#denver black car service

[alphatransportation]

Alpha Transportation's Denver Black Car Service offers premium, reliable, and comfortable transportation for business or leisure. With a fleet of luxury vehicles and professional chauffeurs, we ensure a seamless and stylish travel experience in and around Denver. Learn more at Alpha Transportation.

[groundtravel]

Denver Black Car Service

Looking for reliable and luxurious transportation options in Denver? Ground Travel Today provides exceptional black car services that combine comfort, style, and reliability. Whether you need transportation for business meetings or leisure activities, our professional drivers and well-appointed vehicles ensure a smooth and stress-free journey.

Visit our Profile: https://www.pinterest.com/groundtraveltoday/

[blackcarlimodenver]

Elite Car & Limo Service Denver – Black Car Limo

Travel with class and comfort with Black Car Limo Denver. Our luxury fleet and skilled chauffeurs offer first-class transportation for corporate travel, special events, and airport transfers in Denver and Lakewood.

Lakewood car service

[eddielimo-blog]

Planning a trip to Breckenridge, Colorado, is an exciting adventure, but knowing what to pack is essential to ensure you make the most of your visit. Nestled in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, Breckenridge offers a unique blend of outdoor activities and vibrant local culture, making it a popular destination year-round.

[eretzyisrael]

by Jaryn Crouson

Several anti-Israel groups are planning to interrupt holiday travel and Black Friday shopping in a series of protests aimed towards “global escalation.”

A coalition of groups has planned over 50 events taking place from Nov. 27-29 in major cities across the U.S., Europe and Australia with the intention of disrupting “business as usual,” according to the coalition’s website titled “global escalation.” The action list includes coordinated strikes, protests and boycotts.

“From Wednesday 27th to Friday 29th November, the Global Escalation will bring together people and movements around the world to step up the collective resistance by going on strike, refusing to shop and by taking direct action,” the website’s “call to action” reads. “It will be the first of a series of blows that will force change.”

Protesters march through the CBD on October 06, 2024 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Roni Bintang/Getty Images)

Some events intend to prevent shoppers from purchasing from vendors the group declares are “complicit in genocide” in hopes of  “depressing the economy during the whole holiday season,” the website states. Other events call for workers and students to stage walkouts and strike “in solidarity with Palestinians” and protest of “Israeli weapons’ industries.”

“The forces of global capital and institutions of western power have thrown their entire weight in the service of the Israeli war machine, getting away with levels of brutality that none of us have witnessed before,” Global Escalation’s website states. “New precedents of colonial violence are being established, along with new ways of retaliating against anyone fighting the injustices that plague our world.”

A car caravan in South Carolina on Nov. 29 plans to interrupt traffic and clog “the central arteries of Charleston,” the event description says. (RELATED: Chuck Schumer Just Sparked A Massive Free Speech Debate After Sliding Antisemitism Act Into Defense Bill)

New York City, Boise, Idaho, Denver, Colorado, Omaha, Nebraska and several cities across California are some of the areas expected to be hit by protests, according to the website. There are also events planned in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain, Japan, Canada and Italy, among others.

Anti-Israel protesters have led a multitude of disruptions since Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 2023 attack on Israel, blocking traffic on more than one occasion in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California. Demonstrations on college campuses across the country have ended in hundreds of arrests after countless violent and destructive scenes unfolded.

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 1.17

Holidays

Apple Wassailing Day (Carhampton, UK)

Art’s Day (Robert Filliou)

Ben Franklin Day

Betty White Challenge Day

Business of America is Business Day

Cable Car Day

Carnivale begins (Italy)

Customer Service Day

Desert Storm Anniversary Day

Dia de la Divina Pastora Bank Holiday (Venezuela)

Ditch Your New Year's Resolutions Day

Drudge Day

Eartha Kitt Day (South Carolina)

Fire From the Sky

Hardware Freedom Day

International Mentoring Day

International We Are Not Broken Day

James Leonard Tagle Gordon Day (Philippines)

J.C. Penney Day

Judgment Day

Kid Inventors' Day

Lamb Chop Day

Liberation Day (Poland)

Make Your All-Time Top Ten TV Characters List

Martyrdom of Hazrat Fatemeh (Iran)

Menorca Day (Spain)

Military Industrial Complex Day

National Boxer Day

National Carolina Day

National Charlotte Day

National Classy Day

National Day of Racial Healing

National Feedback Day

National Lose the Jet Lag Day

National Public Employees Appreciation Day

National Puggle Day

National Ta Day

National We Are Not Broken Day

National Women in Science & Engineering Day

Old Twelfth Night (UK)

Operation Desert Storm Day

Patrice Lumumba (Heroes’ Day; Congo)

Photo Developing Day

Pig Day

Popeye the Sailor Man Day

Possession Day (South Georgia)

Professional Boxer's Day

Straying Toward the Path Day

USS Nautilus Day

World Lichen Sclerosus Awareness Day

World Rich People’s Day (Turkey)

Zinc Day (French Republic)

Zirgu Diena (Day of the Horses; Latvia)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Bean Day (Fargo, North Dakota)

Hot Buttered Rum Day

Hot Heads Chili Day

National Bootlegger’s Day

National Dairy Day (Thailand)

National Rye Whiskey Day

World Pizza Day

World Scotch Pie Day

Nature Celebrations

Rumex Day (Friendly; Korean Birth Flowers)

World Waterfowl Day

Independence, Flag & Related Days

Liberation Day (Poland)

Menorca National Day (Menorca, Spain; 1287)

Possession Day (South Georgia; South Sandwich Islands)

3rd Friday in January

Arbor Day (Florida) [3rd Friday]

Bean Day (North Dakota) [3rd Friday]

Comfort Food Friday [Every Friday]

Five For Friday [Every Friday]

Flashback Friday [Every Friday]

Fondue Friday [3rd Friday of Each Month]

Friday Finds [Every Friday]

Friendly Friday [3rd Friday of Each Month]

Fry Day (Pastafarian; Fritism) [Every Friday]

Hat Day [3rd Friday]

International Fetish Day (UK) [3rd Friday]

National Corrections Day (Australia) [3rd Friday]

Northarvest Beran Day (North Dakota) [3rd Friday]

Straw Bear Festival begins (Whittlesea, England) [3rd Friday-Sun]

TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) [Every Friday]

Weekly Holidays beginning January 17 (2nd Full Week of January)

Amelia Island Restaurant Week (Amelia Island, Florida) [thru 1.26]

Berlin International Green Week (Berlin, Germany) [thru 1.26]

Festivals Beginning January 17, 2025

Bean Day (Fargo, North Dakota)

Chili Quest & Beerfest (Galveston, Texas) [thru 1.18]

Denver Comes Alive (Denver, Colorado) [thru 1.18]

Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo (Fort Worth, Texas) [thru 2.8]

Fringe World (Perth, Australia) [thru 2.16]

International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo (Chapiteau de Fontvielle, Monte Carlo) [thru 1.26]

Madfredonia Carnival (Madfredonia, Italy) [thru 3.9]

Massafra Carnival (Massafra, Italy) [thru 3.4]

Montana Winter Fair (Lewistown, Montana) [thru 1.19]

Napa Truffle Festival (Napa, California) [thru 1.20]

Punta Gorda Seafood & Music Festival (Punta Gorda, Florida) [thru 1.19]

Rijeka Carnival (Rijeka, Croatia) [thru 3.5]

Scientific Grower Truffle Grower Seminar (Napa, California)

Winter Carefree Fine Art & Wine Festival (Carefree, Arizona) [thru 1.19]

Winter Wine Festival (New Castle, New Hampshire) [thru 2.9]

Feast Days

Amelbert (Christian; Blessed)

Anthony the Great (Christian; Saint)

Angelo Paoli (Christian; Blessed)

Black Bart (Muppetism)

Blathmac Mac Cu Brettan (Celtic Book of Days)

Blessing of the Animals at the Cathedral Day (Hispanic Catholic Church; Mexico)

Benjamin Franklin (Humanism)

Charles Gore (Church of England)

Feast of Wagy (Ancient Egyptian Day of the Dead)

Felicitas (Old Roman Goddess of Good Luck)

Gamelbert of Michaelsbuch (Christian; Blessed)

Genulf (Christian; Saint)

International No Farting Day (Pastafarian)

Jenaro Sánchez Delgadillo (one of Saints of the Cristero War)

Julian Sabas (Christian; Saint)

Meng-Tseu (Positivist; Saint)

Mildgytha (Christian; Saint)

Nennins (Christian; Saint)

Ogoun’s Day (Pagan)

Old Twelfth Night (Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Our Lady of Pontmain (Christian; Saint)

Patras Carnival begins (until Clean Monday; Greece)

Richmir (Christian; Saint)

Shakambharii Jayanti (a.k.a. Cher-Chhera Punni; Chhattisgarh, India)

Speusippus, Elcusippns, Meleusippns (Christian; Martyrs)

Sulpitius the Pious (Christian; Saint)

Sulpicins the Second (Christian; Saint)

Thaipusam (Tamil Nadu, India)

Thingfish Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Uzhavar Thirunal (Puducherry and Tamil Nadu, India)

Secular Saints Days

Muhammed Ali (Sports)

Luis Alverez (Science)

Anne Brontë (Literature)

Jim Carrey (Entertainment)

Eugène Carrière (Art)

Robert Cormier (Literature)

