Sep 30

What's a silver cloud Rolls Royce doing at Walmart?

If I were any kind of private investigator, I could find out who owns this and ask them myself.

Sep 29

The weather that greeted our guests was drizzly and raw. This was countered with a nice warm fire in the woodstove. We have the jigsaw puzzles out, the cribbage board and cards, sudoku, chai tea and chocolate chip cookies.

It was so romantic that I chose that time to ask if I could go to Kathmandu and beyond to the base camp at Mt. Everest. Good to go. But first, another cookie.

Menu

The guests will get to choose from several meals during their stay. These include:
1. Lobstah
2. Clam chowdah
3. Haddock with cranberry stuffing
4. Salmon and asparagus risotto
5. Shrimp etouffe
6. Turkey enchiladas
7. Tamale pie
8. Polenta pizza
9. Samosas
10. Chicken pot pie
Yum yum. This reminds me of Julie and Julia.

Sep 27

Today friends from the midwest are arriving for a visit. I have been cleaning rather too vigorously.

Already there are two brooms bound for glory. We have sneezing fits from dust stirred up from the corners. The neighbor has lent us a filtering machine that rotates and sucks up all the spores.

We shall have to provide ladies' gloves to check for all the surfaces. Well, maybe not.

Sep 26

An invitation to attend a reunion came in the mail. It has been 25 years since graduation from medical school. One would think that classmates or teachers might figure prominently in the memory. But what I remember fondly is studying at the Creighton Law Library (not even the medical school's own library!), a magnificent building with beautiful study tables made of ash and maple, wearing headsets and listening to two music tapes in particular while cramming the Krebs Cycle and Neuroanatomy into any remaining brain space.

It started out with Bob Marley, Easy Skanking, moved to Peter Tosh, Don't Look Back, and finished with Van Morrison, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart. See, I can remember these particular songs from a particular tape, but I can't remember the Krebs Cycle or where the cranial nerves exit the brain. But really, which would you prefer? Easy Skanking vs Biochemistry? Inarticulate Speech vs Neuroanatomy?

Merry Christmas in September

There's a stack of subjects demanding concentration and focus lately: Chapter 2 of Tantra, Book 6 Neurology for medical education, the novel of course, recipes and activities for leaf peeping visitors ("You don't have to entertain us."), a book on karma, Our Lady of the Lost and Found, and the usual idea of fantastic fitness.

So what do I do instead for fun? Balance the accounts and go through a month and a half of receipts.

Sep 24

In what magazine was it written that every kitchen should be decorated with something red? Here's a beautiful kitchen, with abundant blueberries and raspberries.

And burning bushes

Autumn

Happy Autumnal Equinox

11:09 PM EDT 9/22

And Happy Harvest Moon

5:17 AM EDT 9/23

Going to bed late and getting up early.

Some people celebrate their birthday on the weekend following. It's like drinking decaffeinated coffee. What's the point?

When it comes around, we'll be celebrating 12/12/12 on the 13th.

Sep 22

There's 100 days remaining in 2010. I haven't counted, but that's what an email solicitation said. As in, 100 more days to make your mark on the year. One hundred days to launch a new project, start a new adventure, get that ____ you've always wanted before the end of the year.

Yesterday we flew over the Brunswick Naval Air Station, now closed for almost a year. Previously, the general aviation airplanes were vectored around Brunswick air space. On our flight we confirmed the yellow Xs marking the runways and taxiways. But even better than going into unchartered territory was the blue of the inlets and ocean. The air was smooth, the birds were out gliding in the warm air at 1500 feet. Getting ready for migration. Getting ready for the last remaining 100 days.

Sep 21

Good Morning!

It's not enough to say you dressed for the chilly air and went shopping.

No.

You have to embellish and say, "I put on a yellow ducky vest, drove to the store to buy a respirator, and was promptly attacked by homicidal duck-hating seagulls."

