Moss, But It's Green, and Two Month Reports

 

One more picture to share from my Bowman Lake adventure. I love how GREEN the moss is.



And now... drum roll... I know you've all been waiting to see how poorly I did on THE LIST.

It seemed like there were too many interesting things happening at the end of January to break them up with a goal report, so now you get two months lumped together. I'm not overly proud of this, but I did a few things.

54 in 300, report on day 128
Number	Category	Item	Jan & Feb	Total
1	WRITING	begin working on North Country Quest again	worked more on Chapter 1- "Meanders and Undulations"	still about 5 chapters done
2	WRITING	edit Kiss of the Butterfly, submit for publication	nothing	nothing
3	WRITING	100 NC History pages	nothing	just the planning in Nov
4	WRITING	blog about 8 wild foods	none	none
5	WRITING	finish Dead Mule Swamp Druggist	chapters 23-26	8 chapters added
6	WRITING	do 10 book promotion things	2 sold books at Your Story on Stage, and Authorpalooza in Big Rapids	6
7	WRITING	writing schedule day 50 times	0 (this doesn't mean I didn't write, but this refers to a particular disciplined schedule, and I didn't do any)	9
8	WRITING	5 entries in Off the Sanctuary Wall	none	none
9	WRITING	pursue a contract I can't name yet	follow up contact	no results
10	WRITING	talk to 5 bookstores about carrying mysteries	none	none
11	HOUSE	fix kitchen drawer	DONE	DONE
12	HOUSE	cut down 5 autumn olive trees	none	none
13	HOUSE	clean refrigerator twice	1	1, and had to wash out spilled mulberry syrup in the freezer
14	HOUSE	replace kitchen faucet	nothing	nothing
15	HOUSE	get lawnmower fixed	nothing	nothing
16	HOUSE	clean terrace	nothing	nothing
17	HOUSE	kitchen light electric box	nothing	nothing
18	HOUSE	replace faucet by washing machine	nothing	nothing
19	HOUSE	put away model railroad stuff	none	none
20	HOUSE	spend 10 hours sorting books	1	2
21	FITNESS	increase to 30 pushups	23	increase of 2 since December
22	FITNESS	increase to 100 jumping jacks	70	increase of 5 since December
23	FITNESS	increase to 2 min planking	70 sec	no increase
24	FITNESS	walk, bike, ski or snowshoe 200 times	29	49, better
25	HIKING	NCT Hike 100 Challenge for 2016	9	total of 9 miles on two SPW hikes
26	HIKING	visit 5 new MI counties to explore trails	none	none
27	HIKING	hike 100 more miles of the Buckeye Trail	none	next spring
28	HIKING	clear my trail better	0	total of 13 days, wrong season now
29	PERSONAL	Savings Goal	added some	75% to goal
30	PERSONAL	Financial Goal #2	nothing	nothing
31	PERSONAL	lose 10 pounds	0	I'm back to where I was when I started this which means I lost 1 from Dec
32	PERSONAL	play music 50 times	8	14
33	PERSONAL	other #1 (200 times)	27	34, better
34	PERSONAL	other #2	0	1, not on track
35	MISC	make 21 quarts juice	0	7 total
36	MISC	try 10 new wild foods	none	none
37	MISC	some genealogy stuff	nothing	nothing
38	MISC	100 more pix on Shark Shots	none	none
39	MISC	2 photo cards documented	nothing	nothing, but backing up important stuff on line
40	MISC	give 10 gifts from my kitchen	1	3
41	MISC	eat at Brenda's Burgers	with Ester	DONE
42	MISC	eat at Country Critters	nothing	but I'd better, because it's for sale
43	MISC	take my trailer on 2 trips	none	none
44	MISC	finish monkey booties	1	one pair done, one to go
45	MISC	get two programs NCT and Kitchen Sink	tentative contacts	probably one for April 2017
46	MISC	get rid of 100 things	1	8
47	MISC	read or listen to 100 books	25 Best one in Jan was The Wrong Man by James Neff, a reporter who looks into the Sam Shepherd murder case and convincingly points to the true killer of Shepherd's wife. Best on in Feb was The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson, a narrative of the great cholera epidemic of London in 1854	34
48	MISC	move NCC from Josh's garage	nothing	nothing
49	MISC	short bios of 5 relatives	none	none
50	MISC	sort my fabric	nothing	nothing
51	MISC	do something inside my trailer	nothing	nothing
52	MISC	add 50 things to family heritage list	none	none
53	MISC	some VCR tapes to DVD	none	none
54	MISC	some cassette tapes to CD	none	none

	See December Report
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A Closer Look- Three Lichen

 
While I was hiking yesterday, I got some macro pictures of different lichens. You might remember I bragged a while ago that I now had books, and was going to try to start identifying some of them. Ha! One needs a couple of kinds of testing chemicals, and a lot more observation time than I have previously devoted to the lowly lichen.

