It has been awhile since I’ve posted, FaceBook being my preferred method of social networking for the past several weeks. That should change in the 2010. I hope to take this blog in the direction I intended when I first set it up and began posting to it, but more on that later. I’ve also tethered Uncommon Sense to my FaceBook account, so we’ll see how that works.
This post is just for fun. We got some snow here in D.C. Metro-land. My yard got twenty-two inches, and right before our expected Christmas road trip to Indiana. I took a few pictures from my Metrorail commute right in the middle of the storm. When the pictures were taken, seven inches of snow had fallen.
I had a few minutes to waste Saturday morning after coming off of my 12 hour shift. The first trains don’t leave their stations until 7 a.m. Mine comes from Ft. Totten, and that leaves me waiting for about 20 minutes. The picture is of a Blue Line train out of Franconia-Springfield, heading out to its next stop at Arlington Cemetery. I took several shots to get the blurring just right to show the train’s motion. I took some still shots that showed the snow melting from the train and sloshing onto the track, but I don’t want this to be a slideshow.
The next shot was taken at the King Street Station, which is West of Old Town Alexandria. King Street is famous for its shops and restaurants. To tell the truth, I’m falling in love with the place. In the picture, you get a good idea of what seven inches of snow looks like lying on the train platform. 
They hadn’t put much salt down beforehand, because people were slipping and sliding when they got on and off the train. Just be extra careful! I liked the vantage because you can see off and away from the elevated platform, the snowy streets and streetlights (which hadn’t gone off yet because of the gray skies). The sprinkling of illuminated raindrops around the platform lamp post gives it an added perspective, if for no other reason than the windows on a Metrorail car aren’t the cleanest plates of glass you’ll happen upon.
The last picture is a blurred shot of a row of townhouses we pass between King and Eisenhower. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get a straight shot of them with a G1 point and shoot camera on low light. That wasn’t the point. 
I must have taken a dozen shots, panning the camera with the motion to minimize the blur just enough that it didn’t completely wash out. I was going for a taste of impressionism, I guess. This one picture came as close as I could get to the desired effect. And if the question is going through your head, “how many times did they pass those buildings?” Well, there are close to a dozen sets of them.
That should be enough for now. I hope you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope you can stick to your new year’s resolutions, and that you are blessed with the company of family and friends. Most of all, I hope you take the time to focus on the real reason for Christmas. A cattle stall in ancient Palestine, a manger beneath its humble roof. And He who laid upon its fragrant hay. God bless!
On November 1, 2009 my creative juices will be flowing so hard that my head will look like a fresh squeezed lime. They will continue for thirty consecutive days until on the 30th of the same month, I will have the first draft of a fifty thousand word novel in my hand.
I’m impressed with Google Books. More on that and the excellent work they’ve been doing on the public domain later. But, I’ve been scanning the January 1, 1915 edition of the Catholic “Fortnightly Review” by one Arthur Preuss. On page 25 thusly: Commenting on the fact that Attorney General Hogan, of Ohio, was defeated in the recent election mainly in consequence of the warfare waged against him on account of his religion, the New York Freeman’s Journal (No. 4210) asks the “significant question”: “How is it that it is only against Catholics the ‘religious warfare’ is ever raised in politics?” Can it be for the reason that the average Catholic politician is notoriously a scamp?!?
Found a house in Alexandria. Everything just came together. This house sits on half an acre, a few blocks south of the Capitol Beltway in SW Alexandria. HALF AN ACRE. 
