Today being the Winter Solstice, I set out with the intention to photograph both the sunrise and the sunset.I’ve been starting work early these days, so I actually took my lunch hour (very) early and set out at 7:30 to catch the sunrise.The last several days have been completely overcast, so I felt so lucky that the skies were partially clear.The clouds were amazing!After work, I set out for my favorite sunset-watching spot, anticipating a crowd, it being Solstice and all.There was only one other dedicated sunset-watcher there (not just drifting by to take a selfie and then moving on).I said to this woman, “I’m so surprised there aren’t more people here for the Solstice!”She answered, “Yeah, Summer Solstice gets all the love.” Well, I love you, dear Winter Solstice. I love you with all my heart. Welcome back, dear Sun.
Hello friends! I’m back! I have been dealing with some very frustrating technical difficulties over the last few weeks. Out of the blue WordPress was not letting me edit or begin a post. I got a pop-up error message that I tried to resolve using all the advice out in Google Land, as well as the (really crap) technical support provided by Bluehost, my hosting service. All to no avail. Finally, Chris asked if it might be worthwhile trying his old laptop. Et voila, here I am. I think perhaps the problem was that the latest updates to WordPress and Bluehost finally rendered the operating system in my laptop (which has reached its own iOS update limit) incompatible. The plan is to get me a new laptop at some point, but until that time I’m so happy to have a pretty convenient workaround.
It’s funny – before these technical difficulties I would sometimes feel self imposed pressure to get on here and crank out a blog post. Once I was unable to do so, I missed the blog so much!
Okay, so, my bird photos – I’m quite pleased with my new setup. I’ve put up my seed feeder right outside my kitchen window – about three feet away from the window. That’s not new. What is new is a large-ish branch that I’ve stuck into the ground about three feet from the feeder. When things get really busy at the feeder birds will use this branch as a pit stop before or after feeding. That’s when I get my photos. It provides a more natural background for my photos than a green plastic feeder.
Life is good here. My exercise routine is still going well. I ate too much this long Thanksgiving weekend. We got a milk steamer/frother which is so much fun. We’re almost all caught up with Doc Martin. I just finished a super busy time at work and am about to begin another super busy time at work. I am loving the newest Taylor Swift album (never thought of myself as a Swiftie but here I am).
I am SO glad to be back on here, excited to be photographing the winter birds, and really looking forward to sharing more photos with you.
Hi, friends! I’ve been settling back into normal life after our visit to the UK.
One thing that I’m tweaking at the moment is my workout schedule. About three quarters of the way through the six-week-long workplace exercise challenge I realized something: my anxiety levels had gone way, way down. As you can imagine, this made me very happy/excited – but I also knew that getting out and walking two-and-a-half to three hours a day would just not be sustainable for me, even if it did have this amazing effect on my anxiety. So, I’ve been messing around with the intensity of my workouts. Instead of just walking, I’ve been adding a 20-30 minute workout on the stair-climber machine at our gym. Two things I like about using this machine – 1) it pairs with my Apple Watch so I can see my heart rate on the monitor screen, and 2) I can therefore easily make these sessions into HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts by increasing and decreasing the speed of the steps over the course of the workout. I’m also continuing to walk, but the overall time I’ve been spending on my entire exercise session is about 1hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. Something I can definitely fit into my day (I’m also back to three days a week strength training, which I am able quickly accomplish after work on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays).
So far this decrease in time while increasing intensity seems to be working. However, I am finding that if I want the results to be apparent every day, I need to work out every day. No days off. Which is a bit of a bummer, but definitely worth it to me.
All of the photos in today’s post were taken with my new iPhone. I’m still getting used to the new phone (I’m definitely a creature of habit and not a huge fan of change) and have had to adjust some of the settings in order to have the photos transfer to my laptop full size, but I’m looking forward to figuring it out some more.
The first two photos of this post are actually from our dinner on day two of our Cotswolds visit but I forgot to include them in yesterday’s post. Including them today because no travelogue of the UK is complete without some fish and chips with mushy peas!
On day three we decided to visit several small villages, traveling northeast along A429 (for those following along with a map, lol) visiting Bourton on the Water, Upper and Lower Slaughter, and Stow on the Wold. We then drove southeast to Oxford to spend the night before heading to Heathrow early the next morning.