Antonio del Pollaiuolo (Art)

Laurent Delvaux (Art)

Benjamin Franklin (Polymath)

A. B. Frost (Art)

May Gibbs (Art)

T. Alexander Harrison (Art)

Rock Hudson (Entertainment)

James Earl Jones (Entertainment)

Sebastian Junger (Literature)

Compton Mackenzie (Literature)

Georges Pichard (Art)

Antonio Prohías (Art)

William Stafford (Literature)

Pieter Van Bloemen (Art)

Hem Vejakorni (Art)

Alfred Wainwright (Art & Literature)

Betty White (Entertainment)

Paul Young (Music)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Good Luck Day (Festival of Felicitas)

Prime Number Day: 17 [7 of 72]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [7 of 60]

Premieres

The Adventures of the American Rabbit (Film; 1986)

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, by Henry Miller (Essays; 1945)

All’s Well (Fleischer Gabby Cartoon; 1941)

Billions (TV Series; 2016)

Canoes Who? Or Look Before You Leak (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 16; 1960)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl (Novel; U.S. 1964)

The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekov (Play; 1904)

The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier (Novel; 1974)

Choral Hypocrite in G Major, by Erik Satie (Duet for Violin & Piano; 1914)

The Clan of the Cave Bear (Film; 1986)

A Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Poems; 1958)

Court and Spark, by Joni Mitchell (Album; 1974)

Drum Boogie, recorded by Gene Krupa (Song; 1941)

Dumb Like a Fox (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1964)

Everyone Says I Love You (Film; 1997)

Fraidy Cat (Tom & Jerry Cartoon; 1942)

Freejack (Film; 1992)

Frontline (TV News Series; 1983)

Gone with the Wind (Film; 1939)

A Guy Thing (Film; 2003)

Heathcliffe: The Movie (Film; 1986)

Helter Shelter (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1955)

Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (Animated Film; 1986)

The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Novel; 1868)

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (True Crime Novel; 1966)

The Inspector-Detector or A Kick in the Plants (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 15; 1960)

Iron Eagle (Film; 1986)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (Film; 2014)

Kickin’ the Conga ‘Round (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1942)

The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Animated TV Series; 1988)

The Nut Job (Film; 2014)

Ride Along (Film; 2014)

Seven Types of Ambiguity, by William Empson (Literary Criticism; 1930)

Snow Business (WB LT Cartoon; 1953)

Somewhere in Dreamland (Fleischer Color Classics Cartoon; 1936)

Sounds of Silence, by Simon & Garfunkel (Album; 1966)

South of No North, by Charles Bukowski (Poetry; 1973)

Toonerville Trolley (Rainbow Parade Cartoon; 1936)

A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute (Novel; 1950)

Today’s Name Days

Antonius, Beatrix (Austria)

Andon, Anton, Antonia, Dona, Doncho, Donka (Bulgaria)

Antun, Lavoslav, Marijan, Vojmil (Croatia)

Drahoslav (Czech Republic)

Antonius (Denmark)

Anto, Anton, Antu, Hando, Tõnis, Tõnn, Tõnno, Tõnu (Estonia)

Anton, Antto, Anttoni, Toni (Finland)

Roseline (France)

Anton, Rosalind (Germany)

Antonia, Antonios, Antonis (Greece)

Antal, Antónia (Hungary)

Alba, Antonio, Iole (Italy)

Tenis, Timotejs (Latvia)

Beatričė, Dovainis, Leonilė, Vilda (Lithuania)

Anton, Tønnes, Tony (Norway)

Antoni, Jan, Rościsław (Poland)

Antonie (Romania)

Nataša (Slovakia)

Antonio (Spain)

Anton, Tony (Sweden)

Anthony, Antoine, Antoinette, Anton, Antonia, Antonio, Antony, Antwan, Ben, Benita, Benito, Benjamin, Bennie, Benny, Toni, Tony (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 17 of 2025; 348 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 5 of Week 3 of 2025

Celtic Tree Calendar: Ruis (Elder) [Day 27 of 28]

Chinese: Month 12 (Ding-Chou), Day 18 (Bing-Xu)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Coptic: 9 Tubah 1741

Hebrew: 17 Teveth 5785

Islamic: 17 Rajab 1446

J Cal: 17 White; Threesday [17 of 30]

Julian: 4 January 2025

Moon: 85%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 17 Moses (1st Month) [Meng-Tseu]

Runic Half Month:Peorth (Womb, Dice Cup) [Day 11 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 28 of 90)

Week: 2nd Full Week of January

Zodiac: Capricorn (Day 27 of 30)

[quaranmine]

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Six)

Someone’s worried about Grian, and the Forest Service comes to collect Mumbo’s bike.

Chapter Six: 8,724

<< Chapter Five | Masterpost | Chapter Seven >>

The other half of the fifth chapter! I hope you enjoy this 1988 sequence especially, I was looking forward to it a lot (and it single handedly made the chapter so long it had to be split in two!)

No real CWs this time. I personally think that if you have made it this far then I don’t really have to warn you about the themes of loss and grief anymore, but just in case: yep, still very present.

November 20, 1988

It’s about noon on a Sunday, and Grian is…not doing much, actually. He has a thousand things he needs to do, ranging from cleaning out the refrigerator to trying to change his car’s oil to looking into a part-time second job, but instead he’s lying on the couch trying to watch TV.  Somewhere along the way he tuned out of the program and started staring at the ceiling instead, mentally tracing out the patterns in the spackle. 

The man on the drones on and on in the background, until he’s just part of it. Grian can feel himself starting to drift to sleep. 

Then the phone rings. 

Grian startles awake and sits up, scowling at it in the kitchen. He hasn’t the faintest idea who is calling him, other than maybe a telemarketer, but do those people work on Sunday? Well, perhaps they do. Everyone is home then, afterall. 

It rings twice more, so he gets up and answers the phone. “Hello?” he says. 

“Griba!” shouts a voice on the other end of the line. 

And–it’s a very familiar voice. 

“Pearl?” Grian says, just the slightest bit baffled. “Is that you?”

“Hi!” she says. “How are you doing? Are you busy?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “How are you? What do you need?”

“Can’t I just call to say hi?” Pearl asks. 

“Of course, but–”

“But the international rates?” Pearl says. Then she laughs. “Oh, shush, I know you were thinking about it.”

“Oh noooo,” Grian says. “I don’t care about that at all, we can talk as long as you like.”

 It’s a lie. He was definitely thinking about the international rates, and then immediately feeling bad about it because Pearl is a friend. He puts friends before money, of course, it’s just…well, it was expensive. But worth it! Pearl is Pearl. But every minute on the phone eats into his checkbook, and it’s hard not to think about. 

Pearl laughs again. “Well, I’m glad you don’t worry about that. Not that it matters anyway; this call is local.”

Local. Local?

“Huh?”

“Yeah, you were right Griba, I did need something when I called,” Pearl says. “Can you pick me up from the airport?”

Grian’s head is spinning. “You’re at the airport?” he says incredulously. “Like, in Colorado? In Denver? Right now?”

“Yep,” Pearl says. “And I need a ride. Well, I could go get a taxi somewhere. But I figured I’d ask my friend first. Are you busy?”

Yeah, busy falling asleep to daytime TV on the couch. “Um, no,” he says. 

“Great! I’ll see you there!” Pearl says. “Wait, how long will it take? I don’t know where you live, actually. Ooh, this is exciting! I’ll finally get to see your place.”

“Um, give me like half an hour and I’ll be there,” Grian says slowly. 

He and Pearl say their goodbyes for now, and after she hangs up he finds himself staring at the phone for several moments. What just happened? First of all, Pearl’s in Denver, apparently. Second of all, he did not know this was happening. Thirdly, his afternoon just got way more interesting.

He grabs his keys off the counter and makes his way downstairs. 

»»———-　　———-««

When he arrives at the airport, in the long line of cars waiting to pick people up and drop them off at the terminal, he does not expect to see Pearl waiting outside for him. Yet he picks her out instantly, a familiar face in a crowd of strangers. 

She’s bundled up in a black hoodie. The hood is up over her head, but he can see the long wavy tendrils of brown hair peeking out from behind it. Her hands are shoved in the hoodie’s pocket, and her nose is pink from the cold. When she exhales, he can see the faintest cloud of her breath. 

He can hardly remember being so happy to see someone before. The second he sees her face, any doubt or mild annoyance at her unexpected stay just melts away. 

He pulls his car up as close as he can to her, and throws it in park. She doesn’t know what car he’s driving, of course–she’s never visited him here. He leaps out and calls her name. 

“Pearl!” he shouts. 

She spins around and a grin breaks out on her face the moment she spots him. He races up to her on the curb and she throws her arms around him in a hug immediately. They cling to each other for a moment, before letting go. 

“Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you!” Pearl says.

“Oh, yeah,” Grian says. “A few years, right? Not since I’ve been here.”

“Ah!” Pearl squeaks. “I can’t wait to see it. I should’ve come for a visit so much sooner.”

Grian breathes a sigh, not of any annoyance or tiredness, but perhaps–of relief? Relief from what, he doesn’t quite know, but he’s so happy to see Pearl it’s like he can hardly speak. His breath clouds in front of him. 

“Let’s get you in the car,” he says. “It’s so cold out here, why weren’t you waiting inside?”

