When Johnny Met Susie

I had reason to delve into some old photos yesterday. This is from the day that Johnny first met Susie, or close enough although we sort of knew each other previously, but we travelled in different circles.

How odd that I am wearing sunglasses but that she is not although she does seem to be squinting. As you have witnessed, she usually wears sunglasses outside. Somewhere along our line of days, she became even more sensitive to light.

Update: Sue just informed me that when she was growing up, she always had to be sat with her back to the window during family dinners.

Fifty-nine years later, my sweet lady is yelling at me.

You see, it was time to dry out my hearing aids overnight, so I am having to recharge them this morning. Therefore, Sue must raise her voice considerably to be heard, and unless I am careful, I will raise my level too, just to hear myself. 

In other news, we are expecting a big snowfall today. Danica has opted to skip classes by not driving into the city. Shauna still drove the other way to work, but that is more or less along less-travelled rural roads, and she is also a more experienced driver and in a better car. We were to get our RSV shots this morning, but Sue has just called to cancel. Meanwhile, JJ will enjoy his day off as school buses have been cancelled.

This is what it looks like now, but it has just begun: front and back.

Spill the Tea

We live on the outskirts, if they can be called that, of our town, but we have now two cafés within walking distance of home. We are not connected to them the whole way by sidewalks, but we find out way to walk over there through the winter conditions from to time.

You are familiar with Dark & Deadly, at least you are if you have stopped your bus here at all in the past few years. It's the café with monsters that has now been open for a few years. While I haven't bothered shooting the monsters lately, I did bother to shoot Sue during our visit last week.

 Most of my photos of Sue seem to be across
the table in restaurants.

I rather like shooting Sue, which is fair enough because she frequently expresses a desire to shoot me, particularly when I spill or drop things in my ultra clumsy fashion.

A new café, Spill the Tea, has just opened in the Health Centre, which has also just opened recently. We trudged there yesterday through gale force winds, as revealed by the blowing flag. It was a bit of a tough walk, but we were drawn by the promise of yummy looking bagels, which aren't of offer at Dark & Deadly although yummy breakfast sandwiches are. We ended up ordering sundried tomato bagels. They were pretty darn good, and so was the coffee.

The sign in the hall and the view inside, which other than us was empty at the time. 

No monsters here. 

So here we are with a selfie and a Sue shot. It seems like 90% of my Sue photos are taken in restaurants. This is about as exciting as life gets on a dull, windy in the middle of January. 

By the way, did you know about the phrase, spill the tea? Milady informs me that it is now a euphemism for gossiping. Seems like a good name for a café and tea house.

Canadian, Eh

I wasn't going to bother posting today, but I thought this was a cute image.

This, about Canadian English, is truer than you might think, and for online spellchecks we usually have to choose between British and American. I tend to choose American, but then I have to verify when it tells me a spieling is wrong. Such spelling usually involves the doubling of consonants, as before an ing ending for example.

Photo Ops are sparse these days. This is a recent one, taken from the trail bridge before it traverses over the water. It is a colour photo btw; it has NOT been processed into b&w. Our Unmighty Mississippi River flows in the background.

Bearded Wonder

Norm was at the checkout just behind us. Quite frankly, he had a marvellous beard. Sue was so entranced that I thought that I would have to intervene before she invited him home for dinner. I feared that she would ask what night I might be out. ;)

While I think my beard is acceptable, by no means do random strangers stop me to express their approbation. Mind you, Sue's approval of my first beard when I was a tender 19-year-old was certainly positive reinforcement for continued porting of same.

At coffee with the boys this week.

That ↑ is about as long as I can grow my beard before it goes all gnarly. I did try to grow it more during COVID, employing special shampoo and  conditioner and ointment or whatever, but it just wouldn't work.

But Norm's beard is special. He can grow it without it beginning to run rampant.

