November 1st

Well, we've reached November.  Here's an update in pictures...

We had gorgeous fall color here...

 

Until the first, early snow of the season killed all the color....

I adopted two kittens, a pair of siblings

Marie

Tonio

Sleeping kittens

And I lost my 16-year-old Elanor to kidney failure.

Elanor on right, Jack (her brother) on left

Life goes on.

Tonio is a shoulder cat! Yay!

 

I apologize for not posting anything in months.  I appear to have nothing to say lately.  No words at all, nothing to offer, nothing to share.  I should look for some tags or something.  I'm safe, my family is safe.  In fact, very little changed for me, as I already worked from home.  My daily routine stayed basically the same.  A grocery store trip once a month instead of once or twice a week, but that's about the only difference.  I don't live in a big city, so I never had to stop walking my dog daily or anything like that.  I hope everyone stays safe and sane while the world continues to go bonkers.

I have not been watching many movies.  A few here and there.  Mostly I've been watching South Korean dramas on Netflix.  As most of these shows run a minimum of 12 eps, and usually 18... that's a lot of hours per show, which keeps me nicely occupied.  I suppose I could review the ones I've seen... but I can't seem to muster the energy, and I'm not sure anyone cares.  I will say my two favorites so far have been Memories of the Alhambra (2018) and Tunnel (2017).  I burned through both of those shows in ridiculously short times. The first is about an augmented reality game that bleeds over into real life.  I always liked the song "Memories of the Alhambra," but now, if it ever starts playing during a thunderstorm, I'm liable to freak out. It's such a lovely song, and I LOVE the frightening context it took on.  Good stuff.  The second show is about a cop who accidentally travels through time while pursuing a serial killer.  I love time travel stuff, and this was a great show.  I loved the characters, loved seeing how the police in a different country work on a case, loved watching the lead try to adjust to the current year after jumping forward from the 80s.

Other than that, daylight hours are mostly spent outside doing yardwork.  Pulling weeds daily, mowing and edging twice a week. I put a small garden in this year, with more than just my normal tomatoes.  If stuff grows well, I will expand the area next year.

My aspen grove with lupines and Silver

No sunlight, so these look washed out, but they're pink, with a yellow lupine in the background.  I had a deep maroon one, which was my favorite, but Silver dug it up when it was just coming back, and it didn't survive.  Sigh.

The purple lupine

The eagles are coming

The salmon are running, which brings the bald eagles to the lake to feast.  I don't have a good camera, so getting the really good pictures I leave to the rest of my family, but I was able to snap this one on my phone.  The days are very overcast right now, so the lighting is not exactly conducive, but it's not terrible.  A third eagle joined these two right after I started walking away. 

I spent a long time just watching the eagles fish on the lake.  It's quite cool to watch them dive down and snag a swimming salmon in their talons then take off.  If you look at the trees around the lake, the eagles are really easy to spot with their white heads.  Some trees have a dozen or more eagles perched in them.

Happy Halloween and Nano begins

It is November 1st!  Hope everyone had a lovely Halloween. It was pretty fantastic here.  My sister's new home is right by a popular park, and it's where many come to go trick or treating.  There was a fabulous turnout.  Hundreds of kids... we ran out of candy to pass out, had to make a fast grocery store run to pick up more.  Saw tons of adorable costumes.  One of my favorites was the mom and dad dressed as Ron and Hermione from Harry Potter, and their three young boys were all Harry Potter himself.  Three matching little Harry Potters.  It was fantastic.  There were superheroes, pirates, Disney princesses, Incredibles characters, a whole flock of kids in those blow-up T-Rex suits running around (which was hilarious).

My own family went the Star Wars route, specifically Return of the Jedi, with Vader, Luke, and yours truly as a stormtrooper.  Walking around in full-on Star Wars costumes is The Best.  Kids, and more often than not, the adults, would come running up, saying, "It's Darth Vader!"  So fun!  We all had a blast.  And now we know what to expect for next year, so we can have more candy stockpiled to start with.

Today, it is raining, and it is the perfect weather to start a novel.  I've got my hot tea, a Danny Elfman score on (Oz, the Great and Powerful), and am 800 words in.

