"Light Wintry Mix"

Doesn't this sound fun? Kind of like a party? Or perhaps a blend of Chex cereal, roasted sunflower nuts, and candy-coated chocolate?

No no, what we have here is the forecast for Tuesday, December 2 in Traverse City, Michigan.

I went to my yahoo weather site, conveniently bookmarked and now changed from home city of Portland, Oregon to Traverse City. "Flurries, Cloudy, Snow Showers, Few Snow Showers, Snow Showers" is what it said for the next five days.

Hmm. Hadn't I seen a glimpse of a sun in there toward the weekend when I looked a few days ago? A little yellow amidst all that white?

So I clicked on the 6-10 day forecast, and there it was: "Light Wintry Mix."

Well, at least it's something else! I guess I'll take it.

The 'Hood

Looking north, up the peninsula.



Looking south, toward town.

Some people have asked what the neighborhood looks like around here, so here are a few pictures up and down the street. It's not a neighborhood, exactly, but it's a fairly quiet street that goes up the east side of the peninsula (hence the name "East Shore Road"). Maggie and I have been doing a lot of our walking up and down this road, and we are able to go for long stretches between getting off to the side for cars going by. The drivers are generally pretty nice, and many slow down or move over.

When we're not walking on the road, we are generally walking along the bay. This is nicer, except for the rocky parts, which, when covered with snow, are hard to see and very slippery. But we pick our way through these parts and end up on some nice sandy stretches. And then we make our way back on the road, glad to be able to stretch our legs and get some traction!

The only problem with road-walking is, whatever side I am walking on, Maggie seems to want to be on the opposite. Here I am, trying to be a responsible pedestrian and walk on the left, and Maggie is stretching the cord on her retractable leash all the way across the road and over the double yellow line towards the grass (or snow) on the other side of the road! I thought well, maybe the other side is more nasally interesting...but then when we turn around, the same phenomenon occurs and suddenly it's the original, neglected side that holds all the wonders!

It finally occurred to me tonight that she has always been used to walking on the right. She has her whole life been one dog in a group of dogs, and since I had Emily before her, I trained Emily in the usual position on the left, and Maggie was stuck with the right. Until now, it hasn't been an issue, because the grass to the right of the sidewalk is just as good as the grass to the left. I guess from her perspective, she's still on the sidewalk, only this sidewalk is very wide and dark and has two orange lines in the middle!

So today I said hey, why don't you walk over here on THIS side, and tugged her over a bit more insistently...and I think she finally discovered that there is a place for her on the LEFT, and interesting things to sniff there, too!

Phew.

Here, Maggie weighs the discomfort of diving into really cold water against the potential thrill of catching some ducks (who had flown away right before I snapped this picture). She decided to remain warm and dry.




The Subie has to get a special mention, by the way, for being the PERFECT vehicle for northern Michigan weather! She is awesome! I keep thinking maybe I'll meet someone from Oregon who'll see my Portland plates and come say hello. (I was kind of dismayed to see that the Wentworth logo is completely covering up the word "Oregon," but I'm too lazy to remove it.)

But my real love is THIS: and I'm trying to figure out some good routes around town so that I can do my errands without the car.

Then I'll really feel like myself around here!

This will make you snort milk out your nose

(soymilk, of course)

It's Really Cold Here

So I don't know if anyone has looked at the forecast for northern Michigan lately, but I can sum it up in one word: SNOW. Snow today, snow yesterday, snow last weekend, and snow every day until Thanksgiving. After that, the forecast runs out, otherwise I'm sure it would include more SNOW.

It all started last Saturday, when Mark and I went to see Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women (a kick-ass group of women if ever there was one). After a lovely evening in which I even got to meet and talk to all of the uppity women, we emerged into the night to be greeted by freezing bits of water falling from the sky: that's right, SNOW. I said this can't be happening! It's not even Thanksgiving!

But it was happening.

Mark made a little note for me on my car that he thought would encapsulate my feelings about this event. (The first word is "What"...)

Before the snow started to fall, I had picked up Maggie from Sundog Boarding Kennels (where, after an initial unsuccessful attempt to locate an escape from the back yard, she had settled in nicely...whew!) and we had gone for another nice walk on the Leelanau Trail. Here are a few views from the trail:
So you can see: pre-snow, not too bad.

We also took a walk in the woods across from Mark's house, before he remembered that it was the first day of deer hunting season. Mark then mentioned that perhaps it was not a good idea to be walking around in the woods wearing a brown coat...and come to think of it, perhaps we shouldn't be walking around in the woods AT ALL for the next two weeks. We headed back to the road.