Caturday 87: Ongoing Pawprints

After a light overnight snow, I stopped to take this photo before exiting the garage to head over to the kids on Christmas Morning.

Note the direct registering where the back foot
 lands in the same spot as the front foot

We are into our third decade in this place, and cats have been taking this same route for the duration as far as I can determine. They walk past the garage, up our little walk, and across the front of our house. I can clearly see this pattern on winter days like this, and I have been out on our enclosed porch in warmer weather while they have crossed by. I greet them, often startling the poor things.

While I say "cats," I presume it is only one cat at a time, but in over 20 years, it has had to be multiple cats in some sort of succession. The pawprints remain the same while the cats go marching on into the mists of time, and I find this satisfying in some way.

Scrounging for Photos

I have always posted plenteous photos on this silly, little channel. In autumn it is easy because colour is everywhere. But winter ain't so easy. While there are bright days and/or fresh snowy days, there are a many other days when the skies are grey and the snow is not exactly as "deep and crisp and even" as they were for Good King Wenceslas. But we do our best, and sometimes we can cobble together a post after a few days.

When we begin to cross the trail bridge over the river, we pass some vegetation while we are still over land. One day, I spotted some pretty, frosted leaves by the railing.

On another dull day, I took a couple of minimalist photos in the neighbourhood park.

This ↓ is the main bridge on main street with town hall just behind me.

And then there is Sue and her daily challenges that sometimes supply me with blog fodder. Yesterday, she was prompted to photograph something red through a window. As you know, I wear a red winter coat, and I have a red chapeau as well, so I became the subject. She shot through the front door wreath of me holding a shovel. Out of several attempts, I chose this one to post although she settled on a different variation here for her post.

We went downtown to look for other photo ops. There were several attempts here and there through various windows of various stores, but this one from town hall was the best of the lot although the wreathe photo did win the day.

I looked tiny in the ↑ photo, so I played with embiggening myself. The process replaced the balustrade (is that the word?) behind me as well, but I had to try.

I don't know what other photos I will have to share in the next little while, for we seem to be entering a typical, dull January Thaw period.

Have You Ever Played These Games?

Have You Ever Played Crokinole? Google must not have played because it doesn't recognize the name in spellcheck and won't even search for it directly. However, opening a search window separately did take me to this page, so it is not completely unknown

I have played the game; in fact, I have a photo of Sue and Shauna on the floor by the crokinole board one Christmas at my parents' house  —  in 1974, I think.

I don't know what happened to that board, but I wish we still had it. They are not inexpensive, but it would be a fun game at family get-togethers, or at least I think it would.

I would have last played it in the late 70s or early 80s. A couple from the church had a number of couples over for a crokinole evening. Each man played a game with each woman for a partner although I am not sure if we played with our own spouses.

At evening's end, it was calculated that I had the worst results amongst the men. I remember saying, "I couldn't find a good partner, and I played with all of them."

So that was it. I last played crokinole more than 40 years ago, but I remember it being a fun game and have been thinking about quite a lot as a possible family activity. It would be great to have a board again, but the price is an obstacle, and it wouldn't get much use.

Have you played? Do you still have a board?

We were, quite surprisingly, able to play another ancient game on Christmas Eve: Tiddly Winks.

Tiddlywinks is a fun game played on a soft felt mat where players use small, flat discs called "winks" and aim to flick them into a target called a "pot". The objective is to get your winks into the pot to score points. It is a Victorian children's game that involves launching these disks from a flat surface into the pot, similar to beer pong.

According to the quote, above, it is an old game, more of my dad's generation than mine. I believe it because I never played it much, but when I did play with my dad, he was clearly more skilled than I.

We couldn’t find the game, or at least not inexpensively, in town, but, of course, Amazon had it for a reasonable price. I ordered it but then saw that it would not arrive until January. However, there it was in or mailbox about a week later, all of the way from Germany if you please. 

I will now thrill you with a very brief Tiddly Winks clip from Christmas Eve.