THE IDES CAME AND WENT

Wow, talk about NEGLIGENT.  I admit it, blog.  I left you for another, mainly Facebook and Linked In.  But I am back.  I should not neglect you.  You provided me with a lot of fun back in the day.  Weird Object Fridays.  Alphabetical memes.  I think that's the word.  I am of a certain age and am not really sure I am up on all the lingo of the time, including "meme".  I am more sure of other words, like "avatar".  But anyway, it seems like the blogosphere cooled down for me, considerably. 

Anyhow, just to stay in the game, let's post a picture that I put up on Facebook some time ago, but I think it is really cool in an otherworldly way.  Here it is:

Then there is this more thisworldly picture I took a month ago at Tappan Lake in eastern Ohio.  I will be going by that same lake tomorrow and will probably have my camera with me, but I will be in more of a rush tomorrow with meetings three hours away followed by meetings here at home.  Perhaps I will snap a shot as I fly by.  Anyhow, I give you...two frigid-looking shots of Tappan Lake... 

...and finally, for good measure, a four-goose flyover and touchdown.  More later.  I promise. 

2012 In Pictures

Here are a few of the "highlights" of the past year...

Top story in our family came in October, with the birth of our first ever grandchild, Charlotte.  Here she is, an hour or two old. 

They change quickly.  Here she is at (how can I tell?) two months.  The other sizable news involved...

our son's engagement to Megan.  Wedding planned for spring of this year.  

So 2013 is guaranteed to have at least one "big event"!

OK, on to relatively lesser items culled from the 2012 archives...

The dogs that fill our otherwise empty "nest".  They keep it real.  They keep it jumping.  

And the beagle opines too much, in whines and yowls and woos and such.

Grand-dog Lily rocking the baby swing.  A precursor of a blessed event to come...

The view from our seats at Severence Hall for a concert.  No, not "Night on Bald Mountain" 

(I apologize to the guy one row up; that is cruel). People did show up and play and sing.

  

Celebrating 3/4 century for our brother in law, Doc, in Marion - he's the one with the cool hat.  

Obligatory Nature Picture - out at the Norwalk Reservoir.  

Touching rays...and touching rays...and then touching more rays...at the Cleveland Aquarium.  

We couldn't get her away from the "touch tank".   

Obligatory Urbanscape Picture: Cleveland, City of Light, City of Magic.  

Second obligatory Urbanscape: Baltimore: The Homeland (from our trip there last summer).  

The band from church, "Give 'em Heaven", after pulling off our second annual "Gazebofest".  

Ok, not the real name.  Also known as "Praising in the Park".  

 Linda's mom and dad back in the day.  We lost her mom in August.  We miss her. 

The last NEARFest, ever, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.  Renaissance and Annie Haslam of the zillion-octave voice. 

Made it up to the beach.  Caught a cool rainbow before we left.  

Another moocher at the African Wildlife Safari park.  We also inducted/initiated/hazed Megan with some bison slobber.  She passed the test and may thus marry our son.

Day trip to Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

The dynamic duo becomes a triumphant trio...

Cheers!  Best wishes for 2013...

I'm Not Dead Yet....(Still Here)

Just a line from that Monty Python movie. No need to fret.  Aside from the Mayan thing, which may claim us all in a pillar of fire or outrageous storm.

Wow, what a month or two it has been.  I have been too busy experiencing life, mostly vicariously, to get on here and update, post, just say "hi".

First the daughter has a wonderful daughter of her own, and I am immediately in love with a new life on the planet.  People had always said this grandparent thing is incomparable.  Well, I suppose you can compare it with having a kid of your own, and that may be a hard one to reconcile.  But there is something about sitting in a room or, as we did this past weekend, a van, accompanied by one's wife, son, and then the new parents and the grandchild.  A new family, formed right before one's eyes.  "Blessed" begins to describe the feeling.

Having babies is clearly one of those natural acts that happens all the time - relentlessly in those larger urban hospitals.  Indeed, this one was born in a pretty busy urban hospital, and staff attention soon turned to the next in line after all was well, post-partum, with the one we were waiting for.

So now there is this new, inexplicably magnetic person on the planet, and there is this new activity (if you can call it that) which consists of quietly and peacefully holding this seven or eight or now nine pound baby, meeting any challenges, stifling the cry, sensing the bodily functions that may be underway, rocking and cooing and making ridiculous sounds that just seem to make sense.

There is the perfection of an up-and-down motion I call "the elevator"- a maneuver that can calm the unsettled baby, usually making her arms fall limply and her eyelids close within a few seconds.  There is the wonder of pivoting a "360" and watching her turn her head left, then right, to track the sunlight through a window.