Now, you've got a story.

Sep 20

Jimmy retrieved a magnifying glass from his man purse and used it to study a photograph of retirees from his local union. He lookedat the same picture for almost half an hour and didn't realize he was being photographed himself.

I could have used that magnifier to study a big bag of an insect that he found and brought into the house. This morning I thought of all those collections of bugs in the downstairs closets of my youth, pins stuck through thoraxes securing them to the oak tag cardboards, a vague smell of lighter fluid around the closet, and paper labels of lepidoptera and hymenoptera in disarray on the floor. Jim wonders why I scream when I see an ant unexpectedly. It's the crawling that bugs me.

Sep 19

It was a dark and quiet night. The wind was finally calmed. To counterbalance the ashram experience, of course there's a party. With all-meat pizza, alcohol, smoking and swearing. I could swear red lingerie, sky diving, and young and old woodies were a part of the conversation.


Nebraska and Washington played football yesterday, two of my alma maters. We watched until the 4th quarter, when it was time for the party. Jim always tells the joke, "What does that N on the Nebraska football helmet stand for?" And I always laugh at the punch line....

Murder at the Ashram

Friends who live at the ashram suggest that a murder mystery based here might make a good novel, depending on the clues. It was the doctor with the scalpel in the bookstore.

Most of the permanent residents of the ashram have a poor opinion of the traditional medical field. Actually, that may be true of most of the permanent residents of earth. Aside from those in the traditional medical field.

It is always curious to hear disparaging remarks about physicians and their obssesive drug-prescribing ways, and then to see the ashram's pharmacy on the second floor at the ashram.

Books and homeopathic drugs are prevalent. Telephones and televisions are not. Netflix is popular among the residents. Gossip is rampant. The summer harvest is plentiful. The vegetarian food is splendid. The ten-syllable mantra was worth the drive.

Sep 17

"Oh, are you going to the nudist colony again?" ask my friends who have never gone to Pennsylvania.

"It's an ashram. I'm going to meditate," I tell them.

"So, you're driving 700 miles to get 2 syllables of a mantra? Hope it's worth it." says manfriend.

"What is she going to do?" asks a neighbor, grabbing a bottle of wine out of our fridge and pouring a glass.

"I don't know. She never tells me anything," says manfriend who swigs from a large cup of coffee.

In a deep sonorous voice I say,"Cast not your pearls before swine."


They both groan in protest. I've called my best friends pigs and was secretly pleased and then horrified that I had done so. It looks to me like I need the ashram for attitude adjustment.

Sep 16

Traveling through the land of Ichabod Crane and Rumplestiltskin, the skittish horse insists on cantering faster, breaking into a trot. We move towards a long low valley hidden by mist.

Flowers line the path. The horse is finally calm enough to allow tethering to the post, consents to be left alone, and grazes contentedly. Inside the building, the empty desk is a stopping-off place. Wait, make more space, watch.

S'mores

Well, Hannah fixed me my first S'more the other day. It was pretty godawful sweet. But there was none wasted. And today I drive past a field with...

Giant Marshmallows! The fixin's for S'Mores!

Sep 14

It appears that travel by 2 wheels has something to say today. First off, a bicycle race was in play right on the country road where we live. This is the same road to the dump where mutant toxic black mold squirrats roam the bins and crevasses of trash.

Just after passing the speeding bicyclists, and arriving at the next stop sign preceding the turn to the dump, a long, long line of motorcyclists held up traffic for 15 minutes.

It reminded me of a story where Mini Cooper owners and aficionados meet en masse, numbering in the hundreds, and drive madly across Chicago, holding up traffic and disrupting the usual flow of things. Sounds fun.

Found objects

From a previous entry of Clover patches dated August 17, from that same patch,

A Four Leaf Clover!!!!

