Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Poem for Tuesday and Outdoor Brookside

Deserted
By Madison Cawein


The old house leans upon a tree
  Like some old man upon a staff:
The night wind in its ancient porch
  Sounds like a hollow laugh.

The heaven is wrapped in flying clouds,
  As grandeur cloaks itself in gray:
The starlight flitting in and out,
  Glints like a lanthorn ray.

The dark is full of whispers. Now
  A fox-hound howls: and through the night,
Like some old ghost from out its grave,
  The moon comes, misty white.

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My kids had no school on Monday so teachers could grade midterms and finish semester reports. I took older son to robotics in the morning and had younger son come with me so we could stop at Barnes & Noble, though we ended up ordering the photography book he wanted because it was much cheaper online. Then we went to Bagel City, where we got both sweet (walnut raisin, blueberry) and salty (veggie) spreads and a baker's dozen bagels to bring home. House on Haunted Hill was on cable, and since the copy currently on my shelf belongs to Dementordelta, I recorded it so I'd have my own copy and naturally I had to watch it to make sure it came out all right -- I really dislike horror movies, so I was really hoping that this one would at least have a four-way involving Ali Larter, Taye Diggs, Famke Janssen and Geoffrey Rush (I said so on Facebook and several people agreed with me) -- but sadly it was too much horror, too little sex.

Paul had gone in to work early, so he left early to pick up older son from robotics, sparing me the Beltway on a day when it had to be closed in Prince George's County because of a massive water main break (apparently the traffic wasn't any worse in my own county than usual, but I really wasn't looking forward to finding out). He decided that we should have peanut soup for dinner -- one of my favorite things -- and we spent the evening watching Monty Python episodes before Harry's Law, which has courtroom scenes that are even more unrealistic than Boston Legal's and I couldn't care less, since I like Kathy Bates and I want to live in the America that exists only in David E. Kelley's head. Here are some photos from wintery Brookside Gardens on Sunday, where the holiday lights haven't yet been taken down:















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