Greetings from Wingaersheek Beach

We went out early Tuesday to drop a package off at the post office and to pick up bagels (plus I got Pokemon into four showcases, three of which I won). Then I folded and put away laundry and did some other chores, we ate lunch, I did some reading, and then I got a package containing the Oracolor deck Illuminated Paths so I read with that for a while. It was another gorgeous not-too-hot day, so perfect for walking and seeing bunnies. 

My DS9 group watched "Shakaar" (Kai Winn! Lupaza! Bajoran politics! And, fine, Shakaar, though he and Kira bother me less together since I know it doesn't last). Then we watched the end of the extra-innings Red Sox-Marlins game (grand slam!) and a bit of coverage of the Orioles blowout of the Cardinals (13-1!) before the new episode of Futurama (Taylor Swift?!). A gull and her very hungry child we met at Wingaersheek Beach seeking potato chips:

Greetings from the EcoTarium

I spent a lot of Monday in the garage doing things that included finding and unpacking the Doctor Seuss books and other children's classics, giving away more boxes to the ex of someone else from freecycle who picked up boxes -- they're moving into separate apartments, so they both need to pack -- realizing we have comic book series we thought we gave away, and consolidating son's artwork in one box so I could collapse the others. I still can't find my Lord of the Rings playing cards anywhere -- I packed them away too safely! 

We took a walk in the chilly neighborhood when Paul got home, saw several bunnies, made room for the Oxford English Dictionary and kids' books by moving some collectibles upstairs, rushed through some computer work, and eventually ate dinner. Now we're watching the men's NCAA basketball championship (rooting for Michigan for Big 10 pride and my nieces). From the EcoTarium's Secret World of Elephants exhibit, at which I learned how much water elephants drink in a day and that the National Zoo's Kandula used a tool to get to a treat:

Poem for Friday and Old Sturbridge Shop

General Store 

By Rachel Field 

Someday I'm going to have a store

With a tinkly bell hung over the door,

With real glass cases and counters wide

And drawers all spilly with things inside.

There'll be a little of everything:

Bolts of calico; balls of string;

Jars of peppermint; tins of tea;

Pots and kettles; and crockery;

Seeds in packets; scissors bright;

Kegs of sugar, brown and white;

Sarsaparilla for picnic lunches,

Bananas and rubber boots in bunches.

I'll fix the window and dust each shelf,

And take the money in all myself,

It will be my store and I will say:

"What can I do for you today!"

-------- 

I spent part of Friday putting together a waterproof storage box for our deck furniture cushions and a lot of time in the garage tracking down the box with the second bedroom couch covers and pillows, aided by getting rid of some more boxes to a British expat I met on Nextdoor's marketplace. Now we just need to build another bookcase and maybe a display case for upstairs plus some big plastic shelving units for the garage, and finish unpacking all the various boxes currently filling up the space behind the car. 

It was nice out while I was putting together the storage box, but turned chilly by the time we took a walk and was raining before we got back, visited by the bunny. Before dinner we saw the Maryland women win their first round in the NCAA tournament, and after dinner we watched Wicked: For Good, which is streaming on Peacock now. Tomorrow we're going back to Sturbridge Village for a Celtic festival but here are photos of Asa Knight's 1838 local and global import general store from when we were there earlier this month:

Poem for Wednesday and February 14

Grizabella, The Glamour Cat 

By T.S. Eliot 

Remark the cat who hesitates towards you

In the light of the door which opens on her like a grin

You see the border of her coat is torn and stained with sand

And you see the corner of her eye twists like a crooked pin.

She haunted many a low resort

Near the grimy road of Tottenham Court;

She flitted about the No Man's Land

From The Rising Sun to The Friend at Hand.

And the postman sighed, as he scratched his head,

You'd really had thought she'd ought to be dead,

And who would ever suppose that that

Was Grizabella, the Glamour Cat?

-------- 

I had a low-key but nice Valentine's Day starting with over two hours chatting with my high school friends, then lunch, a couple of hours of work, and the first half of Black Widow with Kristen. Then we took a walk to the beach, where I tried to do an Enamorous raid, but there weren't enough Pokemon Go players for us to win. We were thinking about going to Kitanda for dinner but it was so cold that we came home for soup instead! 

