After today's lunch I dropped in on the nearby Kohl's to pick up some "necessaries." Exiting after my purchase, I stumbled on a rare sight: a tiny old woman, decked out in scrubbed-white walking gear, snuffing her smoke out on the metal sides of the butt-bin just outside the door so she could keep it for later. I'd only seen that once before, about eighteen years ago, when an old man in a bank vestabule gingerly put out his cigarette with his thumb and forefinger before walking inside.
I break with social conservatives, I suppose, in feeling no great urge to protest city and state agencies as they prohibit the nasty habit out of existence. Did I miss asking for non-smoking seating every time Ed, Paul and I dined in Albany? Not a chance. I've been contemptuous of the industry since I figured it out at age three. [Don't laugh. I did!] But watching an old generation treat their tobacco as they did sixty or seventy years ago when they first learned — preciously — is enough to give a nod to tradition.
Home again, home again. My third in as many years, this trip to Albany was as fun as it was different than 2002's and 2003's. Less video games. More photography. And, for the first time, temperate weather. Sun, a first!
I'm a bit tired and hungry — even for a record-breaking drive of seven hours and thirty minutes. I also have somewhere to be for church this evening; and having spent four days away from just about all but two glances at Google News headlines, catching up on news will be a high-traffic merge. Rest assured, a multimedia telling of this year's Albany Excursion will be up soon. If the Excursion is new to you, educate yourself by reading about the first and second.
Twas on a jolly summer's morn, the twenty-first of May,
Giles Scroggins took his turmut hoe with which he trudged away;
For some delights in hay-makin' and some they fancies mow-in',
But of all the jobs that I likes best give I the turmut hoe-in'
Cho: For the fly, the fly, the fly be on the turmut
And it be all me eye for I to try to keep fly off the turmut.
Now the first place as I went to work it were for farmer Tower,
He vowed and sweared and then declared I were a first-rate hoe-er.
The second place as I went to work I took it by the job
But if I'd 'a knowed a second afore I'd sooner be in quod.
As I was workin' at yonder farm they sent for I a-mow-in,
I sent word back I'd sooner have the sack than lose my turmut hoe-in'.
Now all you jolly farmin' lads as bides at home so warm
I now concludes my ditty with wishing you no harm.
— The Turmont Hoer's Song, Traditional
It was a long day today after a minor family medical crisis arose. It's over — everything's okay. But we're all a little winded. An armchair would be suitable for an evening like this, literal or figurative:
The Mainichi Shimbun is running their annual Visual Nippon summer contest, one of the fine entries featured here. The challenge? Submit a picture that clearly says "Japan." The prizes? Several, all worth your time.
Rock, electric androgyny, the Mediterranean and Far East: a little late, this month's Four on the First is up.
I'd been kept pretty busy at the same time my home computer was put out of service for two days following its power supply's untimely demise — so blogging has still been a little lighter than normal. At least it seems that way to me. But don't think I've been neglecting uBlog-related activities. The photograph above is, in fact, a nighttime shot and I've plenty more skyscapes to present (the weather's been both odd and picturesque). All in good time.
I'm a sucker for Aflac commercials — you know, the adenoidal duck and the conversations about work-related injury he stumbles upon. I also happen to be partial to women in one-pieces and swim caps, so this is a match made in heaven.
Go here for more advertisments, including some duck-time for our Japanese friends.
The air's unstable and the sky's cluttered but pictorially, that all seems for the best.
My view from the balcony has as many moods as one has time to photograph them. The streak in the second photograph's upper left-hand corner is a plane on final approach for Cleveland-Hopkins International's Runway 24.
Juliette Ochieng briefly fell into a situation where she thought it may have been her time; but the Man Upstairs, who arranges such things, didn't intend a vertical transfer. She gave thanks. My brushes with danger — almost hit by a car on a rainy night in 1996, caught outside during the Syracuse Labor Day Derecho in 1998 — left me more shocked than thankful. But I'd like to believe I take things a tiny bit more seriously today. Most of us would. Moments when we're reminded who's in charge help.