“Well, it might be cold out here,” Pearl says, attempting to pick up her bag. Grian steals it out from under her grasp before she can, though, so she just trails after him to the car. “But it certainly isn’t cold at home. It’s kind of nice, actually. Anyway, I wasn’t out here waiting the entire time, I just walked out a few minutes before you came.”

“Well, don’t freeze on me before you even get here,” Grian says. He loads her things in the car, and they hop in. He starts to navigate out of the airport traffic. “How long was that flight?” he asks. “I mean, I assume you flew in from Sydney.”

“Ugh, it was never ending!” Pearl says. “It was like 12 or 13 hours, and that only got me to Los Angeles. Then I had a connection here.” She glances at the clock on his dashboard. “Did you know it’s almost the same time I left?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. I left around noon on the 20th. Then I landed and now it’s around noon on the 20th again.”

“Wow.”

“It feels like I got put in a time vortex or something and they zapped a whole day from me. And then I woke up and I’m repeating the day again.”

Grian side eyes her in the passenger seat. “Are you, perhaps, a little tired?”

“Exhausted.”

He smiles just a little. “I bet you’re hungry too,” he says. “Let’s get lunch on our way back to my apartment.”

»»———-　　———-««

They get lunch, and it’s great. They talk about various, mostly mundane things about their lives over the past few years. They’ve kept in touch ever since graduating university together, even as their lives diverged on totally different paths on totally different continents. But that was mostly just letters and phone calls. It’s entirely different to be face to face again. It’s so much better to be face to face again.

Grian asks about her career in Australia. “So, have you designed the next Sydney Opera House yet?” he teases. 

Pearl gasps in fake horror. “Of course not! There can’t be a ‘next’ Opera House, it’s iconic!”

“Eh,” Grian says. “I think you could come up with a cooler one.”

She rolls her eyes affectionately. “Alright, stop it.”

“I’m dead serious. I think you could make a better one.”

She laughs and shakes her head. “Seriously though, I mostly just do office buildings.”

“Hm, well that’s boring,” Grian says and takes a sip of his water. “We for sure don’t need any more of those.”

“That’s what most of the work is,” she says. “Lots of new development to work on! So what have you been up to? Any interesting projects lately?”

Grian hesitates a bit in replying. The answer is no, of course. Pearl’s aware of his job from some of their previous communication in the past three years, but now that they’re sitting here face to face she clearly wants to hear all about it without the constraints of a phone call or letter. 

He just, well, has nothing to say. He hasn't even really received projects lately. 

He and Mumbo came to Colorado a little over two years ago after Mumbo was offered an engineering job in Denver. Grian had figured he might as well dust off his completely unused dual citizenship and follow him here–it’s not like it was even a difficult process for him. It was the perfect sort of adventure to follow up five years of intense schooling, and an interesting place to put his new skills to test. 

It had been that which enticed him to go with Mumbo. That, and the way his stomach had twisted when he thought about saying goodbye. They’d been inseparable for over a decade and Grian refused to accept a reality where his best friend lived so far away. Truthfully, Mumbo was a little apprehensive about moving to an entirely new country alone, so this had worked out perfectly. 

Grian would go with him. They’d split an apartment and get settled in for a while and experience life in a new country. Grian would finish the rest of his architecture field training in Colorado and finally get his license. Mumbo would work on creating machines and learn about computers. 

It was fine. It was fun. They had a good time–there were endless things to do, from skiing to hiking to rafting to biking. 

Then Mumbo went missing, and Grian was just…still here, but missing everything that was worthwhile. He was struggling. Not showing up to work. Getting demoted.

“I haven’t really had anything interesting to work on,” he says finally. “There was this one house–way too massive, really, and the owner could never really decide what he wanted but he wasn’t so bad. But then I had to leave to…” 

He trails off. Pearl glances at him and opens her mouth, but she rethinks it after a moment and shuts it again. She’s smart, and part of that intelligence is knowing when to not poke around. 

“Mostly they just have me working on codes and compliance right now,” he finishes quietly. 

It’s still an important part of the process, making sure that all of the projects are in alignment with local building codes. Sometimes it’s even frustrating, when he has to figure out things like getting a water line from whichever locality is closest for someone’s house perched high on a mountainside. 

But he doesn’t have any of his own clients anymore. He does work for his coworker’s projects. He doesn’t do any drafting. He doesn’t touch any blueprints. He doesn’t design anything. 

It’s not really the update that he wants to give Pearl. They met each other in university because they studied in the same architecture program. They spent long nights in the library together. He’s seen her rip up her papers in frustration when things weren’t working quite right, and she’s seen him start crying on the floor of her dorm room the night before a particularly major test. They graduated together. 

It just doesn’t look good. Of course, he knows Pearl very well. She isn’t going to think anything less of him. It’s more, well, himself that he has to worry about. 

Pearl purses her lips, and moves on. “Well,” she says, “that’s all very important. God knows we studied it enough. Don’t worry about projects, you’ll find some cool work soon.”

“As cool as office buildings?”

“With any luck, even better,” she says. 

“How long are you staying?” he asks, realizing he still doesn’t know. 

“Little over a week,” she responds. “I’m leaving next Monday.”

He frowns. “I probably have work, but maybe I can take off a morning to take you back to the airport–”

“I can survive in a taxi,” Pearl says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, you asked me to pick you up this time.”

“Mm, well, I wanted to see you,” she says, “and I had a feeling you weren’t going to be busy.”

He hates that she’s right, but only just a little. He’s sort of glad he wasn’t busy so that he could see her, since she’s apparently decided to drop this entire trip on him with no notice whatsoever. It does not miss him that she could have done this basically any weekend in the last several months and landed on a day where he wasn’t busy. 

“What are your plans for this week?” he asks.

“I want to see everything!” Pearl says, and stretches her arms wide to accommodate the words. She has to pull her arm back in quick, since she nearly smacks a waitress walking by. They both descend into laughter. 

“Pearl,” Grian hisses, “we’re in public!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she whispers. “I’m just so excited! I want to sightsee!”

Grian leans back in his chair and regards her with a critical eye. He’s smiling. “I don’t know if a week is enough to see everything,” he says. 

“I am going to do my best,” she says, mock-serious. 

It suddenly hits Grian. “Wait,” he groans. “I seriously have to work tomorrow. And Tuesday. I could ask off, but…” He winces as he trails off. “I kind of have a track record with my boss and I don’t think he really appreciates me calling out last minute.”

“That’s fine,” Pearl says. “What? I know I came here without telling you but it’s not like I wasn’t prepared to take care of myself. I’ll just see some things on my own.”

Grian nods. “I have a half-day on Wednesday,” he says, “but I think he’d be more amenable to letting me have that as a full day. Then Thursday’s off for Thanksgiving, and Friday too. Then of course the weekend.”

Pearl looks self-satisfied. “Good. I meant to plan it that way so you’d have a little time off.”

“So what do you want to do?” he asks. “One of them, I guess, since everything’s on the table.”

Pearl leans closer to him across the table. “Please,” she says. “I want to go skiing. I’ve never been skiing. Can we please go skiing? Please?”

Grian laughs again at the face she’s making. She’s so dead serious in her begging. “I’ll call around and see if any places are open. As you can see, we don’t have any snow around here right now. But further up into the actual mountains probably does.”

“Eee!” Pearl squeaks in excitement. “I’m so ready.”

“Oh?” Grian says. “I will literally bet you on how many times you fall.”

“I’ll take your money,” she says. “I’ll be the greatest first-time skier there ever was.”

“You will fall on your butt no less than a dozen times,” he shoots back. 

They continue talking for a while, back and forth. Pearl tells him about various stories and adventures from Australia. She begs him to come visit–she came here, so now it’s his turn to come to her. Maybe next summer, when it’ll be cooler in Australia and hotter down here. 

She’s obviously prepared for their trip and seeing him again, because she’s also brought photos to share with him. He looks through a few photos of what her house looks like, what a few buildings she’s worked on looks like, a picture of her by the ocean (she says he can keep that one, as long as she gets to go home with a photo of him), and even the two cats she has adopted. 

They get the check–Grian pays for the whole thing without blinking–and head back to his apartment.

They’re discussing sleeping arrangements as they walk up Grian’s stairwell. He has his keys out already, and they clang a little step-by-step. 

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he declares. “End of story.”

“But,” she says, “I’ll feel so bad taking your bed from you.”

“You’re a guest!” he says. “I’m not letting you sleep for a week on the couch! You can take my bed.”

Neither of them mention that there’s a third option. Or really a fourth, because Pearl could always get a hotel room if it didn't work out, but she had asked to stay with him. She must have spent so much on flights already, it was the least he could do. 

So there’s really only three options, and only two are being discussed. The apartment is a two bedroom. Mumbo’s room has sat empty for five months now, completely untouched. But that room isn’t up for grabs–it’s a time capsule, frozen from the moment he left it. Grian doesn’t mention it. Pearl is smart enough to not ask about it. 

“Ugh, fine,” Pearl says, rolling her eyes. “I guess I’ll take your room. If you make me. I still feel like it’s weird though.”

Grian freezes on the top step, and Pearl nearly bumps into him. “Oh no,” he mumbles. “My apartment is–Pearl, listen, I didn’t know you were coming, so I didn’t really take a chance to clean up anything, so it’s definitely a little messy in here, and–”

She cuts him off, voice bright. “So what I’m hearing is the couch might be better than your room?”

