looking for christmas spirit in the christmas city

Yesterday was the #optoutside volkssport walk. I was the only one that showed. SO instead of doing the walk myself I went to ArtsQuest and watched "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" which I thought was about Mr. Rogers, but it really wasn't.

Today I had no planned walk. It's a nice day and I really needed to get my ass in gear. I've been such a sloth lately. Where to go. I really need to find some walking buddies. I decided to go uptown (My mother split hairs—downtown is 3rd Street, uptown is Main Street.) and look at Christmas decorations. Maybe that would pull me out of my funk.

Town was crowded. I decided to go to the Kemerer Museum and see the purse exhibit (3 Museums). They are on loan from Ilene Hochberg Wood who owns more than 3000 purses that span three centuries ranging in style from folk art to contemporary designer to embroidered.

I ultimately bought the combo pass for this and the Trees of Bethlehem Christmas Couture exhibit. That exhibit is done by the Garden Club and always pairs with whatever the main exhibit is at the Kemerer (Aside: Wow, the dollhouse ...) and was at the Kemerer, Sister's House, Moravian Museum, and Goundie House. The Moravian Museum also had more purses. One room had them from the 17-18 century that was part of their collection, and 20th-century needlepoint purses from the Wood collection.

Each tree represented a designer.

Most of the trees are at Kemerer. They included Dior, Judith Leiber, Philip Treacy, Valentino, Betsy Johnson, Alexander McQueen, Givenchy, Comme des Garcons, Vera Wang, and Anne Marie of Paris.

There are a half dozen at the Moravian Museum including Ralph Lauren, Eric De Kolb, Burberry, Versace, Fendi, and Gucci. The triangle tree is there every year. Instead of cutting down a whole tree, they cut off branches and made the triangle. Then added to fruit and candles.

And four —Louis Vuitton, Lilly Pulitzer, Jeanne Lanvin, Dolce & Gabanna— at the Sister's House. There is also a large collection of Putz's (nativities, creches) there. 

I only saw three at the Goundie House — Chanel, Carolina Herrera, Yves Saint Laurent, and Kate Spade. Where was Channel? Maybe in the visitors center. I have no idea.

It's been a while since I've been in any of those places and they have changed, yet stayed the same.

My final stop was at the Hotel Bethlehem. When I was there last week I was disappointed that they were already decorated for Christmas, and worse, half-way decorated. Thankfully they finished the job yesterday and it is spectacular as always. The huts were selling stuff, and the shoppes on Main Street had a window decorating contest so everything was very festive.

My friend now lives in Virginia, but at one time lived here. She would have loved the purses and the trees. And she probably would have also gone with me to the Art Museum to see the Hollywood costumes.  It's curated by Gene London. Does anybody remember him? He was a kids television host when I was little. Angel does want to see the costumes but she's very busy with a teen, a fairly new job and adapting to being single. It's hard to make time.

When I headed for home I was feeling Christmasy. Then I opened the door to Ebenezer Scrooge and any Christmas cheer gathered was gone in an instant.

Miles/Steps:          2 miles

Weather:               mid-40s, sunny

Bathrooms:           I-5 at the Kemerer. And they were unisex.

complete and incomplete

I'm involved in two virtual programs for 2019. One is "Walking Canada" which is an AVA event, and the other is "Run the Year", in other words, I had to walk 2019 miles, in 2019. Noth are linked to my FitBit. I don't need to manually put in the data like you do with "Tail On The Trail". It's annoying.

About six weeks ago, I updated my FitBit software on my phone. And the app stopped working. I didn't realize it wasn't syncing as well. Yesterday while walking I decided to remove the app and redownload it. When I went into the app store I had 15 updates, including FitBit. I did them all.

Fit Bit now works. That's when I discovered I lost all my data for the last six weeks, or so I thought. That's important. Both walking Canada and Run The Year are synced to my FitBit. Shit.

