Hazy, Lazy Days Of Summer

6:27

Well, those hazy summer days have arrived, the weekenders have arrived, as have the fishermen and tourists.  Chautauqua Institution's season also opens today, so the area is beginning to look like the summer season has begun.  Mostly sunny today, with a high of 84º, a perfect day for locals and tourists.

Yesterday was a great day, lots of sun, a nice breeze most of the afternoon and both of us seemed to have our mojo back.  I left early for Lakewood, to return a hose I bought from Home Depot and picked up a new garbage can (it's sharp) and more grass seed, the third bag this summer (so far).  And I stopped at our local department store, Bon Ton's, because they were having a 'great sale.'  I have been there before but never seem to learn.  The deal, buy a 100 dollars worth of items, including sale items, and get 50 dollars back.  I picked out my items, went to check out and guess what, my sale items were not the sale items indicated in the small, tiny print in the newspaper.  This has happened to me before.  'Fool me once...shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again.' (thanks to George Bush).  When I returned home,  Evie had turned the kitchen into a wreck and was sitting on the back porch, frying eggplant.  Yum.  She had spent much of the morning making Eggplant Parmesan Bites, a delicious appetizer of ricotta cheese and other goodies sandwiched between two slices of slice eggplant, breaded and fried.  And she made more hanky pankys, sausage, hamburger and velveeta cheese on rye bread.  All of them were made, then put in bags and frozen, ready to be pulled out at any time for appetizers.

Lake Weeds Drying

While Evie was finishing up, I watered many of the plants in our backyard, using the hose from the lake to fill up water cans.  Lots of hydrangeas needed water as we still have a parched earth area. I then wanted to get some weeding done in the lake before lunch, so I went out in the water, with my gloves, a bucket and weed rake, and filled a couple of buckets with weeds, layering on the dock to dry before disposing of them.  Lunch was once again, leftover tacos, still good and I watched some Sports Center, as the NBA season seems to be ending, with their draft.  Now it's time for a bit of baseball, then some European soccer championships before the Olympics from Brazil in August.

After my brief nap, I woke once again with energy, scaring Evie because I was up so soon.  I wanted to get more weeds out, so I filled a couple of more buckets with disgusting weeds and algae, making our swimming area clear for our family fun over the next month and a half.  Evie was out helping as well, often getting her feet stuck in the lake mud.  By 3:30, we had both had it.  We originally thought we would take a nice boat ride but neither of us felt like it so we just went out on our dock, sunbathed and occasionally swam.  About 5:00, I went in and got a cooler with a couple of of beers and pretzels, and our neighbor's daughter, Kathy came over, so we talked with her until after 6:00.

Cloud Art

We then worked on the bare spots on our lawn with the new, guaranteed to grow grass seed (fat chance) which took all of 20 minutes.  Evie then went in and put together an eggplant and tomato sauce pasta as I watered the grass for another 20 minutes.  I love fried eggplant with a tomato sauce over pasta.  I remember having it for the first time in Istanbul, thinking where has eggplant been all my life.  Turks are noted for their eggplant dishes and have many different combinations of eggplant with all kinds of different ingredients.  We watched a movie we have been intending to watch for a couple of weeks, The One-Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared, an award winning book and film.  It follows a 100 year old Swedish man, who ups and leaves his nursing home, accidentally ends up with a drug dealers suitcase filled with money, and the rest of the movie is about the friends he makes, how the drug dealers eventually meet their end, with flashbacks to his life, one in which he meets the likes of  Franco, Truman, and Stalin.  Quirky and silly, we surprised ourselves by not liking it more than we did. O, well, who can account for taste.

We were in bed by 11:00.