Diner Food

Today a choice between a slinger and a meat loaf omelet with mashed potatoes and white gravy. Went for the latter. A good call.

Published direct from the cell.  Who knows how it will look...

Bald Eagle

This time of year they start to come back.  They love the Mississippi locks, not much ice, plenty of carp.

Just the coolest bird.  Their nests are made out of branches and logs, not twigs.

Placeholder

When all else fails.  Something to hold the place until the genuine article arrives.

Cousin to the seatfiller.  Someone who fills (duh) a seat (duh) at an event like the Academy Awards - especially while the true attendees attend to the call of nature.  So when the cameras pan the audience, no empty seats.  There's a whopping metaphor in there somewhere - some day I will suss it out.

Predator Drone

I'm sure predator drones are no laughing matter to the many people, bad and good, whom they have killed, but I have to note the irony.  Back before it was attached to technology, a drone was a "male bee... stingless, performs no work, and produces no honey..." (Webster's).   We've manned them up.

Nameless Dread

AKA "vague, nameless dread."  With a few minutes' googling it seems to come from A. Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet... but it sounds more like Poe.  (Through the miracle of the Search function it looks like Watson, in the same book, compares Holmes to a Poe character, and Holmes dismisses it.)  Sic transit dark 19th-century stuff - their version, I guess of noir.

What this is talking about, anyway, is the emotion of fear without knowing its cause.  In the middle of the night, not so surprising, could have come from a dream you don't remember.

But at high noon it's unwelcome.  Beat it.

Roadie

The guy you hire to haul gear to a gig. You can pay him most of what you make in a night, so you wind up playing for free.

Or the drink you pour for the road.  Usually a bad idea.  But after a gig where you've cleared zero and the crowd was calling for disco, it's hard to pass up.

Chicago

At 16F it's a little hard to love but still, the city with the best architecture.  Looking through the window from our room at The Tremont.