Work Dreams
After you retire, if you want to know how to start dreaming about bizarre work challenges again, just drive the commute to your old day job to walk through the workplace and visit all your former coworkers again. I did just that last Tuesday and was rewarded doubly.
I enjoyed the pleasure of seeing their precious faces again, while they applied their trade skills in a spiffed-up facility under new ownership and management. As a bonus, I was rewarded with a mostly unrealistic dream a night later, involving imagined situations I was supposed to play a role in, while having no idea how to proceed.
It was a treat to see them all looking as good as always, and have everyone still remember who I was. Of course, it helped that I brought a batch of Cyndie’s home-baked scones, fresh out of the oven, to distract them from any lingering memories of why they hoped to never have to listen to my lame attempts at humor ever again.
– Lynne, I’m sorry it took barely a few minutes before I came up with some snarky remark to poke fun at you. –
In the years since I retired, I haven’t noticed missing the work, but I frequently miss being with these people. We spend more time interacting with coworkers most weeks of a career than we do with our families. The folks I was lucky to be with for many years were a very special work family for me.
If only I could convince the staff that they should hold their next company picnic at Wintervale Ranch. I’m sure I could talk Cyndie into baking some desserts for the occasion. I would even promise not to make the manure composting area one of the main features I’d show off.
After a day up at the Wilkus’ cabin in the middle of the week, Cyndie and I have taken advantage of an opportunity to get away to her family’s lake place for the weekend. We brought Asher along, too, so we only needed to find coverage for twice-a-day horse feeding for the few days.
Since we prefer to wake up at the lake whenever possible, we drove up last night under the cover of darkness. I think it might have helped me avoid any more dreams about the old workplace.
When can I expect to start having dreams about weird situations of being retired?
.
.
Couldn’t Fly
We drove home. The weather didn’t clear up enough in the Cities for us to fly Mike’s plane back. Not for lack of us trying to will the clouds to lift. We checked for promising progress frequently throughout the day, but that didn’t seem to help. A watched weather report doesn’t necessarily clear.
The focus of our dual-purpose trip shifted more toward the speedboat motor getting serviced and the boat being brought back to the storage building on their secondary property.
That gave us time to kill, which we used for another walk through their woods.
There was a fair amount of bright fall colors in the leaves near the ground.
However, there were very few leaves of any hue left in the branches overhead.
The boat dealer told Mike they could have his motor service completed by 3:00. If flying weather was going to improve enough, Mike suspected it wouldn’t happen until around 4:00. The potential was there for us to accomplish both his main goals, even though Mike was more than willing to take care of just one and call the trip a success.
If a window of good flying weather conditions opened up, we would take it immediately and leave the boat to be picked up on a future trip to their cabin. We plotted a course of action for the day, packed up our gear, and left the cabin to walk more trails on their property.
After that, we headed to town for a late lunch and then drove to the boat dealer to wait for the service work to be completed, watching flying conditions on an app all the while.
It wasn’t improving at all.
The call to report the boat was ready came at about 2:58. We hooked it up and drove back to their property to park the boat and trailer in their storage building. Then we drove back into Grand Rapids and stopped for one last check at around 4:00.
It was obvious, which made it an easy call, despite how badly we both wanted to fly. We were driving home, and into the dark of night. The flight would have taken around an hour and twenty minutes. The drive was over three and a half hours.
However, fear not! We had each other and my digital music library for entertainment. The time passed easily, especially with Mike doing the driving. It’s a route he has traveled for 40 years, making him an excellent tour guide for points of interest along the way.
I was only away from home for 35 hours, but Asher gave me a greeting when I walked in the door like it had been a LOT longer. I suppose he was measuring my absence in dog-years.
.
.
Striking Scenery
The day started as brilliantly as it ended yesterday. The timing of the sunrise has moved late enough that our morning walk with Asher on the way to feeding the horses brings some wonderful displays in the sky.
Early in the afternoon, I met Mike at the Flying Cloud Airport, where I parked my car before climbing into his SUV for the drive north. The fall scenery was looking pretty impressive, a couple of hours north of the Cities, despite the sputtering rain from a gray cloud cover. If it had been clear and sunny, it would have really popped.
The clouds to the north of the precipitation put on a show of their own, which I captured through the windshield.
One of the chores during this trip was to move their boat into town (Grand Rapids) for winterization service. We arrived to hook up the trailer with time to spare for a walk in their woods. The scenery around the pond, with its glassy surface, was particularly photogenic.
It’s a little past peak for brilliant reds and oranges up here, but the tamaraks are just short of reaching their peak fall beauty.
