Everywhere I go I find a pal

Peter Weinschenk, Editor, The Record-Review

Let’s celebrate the moon.

I left my shop on Sunday night and the moon, full and bright, illuminated my driveway with its steely blue light. The orb glowed like a flashlight. The town glowed. The trees, flocked with heavy snow, glistened. The yards radiated a dark, blue hue. In contrast, sodium streetlights punctuated the street I live on with orange-ish light.

I walked across an ice covered driveway towards my house. In the night’s stillness, you could hear snow crunch under my galoshes.

At one point, I stood and admired the scene. The moon was shining bright. The silhouettes of pine trees were clearly visible across my yard. I saw a whitetail deer next to some backyard pines.

This, I concluded, was gorgeous.

It was the most ordinary thing, of course. It was a brief walk between two buildings. But the cosmos was on display. The moon and stars illuminated the night.

We all are inspired by the grand things of nature, whether it be oceans, waterfalls or mountains. But everyday life, too, can be so beautiful.

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What’s fun is taking a short dog through deep snow.

The dog will wriggle and swim through the snow, paddling to keep her head above the snow drifts.

I got to do this Sunday with my daughter’s dog, Lischka.

I was amazed at how the dog knew naturally how to maneuver through snow. The dog scrunched up its back, ever lunging forward through the snow. It’s the same maneuver you see with sled dogs.

I was amazed, too, at how much fun the dog was having in paddling through deep snow. Lischka had an absolute blast.

Both of us got a nice work-out.

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I bought a new watch to replace my old Timex Expedition.

It is a Garmin Instinct.

It’s a nice watch, built for sport and the shop, and it can do a little bit of everything. It tells time. It measures your heartbeat. It calculates the air pressure. It is a compass. It tells you where you are.

That’s all pretty good.

But here’s the downside. The watch has a 36-page owner’s manual.

I am wading through this pamphlet trying to understand all of the things this device can do for me. It’s complicated! The watch has no less than six buttons and communicates with my smartphone.

But this watch does some amazing things. It will pinpoint the spot a person goes overboard on a boat. You can use it to locate a lost cell phone. It makes a graph of your stress level. It displays the current weather. It communicates with satellites.

My new watch makes my old watch seem sort of quaint, but time marches on. Pun intended.