“No, ugh, I’m just saying I’m sorry that this place looks so bad.” He sighs. 

“I get it,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

“It’s not how I wanted it to be,” he says softly, and slots the key into the handle. “Just let me work on it, I’ll get it fixed up.”

They go into the apartment. Really, it isn’t that bad, but he’s embarrassed about it nonetheless. It isn’t filthy or grimy, it’s just cluttered. He’s always been a cluttered person. There’s stuff lying randomly about, like the somewhat muddy shoes by the door, the jackets shed across chairs, or the laundry basket of unfolded clothes sitting on a dining room chair. At least three random empty drinking glasses are sitting on the coffee table in the living room. And, well, he could have probably bothered to do the dishes from the last three days, but there’s only one of him and he doesn’t cook much, so really it isn’t very much even if it looks bad.

Everything in here would be so fast to clean up, but whenever he tries it feels like an insurmountable barrier. He does things a little at a time, so that it never gets too out of hand, but he can’t remember the last time it looked good. It’s just something that’s continually slipping further and further away. It feels like one day he’ll wake up and it will finally be completely out of control. 

Pearl doesn’t say anything. She just walks in and drops her bags–which she had insisted on carrying since he insisted on paying for lunch–on the floor and puts her hands on her hips. “This is a cute place,” she says. “I like the lighting from the windows. And you’ve got a view of the mountains!”

“It’s cute when it’s clean,” he mutters. It’s like he knows how to be ashamed of how the place looks, but not how to do anything about it. He’s got the external motivation of another human being seeing it now though, and he’s itching to work and hide everything here.

Maybe it’s concerning that his main motivation after months on end is just so that he can hide. This thought does not cross his mind, because the sort of people who hide things from others are fantastic at hiding things from themselves, too. 

“I saw your dorm room in university,” she reminds him. “You can’t seriously think I wasn’t prepared for your clutter.”

“This is worse,” Grian groans. 

“Eh, not really,” Pearl says. “I think you’re doing well, all things considered.”

All things considered. Grian bites his lip. It’s nice that she thinks so. He isn’t sure where she got that impression, but if he can spend the rest of the week cultivating it then maybe she’ll stop worrying. 

She walks over to the laundry basket on the chair. “Is this clean?” she asks. 

“Yes, of course,” he responds, and he wants to add “I’m not that bad" to the end of the statement until he remembers the floor of his bedroom, which is exactly “that bad.” 

“Great!” she says. And then she sits down. And starts folding it.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and snatches the basket away from her. “You’re a guest! You’re on vacation! Don’t be doing that?”

Pearl frowns. “Um,” she says. “Just helping?”

“I don’t need you to help,” he says, and it comes out a bit harsher than intended. “Just, like, go relax or something. Take a nap. I know you’re exhausted.”

A brief look of hurt flashes over her face, and vanishes almost as quickly as it arrives. “Grian?” she asks. “What do you think I’m here for?”

“To see me?” he says, confused. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Of course it’s to see you, I missed you. But also to help.”

“I missed you too,” he says automatically, but when the rest of the sentence catches up to him he shakes his head. “I don’t need help.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You don’t? Then why can nobody get a hold of you, Grian? Why does your apartment look like this? Why do you deflect phone calls and make excuses? We’re all worried about you, you know. We don’t know what’s going on.”

“We?” Grian says. “You’re talking about me behind my back? Who’s we?”

“Well, we wouldn’t be talking behind your back if you talked to us,” Pearl replies, matter-of-fact. “And the ‘we’ is your friends. Your family, Grian.”

“I’m fine,” he snaps. “I’m sorry to have you worried but you don’t need to be.”

“You don’t get to try that on me,” Pearl says firmly. “I know you too well.”

“Maybe that’s why I don’t talk to you,” he says. 

Pearl looks back at him, for a long time. He doesn’t return her eye contact, and instead begins to pick up the glasses from the coffee to take them into the kitchen. He knows looking at her will just make him sad. He also knows that he really, really wants to look back at her. 

He misses her so hard it hurts. Mumbo hasn’t come back, but she did. She was never really missing, though–just separated far, far, away by circumstance. 

She takes a deep breath. “Well. Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell you I was coming.”

He says nothing, and turns on the tap. It’ll take a moment for the water to heat up. 

“You always try to hide,” she says. She picks up another item out of the basket and begins to fold it. “But you can’t hide if you didn’t expect me to come.”

She reads him like a book every time. It was a definite contributing factor to their friendship–they’d clicked fast and gotten very close in university. They understood each other well, and shared not only the same area of study but also the same ideas about pulling mischief on campus. There used to be a point in time where her reading him like a book served both of them well, but not today. 

“I told you to stop folding that,” Grian says.

Pearl drops it with a huff. “No,” she says. “I’m not going to stop. You said I was the guest, right? Guests get to do what they want. And maybe I want to help you clean up.”

He finally turns to look at her. Her blue eyes are wide and just the slightest bit watery. He’s done that–he’s been the one to make her that worried. He turns back to the sink. 

“Okay,” he says quietly, words almost lost in the water running into the sink. He says okay because he can’t imagine even trying to fight her on this. “We can work on it together.”

»»———-　　———-««

The cleaning goes well, up until it doesn’t.

“Grian, what is this?” Pearl says from the other room, loudly. She’s finished folding his things and has fortunately just left them all in the basket for him to put up himself, declining to go rifling through his dresser and closet. The next task she has taken upon herself has apparently been working through the clutter in the living room area, which is always a dangerous place.

Grian sticks his head around the corner from the kitchen. He’s finished doing the dishes, and is just drying them off now to put in the cabinet. “Let me see,” he says. 

She turns around and Grian’s heart sinks immediately. She’s standing by his desk, the nice one by the window that he always liked to sit and draft at. She’s holding a few pieces of paper that Grian really didn’t mean to leave out. Because he definitely did leave them out–Pearl is nosy, and she’ll fly all the way across the world to drop in uninvited, but she isn’t the kind of person who goes through drawers. 

But he did just say she was nosy. Nosy enough to read something he left out. 

He drops the dish towel. “Give me those,” he says, and crosses the living room to the corner she’s in. He tries to snatch it out of her hand.

“Nope, not so fast,” she says, and holds them higher, squinting at them so she can read. Grian is, at this moment, extremely annoyed that she is so much taller than he is. He can’t quite grab them out of her hand. 

“Pearl,” he whines. 

“Shh, I’m reading.” Her eyes widen, and she looks back at Grian. He feels the slightest bit locked in her gaze’s intensity. It’s equal parts scrutinizing and empathetic. Like she feels bad for him, but is also a little disappointed. “Are these late notices?”

She files through them one by one. Grian cringes. He’d rather melt into the floor than be here. “Most of them are already paid,” he says feebly. 

“Most of them?” she looks back at him. Her brows are knit up, and it creases her forehead.

“I, uh, get paid this week,” he says. This is another lie. He gets paid at the end of the month, but she doesn’t need to know that.

She doesn’t seem fully convinced, but she hands them back to him and he takes them from her so sharply he almost tears the paper. He puts them in the drawer and slams it shut. It rattles the whole desk.

“The top one was about your credit card payment,” she says slowly, as if she’s halfway between deciding whether to say something and not, but was already saying it before she could finish the debate. 

Grian fixes her with a glare and she wilts under it, immediately looking away. He shoves his hands behind his back, because suddenly they seem shaky. His chest is tight, and his jaw is set, and–he’s angry. He’s so, so angry, and it feels like it’s burning him up, white-hot. 

“Why did you read those?” he demands. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to find it, it was just laying on the desk–”

“You could have ignored it.” 

Pearl crosses her arms. He’s activated her fight mode, and he rarely does well against her when she tries to be stubborn. 

“I’m just worried about you,” she says. 

Grian shakes his head. “I can’t with you right now,” he says. His tone is icy even while his whole body feels hot. “They were laying on the desk because I didn’t expect to have any guests.” 

He turns away from her and walks partway across the living room floor toward the kitchen, and then whirls around again. “You’re just..showing up uninvited, messing with my stuff, reading my mail? Is that where we are now?” his voice cracks a little on the last time. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you in three years and this is where we’re at now?”

Pearl takes a breath. “I just wanted to help,” she says. It falls flat. 

“It isn’t your business.”

“You never said you needed money.”

“Because it isn’t your business.” He enunciates every syllable clearly. 

She runs a hand through her hair in a nervous, agitated gesture. “None of know what’s going on with you, Grian,” she says. “We didn’t know about this, so what else don’t we know about?”

He doesn’t answer. 

“Okay, fine,” she says desperately. “This wasn’t my business. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked at it. But I meant what I said, okay? We don’t know anything about what’s going on with you!”

“There’s the ‘we’ again,” he says. 

She shakes her head, incredulous. “Do I have to literally spell it out for you? Did you forget our names when you moved to America? It’s Jimmy, and Joel, and Martyn, and Netty, and Lizzie. It’s your mom. It’s Mumbo’s parents.” She pauses for just a moment, taking in a short, if slightly hysterical, breath. “It’s me.”

He doesn’t want to hear their names again. He misses them enough already. 

“I’ve talked to them,” he says instead. Simple.

Pearl throws her arms in the air. “For hardly more than five minutes!”

“Well,” he says, with a bitter laugh, “you certainly know I don’t have the money for long-distance calls.”

