Clear Skies, Sunny, and Cold, Twenty two degrees

Yesterday at 9:45, Windy and Wild Seas

7:15

 Up at 7:15 to a well lit room,  the sun rising earlier and earlier as it moves towards the summer solstice, on June 21st.  It's quite cold out, 22 degrees.  When I went outside, however, it felt warmer than yesterday because of the lack of wind.  It's supposed to be a sunny but cool day, high in the low 40's, so we are going off to walk the first section of the Western Overland Trail, from the entrance to the Chautauqua Gorge to Summerlin road and back.  It should be a great day to hike this area, and fun to be on a trail that is new.

Yesterday, I went off to yoga, Evie to the gym, as we both felt like we needed some exercise and it was so cloudy, windy and broody out, that it did not look inviting for a hike.  Yoga was good, as I felt energized when I was finished, came home and hiked the Woodlawn/Victoria trail for about a half an hour.  A bit of green is beginning to appear, mostly on the ground, very little in the trees except for an occasional willow.

Kinney's Run Starting to Green

Skunk Cabbage, The first green of Spring

I read much of the afternoon, finishing Joe Nesbo's Headhunters, and Evie worked around the house, putting away much of our winter clothes and beginning to get out our warm weather clothes, for our trip to Scottsdale in April.

For dinner, we had scallops in garlic, white wine, shallots and parsley, from Ina Garten.  It was delicious  but not filling, so we both we hungry after our rice and salad.  We watched the two hour return of the Mad Men series and were disappointed, as the scenes were uninteresting, we never got to see Betty, Don's ex wife, and nothing seemed to happen, like a review of the characters and their lives up to this point: Don is selfish and solitary, Pete resentful, Peggy apologizing, and Rodger increasingly marginalized.  Let's hope it gets better.

We decided to begin an independent film called the Conventioneers and ended up liking it.  It's set during the 2004 Republican convention in NYC, mostly in the meetings of the left wing protesters, of Bush, his war, and the Republicans.  A young Texas delegate, David Massey comes to the convention and meets up with an old friend, Leah, a girl, from his Dartmouth days.  The movie centers on this relationship, on her liberal beliefs, how they contend with his solid, unquestioning Republican ideas.  Despite their political differences, they end up having a passionate four day tryst.  During this time, they see New York together, and he begins to question his beliefs, visiting a soup kitchen, even participating for a time in the anti war rally.  His life, his marriage, seem to be in confusion, so he's ripe for change and thinks this is it.  He pledges his love to Leah, but she understands this is just a brief affair, a tumultuous time in his life,  and turns him down, and heads back to her fiancee, a writer.  Disappointed and angry, he rebukes his buddies when they think he has gone soft on his Republican beliefs and he calls Leah, leaves an obscene message on her fiance's phone, talking about their tryst and how much he enjoyed sleeping with her.  And it ends.  The most interesting part of the movie was the setting, as most of the film was shot during the protests, during the rallies, so it was like a documentary.  In fact, all of the camera men, about six of them, were arrested and put in jail during this week of filming in NYC according to the credits.  Not a great film but an interesting one.