Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 2:30 a.m. in "The City."

And in "The City", we have a current temperature of 32° with the view out the WW partially obscured by the Dense Fog Advisory that is effect until 11:00 a.m. this morning. The sun will rise @ 8:09 a.m. and set later @ 5:10 p.m. By then, the skies will still be partly-cloudy.

In between, I'll be going to the monthly Irish Jam session at the library, my last until February due to my upcoming shoulder surgery. I decided that since it is the holiday season, that I'd bake those funfetti cookies that I referenced in a previous blog and take them to the jam this afternoon. I followed the recipe that I had previously downloaded from the Internet and they turned out very tasty.

I deviated slightly from the recipe by using my regular cookie scoop, which is one-tablespoon in size, versus the 1 1/2 tablespoon size referenced in the recipe. Thus, the cookies came out more flat than puffy. One benefit is that I have more than 40 cookies versus the 24 that are supposed to occur. We like them better and I am betting that the people at the jam session will like them too. I probably overdid the amount of sprinkles that are called for in the recipe too, but they look very festive.

They taste as good as they look!

Once Mary returned from the grocery store, I had a decision to make. Did I want pizza or vegan sausages for dinner? I opted for pizza and so Mary made the dough and set it aside to rise while we went out.

Mary had been looking at the internet earlier and found a reference to a shipwreck that had occurred in the late 1800s. The recent gale force winds had uncovered the bones of the ship for the first time since 1974. The same forces had uncovered the wreck in 1942! It turns out that the ship, which was located on a beach of the "Big Lake" and she was originally misidentified as the L.C. Woodruff, a vessel of 170 feet in length..

However, researchers from the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association, went to the location of the wreck, took some measurements, and decided that the wreck was that of a smaller vessel, the Contest, which was grounded in 1882. We took some pix of our own, but I've also included a pic taken by the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association, before the wreck was further obscured by the waves wind, and the tourists.

The pic taken by the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association.

As you can see, it has only been a few days since the first pic was taken and the wreck is now almost totally obscured. The spokesperson for the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association says it will be totally obscured sometime in early 2019.

Since we were at the beach, along with a lot of other people who saw the same info as Mary, she took some additional pix of the surroundings that I think turned out great.

Even though it was 42°, the ice was still stubbornly clinging to the rocks that lined the nearby channel.

Sadly, people were observed standing on the wreckage for "Selfies", that can cause the type of damages that the Michigan  Shipwreck Research Association spokesperson warned about.

This is a man-made breakwater near the beach.

A nice shot of the decommissioned lighthouse/maritime museum through the dune grasses.

No dune grasses.

Nothing but dune grasses.

Since it was definitely cooler near the lake, we skedaddled back to Renee and headed for Stan's in Spring Lake.

I should get back to that pizza that Mary made for our dinner. I think that this was her best effort to date. Of course I was hungry, but I really believe that the combination of vegetables, two sauces, and just the right amount of vegan cheese and nutritional yeast made this one especially great.

I did espy both trips of the train on the RSTL. At 9:13 a.m., I saw locomotive # 2025 heading south at an extremely slow rate of speed, towing 10 CHCs, eight DBTCs, and four DWTCs. Later, just after noon @ 12:10 p.m., I espied that same locomotive heading north, towing four DBTCs, and three CHCs.

Today, we have to collectively go to my jam session, since I have extra things to carry and my arm is not able to carry my usual traveling items, Abagael, my music stand, my music books, and those cookies I made. Mary will be driving me and staying for the jam.

That looks like enough for one day and one blog. Ciao.