Hello Everyone! I hope you’ve all had a nice week since last we met. The weather here in D.C. has been spectacular and I’ve enjoyed spending a lot of time outside this week. The fall colors aren’t great here, but the maples in particular have been pretty awesome. My folks and I have continued to try and celebrate life this week while keeping safe and close to home and I even got out for an overnight in my van which was awesome. October has seemed to go even faster than September did and I know that process will continue as the days get shorter. All told it’s been a pretty good week though.
I got a new phone this week, which is always exciting. My iPhone 5s has been slowly dying over the last year or so, and at the end the battery would only last about 20 minutes. I carried around an external battery for the last 6 months which is a pain, but also not a huge deal. I’m not all about the latest gadget, but that phone lasted a solid five years or so and hadn’t been new when I bought it. I’ve gone with the latest iPhone SE which has the newest chip in a reasonably priced phone. I was super happy with Apple’s new phone-to-phone transfer technology which basically migrated everything from my old phone to my new phone (down to the wallpaper) via WiFi. It was amazing and made set-up super easy. So far I’m enjoying the new features and the expanded capacity and capability of my new phone, and while there are a few things my old one could do which this one doesn’t seem to be able to, I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
The news this week is obviously pretty focused on the upcoming election, and I truly hate to see the divisiveness in the country right now. I know it’s been building for quite some time, but it seems too many people are fanning the flames and it’s heartbreaking. I think a lot of it comes from people not traveling enough and experiencing the different parts of the country and spending time with people who are Americans, but Americans different from themselves or their neighbors. I’ve spent almost my entire adult life doing just that, and I’ve found nothing but good people from coast to coast and lakes to gulf. I’ve always said that I think that sitting around a dinner table we’d have more in common than we did different, and with some open-minded conversation we could probably find compromise and common ground. But now more than ever we’re not having that face-to-face discussion, and it’s eating us like a cancer. I know the biggest divide right now seems to be between urban and rural communities and I’ve spent plenty of my life in both and both have enormous benefits and drawbacks. I think city people could use a bit of time in the country or in a small town and country people could use some real time in the city. Texans should go to Seattle and Alaskans should spend some time in L.A. and they all might find that the people there aren’t as unlike them as they think they are. I’ve spent time in my life in truly foreign environments having traveled across many countries all over the world and no matter where I’ve been I’ve met wonderful people working hard to provide for their families and spend a few minutes with their friends at the end of the day. When I personally can find a huge amount in common with a farmer in rural Cambodia, I know that people from different parts of the same country could find even more if they were focused on our common interests and ideals. We’ve got to stop demonizing each other and spend more time together and we’d all be surprised by what we find. I know that for a fact. Sermon over.
Mason and I continue our adventures around Glover Park and the nearby woods. He is really enjoying all the Halloween decorations, and again seems fearless since he has not been given a reason to be scared of the things we see (and certainly won’t get that from me). He waves to the Wolfman and says “Hi Doggie” and carried on a five minute conversation with a headless skeleton sitting in the bus stop. We’ve got a hill that we love to run down together, holding hands because sometimes he makes a misstep and at full speed that could end badly. He loves this hill and laughs so hard and heartily it warms my heart to no end. Remember when the joy of simply running down a hill could bring you that much happiness? It’s wonderful. His letters and numbers continue to improve and we’re having some good conversations like the difference between “M” and “W” which is somewhat confusing because they are the same shape and “A” and “4” which also can look similar. He asked me some good questions about the difference between “chew” and “two” and between “van” and “fan” which I really just think is incredible. His brain is working all the time, and comes up with some pretty fascinating things. When I ask him what he wants to do in the morning, seeing bumblebees is inevitably the first thing out of his mouth. We’ve started to talk about how they won’t be around much longer just like we talked about how the leaves were going to change and fall and how soon we’ll be saying goodbye to many of his favorite berries as well, but that winter has its own beauty and will hold new things for us to discover. I don’t know how much he understands of what I say, but I actually think it’s quite a bit. We’re having a great time together on our adventures.
