It has been foggy here the last few days. Not sure if it has to do with my childhood living in England, but I find the fog comforting. Things seem quieter, there is usually not much of a breeze, sounds seem muffled. I also like the play of contrast, shades of gray on gray, the way lights are transformed into shapes and auras.. I often tried (usually unsuccessfully, I got this one from Google images) to capture that in my earlier days of black and white photography, will have to try again with my new camera. Maybe it is the attenuation of color on days like this that make them so vibrant when the sun comes back. Probably a life metaphor in there somewhere, but I will leave those to AM. ;-)

So many movies have made fog seem "evil", so I am thankful I have not seen too many of those, but a dog howling stills brings to mind the "Hound of the Baskervilles" a movie that made for some restless nights when I was a wee lad. ;-)

How do you feel on foggy days?

Where does the time go! I guess watching 3 out of 4 performances of the Wizard of Oz can make a dent in your blogging time, but it was fun trying to see what changed from performance to performance. Some of the ad libs by the 4th performance were hilarious, and all the kids were having a good time. I also got to practice with my new camera.. finding it hard to hold that thing still in low light.

OK.. I am all done with my shopping and decorating... yeah right! I am making progress, but it always happens.. I can find presents everywhere for a few people, and cannot for the life of me figure out what to get the others. Think I should just go with gift cards and booze at this point? Or maybe make a little more effort? ;-)

The forecast tomorrow is for a chance of snow. I am sure all the kids are putting on their pajamas inside out, walking backwards to their beds, and leaving spoons on their window sills. Anyone have any other superstitions to get a snow day?

Hope everyone is enjoying the festive music at the malls, the energetic walks from the outskirts of the parking lots, and the patient conversations in the checkout lines. :-) Humm... back to amazon.com for now.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was very enjoyable with great food, drink and company at AM's house, followed by fourteen of us going to see "Enchanted." Friday I was inspired by the sales flyers and my mom's request that I buy my Christmas present from her... so now I finally have my new digital camera. I am still learning how to use it, but got some good practice shooting some skydiving activities on Saturday. I am looking forward to getting back into my photography, it's been a long time.

Starting to get into the Christmas decorating frame of mind... will drag my tree out of the attic soon and get it up. I like the fact that my tree has all its lights already on it, but have now learned that when they go bad.. it is a "pain" to get them off. I would like to meet one of the poor souls who clip all those lights into the trees in the first place, that has to be a tough job, I wonder what profanity sounds like in Chinese?

So who has all their decorations up and Christmas shopping done already? I have barely started shopping.. but plan to do a lot this week.. then just have to wait for the packages to arrive... what did we do before online shopping? Oh yeah, I remember that Christmas Eve in KMart with the lights being turned out... not going to let that happen again! :-)

I am usually pretty patient, but when my cable, internet and phone all got knocked out this morning, I was a bit annoyed, since I do a fair amount of work from home. I called and reported it and was told that there was an outage and it would be back up soon. Patience I said. When my daughter came home from school at noon and could not contact me through our usual methods, phone, IM or e-mail... I was concerned. To keep the worst case scenarios from playing in my head, I dashed home after lunch to make sure all was OK. It was, apart from a young girl who was bored out of her mind! Now, I remember the days before internet, cable TV, video games, etc.. but this 13 year old has never known a day without the internet. It may as well have been a full power outage, we would have just been colder! :-) I walked out back and could see the painted lines in the grass showing where my cable was, and the fresh trench marks and spool of cable at the pole... I called Comcast again.. and was told that the outage was fixed. "Not for me", I replied. But since it was after 1 pm by this point, they could not send someone out until tomorrow, and that was going to be sometime during the day, would I be there?. "You mean I need to stay here all day so you can fix the cable you dug up in my back yard?", "Yes, sorry", she said (then started going on about the difference between a meteor and meteorite) ;-). We will see what time this repair gets done tomorrow. Fortunately, I have my cellular modem for the laptop, several hours of shows on my DVR and my cell phone. Redundancy can help with patience. :-)

It was an all blogger birthday celebration on Friday, with Anne, Dan, myself and AM. We were all impressed with Anne's new iPhone.. I really have to get one of those soon! We were in Annapolis at the Rams Head to enjoy the sold out Mark Cohn concert and some refreshing local brews. It was a great start to a fun night!

Saturday was a relaxing day with not too much to do until the afternoon when we took a road trip to my old neighborhood in Forest Hill to pick up my daughter and have dinner with my "old" neighbors. (they aren't really that old.. just from my old neighborhood) :-) We had a good time with new introductions and delicious food, then trekked our way back south to the "new" neighborhood.


Sunday, the daughter and I were up early for the last horse show of the fall season. It was a cold, blustery day.. with a few raindrops here and there at the beginning, but the day turned out nice and the show went well. She decided to enter into some morning walk/trot/canter classes and an afternoon jumper series (small fences). She won first place for the first time on Pilgrim (her horse) on the second of the jumper classes and was thrilled (especially after a little difficulty on the first jumper class). We came home cold and tired, with a rainbow of ribbons and smiles on our faces.


Looking forward to the shortened work week and Thanksgiving festivities. I usually don't have too much trouble finding a few things to be thankful for, but this year will be especially easy! :-)

Tonight I witnessed several incidents of husbands being thrown out of cars, the disappointment over not being able to have a baby, confusing discussions over money, and a beautiful cop who was making a mint on speeding tickets. Then it was my turn... and I won the Nobel Prize! We were playing the Game of Life. :-) It was a bit different than I remembered from the version I grew up with... seemed like you could do more "gambling" in the older edition, but I also recall those games hardly ever finishing, since they took so long. It was fun playing together, laughing, and for a change a computer was not involved!

What are some of your favorite non-computer games?

My birthday is tomorrow! As I reflect on the past year.. nah.. not going to get all introspective and stuff like that. Just going to say it has been a great 6 months, must be the blogging... it brings me such joy! ;-)

Got to enjoy an early celebration on Friday with a wonderful dinner and a play. It was Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew", but done with modern costumes and props. This made for a interesting presentation, from humor to some unsettling parts along the lines of domestic violence, but seemed to end with a more modern "mutual respect/team approach" to relationships. I think I am going to start saying "Well Met" instead of hello for a while.. just to be brave ( or stupid?).

Saturday brought the 30th anniversary gala for Changing Focus. It was a fun event, with a lot of folks I've known for a long time now. We even managed a few dances, of the slower variety.. will be at least another week before "the Twist" or "Brown-eyed girl". We followed up this event with The Crayfish at a local bar, always entertaining!

Sunday I started to feel a cold coming on, and it has been making itself noticed more today. Hopefully after a few naps today and a good nights sleep, I will shake it soon. Nothing quite as much fun as being sick on your birthday. (OK, I am sure that can be topped in many ways.. just going for the sympathy comments) :-)

OK. go ahead and top it.. what were some of your more "fun" birthdays?

Off to bed... Have a good election day!