It also appears to be inadvisable to wear a bit of white at this time. One of Mark's neighbors told me of a tragic event in which a woman wearing white mittens was shot in her own back yard. I hadn't thought of this aspect, and it did give me pause as I was out with Maggie later that evening and realized that I was at that very moment walking around with a bit of white...I am, of course, referring to the bag of POOP that I spend half my life carrying around. Perhaps I should look into some different-colored bags.

Maggie enjoyed racing down the hill through the leaves...

And finally, we got a few bulbs in, JUST IN TIME.








So then it started to snow and snow, and that pretty much brings us up to today. But it's not all bad...Maggie is REALLY enjoying it, and I have to admit (in between screaming to myself "WHAT HAVE I DONE?!) that it's very pretty.

When viewed from the window of a warm house.

New Orleans

Today I saw a lamp that had a price tag of nearly half a million dollars. Yes, HALF A MILLION! FOR A LAMP! It was not even that big.

Yes, it was a Tiffany lamp; quite rare, I guess.

But Mark and I were talking later about this...how is it that a lamp can be worth that much? CAN it really?

I said it's the politics of scarcity. The fact that it's rare makes it sought after, and therefore pricey. But is any lamp really worth that amount of money? Think of what good that money could do in the world, feeding hungry children!

What about a painting, Mark asked, what if you paid someone $10,000 to paint a painting that takes them half a year?

Well then you're supporting an artist, and facilitating the creation of something beautiful. That is, in itself, a worthy end, I think.

(I used to be all about the function and not the form, but over the years I've come to believe that beauty for its own sake is completely valid and actually absolutely necessary in this world.)

So the difference is, this lamp is already HERE. By paying $468,000 for this lamp, all you get is the satisfaction of OWNING the lamp, a lamp that not many other people have. So WHAT.

Completely flippin' ridiculous, we both agreed.

Anyway, I'm posting a few pictures here of our trip to New Orleans, where we've been for the American Heart Association conference. There are about 25,000 people here for this conference! I've been very fortunate in being able to attend some of the conference events, including an address by DR. OZ yesterday. Woo hoo! (For those who don't know him, just catch Oprah sometime, and he'll probably be on there explaining about your body in terms you can understand and relate to. In his other life, he's a surgeon in New York.)

Other than seeing Dr. Oz (front row center) and in direct opposition to his medical advice , I've been busy expanding my waistline here in New Orleans. They have these donuts here called "beignets," which are fried bread covered with powdered sugar, and I mean COVERED. The picture above is the sugar that was LEFT OVER after we ate all the beignets!

We've also been hanging out with Bob and Noelle (who arranged the Grand Canyon trip on which Mark and I met), who are also here for the conference. After gorging ourselves on beignets at lunch, we ate MORE beignets later that same day with Bob and Noelle.

Mark's daughter Amy is also here...she is a Sarnoff Fellow right now, taking two years off in the middle of medical school to do research. We were very excited to go to her poster presentation Monday morning...see picture of very proud papa with (in our unbiased opinion) brilliant daughter!

After seeing Dr. Oz and then Amy's presentation, I was pretty much done with the conference, so I decided to go on a city tour. This included the very unusual cemeteries they have here, all above ground and some of whose markers cost as much as a hotel.

Again, I just don't see the point here of so much expense. Just burn me up and return me to the earth, please. Or just throw me in there! Fancy coffins and cement vaults just retard the process that I'm trying to facilitate! Skip the coffin entirely!

Anyway, after the tour I was having a lovely time sitting in the sun across from the St. Louis Cathedral (see picture with the mule-drawn buggies in front) when I heard this calliope music...I couldn't figure out quite where it was coming from, so I walked around the trees and down the steps and across the streetcar tracks and up onto the river walk and...

there it was: a paddlewheeler with this woman on the top deck playing this organ-looking thing in front of a set of pipes which lit on fire, one after the other, and belched huge plumes of steam...WOW! And it was LOUD!

Then we went to this restaurant where I had one of the best meals of my life, and then we saw this cornstalk fence hotel where Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin (and Elvis stayed there too), and then we stopped in a few antique stores and saw the lamp. And a few other things, one of which is pictured here. If you are interested in buying an armoire that was owned by Empress Eugenie and is decorated with two intertwining engraved wooden L's, it is for sale in New Orleans for only $168,000.

:-)

I'm So Stuffed I can Hardly Walk

Crawfish etouffée, roasted potatoes, steamed vegetables, trout almondine, oysters Rockefeller, delicious salad, bread and butter, fruit, cheese, crackers, cabernet...and then bananas Foster and cheesecake with a thick graham cracker crust and chocolate syrup layer...oh my gosh. Food in New Orleans is incredible.

