Winter has come

I've been trying to remember when I last experienced a winter like this one. I remember one in high school, back in Illinois, that was COLD for a long time, windy, icy roads, lots and lots of snow in the way it gets in the midwest. 

That's a long time ago now. 

This one has been challenging. It was great for a while--the snow just kept coming right through the holidays, the skiing was better and better, it stayed cold enough for the snow to stay fresh and soft. We had fun. 

We skied and played and sledded and ran and hiked. 

We stayed indoors and got cozy and prepped for the coming of this hygge thing. Good practice. 

We took a New Year's trip to Sun Valley and had a fantastic winter vacation in the cold and snow and sun. 

We came home, and the snow kept falling. 

And the ice came, and the cold stayed. We found interesting ways to entertain ourselves, like creating a reading box. So Theo had a place to read. This was our neighbor Amy's idea. Genius. 

School snow days meant working from home with a new office mate. Lots of fun. Productive, even. 

We got out. Went for a couple walks. Went to movies...

It was tough to escape. These days, we're spending our time on ladders with ice picks, or in gutters with wading boots, chipping ice and clearing ice dams and trying to find and open storm drains to prepare for the impending melt flood. 

I'm remembering what really having winter was like, as a kid, in Illinois. Much of it is great. Some of it is not. But, there's always one fantastic thing, if you just make the effort. 

Get out and have fun. Play in the snow. Seek the sun. Stay human. 

And stay warm and dry, Boise. 

Sun Valley New Year

Christmas Eve

Snow day!

Hauschka ~ 5 Movements

A beautiful new piece of music from German pianist and composer Volker Bertelmann, aka Hauschka. Light, bright, and extremely accessible and enjoyable, this 5-track EP shows a more straightforward and playful side of the artist.

Mostly. The pace slows, the notes darken and lengthen, occasionally, as in 6am, but it is still affirmative, upward looking music.

This is a good way in to Hauschka's music if you're curious or just in need of some focus-feeding background sounds.

Chill chilly weekend

Look who got his first stripe in Taekwondo this week!

We ended up having a pretty mellow weekend around Boise these past couple days, and that's just fine with me. I'm just getting over a cold, Cathy's just starting one, and we all had hugely busy if extremely rewarding weeks. So, we chilled. And I got to hang out with this guy a lot. 

We went to Taekwondo. We went out for lunch. Went and saw the Christmas toy train exhibit, which never disappoints. 

We went for a gorgeous and icy family hike in the Military Reserve. 

We hung new pictures. We did laundry. We had chile verde and homecooked black beans and homemade tortillas for dinner.  We read books and played legos and read more books.

I had John over on Friday night and we tied dry flies over whisky until about 1am. All in all, a solid relaxing weekend.

Snowy trail run

Great run today in the foothills. 

Not too far above 0degreesF, but the wind was down and the sun was shining.

Josie certainly enjoyed it. And after being sick this past week is was nice to get outside and work for an hour or so. Sweat it out. 

I look forward to getting in some mileage again. 

Feeding the fishing fix

I've been spending lots of time out in the office tying flies. I'm actually getting a lot less horrible at it. It's meditative, relaxing, and kind of a lot of fun now that I can manage a few basics.

Actual fishing time has been slim, but I plan to rectify that. I made it out to the Boise a few days ago and landed over half a dozen easy, some nice ones, and three on a fly--a lopsided old-school non-parachute Adams--that I had tied! I've had hits and interest before, but this is the first, second, and third fish I've actually brought to hand on one of my own flies. I have to say, pretty dang gratifying. Especially since I got all 3 fish off clean without hardly touching them.

Getting cold up here in Idaho, and you can't stay in the river for long, but man was it nice to get out there and put hands on some trout. It's otherworldly beautiful when the river is surrounded by snow, too.

A beautiful book

This is a book just put out by our good friend Elisabeth McKetta, with help from her good friend Troy Passey. 

It combines lines of poetry--nonsequential, loosely related one to the next--and art in greyscale that combines words and scratches and sketches and shape into way more meaningful compositions than you might expect. 

It is truly a beautiful book, and reminds me that books can be beautiful in a way that so many media cannot. 

I read the entire thing the night I got home with it. And I look forward to reading it again. And again. 

amiina ~ Fantomas

I cannot stop listening to this record. 

amiina is a quintet from Reykjavic, Iceland, that traffics in lush, warm minimalist music. Classical instruments and haunting, spare melodies with quiet percussion only sometimes, this is music to send you down the rabbit hole of your mind. 

Fantomas is the score the band developed and recorded for a screening of a film serial from Louis Feuillade from 1913. Like so many of the best scores, this stands entirely on its own and adds a depth to amiina's catalog. This is great stuff.