I turned 45 in June, and, as I had done when I turned 40, I celebrated with a long weekend bike trip.  In this case, I headed north (and a bit east) into New Hampshire, where I intended to hike Mt. Monadnock, which I’d been meaning to do for several years. I started the trip … Read more

On my last morning in Iceland I got up somewhat early so I could return my rented bike (Óli Stef).  I headed for the Reykjavik waterfront along the city’s bike paths, and partway there, I noticed geese in the median strip of the road (click photo to embiggen): I also encountered this little bird at … Read more

On my third day in Iceland, I had a quick breakfast of yogurt and granola, or rather, of yogurt drink and granola.  It turned out that the stuff I thought was yogurt, Skyr, is more like a thin smoothie.  It still worked fine, as I even like having granola with plain milk. Outside, before getting … Read more

Catching up with a few photos from the past few months. Back in January I was flying home from a visit to Michigan.  As I waited in the Detroit airport, I noticed something moving through the air in the concourse.  Then I saw more than one thing.  It turned out that there were birds that … Read more

Last week I walked into the bedroom to find the following:   Usually the cats are more discreet when they go undercover.  

But mostly lions. This was the view out my hotel window the first morning, as the sun was about to come up over the mountains: I wandered around the hotel area the first night to get dinner, which included walking through the casino.  It’s pretty extensive: And it has a car in it: You can … Read more

There is good news and there is bad news regarding cats in our household.  I’ll give the bad news first, which is also the more recent news. Arzachel, who was the very old cat of the household, died 2 weeks ago on December 23.  He was about 19 years old, which is quite a bit … Read more

The assessment given by the vet who diagnosed Shark’s cancer was correct. He said that Shark probably had a few weeks, maybe a month, to live. That pronouncement was made on August 13, and the end came on September 12. I originally got Shark in the summer of 1994. We had stopped by a dancewear … Read more

Some details in this post may be a little gross for the squeamish, just to warn you. Shark was going along seemingly fine on the medications prescribed to him, until a few days ago.  He threw up a little after being in the litter box (and not doing anything there), and this raised red flags … Read more

We have another cat who has been diagnosed with cancer.  Most readers will remember that a very large tumor had been discovered in Nematode in the Fall of 2005, and we had to have her euthanized in February of last year.  Now we face a similar situation with Shark. In the first few months of … Read more