A Happy Fiftieth Anniversary To My Sister, Linda and My Bro, Rich Holzheimer

Rich and Linda

7:00

It's back to normal, up at 5:50, listening to Click and Clack, waiting for Only A Game to come on NPR at 7:00.  Not much to see this early, a few hardly visible lights over at Bemus, mostly darkness, waiting for a slice of dawn.  It's strange to be sitting back in my living room after a week with the Albarrans.  It reminds me of Gustave Flaubert's dictum which I have bowdlerized: "Leave home often but not for long."

7:48

Yesterday, we left a crisp, clear, cold but sunny Connecticut by 7:20, finding little traffic on the Merritt and Rt. 7 up to Danbury, where we picked up the beginning of the Interstates, which would take us home to the lake.  It was clear and sunny for the first hour, lovely as we drove through the Catskills but clouded up before Bingingham, as we started to see some occasional snow flurries but nothing heavy. A few stops for breakfast and lunch and we were home by 3:20, after stopping in Lakewood to pick up our mail, our usual seven hour drive.

Chautauqua was snow covered, about eight inches of wet compressed snow, and our parking area needed to be cleared.  So we parked our car next to our garage, got out the snow shovels and for about fifteen minutes, we shoveled heavy snow, clearing our parking space.  It felt good to be outside and do something physical in the cold air.

It took about a half hour to get our things in the house, put away, and feel settled once again at the lake. I always feel a little lost after we have unpacked, not knowing what to do after a week with grandchildren and coming off a seven hour drive.   I am still pumped up from the drive, from wondering if the good weather will hold, so that sitting down, relaxing, with seemingly nothing to worry about is unsettling. It's always a relief to find something to do, for Evie getting dinner ready, for me, to help some, read, or organize my clothes, and start thinking about tomorrow.

For dinner, we brought some frozen left over pork roast from Beth's so we had an easy dinner of home fries, pork and broccoli.  There's rarely much to watch on TV on Friday's, so we watched a few more episodes of Alpha House, a political satire, from Amazon via Apple TV.  Evie brings it up on her iPad, then via Apple TV, it shows up on our TV screen.  We are 'so technologically hip.'

Chautauqua, Late Afternoon

Today, we relax in the morning and then we will drive into Euclid, Ohio, where my sister, Linda and her husband, Rich are having a gathering at Pine Ridge Country Club to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary.  I remember the wedding well because I was a junior in college, and we played a basketball game against the Louisville Cardinals, in Louisville, the night before, and I took a plane from Louisville to Cleveland the day of the wedding, making it just in time.  The party will include cocktails and appetizers, a sit down dinner and a DJ, just like a wedding reception.  Sounds like great fun for all, especially the grandchildren who missed the wedding fifty years ago.