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Our Daily Thread 12-16-14

Good Morning!

We’re down to single digits now!

9 Days Until Christmas!!

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On this day in 1773 nearly 350 chests of tea were dumped into Boston Harbor off of British ships by Colonial patriots.

In 1809 Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate. 

In 1916 Gregory Rasputin, the monk who had wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was murdered by a group of noblemen. 

And in 1960 a United Air Lines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided over New York City, killing 134 people.

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Quote of the Day

“Fight the good fight of faith, and God will give you spiritual mercies.”

George Whitefield

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 This one is fun, sent to me by Karen. From FabFourVideos

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Anyone have a QoD?

68 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-16-14”

  1. Good morning everyone.
    It’s Tuesday. Nothing special about Tuesday.
    Tonight Elvera is going to have dinner with a church group and go see Christmas lights.
    I have to make out the best I can.
    I have done that before. No problem.

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  2. Morning all. I am beyond frazzeled. Not even sure where that is. I was doing okay and folks kept calling me. School went well and I finished well and left everything ready.
    Then had to get my computer worked on, etc.
    I was fine, had a nice dinner with friends.
    It was finding the ant’s nest in my phone that did it. Ants everywhere. No more ant stakes and then I found drops of water on the underside of the sink.
    and then more folks kept calling, can you take just one more letter with you. Arrrggh…
    Pickup is at 6am. I think I need sleep.
    Wonder how heavy this suitcase is….

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  5. Wait. Did we not send enough Christmas photos, that we’re back with the theatened big scary birds? (AJ, did you figure out whether it’s a Cooper’s or sharp-shinned hawk? One of the biggest challenges in bird-watching. Mine was kind enough to spread its tail.)

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  8. Hey, I’m not the one complaining about the big scary birds. If it’s OK with all of you, it’s OK with me. But THIS bird is more likely to catch your chihuahua than that other “scary” bird was, and it’s a lot bigger.

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  12. It’s a Christmas hawk. They’re very rare. 😆

    Unlike Santa, he comes everyday. He doesn’t bring presents though. He does harass and eat the sparrows that are everywhere. And you don’t even have to put out cookies for him. He’s way better than Santa, unless you’re a sparrow. 🙂

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  14. Musical Advent Calendar – Day 16: The Christmas matin “O Magnum Mysterium”, in a haunting setting by Tomas Luis de Victoria.

    O great mystery,
    and wonderful sacrament,
    that animals should see the new-born Lord,
    lying in a manger!
    Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
    was worthy to bear
    Christ the Lord.
    Alleluia!

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  16. Does this mean that Hawk, like Cat, will soon be confined to indoor living? Then they will grin up chickens and process them for politically correct replacement food. Makes perfectly good and economically sound sense to me.

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  21. So you’re saying it’s not a partridge (looking for) a pear tree? That was my first guess, too.

    I am going to try to take a Christmas-y picture this week. But today it’s raining again (Yay!), the first of a series of 3 storms rolling in — none as intense as last week’s, but what a wonderful feeling to have it raining somewhat regularly again.

    I have a few bird and nature folks as FB friends and one is involved in Audubon: “If I was to do my Christmas Bird Count for Audubon at this very moment, I’d report five species in my front yard – White-crowned Sparrows scratching for bugs, House Finches in the tree, European Goldfinch eating nijer seeds at the feeder, an Allen’s Hummingbird sucking down nectar, and a goofy Yellow-rumped Warbler that cannot find the meal worms I put out for her!”

    See? AJ has a hummingbird named for him.

    She also posted several photos the other day of shorebirds she saw during her walk on our local beach, skimmers, gulls, terns.

    I like throwing out names of birds to impress cheryl and AJ.

    It’s almost like I know what I’m talking about. That’s something I’ve had practice at, being a reporter all these years.

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  22. I spent last night cleaning out the bathroom medicine cabinet (I actually found some boxes of old contact lenses in there along with several unopened manual toothbrushes from my dentist over the years). So now I have more ‘storage’ room in there, which is crucial as my bathroom is the size of a postage stamp with very limited surface space for anything. The medicine cabinet is tiny, too, with itty-bitty, narrow shelves. But it provides needed extra space for things like bandaids, dental floss and eyedrops.

    The shower/tub drain is running slow again, though. I spent some time plunging it, but will have to give it another go-around.

    Tonight I’m working, going to the Unbroken preview in Louie’s childhood hometown. They had the big red-carpet Hollywood premiere last night at Hollywood & Vine.

