Little old lady welcome

I rushed to the farmer's market Wednesday for vegetables because Thursday was forecast to be an appallingly bad day to travel: something line an inch of rain before the temperature dropped below freezing (from 50 Fahrenheit at 12:01 am!) and then something like six inches of snow. That couldn't be anything worth travelling in.

The rain came starting Wednesday night about as planned, and it did seem to be pretty close to an inch all told. But Thursday during the day --- if the day came; it was so dark I made the downstairs dimmer by opening the window shades --- it didn't actually rain, or snow, not until the evening was setting in. In the end we got something like three to five inches of snow. Nothing horrible but, as it turned out, we probably would have been okay driving to the store in the afternoon anyway. I am glad bunny_hugger had no need to drive to or from school in that, though.

Her parents got ... well, I don't know. The Grand Rapids station for the National Weather Service said Kalamazoo, a bit to their west, got two inches of snow, while Jackson, a bit to their east, got seven inches (violating the usual rule that you get more snow nearer the Great Lakes). So it's possible they got literally anything, including a light dusting of snow, twenty feet of frozen rain, or two hours of being pelted with bags of frozen carrots. I suppose they'd have said something if either of the last two, though.

Here's some more of the Turner-Dodge House. I'll probably be done with photographs of a trip taken six weeks ago, that took us two, maybe three hours, in another week or so. You know how it is.

On to the Guest Bedroom, done up with a touch of a candy theme, and powered by ... I have no idea who's credited on that sign. Despite the room's name and our not being members of the Turner-Dodge family we were not invited to lie down and take a nap. (They had the bed roped off.)

I took a photo holding the camera up as far as I could possibly reach and I think the focus decided the lamp was the only thing it could focus on and as a result the place somehow looks like a dollhouse with a tiny bunny_hugger inside.

Peeking out the window to the pergola that could have been where bunny_hugger and I married, if the Turner-Dodge House didn't require wedding parties to arrange their own catering. Also, the discovery that other people have cracked windows they haven't got around to dealing with!

Above the fireplace (I think all the bedrooms had some fireplace) was a row of Lansing souvenir cups and plates and such, many showing the capitol building.

More views of the capitol from Lansing, Mich.

In the guest room was a steadily playing sequence of Christmas carols done entirely in bell tones and it turned out it was made by this Mr Christmas-brand ``Bells of Christmas'' gadget that, from its design, could have been made anytime from 1974 on.

Trivia: The Shah of Iran had rented an entire hotel in Igls, site of the bobsled and luge events for the 1976 Winter Olympic games, but cancelled plans to attend after a terrorist attack on OPEC headquarters in Vienna six weeks before the Innsbruck games.
Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries, Joshua Gilder, Anne-Lee Gilder.