And so, another year begins.

I trust that everyone emerged from their respective New Year’s celebrations relatively unscathed… unless your intention was to have a reminder or two, in which case I hope that things turned out as planned. And remember: “If you did it and lived, then you probably did it right.”

I spent most of the early part of the day being lazy. When that wore off, we went to Scott and Dan’s for dinner with them and Angie. And it wasn’t just any dinner, it was a rather full spread – turkey, fresh mashed potatoes, broccoli, green beans and dressing. Jess had to go to work a little while later, so Scott, Dan and I watched The Terminator. The first one. The one with Arnold as the nearly unstoppable engine of death. The one that forever ingrained the phrase “I’ll be back.” into the American pop culture dictionary. And unless I’m mistaken, this phrase started the trend of Arnold having at least one catchphrase per film. Here is some trivia about the movie, courtesy of The Internet Movie Database.

I realized something while watching the movie tonight (and some other movie a couple of nights ago): We can be easily drawn into the world of the movie that we are watching. This excludes Cool World, Deep Blue Sea, Wild, Wild West or a certain movie-which-shall-remain-nameless (but it was based on and named after a popular role-playing game by TSR, Inc.). In those cases, run – don’t walk – to your nearest exit or therapist, whichever is closest at hand. Even having seen it before, I found it interesting and curious how I was holding my breath or waiting with anticipation during certain scenes. I did the same thing during Superman: the Movie and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but those are different circumstances and thus shall we not go down those paths tonight.

That brings us to today’s pictures. We saw this on the way to Scott’s. I wish that it had turned out better, but you can still see the volume of the plumage pretty well. It didn’t snow today, so these (1, 2) have no “new” content. This, however… I don’t know what in the Nine Hells happened here. I was trying to take a picture of the foggy night and got what you see there. Like I said: It did not snow today, so I have NO idea what is floating in the air.

Until tomorrow…

Peace.