Warm and Wet, No Winter In Sight

Roofing Old Chautauqua cottage, June, 1982

Evie's Garden, February, 2012

Not a very encouraging morning, gray is the word for the day, with some rain forecast, highs in the low 40's, no snow in sight for the next week or so.  We are both heading off this morning to our workouts, Evie to a strength training class at the Y, then a workout, me to my Yoga class at 10:00.  This is the perfect weather to go to a gym or yoga as the outdoors just is not that inviting, alas.

And there is not a lot to do, without the snow.  We went into Jamestown yesterday morning; Evie had some work done at the dentist and I walked downtown Jamestown. I was impressed with the work going on downtown, as they attempt to renew many of the attractive buildings that have fallen into decay over the past ten or twenty years.  I am now sure it's  going to attract more people down, but it certainly makes it a much more attractive.  It would be neat if people actually wanted to go downtown, that there were major stores and attractions to pull the locals out of Lakewood and the Mall to the downtown.  Can the demographics of the past 50 years, from city to suburb, be reversed?

Melting Lake

For dinner we had chicken picata, one of my favorites, and we watched DRIVE, a much praised new film with Ryan Gosling.  Gosling plays a stunt car driver for films, and moonlights as a get away driver for small time crooks.  He lives down the hall from an attractive single Mom and her son and thus the trouble begins.  Gosling ends up getting involved in her life, which leads to lots of trouble, with some very bad guys.  I won't go into the details except to say this simple movie evolved into some of the most graphic violence I have seen in a movie.  Evie couldn't watch it.  I felt it was gratuitous, way overboard and the look of the film, especially the long silences, the lack of dialogue, though no doubt the aim of the film maker, became monotonous and boring.  I would not recommend it; the only solace was that Gosling, though violent, acts only in the interest of the mother and her son, rarely displaying self interest.

Thinking Spring at Evergreen Outfitters, with Eddie, the dog

 As you can see, I have been going through some old slides, sending off some to family, so get ready to see some begin to appear in my blog.  This picture of our house when we bought it in 1981 really shows how different it was, a Dutch Colonial, from our present day house.  The turquoise house matched the pink dock.  We got rid of the dock color the first year and painted the house a clay color after we roofed it in 1982.  My buddy Ron Armontrout, now a math teacher at Hotchkiss School, is on the roof with me; I could not have done the roof, fixed the missing shingles, painted the house, nor dry walled the inside kitchen without his help.  Nothing like good friends, especially the kind that are handy!