Found this morning on a walk through the tree nursery, along with a freshly blooded turkey feather and other, more pristine feathers along the way. Saw a dead eviscerated mole (no pictures), coyote scat (likewise) and the dug-out tracks of dirt bikes, footprints of their motorcross through the woods.

Goob Luck to all you readers. This one's for you, all four of you.

Grape Juice

Sometimes this novel is better off without its words.

911

The grape harvest has begun in record time far before the hint of frost. Picking...,

stemming...,

washing.

They are very sweet this year and may not even require sugar to make good juice. Crushing comes after a night of refrigeration. When will we get a scratch-and-sniff computer application with grape juice as one of the scents?

Shooting Rats at the Dump

The car trunk is in possession of a large box filled with cardboard tubes weighted with cement, old 24-shot purple passions, rockets of green paislies and assorted detritus of explosive devices from the Fourth of July. That, plus an old cat piss carpet, wicker lampshades, books, T shirts that are perfectly too small, and a cracked 30 gallon plastic jug for hunting camp water are all heading out to a better place. Better, that is, than the boat house or the entryway to camp.

Earlier in the morning, before the sun came up, I spotted a gray pointy-nosed rodent heading towards the crawlspace under the house. It was the size of a large chinchilla, with a bushy tail. I hope it was a squirrel, and not a water rat. Bushy tail gives me that hope. Please, please, please, don't be a dump rat or a mutant toxic black mold squirrat!

Nine Nine Ten

Yesterday my car stayed parked in the dirt part of the driveway. It did not move. But we still managed to burn gallons of fossil fuel.



There was a sunset scenic flight, a smooth, glassy water landing, and the dusk of afterglow.



This weekend is the Greenville, Maine International Seaplane Fly-In. Contestants tie canoes to their plane floats, taxi to an island, take off the canoe while one paddles the canoe and one taxies the plane back to the shore, then reties the canoe, all as fast as they can. Others see how short a distance they can take off or land. Crowds eat greasy food, drink beer along the banks of the water at Moosehead Lake, and listen to the roar of 185s, Beavers and one Sikorsky float plane painted as a leopard.

A few years back we saw the Northern Lights while camping with friends at the Greenville airport next to our land airplane. I could put a video in here, but couldn't find one without an ad. National Geographic has a nice one showing aurora borealis in Norway.

Sep 8

Light, dark, patterns and shadows.

Sometimes light is the focus. Some things can only be seen at an angle when the light is shining just so. With light appearing, darkness is not far behind, just to show the contrast. Without darkness, there is no concept of light.

Likewise, without light, there is no good perception of darkness. Some things can only be seen by the shadows they cast, like translucent minnows at the edge of the water.

It is the contrast of light color to dark edge that makes a brick pattern so appealing. It is certainly not the heaviness of the gravel in the bucket, nor is it the sharp bricks poking the knees that satisfies. Like medical rounds in the hospital, LGFD.

Looks Good From Door. And so the march against chaos continues.

Sep 7

Yesterday just after dawn, as I was sitting at the dining room table writing by candlelight, a dark shape flew by in the corner of my eye, and slammed into one of the windows to my left. As fast as I could jump up, I ran to the window and saw a predator bird face down on the brick patio that was to be repaired on Labor Day.

The bird sat up, blinked, blinked again, still fierce but also confused. In its beak was moss from its face-plant on the patio bricks after hitting the window. A hawk, swooping down to pick off one of the many chipmunks living near the fireplace, had miscalculated the reflection in the window.

I ran muttering about the house, "My camera, my camera, my camera..." grabbed the case from the purse on the couch, pulled out the camera and turned it on to discover a dead battery. "The battery, the battery, the battery..." I said, as I threw the camera on the table and went in search for the bag of electronics, cords and batteries. Found it, unzipped and took out the replacement battery, loaded it in the camera and ran back to the window.

The hawk was still there, blinking. Then I opened the door to get a better view.

Happy to say the hawk flew off into the neighboring trees, wobbly and without chipmunk, but alive.