February 17th, 2010 | General
The four-dozen roses bought from the expensive on-line purveyor arrived promptly on Thursday, February 4 as promised. They were quickly extracted with their sweet attar from the protective packaging and ice packs; there was a small amount of extra greenery; the red...
February 10th, 2010 | General, the world and Mother Nature
It is not that there is nothing to do; indeed, there is far too much that needs to be done. I need to reconfigure class schedules to deal with days lost to snow, to write lectures for classes starting in less than two weeks, to sort through messes on tables and boxes...
February 8th, 2010 | General
Snow came down for twenty-four hours. The storm started around two-thirty or quarter to three On February 5. At three-oh-five on February 6, I put the chicken in the oven to roast. It may have been the changed quality of the light that caught my eye: the air was...
February 5th, 2010 | General
7:10 am There is a winter storm warning for central Maryland in effect from ten a.m. today through ten p.m. tomorrow. Meteorologists predict two to four inches of snow by tonight, eighteen to twenty-four inches in all, and blizzard conditions. Schools throughout the...
February 3rd, 2010 | General
The weather report for Saturday, our wedding day, is ominous. It snowed steadily yesterday afternoon, a sifting of silver against the pewter sky. Before I went to bed I peered out the sidelights of the front door. All was white, all was soft in the bright lamplight....
January 28th, 2010 | General
A great deal is made about the wedding vows. As an erstwhile Episcopalian, I find the words from the 1662 Church of England Book of Common Prayer poetic. There is something very satisfying in that grand finale: “With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship,...
January 26th, 2010 | General
I am generally uneasy when things go too smoothly. Clarity of vision and ease of execution merely lull one into a dream state. Stumbling, however, keeps one awake and alert. Take the rings, for instance. After a flurry of shopping-like activity, we chose a ring that...
January 24th, 2010 | General, Shopping
Just after the stroke of midnight, in the first moments of New Year’s Day, my Dear One proposed marriage. It was quiet there on our couch and I was full of Spanish bubbly and we were watching fireworks explode on television over the Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Of...
January 10th, 2010 | General, Travel, United States
It’s only hours until we depart Florida and we’ll be as cold when we leave as we will be when we get home. Not to complain, of course. We came here to have a week of comparative warmth and that it what we got. It was much worse in Maryland. How cold is it in Florida?...
December 27th, 2009 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, General, Holidays
As I sat at my desk, gray dawn to gray twilight, the snow fell and swirled as sooty juncos swarmed the birdseed dumped on a protected table top. Barely inside the window that frames my view into the woods, I could see Garden Froggy, golden eyes bulging, disappearing...
