Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
In just a few hours I’ll be boarding a plane to the Pacific Northwest so I can visit my daughter and see her debut performance as Principessa in Suor Angelica for the Lyric Opera of the Northwest. This will be the second time this year I have seen this opera. Earlier this year, in May, Rachelle appeared at the Mistress of Novices for the St. Petersburg Opera.
Continue reading “My Daughter’s Debut as Principessa in Suor Angelica Tonight”
This autumn marks a milestone for Terry and I. We met three dozen years ago last month. I can remember where we met, but I can’t remember the exact date. But the story of our meeting is a Moss Family urban, legend which I only share with close friends and family. To commemorate the occasion, Terry and I decided to try something completely different: dinner on a train going nowhere (literally I have a photo to prove that!).
Porthos ran off to heaven a week ago on October 10, 2019. Of all the Rottweilers we’ve rescued, Porthos was the first to succumb to the common ailment of bone cancer. Everyday, I come home from work and I miss his whine of excitement. I miss his laps around the kitchen, dining room and great room. I miss evening walks with him. I miss cuddling with him before falling to sleep. I keep telling myself he’s in a better place and that he’s no longer in pain or suffering.
You will be sorely missed, Porthos. We love you!
Five 11s
Eleven 5s
A half century and a half decade.
Two score plus a half score plus a quarter score years.
I can’t and never could drive fifty-five.
I was almost five when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
Disappointed a woman hasn’t walked there yet.
I am starting to experience the opposite of time dilation.
Thanks to everyone who wished me well on my natal day.
On any given Sunday, you’ll find me awake before sunrise. Old, very old, habits die-hard. I embrace being a morning person. Only causes an issue when I want to toast in the new year since I generally turn into a pumpkin around nine o’clock. Today was no different from any other weekend.
Yesterday was Twelfth Night, the official end to the Christmas season. When Dickens was a youth, Twelfth Night was ‘THE’ biggest day of the winter holiday in England. Between his Christmas Carol and Prince Albert’s importation of German Christmas traditions (namely the Christmas tree), Twelfth Night began to fade out of fashion during Dickens and Queen Victoria’s lifetimes.
I did not stay up late celebrating or hosting a Twelfth Night party. I had servers to upgrade and test bright and early on January 6th, also known as Epiphany.
I woke up before my alarm (I almost always do this; my alarm only woke me up once in the last six months) and got logged in and ready to upgrade a server. It went much smoother than the last time I tried, right before Christmas, and I was done within 20 minutes (leaving an hour forty minutes of my maintenance window unused). Server patch testing took another fifteen minutes so I was done ‘working’ before seven o’clock, still before sunrise.
It’s a Sunday afternoon. I’m depressing myself streaming tragic dramas while consuming dark chocolate and Chianti. Midway through my third creepy twisted love triangle, I found myself distracted and unfocused, missing entire scenes of the movie. I remembered something I promised my husband I would write about this month. And since he’s off visiting our daughter in the serene Pacific Northwest, I’m left with Rottweilers, wine, chocolate and an empty post page on my mostly neglected blog. I paused my mediocre excuse for a movie and grabbed my phone to research what was happening in September 1983 – the month I met the man I married.
I met my future husband at a bar called Backstage on the northeast side of Wichita, out near where the Cessna complex used to be. The song I remember the most from that evening was actually “Turn Me Loose” by Loverboy. But the song that dominated the summer charts was the Police’s “Every Breathe You Take” which finally fell to “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” by the Eurythmics at the end of August.
Ghandi won best picture that year, but I remember have fond memories of The Right Stuff and the fact that Sally Ride became the first female astronaut as a member of the Challenge crew that summer. And The FCC authorizes Motorola to begin testing cellular phone service in Chicago. Good thing I had an amateur radio license!
Continue reading “Sweet Dreams Are Made of Thirty-Five Years”
Last night, after walking and feeding the dogs, I let them out into the back yard as the sun was setting. Since the wind had died completely and the light was that perfect golden twilight time, I took a few photos of our summer container garden. It has been a few days since I’d checked the interior of the zucchini plant (pictured above) and I quickly noticed the large yellowish-green bloom.
This morning, as I was watering the plants, it was hard to miss this bright beautiful yellow zucchini blossom among the green leaves of the rest of the plant:
We haven’t tried our hands at gardening for a couple of years. Our raised bed has been overtaken by oak and maple tree saplings which are now taller than me; as well as leftover containers, fencing and tomato cages from our last gardening effort. We invested in new larger containers this year (larger than five-gallon buckets) and planted two cherry tomatoes, two Cherekee heirlooms and two jalapeno plants on May 9th. A week or so later I planted a lone zucchini plant. I love zucchini and wanted to try one to see how well it does.
Ten days after transplanting the seedlings (shown above in the first photo), we already had baby tomatoes on both of our cherry tomato plants.
Today, I finally saw blossoms on the heirloom plants (but not baby tomatoes yet).
And the jalapeno plants both of small baby peppers.
The zucchini appears to be blooming as well, or at least I think these are blooms (near the base/root of the plant):
My husband thinks we may have cherry tomatoes to harvest in another ten days. Since it’s been in the mid 90s the last two days, he might be on to something.
As I promised earlier this month in my post about my building’s less than traditional holiday decorating, I managed to snap a few photos of some of my favorite things – and my that I mean Christmas lights, displays and decorations.
In roughly chronological order, starting with Thanksgiving weekend decorating the exterior of our home.
Followed by a drive by on Grand Avenue past one of the tallest Christmas trees in the country in the heart of Crown Center two days later:
I started off December right by stopping just before dawn on Broadway to snap this photo of the annual decorations hung at the Kansas City Life Insurance building:
A week later I made it to work very early, with the sun still below the horizon with the help of some cloud cover and took several photos of the Country Club Plaza Christmas lights from the top floor of my building (despite the reflections of interior lights on the window glass):
Another week passed by and on the ides of December the angel appeared in my landscaping. Due to unexpected altercations with local deer population, our lighted reindeer will be decidedly absent from our yard display:
And finally, and surely not least, as I returned home last night from work, I stopped at Union Station to marvel at their internal decoration bonanza:
I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip around town, at least the parts of it I frequent on a daily and regular basis.
May all your Christmases be Bright and May God Bless Us, Everyone!
Welcome to my annual roasting of my building’s attempts at modern art holiday decorating. When I showed my husband this year’s photo, his first words were: “Bowling pins?”
I had to concede his point. At least this year the dominant color is red with a swash of green.