Moonlight

I sometimes get up in the middle of the night and wander around the house. It's not that anything's bothering me or that I'm uncomfortable -- it's just my sleep cycle. I often wake up about 3 a.m. and walk around, get a drink of water, and go back to bed.

Anyway, I got up early Wednesday morning and found the living room bathed in moonlight. It was a full moon and the light seemed bright enough to photograph. So I got out the camera, set it on "bulb" (which allows me to hold open the shutter as long as I want) and tried some shots.

My hand-held pictures didn't work at all. I have a pretty steady hand, if I do say so myself, but even when I think I'm not moving, I am. I don't have a tripod, so I looked around for a surface where I could rest the camera. I wound up using the back of Dave's recliner, which isn't ideal because it's puffy and upholstered as opposed to hard and flat -- but it did the trick. I held the shutter open for eight to ten seconds, on ISO 8000.

I love how bright the red lights from the digital clock, TV box and power strip seem, as well as the green light on the left, from Dave's charging computer. There's something so peaceful about a quiet, dark house in the wee hours of the morning. (I was going to write "silent," but I'm sure there was actually a lot of snoring in the next room -- both canine and human.)

Games and Books

As I think I've mentioned, we've recently started checking out board games and card games in our library. Monopoly, Trouble, Battleship, Uno -- we've got 'em all. My boss started putting together a spreadsheet for patrons listing all the games with some basic information, like how many players they need, how long they take, that kind of thing, as well as links to online videos showing how to play them.

I spent yesterday filling out that spreadsheet. You haven't lived until you've watched 40 videos about gaming. And of course some of them were terrible, so I'd have to abandon them and look for another. It made for an interesting (?) couple of hours.

The experience made me think about games my brother and I had growing up -- Life, Stratego, Battleship, Monopoly, Perfection. One of my favorite games was Masterpiece, in which players adopt invented personas (such as Roxy "Big D" Warrenson or Baron Dietrich von Oberlitzer) and bid for artworks. Some of the paintings -- reproductions of real works from the Chicago Art Institute -- would turn out to be worth far more than the player paid, while others were worthless forgeries. Does anyone remember this game? If not, here's a video about how to play it! (Honestly, I don't think we ever played it correctly. I mostly just looked at the paintings. It taught me a lot about art, and when I went to the Chicago Art Institute years later I had a great time seeing all those paintings in person.)

We do still read books in our library, you'll be glad to know. I recently read Russell Banks' "Rule of the Bone," which I loved -- the first-person story of a sort of working-class delinquent version of Holden Caulfield.

And I just finished the third volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's autobiographical "My Struggle" series. I was sort of dreading it, because although I really liked volume one, I was less enthusiastic about volume two (getting through it was my struggle). But I'd bought the third one already so I figured I'd see it through. Called "Boyhood Island,"  it turned out to be really good -- recollections of a childhood growing up in a small town on the Norwegian coast in the 1970s. Knausgaard's incredible level of detail can be annoying -- no one needs to describe a Kellogg's corn flake to me -- but I found his tales of tramping through the woods with friends and coping with his harsh father quite engrossing.

I think I might be done with Knausgaard now, though.

At the moment I'm reading "The Diary of a Bookseller" by Shaun Bythell, which I first heard about from Vivian. It's literally just that -- a day-to-day account of running a bookstore in the small Scottish community of Wigtown. It's a hoot, which proves that a good writer can make any story interesting.

(Photo: Fallen leaves in our back garden.)

Zooming

I just woke up from nine and a half hours of deep, uninterrupted, glorious sleep. Hallelujah! I wasn't jet-lagged because my trip was so short, but I was definitely suffering sleep deprivation. I feel a million times better.

My flight back from Washington was super short -- about five and a half hours. Even the pilots commented on how quickly we flew. They didn't say why, but I'm assuming we had some serious tailwinds helping us along. At one point I looked at the ground speed gauge on the movable map (I love those things) and we were approaching the Irish coast at 680 miles per hour! Which seems fast, even for a commercial jet.

Here, I plunged right back into real life. Dave revealed that our TV has been out ever since the tree trimmers visited, which must mean that they loosened a cable connection somewhere in the alley at the side of the house. (Probably when they were dragging branches through there.) I'll go out later and see if I can figure that out.

Also, I had an appointment yesterday with British Gas to come and do our annual gas inspection. Of course they wouldn't tell me when the guy was going to show up -- they said only sometime between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. So I told my boss I'd be in as soon as I could -- and wouldn't you know, the gas guy didn't appear until 12:30. So my boss was annoyed, and I've had to take another personal day at work to account for missing the entire morning, as well as Thursday morning for the tree trimming.

I get it. I have been out a lot the past few days. But it's just one of those things -- I honestly don't see how I could have managed any of this differently.

While I was cooling my heels at home, I finished off some seafood pasta that Dave made about a week ago. It tasted fine, but I was a little concerned about the fact that it had been hanging around in the fridge for the past week. I'm paranoid about shellfish anyway -- my mom ate a bad shrimp once when I was a kid and I've never forgotten how sick she was. In this case, though, the crab had been canned so I figured it was pretty safe, and we'd already eaten all the shrimp. Ultimately I suffered no ill effects!

