Holiday Dinner Style. . .

The Young Master, already a bit silly and eager to sit down to the Thanksgiving table here.

The Young Master and yours truly, the old so and so.

The Young Master and his mother, the bright lights of my life. He has, for better or worse, inherited his father's sense of humor and class clown approach to the rest of the world. As my wife observed last night at dinner, living with both of us is like living with a combination of Peter Sellars, Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Martin Short, and Jerry Lewis. Good. We'd be big in France.

Three photographs taken a few minutes before Thanksgiving Dinner was served last Thursday evening here at Totleigh-in-the-Wold. The Young Master, as always, was the star of the show, but ol' Mom and Dad look pretty good too. Accumulating snow today (Monday morning), and school has already decided to close due to the weather, so the long Thanksgiving weekend will last a day longer than expected. Not a bad thing at all.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

The view up our street from the front stoop this afternoon just after running the snowblower for the first time this season -- it started like a charm -- and shoveling out a few tighter spots.

And down the same street.
L.L. Bean 'duck shoes' and Bean Boots, ladies and gentlemen.

And the woods across our back yard. I never tire of the winter landscape here in Mid-Michigan. While we have some wonderful places for cross-country skiing not too far away, it is possible to set a reasonably interesting course around the house for those times when we can't get away.

Comments

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

The Power of Ideas. . .

T he end is nigh! The autumn semester/term approaches. And while we still have almost two months of summer left according to the calendar, "Summer is over and gone," as the crickets sang in Charlotte's Web . At least for those of us who head back to the classroom in less than a month. In advance of a meeting with my program director late Monday morning, I spent about 40 minutes total during the weekend to jot down several ideas about planned workshops and related activities for the coming 2024-2025 academic year. At an opportune moment, I mentioned "I have a few ideas," and opened my leather portfolio. My director was highly receptive to almost everything I suggested, and we had a very productive planning session for just over 90 minutes. Just about everything I sketched out on Sunday aligns with his own ideas. It's nice when meetings go that well, and two related things occur to me in hindsight. One, it pays to exercise...

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 19...

Classic Style

Search This Blog