A Spring Like Morning In January

8:00

8:02

8:03

When I walked outside to pick up the paper, the heavy winds from last night had died down, the temperature a pleasant 43º, quite a contrast to yesterday's high of 26º.  I then checked the weather and I was shocked to see a winter storm warning for tonight through Thursday in which we might get up to 15 inches of snow.  It's now 8:00 and I am hurrying up to finish my blog so I can kayak as we just had a minor miracle, the sun peaked out from between the clouds.  I just returned from another amazing morning on the lake, dodging pieces of ice, braving an occasional drizzle, as the sky constantly changed colors.

Kayak Morning

Woodlawn/Victoria

Kayak Morning

Yesterday I began the new year with the usual, Yin Yoga, coffee at Ryder's Cup and shopping at Wegmans's.  I ought to get a life.  After writing the blog and having breakfast, I drove to Lakewood, to a very crowded Yin Yoga class, all women, many with new year's resolutions to get back to yoga.
The class was fine, lots of emphasis on the back, a welcome relief from last week's hip openers.  This probably doesn't mean much to most unless you have taken a yoga class.  After class, I stopped for a coffee then returned a carload of plastic and glass bottles and cans to the can man, walking out with ten bucks.  I then drove to Wegman's, surprisingly quiet for a Monday and picked up quite a few staples, like Nutty Buddies and flowers for Evie, a good husband, really a smart one.

Mallards, The Only Wild Life On The Lake, Dodging Floating Ice

When I returned home, Evie was busy working on the blue room, especially the closet, filled with paint cans and slides from our years in Hawaii and Turkey.  About ten years ago, I had all of them digitalized so it did not make much sense to keep them.  So we looked at a couple of boxes to make sure they were the ones we digitalized and decided to throw them out along with the Kodak carousels, which used to hold slides so they could be used on a projector.  Check one more thing off our bucket list of things we don't need but are reluctant to throw away.

Lunch was easy, leftover over chicken and stuffing from Sunday night's dinner and some of Evie'soup.  I watched another episode of NARCOS but it doesn't end well for Kiki.  I guess I am getting close to the end of the series.  I then finished up my Greg Iles novel, briefly napped, then helped clean up the kitchen.  Evie spent a good part of the afternoon relaxing after a busy morning.  I decided to go for a walk around 4:00, despite the cold and winds.  It was fine in the woods, however, not even windy and I enjoyed it, the solitude of the woods, the quiet, and the colors of the sky through the trees.

Leaves, Trees, And Sky

When I walked in, Evie was busy sauteeing both mushrooms and sausage for our pasta dinner.  Once the sauce was done, we enjoyed a glass of wine before boiling up the pasta, making the salad and warming up some garlic bread.  We enjoyed having the pasta, a change from our 'big dinners' during the holidays and we watched a heart-wrenching film with Steve Carell, the story of a father and his son's addiction to drugs, specifically, crystal meth.  Both Carell and his son are amazing, so believable.  The film is hard to watch, however, as the son goes in and out of rehabilitation, driving the father mad with love and desperation.  By the way, crystal meth addiction is so lethal that the recovery rates are in the single digits.  Scary.  We ended the night watching the first half of the college football playoff before going to bed.