“I guess I walked into that one,” she says. She stops, but there’s a funny look on her face that keeps Grian quiet. He’s still standing a few feet away from her after he walked off earlier. Her face scrunches up, like she’s trying not to cry, and after another moment she speaks softly: “Mumbo was my friend too, you know.”

It’s soft, but it still hits Grian like a ton of bricks. 

She continues, and doesn’t look him in the eye. “I know he was your friend first, but I cared about him too. We all did.” Suddenly she’s crossing the floor toward him again, closing the distance he had put between them. “But it almost hurts just as bad to know you’re still out here alone. And that you aren’t okay.”

Grian swallows back against the lump that is rapidly forming in his throat. “I’m fine,” he whispers. 

“I don’t believe you,” she says. 

“I’m fine,” he insists. 

“You need to go home to visit,” Pearl says. “Even just for the holidays. Please. Everybody’s worried about you.” She huffs a small little laugh. “They’re all worried and then they’re calling me because they think I know what’s going on. Because I always used to know what was going on with you. And then I have to tell them I don’t know either.”

Grian doesn’t respond.

“They’d be so happy, you know,” Pearl says. “To see you.”

“I’d never come back,” Grian mumbles. “If I went.”

“What?”

“They wouldn’t let me leave,” he says, stronger. “If I went home they wouldn’t let go.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Pearl asks.

Grian shakes his head like he’s breaking free of her request. “I have to stay here, because Mumbo is here.”

Pearl blinks, and then sighs. “Okay. I still think you should visit, though.”

Her eyes drift away from his face and over to the hallway behind him, the one all the bedrooms and bathrooms break off of. She speaks again sharply. “The money problem, it’s because of Mumbo isn’t it? You used to split all of the rent and stuff because he was your roommate. But now it’s all on you.”

“Something like that,” Grian admits, and it feels like he’s speaking around a block sitting in his mouth.

Their apartment is nice. Not luxurious by any means, but still a decent place to live. His neighbor down the hall yells at him sometimes if he comes back home too late and their door used to slam unpredictably until the landlord finally fixed it months later, but isn’t that all just everyday woes of having an apartment? 

The apartment is nice, but it was never meant to be paid for by one person. Well, maybe a well-paid person. It’s not like his landlord wouldn’t have rented it out to a single person if they could pay. But Grian had never planned to pay for it by himself. And while architecture could be a well-paying job, he was very much still at the entry level. He’d only barely gotten his license after years of schooling and on-site training. 

And then he’d gotten demoted for not showing up. The demotion wasn’t in job duties only, as he’d discovered on his very next paycheck. 

So now he does what he can. He pays the major, important things first. Sometimes they’re a little late, depending on if his check has hit his bank account yet, but it gets done. He starts to depend more and more on his credit card for other things. He pays his minimum payment every month but he doesn’t feel good about watching it accrue. 

“I can help you pay it off-” Pearl starts to say. 

“No,” Grian says. “You aren’t doing that.”

“I can help you pay it off,” Pearl repeats stubbornly. “But Griba, if you can’t afford this place by yourself, you need to just move to someplace else. Smaller. Cheaper.”

“You know I can’t do that,” he says. 

She tilts her head, expression gentle in a way that makes him instinctively recoil. “You can’t keep living here if you can’t pay. This is bad.”

“It’s okay,” he says distantly. “It’s only temporary.”

Pearl pauses. She has a horrible look on her face, so Grian looks away from her instead. “Temporary?” she asks. The word is tentative.

“Until Mumbo gets back,” he says. He grabs her hand, and pulls it closer to him, feeling suddenly like it’s very important that she hears him and understands this. “I can’t leave,” he says earnestly. “All of his stuff his here. It’s his home too.”

Pearl’s eyes are wide. “I can help you pack it,” she says. “You don’t even have to mess with it, or look at it, I can do that for you.”

He drops her hand. “No,” he says, baffled. “I’m not moving anything of his out of here. When they find him, he deserves to actually come home. He can’t come back to a strange place!”

Pearl squeezes her eyes shut. “Griba, please,” she says. He notices all at once that she’s brought his nickname out these past few times, which is a fact that should be comforting but instead starts to set off alarm bells in his head. 

“I’m not moving, and that’s final,” he says. “I’m not going to abandon him.”

“You’re not abandoning him, you’re just…”

“Just what?”

“Being smart.”

It hurts Grian. “He deserves to come home,” he bites. “I don’t care if it isn’t the smart thing to do, it’s the right thing to do.”

Pearl backs up. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.” She takes a deep breath and exhales long and slow. “You’ll stay. I’ll just help you then, yeah? Bills, cleaning, everything else…”

She turns away from him, and starts picking up various items once more to organize them. “I’ll just help,” she repeats.

She wanders around the room. She’s not getting much done, but she looks busy, inspecting everything around her for one more easy thing to do. Grian just stands in the middle of the room stock still, and both says and does nothing. 

Pearl continues to busy herself for a few minutes before grinding to a halt again. “Griba?” she asks, and Grian turns to her again as an answer. “You do have other people to talk to, right? People who live here?”

It’s a valid question. It’s a hard question. 

“Of course,” he says. 

“Stop lying to me,” she pleads. “I already told you I know you too well.”

He swallows hard. “I have people,” he defends. “Had people.”

It’s just that–it was difficult, after Mumbo disappeared. The new friends that Grian and Mumbo had made, they had mostly made as a pair. They each knew a few people from work, but nobody to really hang out with. So most of the friends they met were people they met while doing an activity together some weekend or evening after work. 

So the new friends missed Mumbo too, when they heard about what happened. But they didn’t know Grian the way Mumbo did, or the way Jimmy or Joel or Martyn or Netty or Lizzie or Pearl did. They knew Grian as one half of a pair who was missing his other half. And Grian didn’t know how to interact with them alone. He didn’t know how to go to them for help when they’d barely been in his life for a few months or a year or two. 

There’s layers to friendships, everybody knows that. None of the people Grian had met in Colorado had made it to the layer where he could talk to him. They were nice people. They wanted to help. Grian didn’t know how to let them. 

So he withdrew. 

“You had people. But not anymore?” Pearl asks. 

“I didn’t know them very well,” is all he says. 

Her expression breaks again. Grian has to stop doing that. “But you know us and you still don’t talk to us.”

“I just want to be alone,” Grian says. “Please, it isn’t personal. I just want to be alone.”

“I guess you’ll have to suck it up,” Pearl says. “Because I’m staying here for a week. And I will drag you outside to go skiing with me. I’m going to make you leave this house and we’re going to have fun together. Because I think you need that. And so do I.”

He turns and stalks back into the kitchen. He’s flipping between so many emotions that he doesn’t know which to settle on, so he seeks out something to busy his hands with instead: the dishes on the counter that still have to be dried. 

If he stays in the living room, he might start arguing with her more. He might say something that will make her not want to visit again. 

He’s angry at Pearl. Furious, even. Offended. He could look past her coming unannounced to visit, but the whole thing seems like a plot now. She’s got ulterior motives. She’s purposefully trying to catch him unaware and sneak past all his guard walls. She’s snooping through his things–his mail. It makes his spine crawl to think about. She’s literally trying to get him to move, even though she’s barely been in the state of Colorado for three hours, and even though it means Grian would have to disturb Mumbo’s belongings. 

And still there’s another part of him that just really, really wants to go skiing with her. 

Because–he misses her. He cares about her. And he misses even the simplest things, like getting out of the house to go do something with a friend. It’s just the littlest piece of normalcy. 

So he dries the dishes, and she finishes up in the living room. Then he goes to his bedroom and starts working there–without her, because he doesn’t want her in the room until he’s made it look nice. Safe, even. Clear of any items that could incriminate him in anything at all. The sheer irritation of the afternoon fuels him harder than anything in months, and he finishes the task even quicker than expected, his movements stiff and jerky with anger. 

On one of his trips back and forth to put things back where they need to go, he spots her sitting at his desk. She looks a little sad, staring at the pattern of the wood grain instead of the pretty view outside. He ignores her and goes back to work. 

They exist like this in silence, for a little over an hour. 

Then Grian walks back into the living room, picks up the phone book from the shelf, and sits down at the table by the kitchen where the phone is. 

Pearl whirls around and he can feel her watching him with intense eyes. “Griba, I…” she trails off. “I wanted to say I’m sorry again. I shouldn’t have pressed you like that. I shouldn’t have looked at your bills. And I shouldn’t have come here without telling you.”

Grian just nods slightly. “Yeah.” He flips through some more pages. He doesn’t say anything else to her, just continues on his search. 

She cocks her head slightly. “What are you doing?” she asks. 

“Trying to find a ski resort to call,” he says with a weak smile. “Because I still really want you to drag me out skiing with you.”

»»———-　　———-««

June 1989

It’s two days later when a pair of rangers come to collect Mumbo’s bike. 

They ask him if he has everything he needs, or if he has any requests for supplies that they can pass on to the main office. So Grian takes the first opportunity to ask them about the Cloud Lake Trail, and if it was really closed last season. 

It’s then that he realizes that these two probably aren’t actually rangers at all. They may be dressed in uniform, but they’re just a couple kids several years younger than Grian is. They want to be helpful so earnestly, and their disappointment is clear when they can’t answer his question.  

