Arctic Temperatures, Five to Seven More Inches Of Snow

The Glow of Dawn In Winter, 7:25

Up at 6:10 because I remembered we have the last breakfast till spring with the boys over at the Bemus Point Inn at 8:00.  We had another four or five inches of snow last night and more to come, perhaps as much as seven or eight inches during the day.  It's 10º out side, toasty inside with a nice fire in the fire place. This is our fifth winter here at the lake since retiring and it's by far the most snow we have had at this time of the year.  And we have at least two, maybe three months of winter to go.

Linda and Ron, near Thunder Bridge

We both did little yesterday, Evie still not feeling well, me trying to finish my digital book until it disappears from my Kindle today at 3:00.  Yikes, better get reading.  Like the previous four or five days, I spent a good half hour clearing our parking area of snow, as it snowed on and off during the day.  It was in the teens but no wind to speak of so it was pleasant to be outside, a welcome change of scenery from my book and couch.

After a lunch of Evie's vegetable soup, my bread toasted with tuna salad, I drove off to the Chautauqua Institute, to go for a walk with Ron and Linda McClure, who we have not seen for three weeks.  It was a good day for a walk at the CI, lots of snow of course, cold, a few flurries, as we made the loop in a little over an hour. And surprisingly, a group of residents had cleared the ice and were skating on the lake, at the north end. The Mc Clures have been up at the lake for both Christmas and New Year, a change for them but they have loved it, especially the snow.  We hope to go over to their house tonight for a meat loaf and mashed potatoes dinner if Evie feels up to it.  Tomorrow, they head home to PA so it's our last chance to have dinner together for a few weeks.

Skaters at CI Lake front

The rest of the afternoon differed little from the last few days, on my couch, reading, the only exception my shelving my Turkish tea, getting out some Assam tea from India, which I was first introduced to in India, in 1975, when I traveled around the world on Pan Am 1, stopping in India, Thailand, Japan, Hawaii, the Mainland, than back to Istanbul, Turkey.  I still remember being awakened at 6:00 AM in the town of Puri, at the Great  Eastern Railway Hotel, by a servant with a tray with tea, with milk and sweetened by sugar, a lovely way to wake up each morning, as I sipped it on my terrace looking at the Indian Ocean.

View of Indian Ocean From Terrace

Great Eastern Railway Hotel, Puri, India

For dinner, neither of us felt like cooking and we had a couple of pork chops leftover from the previous night, so we heated them up, along with a couple of baked potatoes, added a salad with blue cheese, and we had fine New Year's Day dinner.  We tried a couple of cheesy movies but ended up watching a couple of episodes of the Netflix series Orange Is The New Black, not your family series, as it's set in a women's prison.  I had to laugh how much TV has changed since the 1950's when we were growing up, where Leave It To Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show were popular, good, clean family stuff. My parents would be appalled at this show, its violence, vulgarity, and sexuality but we sit here calmly, watching it while eating a pork chop dinner.  What will TV be like in twenty years?  Back to Leave It To Beaver types of shows, a reaction to today's stark, realistic TV?  We would like to be around to see.