Derecho damage

A little later on, the main tree is clear, but the sides of the road are still clogged with piles of downed limbs deposited there for pickup by the city over the next few weeks.

Derecho damage

This past August was the great derecho, a weather phenomenon I'd never heard of until it flattened trees all around us and knocked our connections to the outside world down for days. Hurricane force winds for just a brief and violent time, then weeks and weeks of cleanup afterward. We got off lucky, but here's a city crew nearby removing a massive tree from a road and power line.

Months of quarantine

Like many others fortunate enough to be able to work from home, we've been in lockdown in our house a long, long time. Everything that enters our house goes through a six day period of quarantine, sitting down in the basement, and there's been a lot of cycles of those, as attested to by this sticky note that served for a period of more than four months of six-day quarantines.

Where the bows went

This incident also solved a mystery for us, of why we couldn't seem to keep bows on the presents beneath our Christmas tree. Answer: somebody was plucking them off methodically and incorporating them into her projects around the house.

Forbidden stair play

Our toddler is not supposed to play on the stairs, but sometimes a little bit of unsupervised time goes a long way in misbehavior. We're still trying to convey that projects like this are not appropriate, but I've got to admire her enterprise and industry in filling the stairway so rapidly and thoroughly.

House cat

Salvatore also really liked our gingerbread house for some reason. He would often get up on the table and roll against it on his back.

Colonized tree

I'll welcome in the new year with this snuggle image: Salvatore snuggling up close to the tree, in this little nook on the right hand side. When he wasn't there, our other cat Veronica liked to snuggle in this same spot also.