Weekly Ephemera #121

Eight years ago yesterday my friend G_v passed away.  Sometimes it feels like yesterday ... other times it's been forever.

• I decorated the house for Christmas this week.  Early in the week I put up the front door garland, wreaths, and laser lights.  Yesterday I put up the tree.
  
  I was going to put up the balls in our oak tree but the tree hasn't shed its leaves yet.  If my crappy memory serves, there was a year when the tree didn't drop its leaves until the end of winter/early spring.  I'm going to wait for a week to see if something happens with he leaves and then will decide if the balls go up or not.
• Our television took a dump.  A dark vertical bar appeared along the left side of the screen.  Ordered a new one and were up and running by Friday with a new TV.
  
  Also on the tech front I lost an earbud during one of my walks.  It fell out on a noisy street when I couldn't hear the podcast I was trying to listen to so I didn't notice when it fell out of my ear.  Fortunately it was a cheap set of buds so not a great financial loss.  I ordered a new pair before I got back to my car.  I might have to experiment with the larger ear cushions.
• The Wife's Aunt and Uncle celebrated their sixty-fifth anniversary.  If the Wife and I make it to that one we will be nearly one hundred years old.
• Speaking about the Wife, she's been fighting a cold this week.  Hope she gets better soon.
• I walked twice this week for a total of 23.4 miles (37.7 km).  It was cold this week but I still worked up a sweat.  As I walk longer distances it's getting harder to plot interesting paths.  I try not to visit the same place very often and I try to do loops instead of doing there-and-back paths.  I'm also finding that walking along rural roads near the outskirts of the city is not interesting or desirable to me.  Unfortunately there is only one place I can do long enough trail hikes (Indian Cave state Park) but it's over an hour drive from where I live so not worth doing very often.
• This week I started watching "Arcane" on Netflix.  Really liking it.

Welcome to December and the Holiday Season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope all my American friends and family have a stomach stretching Thanksgiving.

It's during times like these that we need to remember the good things we have and be thankful for those who share their love, friendship, and support with us.

🍂 Happy Thanksgiving!!! 🦃

Weekly Ephemera #120

Not much happened this week which, frankly for once, feels nice.  A few highlights:

• We were invited to Thanksgiving Brunch at the Wife's niece's home today.  It was a nice departure from the major dinner on Thanksgiving Thursday.  We all had a great chat about 'things' and I came home with a new red dog hair coat - Thanks Ruby!!!
• I walked two times this week.  I would have done three but Monday was rainy and windy and I just stayed home and hunkered down.  The walks I did totaled 24.8 miles (39.9 km).  They were a nice meander around the downtown area of the city.  I was going to cross the pedestrian bridge and walk on the Iowa side but the bridge is being worked on as they add an extension.  Temperatures are finally feeling like fall but that won't last as colder winter temperatures are coming this coming week.
• In between the walks I watched some television.  The Wife and I watched the latest seasons of "The Great British Baking Show" and "Blown Away".  We enjoyed "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin" (⭐⭐⭐),  I watched "Star Trek: Prodigy" (⭐⭐⭐), the director's cuts of "Rebel Moon" parts one and two (⭐⭐), and "Madam Web" a Sony/Marvel movie (⭐½).

That was it for this week.  Have a good week everyone!

Book: Patrick Rothfuss' "The Narrow Road Between Desires"

I have mixed feelings about Patrick Rothfuss.  His first two books, "The Name of the Wind" and "The Wise man's Fears" were pretty good - the first of those I would say was even great.  The last book came out in 2011.  The third book ... has not been published yet and I am starting to think it never will.

The author has published two related books since his last big novel.  Both books have concentrated on one supporting character from the other two books.  The first was a novella about Auri - "The Slow Regard of Silent Things" which I liked very much.  The other book was my latest read "The Narrow Road Between Desires".

This novella follows Bast, a friend of Kvothe (the main character of the first two books).  His story, like all of Rothfuss' books, was well written.  The author has a way with words and his prose flows on the page.  If only he would actually write more.

I gave this book four out of five stars on Goodreads.  It left me wanting more but history has told me not to expect anything soon.  The progress of this series is too slow to satisfy the reader's desires.

Great Britain 2024 - Part Nine - Ending Our Trip In London

Day Twenty - 01 October

Winston Churchill.

We left Glasgow and took our next to last two train trips.  Over the last twenty days we spent one day and two hours riding twenty trains 1,389 miles (2,236 km) across Britain.  These last trains, the longest segment ridden, would take us to the start of our trip, London.

