Warm and Wet, Another Spring Day

7:35  Sunrise

Majestic Leafless Silver Maples

Cairn and Welsh Flag

Up early for some reason, at 6:25.  Hope this is not becoming a trend.  It's 57 degrees outside, the sky pitch black though now, at 7:10, the sky is beginning to appear, large, dark clouds, blinking lights over at the Lake Road in Bemus.  It's now 8:00, cloudy with rain expected this morning, the lake gray/brown at the moment.  The geese are back by the way; we can hear their calls and when I took my walk yesterday, I scared off some mallards from the shoreline as I walked, so the wildlife certainly think spring has arrived.

Yesterday was Yoga Monday, a good day, as I am becoming familiar with some of my fellow classmates, all women, by the way, who even know my name.  After six weeks of yoga, this should not be a surprise I guess.  We did some interesting poses using the wall, stretching and strengthening arms and legs.  By the way, I am also reading THE SCIENCE OF YOGA, a new book that attempts to pull together all the facts about yoga.  I just finished the chapter on "Risk of Injury", the dirty secret that yogis don't talk about.  From what I can tell, as long as you don't go extreme in any of the poses, especially those involving the neck and back, you should be fine.  Just don't stretch or bend to far, and stop if you begin feeling pain.  And don't stay in a pose for too long; one women fell asleep for a couple of hours in a pose and ended up injuring herself.  Surprise.

We worked quite a bit in the yard yesterday, spreading some of the compost from the lake around our red twigs, working in Evie's garden, cutting down some of the grasses that have fallen during the winter.  It felt good to be outside working and it was warm but not hot.  Today may be a different story, as it's warmer and wetter.  So our yard looks pretty good, leaves and twigs raked, grass beginning to show signs of growth, though the garden still needs quite a bit of work.

We had fillets for dinner, with Brussels sprouts and parsley potatoes and watched more episodes of ER, the 90's TV drama, still quite compelling and entertaining despite being close to twenty years old.

Also, my last year in Istanbul, 1977, Robert College hired two interns, recent graduates from Princeton.  They were a couple of interesting kids and I got to know them pretty well; they were fun and I can remember going to the Marine Club on Friday nights for beers with them.  Anyways, one of them, David Johnson, emailed me out of the blue yesterday, had gotten my email from friends who knew me because I taught them at WRA. They sent him an article about my retirement and wondered if he knew me.  He's lived in Geneva, Switzerland, for the past 28 years, owns an investing company, and has three kids.  It was fun to hear from him; he wrote a self published novel about that year, so he's going to send me a copy of it.  He also has kept in touch with friends he made in Turkey, even owns a home in the south of Turkey.  It was fun to hear from him, the virtue of our connected world.