio silence for the last two days.  No internet.  Gah!  But we're back in business--Hooray!

Look what stopped by to check out the bird buffet yesterday.  It's a Red-tailed Hawk and it was determined to find lunch.  It had a squirrel in its sights and chased it down onto the retaining wall, up into the apple tree, and finally into the parking lot behind us.  Just gorgeous, isn't it?



This is how it looked out the window of our suite at the Inn on Monday morning.  Nobody told me that there'd be three or four inches of snow.  Not my favorite wake-up call but the snow had stopped falling by the time we left and the roads got drier and clearer the closer to home we got.

 
See the cool stuff I got at the thrift shop on Sunday?  Silver (plate, not sterling) spoons and a meat fork, and a paper fan from the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago.  (The spoons were a dime each and the fork was a buck.  The fan was a little more but I couldn't leave it behind.) This isn't the only stuff I bought but you don't need to see a ball of yarn and some blank greeting cards, do you?






Here's the sight that greeted me when I went out for the paper this morning.  The moon is nearly full.  Some tribes called it the Full Sap Moon because now is when maple trees are tapped for making maple syrup.  One of these years I'm going to go out to Barkhausen Waterfowl Preserve to see their sugaring demonstration.  And I saw a robin in the maple tree this morning too.  Spring is on the way, I'm sure of it.


March 15--Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Self-Portrait with Model.  Giselle paused in the doorway.  The glimpse of Ernie in his bathrobe stopped her in her tracks.  Ernie wasn't a small guy, not by a long shot, and his robe only emphasized the fact.  It was full-length with three huge buttons straining to hold it closed.  The fabric had wide black and orange stripes running around it.  He looked like a mobile sideshow tent.  "Come in, come in," he called down the hall, "we're working in the dining room today."  Working in the dining room, she thought, he looks like he's done his life's work in the dining room.  She heard the scrape of a match and smelled the mix of sulfur and tobacco as he lit his pipe.  It was going to be a long day.

I get to go to work today.  I even have my lunches for today and tomorrow all made up and ready to go.  All I need to do it put on my earrings, run a brush through my hair one more time, and hit the road.  You have a good day.  Toodle-oo.
--Barbara