Photo Field Trip

Gil had taken the dogs down the street for a photographing field trip in the attached photo. He never knows what he's going to capture. The daylight on this particular day wasn't good for taking images, as it turns out, but at least the three of them spent some "quality time" together.

We love most aspects of living out here in Milford but there are some things which are downright annoying. One is living off of a dirt road. It means the cars are always full of mud in the winter.

The other annoyance is very slow internet connectivity. We don't have cable -- which would be ideal -- because Comcast says it is too expensive to run the fiberoptic cable down our street. (They claim it would cost $25,000 to put in aerial wire from the next closest node and then have to run 1/2 mile of cable underground to all our houses.)

We tried a satellite dish but were dissatisfied with the slow speed and weather-related glitches. So we both use cellular phones to connect and the speed is still abysmal.

For that reason, Gil is looking into renting a small, one-person office space in downtown Milford which has Comcast cable availability. We've tried using the library's internet but the reduced hours during the winter make is inconvenient on the weekend days when he's reading studies -- and even then, the connection speed is not quite fast enough for getting good high-resolution images of the data-intense studies.

My book club discussed When a Crocodile Eats the Sun this past week. It's a memoir by a journalist, Peter Godwin, who was born in Zimbabwe. It spelled out the whole bloody history of the country and it's sad to know that such a beautiful country has fallen into such despair. There was a "happiness" study of countries in the world recently reported in the NYT and Zimbabwe was rated by many factors as the "unhappiest" of all nations in the world. (Costa Rica was ranked Number One.)

It's been hard to get my 10,000 steps in each day with the temperatures hovering in the low teens so I've joined the YMCA here in Milford. Did a spinning class last night and a cardio class this morning which has left me tired and sore but has released enough endorphins to make me feel very happy!

Haiku:

Cold but sunny out

Winter is halfway over

Holding out for Spring!