Month: November 2017

Random Semicoherent Thoughts – Volume 31

I darn near violated one of my personal rules for this blog several times in the past month.  Fall colors just beg to be photographed and shared and I became sorely tempted to do so.  That may explain some of the recent lack of black and white photography.

I count myself fortunate to live in a part of the world where the fall season brings with it hillsides full of color.  Every time I’ve lived somewhere that doesn’t have this like Northern Illinois (where you can only see one line of trees) and Oklahoma (where the scrubby trees may look nice for an instant on the lone day between summer and winter), I have felt out of place.

Fall hung around for quite awhile here in the Midwest this year.   After a coolish August, temperatures remained well above normal for most of October and November.  Peak fall color normally occurs around the late teens in October, but did not occur until about the first week of November this year.  Our first hard freeze did not come around until last week  <sarcasm> but this has nothing to do with climate change </sarcasm>.

I’m all for jumping on the climate change bandwagon until I realize that another month has passed by without filling my heating oil tank.

I raked the leaves in the yard here at Casa del Boss with the helps of Ms. Boss and middle two Bosslets.  Believe it or not, this was the first year we did so.  From what the neighbors tell me, the guy who owned this house in 1997 declared it a ‘nature preserve’ and stated he would not be doing any more yard work.  Fast forward to when we first moved into the house and you could barely see our house from the street from all the honeysuckle and other weeds.  Slowly but surely (and with increasing competence), we have reclaimed the yard from nature to the point where we finally had a ‘mowable’ yard this year.  I’ve already killed my grass by not raking leaves once in my adult life, thank you to Ms. Boss reminding me that I really didn’t want that to happen again.

Today’s reward for a job well done?  A cup of homemade cocoa from the hands of Ms. Boss.  It truly defines unctuousness in a cup.

A bit of World Wide Web Wednesday for you on this Sunday afternoon:  https://www.misterhoneysuckle.com.  Got honeysuckle and want it gone?  This is worth every… single… penny.  I just so happen to have a neighbor that loaned me his for free.

Sometimes home ownership sucks.  On the other hand, sometimes you go out and do some work that makes a huge visual impact like we did today and it feels really good.  Now if I can only remember that next Sunday when the next round of chores come along…

Random Semicoherent Thoughts – Volume 30

Searching for a theme in this particular post may be an exercise in futility.  This one is truly random.

It’s Veterans’s Day today.  My last communication with my father before he died suddenly was a pic of my daughters wishing him a Happy Veterans’ Day to their favorite veteran.  He was off having an adventure at the time, as he was prone to do, and was somewhere I knew he would not likely receive it right away.  I never imagined I wouldn’t ever enjoy the opportunity of speaking to him ever again.  I hope he did actually receive it.  His granddaughters loved their ‘Pa’ dearly.

As I’m sure you already inferred from the previous paragraph, my father was a veteran.  He served as a naval aviator during Vietnam, though he never actually went to Vietnam.  He pushed very hard for me to join Navy ROTC when I went to college, I wanted nothing to do with it.  It actually became a heated argument during orientation.  He finally relented.  It took years for us to discover the truth behind the outcome.  I finally admitted that ROTC would have done me some good.  He confided that he gave in because he discovered that the ROTC program at my school was in complete shambles.

My eldest daughter’s boyfriend turns twenty this weekend.  Fortunately for me, she softened the blow of this news by reminding me that she turns nineteen this week.

Yesterday’s day off from work provided me the joyous opportunity to have lunch with Ms. Boss and my eldest Bosslet.  Afterwards, we stopped by the coffee shop where my daughter works part-time to get a coffee.  It was very gratifying to watch her navigating the adult world successfully – talking with us, chatting with her regular customers, executing her plan for the day.  It looks like we may be on the verge of launching one into the world.  One down, three to go.

The middle two Bosslets, freshmen in high school, just finished their first marching band season.  They have found their tribe which make me very happy.

My youngest Bosslet is in her first year at the middle school, a place I am convinced takes perfectly wonderful children and transforms them into something I do not recognize.  It’s happening again.  Yes, I know this would happen regardless of whether they were middle school or not, but humor me.

The past two Veterans’ Day weekends included running a half marathon.  That won’t be happening this year.  In fact, a half marathon won’t be happening this year, period.  A ten-miler in April will go down as my peak mileage for 2017.  A health scare in June meant I only ran twenty miles for all of July.  The aggravating part is that the health scare was almost completely unfounded and running would have helped.  I never got back into my routine of running five miles at three times a week.  I went for four yesterday and managed just three.

To all the veterans out there, Happy Veterans’ Day.  Thank you so much for your service.