"O What A Beautiful Morning"

7:15

I did not get up until 7:15, missing the sunrise, alas, coming downstairs to a living room filled with sunlight, unusual for this time of the year but I am not complaining.  It's now 8:00 and I a sitting on my couch with my baseball cap on, to keep the dazzling light out of my eyes.  It looks strange but it works.

I began yesterday, like I have recently, with a leisurely morning of coffee and breakfast (homemade granola, yogurt and blueberries), then a drive to Lakewood for yoga class, this morning with Danielle.  I'm the only male and they laughed when I told them about my power yoga experience on Saturday. We worked on hips the entire morning, not a part of the body we think about very often.  I wonder how people with hip replacements would do in this class.  I know some have hip or knee or shoulder replacements, so they must work.  Amazing what today's medical world can accomplish.

After yoga, I did some major shopping at Wegman's, picking up staples for the week, sort of, as I always end up going back within a day or two.   For lunch, I had the last of the home made vegetable soup and tuna sandwiches, as we waited for or new plumbers to come, to service our boiler.  They were recommended to us by our neighbors, are from Panama, called Northridge Services.  They seemed much more thorough in their servicing than our usual plumbers and we liked them enough to call them again.

We took it easy, what else most of the afternoon, readings, watching some TV, and taking a nap (moi) but around 3:30, I went out and did some easy work in the yard.  My buddy from Maine told me about a deer barrier that they use.  It's 30 weight fishing line tied tightly between poles at two levels, 18 inches and 48 inches.  So, other than finding a spot to pound the poles in the ground where there were no rocks, it was easy.  I also put in poles to mark our drive way and road for the winter plowing.  Yes, winter is definitely on its way.  It felt good to be outside, so I took a quick hike through the Woodlawn/Victoria woods, noticed small tractor tracks on the trails and one of the trees that had fallen, was gone.  I wondered what had happened but then noticed that the Johnson's, both John and his son Steve, were working in their yard, so it was obviously them.  They are thorough if anything.

Woodlawn Creek

When I got home, Evie had prepped everything for our stir fry dinner, cabbage, mushrooms, chicken, beef, various sauces.  So, we were both hungry even though it was before 6:00, so she got busy with the garlic and ginger, chopping and slicing, then putting them in the wok, along with all the ingredients, and within five minutes, we had a great stir fry.  One of the secrets of wok cooking is that its quick but the prep can be arduous and time consuming.  We ate dinner, watching the rest of CBS Sunday Morning, which talked about Jon Stewart's movie, Rosewater, which opens this week.  It should be interesting to see if he can pull off directing a movie based on an actual event in Iran.

 Moon Over Chautauqua Lake

We then watched The Good Wife, a pretty good episode actually if they left Kalinda's sexual dalliances out.  Then, we watched the first two episodes of an acclaimed new series on Showtime called The Affair.  It's told from two points of view, the hook, from husband, then his lover.  It's not clear at first but they are being interviewed by a cop and a murder had taken place, most likely the lover's husband.  Dominic West is the lead, one of my favorites from The Wire, one of the great series from the past 15 years. I was ready for bed after the second episode because I was reading a book that I was really into called THE DIRECTOR, by Washington Post journalist David Ignatius. I have read two or three of his other novels and like them.  This is set in the contemporary cyberspace world of the CIA, which is quickly changing from moles to Internet geeks with vast hacker experiences.   The Wild Bill Donovan's are gone, kids in jeans, tee shirts and earrings are in.