Reasons I Love Noah, #347

Pancakes, mini sausage, spicy homefries, and a mixture of pears and peaches in a syrup made from peach and ginger preserves with a touch of cinnamon... yummy!

Bucolic Minnesota

The Luce Line. A converted railroad bed that stretches from near my house to South Dakota. A playing stomping ground for childhood Stephen.


The woods behind my parents house. This is old growth forest and part of the original Big Woods that use to cover huge tracts of Minnesota and Wisconsin:


More Big Woods.


Bucolic MN. Head east from my parent's house and you are in the city. Head west and you see horse farms:



Walk me out in the morning dew, my honey . . .


Local fauna with two flavors of local ice cream (for the record, Peppermint Stick ice cream and Peppermint bon-bon, both from Licks Unlimited in Excelsior Minnesota on Lake Minnetonka):

By Request

They said it would be a Hyundai. Somehow, the acceleration and growl of the engine said differently:

Minnesota State Fair

Another Game

No, not the game of the banal. This is a word game. The rules are simple: ask a question that can be answered in English. But the answer or a word in the answer also sounds/is a foreign language word that also is related to the original question. For example: Does Japan have a theatrical tradition? No.

New question I thought of tonight: Are Chinese noodles exciting? Yes, they are fun!

Eine Kleine Niagara Music

A little stroll down the Niagara River

Niagara River . . .





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The way down (or up) . . .






















This time with an obstacle . . .

Somewhere...

Sadly, it had started to fade by the time I wrestled my cell phone out of my bag, but I was greeted with this lovely rainbow upon exiting work this evening. Hard to believe with all the late afternoon thunderstorm we've had, but I think it might be the first I've seen all summer...

The various skies of Jersey City

Red in the morning, sailors take warning . . .

Sunflowers Bring Showers

These are a few of my rather poor attempts to capture an amazing bed of sunflowers in the field along Scotland Road. Unfortunately, although my cell phone does take good pics, it's not very adept at adjusting to lighting issues. So the sunflowers themselves aren't very visible, but I rather liked the thunderheads forming in the background... not too long after I took these photos, we had an apocalyptic mix of thunder, lightning, and hail so fine it looked like it was snowing a blizzard.

Harkness State Park redux

Took a daytrip to the shore yesterday, accompanied by Michael Powers, and thoroughly enjoyed the only patch of sunshine in the entire state. Some random pics for your enjoyment:

Down the Shore . . .

Sharing a little of the Jersey Shore (Stone Harbor) from this past weekend.

Pandora's Box...I Mean, Radio

So I've discovered Pandora Radio through a friend in the office. It's a site that allows you to create "radio" stations -- you indicate to Pandora know what you like to listen to and then they create play lists of music that they think may be similar.

So the first channel I created was "Gustav Mahler Radio" (surprise!). They randomly selected the second movement of Symphony 6...and then instead of continuing on to the next movement, switched over to the first movement of Tchaikovsky 4 (which I do happen to love). I attempted to talk myself through this cognitive dissonance caused by playing only individual movements of a symphony (one of my pet peeves) when I happened upon this explanation of the Tchaikovsky's "features":

Features Of This Song
Romantic stylings
a symphony orchestra
oboe
tonal harmony
minor key tonality
an emotional aesthetic
a symphony
a well-known composer
an acclaimed work

Romantic "stylings"????? "a well-known composer"?? And don't get me started that this movement is being called a "Song". Gah.