They inform him that it’s their first season working here, so they’re not exactly sure about what the Cloud Lake Trail was like last year, but that it’s open right now if he’s interested in it! Grian realizes that they’re a couple of seasonal workers just like he is, except they’re on summer break from college and Grian’s floundering on the cusp of his 30s. 

They’re friendly. Grian tries his best to match the energy, for the sake of politeness.

He asks them what the plan is about Mumbo’s case, and doesn’t really expect much. Apparently, there’s a bit of gossip about the case around the ranger’s office, so they do know a little. The plan seems to be to conduct a few aerial searches of the area the bike was found in with a helicopter. They also told him he could expect a more detailed phone call soon from the main office. 

That’s a little amusing to Grian, given his tower does not have a phone line. 

He bids them farewell at midday and watches them disappear into the woods. Then, he decides it’s about time for lunch. He takes an hour, locks up the cabin behind him, and heads to a rocky outcropping he knows nearby to the tower. 

It’s a beautiful spot to sit and stay a while, and a good vantage point into a little valley. Grian sits on a boulder and finishes his lunch, and tries to think about things that aren’t so negative for once. 

He’s so used to looking. Looking for fires, looking for helicopters, looking for storms, looking for lightning, looking for Mumbo. It’s what he’s good at, so he tries to challenge himself to look at something else for once. 

A few feet from him, there’s a small stand of light purple flowers with narrow, silvery green leaves growing. They’re snagging their spot in the ground amidst the surrounding rock. One of the features of his tower is a somewhat excessive amount of posters left there from years past, most of which were fire, forest, rock, or plant related. Grian thinks he’s seen this little plant several times before. He’s watched it spread from just a few sprouts in May to coating the meadows in a wash of purple the past few weeks. 

It’s a lupine. Growing alone, but steadily. 

He looks more into the mini valley below. It’s not so much a vast sweeping valley as it is a wide little canyon for the stream that flows at the bottom. It’s fascinating to look at though. To think how long it might have taken for that little body of water to have carved it down like this. There’s some small rocky cliffs along the edges in some places, and he can see the darker parts of the rocks where the water pours off during a storm. 

It’s as quiet as the forest can be. Which, in the summertime, isn’t very quiet at all. There’s cicadas buzzing all around him right now. That was something new for Grian ever since he moved–they didn’t have cicadas in England. But as loud as they are, it’s a pleasant background noise he’s become adjusted to. 

He leans back on the rock and stares into the sky for a bit, watching the handful of clouds that there are today drift along. There’s a hawk or an eagle or something flying high up there too, gliding effortlessly along the air currents. He watches it for a while. 

When Grian’s hour is up, he gathers his things, and walks back to the tower. 

Scar calls him on the way. 

“Are you there, G-man?” he asks. 

Grian pulls out his radio from his pocket. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I am. Some kids came and took Mumbo’s bike away earlier.”

“Yeah?” Scar says. “How was that? What did they say?”

“They didn’t know much,” Grian says. “A couple of seasonal workers. But it’s fine, I guess. I know the main office will be looking into this again. They told me there might be some aerial searches in the future. I just wish it was higher on the priority list, I guess.”

“Well, they have their priorities and we have ours,” Scar declares. “But I think I can shed a little light on it, maybe. I spent most of the morning on the phone.”

It’s kind, what Scar is doing for him. That Scar is helping him like this at all, not even accounting for spending time scouring his notes from the prior season or spending all morning on the phone. Grian needs to thank him, or convey his appreciation somehow, or apologize for snapping at him so much, but instead all he says is: “What did you find?”

“I wish I had better news,” Scar says. 

Grian locks away the part of him that is always stabbed with instant anxiety over statements like that. He takes it, locks it away, and smooths it over. He’s walking on the trail back to the lookout right now, one foot in front of the other. He can handle just another conversation. 

“Well, I seem to always be lacking in good news,” Grian jokes lightly. “So just give me what you got.”

“I talked to a friend in the main office, she’s really sweet. She went to pull the records for me.”

“They’re still on file? Good.”

“Everything’s on file, Grian,” Scar says. “The government will keep an old shoe for a decade if they think it’s a record, let alone anything that relates to an open case.”

Grian grimaces a little. “Well, go on then.”

“She found his backcountry permit information from last year. And…” Scar trails off for a bit. “He’s permitted for Cloud Lake Trail. He even had designated camping spots, she even told me which ones.”

“So the trail was open?” Grian says. 

“Not exactly,” Scar says. “The trail was closed.”

“What?” Grian says. “They permitted him for a closed trail?”

“Apparently?” Scar says. “That’s what I got.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew.”

“What else did she say? Who issued the permit?”

“She didn’t say anything else, so I don’t know. I’ve never worked in the main office. I don’t think she was even supposed to tell me that, honestly, but we’ve always got along pretty good since she started working here.”

“Right,” Grian says. “You’re not an information wizard…”

“I have no more information to give, unfortunately,” Scar says. “I am a wizard, though.”

“You are not a wizard.”

“I’m many things, Grian. You’re just a nonbeliever.”

Grian just shakes his head at that, leaving that thread of the conversation behind. There’s just so many questions that keep coming up. 

“So we can agree he was on Cloud Lake,” Grian says. “Right? Regardless of all that, we can assume this right? He told me he was going there, his car was there, he was permitted for it, and someone said they saw him there. So he was there, right? We searched there, and he was there.”

But…

“It seems likely,” Scar says. “At one point, at least.”

“But then someone found his bike over on Pinnacles. How did it get there? Did he go there for some reason?”

“There isn’t an official trail that connects Cloud Lake and Pinnacles. It’s not a loop or a network or anything. Maybe he could have found a way between them or went on an unofficial side trail. There’s a lot of things that look like they could be a trail that aren’t really trails.”

“No,” Grian says. “He knows better than to take an unmarked trail. He said he was getting maps at the office when he got his permit too, so he would have known where the trails were. He wouldn’t have done that.”

“Grian.” 

Just his name, the weight it holds, and nothing else.

Grian’s face crumples a bit. He doesn’t want to admit it. It hurts to admit it.  “Okay, fine!” he cries. “Maybe he did go off-trail, maybe he did make a mistake, whatever. But it’s not his fault if something bad happened, okay? It isn’t.”

There’s another option to all of this that Grian hasn’t said out loud yet. He’s been thinking it off and on though for a long time, as he tries to fit these pieces into the larger puzzle. Nobody had any reason to think about foul play but him. There’s no evidence. But what other evidence do they have?

He went camping. He went missing. The search failed. Some of his belongings were found in the wrong place. 

And that is, essentially, it. 

“Do you think what happened to him…” he trails off. “Do you think it could have been someone else?”

Maybe Mumbo never did make a mistake. Maybe he was exactly where he was supposed to be, sans closed trail, and there was just something else that got in the way. 

“Someone else?” Scar says, tentatively. 

“Do you think someone out there might have taken him? Hurt him?” Grian is back at the base of his tower now, and he looks up at its spiraling staircase. He begins to take the steps one by one, watching as the horizon slowly inches into view as he climbs above the trees. “Did someone steal his bike? Is that why it’s somewhere else?”

“I…” Scar trails off. “I guess we don’t know if something like that happened. G, there’s a lot of ways someone can get in trouble back here.”

“And one of them could have been someone else,” Grian says. “Doesn’t this connect some of the dots, Scar? So much of this doesn’t make sense, but if someone else was involved, couldn’t that answer some of these questions?”

But the words hang heavier in the air now that he’s spoken to them. 

If Mumbo had just gotten lost, or injured, or something else while alone in the woods, Grian has some hope of saving him. Mumbo is blindingly smart, with an engineer’s eye for designing devices and contraptions. He could be okay. He’s a little lost, but Grian can find him. 

But if Mumbo’s incident was linked to another person, the odds in Grian’s mind plummet. If Mumbo ran into someone bad at some point during his trip, would he have escaped that confrontation? If someone had decided to hurt him, or take him, or rob him, or whatever–then Mumbo’s continued absence just looms more and more ominously. 

Would he make it out of something like that? Would he survive it? 

Grian reaches the top of his tower. If he looks straight through the windows of his cabin and out the other side, he can see Scar’s little cabin far in the distance. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore. Thank you for the new information though.”

He turns his radio off and goes inside. He spends the rest of his work day in silence, watching the smoke twist in the air. 

<< Chapter Five | Masterpost | Chapter Seven >>

[ometochtli2rabbit]

13.0.12.3.12

ka'a{2] EB/E'E - jojlajun [15] K'ANKIN

galactic tone: duality/ polarity

sun sign: ROAD| mountain lion/yellow[blue]/south

do some community service - MAYA

ome[2] - MALINALLI [grass]

Tlaltecuhtli | Patecatl

quetzalhuitzilin[green hummingbird]

lord of the night: Chalchihuitlicue

trecena[2]: Patecatl

x: chicunahui [9] - hueitozotli - NAHUA

today's symbol in the Maya Calendar is the road- the one we are all on to get to where we need to go in this journey of life. so here are some songs that feature ROAD:

Big Youth: Hit the Road, Jack!

