A Great Week Ends With A Bang

7:17

7:18

8:03

It's after 8:00 as I begin my blog this morning, the sky partly cloudy, the sun hidden behind them.  I was up around 7:20, just as the sun was rising above the horizon into a clear, blue sky.  It's 52º and for some reason I thought, "This is a fall morning," the sky, fallen leaves, cool temperatures.  No regrets as we love fall as much as summer if not more especially here at Chautauqua Lake.

Yesterday was taken over by a 'big surprise,' the arrival of Evie's birthday present albeit a week later. Fortunately, I had already taken two trips to the Transfer Station, one for trash, one for iron dock pieces that have been sitting around for years.  Anyways, she was prepared for something special as our son Tom told her to make sure she was home Saturday morning between 9:00 and 1:00.  This of course got her thinking, what could it be.  She thought back to a week ago when her granddaughter, Marlena said, 'Granny, you are going to love it.".  Well, surprise, Tom and Mary sent her a brand new iPhone 6s, wonderfully packaged and now Evie can find join the 21st century: she has an iPhone like everyone else in our family except your yours truly who, honestly, does not want one.  I am happy with my dumb phone and I rarely get a call.  Anyways, back to Evie.  The rest of the day was taken over by this darn phone, setting it up, figuring out all the various apps and how to use them. Fortunately, about a half hour after getting the phone, Tom and Marlena called on FaceTime and spent the next hour and a half helping Evie to set up the phone.  I have to say Marlena, our seventh grader, was as knowledgeable about the phone set up as Tommy,  In fact, Tommy finally suggested, after an hour, that Evie just work with Marlena; he needed to take a shower.  So the two of them continued to set up things on the phone.  I meanwhile sat around looking up passwords and codes needed to access email, credit cards (for apple pay) Pandora (for music), icloud (for sharing) and Evie even decided to change her email address to icloud making things easier.  And syncing her iPhone with Ipad took some time.

Our Neighbors Sailing At Dusk

By the time everything was finished, Evie was a wreck, not having concentrated and thought this hard since she retired along with me six years ago.  So around 5:30, she finally set the phone down and put together some dinner, the makings for tacos.  And we then sat down on our porch to celebrate our amazing week, a new car and iPhone 6s in the same week, with a  perfect Manhattan (with Martini and Rossi's Bianco, not Sweet Vermouth) and listened to Garrison Keeler, who was featuring one of our favorite blue grass singers, Sierra Hull.  It was a typical fall evening on the lake, warm enough to sit outside on the porch not in the yard because of the wind.  Sierra Hull was good, especially her mandolin playing.  By the time we had dinner, it was late, 8:30, so we watched Bill Maher's Real Time, some HGTV, then went up to bed, me to read the new Jack Reacher novel, not his best but decent.  So ends a great day, an amazing week.  I am sure Evie spent the night dreaming about driving her new Subaru, using her new iPhone.