Clear Skies And Still Cold

7:22

7:24

I was up at 6:20, in time to see an orange glow begin to edge out the darkness.  It's not quite as cold as the past few mornings, 26º and will get up to the 40's later in the day. And when I walk outside to take a photograph each morning, I am welcomed by the chirping of birds, a sign that Spring has arrived even if it's not convincing. 

Sunday was a day for basketball, March Madness as I ended up sitting around and watching two games in the afternoon, hogging the TV room.  We did, however,  manage to get in a good but shortened walk around the Chautauqua Institution in the morning.  We waited until 11:00, enjoying our Sunday morning of coffee and news and getting the house organized.  It was colder walking than we thought, especially the wind when not protected by homes, so we stayed away from the lakefront, keeping to the narrow streets.  It's still a quiet and seemingly uninhabited place because we rarely see anyone on our walks despite the fact that there are a few hundred year-round residents.  The streets were snow free, the yards still snow covered, with no sign of spring.  I forgot to mention that in our March on Saturday in Dunkirk we did notice a few crocuses in bloom along a narrow stretch which gets lots of sunshine.  What a surprise, spring life.

By the time we were finished with our walk, I was already thinking about our big breakfast and couldn't wait to get home.  We had leftover mashed potatoes so Evie not only fried eggs and bacon but also potato pancakes.  Nothing like fried eggs and potato pancakes on a late Sunday morning.  We watched CBS Sunday Morning, a welcome antidote to the usual 'breaking news' as they purposely seem to avoid mentioning DT although Jim Gaffigan had an interesting 2 minute soliloquy titled, "That Topic."  So for an hour, we can feel good about life, enjoy the triumphs of the human spirit.  By the time I got around to watching basketball, the game had already started so I was able to fast-forward through the commercials.  I did get bored towards the middle of the first game, took a quick nap and did some reading, waiting really for the Kansas/Duke game to start.  It was a great college game, went into overtime, and Kansas won, even though Duke seemed to have more talent.  Kansas players just rose to the occasion and played their best. 

Dinner was marmalade glazed salmon, rice, salad and broccoli, as we hurried into the TV room with our dinners to watch the Stormy Daniels Show, which, as I thought, was a nothing burger, just CNN hype non-stop throughout the week.  Evie is so fed up with CNN and their repulsive pundit Rick Santorum, his stupidity and heartlessness towards the Parkland students saying they should be learning CPR instead of marching, that she fired off missive after missive to the higher-ups at CNN, even calling, asking them to replace him.  The damage caused to the 17 students by an Ak-15 is unimaginable, nothing any of us should see let alone teenagers.  We are very worried about the long term consequences for these brave young souls.  It seems lots of other people feel the same way.  We ended the night watching an old Trading Spaces, a bit of deja vu before turning to Homeland before going up to bed.