I spent Friday afternoon this week trying to track down a DVD copy of It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown for another week of celebrating Halloween which proved harder than expected. After striking out on Amazon and several other streaming services, I ran around town trying to just grab a copy thinking it would be easy. It wasn’t. Whoever owns the rights to this cartoon really isn’t making what they could from it. I found 4 copies on Blue-Ray (the modern version of Betamax), but no DVD. Undeterred, we watched Spookley The Square Pumpkin instead. It wasn’t great, but it was cute and we enjoyed it. On the menu were some orange colored Halloween favorites like jack-o-lantern quesadillas, chips and queso and pumpkin pie. In the beer department, we had a nice Halloween sampling including Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale and Batsquatch, The Raven Special Lager, a pumpkin ale from Anderson Valley and Dragon’s Milk. It was definitely a good time.
I spent Saturday morning trying to catch up on a bunch of things around the house. Finally in the afternoon I took off around the beltway to peaceful Watkins Park in PG County where I had a campsite reserved for the night. I wish I had gotten there a little earlier, but I was glad to be there nonetheless. I got set up, built a nice campfire and read until it got dark out. Then I listened to some music for a while, sipped a few beers and a little rum and just enjoyed the alone time and the sounds of the forest. It’s a pretty great place considering it’s really so close to the city. It was wonderful to be back in Shadow Catcher for the night as well. It’s such a cozy little van and I enjoy it so much and look forward to a time when we’re back on our great adventure. I spent all of Sunday morning in my campsite and then headed home in the afternoon. It was a quiet Sunday and my mom made a wonderful Sunday roast dinner to top off a great weekend.
Tuesday I had to give up my weekly excursion with my mom to get to the dentist. For those of you who remember, I broke a tooth back in March in Texas right as the pandemic was kicking into high gear. I got an emergency root canal the next day and a temporary fix put on it as it was the last day that particular dentist was going to be open for the foreseeable future. That was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back in my decision to return home to D.C. instead of taking my chances with a shut-down country on the open road. When I got home, my dentist was closed and I wasn’t necessarily super keen on going in right at that moment either. I was hoping for more progress on treatment or prevention of this virus, or at least a national effort to try and get it under control. Well, as colder weather is on the way and a resurgence of the virus is all but inevitable, I decided that now is probably the best time to get it done before the end of the year. It was a long appointment as the dentist had to remove the 6 month old stub and replace it with a temporary crown, take measurements for a new crown and x-ray the whole thing. But we got it all done and hopefully I’ll get the crown in a couple of weeks and we can go from there. I’m grateful to have gotten this done and think this may be the best time for many of you who can’t wait indefinitely to get something done.
Today was another great day in the ongoing adventures of Team Mike and Mason. It was foggy but warm most of the day and we didn’t get too early of a jump because it was gloomy out. We hung out inside for a while and his stuffed monkey offered some lessons on the alphabet using an etch-a-sketch as a chalkboard. When we did get out it was still overcast, but all the moisture in the air had brought out a magnificent variety of mushrooms to be explored (and we didn’t even make it to our favorite place for that particular activity, dubbed “Mushroom Lagoon”, today). We threw pocketfuls of acorns into the creek, read the letters on the park sign, found an intense cluster of porcelain berries which looked like Easter morning and a fantastic real-life spider web with a real spider in the middle of it (which put all the cord and rope spider webs in the neighborhood to shame). It was a great day out there.
I came home to finish up this weekly post and another with the rest of my fall photos from my trip to New Hampshire. Tonight I’m going to whip up some delightful sandwiches for our Dinner and a Movie Wednesday presentation of Hocus Pocus. I’m also excited for the next episode of the new season of my favorite show (for obvious reasons) – The Amazing Race. I was happy that in the season opener last week they started out somewhere that I’ve spent some time – the beautiful twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. I’m not sure what the rest of this week is going to hold. I know I keep telling you about getting some more photos from the National Parks together and my long-awaited next podcast, but I’ve just found myself so busy lately. Thankfully I know there is a long and quiet winter ahead so I’ll have plenty of time for all of that. I’m definitely trying to enjoy the fall colors as much as possible and hope to get out and take some more photos before it all disappears. Whatever the week brings, I’ll be keeping busy and, as always, trying to keep my chin up. I hope you’ll be doing the same. Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you right back here this time next week.
-Mike