So it goes

Well, spring in Man­i­to­ba: 20°C today, threat­en­ing snow this weekend.

But I saw a robin on the lawn today, chow­ing down on worms.

This is large­ly a “note to self” post, but oth­ers might be inter­est­ed too: NASA has a gallery on their web­site ded­i­cat­ed to images from Artemis II’s lunar fly­by.

Here’s the full text from the “Earth­set” image above:

Earth­set cap­tured through the Ori­on space­craft win­dow at 6:41 p.m. EDT, April 6, 2026, dur­ing the Artemis II crew’s fly­by of the Moon. A mut­ed blue Earth with bright white clouds sets behind the cratered lunar sur­face. The dark por­tion of Earth is expe­ri­enc­ing night­time. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are vis­i­ble over the Aus­tralia and Ocea­nia region. In the fore­ground, Ohm crater has ter­raced edges and a flat floor inter­rupt­ed by cen­tral peaks. Cen­tral peaks form in com­plex craters when the lunar sur­face, liq­ue­fied on impact, splash­es upwards dur­ing the crater’s formation.

Image Cred­it: NASA

You can down­load this and oth­er high-res­o­lu­tion Artemis II images from the gallery.

Hoss^[1]Our name for any of the wild rab­bits we see around town. Short for “hasenpf­ef­fer”. came and chilled in our yard for a while. Above is a pho­to of a bii­i­i­i­i­i­i­i­ig stretch last evening.

He was there this morn­ing at 8:30.

And he did­n’t look like he’d moved much by 1 pm.

He had depart­ed by 4:30 pm, but some­thing tells me he’ll be back.

I guess I’d bet­ter read this, which a friend has kind­ly lent to me. (Thanks, Caryl!)

Pho­tos from Sept. 13^th, 2025, at Pel­i­can Lake in Ninette, MB.

I got back ear­li­er today from a camp­ing trip to Mani­pogo with three oth­er gen­tle­men. We ate like kings, drank some fiery drinks, enjoyed a ridicu­lous game or six of “Chick­en Time Warp”, pad­dled on the lake, stared at the stars, dis­cussed the world’s prob­lems, and gen­er­al­ly had a relax­ing time.

Same time(ish) next year, guys.

From 5:30pm to 8:30pm last night^[1]Which was, we real­ized, the 25^th anniver­sary of the day we moved into the house, we had 16 trick-or-treaters show up at our place.

• Har­le­quin with a lit­tle hat
• Pig (he wore a burlap over­all and had quite the full-head mask going on)
• Pikachu (it was her first Hal­lowe’en; when her mom said “What do you say?” her first guess was “Can­dy please?”)
• A giant black dot
• The Phan­tom of the Opera
• Teen who likes can­dy ×2
• Skull-faced clown
• Zom­bie mobster
• Deliv­ery dri­vers who brought us our tor­ta ×2
• Stitch
• Dead­pool
• Min­ions ×2
• Vam­pire

We turned off the light about 9:20pm, and we’ve got a bunch of can­dy left.

“Explain,” said the inter­ro­ga­tion machine. “Describe their culture.”

“They have an impor­tant cel­e­bra­tion,” said E.T., “called Hol­low Bean. Every­one carves faces in fruit squash­es and dress­es up in sheets.”

“Who holds this celebration?”

“The chil­dren, who actu­al­ly rule the Blue Plan­et of Earth. They are more intel­li­gent than the old­er peo­ple and out­run them on bicycles.”

The machine whirled around him again. “And what is the pur­pose of this celebration?”

“To col­lect the all-impor­tant food.”

“Which is?”

“Can­dy.”

—William Kotzwin­kle, E.T. The Book of the Green Plan­et. 1985, Berke­ley Books.

Hap­py Hol­low Bean, every­one! And b. good.

Pho­to by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash.