A Dismal Saturday, Cloudy and Rainy

7:58

Paddling at Dusk

A Lake of Reflections

Enjoying the calm

Woods at Chautauqua Institute

Up at my new usual, 6:00 to utter blackness, a few lights flickering off toward Maple Springs.  I am listening to Click and Clack, waiting for Only A Game, my favorite sports program.  I am not sure what today will bring because of the weather.  We are excited, however, about later afternoon because our neighbors are having a clambake.  Like my family, they grew up in the Cleveland area having clambakes every fall.  We have missed it the past two years because we were out east visiting friends but this year we are able to make it.  They, Jim and Barb Fox, drove in yesterday afternoon from Cleveland, with the clams on ice from Euclid Fish.  What memories I have of going to Euclid Fish with my Dad as a kid, picking up the clams, the boiler, bringing them home, spending hours in the basement cleaning the clams because they were sandy, my Mom cutting up the chickens and vegetables, in a bag,  shucking the corn and, of course, the pouring of the beer in the bake by a pregnant women. I can only remember my sister Ellen doing this back in the early 1980's.

We were lucky because yesterday because it was a beautiful day to be on the lake, warm enough to sit outside, to walk or kayak, all of which we did.  We straightened things around the house early morning, then went to Mayville, to get our flu shots, and shop some at Topps.  We then stopped at the CI and took a walk around the still leafy streets.  Lots of building going on and it  seems every week we see a new house going up, or an old house being torn down.  Construction always seems to be booming in the CI.

In the afternoon, Evie went out on the dock to read and I joined her briefly before going off to pick up my boat, to take it up to be stored.  Unfortunately, I had quite a bill as the steering cables had to be replaced again, something which was done three years ago.  I dropped the boat off at my neighbor's garage, up on Carpenter Pringle, so that's done.  Now all we need is for the dock to be taken in and summer/fall is officially over, alas.  About 5:45, we realized the lake was smooth, like oil, as the sky was a threatening gray.  We jumped in our kayaks, went straight across to Long Point, then back along Victoria and Woodlawn, and it was lovely to be out on the water at dusk, as the sun was setting, the storm clouds coming in to the area.

For dinner, Evie made a shrimp pasta, with lemon, garlic, and wine, and with salad and garlic bread, we were happy.  We watched a quirky Norwegian movie, Turn Me On, Dammit.  I won't go into great detail other than to say it's about a seemingly over sexed teen age girl, who ends up being ostracized by her high school friends for something she said.  She runs away for a weekend, to a college friend in Oslo, where she is accepted as normal and treated as an adult for the first time. She comes home changed, the boy she likes shows interest in her, and all is well in this boring little town.  One detail I did like---every time the school bus passed the sign announcing her village, she and her friends would give it the finger.  Neither Evie nor I was crazy about the movie, nor did we like the teenager much until the end when her boy friend announces he cares for her to the entire school.  Not your Pretty in Pink teenager flick.