On the way home from my soccer match, I stopped to photograph a small herd of Holstein Friesians cattle which have been hanging out in a field near our home for several months now. Known as the best dairy cow bread, it appears these ones are heifers and not yet ready for milk production.
In an effort to get a more competitive soccer match today, we played a Division 1 over-49 team which were 10 years our junior. They requested modified rules due to Covid-19. Specifically, headers were disallowed, throw-ins were replaced by kick-ins, and slide tackling was not permitted. We were compelled to accommodate their request even though I believe none of these make sense. We were ahead at the half having scored a single goal. In the second half, one of our defenders cleared a corner kick with a header (very hard to change 50 years of habit) earning our opponent an indirect kick from very close range. They scored and we had to settle for the tie, an unfortunate consequence of the silly rule changes.
My sister Alissa is 4 years my junior and still strutting her stuff on the ballroom dance floor. I am glad to see that the pandemic has not prevented her from pursuing her passion at a time when we all need to be finding ways to preserve some semblance of normality.
I generally only post my photos on this blog, but occasionally I come across an image that is just too good not to share. Today, I have a pair related to animal photography.
I completed work on our expanded walk-in closet today and returned the original shelving and storage units to their original locations. The new owners are going to have custom-made, built-in furnishings fabricated, as was my initial plan. Until then, these should serve them well. What is not shown in the photo is the remaining 1/3 of the closet which should offer enough space to create a nice seating / dressing area.
Pictured above is the amount of junk we have acquired over 17 years of living at our current home, roughly 3 cubic yards. Next week it will be picked up and taken to the dump. We have done our best to recycle everything that has residual value or use but some things just need to be thrown away. I just hope that my extremely efficient packing of this dumpster bag has not made it too heavy for the waste disposal company to remove.
Followers of this blog may recall that we got into a bidding war for our new home, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars over the asking price and fair market valuation. Prices in the real estate market have been driven up by the Coronavirus pandemic in which many are seeking safe refuge from the virus in suburban settings such as Concord. We made some of that back on the sale of our current home which was buoyed by the same market forces. The remainder, I made back today when I sold several positions in the cruise and air travel industries. Both of these sectors tanked when the financial implications of Covid-19 first became apparent and I decided to invest heavily since the fundamentals of both suggested they would eventually recover. With the promise of an effective vaccine on the horizon, they surged to new recent highs and I walked away with a 2.5x return.
Jeanine has a new best buddy, Kobe. He is part of her posse enjoying the weekend together on Martha’s Vinyard. I had a productive day both on and off the soccer pitch. We played Hopkinton, the third-place team in the league, and defeated them soundly. I got my first goal of the season, a blistering half volley from the top of the box. It is the kind of shot that makes you feel like you know what you are doing. Unfortunately, two of our wing halfbacks pulled up lame with strained hamstrings, leaving us no subs at that position. We face our toughest opponent in the league next weekend and I am in no kind of shape to be playing for 90 minutes straight. I hope our manager will be able to find some reserve players to help us (me) out. On the home front, I was able to pack and move most of my shop from the basement to a staging area in the garage.
Jeanine is enjoying a much needed weekend getaway on Martha’s Vinyard with a small group of her gal pals. She spent part of the day doing “clam therapy” in her bare feet and will be making a meal of the harvest this evening. I took advantage of what can only be described as perfect weather to move a good amount of my shop from the basement to the garage in preparation for moving day which is rapidly approaching. Doing so with a hand truck using the sloping lawn as a ramp is much easier for the heavy items than the shorter distance up the stairs.
I find geese much less interesting than most other birds and rarely take the time to photograph them unless they are doing something interesting. Today, the field behind our house was overrun with them so I thought I would do a couple of group portraits. The first features just over a dozen, the second about a hundred, and the final one something in the neighborhood of 300. That’s a lot of geese.
Our goal is to pack the entire contents of our house (excluding my shop) into the tiny POD on the right. Impossible you say. Perhaps, but this is what we are attempting to do. The plan is predicated on selling most of our furniture which I have been doing diligently for the past several months and packing the POD from floor to ceiling. Only time will tell but I feel like we might actually make it. I will move my shop using a U-haul trailer or truck to the garage of our new house where it will be stored until I can prepare the basement for occupancy.
I have more than 50 for sale listings on Craig’s List at the moment, most of them for furniture. I am most interested in selling items that are either large or heavy so we do not have to move / store them. Our new home represents the beginning of a new chapter in our lives and we have decided we should give ourselves a fresh opportunity to furnish it. Today, I sold this set of wicker furniture to a couple who drove three hours with a U-haul trailer to pick it up.
