Please, no medical advice. It'll only annoy me, and I'm already annoyed.
Sirenia Digest #108 went out to subscribers yesterday, and I'm very pleased with this issue. For one thing, "The Cripple and the Starfish"* is the best story I've written since "The Cats of River Street (1925)." I wrote that way back in early August, for #102.
Before I tried to break my toe yesterday, we left the cabin about noon and headed out Route 212 to frozen Cooper Lake. The windchill, well below zero, was brutal, and we were only able to be out of the van for a few minutes at a time. The threat of frostbite was very real. But it was beautiful. The wind whipped the snow up into clouds and dervishes that swept and whirled across the great white plain of the lake. And behind it all, a bulwark raised against the blue, blue sky, Mount Guardian, Indian Head, Overlook Mountain, Plattekill Mountain, Sugarloaf Mountain, Olderbark Mountain. We took a few photos, behind the cut, below.
For dinner, Spooky made hamburger steaks and cheese pierogi with green peas, and we had Guinness. A bottle of Guinness is good for a smashed big toe. Later, there was chocolate babka and The West Wing (Season Four) and I read "Camelus grattardi, sp. nov., a new camel from the Shungura Formation, Omo Valley, Ethiopia, and the relationships of African fossil Camelidae (Mammalia)."
Damn power lines. View to the northeast.
View to the northeast.
View to the northeast.
View to the northeast.
Back in Woodstock, in the lee of Overlook Mountain. View to the north.
Pointy stuff.
All photographs Copyright © 2015 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac
TTFN,
Ain't Beat
*Note: Yes! I found a better title and ditched "Stabbing the Face of Winter." Thank you, Antony and the Johnsons.