Phew! I love travel, and I love coming back home. I hope you enjoyed my photos; I love sharing them with you.
Chris and I got our new phones last week (iPhone 14 pro max – replacing our old iPhone 8 phones that had severely degraded battery capacity and were generally on their last legs) and I’ve been learning how to navigate the fancy-schmancy camera in my phone. The fall colors are at their peak right now, and I’m looking forward to sharing some photos in my next post.
Our second day in the Cotswolds was spent taking a day trip into Bath, which was about an hour’s drive (taking a scenic route) from Ewen. Our B&B host Neil highly recommended that we take the Park and Ride into Bath, which turned out to be perfect advice, there being very little parking of any kind (public or pay) in the city of Bath. Another gorgeous day weather-wise. We decided not to visit the Roman Baths (not fancying either the crowds or the 20 pound entrance fee per person).
Tomorrow will be my final post about our UK trip – Upper and Lower Slaughter and Stow on the Wold!
After the wedding we spent three days in the Cotswolds. I’ve actually been working on this blog post for two evenings because I don’t really want to sound like a travelogue, especially since that involves reading Wikipedia articles on the Cotswolds or the Thames Head and trying not to plagiarize as I paraphrase their contents here, because my knowledge of this area really is limited to a few articles I’ve read and my experiences over a very short time.
So, the highlights (with Wikipedia links just in case) —
I had never stayed in a bed and breakfast before. As an introvert the idea always really intimidated me, to be honest – would I have to make small talk with the hosts? Would I have to make small talk with people in the breakfast room? Small talk is not a strong suit of mine, and generally when I’m on vacation I don’t like to intentionally put myself in uncomfortable situations. However, I decided to get over myself this time and booked us into two different B&Bs during this trip. I’m glad I did! The first B&B was called Well Cottage and it was completely lovely. I quickly got over feeling awkward and warmed to the entire experience. By the end I was nattering away in the breakfast room with anyone I could make eye contact with.
When booking our room in Well Cottage we found out that the Thames Path runs through the town of Ewen and only a mile or so down the path we could find the Thames Head. This was very exciting for us because Chris and I are big fans of the Rivers of London urban fantasy book series by Ben Aaronovitch. The series is mainly about magical crime fighting in London, but the world the characters inhabit is one in which all the rivers in England and most likely the whole world are actually gods and goddesses. and the upper reaches of the Thames are the where the very powerful Father Thames resides.
After our pilgrimage to the Thames Head we felt it necessary to have dinner at the Thames Head Inn (note the likeness of Father Thames in the signage!) — Bangers and Mash for me and Bubble and Squeak for Chris.
Day two of our Cotswolds adventure was spent in Bath – post to come tomorrow.
After spending fewer than 24 hours on the southern coast of England we traveled north of London to the county of Hertfordshire for the wedding. The weather was glorious, the bride and groom radiantly happy, the music and dancing exuberant, and the food abundant. We were so happy to be able to participate in Steve and Jamie’s special day. xoxo
Great view of London as we got ready to land at Heathrow!
Hello friends! Sorry for my absence from here – I’ve decided I really am full of shit when I say things like, “I’m going to post here every week no matter what!” Lol. I’ve had a busy few weeks since last writing here. Remember that office wellness/fitness challenge I said I was going to be more relaxed about? Well, my competitive side got the best of me there, so that proclamation was bogus as well. I ended up finishing 2nd in a field of 45ish people, averaging 25-30 thousand steps a day. I also came down with a lingering cold. Coincidence? For the last few weeks of the competition there was literally not one waking moment when I didn’t have walking on the mind – there was no time for reading, kicking back and relaxing, blogging, taking photos of anything other than my walk. It was intense. But I am pretty proud of my effort, and also very glad it’s over.
Right after the competition ended, Chris and I headed out for the UK to attend the wedding of our nephew. I will post photos of that glorious day tomorrow, but since I took a gazillion photos with my trusty iPhone 8 during the trip (getting a 14 soon and I am so excited about the camera possibilities with the new phone!), I thought I would share the best of the bunch over the next few days.
Today’s photos are of Chris’ childhood town, Bexhill on Sea. His family moved there from London when Chris was ten. We spent less than 24 hours there this time, but soaked up as much of the beauty of the place as we could while we were there.
