Almost 5 years ago, I posted some of my Little One Abbie’s artwork. Now that she’s a full-fledged high-schooler, calling her “Little One” feels a little creepy, and reminds me too much of Lwaxana Troi. (But I still sometimes do it anyway.)

Anyhoo, in the intervening years, she’s been posting lots of stuff on her page at DeviantArt. And so I figured it was time for an update. And so I sorted through some of her latest stuff, and picked out some of my favorites, and asked if that would be okay with her. And it was. And so here it is.

I managed to get one photo. The LDT Forest (as I like to call it, for short) is more than 15% wetlands. Here’s a view of (I think) Spruce Swamp, from the north.

Have a great weekend!

-TimK

P.S. Photo courtesy my daughter, Abbie.

Now that the storm is passed, and we’re all dug out—which is a whole other story, for another time—we can look back at the fun, the pain, and even the beauty Nemo left us.

The funnest part, of course—for many of us—was being bundled up safe at home, with plenty of supplies, while the cold world raged outside. Some of us lost power, unfortunately, at least for a period of time; and with power, heat.

Others, like my own brother and his wife, worked into the storm (and some of them, through the storm), in emergency-response and medical fields, and for that we thank them.

And after it was over, then came the basking and romping, and some great photo-taking. I’ve collected a number of photos my friends have posted.

Like this little fella (posted by one of my other sisters-in-law), waiting for another shovelful:

The bill has come due for the mild winter we had last year. And since Punxsutawney Phil (played by the classic actor Bill Murray) has predicted an early spring—which here in New England means snow, rain, sleet, hail, and 90-degree swelter, all within a 24-hour period… Since Phil has predicted an early spring, God has apparently decided to cram all the winter originally planned all into an 18-hour period.

Almost 35 years to the day (almost) since the Great Blizzard of ‘78. (Of course, that year, Phil did see his shadow. So clearly, Phil isn’t always too accurate.)

Some Random Photos

Because I didn’t pull out an entertaining and interesting image for any of the other blurbs in this post. (Sorry.)

First Snow

Or to quote Lorelai Gilmore: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have flakes. Flakes have been sighted. Flakage, if you will, has begun.”

Yesterday afternoon and into the night, the season’s first snow in the Boston area (and if I recall correctly, in New England generally).

I settled in, and popped in Gilmore Girls season 1, disc 2, episode 8, “Love, War, and Snow.” Sigh.

A Motto Worth Remembering

Some time ago, I posted some miscellaneous cellphone pictures that had been taken on my old cell phone. Now that I have a new smartphone, with a (slightly) higher resolution camera, it seems lots more pictures get taken. And most of them not by me.

Actually, my Little One, “Abbie the Artist,” has been taking quite a shine to the camera. Her artwork, of course, has greatly improved since I last posted some of it three years ago. She says she thinks in pictures, which sounds like a good name for a photo-memoir… or at least a good name for another blog post. (Stay tuned.)

You can tell she’s artistic, because she dyed the ends of her hair purple. And then started to complain when they faded to pink… -ish.

Hey, Can I Get Facebook on This Thing?

August 1 was the 30’th anniversary of the release of the Commodore 64 home computer. To commemorate the event, Pingdom posted a series of C-64 photos on his blog, and I guess, yeah, we all looked pretty dorky back in the 80’s. (You’re welcome to guess which one is me. And you’d probably be right, since my name is cited right there under my photo.)

Meanwhile, my brother and father and I commemorated the event by digging out my old C-64… which we couldn’t find. Apparently, we had already gotten rid of it. (Unless it’s buried somewhere in my basement, which I guess it may be.) The C-64 was named after its 64KB of RAM (not MB or GB), which was quite a feat for the day. We did, however, find the old Commodore 128, the next-generation system with 128KB RAM, which only half worked. That is, it still works in high-resolution mode (Ha! Good one.), just barely, but the low-resolution video generator seems not to be working anymore.

Regardless, unfortunately, we couldn’t find any floppy disks that still had usable data on them.

Don't Know What It's About

I think this is the last Dave Ramsey story I’ll tell for a little while. (Or at least the last big one.) But I have to at least tell this one, because I’ve already told it to several friends, several times, and it’s turned out to be a hoot.

Dave Ramsey is famous for cutting up credit cards on stage. And for using the word “stupid” repeatedly during the process. And this is a story of the first credit card I ever had. I had gotten it while still a teenager, through a deal with AAA. And I still had that credit card years after I had dropped AAA. I kept it after the account had been sold to MBNA—Yikes!—and finally to Bank of America—Crikey! I charged up that card, and paid it down, and charged it up again, and paid it back down, and charged it up— like a freakin’ yoyo. That poor card was so tired, I had put it through so much: it had a dog-ear in one corner and a tear on the opposite one. But it kept going, and I kept it around, for “emergencies.”

(You can see where this story is going, right?)