We watched the end of Derry Girls, which I'm very sad is over and may actually rewatch from the beginning in a few months -- the music alone would make it worthwhile. Now we're watching Cats, which we settled on after not being able to decide what we were in the mood to watch (I love this movie and I don't care what anyone says, I'm always in the mood for it). Here are some of my Valentine presents and cards from Paul and Cheryl:

Poem for Tuesday and Cute Squirrel

Thought.
By Alice Dunbar-Nelson

A swift, successive chain of things,
That flash, kaleidoscope-like, now in, now out,
Now straight, now eddying in wild rings,
No order, neither law, compels their moves,
But endless, constant, always swiftly roves.

-------- 

My Monday sucked in lots of little stupid ways that it has been suggested many times over the past year that I am Not Allowed To Complain About Because At Least No One Died Of Covid, but a year's worth of them is still a bitch. Anyway, in good news, the laundry is half done, the rain stopped in the afternoon, my Kickstarter transformation deck arrived, Paul made Glamorgan sausages for St. David's Day (yes I know he was problematic for women and pagans, but Welsh food is Welsh food), and Snowpiercer was great. 

And my Barbie Tarot cards are now watermarked and posted to my web page and blog so the next time someone tries to steal and print them, they'll at least have to do some work cleaning them up first. I don't know how it got to be midnight, but Colbert won't shut up about Trump and on top of everything else, I am so done with rich supposed liberal entertainers trying to make more money by keeping Trump in our faces the way they helped get him into office in the first place. Here is a photo of my furry adopted son:

Greetings from Travels

I had plans with Denise on Friday morning, but she wasn't feeling well, so I had a fairly uneventful day trying to figure out Harry Potter: Wizards Unite after a very successful Kyogre raid until evening. Then we went to my parents' for dinner, and then drove to Dulles at twilight on the longest day of the year to pick up Adam from his European adventure, which sounds like it was awesome (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Munich, various castles, Innsbruck, various mountains, Venice, and Rome). He even brought us replacement Iceland souvenirs for the ones we had left on the plane (photo below)! He wolfed down some dinner and went to collapse, and I am going to do the same as soon as The Graham Norton Show is over!

Greetings from Home

Extreme quickie as Adam is about to drive back to College Park and Daniel is flying back to Seattle in the morning. We had a nice low-key day; Daniel had thought he might be meeting a friend for lunch in Baltimore, so we thought we might be driving him there, but she was unavailable, so instead we had brunch here and went to Great Falls to enjoy the great weather before going to my parents' for pizza and very early birthday cake for my father, since neither of my kids can be here on his actual birthday. When we got home, we played some Cards Against Humanity, then watched The Avengers, which we all saw together back when it was new. Here are a couple of pics from dinner:

Poem for Thursday and Yuri on Ice Valentine

Amoretti: Sonnet XXX
By Edmund Spenser

My love is lyke to yse, and I to fyre;
  how comes it then that this her cold so great
  is not dissolu'd through my so hot desyre,
  but harder growes the more I her intreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
  is not delayd by her hart frosen cold:
  but that I burne much more in boyling sweat,
  and feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
  that fire which all things melts, should harden yse:
  and yse which is congeald with sencelesse cold,
  should kindle fyre by wonderfull deuyse.
Such is the powre of love in gentle mind,
  that it can alter all the course of kynd.

--------

My Valentine's Day started with two Rayquaza raids in Cabin John Park and a Kyogre raid at Starbucks, followed by lunch with raiding friends (we were joking that others might be looking for love but we were looking for Luvdiscs). So I got some exercise and some bagels, then came home and did work for a few hours before I got distracted talking to Deborah and Emma on the phone. I saw the horrible news about the Florida shooting and just have no words, since no one wants to listen to the obvious solution to mass shootings.

Paul took me to Not Your Average Joe's for dinner, because I love their goat cheese and raspberry salad, and gave me the card below plus a deck of Yuri on Ice playing cards, chocolate, and a necklace with Thor and Loki-colored Swarovski crystals. We tried to watch the pairs skating long program though NBC only wanted to show the top five couples and made us sit through a lot of time-wasters about weather problems affecting the giant slalom instead, but I love the top three couples and the married American pair, so it's all good.

