Time is Short

I'm being rushed out the door. We're leaving at 8 AM for up north and it's . . . well, you see what time it is below. So, time is short for me to blog. My mind doesn't work well on short time. Mine is a long time mind. My thoughts need time to simmer and percolate before anything understandable or cogent comes out. So, if there are a lot of tipogruphicel erors in tody's blog i apologixe, because I just can't operate this way.

Kooper just ate some of the rolls we are bringing up to Meadville/Franklin for dinner tomorrow (Thanksgiving with family will be a Friday event this year). Kate doesn't know it yet. She's upstairs tea-ing. I imagine she'll come downstairs soon. He ate them while I was typing the words above. I have two choices. I could put the bag with the hole in it and the two out of eight half-eaten rolls back into the shopping bag for the trip north. Then, I wouldn't suffer the ridicule and embarrassment of having enabled Kooper's feast for six or seven more hours (and then be buffered by others being present to laugh along). Or I could just leave the bag out and look sternly at Kooper as Kate comes down the steps as if to say "That Kooper! I just don't know what we can do about that dog!" And maybe preemptively avoid any question of my acquiescence.

I'll go with the first. So if any of you are around Franklin later this afternoon, stop by my Mom's house to help me out. I would be so very thankful. Please. And have a happy Thanksgiving!

Slow Times

Orion the Hunter, the constellation, is in the western sky in the dark mornings when Kooper and I go for our wandering through the neighborhood. That's always a reminder to me that we're officially in winter. This is winding down into a slow time of year when the cold and darkness gently (or sometimes harshly!) nudge us into "hunkering-down-mode." Stay inside. Keep warm. Drink hot tea. Snuggle. Wrap up and read a book (or play World of Warcraft).

Zoe is moving back up north this weekend as we travel to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. Michael and Zoe will reunite. It's a black and white thing. Zoe misses all of the black fabric that Michael accumulates - clothes, pillows, throw rugs, blankets, towels. Zoe's white fur goes well in a contrasty sort of way with the black. She's become an indoor cat over these past four months, so her whiteness won't be needed for outdoor sleuthing and stalking in the snow. Michael lives on a busy street anyway in Meadville, so the cars searching for pet and squirrel prey along North Main Street won't have Zoe in their sights. She's put on a bit of weight in the process of staying indoors. Her main exercise has been playing with Lucky.

Lucky will miss her playmate I imagine. She's shy to begin with so I'm guessing we'll see less of Lucky once Zoe isn't here to draw her out to play. She'll hunker down, wrap up, and watch carefully as the bigger animals in the house wander about. I guess it's not a bad activity for these winter months.

House Work

Weekends are working chore times at the house. Vacuuming, watering plants, garbage and recycling (the haulers come early Monday morning). I've noticed that there is less hair around these days than in the summer when the heat must have accelerated the shedding rates. There is Zelda hair concentrated on one of the living room chairs. Lucky hair on the guest room bed cover. Zoe hair on the bedspread covering Michael's bed downstairs. And a bit of Kooper hair on the couch (Yes! He's spoiled!). There is less hair on the top floor than there used to be. That was Lady's territory. Kooper doesn't go that high. He makes it into the kitchen and dining room on the third floor but no higher.

Not only do the pets shed, but so do the plants that have come inside for the winter. They get much less light than they did on the back patio and are rebelling by turning brown at the edges and dropping leaves - large and small - all over the place. Especially the fern. Those small, brown leaves are everywhere. Most notably between the fern's perch in the guest room and the bathroom where it goes to be watered on a weekly basis. Dropping dozens of small, crunchy, brown leaves in the process.

They get vacuumed up then. Along with the pet sheddings. There is still the random Lady hair to be found among the dust bunnies and other detritus. But not so much anymore.

NSO

We saw and heard the National Symphony Orchestra last night at the Kennedy Center. We walked to the Braddock Road Metro in the wind and cold (real wind and real cold this time!). Took the Metro to Foggy Bottom. Took the Kennedy Center shuttle the few blocks to the Center. Then snuggled into our seats (109 and 110) in row CC.

The NSO came out. Played. And left. The audience sat there. Clapped. And went home. All very civil and correct. Not too real but the movement and applause and music all seemed to come at the right moments and last the right amount of time. It seemed very "going-through-the-motions" like. Like "Okay we're done. Let's move on to the next thing to do." I don't have much to compare it to except for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Heinz Hall. But that seemed more real. In fact (I've said this more than a few times to Kate), Pittsburghers as a whole seem very "real." Authentic. Themselves and comfortable at it. When we went to Heinz Hall last year to see the symphony and the orchestra members came on stage they would wave at and chat with the people in the audience. Audience members would walk up to the stage before the performance and during intermission and afterwards to chat with musicians leaning over the stage edge. There was a sense of community in the audience before the show too. And the audience appreciation was genuine and robust and long and standing. I guess love might be the right word. Real.