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Road Trippin'

Canned Heat: On the Road Again

Ke$ha: Holiday Road

Lindsey Buckingham: Holiday Road

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Love is a Long Road

Arctic Monkeys: One for the Road

Sheryl Crow: Everyday is a Winding Road

Bee Gees: We Lost the Road

Three Dog Night: Road to Shambala

John Denver: Take Me Home, Country Roads

Toots & the Maytals: Country Road

Modern Lovers: Roadrunner

B- 52's: Dirty Back Road

"Weird Al" Yankovic: I Love Rocky Road

Japanese Breakfast: Road Head

Eric Burdon: Tobacco Road

Dead Prez: Psychology

Dire Straits: Telegraph Road

Foo Fighters: Long Road to Ruin

Big Brother & the Holding Company (Janis Joplin): Roadblock

Pearl Jam: Long Road

Cinderella: Gypsy Road

Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Dan Fogelberg: Down the Road

Black Sabbath: Hard Road

Kris Kristofferson: This Old Road & Road Warrior's Lament

Nat King Cole: Rules of the Road

Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Sade: Long Hard Road

Eagles: Seven Bridges Road

Faith Hill: Somewhere down the Road

The Rolling Stones: Down the Road Apiece

Willie Nelson: On the Road Again

Norah Jones: Out on the Road

Bruce Springsteen: Thunder Road

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Side O' the Road

Bob Marley: 3 O' Clock Roadblock

Talking Heads: Road to Nowhere

Hank Williams: I've Been Down That Road Before

John Lennon: Old Dirt Road

The Kinks: Road

The Beatles: Long and Winding Road

[greatwesternway]

Traintober Day 3: Twins - 9901 and 9902

An excerpt from the upcoming installment of The Future is Still Silver and Black:

I hesitate to guess at what 9901 would say to being told he was special for not having a name though. I suspect his manners would have failed him.

He and 9902 were a little unlucky to be built when they were. They weren’t first so they didn’t get the benefit of it that I did and they came too early to be themed the way The Mark Twain Zephyr was. Then they got bumped from their route by Pegasus and Zephyrus’ larger, themed trains. Those two became the New Twin Cities Zephyrs and the original twins were given their own separate routes. 9901 wasn’t very happy about it because while he was getting his own route, this was also just after my train had been given our new name. I think most engines would be satisfied to have a named route at all, but with us Zephyrs and how many names we’ve all been given between us, it becomes a sticky subject if you’ve come out short. 9902 was just happy to be able to accommodate his demand again. He was always the more sensible of the two of them.

They were twins, but I do not think this is similar to having a B-unit. 9901 and 9902 only ever operated together on exhibition runs before they entered revenue service. The day before their christening, they did one with forty-four sets of twins riding their trains to Chicago, one half of each pair on each train. Once they were in service though, I don’t imagine they saw much of each other. They’d run the route from opposite ends twice a day, so they’d only have had brief passings.

After Pegasus and Zephyrus took over The Twin Cities Zephyr route, 9901 was sent to Texas to work on the Burlington-Rock Island to pull their Sam Houston Zephyr. From what I heard, he became much less crabby about names when he was actually working a route of his own. You’d hope it’d be the pride of having a named route all to himself that turned him around, but I wonder if it wasn’t actually because he got that special nose herald that said “Sam Houston Zephyr” instead of “Burlington Route”. You know how important identity is for us Zephyrs, after all. 

9902 got an “Alton-Burlington” nose herald for his Ozark State Zephyr in Missouri until they sent him down to the B-RI too. He and 9901 had to share routes again, but they had two between them so it wasn’t such a debacle as it had been when they were both The Twin Cities Zephyr. One of them would be the Sam Houston Zephyr and the other would be the Texas Rocket, with nose heralds to show which.

Unfortunately, the B-RI wasn’t taking as good care of them as Burlington itself would have. From what I gathered over time (because you know how cagey our people can be when things go wrong), 9901 had a lot of oil build-up under his trucks and something set it on fire. They couldn’t get the blaze under control and 9901 was burnt inside and out, completely irreparable. I mentioned before that this was right after that FT smashed into my observation car 570. Because 9901 had to be stricken from the roster but his cars were only a little burnt, they thought to replace my observation car with his. They decided not to do that in the end and instead his cars were kept in storage in case I, 9902, or Injun Joe might need them on our trains.

After all that, B-RI ended up giving 9902 back to Burlington to replace 9901. And ironically, he ended up with a route named just for him! No one ever mentions it really, but he was given a route between Chicago and Ottumwa, Iowa and they called it the Zephyr 9902. When they moved him to the Chicago-Hannibal route, they renamed it Zephyr 9902 too so it was almost like it was his train that had the name. I think if 9901 had still been around for that, he’d have been so jealous he’d have gone up in flames again. But they also sometimes nicknamed 9902 the “Baby Zephyr” because of how big the Denver and California Zephyr trains were by then so maybe not!

I am being told that I have gone on very long about 9901 and 9902, but I almost feel obliged. They get overlooked, but how would we have known we needed a train as grand as yours for that route without their shorter trains on it first? They had the same problem I always did, that our train became too popular to fit everyone who wanted to ride.

[modestvm]

PENNY, 24, GMT; SHE/HER. | if you’re hearing VIENNA by BILLY JOEL playing, you have to know GABRIEL MOORE (HE/HIM; CIS MAN) is near by! the THIRTY-FOUR year old HISTORY PROFESSOR has been in denver for, like, THREE YEARS. they’re known to be quite OBSTINATE, but being ALLOCENTRIC seems to balance that out. or maybe it’s the fact that they resemble JACOB ANDERSON. personally, i’d love to know more about them seeing as how they’ve got those WANDERING EMPTY MUSEUMS, THE GLOW FROM A LAPTOP SCREEN and ROLLED-UP SHIRT SLEEVES AND V-NECK JUMPERS vibes. and maybe i’ll get my chance if i hang out around the DOWNTOWN DISTRICT long enough! 

full name: gabriel isaac moore. nicknames: gabe, abe. gender and pronouns: cis man, he/him. age: thirty-four. sexuality: bisexual. date of birth: july 15th. zodiac sign: cancer ( loyal, creative, sensitive, insecure. ) place of birth:  bristol, england. occupation: assistant professor of history, university of denver.

born and raised in bristol, the youngest of three with two older sisters. as a diplomatic service officer their father was away more often than not, so gabe was raised by his mother and sisters.

his interest in writing, reading and history was a curveball. aside from his father, the rest of the family's interests were firmly rooted in stem. they were ( perhaps justifiably ) worried that gabriel's interests would not give him much success in life. but he was determined to pursue his passion and after graduating top of his class at bristol uni for undergrad, went on to get his master's and phd in history at st andrew's.

moved to london after graduation wondering what to do with himself and fell into teaching. completed his teaching qual and sought out a role teaching history whilst continuing to research and publish occasionally on the side to keep up with developments in the academic world.

( tw: car accident, injury, depression & ptsd ) was cycling to work as per usual one day when he was hit by a drunk driver at a crossing. he woke up just short of a week later to a shock. gabe had been lucky, really. at least, that's what everyone said -- at the time he couldn't only think that was a cruel thing to say. his right leg had been amputated, originally below the knee but complications did not go his way and so shortly after he became an above knee amputee. otherwise, he was pretty much unscathed - scars here and there the only thing to show of his ordeal now.

slightly reeling and with nothing to really do during his recovery, gabriel turned back to the work he loved. this was something of a relief to friends and family as, not unexpectedly, gabe was diagnosed with ptsd and depression immediately following the accident and suffered during much of his recovery. by no means have either of those things become a non-issue in his life, but they have dissipated and significantly and well, when all else fails… there’s always throwing yourself into work or looking after someone else. he wrote a monograph, a social history of black africans in renaissance england that was eventually published just under five years ago now.

riding on the back of the book's success, a desire to return to academia and for a change of scenery he began applying for jobs. the offer from the university of denver came through and he took it and uprooted to denver. this was where his family’s relief was dampened; they thought it was a rash decision ( they weren’t wrong, but gabe was never one to change his mind once it was set and they knew it ) 

gabe has been in denver for three years now, comfortable in his position at the university but also keen to engage with as many people as possible. he runs a sort of 'history 101' evening class at the community college for anyone to attend.

wanted connections page ! gimme literally everything pls.

