It reached 60 degrees today in Pennsyltucky.
Except to go to the grocery store, I’ve been a homebody since I returned from North Carolina on the penultimate day of 2025 (ie., December 30th), and it’s been absolutely cold.
I drove over to the state park, just because it was lovely.
The Susquehanna was frozen over, and the movement of the shadows of clouds on the hills around Columbia was pronounced.
It was a bit windy up on Mt. Pisgah, and my baseball cap blew off a few times. Yikes!
Today is January 7th.
The last time I spoke to my mom was December 7th, her birthday.
I’d gone to Washington, DC that day, and I tried calling her several times after I got home in the afternoon, to no avail. She hadn’t been answering my phone calls since October, either because she couldn’t hear the phone, she was absolutely overwhelmed by Medicare enrollment phone calls (a story for another time–I told one caller she could, and I quote, “die in a fire” when I was down in Lynchburg in November), or she was freezing me out (which I had reason to believe was a possibility).
I texted her about 7:30, after yet another attempt to call, though I knew it was unlikely she’d ever see the text. She replaced her phone two or three years before, and Google changed the messaging app that she’d been using, so she didn’t know where or how to text, despite me showing her on several occasions.
I tried calling again at 8 o’clock, and it would have been my last attempt if she didn’t answer. She did, and we talked for about ten minutes. It was a good conversation. She sounded happy. We talked about Christmas, how she didn’t expect me to come but she was keeping the tree up until I did, even if that didn’t happen until spring.
She died a week later, on the 14th.
I’m glad I made that last attempt at 8.
I haven’t been to the Annapolis Irish Festival since before COVID. They announced the musical line-up today:
Carbon Leaf. Gaelic Storm. Those are reasons to go.
I know Carbon Leaf is playing in Baltimore at Union Craft Brewing in March, which is where I last saw them, in July 2024. (They didn’t play anywhere especially convenient for me in 2025.) I was probably going to do that, depending on the job situation, as almost two years is a really long drought when it comes to seeing Carbon Leaf.
In light of today’s weather, I should queue up Ether-Electrified‘s “January 9, 63 Degrees.” 🙂
I did not expect to see the Washington Nationals’ Curly W on Lombard Road while driving out to the state park above Wrightsville today.
Windsor Township apparently uses the Curly W, albeit green and not red, as a logo. Maybe they think that because this is Phillies and Orioles country no one will notice.
I was at the World Series parade. Of course I’d notice!
For the love of God, Montressor!
Facebook, I am not interesting in your dating app. I am definitely not interested in dating in Lynchburg. I don’t live there. I do not intend to live there.
No.
Defund and abolish ICE. They are Trump’s Brownshirts. They are his Gestapo. “I was just following orders” didn’t work at Nuremberg. It shouldn’t work here and now, either.