Snow, cold...

We got some snow a couple of days ago. Not a lot like some parts of the country just enough to be a nuisance. It's also been quite cold. Roughly two degrees last night. Well the snow got me to thinking of a tradition around here and I wondered if it existed anyplace else. This is a fairly densely populated area and if you don't have a driveway you have to rely on street parking. Well when the snow starts piling up spaces become scarcer. So if you've taken the time to shovel out your car parked on the street you claim that space as yours and further stake your claim by putting a chair in the space. Could be a kitchen chair or a lawn chair. I've seen a baby carriage anyway as I began to look for various items left as space savers in the Boston area I discovered that this is not something particular to this area. Other cities who regularly get snow do the same thing. I found plenty of pictures but I only took the ones from Boston though they do the same thing in Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Chicago and so on.

                                     

 

Christmas was a real toned down affair. In fact because of my sisters situation with her husband we did nothing. Arlene and I essentially just went out dinner, went back to her house and killed a bottle of wine. In a way it was refreshing not having to deal with shopping. Did I mention that as I write this it's FRIKKIN' COLD! Seven degrees as I write this not counting the "wind chill" factor.

On Mt. Washington in New Hampshire (12-28-2017) it was 34 degrees below 0 with winds of 100 miles an hour. In the video clip this guy went outside of the Mt. Washington Observatory with boiling water and watched it instantly turn to snow.

 

I could never go into Boston for the First Night celebration particularly with weather like this. I don't know how people do it? There could be, depending on the weather, anywhere from 300,000 to 1,000,000 people in town.

I can now rest a little easier as the temperature has risen to 8. Anyway I hope everybody has had a nice Christmas or whatever you celebrate. It's time for me to get my act together and actually do something productive. I'll visit around and see if I can get Arlene to invite me over for supper. Hey it's worth a shot.

I'm outta here.  

Say Kids! What time is it?!! This has nothing to do with the blog.

Arlene and I will be going out for a bite to eat a bit later on. She wants Chinese and I want Italian.  We could end up at a middle of the road place so neither one of us will be happy, and isn't that what it's really all about?

I was cleaning out my computer and found a few pictures that I may have posted these here on Blogger and probably posted them on Spaces a while back. I've been blogging since 2006. The first few shots here were taken in the fall of 2006 at the Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, across the street from where I worked for 11 years. It is a beautiful place with rolling hills and a wide variety of plant and tree species. 

Below is the memorial to Mary Baker Eddy the founder of the Christian Science Church.

Below are shots from Fall 2007.

There is a 60 foot tower in the cemetery affording a view towards Boston. Left of center you can see Harvard Stadium.

Below a few local pictures at the Mystic lakes from 2005 and 2006.

The next two pictures are the same. The first one was a picture of the trees reflected in the water and the second is the same picture flipped top to bottom. 

One thing I am noticing is I have less and less desire to drive. Fortunately it doesn't seem to bother Arlene as long as it's local. If we go back to the Island this Spring I drive to the ferry and she drives on the island. Essentially I do the highway driving. I do have to admit that I'm becoming a bad passenger. So anytime I can beg out of driving, well that's just fine with me. Did I just write a line to a country song?

My friend Dave doesn't mind driving. He drove us up to Lowell the other day. His car is 20 years old and it looks it. On the other hand  it runs quite well, at least it did for the 56 mile round trip. My car is 10 years old and served me well and I don't have any plans to buy a new...well newer car. What I really need is a teleporter. Screw the traffic, the woman with the little dog hanging out the window, the moron yapping on his phone as he turns onto a narrow side street not thinking that there could be somebody coming the other way. If I can avoid all that by stepping into the teleporter and *poof* myself to the supermarket. Then *poof* myself home. Well I'm ok with that.

Time to move and end this babble.
I'm outta here.   
  

Psst! Over here....

...I don't know if anybody will read this but here goes. My sister is in the middle of dealing with her husbands medical situation. He will not be coming home. She has retained a lawyer who is helping her wind her way through a complicated and difficult situation. My brother in law is in and out of reality but I'll give my sister credit, she is dealing with everything well after a very rocky start.


I have started several blogs since my last one but just never got around to finishing them. I could start 'em but I couldn't finish 'em.
But life goes on. On January 5, 2018 it will be one year that I stopped working completely. Now it's nice not working but it has been an adjustment for me. I hung around with my friend Dave on Wednesday. We ended up taking a ride to Lowell Ma. because he wanted to buy some chocolates to send to a friend of his in Australia. Lowell is about 25 miles from here and I'm sure you can buy chocolates around here but he was driving and I had nothing else to do. He likes to buy from this place because he used to live in Lowell in the 80's and 90's and still has quite a fondness for it. The candy store is a privately owned business and have been in this same location for sixty years. And yes I ended up buying some boxes of chocolates.
I wish I had brought my camera. It was a sunny but cold day. Dave knows his way around Lowell and this is a historic city and some of the old textile mills are still standing and the canals are still around. For most of the 1800's this was Americas industrial center. It's a good sized city with a population of about 109,000. We went to a favorite lunch spot of his and later we stopped at a "private club" for a beer. Now the only reason I could see that this was a "private club" and not a bar was you had to press a button, and then you got buzzed in. You can't smoke in any places of business in Massachusetts but apparently since you couldn't just open the door and walk in, it is a  "private club" not a bar, and there were people inside smoking. I have been to this "private club" in the past and it's a nice place. We had a couple of beers then continued on our way. We went by where he used to live with his wife and kids back when I used to visit in the 80's. And the grand finale  was going by the house Bette Davis was born in. These are pictures from the internet.

Something else I didn't know, well I did kind of know but I forgot I knew. (What the hell is he talking about?) Fannie Farmer lived up the street from me. The house was lost to fire in 1979.

  
Then there's the house where Amelia Earhart lived with her mother and sister. Her sister lived there until 1998 when she died at the age of 98.
   

 

One thing I have noticed is I am becoming less and less enamored with driving. The greater Boston area is a wonderful place to live. It has much to offer but driving around here is not one of the perks. For an area supposedly filled with so many smart people they weren't so smart when they laid out the streets and roads. We have many rotaries or roundabouts if you like and they can be a challenge. One in particular near where I grew up, features six roads leading up to the traffic circle. If there is a pedestrian that wants to cross from on side to the other, They press the walk button and everyone entering the circle stops and the pedestrian crosses.  Then all the traffic lights turn green and everybody enters the circle at once fighting for position so they can exit where they want. It's insanity. So as I age, though I am fortunately in good health, I sometimes think about moving north to New Hampshire. It's quite rural compared to Massachusetts, and certainly cheaper to live though I would miss being able to go into town which is only five miles away. 

Okay now I'm beginning to ramble. Maybe I'm all blogged out. I had jotted down several things more to write about but I think I'll save them for the next installment. I had other things like the state's plans to change the rotaries to roundabouts. Difference? There will be lane markers and you have to be in the proper lane for your proper exit. Yeah right! Then there will be times when the white lines will be covered with snow. It won't matter. As far as I'm concerned it will be the same free for all it has always been. It would be tough to police.

So it's time for me to get my act together and go and run a couple of errands. I plan to come back later and see what's going on in blog land. For now...
...I'm outta here,