Speaking of seafood, here's my current favorite wine label -- I believe "pulpito" is Spanish for little octopus. I have no idea whether octopi hold tentacles in real life, but I love the art, and the wine's not bad either.

(Top photo: Flamingoes at the Portobello Road market in Notting Hill, about a week ago.)

Waldo Goes Home

To those of you who guessed I’m in Washington, DC — you get a gold star! (Granted, the license plate kind of gave it away.)

As I write this on Sunday evening, though, I’m sitting in Dulles Airport on my way back to London. By the time it posts, I’ll be home. This was a two-day transatlantic trip, which would horrify Greta Thunberg, but I justify it by arguing that my day-to-day carbon footprint is pretty darn small. (No car, no kids.)

I came to the states because one of my friends from the Peace Corps, Liz, turns 50 this week, and her friends threw her a surprise birthday party. I heard about it maybe 6 weeks ago, and I thought, “You know, I haven’t seen Liz for four years and I haven’t been to DC in nine. I’m going!”

I never mentioned it on the blog because, obviously, I needed to maintain the element of surprise. And it worked! Liz suspected the party but she didn’t expect me or a few other friends who traveled from a distance. I think she thought I'd lost my mind, to be honest.

The party was a blast, with a “Scooby Doo” theme — apparently Liz’s favorite cartoon. Who knew?! And I got to see several other old friends too — Kevin, who I know from way back in middle school, and his husband Brent; Kelly, another Peace Corps friend, and her family; former blog pal, now real pal Reya. It was a fab trip, and I am exhausted. (And still blogging from my phone, by the way. Argh!)

I didn’t get to spend a great deal of time exploring DC, but I knew I wouldn’t. That’s partly why I didn’t bring a computer or even my big camera. Just a tiny Jansport backpack and my phone. It felt GREAT to travel so light!

One of my favorite moments came Sunday morning, when I went to a Starbucks next to my hotel in Silver Spring, MD. After I placed my order and the woman behind the counter gave me my tall coffee and almond croissant, she asked me my name — which I thought was odd, since our transaction was finished at that point. I told her, and she said “I’m Sunshine. You have a great day, Steve.”

And honestly, it was a small thing, but it felt so nice to be seen and acknowledged so personally — and by a woman named Sunshine! She’s certainly living up to her name!

You might think going to Washington now would be a bit forbidding, considering who's in power in the USA. But Washington is not a Trump town. With the exception of one college-age kid wearing a MAGA hat near the National Mall -- obviously a tourist -- everything I saw indicated a degree of resistance to Trump and his agenda. One person posted paper cutouts of the words "Hope" and "Courage" in their window, facing the Metro train tracks, as if trying to help us through the siege.

And then there was this:

Where’s Waldo?

Surprise! I’m on a little trip. I’m writing on my phone, which is hard — so you’ll get 

the full story tomorrow!

Before and After

So here you go -- a quick look at our tree-trimming adventures!

First, the patio. The neighbor's climbing rose was encroaching over the fence (right) and the camellia was being engulfed by the gigantic mock orange (or Philadelphus).

The trimmers, as you can see, cut the rose off at the fence line and substantially trimmed the Philadelphus to get it away from the camellia. At the same time, we tried to leave it as rambly and tall as possible because the birds like it and there are several old nests in those tall branches.

Second, the hazel (at left), which as you can see was growing outward and casting shade over the garden. It was almost touching the branches of the walnut.

Now it's been cut back to give more light to the garden.

Finally, the Philadelphus in the back, near the Japanese maple, had practically taken over.

We had it substantially reduced in height and pruned away from the maple, so the maple can get more light and show off those flashy red leaves!

There was some other work as well, but that's the bulk of it. As you can see, we didn't opt for any radical changes and our garden is still quite shrubby, which is great for the birds and critters. The tree crew did do a great job -- better than we could ever have done, given the height of some of the work -- and they also raked the lawn! Bonus!

The Bookshelf Revisited

As long as we're talking about pubs, here's one that hasn't fared well in recent years. You may remember I blogged it before, more than four years ago -- Swan & Edgar, with its outdoor bookshelf. It once claimed to be London's smallest pub, with a bookish decor and a bathroom paved with Scrabble tiles. But it closed in 2013, and as I understood the plans, it was supposed to become a residence.

As you can see, it hasn't. It hasn't become anything at all, in fact.

I'm not sure why it was more economical for someone to buy and close this pub and let it sit empty than to allow it to continue to operate. I'm sure there's a story behind it but some perfunctory Googling didn't reveal anything new.

Anyway, the outdoor bookshelf is still there, looking even more mournful. The books have become illegible shapeless lumps.

Our tree trimmers did come yesterday, and although they moved incredibly slowly, they were very careful and got the job done. We're happy with the service and I'll share some photos tomorrow!