    I’m looking forward to seeing the film at long last. The producer & Louie’s family members will be there, too, answering audience questions afterward.

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  24. Today is generally assumed to be the anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. (There is no record of his birth, but his baptism in the Roman Catholic church, traditionally registered one day after birth in Beethoven’s time, is recorded as occurring December 17, 1770.) So, in honor of his supposed birthday, here is one of his pieces that I love.

    Everybody knows the opening four notes of his Fifth Symphony, but my favorite part of the piece is the last movement. So I went looking for a video of that movement, and found…

    …well, you know how much I love seeing children express themselves musically… here’s an excerpt of a 3-year-old boy conducting to a recording of Herbert von Karajan leading the Berlin Philharmonic. 😉

    (The boy has a little trouble with an itchy nose for a while in the middle 😉 but if you can excuse that, you’ll be amazed to see this young man’s precision and fire!)

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  26. Janice, I rather assume Mumsee meant guinea fowl, not the little rodents.

    AJ, did you get the hawk ID’d? If you got a good look at his tail feathers, that could do it. I lean toward sharp-shinned, because what we can see of the tail it looked squared, not rounded, but it isn’t a really good look. Whichever one it is, it’s a juvenile, like mine was.

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  30. Cheryl,

    The Coopers around here tend to be smaller. This fella was bigger.

    It amazes me that I live in a pretty populated area yet I’ve identified at least 3 different birds from pics I’ve taken. It seems for the last few weeks I see one of them every other day or so. I got some more of a different hawk this morning. 🙂

    Of course it probably helps that my neighbor has birdfeeders everywhere on his property….

    Kinda like ringing the dinner bell. When I do see ’em, they’re hunting.

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  32. Re birds. This year, I got my first photos of oriole, cedar waxwing, kingfisher, hummingbird (ruby-throated), catbird, Eastern kingbird, great egret, pelican, killdeer, sapsucker, Cooper’s hawk, some form of tern, anhinga, snow goose, brown creeper, a couple of unidentified ducks (they don’t “match” any photos in my bird books or online), lesser yellowlegs, rose-breasted grosbeak, wren (two different species), white-throated sparrow, wood thrush, brown thrasher. From Cooper’s hawk on, that was also the first time I saw each of those species, except for the wrens.

    I also got my first photos of fledglings or unfledged juveniles of at least ten species, as well as my first photos of courting turkeys and peacocks. And lots of good photos of birds in flight, from hawks to hummingbirds. And some great shots of fighting birds, too. Oh yeah, and bird-eating-bird.

    The last two years I have also photographed about 30 species of butterflies, though two or three of those species (such as monarch and tiger swallowtail) I had photographed before.

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  33. Good to hear from you, Jo. Praying you through your journey. Looking forward to more updates when/if you can.

    AJ, I like unorthodox and odd now and then. 😉 I dare say Beethoven might approve, as well. 🙂

    I was reading in the book The Gift of Music: Great Composers and Their Influence recently, and in the chapter on Beethoven, it is recorded that he had a few students from time to time. Due to his complex personality, the authors concluded “he must have been one of the most unsystematic teachers the world has known, being impatient, slovenly, quarrelsome, unbelievably sensitive, and never on time. That marvelous organizer of music was the most disorganized of persons.” LOL! It’s fascinating to me, the study of that man’s life and creative genius.

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  35. I got a kick out of seeing it, too. Such enthusiasm! I’ll have to say his giggling after he dropped the baton near the end was infectious. 🙂

    The director of the symphony I played in while in college was quite vigorous in his conducting at times (and sometimes fiery in his personality, too). I was always hoping his baton wouldn’t accidentally go flying — I was seated in the front, as principal violist, and right in the line of fire should his baton have escaped his conducting hand!

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  36. The kid has potential. Obviously he is familiar with the tune.
    He has good sense of beat and tempo.
    Not everyone has that. I had a friend in basic training in the AF who couldn’t keep step with the beat. Flight leader gave him a hard time for a couple of weeks, but then ignored it. Trouble was, he kept others out of step. Didn’t bother me, I marched to the drummer I heard.

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  38. 6 arrows, that video was great, going to share it on FB. So much passion! And I loved the eyebrow action to go with the changing musical moods. 🙂 And the giggles at the end, so cute, just makes you smile & laugh along with him.

    Well, I’ll be on both mumsee’s and cheryl’s hit list this week (well, the latter’s only if I give in and buy some shoes!).

