39º

8:10

It's 8:30 at the moment, chilly in, cold out, windy, gray skies, wrinkled lake, and it's only going to get up in the low 50's today.  No rain forecast so it might be a good day for a hike somewhere.  We both slept in this morning; I did not get up til 7:45 and Evie's still sleeping...the virtue of cool weather?

Yesterday was the kind of day Evie loves, sunny, windy, and cool, temperatures only in the 50's. It energizers her, pushes her outside and in this case, she cut the lawn twice, mulching the leaves, leaving the yard looking like a putting green.  I can only encourage her.  Meanwhile, yesterday for me was taking the boat out of the lake day.  And once it's done, as most boaters agree, it's a great feeling to have it done, no more worries or expenses.  A neighbor has helped me over the years, taking my car and meeting me at the Prendergast Boat launch with my trailer.  He's an expert at backing up the trailer, making sure everything is done right, which has been enormously helpful over the years, especially if something went wrong, which it often does.  My cruise to the launch, on the windy, blue lake was easy and cold and the taking out went well.  We then dropped the boat and trailer off at a yard where one of the kids who takes in our docks, will winterize it, power wash the shells/zebra mussels ls off of the boat.  And it will then be parked in my neighbor's boat garage for the winter.

Mornings On Chautauqua Lake

When I got home, Evie was out cruising in our new car, mailing a package.  When she got back, it was 12:00 and some of my high school and post college buddies drove up, having come to the lake from the Cleveland area, to visit Stan Marshaus, the retired golf pro from Chautauqua, who grew up in East Cleveland with the guys.  I knew them because we all had basketball in common and played against each others on the playgrounds of Shaw Field in the summers, and with each other after college on semi pro teams in Cleveland.  We have gotten together once before, perhaps three years ago, and it's fun to see these guys because we have history together, growing up in the 1950's, playing ball, and coaching, as all four of us coached and played basketball at one time or another.  We went to the Seezurh House for lunch, had a great time reminiscing about the 'good old days,' like the old farts that we are, trying to remember both names and places and dates we had in common.

The Boys From East Cleveland/Shaw

They headed back to Cleveland around 2:30 and we vowed to try and do this at least once a year.  It was a nice way to spend an early afternoon.  The guys love coming up to the lake, always comment on our house and view which is nice. When we walked in the Seezurh House, it was overcast but sunny and blue skies when we came out.   Evie was cutting the lawn when we returned, of course, and the rest of the afternoon, I took it easy, reading mostly, then watching TV and the coverage of the tragedy in Oregon.  The height of ridiculousness came, however, on Fox TV, when commentator Charles Krauthammer suggested that Obama's address to the nation about the shootings was an attempt to take our eyes off of his problems in Syria, another blatant example of how our politics blind us to reality, to the truth.

Neither of us were very hungry, so we pulled some frozen pancakes out of the freezer, toasted them, covered them with my good friend Dale Conly's maple syrup and that was dinner.  There was little we wanted to watch on TV, as we channel surfed between the major channels, interested to know how they handled the tragedy in Oregon, the rumors, the changing facts.  Finally, Fox News was the first to announce the killers name and most channels had him living in the Mid West, arriving in the area a few days prior to the shooting.  Obviously, they were all wrong if you read this morning's papers.  We both were moved by Obama's earlier address; everything he said resonated with us, was spot on, especially his anger over the number of mass shootings (294 mass shootings so far in 2015 according to today's Washington Post's story).  I was anxious to go upstairs and read because I am reading a book I really like, A COLDER WAR, by Charles Cummins, much of it set in both Istanbul and Turkey, in fact, one of the characters mentioned Arnavutkoy, the village we lived in during the 1970's