It was raining when we arrived and we took a taxi to our hotel located on the edge of Hyde Park.  If the weather had cooperated a walk in the park would have been nice but the weather and our busy schedule would prevent us from exploring this large park. To be honest, as it was near the end of our travels in Britain, I was too tired to do much wandering.

Day Twenty-One - 02 October

Westminster Abbey.

We took the tube to Westminster station and met our walking tour guide near the statue of Winston Churchill.  From the start you could see the Elizabeth Tower with its famous Big Ben bells.

First stop in the walking tour was Westminster Abbey.  A lot of history has taken place here and many famous British subjects are buried here.  Unfortunately the crowd of tourists were often standing on graves that you wished to photograph.  Still we saw the resting places of Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, and Michael Faraday.  While I gawked at the scientists the Wife gawked at the authors and poets.

From there we walked to Buckingham Palace to witness the changing of the guard.  Along with the regular soldiers there was a large contingent of Gurkha soldiers in their distinctive uniforms as well.

Buckingham Palace from the mall.

We walked to Trafalgar square where we stopped for lunch at the Admiralty pub.

After lunch we walked toward the river Thames passing number 10 Downing Street along the way.  At the Thames we got on a boat and cruised up the river.  Unfortunately the weather, which had been fairly dry most of the morning so far decided to get a bit wetter so we went inside the boat and admired the buildings through windows.  From the ship we saw the Shard, the Globe Theater, and other landmarks you could see on the way to tower bridge.

Tower Bridge over the Thames.

At Tower Bridge we got off the boat and toured the Tower of London.  We met the legendary ravens and saw the crown jewels and learned of the history of the tower and the beefeaters who guard it.

One of the Tower of London Ravens striking a pose.

The walking tour ended here and we walked to the nearest tube station and headed back to our hotel.  It had been a busy day full of walking and history.

Day Twenty-Two - 03 October

Today we were on our own and the weather cooperated with us.  We started with a tube ride and a short walk to the Globe Theater.  We toured the reconstruction of the famous theater where Shakespeare's plays were - and still are - performed.  

Inside the Globe Theater.

From there we walked to a place to eat suggested by one of the wife's students.  The place was a food court with several vendors offering everything you would want to eat.  We ate at the Black Pig.  Finding a place to sit was challenging (an understatement) but we finally found a seat at a picnic table.  We didn't have any drinks and the lines to places selling drinks were long.  The Wife enjoyed her sandwich.  I did not enjoy it as much.  Too messy and spicy for my taste.  This was probably the only meal in Britain that I did not enjoy (or didn't finish).

The London Eye.

We walked along the Thames to the London Eye.  We were early so we had some drinks at a chips shop near the eye.  We had skip-the-lines tickets but we didn't realize you needed an app to use them so we found a place to sit at the Wife sloooowly downloaded the app.  We were a bit early so we had time and we managed to get on the eye on time.  The view of london from the eye was pretty awesome.

The Parliament building and the Elizabeth Tower (home of the Big Ben bells) seen from the Eye.

We were tired from all the walking and touring so we made our way back to the tube and headed back to the hotel.

Day Twenty-Three - 04 October

We  checked out and took an Uber to the train station where we took our last train, the twenty-first - this one an express train to Heathrow Airport.  The rest of the way went fairly smoothly.  It was a long day but it was nice to be home.

The Wife and I really enjoyed this trip.  Meeting with friends was a delight.  Not worrying about a language barrier was comforting.  transportation, while there were a few hiccups, was easy to figure out.  It felt different from our 'normal' trips which are in more exotic locations.  This trip was about history and everywhere felt familiar and definitely not exotic.  This is probably how our future trips to Europe will be like.  We still have a few exotic locals to visit but that is for another day, another trip, and another post.

Pictures can be found in my 2024-09 Great Britain Google Photos album.

Weekly Ephemera #119

• I power washed the deck and spread winterizer on the lawn this week finishing the winter prep.  It was cold and windy when I washed the deck and I did a half-ass job on it, especially on the underside of the deck.
• An insurance field adjuster came this week and did a second inspection of the hail damage we got back in July.  He caught everything the first adjuster had missed and what we had asked for from the insurance company.  This is the same damage the desk adjuster, after looking at pictures, said she didn't see.  Not sure what was going on with the desk adjuster.  There was a heated discussion between the adjuster and my roofer.  Fortunately they smoothed it all out and shook hands at the end of the inspection.  The second field adjuster handed us a check covering the missed damage which made the Wife and I very happy.  The actual repairs will probably be done next spring once it starts warming up again.
• I deleted my Xitter account this week.  Since it seems I have to have at least three social network accounts at any one time I also opened a Bluesky account (@homerstravels.bsky.social).  I now have accounts on Discord, Mastodon, and Bluesky.  Most of the people I have been following on Mastodon also have Bluesky accounts.  While I don't really need Mastodon I'm probably going to keep it since I like to have a non-corporate run, multi server social network as a backup.
  
