First Cut, First Blue-Winged Teal, First Great Blue Heron

6:05

7:20

It's gray and wet outside, a half-inch of rain fell overnight along with horrific winds (gusts up to 60mph) through the night, strong enough to wake me at 2:00 as the house shook.  Fortunately, there does not seem to be any damage within eyesight.

I am listening to The Bulwark interview Chris Matthews.  Chris makes an interesting observation into Trump, that his success was like the Roman mantra, give the masses 'bread' (wealth,jobs) 'circuses' (entertainment, a reality show), and they will be happy.  Trump offered both until now when we no longer have bread  (money) and do not want circuses (entertainment). We want expertise, competent leadership, not fun.  Interesting.

When I got up, the wind had died and even though it was drizzling, I thought I might get in a paddle,  Now, at 8:00, however, the wind has picked up, the lake is wavy so there will be no kayaking,  Forget what I said above.  It's 10:30 and around 9:30 the rain stopped, the lake calmed down and I had a great paddle, worth it because of the photos below.

Kayak North at 9:40

First Sighting Ever Of Blue-Winged Teal

Great Blue Heron

Wednesday turned out to be a decent day until late afternoon.  The morning went as it usually has over the past few days.  I kayaked, then wrote the blog which Evie then edited and had breakfast, smoothie for a change.  Since Evie was interested in continuing to tweak the Shutterfly album, I decided to practice yoga, watching an hour Yoga With Adriene video.  It was a tough class for me, so I had to modify some of her asanas.  When I finished, Evie was still working so I drove off to drop off some items in my boat before launching it.  It's a good thing it was not yet docked because I would have been up a good part of the night worrying about the wind.

I was back by noon and discovered I had forgotten to pay my Visa bill this month and received a late fee.  Idiot.  So I sat down with bill pay and made sure all the bills were paid up.  I have yet to figure out the right time to pay bills because they all seem to arrive at different times.  This failure to pay on time happens every two or three years and I usually can get them to waive the late fee.  Not this time.

Evie took pity on me and made me a great lunch.  In between working on her album, she made an Indian cauliflower/potato soup, one of our many favorite soups.  So I had a bowl along with a tasty omelet wrapped in a tortilla.  I watched my show, relaxed on the couch with my Tana French book and fell asleep of course, having gotten up so early.  Evie was hot to cut the lawn, her favorite form of exercise, so I pulled the two lawnmowers out of the garage, checked the oil, and gassed them up.  Around 3:30, she discovered that rain was coming, so we fired up both mowers and she cut the front yard and I did the side.  Even so, we finished in a drizzle but at least the yard looks great, as there's nothing like spring green.

First Cut, Spring Green

While I read, Evie sauteed the scallops and made the sauce, so everything was ready when we wanted to have dinner.  We then enjoyed a glass of wine although I made myself Fleabag's favorite drink, a vodka gimlet,  Not bad.  We sat on the couch and went through every page, every photo, every frame of the album, making sure we were happy with everything.  We weren't so Evie still has to find another photo or two to fit the page theme.  Once we had enough editing, Evie heated up the lemony sauce and boiled the linguini.  Once the pasta was done, she heated the scallops in the sauce then added both to the linguini and let it marinate for a couple of minutes before plating it.  With a salad, we had another one of our favorite go-to dinners.

Still Light At 8:03

We were excited to watch a new film on HBO, Bad Education, about a school superintendent and assistant who bilk a wealthy,  high ranked Long Island school system out of millions of dollars over a period of years.  It's easy to watch, little violence, the suggestion of sex but basically, a watchable film for the family if you don't mind that the Superintendent is also a closeted gay man.  I would give it a B.  After the film, we watched a fun Colbert as he interviewed actor Jake Gyllenhaal, then a Cheers to wrap up the night.