April 2024

Weather: 50° and overcast. Moderate wind. Dry.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk towards the Causeway with an unleashed Teddi. She was so excited to be on her home turf.

Weather: 50° and mostly sunny with a mild cold wind.

Exercise: 5.0-mile brisk walk on the approach to the Causeway.

Musing

Starting to see familiar faces; most of whom I know rarely venture onto the path during the mean months of Vermont's winter. Saw Holly yesterday. She always shows some love to Teddi, but she can be standoffish to me. As soon as she noticed that I was walking without Teddi, she braked her bicycle and inquired after her. Everybody loves Teddi.

Holly told me that in June of 2023 she severed a tendon in her leg, and she has been recovering slowly through daily therapy since her surgery. Sounds like she has been through quite an ordeal. I am pretty sure yesterday's the longest we have ever spoken. I guess sometimes it can take years to break the ice.

My first few times greeting Holly we would exchange nods in passing. Then a few words. Then one Christmas I offered her Christmas greetings and she tersely responded by saying "I'm Jewish, I don't celebrate Christmas." I remember being a little nonplussed, since I only intended to extend a greeting of goodwill. Oh, faux pax.

I see it from her point of view, now. Since that moment, I never offer a greeting based on my religious tradition, unless having been greeted in kind first. Unfortunately, that bone stuck in Holly's craw for a long time. And I'm still talking about eight years later. Looks like she might have, finally, spit it out.

Weather: 45° overcast with a moderate wind. A spring snowstorm is coming.

Exercise: 4.0 miles with Teddi. Cannot wait to get her haircut tomorrow. Last cut was the first week of January.

Weather: Sucks. 33° and wet snow falling since last night. Very windy.

Exercise: Hand shoveled the driveway. Can't complain though. First time (and I hope the last) shoveling the driveway for the winter of 2023-2024.

Tomorrow we leave for State College, PA for Lauren and Chris' Shower. This will be my first time meeting his parents. Lauren's friend, Megan, and member of the wedding party, is traveling with us tomorrow. It is about an eight hour drive. Glad we got the snow out of the way today!

Listened to the Tigers beat the Mets in the first game of a doubleheader. The Tigers are 5-0 to start the season. Best start since 2016.

Stoic Prompt week 14 (2024)

What could go wrong . . . might

Weather: Snowy, cloudy, rainy and windy. 45°.

Exercise: None. Drove for nine hours.

Lauren's friend Megan is a sweetheart and an easy travel companion. We made good time, stopping for deli sandwiches on the way. We went directly to Chris' parents' home in State College and visited with his mom and dad, his brother and sister, and their respective partners. We stayed about two hours and drove north to our hotel. I was fairly tired, and I was probably not very good company, given that my mind was mush from spending so much time on the road.

Weather: State College, PA. 50° mostly cloudy.

Exercise: None. Attending Lauren's Wedding Shower today at noon then dinner at Chris' family home this evening.

Musing

Although I have never been good at mandatory fun events, especially activities created exclusively for and by women, I must admit, reluctantly, that I had a great time. We broke the ice with Chris' parents the night before, when we met Julie and Chuck and some of their family and friends at their home in State College.

During the Shower Saturday, Chuck was solicitous of my comfort while in the company of his friends and family. I find it hard to step into a party of people who know each other so well. I often feel like a third wheel. They never made feel that way; and I really appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I especially enjoyed the personal tour Chuck gave me of the brass works at State College. His friend Bob and a group of investors have rehabbed an old manufacturing site into various retail and small business spaces and interestingly a cryptocurrency server farm.

The venue for the Shower was a friend’s family compound, an estate first developed in the 1930’s and built largely from field stone. There is a family grotto in the trees beyond the driveway that suddenly ends, and the forest begins. It is immediately behind the property where the two homes are situated. Across from the driveway there is an enormousness built-in swimming pool with a view of the property sloping away down to the valley below. The couple uses the home where Lauren and Chris’ Shower was held for events and as an Airbnb property.

The strong bonds, so clearly evident, among Chuck and Julie’s friend group must provide Chuck and Julie with great joy. Their friend’s love for Chris’ family is clearly apparent. They showed great warmth and worked very hard putting on the Shower Saturday afternoon.

Weather: 50° and mostly cloudy in PA.

Exercise: None. Drove for eight hours to Colchester, VT and home.

Observation

Eclipse Pagans

Weather: Sunny and 60° until it went suddenly dark and then it was quite a bit cooler until the sun reemerged.

Exercise: 4.0 miles on the Causeway trail. Teddi and I negotiated the path between the hoard on foot and on bicycle. Kept Teddi leashed the whole way.

Musing

Amazing. Full eclipse of the sun. My first. Probably my last, too. Most of my eclipse experience is covered in my recent Observation titled, Eclipse Pagans.

On my walk today, on the way back, close to our house at the bend by the river, I spied on the sidewalk this wonderful chalk drawn expression of the eclipse. It neatly imagines the moon moving in front of the sun with some errant stars peeking through the darkness.

This drawing, and one especially nice instant when it went full-on dark, causing the children in the neighborhood to exclaim their gleeful approval, while fireworks erupted in disparate locations around us, were two wonderful moments that made the eclipse of 2024 special for me.

Weather: 60° and sunny with a light wind.

Exercise: 5.0 power walk. More people on the causeway path than I expected. Leftover eclipse pagans, I suspect.

Weather: 55° and cloudy, threatening rain. Cold wind blowing in off the water.

Exercise: 4.0 miles on the Causeway path with Teddi. She walked at her fastest pace since her injury to avoid the cold rain that visited us on the way back. We got back in a nick of time. It rained steady after we got home.

Weather: 50 ◦ and rainy.

