A Brisk Morning

8:01

8:06

It's 7:12, the morning sky is developing slowly, lots of dark clouds, a vanilla middle.  It's 34º and not as a whisper of wind.  It's too dark still to kayak and I have breakfast at 8:00 so I won't be out on the lake this morning.  It's 9:25  as we finish this and I am off to Yin Yoga in a few minutes

8:15

Yesterday began as usual, with a bizarre paddle, as it sleeted briefly and rained, with a rainbow off to the north. After the blog and breakfast, we did little other than take a walk around the neighborhood.  Evie also did some prepping for lunch because a good friend from high school was stopping by on his way home to Massachusetts.  Mike and Maryanne arrived just as they thought, 11:30, after a brief lake effect snowstorm on #86, a typical welcome to Chautauqua.  They had visited their granddaughter at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, and a friend in Euclid, before heading our way. Mike and I grew up together, played basketball in high school, and he was the best man at our wedding. This was the first time since the late 1990's that we have gotten together.  Like me, both Mike and Maryanne taught at various schools, so we have quite a  bit in common, and we have stayed in touch via email, usually about sports.  We had a tasty lunch, cauliflower soup, and a sweet potato galette and had lots of laughs as we reminisced about the good old days growing up in the late '50s and early '60s, and caught up on our kids and grandchildren.  It was so good to get together that it made me wonder as it always does,  why we don't see old friends more often.  Once we get together, it feels like we just start up again where we left off years ago.  Unfortunately, they had to leave by 2:30 as they were spending a couple of days with their son, his wife, and grandchildren in East Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo. 

Friends

The visit took any ambition out of us so that we spent the rest of the day enjoying the large leisure afforded us by retirement.  What a gift. I am enjoying my new book by Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway.  The extent of my afternoon exercise was to pick up the mail and that was enough.  

Dinner was easy, just heat up the previous night's man-pleasing chicken with rice and we were happy. Our streaming was acting up so we had to stick with cable TV and watch the usual, Cobert and Jeopardy, no Netflix or Prime Video.