But, I'll tentatively identify these... at least into general groups. In all three cases, one has to look closely. A casual glance at the scruffy green stuff on a log isn't going to tell you enough to get beyond "lichen."

At first pass, this looks like quite a collection of various things: moss, possibly two lichens, a pine needle, a dried bit of grass. But, I think the lichen is all one kind, possibly candlestick lichen, Cladonia coniocraea. The gray-green flabby parts are called squamules, and the stalks are podetia.



Next is common antler lichen, Pseudevernia consocians, I think. The fun thing about this picture is the little cups at the ends of some of the stalks. Those are apothecia, where the spores are produced.



I like this picture. Very much unsure of the identification. I'm pretty sure it's not Pixie Cups, because the cups are narrow and irregular. I've showed you pixie cups before. There are several lichens with this general form. At this point my best guess is narrow crown lichen, Cladonia rei.



If I'm really going to do this, I need to be taking tons of pictures, so I can start with the kindergarten skill of same or different. Seriously... I have to be able to tell which little "trumpets" might just be dirty or damaged pixies, or which might be the golf tees, or the wacky deformed ones, or which are just dirty and which have soredia.... And that's just the Cladonia.

Found out there are at least three kinds of reindeer lichen. So, I need to get more specific on that. Wow.

Nice warm day today. Took my road walk early because the sky seemed to be graying. Good timing. It started to rain just after I got home!

	See A Pixie Hiding in My Grass
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Late Winter Hike Around Bowman Lake

 
One of my favorite local hikes is anywhere around Bowman Lake, a small glacial kettle hole. My expectations for scenery were low because this is an icky-looking time of year. But this place even manages to look great on one of these gray and brown days.



The first thing I noticed as I began to walk closer was the interactive vertical lines of tree, reflection and cattail.


Then, my eye was drawn to the opposite bank with its little hill.



Even the angled shadows on the snow reflected so there is a chevron pattern imposed on the verticals.



First I walked around the lake. Here's just a general view from the back side.



I hiked for an hour and got a REALLY good workout. The snow wasn't deep enough to call the walking "postholing," but it was soft and mushy, and anyone watching would have thought I was drunk. Each step ended up at a different angle.

Here's my favorite picture of the day. Even though it's similar to one above, in this one the tree lines are so straight, and with the melting spots at their bases, it looks as if they are pins threaded through buttonholes to stitch the shoreline to the water.



Did I have a good time? What do you think?



After I walked around the lake I followed an old woods road for a while, and took some interesting close-up shots. Maybe tomorrow you'll see those.

	See Snowshoe Outing with SPW
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Living in a Private Development

 

Unlike the ordinary housing featured at What's Hatching, just down the road, this is the high class neighborhood.



No riff-raff allowed!



The infrastructure is even slightly better, a boxelder instead of autumn olive. However, if the occupants paid for the really top contractor, they got cheated. Although the boxelder is a member of the maple family, it's pretty much the low end of the quality ladder.

I'm off to work in just a few minutes.

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Mail Room Jewelry

 
You can probably guess that I'm not a big jewelry fan. But I always get to wear some on recycling days at work.


So fashionable, don't you think? Can I start a new fad?

	See Mail Room
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Meet James

 
Tonight I got to meet James, who is thru-hiking the North Country Trail. Oh yeah, and that right after he hiked the Appalachian Trail, and made a detour to see the Atlantic Ocean (on foot), and walked from Maine to New Hampshire and down the Long Trail to get to the NCT because it would have been boring to backtrack on the AT. You get the drift. He's a hiker.



I picked him up at the end of his trail day and took him to his aunt's house. Then I got to pick his brain so I can write about him for my newspaper column. He was gracious to let me do that before he even got to eat dinner.

Wish we could have talked longer, and I could have hiked with him, but I had to get home because I work again tomorrow. Hope to meet up with him some time in the future.

	See four NCT End-to-Enders See Luke Jordan, E2Eer
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Moon and More

 
Long day. Waaaaay too much shopping, including a shiny new phone. That might sound like a positive thing, but it's just a bunch of new stuff to figure out and I don't find it all that fascinating to struggle to use a piece of technology that I don't even like. Anyway.

