In the B&O trainyard

We have a world-class railroad museum in downtown Baltimore. We had planned to make a late-afternoon Sunday dash as a work break. I accidentally left the tickets at home, but we did get to wander the train yard. This beauty is a gigantic steam engine, just sitting there and waiting for you to cozy up to it.

Gul-durnit!

This is a real problem! I thought the nomming would stop when the weather changed...but the weather never changes inside the hoop house. I picked off one particularly well-fed fellow yesterday and held him aloft. He was curled around the tip of the straw I'd used, and in the golden sun of late fall, his little yellow dashes seemed particularly dashing, and his collard-colored skin looked vibrant and velvety. I sighed and put him back in the hoop house. It's his only little life, you know? He only gets one, I only get one.

On losing weight and being game

Between last fall and this fall I've lost about 50 pounds.

It's not so much that I see my body much differently. I still look the same to me as I ever have...though I can see the change in my face. The picture on the left is from our 2010 trip to England, and the picture on the right is from today - from my desk (I am sick, by the way).

What has really changed, is that suddenly, after all these years, I AM GAME.

I am game for it, man.

I was never game. Not as a kid, not as an adult. Kids would start to race and I would yell: "I'm not racing!"

Well, I'm still kind of like that -- I don't like to compete and when I do I expect to roundly lose, which is often the case. However, as a grown-up, I have found out that - surprise! - this is not the only way to be physical. I have run, on and off, for years, but I've never liked it. But, this year, being game as I am, I experimented and found two things that I am head-over-heels for: Snowboarding and Stand-Up Paddleboarding.

I didn't know.
I didn't know that by being game, I would find so much joy.
I didn't know, but I'm happy I know now.

Drunk at Brunch

Pictures taken by my mom's friend Kendall, who visited in early October.






Seventeen years...

Luckey Haskins...

...is a very good boy. Also warm on the neck.