See you here tomorrow with photos of Hertfordshire and the big wedding day. xoxo
My friend Beth and I met on the very first day of fourth grade, on the bus that was to take us to our new school. We had both been chosen to go to a special school for “gifted” children for the next three years – the very opposite of the mainstreaming of students of differing needs that is the accepted practice in education today. I think it was a bit of an educational experiment that only lasted a few years. Whatever the case, we very quickly became inseparable. As is often the case with longterm friends who live hundreds of miles apart, we have not always been perfect at keeping in touch over the years, but in the last two decades we’ve been pretty tight. When the pandemic hit we started Saturday morning Zoom and then FaceTime calls that I look forward to all week.
This month marks 50 years since that first day of fourth grade. Fifty years of friendship. We celebrated with a long weekend staying in an Airbnb on the East Side of Providence (home of Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, amazing bakeries and restaurants, and stunning old homes). We used the apartment as our base of operations for exploring our old neighborhood, our old teenage stomping grounds of the East Side and downtown Providence (we were experts at taking city buses from an early age), and for going a little farther afield. We took a narrated boat tour of the Providence River and learned some new things about the history of Providence. We drove out to Point Judith, Rhode Island to take the ferry to Block Island for the day — to ride bikes along the country lanes and drink Del’s frozen lemonade in the shade (Beth had Del’s, I had ice cream).
To give a play-by-play of the entire long weekend would take many paragraphs. Suffice it to say a grand time was had by all and I am so thankful to have this dear friend who is really family to me. I love you, Beth! Thank you for planning the entire weekend and for being my friend all of these years.
Hello, friends! It has been a busy couple of weeks since I last wrote here. Last week I was in Connecticut for an extended weekend visiting family. The weather was absolutely perfect during my stay.
Since August 22 I have been preoccupied with a competition we are having at work. The powers that be thought it would be fun to have a friendly wellness/exercise challenge for anyone interested, using the app Wellable (link here). You can earn points in a variety of ways: 0.05 points for each step you take, 5 points for every minute you exercise, 100 points for every mile you walk/run, 30 points for every mile cycled, etc. I’ve definitely gotten caught up in the competitive vibe of the thing – out of 48 participants I am currently sharing the 3rd/4th place position with a perfectly nice coworker who has become my nemesis – up until yesterday. The problem with the competition is that they cap the number of points you can earn at 1,500 per day. That’s the equivalent of 15 miles of walking/running a day (about 30,000 steps). That’s a lot. And that’s what everyone in the top 5 or so have determined is needed to maintain their position. So, yeah, it’s been exhausting. The competition lasts until October 2 and yesterday I decided to scale it back to something more sustainable (and something less likely to give me a stress fracture in my foot). Fifteen miles a day is technically do-able. But do I want to do that? It’s quite a chunk out of my day. Yesterday I ended up doing 18,884 steps, which felt like a walk in the park compared to 30,000, and a lot more reasonable. We’ll see if the rest of the top group feels the same way soon, or if I’ll be left in the dust.
Last Friday was a momentous day – Chris became a naturalized US citizen. It was quite moving seeing the 50+ other people there with their families (and in some cases the entire family were becoming citizens at the same time). People from all over the world whose life paths somehow brought them all to the same court house in Cleveland, Ohio on this day. The culmination of lifelong dreams for many of them. I will never forget the feeling of that morning.
The hummingbirds will soon be all gone for the year. As it is, there seem to be only a couple left: two immature males who are in the process of molting (in the photos above you can see the lost/new feathers). I imagine they will be on their way after the process is complete. In the three years that I have been photographing hummingbirds I have never witnessed any of them in the process of molting, and I must admit it looks a bit freaky to me, lol.
On Friday I will be flying to Providence, Rhode Island for a celebratory long weekend with my BFF Beth – we met on the first day of school in 4th grade and immediately became friends. 50 years later we are still friends. I am so excited for this trip. There will be visits to Italian bakeries. There will be self-guided walking tours all over Providence. There will be a boat tour of the Providence River. There will be pizza strips and Del’s lemonade. But most importantly, there will be plenty of time to visit with my oldest friend. We haven’t had a good, long, in-person visit in many years.
That will be my next post. In the meantime, take good care of yourselves.
