9/365 Sunday, 01/09/2011

Yes another Mieze shot...I'll try and space them out, but on many a day she'll be my most interesting subject. On this day she was being a furry book-weight on top of my
"Everything notebook" and Moleskine Calender. Yes I have a mild notebook-fetish. The "Everything notebook was purchased at the KaDeWe when were there over last New Year's. It's a "Leuchtturm1917" --read about it here: Leuchtturm

Saturday, 01/08/2011

kitchenette building

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

   We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,

   Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong

   Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

   But could a dream send up through onion fumes   

   Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes   

   And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,   

   Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

   Even if we were willing to let it in,

   Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,   

   Anticipate a message, let it begin?

   We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!   

   Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,   

   We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

   Gwendolyn Brooks, “kitchenette building” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1963 by Gwendolyn

   Brooks. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Gwendolyn Brooks. 

I heard a reference to this poem by Gwendolyn Brooks this morning (Sunday, 01/09/2011) on Krista Tippett's show "Being". Her guest was Elizabeth Alexander, who wrote the poem "Praise Song for the Day" for the Presidential Inauguration of Obama. The minute I heard Alexander reference the poem I remembered that yesterday I had taken a shot of the onions I had just chopped for our dinner.... and so I decided to post that poem along with my onions pic for the 365 entry for Saturday.

Friday, 01/07/2011

Had a great time yesterday catching up with a former Albion College student (Hi Diana!) who was back to  Michigan for a visit before returning to her graduate program in Marine Sciences on the East Coast. It was also fun to meet in 'Relli's" one of the few places in town that most if not all Albion students will (fondly I hope) remember.

Thursday, 01/06/2011

Hansi was sitting on the new place-mat (he thinks we put them there for him to sit on...) looking all pretty so I thought I'd snap his picture. Once he saw me swooping in with my camera he decided to make a dash for it and so I got a blurry action picture of him instead....So it goes so it goes...

5/365 Wednesday, 01/05/2011

While I was watching West Wing I become engrossed in taking pictures of this paper-weight. This is the image I chose to represent the day. I had originally wanted to post a picture of wintry Albion, but I went with this one instead.

4/365 Tuesday, 01/04/2011

This is another of our four cats. Her name is Mieze, as in "Mieze-Katze" which is the German for "pussycat". Her name used to be "Mice" -- i.e. the Latvian version of Mieze, since her first owners were Latvian. That named caused a lot of confusion at the vets office--they couldn't figure out why a cat would be called "Mice". We took Mieze when they moved back to Latvia after having lived in Michigan for a number of years. She is very sweet with us, but stubbornly shy with strangers. She bolts into the basement when someone who is not us comes to the house.

She also gets along fine with her co-cats--they play together and even though sometimes the two boy cats are a bit aggressive she doesn't seem to really be scared around them the way she is around people. The only cat she had some problems with was a cute little grey cat we looked after for some months. I think she felt her role or position as "cute, little girl cat" was being usurped and that made her slightly less friendly towards that cat. She is the only one of our four cats who still has her front claws which she puts to good use making abstract "works of art" on our walls and furniture. She hardly ever uses them with her cat-siblings. The little white fluffy thing is her special toy. Besides playing with it and carrying it about, she carrys on quite extensive conversations with it-in a way that she doesn't speak to us or her sibs...But she does most of this when we are not looking--if you try and catch her in the act of talking or playing with it she quickly adopts a perfectly nonchalant stance--as if to imply she has no idea how the toy came to be where it is or where all the noise was coming from we just heard. Its her own little secret, except that its not really...

3/365 Monday, 01/03/2011

The day got sunnier as the morning progressed. I just filled the bird feeders the day before, but most of them were still staying away. There was a woodpecker (check my flickr stream), and this cute grey/brown squirrel. The woodpeckers often come when none of the others do. The squirrels are there all the time.

The grey/brown colors are unusual for Albion where most of the squirrels have either dark brown or black fur.

This was a close-up taken through the kitchen window.

2/365, Sunday, 01/02/2011

Day two of the 365 picture project. I was going to post a picture of a deer I saw through my window hanging out in a neighbor's yard. But then I turned around and saw this scene and decided to go with it. Hansi is such a dear--very affectionate, albeit sometimes a bit neurotic (he has a tendency to use his paw to bang on things and make noise: flaps of boxes, closet doors etc..). Bill has been home for two weeks but tomorrow he will leave again (at 5am) to drive to the airport so he can fly to his job in Cambridge, MA. I am sure the kitties will notice!

This is the first picture of the year! I decided to take Hans for a short walk on the leash (I'll be sure to post a picture of this at some point!) and took the camera with me. We had an unusual warm spell in Southern Michigan that melted all the snow that was still on the ground. But today it was already turning colder again. That's the main reason the walk was a short one! This is a shot of our Winter trees and the sky behind them. They are wonderful even though they cause a lot of what I call "tree-crap"-leaves, branches etc...to rain down on our modest yard at an alarming rate...it's sort of impossible to keep up! But they are beautiful.

Christmas Crackers!

This year I've noticed that quite a few of my flickr contacts and favorite bloggers have Christmas crackers or bonbons along with their Christmas dinner. I remember these well, from my childhood years growing up in Australia. They were fun! You open it with the help of someone else and there's always a pop or bang-hence the name. Inside there's a hat made of tissue paper and a silly joke --sometimes a little toy as well I think.

I remember one Christmas year in Germany my mother desperately wanted to find some but she had no luck--there were none to be found in the land of Glühwein and lebkuchen. They are clearly an Anglo/Commonwealth custom. Here's what wikipedia has to say on the subject:

Christmas Crackers

And here's a link to a description of them and some examples of the kind of silly jokes you'll find in them: Christmas cracker Jokes

And finally here's a link to a short video of one of my favorite bloggers reading the joke that was in her cracker and then putting on her hat--so cute!! ImpossiblecatChristmas