The world stops.  Work issues, other pressing matters of the world all go away, and holding the baby becomes the world.  That's the best I can describe it.  Unparalleled.

OK, the other big vicarious event.  Our son told us this was coming, and indeed he carried it out.  He asked a really wonderful girl a simple yes-no question, but one with lifelong implications.  She replied in the affirmative and, bam, we have a new daughter-in-law to be, our new grand daughter has a new aunt-to-be, and we are looking forward to a big event in the spring.

So the big deals are all being orchestrated, if you will, by the next generation.  Me, I go to work and have good days and get some things done.  Come home and walk the dogs and practice with the band, enjoy time with my wife, think about seeing Pi or Lincoln.  These are all good things, but the spotlight is on the kids, and it is amazingly satisfying just to see how their lives are unfolding these days.

 

Change of Season

Summer is a hazy, heated blur.  The dog walk tonight required jackets for the humans.  The times, they are a changing.  We are welcoming a new season.  And with a (very) pregnant daughter, we are looking at fall as a season of new beginnings, perhaps moreso than spring ever was.
 
We have tried to squeeze some fun into the declining weeks of summer, and finally got up to the beach a couple weekends ago.  We got to wade in the water a bit and just hang out on the sandy beach for a couple hours.  Then we enjoyed a soft-serv ice cream cone at the local stand.  I had an orange-vanilla twist, in honor of my grandmother, who once upon a time downed a large orange-vanilla at the same establishment, after proclaiming "My, that IS large!"  Before we left the beach, it started to rain while the sun behind us continued to shine.  I knew this meant conditions were right for a rainbow, and we were rewarded!
 
This past weekend, we had a car appointment over near Cleveland, and after we took care of the free oil change, we departed for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and environs, only about 15 minutes farther than the car dealer.
 

 
It was a great escape of a day.  We rode the Cuyahoga Valley Railroad the 22 miles down to Akron and the 22 miles back, a relaxing three hour trip.  I enjoyed every rail crossing with gates down and cars a-waiting, sort of a payback for all the times I have sat at crossings, counting the cars and marveling at the illegible but really artful graffiti.
 

 

 We were told there would be an eagle's nest along the rail run.  You couldn't miss it as the train slid by, but unfortunately its occupants were out fishing or doing whatever eagles do on a Saturday afternoon (Buckeyes football?)

TWO weekends ago, we traveled up to the African Wildlife Safari park, which is just about an annual event for us.  My wife seems to score a carload ticket as either a radio prize or a half-off deal.  This year we took our son's girlfriend along and enjoyed her reactions to such stimuli as slobbering buffalos and highly strung llamas.
 
SO the past three weekends or so have been pretty active ones.  Sooner than we would like, it will get cold out there and these activities will not be so attractive.  They will be replaced by foliage tours and hikes, a coming venture up to see friends in Michigan, and who knows what all.
 

 

Random Summer-Nearing-its-End Pictures (Mostly Roses)

 Just to represent the highlights of the waning summer, here is a group photo of our little ol' bank from church (said church actually making it into this picture, with the steeple back there on the right hand side).  We went out on our second annual "world tour" on August 11, traveling all the way down to this downtown park with a suitable gazebo and plenty of grassy area for folks to bring folding chairs.  It was a lot of fun, aside from the rain that settled in for the last couple of songs, causing us to shorten the set list by a tune or two.  Interesting factoid: the woman on the lower left-hand corner does not actually play guitar.  But she can sing. 

 We were down at the reservoir park with the dogs a week or so ago and I liked the way the light was infiltrating a portion of the woods here, casting a kinda Kincaidian light, if you will. 

 Then just yesterday, we went down to Columbus to celebrate our son's birthday and took him and his girlfriend out to a Japanese steak house.  I enjoy those places, and have been known to aggravate my wife on numerous occasions while clumsily trying to emulate the sounds and motions of the Japanese cooks who prepare the food in front of you, banging on and rattling utensils, flipping foods around and catching them on spatulas, etc.  Its' great fun.  Watching more than attempting in one's own home.

 So, anyway, there are clearly not pictures of a Japanese steak house.  After we ate, William's girl friend unfortunately had to go to work, but the three of us went on to check out the Garden of Roses in Whetstone Park up in the Clintonville section of Columbus.  It is an amazing place, and a friend on Facebook informed me that it would likely be moreso in June when there would be many more roses blooming.  But when we saw it yesterday, it was not bad. 

 I was amazed at the variety of colors among the roses.

 This is the view of the place from a nice little observation platform.  I am a sucker for observation platforms, whether in Gettysburg, a park out in the middle of nowhere, or an urban rose garden.  The grass was a bit scorched there on the left in the back, but whose isn't this summer?

 And a few more pictures from the Garden of Roses.