A Dawn Of Darkening Skies

6:05

6:25

6:37

I was up at 6:00, on the dot, to a gray, ever changing sky.  No obvious sunrise this morning, much cooler, with a high today in the 60's, such a contrast to yesterday's muggy, summer like temperatures. Heavy 50 mph winds forecast for today.

Yesterday turned out to a ridiculously silly day, the kind which is becoming too common.  It started well, however, with an early morning kayaking down to Whitney Bay and back, a good hour of paddling. Then, the two banes of my existence, the dentist and car repair, once again reared their ugly heads.  First, at 11:00, after a morning of sorting pictures, figuring out which bedrooms to hang them, I drove to Jamestown to get an impression for a crown which I had replaced a month ago. It ended up being a quick trip, and I was home, to Evie's surprise by noon.  So far so good.

Kayak Girl

It was a warm but sparkling blue day on the lake, so we jumped in our kayaks, putting aside anything we wanted to do, and paddled across to Long Point, then to Wells Bay, then home.  Despite the sun and muggy weather, the lake was fine, and we even found a breeze. When we got home, I had leftover pizza for lunch and watched a couple day old NBA game, a good way to waste an hour. Anyways, we are driving to Virginia, then Connecticut over the next two weeks and we decided to take the Honda Pilot, not the Accord.  So, I wanted to get it checked out, especially a strange muffler related noise, so I took it to the former Honda dealer, got an oil change, and was told I needed a flex pipe, about 150 bucks.  It was not dangerous, just a bit noisy, so I let go.  Happy, I then drove to Sam's to get my tires rotated, free because I bought them there.  As the guy pulled the car in the garage, he noticed my gas line was leaking.  This is no more than 15 minutes after  it was at Hartley Buick for an oil change, less than a week after I had it repaired by Keystone.  Not good. So I drove to my mechanic, Ray at Keystone, who supposedly fixed the line last week.  He put it on the rack, saw the problem, and sent out for a part, while I waited.  Forty five minutes later, the wrong part arrived, so we decided to leave the car, and he would fix it this morning, check the air conditioning to see if he could reinvigorate it.   He also showed me the rapidly deteriorated, rusty under carriage of my car, making it clearer than ever, I am going to need a new car. He then drove me home in his truck.

When I got home, all I wanted to do was sit on the dock, despite the heat and humidity and have a couple of beers.  Evie was more than amenable, so we enjoyed the late afternoon, munching on chips, drinking a couple of beers, trying to forget our increasing car troubles.  About 7:00, the clouds started to arrive, the winds picked up, so Evie took a quick dip in the lake before we went in to make an easy dinner.

Earlier in the day, Evie had made some Hawaiian macaroni salad, the kind we would get on a plate lunch at Kenny Kaneshiro's  Jolly Roger Drive In in Honolulu (by the way, he sponsored our basketball team in the Hawaiian Armed Forces League, a great guy). Our entire family loves this simple salad.  We had Slovenian sausages leftover from Saturday, heated up a small can of sauerkraut, and Evie made a salad and dinner was done.  I forgot how good these sausages were with sauerkraut.  We watched the penultimate episode of Mad Men, then some of The Daily Show before going up to bed to read.  It was a scary night, of high winds, heavy rain, some hail, and a half inch of rain.  Fortunately, there does not seem to be any damage in the neighborhood.  We needed the rain, however, so that was the good part, as we have had a dry couple of months after the cold, cold winter.