  I also switched from the free service IFTTT.com to the paid service dlvr.it to distribute my posts.  It is a little expensive ($99 per year) but it will post my blog posts to all three of my social media platforms and it does it in a nicer format than IFTTT could provide.
• I hiked two times this week.  We are in that rainy, windy, and cold period before the snow has arrived when walking is hard to do.  I was going to walk three times but an all day cold and windy rain kept me indoors for part of the week.  I walked a total of 25.3 miles (40.8 km) this week.  The second walk was over 15 miles (24 km) and was my longest walk since November 2022.  It nearly killed my legs.
  
  On that long walk my phone died.  The phone got stuck in some sort of loop.  By a strange coincidence I was only a couple blocks from my cell phone store and they were able to revive it. Phew!
• I spent some of the rainy days watching more episodes of "One Piece".  The Paul-Tyson fight resulted in us subscribing to Netflix a couple weeks earlier than I'd planned.  I will now start binging a few shows there this week.

Great Britain 2024 - Part Eight - Glasgow, Scotland

Day Eighteen - 29 September

We went to the Edinburgh train station the 'correct' way which was a heck of a lot easier.  Naturally going down the steps was easier than up.  We caught a train to Glasgow which was crowded (standing room only) but fortunately it was only thirty to forty minutes long.

The train station in Glasgow was literally next door to our hotel so we simply walked next door and checked into our room.  The hotel was on George Square the central square of the city.  The square is full of statues and a cenotaph at one end commemorating World War I veterans.

The Cenotaph.

We had some lunch in a crowded pub and visited the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA).  Now, if you know the Wife and I, museums aren't much our thing but we had time to kill and the museum was free so we said what the heck. 

The Duke and his crown.

In the front of the museum is a statue of the Duke of Wellington on a horse.  On his head is an orange traffic cone.  The cone has been removed many times and it is returned soon after.  As a matter of fact we saw quite a few statues in Glasgow and Edinburgh with cones on their heads.

We took the elevator to the top floor and worked our way down.  The Wife and I noted that most of the exhibits were more about the GoMA building and its history more than it was about modern art.  

This evening we went to the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Andrew for Mass.  Afterwards we had difficulty finding a place to eat.  Our first choice was closed due to kitchen issues.  Their suggested alternative was too crowded and rowdy.  We ended up in the same pub where we'd had lunch even though it was crowded too.

Day Nineteen - 30 September

We ate breakfast in our hotel.  They had a nice enough spread but their pancake machine was out of order - a tragedy.

Saint Mungo mural.

We booked a short walking tour this morning.  It was drizzling as we waited for our guide in George Park.  At one end of the park they were filming some show - looked like a period piece.

Our guide showed up and explained the slave trader connection with the buildings surrounding the square.  She pointed out the unicorn on one building - the official animal of Scotland.  The Unicorn is said to be the only animal who could beat a lin in a fight (The British animal is the lion so lots of snark there) we walked through the city seeing religious inspired modern murals, the Glasgow Cathedral (with a view of the Glasgow Necropolis), and various old buildings demonstrating the history of the city.  We even saw the Doctor's TARDIS.  If we'd had time touring the Necropolis might have been interesting - next time.

The Glasgow Cathedral.

We ate at the 'rowdy' pub we'd passed over the night before.   We stopped at a grocery store on the way back so we could just eat/snack that night in our hotel room.

When we arrived in Glasgow we really didn't have a long list, or any list at all really, so we wondered what we would do with our two days here.  After our walking tour I think we could have spent another day (or at least had spent the time we had a little better).  Glasgow wasn't as interesting as Edinburg but there is still a lot of stuff to see if you know where to look.

Tomorrow we would be heading to our last destination, London.

Pictures can be found in my 2024-09 Great Britain Google Photos album.

Weekly Ephemera #118

I missed last weekend's Ephemera post as we had guests staying at our house.

