Musings

Voice mail full

Voice mail full

Since staffers monitor contacts with the office as a gauge of constituent concern, if phone and fax don’t get through, and emails are considered…less significant/important–and email takes months to arrive…how does a citizen grab the ear of an elected representative while he or she is off “doing the people’s business” in the nation’s capital? Especially on timely issues?

Bastids

I swear this is random graffiti—no relation to our downtown visit….

Droney landing

We took High Guy (used to be Droney-Roney the Irish Device) out for some fresh air. The Guru flew him the highest ever, he said.

Hosiery

Hosiery

I found this hose-winding device by the sidewalk by the doors of a mini-strip-mall, installed for watering plants-for-sale (when it’s that time of the year). Usually such items have a simple/functional design, so I was intrigued with the more elaborate mold used here.

Decades

Brick sidewalk BW

Last time I messed with black-and-white photos, as I recall, was in a darkroom when I was in ninth grade.

Ah, the digital photography world….

We ate too much

Chinese china

Happy New Year and good luck! [All the food pictures didn’t do the dishes justice…so here’s plate number two waiting for the entrees to show up.]

Would you call this Chinese china?

Wintery whine

Camellia buds browned

I’m wearing wool socks. [The cold returned.]

Gotcha

Possum toes

My, what’s that there in the back yard? I see toes…claws! And a nekkid tail.

Possum face

Ah, there’s a pointy nose and beady eyes, too.

Research adventure(s)

Tempered glass frags

Turns out that this kind of safety glass is, terminologically, really toughened glass, which I know as tempered glass. Sounds like the toughening process resembles the quenching/tempering of metal.

Following a WikiPee rabbit hole I discovered lead me to Prince Rupert’s Drops. Strange thing: drip droplets of molten glass into cold water; recover when cool. They will have an elongated teardrop shape. Try to crush the bulb; it will be hugely resistant. Snap, break, or crush the skinny tail, and the whole thing will fragment into dust. So I have read. Apparently the tail and the outside of the drop cool faster than the inside, which stays molten a bit longer, yielding a tensile stress pattern that makes the tail weak and the bulb strong. Or something like that.

Anyway, I think this is auto window-glass, fragmented into cuboidal shards.

My other research adventure today had to do with the royal sites of Ireland…medieval period…there are four of them. Five. Six. Depends on the definition.

Wait. One more research adventure: KW taught me what a zarf is. I told JCB, and he said nooooooo…then looked it up. From a Turkish term, he says.

I am now more learn ed, that is learned pronounced with two syllables.

Living urban

Downtown demonstration

Today’s highlight was going downtown and joining about 150 others to remind Senator Perdue that he’s voting for all his constituents…and that some/most of the Trump nominees…are lousy choices to safeguard and promote the institutions they’re to run. A #drainyourownswamp thing.

Task couch

In a totally different neighborhood, we found this abandoned “task” couch. I think I have an unlabeled “task” desk, but the couch is free of such a link. [I never figured out what the letters on the metal panels in the background spelled….]

#alternativefactoftheday

Lichen

I’m just not that clever. It never occurred to me to argue with the teacher or any other exam-grader that I should get credit for my answer because it was an alternative fact.

The title? That’s my new favorite hashtag.

The picture? That’s lichen that’s greened-up from the recent rain and warm temps. Colder now, and no rain. Breezy.

Haunted maybe?

PansyCU

I’m being barraged by Henry VIII of England. First Wolf Hall. Tonight it’s Lucy Worsley’s version….

Yeah, I know Henry’s symbol was the rose not the pansy. My wee joke. Plus, pansies are blooming now and roses aren’t.