You can tell by this blog that I am not walking like previous years. Part of it is a lack of motivation. I just don't care. I did manual sync and retrieved a month's worth. Both of these normally would have been done in July, maybe August.

I received my 900 miles badge yesterday for "Run the Year". Clearly, I shall fail at "Run The Year". There is no way I will get half the miles in five weeks. But maybe I can get 1000. That might be doable.

I finished "Canada" today. I thought I had a way to go, but when I logged in (first time this year) I was done. 

I also collected badges. They send an email every week but I don't read it. I guess the badges were in the email.

I did finish "Tail on the Trail". This year we are getting a folding flashlight. I guess that will live in the car. 

a little of this. a little of that.

Yesterday I had no planned walk. My roomie kept saying why not go to the exercise class at the library? I finally decided to do that.

Now should I walk or drive? Walking seemed to be the logical choice, but I needed to take photos of the two Bethlehem volkssport walks for the national AVA. I decided on a combo of walk and drive.

I started at the Comfort Suites and signed in for the South Bethlehem Volkssport walk. Then I walked down the greenway to Polk to take a couple shots and came back. Then I drove to Arts Quest, parked and took some shots of the furnaces, ruins and the NMIH. Then it was back in the car and to the north side. I still had enough time to shoot the sculpture garden before I had to head to the library for the Qigong. I never explained to my sister that this wasn't an "exercise" class. At least not in the western sense.

When I arrived they were talking about Chinese calligraphy. The class soon started and we learned one set of five. It's always sets of five. After learning it we do the movements as one two or three times. Then end with meditation. (Or torture. It depends on your point of view.) It was a hard set. My legs were killing me and I was seriously thinking of skipping the north side walking and head right home. Then the instructor said he was changing it up and we were going to learn some Xing Qi meditation. (Must be spelling that wrong. I can't find it on google.) I looked at the clock. The class had 40 minutes to go. Forty minutes of meditation? I'd rather walk home on my hands.

I cannot sit still. I cannot visualize. I can fidget. I can listen to the children in the hall. I can hear the heat come on and off. And I can watch Elsa and Anna cosplayers on the plaza entertaining the children.  You know it's bad when Frozen characters are more interesting than what you're doing. I did visualize something: My route from the library to all the places I needed to go.

The gong finally rang and it was time to get the hell out of there. I was pretty much the only one that left. Everyone else stayed and talked about the wonderful time they had in this meditative state.

I headed to the Hotel Bethlehem. The town was a Christmas fantasy ... already. Even the hotel was decorated. I always appreciated that they stayed in autumn until the day after Thanksgiving.  Then I headed down to the industrial quarter for pictures, then to the canal. then back up to church street to the serenity garden and the view from the Plaza wall. Finally, I was back at the car.

Then I drove to Moravian College, took more pics, and to the Wind Creek Casino for the final ones. The only "key spot on the walks that I did not take was Lehigh. It was the Lehigh Lafayette game day. No way I was stumbling on campus then. Driving back Fourth Street there was a line to get in the Tally Ho.

Miles/Steps:           4 miles

Weather:                low 40s, sunny

Wildlife:                 none

golv: jacobsburg

This week was the Jacobsburg Get Out Lehigh Valley Walk. I felt like shit, but I went anyway. I have my first full-blown cold of the year.  I broke down and bought the high blood pressure cold medicine. Don't. It sucks. It might not raise my blood pressure but it doesn't do anything else either. It's useless.

Being outside actually helps more. Now if I could blow my nose and keep walking, it would be perfect.

Again, no photos. (Stole the lead photo from the GOLV FB page. )We started at the big lot and went on the orange Henry's woods trail, then picked up the red trail. It was flat and I was in the front of the pack. Then we changed to the red trail, crossed the road, and headed up a hill to Rt. 33. Now I was at the back of the pack. As we walked carrell to Rt. 33 you could hear all the traffic, but there was enough brush and trees that you couldn't actually see it.