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[blackmountainmotorworks]

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[brookston]

Holidays 1.17

Holidays

Apple Wassailing Day (Carhampton, UK)

Art’s Day (Robert Filliou)

Ben Franklin Day

Betty White Challenge Day

Business of America is Business Day

Cable Car Day

Carnivale begins (Italy)

Customer Service Day

Desert Storm Anniversary Day

Dia de la Divina Pastora Bank Holiday (Venezuela)

Ditch Your New Year's Resolutions Day

Drudge Day

Eartha Kitt Day (South Carolina)

Fire From the Sky

Hardware Freedom Day

International Mentoring Day

International We Are Not Broken Day

James Leonard Tagle Gordon Day (Philippines)

J.C. Penney Day

Judgment Day

Kid Inventors' Day

Lamb Chop Day

Liberation Day (Poland)

Make Your All-Time Top Ten TV Characters List

Martyrdom of Hazrat Fatemeh (Iran)

Menorca Day (Spain)

Military Industrial Complex Day

National Boxer Day

National Carolina Day

National Charlotte Day

National Classy Day

National Day of Racial Healing

National Feedback Day

National Lose the Jet Lag Day

National Public Employees Appreciation Day

National Puggle Day

National Ta Day

National We Are Not Broken Day

National Women in Science & Engineering Day

Old Twelfth Night (UK)

Operation Desert Storm Day

Patrice Lumumba (Heroes’ Day; Congo)

Photo Developing Day

Pig Day

Popeye the Sailor Man Day

Possession Day (South Georgia)

Professional Boxer's Day

Straying Toward the Path Day

USS Nautilus Day

World Lichen Sclerosus Awareness Day

World Rich People’s Day (Turkey)

Zinc Day (French Republic)

Zirgu Diena (Day of the Horses; Latvia)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Bean Day (Fargo, North Dakota)

Hot Buttered Rum Day

Hot Heads Chili Day

National Bootlegger’s Day

National Dairy Day (Thailand)

National Rye Whiskey Day

World Pizza Day

World Scotch Pie Day

Nature Celebrations

Rumex Day (Friendly; Korean Birth Flowers)

World Waterfowl Day

Independence, Flag & Related Days

Liberation Day (Poland)

Menorca National Day (Menorca, Spain; 1287)

Possession Day (South Georgia; South Sandwich Islands)

3rd Friday in January

Arbor Day (Florida) [3rd Friday]

Bean Day (North Dakota) [3rd Friday]

Comfort Food Friday [Every Friday]

Five For Friday [Every Friday]

Flashback Friday [Every Friday]

Fondue Friday [3rd Friday of Each Month]

Friday Finds [Every Friday]

Friendly Friday [3rd Friday of Each Month]

Fry Day (Pastafarian; Fritism) [Every Friday]

Hat Day [3rd Friday]

International Fetish Day (UK) [3rd Friday]

National Corrections Day (Australia) [3rd Friday]

Northarvest Beran Day (North Dakota) [3rd Friday]

Straw Bear Festival begins (Whittlesea, England) [3rd Friday-Sun]

TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) [Every Friday]

Weekly Holidays beginning January 17 (2nd Full Week of January)

Amelia Island Restaurant Week (Amelia Island, Florida) [thru 1.26]

Berlin International Green Week (Berlin, Germany) [thru 1.26]

Festivals Beginning January 17, 2025

Bean Day (Fargo, North Dakota)

Chili Quest & Beerfest (Galveston, Texas) [thru 1.18]

Denver Comes Alive (Denver, Colorado) [thru 1.18]

Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo (Fort Worth, Texas) [thru 2.8]

Fringe World (Perth, Australia) [thru 2.16]

International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo (Chapiteau de Fontvielle, Monte Carlo) [thru 1.26]

Madfredonia Carnival (Madfredonia, Italy) [thru 3.9]

Massafra Carnival (Massafra, Italy) [thru 3.4]

Montana Winter Fair (Lewistown, Montana) [thru 1.19]

Napa Truffle Festival (Napa, California) [thru 1.20]

Punta Gorda Seafood & Music Festival (Punta Gorda, Florida) [thru 1.19]

Rijeka Carnival (Rijeka, Croatia) [thru 3.5]

Scientific Grower Truffle Grower Seminar (Napa, California)

Winter Carefree Fine Art & Wine Festival (Carefree, Arizona) [thru 1.19]

Winter Wine Festival (New Castle, New Hampshire) [thru 2.9]

Feast Days

Amelbert (Christian; Blessed)

Anthony the Great (Christian; Saint)

Angelo Paoli (Christian; Blessed)

Black Bart (Muppetism)

Blathmac Mac Cu Brettan (Celtic Book of Days)

Blessing of the Animals at the Cathedral Day (Hispanic Catholic Church; Mexico)

Benjamin Franklin (Humanism)

Charles Gore (Church of England)

Feast of Wagy (Ancient Egyptian Day of the Dead)

Felicitas (Old Roman Goddess of Good Luck)

Gamelbert of Michaelsbuch (Christian; Blessed)

Genulf (Christian; Saint)

International No Farting Day (Pastafarian)

Jenaro Sánchez Delgadillo (one of Saints of the Cristero War)

Julian Sabas (Christian; Saint)

Meng-Tseu (Positivist; Saint)

Mildgytha (Christian; Saint)

Nennins (Christian; Saint)

Ogoun’s Day (Pagan)

Old Twelfth Night (Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Our Lady of Pontmain (Christian; Saint)

Patras Carnival begins (until Clean Monday; Greece)

Richmir (Christian; Saint)

Shakambharii Jayanti (a.k.a. Cher-Chhera Punni; Chhattisgarh, India)

Speusippus, Elcusippns, Meleusippns (Christian; Martyrs)

Sulpitius the Pious (Christian; Saint)

Sulpicins the Second (Christian; Saint)

Thaipusam (Tamil Nadu, India)

Thingfish Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Uzhavar Thirunal (Puducherry and Tamil Nadu, India)

Secular Saints Days

Muhammed Ali (Sports)

Luis Alverez (Science)

Anne Brontë (Literature)

Jim Carrey (Entertainment)

Eugène Carrière (Art)

Robert Cormier (Literature)

Antonio del Pollaiuolo (Art)

Laurent Delvaux (Art)

Benjamin Franklin (Polymath)

A. B. Frost (Art)

May Gibbs (Art)

T. Alexander Harrison (Art)

Rock Hudson (Entertainment)

James Earl Jones (Entertainment)

Sebastian Junger (Literature)

Compton Mackenzie (Literature)

Georges Pichard (Art)

Antonio Prohías (Art)

William Stafford (Literature)

Pieter Van Bloemen (Art)

Hem Vejakorni (Art)

Alfred Wainwright (Art & Literature)

Betty White (Entertainment)

Paul Young (Music)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Good Luck Day (Festival of Felicitas)

Prime Number Day: 17 [7 of 72]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [7 of 60]

Premieres

The Adventures of the American Rabbit (Film; 1986)

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, by Henry Miller (Essays; 1945)

All’s Well (Fleischer Gabby Cartoon; 1941)

Billions (TV Series; 2016)

Canoes Who? Or Look Before You Leak (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 16; 1960)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl (Novel; U.S. 1964)

The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekov (Play; 1904)

The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier (Novel; 1974)

Choral Hypocrite in G Major, by Erik Satie (Duet for Violin & Piano; 1914)

The Clan of the Cave Bear (Film; 1986)

A Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Poems; 1958)

Court and Spark, by Joni Mitchell (Album; 1974)

Drum Boogie, recorded by Gene Krupa (Song; 1941)

Dumb Like a Fox (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1964)

Everyone Says I Love You (Film; 1997)

Fraidy Cat (Tom & Jerry Cartoon; 1942)

Freejack (Film; 1992)

Frontline (TV News Series; 1983)

Gone with the Wind (Film; 1939)

A Guy Thing (Film; 2003)

Heathcliffe: The Movie (Film; 1986)

Helter Shelter (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1955)

Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (Animated Film; 1986)

The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Novel; 1868)

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (True Crime Novel; 1966)

The Inspector-Detector or A Kick in the Plants (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 15; 1960)

Iron Eagle (Film; 1986)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (Film; 2014)

Kickin’ the Conga ‘Round (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1942)

The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Animated TV Series; 1988)

The Nut Job (Film; 2014)

Ride Along (Film; 2014)

Seven Types of Ambiguity, by William Empson (Literary Criticism; 1930)

Snow Business (WB LT Cartoon; 1953)

Somewhere in Dreamland (Fleischer Color Classics Cartoon; 1936)

Sounds of Silence, by Simon & Garfunkel (Album; 1966)

South of No North, by Charles Bukowski (Poetry; 1973)

Toonerville Trolley (Rainbow Parade Cartoon; 1936)

A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute (Novel; 1950)

Today’s Name Days

Antonius, Beatrix (Austria)

Andon, Anton, Antonia, Dona, Doncho, Donka (Bulgaria)

Antun, Lavoslav, Marijan, Vojmil (Croatia)

Drahoslav (Czech Republic)

Antonius (Denmark)

Anto, Anton, Antu, Hando, Tõnis, Tõnn, Tõnno, Tõnu (Estonia)

Anton, Antto, Anttoni, Toni (Finland)

Roseline (France)

Anton, Rosalind (Germany)

Antonia, Antonios, Antonis (Greece)

Antal, Antónia (Hungary)

Alba, Antonio, Iole (Italy)

Tenis, Timotejs (Latvia)

Beatričė, Dovainis, Leonilė, Vilda (Lithuania)

Anton, Tønnes, Tony (Norway)

Antoni, Jan, Rościsław (Poland)

Antonie (Romania)

Nataša (Slovakia)

Antonio (Spain)

Anton, Tony (Sweden)

Anthony, Antoine, Antoinette, Anton, Antonia, Antonio, Antony, Antwan, Ben, Benita, Benito, Benjamin, Bennie, Benny, Toni, Tony (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 17 of 2025; 348 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 5 of Week 3 of 2025

Celtic Tree Calendar: Ruis (Elder) [Day 27 of 28]

Chinese: Month 12 (Ding-Chou), Day 18 (Bing-Xu)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Coptic: 9 Tubah 1741

Hebrew: 17 Teveth 5785

Islamic: 17 Rajab 1446

J Cal: 17 White; Threesday [17 of 30]

Julian: 4 January 2025

Moon: 85%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 17 Moses (1st Month) [Meng-Tseu]

Runic Half Month:Peorth (Womb, Dice Cup) [Day 11 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 28 of 90)

Week: 2nd Full Week of January

Zodiac: Capricorn (Day 27 of 30)