Our plan to fly Mike’s plane home today is teetering on the edge of acceptable weather, which is exactly why they had to leave the plane here the last time. It will be disappointing if we have to drive home, but we will return today one way or another.
It would be a first for me to view fall colors from a small plane. My fingers are crossed.
.
.
Creating Sawdust
My arms got a good workout yesterday using a grinder on a “Y” section of the oak tree that fell while we were walking past it during the summer.
I got a good start on it, but there is still a long way to go. While I was working, I had a sense it could be compared to giving a haircut, but that usually gets accomplished in under an hour. I also figured that it could be a little like mowing the lawn, but that frequently gets finished within a day.
My projects sculpting wood tend to last for weeks. I have two more levels of finer-grain discs yet to use with the grinder as I refine the shape more to my liking. Then I will switch to sandpaper to work on smoothing out all the tool marks, eventually working it to a silky finish, revealing the ultimate beauty of the wood grain. Or something like that.
Even though it is just starting to get exciting, I need to take a couple of days off from making further progress on it. I invited myself to tag along with our friend, Mike Wilkus, on an overnight trip up to their cabin. We will be driving up to just north of Grand Rapids this afternoon and, if the weather allows, flying their small plane back home on Wednesday.
Mike has helped us out on numerous occasions over the years, so when I heard he was going to take care of this task alone, it was an easy decision to ask if he wanted a copilot to keep him company. It sounds like tough duty [hee hee], but it’s what a friend would do.
The newest wood heart will be there for me when I return.
.
.
Alternative Views
Saturday morning, Cyndie and I got our vaccination shots for COVID and the Flu. My practice is to be as active as possible after shots, working my arm muscles regularly to prevent the vaccine from stagnating in the location of the injection. It has always helped me to avoid excessive pain in my arms.
After lying down to sleep for a night, nothing in the body moves much at all. Yesterday morning, we both woke feeling noticeably achy and stiff. I took a long nap in the middle of the day. I decided to try some acetaminophen to augment my movement routine.
It became a balance of allowing my body to rest and moving around to aid in circulating my lymphatic system. I mostly wanted to rest. My intuitive sense tells me I would be better off staying active.
During one of the moments when I was being not-so-active recently, lounging on the ground by the hay shed with Asher and watching the horses, I looked straight up and thought it would make an interesting picture.
One shot led to another, and I also came up with this:
Just another alternative way of looking at things.
At least it doesn’t look like the hay shed is tipping over from this angle.
.
.
Classics Live
Oh, what a night! Cyndie and I met our friends, Mike and Barb, in St. Paul last night for dinner at Kinkaid’s and a fabulous performance by Classic Albums Live (CAL) doing the Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts. I can’t say enough about CAL’s formula of presenting a pristine rendition of classic rock albums live on stage – “note for note, cut for cut.” It is truly exhilarating to experience.
It was a beautiful October night in the Capital city, although getting there was made more complicated by road construction and increased traffic due to simultaneous MN Gopher football Homecoming and MN Wild NHL hockey games happening.
Rice Park downtown was full of life.
Most of the people around us were headed to the hockey game, but at the Ordway, we found a crowd of like-minded album fans all fired up to relive our past by listening to Sticky Fingers together live. It’s like we were teenagers in our bedrooms again, listening to a record until we had every note, every pause, imprinted in our minds for decades to come.
It occurred to me that the CAL musicians are pulling off something that the original artists probably rarely, if ever, have done. When recording albums, the artists were in studios and laying down multiple tracks with a variety of effects to create their masterpieces. After that, the songs get mastered by the Producer to fine-tune output levels and dynamics. The band and the Producer will settle on a track order that won’t necessarily have anything to do with how hits are performed live by the group for the rest of their careers.
Classic Albums Live musicians are so committed to authentically recreating the albums live on stage that their performances more closely resemble a classical music ensemble recital than a rock concert. The musicians dress in black to minimize attention to themselves, and they don’t try to mimic the original artists’ looks or performance styles.
They excel at recreating every note and sound (mistakes included, if there were any on the album), which can get complicated sometimes on multitrack recordings. The CAL performers become adept at quickly grabbing a shaker or cowbell to come in at just the right moment while still playing their other instruments.
One of the more difficult tricks they pull off, which the original artists likely never faced, is rapidly changing instruments in the limited time available during the pause between songs on an album.
We have become such fans of this concept (we previously saw CAL perform The Beatles’ Abbey Road) that we stopped at the Box Office before last night’s show to purchase tickets for the next time CAL will be at the Ordway. They are doing The Eagles – Greatest Hits in March of 2026.
