James' feeling last Thursday was totally correct; he was feverish yesterday and spent today getting equilibrium. We had a late sleep and then I did laundry most of the day while he partook of hot soup, ibuprofin, and relaxation. We had the Weather Channel on all day watching the progress of "Sandy" and the Atlantic creeping up on Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Narragansett Pier in Rhode Island. The latter was surreal: first high waves, then sea foam flecked and spread everywhere over the concrete sea wall, then water in the streets as dark came on. Later we heard part of the Atlantic City pier was gone. Most bizarre was the blizzard it created in the West Virginia Hills. Weather Channel shot of Showshoe, WV, showed an outdoor electric lamp glowing in the midst of piles of snow.

Here our effect from "Sandy" was a wind that kept pushing one of the chairs on the deck from one end to the other. Where yesterday gave us a dark and looming sky, today's sky was such a brilliant blue that it hurt to look at it. I drank in the brisk breeze and the bright sky as I finally refilled the bird feeders. Usually the birds take forever to come back to the feeders if I haven't filled them for a while, but I hadn't been inside fifteen minutes before the first house finch appeared. Saw chickadees later on.

While watching hurricane coverage I pulled out the CDs I'd purchased at Williamsburg and Yorktown, which were:

• "Crystal Carols," Dean Shostak, 2 disk set of carols played on a glass armonica (not harmonica) with piano and harp and violin

• "Profound Joy" by Timothy Seaman, carols on dulcimers and guitar

• "Apples in Winter" by The Itinerant Band ("Seasonal music of times past")

• "Christmas Joy," Fynesound, traditional carols and Celtic music

• "On Christmas Day" by the Middlesex County Volunteers Fifes and Drums (this is "Middlesex" as in Lexington and Concord)

I listened to the last three. Yes, the last one is indeed Christmas carols done with fifes and drums! "Christmas Joy" has other songs besides Christmas songs, and "Apples" is dulcimers and other vintage stringed instruments. Very nice.

I made chicken cacciatore for supper, as it was just what I was craving. As dinner began to cook, the mail finally arrived: the postman stuffed every bit of mail from the last week into the mailbox. Seriously...really? Bonus...bonus...bonus...December "Early American Life" and November-December "Yankee" arrived while we were gone.

Folding the massive pile of clothes was not fun. But it's over, thank God.

Labels: birds, Christmas, health, magazines, music, weather

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:37:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment