Pre-Dawn

Here it is pre-dawn. The trees outside the window are just becoming visible through the windows. I’ve been awake for several hours now, no idea why. The fire is burning bright in the masonry heater, Attila is preparing the food he will take to work. I am sitting at the computer. Typical morning.

There is another WordPress update to install. It seems like the last update was only a few weeks ago. Accomplished before 9:00 a.m. this morning. The manual update always works the first time, it is just so time consuming!

Terra gave me a few Starbucks coupons for songs, pick of the week. This will be another wee project for today, something new.

An investigation of the online digital library service revealed that the library nearest the little house in the city accesses the same service used by the library near the country house. This is good news for the Kobo. Early this morning another interesting library book was finally ferreted out of the lists of formula romance and vampire novels. It is called Made in the USA by Billie Letts. There are good books in this library collection, but it helps to have a list of titles and authors ready to assist in the search for your preferred reading material. Most of my list is not offered in the online collection.

One of our next projects at the little house is to install a medicine cabinet above the sink in the bathroom. When we bought the property there was only a hole in the wall where a vanity might go. Who knows why, best not to know I think. Anyway, last summer I found a newish medicine cabinet for $11 at a ReStore, a fundraising entity for Habitat for Humanity. Installing the medicine cabinet is on the list, but will require more than a one night stay to accomplish, so perhaps when Attila has another Saturday off in a few months he will be able to tackle this project.

There is no counter space in the bathroom at the little house in the city. Toiletries were carried in and out as needed until I came up with my clever, cost free solution. The bottom half of a plastic pop bottle, with a slit near the top on one side, is hung from a stick-on hook, placed on the wall above the sink. Clever yes. Pretty no. Functional yes, it works.

I’ve been thinking about Facebook this morning. One thing I like about it is that people I know are there, on the other end of the ether, so to speak. At times we are sharing the moment. A strange connectedness in absentia.

Google facilitated a search on sharing the moment, and this site came to my attention. Apparently the site was created by a graduate school student in Helsinki. The ideas are far from practical, from a mass-produced, economy-of-scale, lets-make-a-profit perspective. The ideas are interesting nonetheless. The M.A. Thesis of Michihito Mizutani explores sharing the moment in various ways. Truth be told though, I’d rather share the moment in physical proximity to my friends and loved ones. And there is nothing like strolling down a busy city sidewalk. The most interesting concept I found at this site though, is one aimed at sharing culture and cleansing the planet, the Global-loon Proposal. Quite imaginative; I think it is the geographer in me that is drawn to this particular design.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

-4 °C
Condition: Cloudy
Pressure: 101.1 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: -4.0°C
Dewpoint: -4.8°C
Humidity: 94 %
Wind: 4 km/h
Wind Chill: -6

Quote

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.”
Leonardo da Vinci
1452 – 1519
(translator unknown)