The best thing about today was getting another chapter done in Dead Mule Swamp Druggist. I blogged about that at Joan of Shark

But I haven't had a chance to show you the ring around the moon from Saturday night. The rainbow appearance doesn't show well in the photo, but the colors were very clear in reality. It's called a halo and is created when there are ice crystals in the upper atmosphere.



Tonight, Jupiter is happily frolicking with the moon.

	See Sunrise Bedtime
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What's Hatching?

 
Not eggs, in February. (Although the great blue herons should be starting their nest repairs really soon).



Not springtime just yet, either. No, I don't think those dead leaves are going to hatch.

However, I devoted my walk time to hatching the rest of the plot for Dead Mule Swamp Druggist. Actually, I only needed the middle. I know how the book is going to turn out--whodunnit. I just needed to connect the dots for how Anastasia Raven is going to figure it out.

Walking is my cure for everything, and it did not disappoint. I came home with this picture and the intermediate plot pieces, and have a rough outline of all the rest of the chapters in the book.

What kind of a nest is it? Don't really know. Probably some kind of sparrow. It's in a horrid autumn olive tree. I keep putting off getting the field guide to nests. So, I fixed that after I got home. It should be here in just a few days.

For sure it's not the eagle nest. One of the eagles was flying over just as I returned home and I caught it in the lens this time.

	See Birds' Nests and Soup See Parents of the Amazing Baby for an eagle nest
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Handbell Sunday- February

 
Finally got the issue with my conversion software straightened out, so I can once again edit videos taken on my camera. So... I bring you our handbell choir pieces from this morning. I really like both of them.

I grabbed a guy I didn't even know and asked him to record the songs. Maybe next time I'll remember to take my tripod, and then I can set it up and push the button before we go to the front.

First is Rondeau by Henry Purcell. We did this one for the prelude.



The special music was The Potter's Hand by Darlene Zschech, with a vocal ensemble. This piece is fairly hard, and we were really pleased that it finally came together. When we were able to practice with the vocalists it helped us all because it was easier to follow the tricky timing.



I've got bells ringing in my head! And I'm really pleased to be part of a group that can generate quality music, which I am not so good at on my own.

	See Handbells- A Different Perspective
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Authorpalooza Again

 
Today I traveled to Big Rapids to participate in another of their occasional Authorpalooza events. As I've said before, these are very well organized. I know, because I've been to quite a few that weren't. This time, there were 40 authors, and probably hundreds of books for sale.



I only sold a couple of books, but I'm developing a good network of contacts with other authors. Here are two that are like old friends now. Joe Roper writes youth fantasy, and Judith Wade (Lori Hudson) writes fiction for both young readers and adults.



One of the most fun things about the day was the presence of all these classic literary characters courtesy of the theatre fraternity of Ferris State University! How many can you identify?



General shots of events like this just look messy, but here's one anyway.



It was well worth my time for several reasons. I made friends with a person who's big on marketing, and had conversations about two potential programs. Also, picked up publicity for two other similar events in Michigan later in the year. My big problem with those, apart from the gas money, is that I'd have to take Friday night off work as well. That's a lot of lost income, since one can seldom make enough money through sales to actually pay for the trips. It's about publicity, really. To expand my reach would be great, but I can't really afford it. It's a dilemma. This one is only an hour away from home, so that's pretty do-able.

Fun day, but my limited sleep last night (this morning) may have caught up with me. Good night!

	See Authorpalooza
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Good News Can Sometimes Be Had for Cash

 
Today's quality item is that my car had some repairs. Although the total costs added up to more than I would have liked, the really good news is that there is no real damage. I wasn't sure that was going to be true.



On Wednesday a sudden oil leak appeared, creating much concern on my part. The dipstick showed DRY, so I added two quarts of oil, whereupon it decided to indicate that it was overfilled. Yikes. And what the heck?

Anyway, it now has a new oil pressure switch (the culprit), two worn belts are replaced, and the oil has been changed.

Huge sigh of relief. Tomorrow is the big Authorpalooza event in Big Rapids. I should have pictures and a good report to bring.

	See Acadia to Argent
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In and Out and Up and Down

 

Just another mouse tunnel/track in the snow, but I think this one is a lot of fun.



In some places, the mouse was on the surface and created a trough. In other places, it must have been just below the surface because it humped the snow up into a ridge like the way a mole makes a ridge of dirt



It always makes me smile when the critter goes diving. I just get this mental image of the mouse suddenly realizing he's been out on top of the world, exposed. Sort of like if we went walking on the outer edge of the atmosphere. Oops! Time to go below.

	See The Subnivean Layer Revealed
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