Living on the edge
While I was reading a book on my Kindle this morning and occasionally responding to an email1313 summons from my BlackBerry, hubby was hard at work enhancing the website for the symphony orchestra in our home town. Pictured here with one computer at each hand he’s testing how his website appears on various operating systems and alternate browsers. Rented a vacation house with the required high-speed internet — and that’s what geeks do on a rainy vacation morning.
While it has been two years since we’ve been on the Cape for vacation, it has been at least three years since we’ve driven up to Provincetown and gone on a whale watch. We always ride on a Dolphin Fleet boat as they are staffed by naturalists and are actively doing research on every whale watch they conduct. Though yesterday was cool and breezy and quite cloudy with ocean swells in the 5 to 8 foot range, they decided to head out quite far to the East side of the Stellwagen Bank to watch the whales feeding. Due to the cloudy day, the fish (sand eels) that the humpback whales feed on were really near the surface (within 50 to 100 feet or so). This resulted in the whales making only shallow dives to go down for feeding and not showing us too much tail! But, they also were lunging up out of the water with their mouths full of fish and actually completely breaching the water — as in leaping out of the water COMPLETELY. You haven’t seen a fish jump until you have seen an adult humpback whale leap out of the water. They only did this once the boat had left the immediate area they were in, so I didn’t capture any photos with the camera — just with my memory.
Here are some “shots” from the day
— the humpbacks were often quite close to the boat and there were often more than one at the surface — I left this one un-cropped so that you could see how close to the boat it was
— sometimes they did do a deep enough dive to show us their tail’s underside — each humpback whale has a distinctive marking on the underside of his/her tail by which they can be identified
— lots of photos snapped (yeah for the world of digital cameras) as this whale was with us on the surface for a while, then was going, going, gone
First vacation in 2 years and it seems like forever since we’ve been here on the Cape. We’ve rented a different house this year — in Orleans this time on Pleasant Bay. All the packing and getting things ready at home and work to be left alone for a week had us really tired. So, no biking today — we went on a whale watch instead. Photos of some whale tails in tomorrow’s post, I promise. We observed at least 12 whales on our 4 hour “tour” and they were really active.
Tomorrow morning’s plans include a walk with a cup of coffee on our beach, just a few steps away from the deck. It’s much closer than it appears from this photo. Many sailboats are still at their moorings in the bay. And with the breezes here yesterday and today, it should be a good sailing weather.
Fireworks in our home town — were spectacular, as usual.
Happy 4th of July!!
To celebrate all the veterans of foreign wars – to all the saints who from their labors rest.
Happy Memorial Day 2010.
Our town has a Memorial Day parade. The first part of the parade is loaded with the veterans, some of them still able to proudly march down the street, others being proudly driven in convertibles, pickup trucks, you name it.
It was a beautiful, sunny day — perfect weather for parades and picnics. The navy jet swooped the parade route 4 times. With USA painted on the underside of the wings of the white plane and the screaming of the hornet’s engines from about 2000 feet overhead, it was quite a site.
The back half of the parade must have contained every kid in town (just kidding)! But it felt like it. From girl scouts, boy scouts, and brownies to every little league team that exists, they all paraded by. The local paper’s website says that thousands lined the streets to watch the parade. With all the kids, coaches, Moms and Dads, I think the parade contained thousands also.
Guess this might be just a blog of “firsts in 2010” for now.
The white lily wins the race of first to bloom, but it is in the shallowest water and thus gets warmer when the weather is warm.
They’ve been at the bottom of the pond for months and only just recently, with warmer weather, out of the cave and feeding on algae near the top and sides of the pond. My BFFs (Best Fish Friends) have survived the winter and are looking fine. They do have a lot of algae to eat, but hubby thought it would be fun to see if they remembered what the feeding rock (the place I come to when I feed them) was for. So, I got some of the lo-temp fish food and went out to the pond and, sure enough, they remembered. There were lots of sucking noises as they came up and tried to be enthused about this very boring fish food. My hands and fingers also got lots of “fish kisses”.
And another year by the pond begins today, with the first fish feeding of 2010 on the first day of Spring!
We took a mini-vacation to Martha’s Vineyard over the weekend and I took some knitting along. We took the car onto the ferry from Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven. It was storming fiercely and the waves were tossing the boat about. But I took my knitting upstairs to the passenger area and did some knitting, just so I could say that I did. You couldn’t see anything anyway. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, but the gray, rainy sky was absolutely indistinguishable from the gray tossing sea. I made great progress on my poncho while we were away, mostly due to the fact that the weather was so bad.
The last day and a half that we were there, the storm finally passed and gray skies became blue again. What a difference a day makes.
I should probably look back at the historic posts as I bet I have used this title before. But, sometimes January in Connecticut is kind of bleak. Grey skies, grey trees, grey rocks, — my house is even painted grey on the outside. The winter starts seeming long this time of year and, according to the calendar, we are only one month into it. But since we had our first snow in October, many of us are feeling it should be over already. It doesn’t help that we are past the winter solstice, sunset still comes too early and the nights are too long.
However, occasionally, sunset is worth waiting for and watching. This photo was taken out my upstairs bathroom window of a beautifully developing sunset. This is the only window high enough to see the sunset well and I had to take the photo through glass. I cannot get that high on our hill from outside unless I go slogging through the snow to the top of the hill. And it was too cold and snow-deep to do that. Maybe next time.
From the old poem — “red sky at night, sailor’s delight” —
It’s 2010! Where did 2009 go? If I look back at my posts for 2009 (a bit too infrequent), I know where 2009 went. It certainly went fast and was not a great year, particularly the events of the last quarter. But, many things were not within my control and I have just had to go with the flow, finding out what God has intended for me as it has happened. With no magic crystal ball, I have no idea what’s in store for 2010, but I’m ready for it (I think).
Happy New Year!