Another Chautauqua Thaw

6:43

7:17

7:18

Up at 6:40, to a surprisingly bright sky, clear and blue, with a growing orange along the shoreline.  I shouldn't be surprised, however, as the sunrise is earlier each day, today's at 7:07 supposedly, but it pops up here at the lake usually six or seven minutes later, at 7:17.

Yesterday is momentarily a blank, a result I think of the sameness of most of our days.  How, for example, does yesterday differ from the previous four or five.  Not much I guess as I look back.  The day started with a 9:00 basic yoga class, with four of us, one a novice.  A good class, then coffee at Ryder's Cup and a aloha to all the regulars, the parents, etc. To add spice to my morning, however, I stopped at Reverie Creamery to pick up a couple of frozen baguettes, some St. Ivy cheddar, and tried a Buffalo Milk soft cheese from Italy.  It's nice having this gourmet cheese store a few minutes from our house and the owner, Rico, now greets me by name.  I arrived home to a busy wife, who was working with the biga (sponge like starter which spent 3 days in the refrigerator), added the rest of ingredients, let it rise twice before shaping into a couple of loaves of bread.  And she had put together our dinner, a recipe that I picked out from a blog that I thought would  be interesting, a cabbage, Italian sausage, and white bean stew.  It was interesting but not very good!  Mea culpa.

Around 12:30, Evie hustled off to the gym, happy to be in a groove, of looking forward to working out (partly because of the music she plays as she works out) and because of new Brooks shoes.  She was ready for bear.  For lunch, I defrosted some of Evie's vegetable soup and finished off the sub from the Lighthouse Grocery.  And I watched TREME, read and had a nice siesta, waking just in time to turn the oven on to 500º, so it would be ready for Evie when she got home so she could pop the bread in.  An hour later, we had two gorgeous, crusty loaves of Italian bread, the smell filling the kitchen, making me want to cut it immediately and spread it with butter.  No go...I had to let it rest.

Around 4:15, despite the melting snow, I decided to cross country ski, thinking I could find some decent snow if I went to the campground.  I was wrong as most of the snow on the roads had melted, so I was forced to ski much of the time on the four inch edge of the asphalt, where there was still some snow.  And I had to take off my skis and walk in a section that was completely melted.  Even so, I did work up a good sweat by the time I got home.  I quickly took a shower, felt great, as we both then sat down to some wine and great appetizers, cut up apples, St. Ivy cheddar, and homemade bread.  We were in heaven and neither of us really cared about dinner.  A good thing because the cabbage stew was mediocre at best even though I had a couple of helpings, to prove to Evie that I liked it (which I didn't much).  We watched the much ballyhooed movie THE MARTIAN and to be honest, we were both bored most of the film until the last 15 minutes, when there was some tension.  I suppose the visual effects of life on Mars pushed the film into one of the top ten of the year but the story line was predictable and there was little emotion, no relationships, little tension.  I think we both are becoming a couple of film and TV curmudgeons.