It’s December 21st, so that means that, here in the northern hemisphere, every day from here on out will be a little longer than the one before. I for one am happy to get more and more daylight.
So it goes
Like Vonnegut said, “So it goes.” Poo-too-weet!
A bit of excitement
I pulled up at Chez Angela not long after a car accident. As I was preparing to leave, the ambulance pulled up and parked next to me, boxing me in, so I went back into the bakery and had a coffee to wait them out.
The cars involved are on the other side of the fire truck in the photo. I felt it would be bad form to wander around the site taking photos. Plus it was way warmer inside, sipping my coffee, than out in the street.
When I left, about ten minutes later, the police were still there, and two tow trucks had showed up.
As far as I could tell, no one was seriously hurt, but at least one of the vehicles was not in great shape.
The Hollow Bean 2019 count
This year we had the following costumes come to the door looking for candy (and receiving 2 full-size bars apiece, because frankly we bought more candy than we should have):
- a kid in parka and balaclava
- a knight
- a princess in a parka
- a princess in a different parka
- Maleficient, horns ‘n’ all
- a princess
- a unicorn with wings
- Elsa (I think)
- a princess asleep on her mom’s shoulder (her older sister, in the Elsa costume, collected candy for her)
…for a grand total of nine.
I should’ve given ’em all 3 bars.
Hollow Bean 2019
The last few days
Our friend Tess dropped by for a visit last weekend, and stayed overnight. I decided to snap a photo of her, and one of Kathleen as well.
Tess, smiling 
Kathleen, sitting in the window’s light
Then I saw a lovely red-and-yellow autumn tree on my way to work.
And today it snowed.
Home again, home again
And now we’re home from Ottawa, in the land of flurries and frost warnings and the start-of-autumn paving mad rush that a CBC listener termed “pavement panic season”.
Farewell, summer
A friend told me once about his young son’s reaction to autumn. The boy was maybe two years old, and my friend took him out into the yard to watch the leaves fall from the trees. After a couple moments spent looking around with consternation on his face, the son picked up a double handful of leaves, held them up to his father, and said, “Fix it, Daddy!”
I feel the same, kid. I’m not ready for summer to be done, but there were yellow leaves on the deck this weekend and I had to use the space heater at the office today.
I know a lot of people who love fall, with its sweaters and the riot of colours in the trees, but to me it’s just the gateway to yet another winter. I’m definitely a spring-and-summer kind of guy.
#siiiiigh
Shodan × 2
Two of my judo students/co-instructors graded today for their 1st degree black belts (or shodan). They did just fine.
It was an odd experience for me. They were the first two that I’ve shepherded that far. It felt like a test-by-proxy for me, as well as a test for them.
Congratulations to Neal and Joe. Welcome to the dan ranks.
Bike Ride
It’s a long weekend Monday here in Canada, so I went for a nice long bike ride today. 23km and change, in a bit under two hours. There was quite a wind out of the east, so I’m happy with that time.
I had my camera with me, and so I snapped a couple photos: a goose landing in the river, above, and a train under the 1st Street bridge, below.
I didn’t get a photo of the family in the not-yet-open splash park on 1st Street south of Richmond (Kinsmen Park, I think), making do with a water-gun fight.
Encyclopedia Brown
When I was a kid, I read a lot. I worked my way through the Hardy Boys mysteries, and even read a Nancy Drew book or two before I decided those were more in line with my sister’s sensibilities.
One day I discovered Encyclopedia Brown in the local public library, in a book of ten short mysteries whose endings were hidden at the back of the book, like a puzzle book. I was hooked. I read all the EB books the library had, and—if I recall correctly—I also discovered that interlibrary loan would bring me new tales.
As I aged, I discovered that names like “Franklin W. Dixon” and “Carolyn Keene”, authors of the Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew mysteries, respectively, were “house names”, false identities adopted by writers who would write one or two or ten novels in the series, then move on. I long assumed that Donald J. Sobol, the name on the spine of the Encyclopedia Brown collections, was also a house name.
I was wrong. Donald J. Sobol was a real person, a single, singular author, and this is his story.