Things are nicely settled for us just now, with Deb happily churning out episodes of Yorick for her epic on-line adventure series, starring that lovable skull from way back when. And I continue to polish up the piano pieces I hope to perform in about 7 weeks or so. Though we seem settled in for the winter, we are beginning to gather items for our upcoming trip to Vienna. It should be lovely there at this time of year, with lights and decorations, but it will have to go a long way to improve over Detroit. Every year Detroit gets better and better, and even though a lot of the inner core is till under renovation, there is enough there to get Detroit on a new must-see travel list nearly every month. We hope to spend time downtown over the holidays, just walking around the city.
The annual holiday lighting ceremony downtown Detroit was well attended again this year. The skating rink stays up all season. The annual Noel Night is this weekend, and later comes the winter carnival.
The only downside to visiting Detroit in winter is that there isn't much of an underground, or overground, city. However, there are 3 downtown hotels directly linked to the People Mover, without having to go outside except onto the roofed train platform. But most of the downtown is unconnected to other parts. And they still serve the beer way too cold, and give you ice in your water at restaurants. Brrr. We have our 5th and final autumn concert this Saturday night. We will be hearing 5 of the 6 Brandenburg concertos by Bach, as well as one of his cantatas. 4 of the 5 concerts were all of a single composer! So far Schubert, Bartok, Beethoven, and now Bach. This is highly unusual, but very welcome.
We just missed out on Snow event #6, though just north and west of us got blasted pretty hard. So we are still at #5 and holding. We are once again into a cold phase, but milder air is promised by next weekend. This is critical for us, as we have to drive to Toronto to catch our Lufthansa flight to Vienna (via Frankfurt). I am growing more and more excited to get to the Bruegel (no 'h') exhibit, where 28 of his 40 paintings are currently being shown. A few are from private collections that might never be seen by the public again. I am looking forward to seeing the Madrid "Triumph of Death" once more. I spent many days studying that painting over the summer we spent in Madrid, and I wrote a long essay about it, which I should dig out again.
Yesterday was the first good day to complete our seasonal yard work since coming back from New Mexico. Up to October 12th it was too hot! Then the bottom suddenly fell out of the temperatures. We got November weather after that, and in November we received December weather. I am hoping we get a break next month. There has been NO ASTRONOMY since returning from new Mexico at the end of September. Not only that, but previous to that the weather was equally rotten. 2018 will turn out to be the worst year for observing since I got my newest scope back in 2013. We will be in Vienna for the December observing session. I have a feeling I won't be missing much, but one can never tell.
Mapman
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