Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 11:00 p.m. on a blustery night here in "The City", with a 14 mph wind out of the south making the current temperature, 35°, feel more like 26° under cloudy skies. 

We expect a low-temperature tonight of 35° before we rebound one more time to tomorrow's high temperature of 48°, which will be about seven degrees warmer than today.

We currently have a Small Craft Advisory in effect from St. Joseph to Manistee, with winds of 15 to 25 knots and gusts possibly up to 30 knots propelling waves up to eight feet, until 12:00 p.m. tomorrow, when that Small Craft Advisory will be superseded by a Gale Warning, also from St. Joseph to Manistee, with wind speeds of 25 to 35 knots and possible gusts up to 45 knots that will propel even higher waves up to 14 feet! 

I don't know if the surf will be up, as those waves may be too harsh for even the most die-hard surfers.

The sun will rise tomorrow @ 7:56 a.m. and set tomorrow evening @ 5:10 p.m. In between, the skies will be cloudy and winds are forecast to blow @ 22 mph.

A quick note on sports. The 12 - 0 Wolverines of Michigan will travel to Indianapolis, IN Saturday night, to face the 8 - 4 Hoosiers of Indiana @ 8:00 p.m., to decide which team will be the Big 10 champions. 

The Huskies of NIU and the Spartans of MSU are done for the season.

We collectively got our new modem up and running today. I think that Mary was more diligent than me, and her perusal of some websites told us that although our overall internet speed improved dramatically, the speed of our ancient PCs only improved a small amount, due to their aging hardware. So, we discussed what to do, and Mary agreed that I needed a new PC. She graciously ordered a new one for me to do that voodoo that I like to do and I'll be getting it next week.

While we were sitting in Mary's office doing that computer research, I espied an interesting effect being produced by the prisms hanging in our upstairs window. A Stonehenge photo that Mary purchased during a trip we took to England several years ago, and which is displayed on her bookshelves, had one of the rainbows produced by one of those prisms superimposed on it. 

 

I thought I was seeing things, but I like to believe it was an omen of good things to come. 

 

We've begun the set up of our new Christmas tree, something that I wanted and which Mary also graciously agreed to let me purchase. I have a thing about Christmas.

Be that as it may, I was not inclined to take an afternoon walk, so Mary and Ginger set out to get to the waterfront in spite of the inclement weather conditions. Mary was dressed in her new long winter coat and Ginger was styling her new sweater.

Here is Ginger on our deck modeling her new sweater after their return.

While they were on safari, they spotted the freighter Calumet transiting the channel, heading toward one of the docks in Ferrysburg. Mary snapped a few pictures of the Calumet with her Smart Phone. The Calumet is a Great Lakes freighter built in 1973. She measures 630 feet in length and she is 68 feet wide. She is capable of carrying almost 20,000 tons of dry cargo at 14 knots, propelled by twin 12-cylinder diesel engines.

This is the wheelhouse of the Calumet with the setting sun as a backdrop.

This is the Calumet in all her glory, with the Lynn Sherwood Stadium in the foreground and that same setting sun in the background.

One thing is for certain, the Calumet, like many of the ships that visit the Tri-Cities docks, fills the channel and attracts a lot of attention and photographers.

Since we finished the indoor chores today, tomorrow is set aside for some phone calls, cross-stitching, reading of both varieties, crossword solving, and that's about it. Ciao.