As if Canada needed one more thing to be proud of, they have given the world of album lovers the greatest gift in Classic Albums Live. I tip my tuque to the founder, Craig Martin, for over 20 years of this superb concept.
.
.
Silly Horses
We give them this fabulous sail that casts a large shadow and filters 95% of the UV rays, dropping the temperature by an easy 10 degrees F, but they can’t give up their affinity for that damned willow tree.
Gotta love ‘em.
Maddy, from This Old Horse, came by yesterday because we reported Mix was looking like she was hurting again in her back end. The consensus is that it isn’t one leg or the other, and it isn’t either foot. It’s possible her issue is arthritis, but Maddy felt it seemed more muscle-related. She massaged Mix around her hips and butt and lifted her hooves to do some stretching while I held a lead rope attached to a halter.
We decided to start giving Mix the same pain management dose that Light has been getting each morning to see if it will provide some relief. All we can do is watch to see if she appears to start moving a little easier. They’re all old horses, though Mix is the youngest of the bunch at 21. They all tend to move like old creatures at this point. The fact that they can behave so spry most of the time lulls me into forgetting they are justified in having age-related aches and pains.
I should probably say, spry when they aren’t napping, since that is how they like to spend most of their time.
Yesterday, I had a wonderful exchange with our friend, Patty, who astutely observed a curious sight in the photo of Cyndie and Mix between the fence boards. I noticed it, too, upon seeing the image on my computer. How many of you other horse-savvy readers spotted something? If you did, can you identify what it is?
Patty guessed correctly.
Here is the image, again, for your reference:
If you have no idea, click here for a clue.
What could that be?
.
.
Sitting There
.
From my spot in the grass outside the small paddock, I took two pictures of what I was seeing.
.
I like them both.
Framing the primary subjects of Cyndie and Mix in the background between the two boards of the fence in the foreground produced a result that I am very pleased with. The added features of the two metal gates being aligned so perfectly parallel, and the visible weathered textures of the two wooden boards, add a lot to the appeal for me.
Asher’s distant stare with his stoic posture from his position in front of the barn was definitely portrait-worthy. The propped-open door contributes some life to the image with an implied reference to ongoing activity underway. He is not alone, but he is in charge of himself in this moment, free from the constraints of a leash.
And I was just sitting there, close to them both, taking it all in. It’s a tough life, but I’m doing what I can to get by.
.
.
Finally Frosty
There will be a little break from my whining about how hot it is for this time of year because normal temperatures have returned for a while. In fact, the air temps made a jump from too hot all the way down to freezing in rather short order.
The horses were looking forward to the first rays of sunlight reaching them so they could soak up that solar warmth. The thickness of the frost was impressive in places, particularly on top of the wood post of the hay field fence.
I crouched down to get a shot of the frosty grass by holding my phone close to the ground. It wasn’t until I saw the image on my computer screen that I noticed there was one rogue grass blade standing tall among all the freshly mowed grass around it. How did that one dodge the cutting blade?
I have no idea. Ya gotta give it to that grass blade, though. It found a way to stand out among the crowd.
So, we are at the awkward season of transition between always thawed and usually frozen. Do we shut off all the outside water and drain everything now, or wait and risk being forced to do it all at once later, when the next string of cold nights arrives? We’ve decided to do a little of both. We have drained and rolled up some hoses to store for the winter. The landscape pond pump will continue to run for a while longer.
It’s a bit like deciding when to rake up leaves. Too early, and more will fall back onto the lawn. Too late, and they could freeze up and get buried by an early snowfall.
I’m not complaining (even though it may seem like I am) because the four changing seasons are one of the most wonderful aspects of living where we do. The challenges of the transition weeks are not a bug; they are a feature that builds character.
It’s funny to me that I forgot I needed to dress more warmly when I stepped out the door yesterday into the predawn frosty environment. Where are my insulated gloves, anyway? Oh, yeah, I forgot I have a fleece vest for cold weather. That reminds me, I bought new quilt-lined flannel shirts last year.
I think all that summer-like heat of the last few weeks lulled me into an aimless indifference about preparing for cooler weather. Last year at this time, we had just returned from Iceland, where I had packed all sorts of layers for outdoor adventures. I was already in cold-weather mode when we got home.
Frost is supposed to mark the end of the growing season. With luck, maybe I won’t need to do more than a few spot mowing sessions to finish off managing our grass growth once and for all in 2025.
Remind me to check on the status of our snow shovels soon.
.
.
Relative Something 