Musings

We first spotted this critter starting to cross the path in front of us. S/he looked at our feet and apparently rethought that plan, and reversed to climb this not-particularly-large tree.

The exceptional element to this story is just to the left of the squirrel in this photo, and a bit down.

That funny beige thing is a crustless piece of bread that the squirrel had in his/her mouth from when we first spotted her/him, and decided to stash where you see it while s/he descended.

I guess s/he wasn’t worried about crows or other airborne marauders.

This was yesterday, I admit. I was overcome by laziness* today and stayed indoors where it is warm (awakened to 17.3°F temp outdoors)—brrr.

* There has been some discussion around here about whether this should be considered as true laziness. I say yes. Comment?

Posted at 6:37 PM | 1 Comment »

As near as I can tell, it is darned cold across most of eastern North America. Including good ol’ ATL.

18°F this morning when I got up (yeah, it was early, BUT). TV meteorologist said it’d been above freezing for one hour only since 10pm on Friday.

And mentioned the potential for a bit of white stuff later this week….

The picture? That’s a spent magnolia* bud. On ice**.

* Apparently, they’re named for the French botanist Pierre Magnol (June 8, 1638–May 21, 1715), who was first to publish the idea of plant families as we know them today. Says the Wikipee.

** As my SIL wrote from her perch in her San Diego backyard in shorts(!) regarding the weather situation: wrong wrong wrong!

Posted at 5:29 PM | 1 Comment »

Functional walk today, that is, to accomplish a couple of errands. We found it incredibly foggy, with buildings obscured only three blocks away.

Our circuitous route took us by the Clermont Motor Hotel, a legendary place on Ponce, the main US highway into downtown from the east, built in about 1924. The hotel part (originally apartments) is closing tonight (ordered to by the city because of mold and other health violations), but apparently the basement strip joint (Clermont Lounge) will remain in biz. Still, we caught guys with clipboards of papers posing for photos beneath the marquee, and even a Channel 5 van in the parking lot (covering the story rather than doing some entertainment research).

I took this photo near the odd post office that has no counter service, around the corner from the apartment building where rumor has it Jane Fonda lives (lived?; her daughter lives in ATL). The sky was super grey today, and I guess the pigeons are trying to get a disco nap in before the fireworks keep them up through the dark of the night.

Here’s looking back at the strange year of 2009, with some amazing highs and not-so-high interstices. Not as bad as it could be; I’m smiling!

Posted at 5:58 PM | Comments Off on Nodes and links

Slow Sunday. Micronews: Lake Clara Meer is overfilled, and that’s without a breeze to push the water over the edge.

Posted at 4:19 PM | 1 Comment »

Get it?

Anyway, another overcast afternoon, with pretty high water levels in Lake Clara Meer (it’s now hard to believe we had that drought), but nice for a walk even so.

This was the view as we strolled the SE corner of the park, having entered via an off-path route, since the Park Tavern* gate was closed—lots of private events, based on the notices up by the parking lot.

* RHB played golf here when the Tavern building was a club house, when he was in Georgia courtesy of Uncle Sam. Much of the area where we walk was fairways or on the edge of where they were. You still can see the flattop bumps where some of the greens and tees were.

Posted at 4:33 PM | 2 Comments »

View of South Fork Peachtree Creek through the woods, Morningside Nature Preserve, just after the dedication this morning.

It was pretty low-key participation, but JCB and I attended the dedication of Atlanta’s newest park, the Morningside Nature Preserve.

For being pretty darned foggy, the weather was reasonably cooperative—it wasn’t raining.

Most of the people there seemed to have participated in the making of the Preserve. There were also a few people who lived nearby.

Then: us.

John maintains that a likely journalist showed up late, but I didn’t notice.

Advance head’s-up: There’ll be a Weekly Ponder on Friday on thesga.org about this—but not until 5 am Eastern on the 18th….

Posted at 4:31 PM | Comments Off on Civic participation

Rain today, but not so much when I was out earlier compared to what we’re getting now—and it’s supposed to escalate overnight. There’s a line of rainfall over in ‘bama that might deliver 1/2 inch all by itself when it gets here.

So, when I was out for my walk I came up with at least three semi-clever blog entries, but, can I remember them now?

I’ll just observe that I need to practice with the self-portrait-mode on the camera…. And that friends to the north and northwest (and far northwest, too?; haven’t checked the weather way out there…) are getting less clement weather than we are….

UPDATE: Now I remember (one idea, anyway). “Nice weather for ducks,” my dad would have summarized today if he had been walking with me in the park instead of watching snowflakes swirl in southern MI. Well, I did see ducks, but I found it quite interesting that they were standing next to the lake, avoiding being in the water (most of them anyway).

Posted at 6:09 PM | 2 Comments »

Yesterday was rain; today was overcast. Just short of gloomy, though.

Not sure about this sign, but viewing it above the Midtown skyline upgrades its mystery, I think.

Update on the ClickToFlash: read thishere and beware; it’s more complicated than I thought the other day….

Posted at 5:56 PM | 2 Comments »

Rainy day, all day. Mostly moderate or light, but not quite always.

Lake Lanier’s been at “full” pool level or above for the last six weeks—hard to believe the drought we had prior to that!

And, our backyard azalea is in bloom (again), to boot!

Weird, odd, and all that!

Posted at 4:52 PM | 1 Comment »

Not sure what Paul Krugman is thinking…must be an inside joke. And I’m not Nobel economist enough to “get it.”

Overcast and spitty most of the day, but I think the theme out the window is leaves.

UPDATE: Apologies for using the same photo again; look, I even cropped it nearly identically!.

Posted at 6:52 PM | Comments Off on Looking the other way