Sunshine and Cold

6:00

5:55

Up at 5:45, in time to see the sun rise over Long Point, steam rising from the lake, an unseasonably cold morning, 36º and fortunately, no frost.  We did bring all the plants on to our back porch and covered them with a sheet, just in case.  It looks like it did get below freezing in some areas south of us but fortunately, not around the lake.  The local wive's tale suggests not putting annuals in the ground till after Memorial Day.

Yesterday began with yoga at 9:00 and when I walked in, a woman was stretching, looked and said Hi Tom.  It was a friend of our good friends, the Cassells, from Hudson. Laura Hudak.  She lives in Hudson, has a cottage up here at the lake, and has been over to our house numerous times with the Cassells and her kids.  She is an experienced yogi, going every day to the Yoga Lounge in Hudson.  Our class, like most, is for beginners so I am not sure she was too taken with it.  For me, it was a good class and Courtney does not worry much about time, so we are there for a good hour and a half.  Today my monthly pass runs out, so I will have to decide whether to sign up for one more month or forget it.  It is enjoyable, gives me a goal for each day, but it limits my hiking.  Perhaps I can limit my yoga to two or three times a week, plan hikes on other days and enjoy both.

Yesterday for Evie was 'rearrange' the living room day.  Before I went to yoga, we moved out love seat and chairs back to their summer positions, ones with better views of the lake, less focus on the fireplace. When I returned home around 12:00, after stopping at Wegman's and Home Depot, the living room was completely rearranged, dusted, vacuumed, with some nice touches, tables moved, lamps and pictures  rearranged, less clutter, more simplicity.  It looks great.  We then worked on the book cases together, always a challenge as it tends to collect more books obviously, but also knick knacks.  So we rearranged, threw out, and dusted, so now I have a stack of books to take to the library book sale, and lots of trash to throw away.

It was overcast and cold most of the day, with occasional rain, so we did not venture outside. Around 4:00, however, it started to clear up, a few boats appeared on the lake, and it was sunny but cold when we had our wine and cheese, this time a Castello, a combination of blue and brie, another one of our favorites from Trader Joe's.  Before dinner, Evie had put together a eggplant pasta sauce, one of our favorite which we started making in Istanbul back in the 1970's, a time when we both discovered the virtues of egg plant because Turks have hundreds of egg plant or aubergine dishes.  We had it over pasta with a salad and the eggplant was done just right, so it melted in your mouth.  Perfecto.  We caught up on Stewart and Colbert, marveled at the creativity of their writers, loved the spoof of former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan...it was wonderful, pointing out her hypocrisy, what they called Noonocrisy.

I particularly enjoyed it because I have always disliked Reagan (since the late 1960's) and am appalled at his apotheosis (the glorification of a subject to a divine level) over the past twenty years, into one of the 'greatest presidents.'  The conservative efforts to rebrand him have been amazingly effective if not based on the facts, like the belief that he did not raise taxes (he did it thirteen times, something conservatives have conveniently forgotten or erased from their version of history, like Big Brother in Orwells's 1984).