We finally reached a place that was flat, and I broke ahead of the slow group, but never caught the fast group. They were too far ahead. I had to keep stopping at intersections until the sweep yelled left, right or straight. Ultimately we crossed the road again and were at the parking lot.

Miles/Steps:           3 miles

Weather:                high 30s by the end of the walk, sunny

Wildlife:                 none

Bathrooms:            I-4.5

no photos

My inability lately to use a calendar came to a head-on Saturday. I invited Debbie along for the Get Out Lehigh Valley walk in Jacobsburg. But alas it's the 16th. Oops. We went anyway. But I didn't take a single picture.

It has been unseasonably cold here. I'm glad I took a scarf and a hat along. I haven't broken out the winder coat yeat but I did have five layers on — long underwear, ls shirt, pullover fleece, zip fleece, and sweatshirt. In the end, I was only carrying the sweatshirt.

I don't know a lot of the trails at Jacobsburg so we took the orange Henry's woods trail to the other entrance. That parking lot was a mess. They are enlarging and paving it. Hurray! Then we came a little way back, crossed the creek and continued up the other side. We went for a while and it wasn't back. Then it started to get rocky and rooty. But there were stairs and we took them. That was a big mistake. They were steep and uneven and took us nowhere. We had to climb back up them. At the top we met two women with dogs who told us to go back the way we came, the trail only got worse.

So we did.

i am out of control

Here it is Tuesday and I never posted about Saturday's walk. Yep, I'm in one of those moods again where life is spiraling out of control.

School isn't going well. I don't know if it's the students or it's me but I feel like my Type II classes are imploding. that isn't good. On the other hand, I have two sections of Type I next term, and two sections of Photoshop next term, so I can stop worrying about money.

In 54 weeks I'll qualify for Medicare and will stop worrying about health care. But then I'll start worrying about being an official old fart.

In the past four weeks, I lost both my Discover card (I think at Walmart picking up Sharon's RX) and my debit card (at the farm, buying eggs.) Thankfully I froze the Discover and then replaced it two weeks later. I canceled the debit card. Neither has reappeared. I still haven't replaced the debit card.

My school email was hacked. I'm surprised it took 18 years.  I had a super simple password (not quite as bad as 12345, but close) and I hadn't changed it since I received the account in 2003. Apparently, I am sending emails all over Europe.  What I'd like to know is which website did I use it on that got hit. Was it the typographic day planner I ordered from Sweden?

Speaking of calendars, I apparently can no longer read one. I am getting days and weeks mixed up. I really think it's my lack of work. I only work two days a week and it all kind of blends together. I know that I am spending way too much time with the roommate.

I shut down my doodling blog in October, on it's 10th anniversary. Nobody notice. I wonder if the same would happen here?

time to break out the scarves

It was 31 degrees when I left the house at 7:30 for my walk. I was unprepared. Tuesday I wore a sweater to work and I was hot.

The volkssport walk in Langhorne began at 9. I hopped it would warm up by the time I got there. By the time I turned onto 413 I had the heater off in the car. Things were looking up.

I was supposed to do the registration table for the first hour and a half, but someone took my job. I headed out at 8:55.  Langhorne is a borough, so it's not very big. It was a stagecoach stop on the road to Philadelphia, and hosted a military hospital during the Revolutionary War.

The start point was a historic farm house owned by the town and operated by the Open Space group. It's still a working farm and they also hold educational programs there. The last owners of the farm were murdered and the killer never caught.

I only wore a hoodies and I was fine. Except for my neck. I needed a scarf. I need to put both a scarf and gloves in the car. Especially until the weather stabilizes.

The walk was nice. It was mostly in town. There was a lot of historic buildings and some great 19th-century architecture. There was a small nature preserve. I even ran into a few people I knew.

When I returned to the start point, I took over at the registration table.

Miles/Steps:           5k

Weather:                high 40s by the end of the walk, sunny

Wildlife:                 5 doe crossing the road driving down Route 412

Bathrooms:            I-5 at the start point and also at the public library