Sunshine and Sunday and Cool

7:26

Maple Grove Warming Up

Ready, Set, Go

The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner

An Amazing and Delicious Apple Pecan Torte

The Kinneys, Debi and Bud

Up late for me, 7:45, the sun bright off to the east, difficult to see because of its brightness, as I get my coffee, turn on NPR and listen to a Terry Gross interview with a black comedian who I have never heard of but it's interesting enough that I  stop to listen.  He has a new TV series this fall.  His name, W. Kamau Bell.  It's sounds funny and political, lets hope it's not the typical stupid comedy show.  It would be nice to see a good black comedy, in the class with The Office, Seinfeld, Cheers, and MASH.

Yesterday was a busy day, mostly for Evie, as we were having our neighbors, Bud and Debi Kinney over for an Indian meal, which meant lots of preparation for Evie, cleaning up for me.  Fortunately, we were able to get a fun kayak ride in the morning, as we went to Long Point where the local high school, the Maple Grove Red Dragons were having a cross country invitational, with about twenty teams participating.  It had the atmosphere of a carnival, with tents, refreshments, and lots of pavilions for each team.  Adults, teams, parents, and kids were milling around, then would move off to various spots on the cross country course.  We stayed for the second race, the varsity girls.  The first race was open, for anyone who wanted to run, which was neat.  The day included anyone who wanted to run, from varsity to junior varsity to beginners.  It looked as though Maple Grove probably won the  girls team championship but a girl from Fredonia finished first, some 15 seconds ahead of the girl in second from Maple Grove.  You could not have asked for a nicer day for a meet like this.  It's so much fun to see all these young women participating in a sport, so  different from when I was growing up where the only sport girls had was cheering for guys at a game, or marching at half time as a Majorette.  They have come a long way, baby.

I did manage to get a bike ride in around Mayville and Sea Lion Drive, about an hour, while Evie was making up some of the Indian specialities.  The Kinney's came over around 6:30 and we sat outside on the front porch, though it was cool, enjoying the dusk sky. We had our appetizer, an Indian cauliflower soup on the porch, nice and warming as it was getting chilly.  For dinner we had one of our favorite dishes, Saag Paneer, spinach with squares of paner cheese, Raita, a cucumber and tomato dish, nice and refreshing, and Tandoori chicken thighs.  Rice and naan rounded the dinner off nicely.  Everyone enjoyed the meal, especially the spinach.

For dessert, Bud and Debi had made an apple pecan torte.  And because it was cool, we actually lit our fireplace, and had the delicious torte and Turkish tea in front of the fire.  We sat around and talked until almost 11:00, a fun evening with great food. Both Bud and Debi grew up and now live in the Cleveland area so we had a lot in common. And Bud had been coming to Woodlawn since he was a teenager so we learned lots about the good old days here at the lake.