Hello and Welcome! Come on in and I will get you a nice large mug of super strong dark roast, a cuppa tea or some other beverage. It is a gorgeous day out there! (I hope you get that that means I have to be short here ;) ). Oh, were are we? Some of you may recognize the photo at the top as coming from Cape Cod.
If you joined me last week, you know that I was one Cape Cod then as well. Did I go back to New Hampshire and return so soon? No, I have been down here for over a week. Not just that, I took some time off of work. I had Monday already, so I took the rest of the week. For years this was the week my parents came to visit, but I just saw them in Scotland, so… Anyway, I decided to take the week anyway.
I remember Pastor Jim using the captain’s console as a pulpit and the choir sitting up front. We’d all watch from shore. After a spot on national TV, he was a star. Took all the money and built the church of his dreams.
That place? Really?
We’re a small town, you know.
And now that he’s made the big time, he’s selling the boat?
Well, sort of.
Sort of?
He was awful, people only came for the spectacle of his being on the water. Pastor Jim is selling the boat to raise funds to convert the church into a restaurant.
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word count = 100
Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo by @ Lisa Fox. If you want to join or see other stories, go to the inlinkz linkup.
Hi all! I have been on Cape Cod for the last five days. Those of you who read my blog often know that I have a house here, so being down on “The Cape” isn’t unusual. I have done some of the usual things, like run by the beach, swam at the beach, walked in the woods and saltwater marsh, etc. I’ve also been out on the kayak three times.
I was up pretty early on Sunday. My dogs insisted that I get out of bed around 6 am. After all of the taking care of dogs stuff was done, I did a long paddle. I actually got a later start than I wanted, so there were people out, and it was busy by the time I returned, but it was still nice out.
There was almost no wind early, though it picked up as the paddle went on. Still, the conditions were perfect. The tidal current was ever present, but not as bad as I have seen, so no issues there. A good thing about all of that was if I saw something, I could stop and take pictures without the kayak being pushed all over the place.
For the most part I saw osprey. A lot of osprey. I also saw a seal, but it was pretty far away, so no photos.
When I am not taking photos, I paddle continuously and at a pretty good rate. I followed a power boat for about two, maybe three miles on the way back. I had to stop paddling on occasion because I would start passing – I hate being out front, if, for nothing else, if I need to stop to take photos, I don’t have to worry about what is behind me. OK, so don’t think I was being a speed daemon on my kayak – the speed limit is 6 mph/10 kph. I can easily keep an 8 mph/13 kph rate for miles on end and much faster in bursts. This boat was most likely going very close to the speed limit.
The paddle is nice and takes in a lot of scenery. There are relatively narrow places and large open expanses. Some places are pretty secluded while others are built up. Over all, this is a great paddle, though, because of its length, I only do it a few times a year.
So that was my smile for this week, a very nice, long paddle in my kayak.
What made you smile?
A reminder – although you can still put up smile posts on your own, I will not be putting up smile posts for the next two weeks.
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Come on, I’m sure you smiled at least once last week. Why don’t you share it? I hope you can join in!
Here is list of “rules” and guiding ideas. If you don’t have time to read it right now, just remember that this is an exercise to spread positivity. Don’t smile about the misfortune of others. Don’t smile in a way to excludes others. Make sure a 12 year old can read it.
To join in, write a post to share your smile and then leave a comment on this post with a link to your smile. Or, if you prefer, do a pingback to this post (pingback = have a link from your post to this one) (Note – pingbacks have been very inconsistent – please leave a comment :) ). You can post any time until next Sunday evening (to be simple, I will say midnight GMT, which is 7 PM Sunday for me). Note – I am no longer compiling the smiles into a weekly post as I used to – Sorry, I do not have time.
Hello and Welcome! Come on in and I’ll get you a large mug of very strong dark roast, a cuppa tea or some other beverage. It is bright and sunny, not a bit of a breeze, yet slightly chilly. After this summer, I’ll take the cool! I have been out a couple of times, first taking the dogs for a walk down to the landing and then a run down to and along the beach. It was a little shorter than usual (maybe 4 miles as opposed to between 4 1/2 and 5) since my running routine has been so off lately. Hopefully that will change! Oh, where are we? Besides the hints I just gave, some of you may recognize the photo at the top as being from Cape Cod.
When we were planning the trip, my dad had only two requests: to visit his land (2 square feet) and to see the Edinburgh Royal Military Tattoo. They had seen it before, but he wanted to see it again. He had other suggestions, but those were the only things that were “We Shall.”
I’ll be honest, I was not expecting much. OK, I knew it would be nice and worth seeing, but, you know, watching military marching bands? Right.
