Turn to black

Read and learn from my example.
Before Christmas I bought a pack of address labels from Staples, and with all the hustle-bustle it was just a few days ago that I finally got around to sending in the receipt and paperwork for my $5 rebate. As soon as the envelope was in the mailbox, I found on my desk another rebate form that I hadn't filled out. So I walked back to the mailbox, retrieved the envelope and, drawing on my extensive reading in the murder-mystery genre, steamed open the flap by holding the envelope over a pot of boiling water.
Alas, all the murder-mysteries I've read were written before the advent of thermal paper. I got the flap ungummed neatly enough, sure, but the cash-register receipt had turned completely black from the heat!
Fortunately, the numbers I needed to claim my rebate were safely on the un-steam-damaged receipt. I quickly applied online before I could commit any more errors.
All this for five dollars! Definitely not cost-effective.

White Clay Creek

On the Saturday between Christmas and New Year's the temperature rose to a balmy 50 degrees and my hardy hiking buddy and I decided to take a walk through the White Clay Creek Preserve, a state park near Landenberg. We parked in a small lot off London Tract Road and hit the Penndel Trail, walking to the London Tract Meeting House (site of the "ticking tomb") before looping around on the Edwin Leid Trail along Sharpless Road and then retracing our steps, a round trip of about four miles.
It was a beautiful sunny day -- no need for gloves or a hat! -- and there were many other hikers, joggers, hard-core cross-country runners, and dog-walkers taking advantage of the unseasonable weather. We also saw two equestrians fording the stream and one shotgun-carrying hunter.
The route we took followed the creek most of the way. We didn't see many birds or animals, but it was interesting to see a couple of man-made structures: a crumbling old boarded-up house near the Meeting House, its dormer windows collapsing at alarming angles into the roof, and a green metal shed that once housed a USGS monitoring station for transmitting data about the creek's water level. I noticed one of those ground-level USGS cartography markers in front of it.
The footing was a little muddy in spots, but as far as I was concerned that just made the walk more fun. I was wearing my all-purpose Gore-Tex boots, and wouldn't you know, we ran into a fellow hiker who was a Gore-Tex employee and noticed my footgear right away: "Practical AND stylish!" he commented with pleasure.
Another friendly fellow walking with his lively dog, Jack, turned out to be a trail maintenance volunteer for the park and gave us a few suggestions for trails we should check out.
Another hiker we encountered was rather less sunny. She told us -- with startling vehemence -- that the muddiness was NOT due to the rain, but rather to the number of hikers using the trails. She didn't seem to approve at all. Perhaps she thought that she and her group should be the only ones permitted in the park?

Make this the year

Every January we old-timers at the Y see an influx of people who have made New Year's resolutions to shape up. Most of them, unfortunately, don't get into the habit of working out regularly (go ahead; prove me wrong, please!), and within a few weeks class sizes and the parking lot revert to their usual state. At the Kennett Y on Jan. 2, while I was doing my usual burpees and ball slams, I saw a few people being taken on conducted tours of the facility, and next to me in the fitness center an old-timer was gently introducing a "newbie" to the multiple joys of the Bosu, the stability ball and the medicine ball. She didn't seem impressed.

New Year

I think the best way to describe the Great Mushroom Drop is to tell you that we spent the whole evening searching for two friends of ours. One is quite tall and is usually conspicuous in any crowd. And both of them were wearing red polka-dot mushroom hats, which you'd think would also have made them stand out.
Nope. We couldn't find them! Not only were there too many people in general, there were also too many people wearing mushroom headgear. Only in Kennett Square.
It was a fun evening, and I'm delighted I managed to stay awake. One of my favorite moments was my first glimpse of the huge, lit-up mushroom hanging from the crane at State and Union Streets. It was a magical sight against the dark sky.
It was below freezing, but I was well wrapped up and the cold didn't bother me at all. Maybe the heat from so many people warmed things up, or maybe it was the hot coffee from Fran Keller's and the Underground Donuts food truck.
After wandering around town saying "hi" to friends and visiting the open stores, at about 11 we staked out a spot in front of Talula's Table on State Street. Up until that point it had been a low-key evening, but over the next hour hordes of people descended on town and it got very crowded.
The people-watching was entertaining. One guy who wandered by wore a Santa Claus outfit, complete with beard. A group of stylish young men with Big Hair walked by, and one briefly tried to stand in front of me. Families brought their kids, some little ones asleep in strollers.
And at 11:59, the mushroom started its slow descent -- as the crowd counted down, it hit the street at the stroke of midnight.
I was hoping for a traditional chorus of "Auld Lang Syne," but instead the band launched into Lynyrd Skynyrd. Oh well.
Huge congrats to the folks who worked so hard to pull off this event! It really put Kennett on the map.

What's hot!

In a story on decorating trends, the Dec. 28-29 "Off Duty" section of the Wall Street Journal declares that "The use of blinky owls, Machiavellian foxes, timid deer and, most recently, mushrooms as decorative motifs in artwork and textiles is verging on kitschy."
Are you kidding me?! Obviously this doesn't apply to Kennett and Unionville, where mushrooms and foxes are and always will be cherished decorating icons. In one of my father's favorite maxims, "Consider the source": The same decorator states that 1970s macramé wall hangings are now "in" again.
I rest my case.