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Been throwing out peanuts out for the local crows; a few times some have gotten bold enough to land on the railing with me still standing there. I’ve had as many as eight in one morning, but sadly so far they have not reciprocated with shiny gifts as I’ve heard crows sometimes do.
Ezra and I built a little snow alien at Baker Drive Community Park in Dartmouth. This one’s kind of a grey.
Walking down to the tire shop along the Forest Hills Greenway — not so green in winter with all the snow, couple inches crunching underfoot.
A fork in the path. I think of “miles to go before I sleep” and “the road less traveled” and realize those are from two different Frost poems.
An idyllic brook winds through the woods. You’d barely know it was fed by runoff from a residential drainage culvert.
Bridges, bridges.
Last day of 2022 was clear and relatively warm, with nice views of Halifax across the harbour from the park by the Dartmouth ferry terminal.
There are eight crows in the trees in this photo, waiting for me to throw out some peanuts. Can you find them all?
If that’s too small, click through to the larger photo on Flickr.
After we scattered Martha’s ashes, we tried hiking the Costley Farm Trail, a rocky, hilly trail connecting Cole Harbour Heritage Park to the Salt Marsh Trail.
Along the way we found this nice picnic area, apparently built by crew from the HMCS Ville de Quebec.
Also found some Witch’s Butter fungus growing out of a tree stump.
From the Salt Marsh Trailhead, I did a brisk hike back up along the smoother Heritage Trail to pick up the car — first really strenuous walking activity since my bout with covid a few months back. Happy to report I did not keel over from fatigue or multiple organ failure, so I think I’ve rested sufficiently since recovering.
Shots from a cold dusk walk along the Halifax waterfront, the wave adorned in snowflake light projections, plus a visit to the new Queen’s Marque with sculptural installations “Rise Again” and “Tidal Beacon,” and the giant steps down into the harbour.
More on the symbolic architecture of the Queen’s Marque, with its connection to the rise and fall of the tides.
Launch of NASA’s Artemis 1, first uncrewed flight of the full SLS stack to send Orion around the moon.
This launch gives me *feelings* because back when I worked with NASA OHCM, a big part of my job was editing internal video interviews with engineers and other staff working on, among other things, SLS and Orion. I got really familiar with 3D animated B-roll of SLS as it evolved to its current form, and over time I built myself up a little collection of SLS preview videos to watch how the plans for the rocket changed over the years.
Feels good to now cap off that playlist with a real-life SLS launch video — bit later than scheduled. I still remember walking along Playalinda Beach in 2014 and thinking “I should come back here when SLS is ready to launch in 2017.” That, uh, didn’t happen in 2017.
(Some of those video interviews I worked on, not all SLS-related, eventually made their way to the public as a recruitment series called “#NASAProud”. I had to re-edit those with public domain music — with help from FreePD — and make sure they were ITAR and Sec508 compliant.)
If you want to see more (and don’t mind hearing the NASA PAO announcer flub “ignition” repeatedly): Isolated Artemis 1 Launch Views from various cameras on the pad and around KSC.
Now onward to Artemis II, first crewed lunar flyby.
We already did turkey for Canadian Thanksgiving in October so for American Thanksgiving I tried roasting* a whole chicken instead, and Amy cooked up some stuffing, gravy, herb potatoes, and crescent rolls.
Was good.
* Actually an Instant Pot “roast”, rubbed, browned, and pressure-cooked with broth.
