Wintry feeling

We got a drizzle of freezing rain and a couple of inches of snow last night, but today is sunny, and the mess is melting off pretty nicely. Hopefully it will be pleasant enough out for a run tomorrow, but just in case it isn’t, I think I’ll hit the bike in the basement for a few miles tonight after work, assuming I get out of the office in a timely fashion.

I wish I could spend the day like Walter, who is content to sit on top of my typewriter and stare out the window. I don’t know how much he can see through that bubble wrap I put on the panes to keep out the cold, but he seems to be enjoying the view. He looked so dignified, I couldn’t resist snapping a gratuitous cat picture and posting it. 🙂

Days like this make me wish I had a big sunroom with a trombe wall to take advantage of the passive-solar heat. I’d stick a treadmill out there and run away my troubles in the sunshine.

Hope you’re staying warm, wherever you are.

Emily

The sun’ll come out …

We went and saw the remake of Annie last night when we got back from exchanging Christmas presents with my family. I tend not to be a fan of remakes, because you damn kids get off my lawn, but this new Annie was much better than I’d anticipated.

My only real complaints were the excessive use of electronic pitch correction — which I loathe — and the questionable decision to cast Cameron Diaz as Miss Hannigan. She wasn’t awful; she just wasn’t good enough to follow Carol Burnett (although admittedly, I’m not sure who would have been).

All that said, I thought it was an effective update on a classic, and Quvenzhane Wallis was cute and plucky and made a good foil for Jamie Foxx. Bonus points to whoever was responsible for casting the dog: This is the first Sandy in the entire history of the musical who’s actually resembled the red, pointy-eared dog from the comic strip.

Meanwhile …

Annie may be convinced the sun’ll come out tomorrow, but around here, we’ve been “stuck with a day that’s gray and lonely” so many times in a row that I finally gave up and shucked out 30 bucks for some fake sunshine today in the form of a light therapy lamp.

We’ll see if it helps. It’s certainly bright. Rainy, misty days are kind of pretty, but too many of them in a row tend to drain my energy and leave me feeling pretty rough around the edges. About all I can say for this winter is that it hasn’t been too icy. After last winter, that’s a huge blessing, but I still could use a little more sunshine.

Ah, well. One way or the other, the sun’ll come out Feb. 19, because that’s the day the Phillies have their first spring training workout. I love ya, spring training. You’re only 57 days away.

In unrelated news, I finally got a hand free to take my guitar to Shivelbine’s and have the action lowered, which it desperately needed. It’s much easier to play now. The guy who worked on it was super nice and didn’t even charge me for it.

They had a 12-string Alvarez for sale. Don’t think I didn’t think about it. The main thing holding me back is laziness: I don’t like replacing strings on the guitar I have. I don’t even want to think about replacing twice as many.

Emily

Go home, fall. You’re drunk.

I spent yesterday cleaning the pond in a T-shirt and watching the bees work. I got up this morning to the sound of sleet hitting the windows and walked outside to find my car covered in ice.

Gettin’ real sick of your shit, fall.

Emily

Winter. Dammit.

The view from my front porch this evening. Completely unacceptable. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, winter. GO HOME.

The sundial on my deck. No sun. Just cold, dark nastiness.

Poor little lizard. Looks kind of like he did the day I bought him at Little Tin Barn.

Come to think of it, the mermaid looks a lot like she did the day I met her, too.

And know we know why Weeping Angels cover their eyes. They don’t want to look at this crap, either.

Y’all know how much I hate winter. I spent most of today trying to ignore it: making avocado-and-quail-egg sandwiches for brunch, starting a batch of yogurt in the Crock-Pot, picking up a couple of gallons of sweet cider at Rendleman’s Orchard, sanitizing the keg to ferment the cider (I will have a post on the glory of homemade hard cider in the not-too-distant future), installing plastic over the windows, finishing up the second Roman shade for the living room, and having dinner at the Pilot House, which we’d never been to before, and which we really enjoyed.

We’re fond of stopping at promising-looking roadhouses when we travel, and the Pilot House, which is tucked next to a little creek on one of the back roads to Jackson, was a nice find. It might be all of five miles from home, but it felt like the sort of place we’d stop on 66 or 61 or maybe the Lincoln Highway — sort of like the Elbow Inn or the Luna Cafe or that crazy place we found out near Middlegate, Nevada, on the Loneliest Road where they serve the “Monster Burger” with olives for eyes. They’ve got the wheel from a riverboat mounted on the ceiling above the bar, and the bar itself is covered with pennies embedded in resin or something. I had a ribeye sandwich that tasted exactly like a ribeye sandwich from a bar is supposed to taste, and Ron had a barbecue sandwich that I will almost certainly order next time we’re there.

They also had Stag on tap, which is invariably a good sign. Stag on tap at a roadhouse is like sweet tea at a barbecue joint or horchata at a taqueria: If they have it, you can safely assume you’re in good hands.

Emily