"Many false conceptions are held concerning the nature of tedium. In general it is thought that the interestingness and novelty of the time-content are what "make the time pass"; that is to say, shorten it; whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain its flow. Vacuity, monotony, have, indeed the property of lingering out the moment and the hour and of making them tiresome. But they are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large conversely, a full and interesting content can put wings to the hour and the day; yet it will lend to the general passage of time a weightiness, a breadth and solidity which cause the eventful years to flow far more slowly than these poor, bare, empty ones over which the wind passes and they are gone. Thus what we call tedium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uniformity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares."
-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
As such is life.
My winter was spent in very much a seeming moment of monotony. Now I've looked up, and here's spring, and back to WORK! It's pretty much like I never left. As though I hadn't spent five months alone in a cabin. Good thing I have this blog to reference!:)
Events to break the tedium...
New ski trails...
This wonderful trail-scape was at the end of Antares this WHOLE time, however I never explored it as at first, I thought it was someone's property, and then later in the winter, it was just too dang dark to see anything anymore. I guess this is the best time of year to have found it anyway:)
Hadley is just the feline glue I needed to bond Ernesto to me! Well, at least he's more comfortable in the cabin anyway, and comes down from the loft even while I'm downstairs... during the DAY even...
Hadley is pretty much Ernesto Whisperer...
And also Rude Sourdough Eater...
I also filled some time with Merlin in Fairbanks. I managed to play the game till inoperativeness... whoops...
My puzzle is finished! NOW you can see what it is for real...
The best part of this puzzle was the makers' name...
The SunsOut! mama! Let's stay inside and Puzzle time!!!
AND... the real moose was in MY YARD! Yes, for the first time since I moved in to this cabin over five months ago, a moose has graced it with his presence! Hadley spotted him about 50 yards through the trees to the north of the cabin. The neighborhood dogs started barking at the moose a few seconds after I noticed it, and it high stepped away through the trees and deep snow. However, the next morning as I began making my way to the outhouse for my morning constitution, I noticed that a moose had made that very journey in the night...
Fingers crossed a mother moose will find my yard a suitable birthing spot! Probably not with those dern barking dogs... sigh.
"The days lengthen in the winter-time, and when the longest comes, the twenty-first of June, the beginning of summer, they begin to go downhill again, towards winter. You call that 'of course'; but if one once loses hold of the fact that it is of course, it is quite frightening, you feel like hanging on to something. It seems like a practical joke - that spring begins at the beginning of winter, and autumn at the beginning of summer. You feel you're being fooled, led about in a circle, with your eye fixed on something that turns out to be a moving point. A moving point in a circle. For the circle consists of nothing but such transitional points without any extent whatever; the curvature is incommensurable, there is no duration of motion, and eternity turns out to be not 'straight ahead' but 'merry-go-round'!"
-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
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