See title.

Small Town

On Thursday, I dropped Mom off at the airport and then went to check out Sundog Boarding Kennels. On the way home from that, I stopped at this little organic food place in Traverse City, where I'd tried to eat on a previous visit, but it had been closed. I got a lovely hummus wrap and took it home to enjoy it. As I was eating, I got a text message from Mark, who was still at work. It said, "How was lunch at the organic eatery?"

???

I could only recall one other person coming in while I was there, whom I didn't know. But I guess they knew me! I texted back to Mark, how on Earth did you know I was in the organic eatery?

Small town, he replied.

I guess I'm already becoming a part of my new town!

Leelanau

So here I am, newly arrived in Traverse City, and we are already taking off on a trip. Mark has a conference for the American Heart Association in New Orleans, and I am fortunate enough to be able to accompany him. Except this means that Maggie, who JUST ARRIVED in her new home, has to be left. And Grandma is right now winging her way to her home in Bend, Oregon, which is now WAY too far away for a Maggie drop-off.

This is a major problem.

Fortunately, today I found a wonderful place called Sundog. Tracy, the woman who runs it, is a former zoo caretaker who took care of cougars and wolves and such before the zoo here shut down (and went to great pains to find good homes for all of them). Now she looks after dogs at her lovely place in the countryside of Leelanau County. They get to hang out together both inside and outside in an enormous yard, or have their private space if they need it. We made a visit there today and will be back tomorrow to drop Maggie off. (Gulp. I really wish this weren't coming up quite so soon! Especially in view of Maggie's escapade 6 years ago, when she was gone for a WEEK. I told Tracy about this, and she assured me all will be well. I really had a good feeling about the place, so here we go.)

So Maggie and I went for a walk along the Leelanau Trail after our visit with Tracy. This trail goes from Traverse City to Sutton's Bay, and is the exact trail where Mark was riding his bike two weeks ago and broke his collarbone. It is a lovely place, as you can see from the photos, as long as you do not wreck on your bike and break your collarbone.

On the way home, I stopped to take a picture of West Bay in downtown Traverse City, and then a vineyard that is just up the hill from Mark's house. The last picture is Maggie going into her new abode.

Sorry for so many posts in one day. I don't think my life will be quite so eventful from now on and I hope to keep up a bit better, so we'll just have one at a time from now on!

Sleeping Bear Dunes

So this brings us to yesterday. One of my nicest memories of visiting Traverse City is going to "the coast;" i.e. the coast of Lake Michigan. Which does look like the ocean in that there are waves and no opposite shore in sight...but does not resemble the ocean in that it is fresh water. And when I visited a year ago August, it really resembled more the Caribbean Sea. Sparkling turquoise water giving way to deep blue further on...white sand, everyone in bathing suits, swimming, enjoying the day.

So here we are yesterday, having a lovely sunny day and I'm thinking okay, time to go to the coast! Should we bring the bathing suits...

Imagine my surprise when we got to the coast and it was SO WINDY you could barely stand up! Poor Maggie was leaning into the wind, getting sand in her face, barely hanging in there...no one else was there, not a sunbather in sight.

Okay, so it was November 5.

Anyway, we enjoyed seeing Lake Michigan, snapped a few pics (see grass bending over sideways), and went north to Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Sleeping Bear Dunes are enormous sand dunes formed by glaciers a long time ago. There's this one in particular that goes 450 feet straight down to Lake Michigan. You can't even see Lake Michigan; it just looks like it goes off into nothing. A sign explains that it's EXTREMELY EXHAUSTING to climb back up if you happen to find yourself sliding down there. Mom and I decided to walk to the overlook a little ways beyond in lieu of an exciting descent to Lake Michigan.

A little ways along, there was a dune approved for climbing. Of course I had to test my mettle and climb to the top (I am that small speck of black in the picture). It really wasn't extremely exhausting, but then that dune wasn't as steep or long. So maybe someday...

We were surprised to see at one of our stops that Maggie had gotten completely wrapped up in the blanket in the back seat. I like to call this photo, "Obi-wan-canine-obi."

The 45th Parallel

After we got to TC, we slept in (interrupted briefly to take a picture of a lovely sunrise), gave Maggie a special "welcome-to-TC" Cherry Capital Cookie for dogs (thanks, Mark), and headed up the peninsula. At the end is a lighthouse and an old log cabin, and a special sign explaining that we are on the 45th parallel. Also on the 45th parallel is Salem, Oregon! So I didn't feel so far away from home. :-)

We had a nice dinner at a place called "The Cook's House," where I finally had that cabernet awaiting me in TC.