• The Wife's aunt and cousin flew up from Florida and visited over last weekend.  We'd stayed at the cousin's place earlier this year.  They visited with friends and family in the area.  It was a very nice visit.
• The election ... well ... we all know what happened.  It sucked.  I hate all the uncertainty it will bring in the coming months/years.
• I'd given up ever getting enough money from our insurance company to fix the hail damage on our roof.  I'd been talking with them for four months with no luck.  The Wife said it was her turn.  One call later and the insurance company is sending a second adjuster out this week to reassess the damage.  My hope has been restored.
• I walked two times this week for a total of 23.6 miles (37.9 km).  Both walks were after the election results were known and it was nice to be distracted.  Unfortunately I saw my first cybertruck out in the wild which yanked me back to reality.  Damn it was ugly.
• We cleaned all the furniture and stuff off the deck.  I'll be power washing the deck to get it ready for winter.

Great Britain 2024 - Part Seven - Edinburgh, Scotland

Day Fifteen - 26 September

It was raining when our friends dropped us off at the Berwick-upon-Tweed train station.  We walked in about five minutes to eight and were on a train to Edinburgh by 8:00am.  Just over thirty minutes later we were in Edinburgh.  The hotel was not far from the train station but, for those not familiar, Edinburgh is a multilevel city.  The train station was on the lower level and the hotel on the Royal Mile was on the upper.  Google maps was ... confused.  We walked around in the rain looking for the stairs up to the upper level.  I eventually found a long staircase that took us up - it was not the right one.  It got us up but it was not the nearest to our hotel.  I eventually got my bearings and we reached our hotel.  My roundabout way of getting to our hotel added a couple blocks to our wet walk.

The Holyroodhouse.

We decided to walk to the Holyroodhouse, the royal residences when the royal family visit Edinburgh.  The walk wasn't long and mostly downhill but it was raining and windy and the short distance felt much longer.  We got an audio guide and walked through the opulent home and the attached Abbey while we learned about Mary Queen of Scots.  On the way back we took an Uber to avoid the rain and the uphill.

The Uber dropped us off at the Malt Shovel Inn where we were going to have lunch.  It wasn't open yet so we explored Cockburn street with it's restaurants and shops.  We bought some souvenirs and sweatshirts (as the weather was a bit colder in Edinburgh than my clothes selection could handle).  We returned to the Malt Shovel and had lunch.  This is where the Wife started her haggis tour.  She would have haggis nearly every meal, in one form or another, for the rest of our stay in Scotland.

We spent the rest of the day staying out of the rain venturing out only for food.

Day Sixteen - 27 September

Dean Village.

After breakfast we headed out to meet up with our walking tour guide.  The rain had stopped and today would be perfect for a six to seven hour walking tour.  The tour took us past the Sir Walter Scott monument, Dean Village (an old style neighborhood), a restored Georgian-style home, the home of the Scottish First Minister, a park with memorials and views of Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Scottish Academy gallery, and broke for lunch on Cockburn Street.  We ate at a pub before we rejoined our walking tour group.

Edinburgh Castle.

After lunch we walked through a close (a narrow ally/stairway) to the Royal Mile.  We visited Saint Giles Cathedral (we learned about the history of Edinburgh and the Scottish/English conflicts), Greyfriars Cemetery (we learned about Bobby and grave robbing), our guide touched on the Harry Potter connections to Edinburgh, we visited the Grassmarket and Victoria street, and entered Edinburgh Castle.  Our guide took us around the castle before saying goodbye and letting us spend our own time exploring the castle grounds, enjoying the views, and visiting the Scottish crown jewels.

It was a very busy day full of history.

Day Seventeen - 28 September

Our last day in Edinburgh was light activity-wise.  We had an Underground Vaults tour in the morning.  It was a late addition as most of these tours had a ghost tour angle that we really didn't care for but we had the time so ...  The tour wasn't that bad.  The vaults were originally used for restaurant/pub storage.  They eventually were occupied by the poor, workers, or students.  There were ghost stories naturally but, in general, the tour was interesting.

View of the city from Edinburgh Castle.

In the afternoon we went to Saint Mary's Cathedral. The Wife purchased a large icon that she thought would fit in her bag (it didn't) and would have to carry the rest of the way.

We stopped for lunch at the Conan Doyle Pub close to Sir Conan Doyle's birthplace.

I liked Edinburgh.  There was a lot of history and the multilevel nature of the city gave it interest.  It was odd crossing a bridge and looking down to see another house lined street running underneath.  We spent three days there but you could spend a week or more exploring this interesting city.

Next ... on to Glasgow.

Pictures can be found in my 2024-09 Great Britain Google Photos album.

The Day After

 Despite being a pessimist, I find myself always

underestimating the stupidity of the American people.