Slowly Spring

6:54

8:21

8:21

It's just after 7:00 as I start this, the sky overcast, the lake fairly calm, a few ripples and 37º.  It should get up to 60º later in the day, making for a good day to walk or bike.  Maybe too warm? It's 8:35 and I kayaked down to Sandy Bottom and back, chasing off rafts of buffleheads on a partly cloudy morning,

Kayak Morning

Yesterday was a relief from the weekend weather of mixed precipitation. It was a perfect morning for a long paddle, so I was out for close to an hour.  As a result, the blog was not published until late, around 9:30.  We then did a few things around the house in the morning, changing the beds, vacuuming, and stuff like that.  I also did a few things outside, gathering another bucket full of deadfall, and organizing my toolbox finally so it's easy to get to.  

Afternoon Fishing Off Long Point

By 12: 30, I was sitting in the TV room enjoying a couple of tuna sandwiches and watching my show, The Sopranos, Season Five, and I am looking forward to the end of the series.  The afternoon went quickly, reading, napping, doing a few things for the both of us but I decided to get in a hike, so I drove over to the end of Lakeside Drive and hiked Long Point State Park for close to an hour. It was strange walking through the woods because the last time I was on cross country skis, slipping and sliding on the icy trails. I met one guy walking with his daughter and his dog but that was it for a perfect afternoon for a walk.

A Study In Brown

Fat Bike Trail

We had dinner around 6:30, taco salad with all the fixings, just what I wanted as it had been a while for Mexican food and our favorite Mexican restaurant closed a couple of years ago. We watched an hour of a much-acclaimed Japanese movie, Wheel Of Fortune and Fantasy, by the director of Drive My Car, which just won the best foreign film. If you like a film with no action, two people talking endlessly for an hour then these are the films for you.  We had enough after an hour and don't intend to watch Drive My Car. We then waited for the start of the Kansas/NC game by watching Colbert and Jeopardy.  And like I am sure many basketball aficionados who live in the Eastern Time Zone, I went to bed at halftime, thinking there was no way Kansas could win after being down by 15 at halftime and playing poorly.  O ye of little faith.  I woke up this morning to a Kansa win, one of the greatest comebacks in NCAA history, and I slept through it.  At least I have it on tape and can watch it this morning.

Sound familiar?

BASEMENT   BY Louis Jenkins

There’s something about our basement that causes forgetting. I go down for something, say a roll of
paper towels, which we keep in a big box down there,
and as soon as I get to the bottom of the stairs I have forgotten what I came down there for. It happens to
my wife as well. So recently we have taken to working
in tandem like spelunkers. One of us stands at the
top of the stairs while the other descends. When the descendant has reached the bottom stair, the person
at the top calls out, “Light bulbs, 60 watt.” This
usually works unless the one in the basement lingers
too long. I blame this memory loss on all the stuff in
the basement. Too much baggage: 10 shades of blue
paint, because we could not get the right color, extra dishes, bicycles, the washer and dryer, a cider press, a piano, jars of screws, nails and bolts…. It boggles the mind. My wife blames it on radon.