And now for probably the last of the fall color pictures.  It's still going strong here.  I had to check the date of my first post, and that was Sept 10th.  I suspect the last trees will still be turning on Nov 10th, so that's been two wonderful months of amazing color.  These were just taken, you can see the weather's turning towards rain and cold.  No more sun to shine off the leaves.  But the color is still impressive.

And now, off to write some more.  Still have another 800 words to complete today's word count.

October colors

Autumn gets lovelier by the day here.  The days have been in the 40s and 50s, nights in the 30s.  It rained yesterday, so I couldn't get pictures, and then last night, the winds kicked in and blew many of the leaves away.  Sigh.  So, when I went out at lunchtime today, many of the trees are now past their prime, but many more are still on their way.  I ooh and ahhh everywhere I go around here because of how beautiful all the trees are.

(My nephew and I collected all these... I love the purple-veined yellow ones.)

(Red...)

(... to orange...)

(... to orange from another angle...)

(...to yellow.)

(This pic's a bit washed out, but the center of the tree is orange, and the outer leaves are still green, which was just really really cool, like it's burning from the inside.)

(And here are the ever-changing colors of the backyard view.)

Fall continues

I love fall so much!  Now it's in the 40s in the morning, and it is just crisp and clear and wonderful out. The trees everywhere are all turning colors now.  There are some streets of all yellow, and some streets of all red.  And there are these one kind of trees that are a bizarre purple/yellow that is just plain weird.  I have to get a picture of one of those. (EDIT:  took some pics of those last night, they're at the bottom.) Even the grass at the park has begun to turn orange.

(Out on the trail in the forest)

(My sister took this picture, she really liked the leaves.)

(Okay, these are the weird purple/yellow trees, but my phone camera isn't capturing it very well)

(A whole row of them...)

Pictures not at an exhibition

Autumn is my favorite season.  I love when the angle of the sunlight changes.  Everything is sharper and clearer.  The weather is crisp and cool.  It is just lovely outside.  I tend to go on longer and longer walks with my dog because it's so pretty out I don't want to go back inside.

The trees here are turning colors.  There are two young maples I pass by that went fully red last week. I didn't have a chance to take a picture until last night, and they're now already past their prime, but still lovely.  Here is one of them.  Love the red leaves against the white bark against the blue sky.

This tree is not even half-yellow yet, but I just liked the way the late afternoon sun was shining through it.

The neighbor's trees going red...

Two perfect leaves...

And because one doesn't live in Idaho with seeing lots of meese, here is a young male we saw while driving around the other day. 

Spring!

Spring has arrived.  Everything is in bloom right now, and it is beautiful.  The temp is up on the 60s and 70s, but the nights are staying nice and cool.  My family has joined me and is currently sharing my home with me.  This, I've discovered, makes for zero time to do anything on my own, but that's okay.  We're helping yet more family move up here this weekend, so there is more box moving and lifting in my life.

I have watched almost no movies on DVD whatsoever for the past month and a half.  I have seen Ready Player One (loved it) and Avengers: Infinity War (loved it), and I hope to write up thoughts on both soon.  If I can ever get more than 10 minutes of time at any point...

For now, here are some pics of my neighborhood in bloom and also the wildflowers (blue camas) that covered a hillside on one of our hikes.

Reflections on New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve has almost always been a melancholy night for me.  Year's end makes me moody, and my moods tend to run dark this night.  I won't be watching my old New Year's Eve standard, Reilly: Ace of Spies, at least.  Though I suspect there will be some Sam Neill tonight.

What a year!  For movies, it started with the high of Rogue One, ended with the low of The Last Jedi.  It gave me Slow West and Salvation, two modern Westerns I've probably watched collectively on DVD more than any other movies this year.  I am completely remiss in writing a review on either.  I could not be more delighted that Ben Mendelsohn is in one and Mads Mikkelsen the other, and that both are great movies.

It was a lousy year for new soundtracks, though a good one for new releases of old soundtracks.  I still need to pick up Damnation Alley, which is one I've waited for a long time.  I think of new soundtracks... hm, did I even buy one?  It does not appear so ("It does appear so to Mr. Wallace"... random movie quote, name that movie, LOL!), and that is sad.  Maybe next year will bring some good music.

There was an incredible solar eclipse this year, the most beautiful I've personally seen (my third), and a trip to Idaho that changed my family's lives in so many ways, big and small.  I'm now living here and am very happy, looking forward to seeing what 2018 brings.

So, here we are.  End of a busy, tumultuous, stressful, crazy year. 

I'll leave you with this song.  It's one of my favorite discoveries this year (via a Mads Mikkelsen movie, naturally, though this is the happy version that doesn't break my heart.), and it is really is perfect for this winter night.



Here's to a Happy New Year.

Snow Play

Winter joys

Ahhhh!  Snow again!  I have missed snow.  It is delightful to be able to walk Silver in the snow, and/or just let him outside to romp around the backyard.  Neither of us are remotely missing California right now, that's for sure. 

(My street)

(Snow just getting started.  Happy dog.)

(Silver and my dad... yes, my dog thinks he's a cat
 and sitting on people's shoulders is what he should do.)

And so, this happened...

I moved to Idaho this week and am currently enjoying a light snow storm.  Silver thinks this is fantastic.  I think this is fantastic.  I can finally get the house cold enough to be comfortable.  I am however, wishing I'd labeled the moving boxes a leeetttttlllleeee more precisely.  I can't find several highly necessary things.  Sigh.

Also, I'm afraid I won't be able to review any movies for awhile, unless I watch them online.  It was either my cats or my television.  They both wouldn't fit in the car, so the television stayed behind.  Naturally, I want nothing more than to curl up on the couch with Silver and a cup of hot tea and watch one of my trusty movies, but that will just have to wait awhile.

First of July

The apricots have come and gone, although I still have a bunch in the fridge that are slowly going bad because there are just still too many to consume.  My apples have mostly come and gone as well.  I dried tons of them this year, which will be nice to munch on later.  My tomatoes are currently ripening.  I got smart this year and planted them in a slightly different shadier area, and for once they have not died in the sun.  They are flourishing, yay!

The three wild parrots are back and enjoying apples.

It's turned hot, of course, and my walks with Silver are mostly restricted to very early morning before it heats up.  When it's still 90 at 9 pm, there's no chance of an evening walk.  He still loves water so he has a blast playing with the sprinkler and hose.  The more water to play in the better.

Today marks my 32nd straight day of studying the Danish language on duolingo.  It claims I am 47% proficient, but I don't remotely have the vocabulary built up yet for that to be true.  And I am never in a thousand years going to be able to pronounce some of their words correctly, but I don't care.  I am having an absolute blast learning it!

I have always loved studying languages.  Took three and a half years of French in high school, a year of Russian in college, and I've been learning Italian (via opera librettos) my whole life.  But Danish is the first language I'm studying for no reason whatsoever but because we live in a fabulous age where things like duolingo make this possible.  This means zero pressure.  No grades to worry about, no tests, no trip to Copenhagen (though I can dream), just nothing but learning for the sheer fun of it.  And it is so much fun that it's one of the first things I can't wait to start working on every single morning when I turn the computer on.  The grammar rules are pretty straight forward, much simpler than French.  The pronunciation of words is the only truly difficult (impossible!) part.  However, practice really does make a difference, and I can at least understand the spoken lessons far better than I thought would be possible when I first started.  And reading and writing Danish... that's the easy part.

My sister is studying Norwegian, which shares a lot of the grammar rules and many similar words.  I find I can follow her lessons along with her with relative ease and help her understand the sentence construction... and their pronunciation is sooooo much easier.  Their words are mostly pronounced the way they look, which cannot be said of Danish, where almost nothing is pronounced the way it looks like it should be said.  I find that amusing.

Yep.  Pretty much.

Current favorite Danish word:  badeværelset which is the epic word for "the bathroom."  Don't ask me to pronounce it though.  It's something along the lines of "bell-vay-ah-suh" but I haven't listened to it said enough to remember for sure.

I also find it amusing that the last two movies I watched were French-language movies.  Wrong language!!  I have watched four or five movies in Danish now, but I watched them back before I started studying the language.  I'm going to rewatch those in a another month or two, see how much I can actually understand at that point.

And now for something completely different.

I am a huge fan of the chocolate peanut butter Kind bars, and I recently found I could make my own.  These are spectacular.  Very easy to make (other than chopping up three kinds of nuts into bits is a pain), and they taste so much better than anything from the grocery store.  I've made two batches so far.  I like these for breakfast with my hot tea, but for those so inclined to eat between meals, they'd make a great snack.