Exercise: 5.0 Walk on the Causeway path in a hard cold rain. It let up a bit after about 1.5 miles, then stopped altogether at my 2.5-mile turn-around.

Weather: Variable clouds with heavy storm clouds blowing in from the lake. Very windy. 65° and humid.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk on the Causeway path with Miss Teddi.

Reflection

Who Dat?

Weather: 50° and overcast with showers in the afternoon.

Exercise: 5.0 mile walk on the Causeway path sans Teddi.
Saw the Barred Owl again. There was small group of walkers and bikers pulled over to admire him.

Weather: 50° and sunny in the morning and rainy and cold in the afternoon.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk with Teddi on the Causeway path. Chores; and some more chores.

Stoic Prompt Week 15 (2024)

Test Your Impressions

Weather: 45° and overcast with a fine mist bordering on drizzle. 55° and partly sunny forecasted for this afternoon.

Exercise: 5.0 mile walk on the Causeway path sans Teddi.

Observation

Ospreys are lovers

Weather: 50° and sunny. A little bit of a wind.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk on the Causeway path with Teddi.

Weather: 45° and partly sunny.
Cold wind.

Exercise: 5.0 walk on the Causeway path sans Teddi. Really pushed my pace. Well. For an old guy.

Musing

One thing I like about walking the Causeway path on a fairly unattractive weather day is that it really cuts down on the human traffic. Mostly local regulars today with some Burlington riders and the odd tourist peppered in the mix. Lucked out again, today, got to see both nesting parents on the Osprey platform. Love to watch the male drop off the small branch that extends beyond the platform. He spreads his wings as he stands up from his resting position. Then he just falls forward, like a cliff diver, and catches the wind and he just glides away.

Weather: 45° and rainy on and off all day. Windy and raw.

Exercise: None. Doctor's appointment, etc.

Weather: 55° raw and windy; occasional sun.

Exercise: 5.0 mile walk with Teddi on the Causeway trail. Saw the male Osprey cruising on the wind but could not see the female. Assume she was sitting on her eggs.

Got a new car, a 2024 Subaru Ascent

Weather: The weather is always nice when you get a new car.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk with Teddi on the Causeway Path. Saw the female Osprey.
Jill went on sojourn in the new car.

Weather: 45°; it felt much colder in the wind. Some sun.

Exercise: 5.0 miles on the Causeway Path. Saw the female Osprey up on the branch above the platform. No sign of the male.

Weather: Just plain Sunny. 50° and not a cloud in the sky.

Exercise: 4.0 miles with Teddi on the Causeway Path. Saw the female on the nest. Tough to see her sometimes.

Stoic Prompt week 16 (2024)

Impulse Control

Weather: 60° and nice and sunny. Got windy early in the afternoon.

Exercise: Assembled two Adirondack chairs and a side table made from Polywood (indestructible plastic shit).

Musing

When the kids were little, we drove up into the islands, a little day trip to someplace or another. We caught a glimpse of some Adirondack chairs up on a small hillock by an old farmhouse. Some local fellow made the chairs and a bunch of other Adirondack style furniture out of hardwood, oak, I think.

This was in about 2005, and although he was asking $500 for the set, it was a steal. Even though, that was a lot of money back in the day. He was charging about the same price for hardwood that we had been seeing, available locally at the time, for softwood: pine. His stuff was beautifully made, too. It was unfinished, but that was a selling feature to me. That way I could determine the finish, using top shelf products to seal the wood.

The previous summer I put in pavers, creating an 8×5 patio in the front yard offset from the property line. We defined two rectangles, one on either end on the patio, with borders made from pavers, for landscaping, to plant bushes and flowers. We put those two Adirondack chairs, two chaise style footrests, and a side table on the patio. It looked awesome. Until they didn't. I refinished them twice. What a pain it is to maintain wood in Vermont.

Between the winters and the scaly algae, mahogany is the only wood that seems able to take the beating. Anyway, I got almost twenty years out of the set, and it only started to look like shit two years. Two years ago, I chose not to power wash those nasty green scales off the Adirondack set.

I was over them.

That's why I chose the Polywood set from Costco. They clearly do not look as nice, but no brain damage to keep them clean. It is what it is.

Weather: 45° and rainy and windy. Totally sucked.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk on the Causeway Path. Started out with no wind and no rain. One half mile into the walk the wind started to blow and the rain hammered us. It was so miserable that I did not even look to see if the Osprey was guarding her nest. We almost turned around at the three mile mark, but the wind and the rain let up a bit, so we soldiered on.

Weather: 40° and sunny. Light wind.

Exercise: None. Still feeling poorly from a cold. Thank goodness it is not a barn burner, but it's just sapping my energy.

Musing

Listened to three hours of oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court, online, to determine if a President has full immunity for any action he takes while in office. Woeful times.

Refection

It’s Good to be the King

Weather: 50° and sunny. No wind. Dry.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk with Teddi on the Causeway Path. Got to see both Osprey on the platform, both of them gripping he outside rim of the nest. The male just hanging out. Usually, he dives after he drops off lunch. Today he just sat there, visiting out with his babe.

Weather: Sunny and 60°. No wind

Exercise: Several hours of yard work. Still not done. Bummer.

Weather: 65° and overcast, Rain in the afternoon.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk with Teddi on the Causeway path. The female Osprey was sitting on the edge of the nest all by her lonesome. Watched the Tigers and smoked a cigar. Tigers 4, KC 1.

Stoic Prompt Week 17 (2024)

The Freedom of Contempt

Weather: 60° and cloudy. rain coming this evening. Light wind.

Exercise: 4.0 mile walk with Teddi on the causeway path.

Musing

Got my teeth cleaned today. Been going to the same dentist office for 20 Years.