Chasing Dragonflies

Javier Benites Dia de los Muertos figurine, photo by Merlina McGovern Another Albuquerque trip completed, another  Dia de los Muertos figurine collected. Since I have to travel with these fragile pieces, I'm a bit afraid to pick up some of the more intricate designs. There are some amazing animal and group figurines that I'd love to add to my collection. But I liked this festive couple. I loved the hot pink dress and vibrant flowers against the somber (but dapper) dark tuxedo; the curving heart against the crisscross of bones and rictus smiles. These figurines always remind me of my sister. We both loved laughing at the dark, whistling past the graveyard. It's why I still love the fall, October most of all. I can't wait for this hot, sticky, humid summer to be done with. photo by Merlina McGovern It was hot and dry when we visited my sister's grave this year; it sounds like a cliche, but there indeed wasn't a cloud in the sky. Nothing but hot, cl...

Newfound Lake, New Hampshire, photo by Merlina McGovern Up at the lake. Calm. Peaceful. My mother-in-law has a fridge magnet with a brown bear in a red and white striped swimsuit. It says: The lake is calling, and I must go. In the hot, sticky months of summer, the lake calls to us. Newfound lake, with it's fried seafood shacks and crowded summer homes at its foot and happy boaters zooming up and down its length. (There are muddy undercurrents here in the lakes region, though, with drugs, socio-economic battles, association frustrations -- all topics for a different kind of blog, not one where we're chasing dragonflies!) The night we drove up, fat, dark rainclouds boiled over until rain splattered everything, big boomers echoing across the mountains. The thunder, lightening, and rain prepped and cleansed everything for a clear and dry day. Not really a boating or swimming day, but a beautifully clean crystalline summer day on the lake. When you walk into the lake on o...

Dia de los Muertos figurine, photo by Merlina McGovern It's the day after Halloween, and there's something mournful about taking our Halloween decorations down after the parade of tiny trick-or-treaters have all gone home. I traveled a bit this month, so didn't get to partake of a lot of fall fun, like apple picking, haunted hay rides, or visits to the Topsfield fair. Nothing especially spooky about Manila, which is where I was traveling, in October (well, that is, if you don't count the double whammy of landing just as super typhoon Lando was hitting and feeling the rolling tremors of an earthquake during a meeting). But, with my collection of Dia de los Muertos figurines, there's always a bit of Halloween in the McGovern household, even after the ghosts have all flitted away. The photo in this post is a wedding set crafted by the same artist, Javier Benites, as a figurine highlighted in a previous post. They look so dapper in all their macabre finery, don...

Reading list I've been wanting to do this for a while. With all the gaming that I've been doing recently, and with all of the social media I've been devouring, I feel like my attention span has wasted away to almost nothing. And so, I'm beginning a project where I actually read all of my actual, real, sitting lonely on a shelf books. We've accumulated so many books over the years that even though we've started to buy more and more digital books, we still have a small library's worth of books in our house. The project is daunting, so I'm starting small. One small shelf in one of our shorter bookshelves. It's full of classics mostly, with some contemporary fiction. Some of them I've already read, but that's OK. First up is: You know, an light and easy read to start. Happy reading everyone!

The Three Kegs Inn, The Black Mirror Just when the heavy humidity, draped over everything, became oppressive, the clouds ruptured and rain sluiced down, saturating the roads and earth.  Hah. Gloomy days always fill me with buckets of purply prose. Summer's coming to an end for sure. Yesterday, evening crept in earlier than ever, and this morning, it's 841 am, and the angle of light coming in my window is flatter, no longer high and sharp as it is during the hot days of July.  It's the perfect morning to play a bit of The Black Mirror . I've been slowly replaying this cult classic, which was released back in 2003. If you read the comments for the review on AdventureGamers.com , you'll see they run the gamut from "one of the worst games I've ever tried to play" to "black mirror ROCKSSSSS." The prerendered backgrounds are detailed and full of atmosphere, but, yes, the voice acting is emotionless at times and nonsensical at others....

It's 83 degrees outside, and it's 937pm. I wilt in the heat. My brain stops. I don't want to move anything. But, it's garbage day. Dishes are in the sink. The dryer in the overheated basement is beeping.  This heat is oppressive.