    But mumsee may not be speaking to me. I’m using Liquid Plumber in the shower/tub drain, I had no choice. Just tired of how slow the shower drains in the mornings.

    I got the Kindle for Carol, but was so tempted to go up to a Kindle Paperwhite version — she wants something to read outdoors and I guess the Paperwhite is good for that as well (indoor outdoor); but it was $40 more.

    Still, I’m going to watch the prices to see if it comes down by the weekend at Best Buy (where I found the lowest Kindle prices, much lower than Amazon actually). I’m hearing that this Saturday could be an epic day for price cutting in the stores.

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  41. I hit a good downpour driving home — and steady, light rain otherwise. Love this soaking we’re getting.

    But when I unpacked the things I’d picked up at Smart n’ Final, I found a box of pop tarts that I was charged for (but certainly weren’t mine). So I’ll probably take them back, I don’t see myself as eating those. And somewhere someone’s looking for their pop tarts as they unpack their bags. …

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  45. Chas, your mention of your friend who couldn’t keep the beat reminded me that there’s some Steve Martin movie (The Jerk, maybe?) where Martin’s character, in one segment of the story, cannot for the life of him get the beat. Anyone remember that one? I can’t remember the context there, but he’s trying to clap the beat and lands everywhere but on the pulse. 😉 Of course his efforts are hilarious, being Steve Martin — staring intently, watching when other people clap, trying to match them, all jerky in his movements, but always being late! 😉

    Not as funny, of course, when it happens in real life, if one can tell when oneself is off, but feels frustration at not quite being able to remedy the situation.

    I remember when I first figured out, back when I was fairly young, maybe nine or ten years old, that my singing was off-key. It was like I heard myself for the first time. It didn’t bother me, but I could tell I was off. I think it was soon after that that I learned, on my own, how to match pitch. I’m not sure how that happened, as I didn’t have any specific instruction focused on pitch-matching, not having general/vocal music classes in elementary Christian school, like public school students do.

    It might have been not long after I started taking piano lessons, or due to singing hymns often in Christian school. (I had gone to a one-room country school through the end of third grade, and, though I still remember quite a bit about that experience, I don’t recall having music of any sort in those years. Kind of difficult for a teacher of six different grade levels to make time for that on a regular basis, I’m sure.)

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  53. I enjoyed that little conductor, too. I forwarded it to my husband and our daughter who plays the piano. (He liked it, but she was sleeping and I doubt she has seen it yet.)

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  64. Whew – son was arrested this morning in a high risk takedown!!! His boss had reported his trailer plate stolen 2 years ago and never bothered to let the police know that he had found it again. It all turned out good, but since his boss didn’t bother to tell them that when the police were telling him about it before the take down, son decided he no longer wanted to work for that outfit and quit his job this afternoon. So, we’re praying for him that he finds a new job quickly.

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  66. Kare, sounds scary. But I don’t understand a high risk takedown over a stolen plate, anyway. ??

    I once reported a plate stolen in Chicago . . . and I sold the car with the back plate still on it, telling the new owner the plate had been reported stolen and figuring he’d take care of getting a new plate immediately, as I would have in such circumstances! (I was supposed to remove a plate before selling the car, but physically I had a hard time getting it off and just figured that the plate was no longer in my name anyway, since I’d reported it stolen and hadn’t driven the vehicle since I reported it stolen–the car was parked waiting to sell when the front plate was stolen.) Anyway, I ended up getting ticket after ticket after I sold it, since the guy felt perfectly free to park in handicapped spots, by hydrants, and I don’t know what all, since it wasn’t in his name. I thought they’d ticket him for driving with a stolen plate, but when I asked about it, I was told the police didn’t “record” it as stolen unless both plates were missing. Might have been nice to tell me that when I filed a police report! (I knew the plate was stolen. It had been on the car the night before, and the car had not been moved. The plate was missing and I had a ticket by the next morning, so I rather think the police themselves stole it, honestly. A co-worker even confirmed my statement that the plate had been still on the car the day before by pointing out there was dust on the bumper where the plate had been, yet it had rained the day before.)

    Anyway, both of these extremes seem ridiculous.

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  68. Up too late here. My upload finally got finished–it had to be done by midnight and it was done about four till after more than 24 hours with multiple attempts. Now it’s time for bed.

    Kare, I do hope that your son is OK. That does sound traumatic, and really like the sort of thing that gets police departments sued.

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