Finally a voice from Missouri...

 ...which isn't reprehensible: mine. Although I haven't much to say except I haven't kept up to date on Stationary Starling - I hadn't even looked at it for awhile and then Gill mentioned her frustrations with it and I thought, oh is that still a thing? Some of these pictures you'll have seen on instagram, but anyway, here's a summary of life since Christmas:

 

Christmas Eve: A double yoke in the morning eggs - what does this portend? Perhaps more luck? Another hopeful sign: I discovered a chrysalis on the window frame of my office when I went back to work after (yes!) nine days of vacating. It would have been more except I didn't realize I had to teach a class January 2nd. Then I had two more days of vacationing.

Usually the Magi move from on top of the piano westward to find the creche under the tree. This year they only got as far as the coffee table. Epiphany was also The Day of the Insurrection and so the Wise Men never reached the Baby Jesus. Symbolic? 

Then we went to an exhibit of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings - close ups taken right after the renovation so you could be very close to them rather than doing a backbend to try to see what was 40 feet away. I especially liked the Sibyls of the "pagan" world who supposedly predicted the coming of the Messiah. Everyone was very spaced out and they controlled how many people could get in, but it still felt very strange to be back in an art space.

This is me in my new Doctor Who shirt (Christmas present from my designer daughter) showing off some broccoli so I can find out if the Broccoli Sagra presenter is a fellow Whovian.

Sagras are celebrations of vegetables where experts talk about growing, developing seeds, cooking, genetic backgrounds, traditional landraces. They're run by the Culinary Breeding Network and I watch them as work as "professional development" heh heh, no, boss, I'm not goofing off!

This is about where we are on Monday afternoons when the chores are done and we are ready to be cozy - my view of A Sleeping Man as I Doze Over A Book. (That's the name of this mountain range we are hiking!)

Final vision: Forest Park in the snow on my way to work. Hopefully soon we'll be able to do more interesting stuff so I can share it with you all more often than every six months!

Lots of love,

Agelaius

PS Gill I always upload my phone pictures to the computer to put them into blogger. I don't know how you could do it on your phone and it's only one extra step which I do anyway because I'm such a documentarian.