I’m glad I went…
First, the setting is just marvelous. There is something about Edinburgh Castle, it seems almost to be part of the hill, not man made. I am sure Tolkien was thinking of it when he created Minas Tirith.
I’d just passed into the backyard through the breezeway between the barn and house and froze.
Light!
I stared straight ahead and thought, “Straight ahead.”
The light that appeared without a sound had straight edges and the shadows of my legs were parallel with those edges.
Impossible.
I turned towards the glare in the breezeway, using a hand to shield my eyes from the UFO.
“Hi!Come here.”
The alien sounded just like John Brewer.
Stepping onto the drive I only half noticed that the light, which spread everywhere, was channeled by the breezeway.
“Check out my new electric car!”
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OK, the first thing I noticed about the photo was the crisp lines… For some reason my first thought was “Arriving UFO”
word count = 100
Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo by @ David Stewart. If you want to join or see other stories, go to the inlinkz linkup.
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I’ve been away from about a month and may not be 100% back… I will try to read everyone’s stories, but might not have time to catch all. (edit – maybe not so hard if this few people join this week!)
I have mentioned several times in these posts that this was a family trip. Part of this was a visit to places about the MacDonalds, since that is our history. So I guess I should be excused for thinking that we were going to visit Glencoe for the history, to go and visit the site of the infamous Massacre of Glencoe. I assumed that was what the visitor center was all about.
Imagine my surprise when on our first travel day, after driving through some of the most beautiful mountains I have seen in my life, and I have seen many, that this was Glencoe.
We drove through Glencoe a total of three times. We didn’t get a chance to stop until the last time through. We spent some time, a little over an hour, at the visitor center and another 45 minutes or so at a scenic pull off that was crowded with people looking at the mountains.
In my overview post I talked about my first trip to the British Islands and how I chose to visit quite a few ancient sites. Unfortunately, with so many people traveling and with such limited time and so many things to do and see, we only were able to fit one place in, Clava Cairns. But it is a great place to visit!
The Clava Cairns, aka the Prehistoric Burial Cairns of Bulnuaran of Clava, are a complex of chamber tombs, circle cairn and kerb cairns that are in such good condition to give their name, “Clava Cairn”, to the type of cairn that is found around Inverness. There are actually several other features from the same time as part of the complex, including other cairns, but the main group of 2 chamber tombs and a circular cairn with the small kerb are the main attraction.
Hi all! It’s been an odd week over all. I think I complained a lot in my weekend coffee share post. Oh well, it was like that in ways. But it wasn’t all bad, and some of those things I complained about were actually had a good side to them. So things were pretty good, but there was no one big thing that stood out.
Yep, you guessed it, this is another “it’s the small things in life that count” post ;)
I have said it many times, and I will say it again: we cannot expect one huge thing after another, life doesn’t work like that. To get the most from life we need to celebrate the small, be grateful for the common and smile at the every day.
There were some highlights last week. I had a few great walks, including into a small bit of woods near my house. I had the best run I have had since I’ve been back from my trip. I spent time socializing with friends and neighbors. I talked to family. Although I complained about getting home well after my bedtime, seeing all of the people at the Lions Club dinner meeting was good. We had some much needed rain! It is going to be hot today, but we had a couple of very comfortable days. I’ve returned to blogging after all of that time off (I posted a lot last week, but more than that, I read quite a few posts). I’m in the middle of a great book. I received some fresh honey in the mail (my dad has bees).
Hello and Welcome! Come on in and I’ll get you a mug of very strong dark roast, a cuppa tea or come other beverage. It is cool out, but not as cool as would be expected – it still feels like a summer morning with autumn a distant dream. And where are we? Some of you may recognize the photo at the top as being from New Hampshire.
An odd week over all. I returned from a long weekend on Cape Cod on Sunday (if you saw my Smile post you know I spent that long weekend with my wife’s family). Work was just insane this week. It wasn’t super hot nor as humid as I’ve seen, but I had a hard time getting motivated to exercise. We also had some rain on three different days (yeah!!! the ground was browner than I have ever seen it), which made outdoor activity difficult. So just odd.
So, what did I do?
Well, some dog walks, though they weren’t into it as much as usual (heat? Humidity?). I did do some exercise, but only ran on Sunday (I will run today). I did a few chores around the house. Met with neighbors, including the little “Men of Wilton Monday Beer Meeting” on Monday. On Tuesday our Lions Club had a dinner at someone’s house. Usually these summer meetings are very short, but they stretched it for hours and I didn’t get to bed until after 11, which makes my 5 AM wake-up difficult…
Trent's World (the Blog) 