Poem for Friday and Château de Brézé

History
By Stephen Dunn

It's like this, the king marries
a commoner, and the populace cheers.
She doesn't even know how to curtsy,
but he loves her manners in bed.
Why doesn't the king do what his father did,
the king's mother wonders—
those peasant girls brought in
through that secret entrance, that's how
a kingdom works best. But marriage!
The king's mother won't come out
of her room, and a strange democracy
radiates throughout the land,
which causes widespread dreaming,
a general hopefulness. This is,
of course, how people get hurt,
how history gets its ziggy shape.
The king locks his wife in the tower
because she's begun to ride
her horse far into the woods.
How unqueenly to come back
to the castle like that,
so sweaty and flushed. The only answer,
his mother decides, is stricter rules—
no whispering in the corridors,
no gaiety in the fields.
The king announces his wife is very tired
and has decided to lie down,
and issues an edict that all things yours
are once again his.
This is the kind of law
history loves, which contains
its own demise. The villagers conspire
for years, waiting for the right time,
which never arrives. There's only
that one person, not exactly brave,
but too unhappy to be reasonable,
who crosses the moat, scales the walls.

--------

I spent all day Thursday very close to home catching up on stuff that had been put off since we went to France -- believe it or not, it took me till today to put all my laundry away. The weather was so gorgeous that I had to take a couple of walks, one on the woods path where I was hoping to see deer but ran into utility workers instead, the other in a big loop around the neighborhood to see everyone's daffodils. I also had to rearrange all my decks of playing and Tarot cards to make room for the ones I got in France -- one day I will have a tower room with big stone shelves for them all.

We did not have the Château de Brézé on our list of potential places to visit in the Loire Valley until Kay told me her kids had loved visiting it because it has a subterranean lower level that lets visitors out at the bottom of the deepest dry moat in Europe. It still has a working drawbridge and the oldest parts of the trogloditic fortress date from the 1060s. The upper rooms of the castle aren't as furnished as Chenonceau or Chambord, but the lower levels still have the wine barrels and cooking tools from centuries ago, and you can buy fine Saumur wines from the cellars.

Poem for Thursday and Château de Chenonceau

If You Must Hide Yourself From Love
By Christopher Salerno

It is important to face the rear of the train
as it leaves the republic. Not that all

departing is yearning. First love is
a factory. We sleep in a bed that had once

been a tree. Nothing is forgot.
Yet facts, over time, lose their charm,

warned a dying Plato. You have to isolate
the lies you love. Are we any less

photorealistic? I spot in someone's Face-
book sonogram a tiny dictum

full of syllogisms. One says: all kisses come
down to a hole in the skull,

toothpaste and gin; therefore your eyes
are bull, your mouth is a goal.

--------

I am very pleased to report that all our trip laundry has been washed, dried, and folded! That was no small accomplishment while I am trying to get all my best France photos edited and uploaded so I can use my free Shutterfly coupon to make a photo album before the end of the week. I am about halfway through creating the book and impressed with my photos of Paris in the haze, though less impressed with how my photos in the catacombs came out. I don't have all my clothes and scarves and the four decks of playing cards that are my major souvenirs put away yet, but I am working on it!

Tonight I have spent hours at war with both my computers, desktop and laptop, apparently because Windows changed some setting in their latest mandatory update that seems to have affected my firewall, because suddenly I can't FTP or log in to Google Music Manager (the programs allege that I am not connected to the internet when I am; according to several web forums, I am supposed to open Port 80 and Port 443 to fix this, but at this hour I am too tired to figure out how to do that, let alone how they got closed in the first place or whether that IS really why I can't upload music).

Here are some photos of the Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley, which is not only extraordinary beautiful inside and out -- the castle spans the River Cher, which has swans and herons along the banks, and has gorgeous restored rooms with fresh flowers in most of them, plus it has a hedge maze on the grounds -- but also served as a means of fleeing the Nazis because the long gallery let people escape from the occupied side of the river to the free zone on the other bank. Francis I and Henri II both slept here, as did Catherine de' Medici, who had to share it with her husband's lover.