Tuesday, November 26th

Tuesday I woke up to this!

More snow had started to fall during the night; thick, fat flakes that piled and piled on top of each other. I sat and had breakfast with my nose pressed to the window, watching snow fall lightly. After a bit, it let up, and Bill went out to start up the snowblower… which meant I ran to put on clothes to go take some photos before he blew it all away! Note to self: next year make gloves with fingers, rather than only bringing the fingerless gloves that are fine in Florida.

I’ll have many more photos up in a couple of days. Suffice to say – and you knew this was going to happen, right? – I stayed outside until my fingers and toes were little frozen nubs and I took lots and lots of photos. About the time that Amy was ready to come out and take photos, the snow started falling again. We walked down the hill (walked! didn’t slip and fall!) and down to the river, and with the great photos I got with my camera, I can’t wait to see what Amy got with hers. She has such an amazing eye — if you like my photos, you’re going to love hers.

There just happened to be an exhibit of Ansel Adams photography in South Bend while we were there. He was one of Amy’s big inspirations, so of course we wanted to go (which meant braving the roads, which did cause me to like the snow just an iota less… but not much less). The exhibit was amazing. It wasn’t large, but by the end I was getting glassy-eyed from seeing so many amazing things. Each photograph was perfect. Everything, every scene, every cloud, every stick, every drop of water, every leaf on every tree… every single thing in each photograph seemed to be aware of and loving the photographer. I’ve never seen his work in person, just in art books… and like I found when I went to the Van Gogh museum, the art books don’t do the work justice. The art books, while important for getting lots of things out there, dilute the power of the piece. The exhibit was really powerful.

And no trip to South Bend is complete without going to find some jumbo jelly beans, so the drive continued out to the South Bend branch of the Wakarusa Dime Store; AKA Candy Nirvana. Everything from traditional dime store candy to crazy Hello Kitty bars, to the jelly beans we went in search of. Curses, they were out of cinnamon ones (they only make these a couple of times a year, so once they’re one, you just have to wait). I got lemon, and coconut, and a fruit medley. And a few other things to compliment my candy haul from Jungle Jim’s. I am set on candy snacks for the next year!