Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 5:30 a.m. in "The City."

The current temperature is 38° under clear skies. Today's high is forecast to reach 43° under skies that will be cloudy with windy conditions. The sun will rise today @ 8:03 a.m. and set later @ 5:09 p.m.

There is still a Gale Warning in effect until 4:00 p.m. today. Those southerly winds of 20 to 30 knots accompanied by gusts up to 35 knots will produce waves of 6 to 9 feet from Holland to Manistee. Those strong winds will cause hazardous waves leading to a continuation of that  Lakeshore Flood Advisory for the "Big Lake" until 7:00 p.m. tonight. Minor beach erosion and lakeshore flooding can be expected for Mason, Oceana, Muskegon and Ottawa counties.

We had a great day yesterday. Mary spent some time in the kitchen whipping up a vegan and non-sesame version of fried rice. I won't belabor the details, but the taste was excellent. Mary did opine that she would cut down on the amount of maple syrup used in the recipe as it was a tad sweet, but otherwise she and I like it.

The fur-children did not get a walk yesterday owing to our tight schedule for the afternoon. Today, who knows, as we have that matinee concert @ Seven Steps Up in Spring Lake featuring Livingston Taylor. Here is a cut from YouTube to give a sample of his own musical abilities entitled, I'll Will Be In Love With You. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n40fh68x3QY Livingston is one of six brothers that includes his more famous sibling, James.

Livingston's "Special Guest" will be Rebecca Loebe. We should have a great time and I'll post some pix in the near future.

Speaking of pictures, we made the journey north to Muskegon to the Frauenthal Theater for the Mona Shores High School matinee presentation of the "World's Tallest Singing Christmas Tree" featuring the vocal and orchestral music students of the high school. We were not disappointed.

The lights and the music were as spectacular as billed, including that previously mentioned Barton Theater Pipe Organ. The efforts of over 400 students and parents contributed to a boffo performance. I have added some representative pix that can't sufficiently do justice to the performance. By the by, this was the 35th anniversary of the now annual performance.

This graphic was projected above us and in front of us.

The Barton organ.

Mary thought I was crazy, but a frame for a pic, even when it is the people in front of you, can make for an interesting framing of a pic.

I couldn't capture the entire tree with the lens that I had on my camera, but the 35 foot tree was filled with students of all grade levels.

As we were heading back to our car shortly after 5:00 p.m., the moon was on the rise and so I took some shots of it over the Board of Education Headquarters Building in downtown Muskegon.

I like this shot that took advantage of the natural lighting.

This is the headquarters building, very reminiscent of the Smithsonian Castle in Washington D.C.

As we traveled towards home, we both noticed that the time of day was what photographers refer to as the "Golden Hour", that time when the sun is setting, but it is not yet dark. So, I took some additional pix before we ended our great day @ Don Luis for dinner.

Not bad from a moving vehicle on a bridge with fast traffic that was heading for the Jingle Bell Parade in GH.

Dinner @ Don Luis was excellent and the fur-children were glad that we got home before they expired from hunger and we could feed then their own belated dinner.

In sports news, the Spartans of MSU and the Wolverines had no games on the schedule. What was on was the game between the Buckeyes of  "The Ohio State University" and the Badgers of Wisconsin. While the game started well for the now 10 - 3 Badgers, the now 13 - 0 Buckeyes ultimately prevailed, 34 - 21 to capture the Big 10 title and perhaps a Rose Bowl bid versus the champion from the PAC 12.

I was tired after dinner and came upstairs to watch that game and some TV, including my favorite fare, a Hallmark Channel™ movie, and fall asleep as usual.

Today, I don't see much in store other than that concert this afternoon. Ciao.