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The Moon looked particularly lovely in yesterday morning’s cold blue sky.
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When things don’t make sense to me, I often look at the sky and contemplate what lies out there.
The vastness of it all renders our problems insignificant.
We are less than a speck in time and space, after all.
(Flying saucers?)
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There was a meeting in Congress recently about “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena“, though I did not listen to any of the discussions that were available on YouTube.
There has never been any doubt in my mind that there are others out there and probably many.
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Some say we have already been visited. It certainly isn’t the most extraordinary thing I’ve heard.
Since Congress was discussing the possibility of a future encounter, one supposes that the government is considering plans for it, but given our inability to deal with our own kind, I’m not optimistic that we would be gracious to aliens from elsewhere.
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It’s hard to be optimistic about anything at the moment which is why we spend so much time driving around gazing at the scenery.
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And talking to cats.
It’s Little Man’s Official Birthday!
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And Grant’s Actual Birthday.
Last year he was diagnosed with diabetes and he’s had to give up so many of the things he loves, however he has done well and sometimes a splurge doesn’t hurt.
But he had trouble deciding.
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So after a cake lunch, he’s downstairs exercising to counter the effects of too much sugar.
Last year, I found a recipe for diabetic chocolate cake and made the rare effort of creating one.
It turned out pretty well, I thought. But it was not the real thing. So this year it came from Hannaford’s.
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It was my intention to post this short video of the frozen Batten Kill on Wednesday, but lately it seems to take three days for a video to convert itself to a form that is downloadable to WordPress.
One more thing I cannot comprehend.
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Contrarily…
WP allowed me to upload this morning’s ice palace update, which I’ve not been able to do recently.
So maybe there was a temporary glitch.
Or something.
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Building on ruins and in extreme cold added challenge to this bizarre undertaking.
I was going to call it Ice Henge.
But it’s insufficiently grand.
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Now, if we’d not had that brief thaw last weekend, what might have been accomplished?
The one pillar which survived the big melt lost it’s top yesterday, but I managed to re-attach two pieces with a top-knot, though it may all come down again this afternoon.
While the temperature sits at 22F/-5C, the sun’s rays are amazingly warm.
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The Melting Towers.
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It’s great fun while it lasts and as in in everything, there are lessons learned.
This second structure, apart from being built on the uneven ruins of the last, was different because the cold has been more extreme changing the properties of the ice.
Whereas before I got the blocks to stick easily by wetting them, this time it was too cold to spray, so I sprinkled which caused the ice to crack, although it never actually shattered.
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There are more cold days in our outlook but with warming during the day, it’s unlikely there will be a chance for a third attempt this year.
So I’ll collect up all the containers that have proved useful and make a point of holding on to any others during the year that seem promising.
Hopefully it won’t be another four years till the next cold snap!
A strange thing to celebrate, given the heating bill.
Your ice sculpture is begiining to remind me of some of the sprawling council housing estates on the edges of central London that were built in the late 1960s, with tower blocks and cylindrical stairwells. We managed +1C all day today, with blue skies. But there was no heat in the sun in Beetley. Happy birthday to Grant!
Best wishes, Pete.
Happy Birthday to Grant and Little Man !
Happy Birthday Grant, and Little Man!
The cakes look delicious! Enjoy!
Catherine
Happy Birthday Grant and Little Man. Perhaps your esteemed President will declassify Area 51, and then we can all see the alien hardware that is rumoured to be there!
Happy Birthday to Grant and Little Man! Thank you, Carolyn, for the wonderful post!
Joanna
Happy birthdays to your lovely cat and your husband as well. You have interesting project in your yard (I assume) and you have cold weather. In South Finland it is currently +4 C and raining 😟
Yes, after 4 years of very mild winters, this year has been extremely cold. My previous ice structure was much taller but last Saturday was briefly so warm that it fell completely to bits. Two days later in seriously cold temperatures, I began again. It’s a slightly mad endeavour that I became involved with during a prolonged cold snap in 2021. Each morning I emptied ice out of the bowl we put out for birds and wildlife and after a while I had quite a stack, then two stacks and it became a sculpture of sorts. It was fun and I couldn’t wait to try again and use different shapes of containers. Then I added food colouring. I think of it as an sort of ice mandala, – very temporary. The pieces go wherever they will attach. No rules, no goal in mind except to let it happen. It’s a form of meditation, I suppose. Today is a bit too warm!
I agree – if we cannot even coexist with our fellow human beings without getting into a war, what are the chances of a peaceful encounter with those outside our own world. Happy birthday Little Man and Grant – I wish you both many happy years! Love the video of the cold river (it’s the perfect video to watch while it’s sweltering hot over here). How beautiful are those ice shapes … It looks like little meringues on a cake – very appropriate for the birthday boys 🙂. Oh, and I’ll take one of the turquoise rooms in your ice palace (while it’s still standing), thank you very much!