I'm always reminded of the part from the Velveteen Rabbit when I think of Pittsburgh and its people. “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

Let it Snow

I understand that back in northwestern Pennsylvania the first big lake-effect snowfall of the year has blanketed the area.  Six or so inches near Lake Erie and over a foot inland.  We had snow here a couple of days ago, too.  A few flakes danced around in the whirlwinds between the buildings in DC when I was.  In the District doing grant research.  All of a sudden I looked up from the computer I was sitting at and there it was.  Snow.  In mid-November!  None of it "stuck."  I'm not even sure if any of it actually made it to the ground, it was so windy.  Maybe the few, tiny flakes just were whipped into a frenzy and swept back up into the clouds.

The few flakes did get people buzzing though about the winter and the possibility of Washington shutting down.  People looked at their watches to see if they should catch the Metro home before it closed down due to slick tracks.  One person called to his suburban home to see if the "storm" had hit there.  When I got back to my office, an email had been sent to everyone reminding them of winter shut-down procedures.

Meanwhile back in real life, I noticed that the number of homeless on the streets of DC seems to be increasing.  I would say on average on each block there were about two people bundled up against the cold and wind with their possessions around them for shelter.  No office shut-down procedures for them.  No worries about catching the train before it stops running.

If senators and congress people or their staff are walking or driving from the Capital down to K Street where the lobbyists work, the homeless are there to remind them of who they represent.   Most of the lobbyists trekking up the street the opposite way to the halls of Congress don't lobby on behalf of the homeless and hungry.  Some do.  A few.  But like the DC snowflakes their words don't seem to stick.

Terrible Twos

My two-plus year old cell phone has been throwing tantrums lately.  Not holding a charge all day long.  Cutting out during crucial calls with Michael about his motherboard.  Refusing to charge in a timely manner.  So I got a new battery.  Extra life sized!  I got it very quickly and easily through an on-line store that specializes in Motorola cell phones.  Talk about a niche.  The only trouble is the extra life sized battery is extra thick and it sticks out beyond where the tiny back door to the phone would normally sit.  So, back on line I went last night.  I need a super-sized back door (or battery cover as they so cleverly call it).  It's ordered now.  Should be here Friday.  I should have known that a super-sized battery would need an XXX sized hatch.

My cell phone is Microsoft based and this computer I'm blogging on is an Apple.  The two don't speak.  They don't even try.  I guess if my phone were newer they would at least try to communicate with each other.  But two year-old phones don't know the Apple language.  They don't talk the same talk.  So my calendar on the computer is almost empty but the one on my phone (that I almost always have with me) is filled with everything I need to remember to do.  Like a brain memory expansion pack but only more reliable.  Until the battery starts to fizzle.

Now if you want to call me on my cell phone you can.  It rings (actually it vibrates because that's the best way for me to "hear" it).  It rings when it reminds me that it's almost time to do something I should remember to do.  And if I hold it gingerly the battery on steroids won't fall out.  

I figure if it lasts two more years by late 2010 maybe some new technology will surface and I won't even need a new battery again.  Or a new cell phone at all.  Maybe by then Macs and PCs will be able to speak and understand each other, and Democrats and Republicans will hug in the aisles of the Capital Building, and we all will have forgiven George Bush.

Shooting Star

It's very cold here this morning (around 30 . . . that's "cold" for here).  The fronts that have swept through over the past few days have cleared out any lingering thoughts of Indian Summer or any hints of fallishness.  They cleared out the skies, too.  Any pockets of haze or patches of fog or blankets of pollution are long gone.  Out to sea.

Kate is somewhere northwest of here.  Studying with some other ministers about the hot sociological and theological topics of the day.  It's snowing where she is.  In the mountains of Virginia/West Virginia/Maryland.  Out that way.  Yonder.

Here (hither) it was very clear last night when Kooper and I went for our late night romp through the streets of Old Town.  And brisk, too.  I tried to keep Kooper moving beyond his typical stop and sniff saunter.  Just so I could keep a bit warm.  He would have none of that.  Fur is a great insulator I guess.  Humanity's loss.  But Kooper's slow gait meant at last I lifted my head up to look at the clear sky.  And the stars. Very clear and dark and crisp.  A very starry night.  Not the kind of darkness and starriness you get in north central Pennsylvania or in the Adirondack Mountains, but plenty dark enough to see more than the usual bright constellations.

It just so happens that at one of Kooper's especially long ground snuffling spots as I was looking up I saw the briefest flare of a shooting star.  Glowing ever brighter for the fleetest of moments and then flaring out just as quickly.  On a straight path from somewhere to nowhere.  To oblivion.  Galaxy dust.

It reminds me of the words the priests say on Ash Wednesday during the Catholic ritual of marking people's foreheads with ashes made from last year's Palm Sunday palms.  "Remember that you are dust.  And unto dust you shall return."

Not a bad thing to remember once in awhile.  As Cat Stevens sang, we're "only dancing on this earth for a short while."  Objects in space.  Like a shooting star.