Bright Lights, Empty Campus

 

There is a relatively new sculpture on Cornell campus, and now that the hundreds of students with Covid have left, Gail and I walked up to see it Christmas Eve. 

The take out from Chinese Hot Pot on the way home was an added bonus.  They're on Eddy St. try it.

Weird Stuff in Town

Despite notifying Streets and Facilities of the risk of loosing a South Hill scholar, they never sent anyone up to replace the storm grate.  Lucky for all involved, I had an extra metal pole sitting around and an orange cone I brought up from the creek years ago.  It got fixed after a few days, but I didn't get the cone back.

Kurt's Porch in Thompson Park got furnished.  It looked inviting on a record-setting warm day in December, but probably not so much in the cold rain and snow.

 This showed up in Fall Creek.  On the one hand, people shouldn't treat public property like it is their own; on the other hand, this was much more creative than the rocks people stack up.  I wanted to treat it as my own and move it up to the sidewalk along the street to see if it would slow down the speeders coming down the hill, but somebody else tossed it into the creek first.

Cool Kids

 

I've been helping a former student, Yardana, get her new apartment in order.  It's been fun and she's thrilled with each addition, but none so much as these spice shelves.  Won't be long before she stars in her own cooking show.

 

By a wonderful coincidence, a fiend-of-a-friend knows somebody who lives upstairs in the building and wanted her and Yardana to meet.  While I was putting up the spice shelves, the neighbor came by with two of her grand kids.  Jordanny was in a couple classes I worked in and was a great kid.  He tells me he's now a great college student in South Carolina.  And he and Yardana used to be neighbors back in the day.  Small town.

A Mighty Wind

 

We were spared the winds that reached 70 mph in WNY, I think we had a gust over 50 mph.  It was cool living along Lake Erie and seeing this happen once in awhile: the wind would push the water down the lake in one huge wave in front of it, called a Seiche.

Bridge to Everywhere

 The much-maligned bridge over Rt. 13 by Buttermilk State Park is officially open.  The City took advantage of funding back in the last century to have it built, with the vision that someday it would link the Black Diamond Trail along the Inlet and the South Hill Rec Way.  We're getting there...

I stopped by Buttermilk that day to see the results of the deluge we'd received the night before.  It was pretty impressive.

A Job Done

 

If you scroll down to a post from October about cutting up some wood, this is an update.  Sara and Bronwyn bought a fancy splitting maul that I just had to test out, then Gail and Sara stacked it all up out of the rain and snow.  There was quite a bit of wood in that log.

Ugh.  In between cutting up that log and going back to split and stack, they had another tree cut down.  No promises this year.  Bronwyn has a new hip so she'll be like new when it comes to putting up wood for the winter, and now that Sara has used a real garden cart, maybe she'll go out and buy one of those too.

Gone Electric

 

I finally pulled the trigger and bought a chainsaw, and like Dylan in '65, I went electric.  I'd used a friend's electric saw over the summer and was quite impressed, and seeing so many ash trees come down on local trails, I decided the only way to keep up was to supplement my bow saw and axe arsenal.  The initial test was to remove a neighbor's stump and cut it up.  Plenty of power, I wish the battery lasted a bit longer but my back will be happy to not cut so long.  Hope I don't hit any rolling stones with it.

Friends Weekend 2021

A bunch of friends flew in for a weekend together in November.  They had to rent a car to get home after a rough landing.  But we had a great time in between.

We rented a bunch of cabins on Cayuga Lake near Trumansburg.  Nice to be on the water, lots of loons hanging around and changing skies and water.

The Wilsons, Howard, and Gelsiminos all took advantage of Thursday being Veterans Day.  That gave us enough time for a trip to Watkins Glen.  Sadly, the gorge trail was already closed for the season.

We were close enough to Taughannock that everyone made it there for a walk to the falls, and Howard and Amy joined Gail, me and Nina for a look at Frontenac.

Brian did a great job of cooking breakfast Sunday.

Great to see everyone, and hope those who couldn't make it can join us next year.