Blue Skies, Sunshine, And Snow

6:51

7:24

7:37

9:06

It's 7:30 and I have been up for an hour, enjoying a beautiful morning sky. The sun has yet to rise but I can see it hiding behind the trees. The sky is blue with a few white strings of white on a 28º morning. It was an amazing morning for a paddle. Despite the temperature in the 20's I was not bothered by the cold, probably because it was not windy. And it was hard to see if any eagles were in the pines because the tufts of snow looked like an eagle. I did spot one but he took off just as I took out my camera. 

Kayak Morning

Victoria/Woodlawn

South

Avoiding Ice Floes

The Reeds

Ice Floes And Reeds

Frozen Reeds Like Cotton Balls

When I got home, Evie had been busy but was relaxing, watching some TV. For lunch, I had soup and ham salad sandwiches and watched my series. Early afternoon, Evie put together our dinner, chicken swarma, and let it marinate in the refrigerator until dinner time. Neither of us did much until 3:00 when I drove off to Mayville to drop off some returns to UPS and stopped at Tops to pick up some goodies, ice cream and cookies, a couple of necessities. When I returned, it was starting to get dark so I had a good excuse for not going for a walk and instead, we enjoyed a happy hour until 6:30 when Evie baked the chicken on skewers and made a rice/quinoa side. Dinner was great, both the chicken and the feta and spinach borek. I like mine with Greek yogurt, in fact, I put it on everything like a good Turk.

We watched the usual, some HGTV, some reruns, and of course, ER because we were having difficulty with Netflix for some reason. We had no problem with Hulu or Prime and after watching a few minutes of basketball, I was happy to get back to my book. 

Winter Has Arrived With A Bang

6:26

7:07

7:26

It's just after 8:00 and I have been up since 6:30, watching the strikingly colorful sky turn gray at the moment as the sun hides behind the clouds. It's cold out there, 17º, and it's not even winter yet. And the lake is frozen near the shoreline so I don't have to go out for a paddle. We got three or four inches overnight so I will be out shoveling again this morning if I want to go to yoga. 

7:17

Yesterday was a day to hunker down in the house because it snowed on and off most of the day so by evening we probably received 15 inches in the past 24 hours. So we stayed in, and enjoyed our morning coffee and breakfast but by 10:00, we were both outside shoveling or rather pushing, the foot of snow off the car, then the parking area. It was in the twenties and the wind had not picked up so it was fine to be out there. 

That was it for the morning but two more times during the afternoon, I found myself out shoveling the three or four inches that had fallen, trying to keep up with it. Evie kept busy, putting together a spinach and feta cheese borek, using phyllo dough, a favorite from our days in Turkey. Once she put it together, it had to sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before baking.

Long Point Disappears Behind Snowfall

Lunch was another bowl of Evie's soup and a toasted cheese sandwich with jam. I watched The Wire of course, and am halfway through Season Two. Since I was up early, I was happy to spend a good part of the afternoon napping, reading, and shoveling snow until it was time for a sundowner. 

Trumpeter Swans

Juveniles

Hanging Out

Around 3;45, I looked out out front window, the snow falling, and saw at least 30 or 40 mallards along the shoreline, with six or eight swans just behind them. And looking to the left were 20 buffelheads, recognizable by a wide white stripe on their black head. It was difficult to get a  good photo because of the heavy snowfall.

Buffleheads

Evie had her Zoom call with her sisters at 5:00 and I shoveled the parking area for the last time. We then enjoyed a libation or two, crackers with red pepper jelly and cream cheese while Evie baked the borek. For dinner, we had the delicious borek along with the leftover Lex's chicken from Sunday night's dinner. We watched the usual, some HGTV, then ER, and finally some basketball before bed. 

By the way, mid-afternoon, we watched some of the funeral for Roslyn Carter on CNN. One of the highlights was the singing of John Lennon's song Imagine, by Trisha Yearwood and husband Garth Brooks.  The lyrics are especially moving and apt considering the world today. We also loved Rosalyn's grandson's eulogy. It's funny, moving, and worth listening to. 

Imagine: John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
Ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin' life in peace
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

We Got SNOW

 

8:50

8:05

It's 8:15 and Evie's just come down to join me for coffee. It's a winter wonderland outside if you like snow and we do. We may have gotten eight to ten inches with more to come during the day. I will spend a good part of the morning clearing our parking area I suppose instead of kayaking. 

Adirondacks

View From Our Windows

Monday was a strange day as I didn't kayak or go for a hike. The day sort of got away from me, especially the afternoon. We had an easy morning, with nothing we had to do although by 10:30, the list for Wegmans was made and I was off to shop, stopping at Ryders Cup for coffee with the guys, Bob and Paul, two regulars. After coffee, I shopped at Wegmans, still angry at their changing up the aisles so that nothing is where it used to be. I then stopped at Home Depot and picked up a plastic pail to keep our sunflower seeds in for the birds this winter. And, finally, I drove around the south end of the lake, stopping at Peterson's Farms and bought 50 pounds of sunflower seeds. 

4:38

The afternoon went quickly, with Evie's delicious veggie soup and a ham salad for lunch. I watched my show The Wire and I had to laugh that Dominic West who played Prince Charles in The Crown also plays Detective Mc Nulty in The Wire, two very different roles. I should have walked the woods because we had a couple of inches of snow but I napped and started a new book instead, The Traitor by Ava Glass, the second novel I have read by her. 

8:48

By 5:00, dinner was prepped, two nice fat pork chops, Brussels sprouts and sweet potato so we enjoyed snow falling and a quiet happy hour before Evie browned, then baked the chops and air-fried the sprouts, We then watched the first two episodes of the fifth season of Fargo, on Hulu, and finished the night with ER, so amazingly well acted. 

Moon Rising at 5:51

Flurries And 32º

7:09

7:36

8:30

It's 7:10 and I have been up for an hour, in darkness but now all is gray as I look out the window. A few ducks are floating just off the shore, black dots in a gray landscape. Well, it's snowing at 7:30, the ducks are feeding and I hear gunshots in the distance as the duck hunters are out. It does not look like a kayak morning as I am getting lazy and becoming a wimp. 

November Morning

Yesterday was Sunday, obviously, and it was fairly typical for us. I did get in a paddle before my breakfast and wrote the blog, We really didn't have any plans for the day but once we were finished with our coffee and breakfast, we decided since it was Sunday, we should take our usual walk around the Chautauqua Institution. So we drove over, parked our car, and walked for forty-five minutes on a windy late morning. The CI has definitely slowed down, as we saw nary a person during our walk. I am not sure how many residents live there full time, maybe four or five hundred compared to 7500 during the summer. It felt good to be outside and we came home refreshed, ready for brunch and an afternoon of football. 

Thunder Bridge

November Rose

Brick Walk

Evie made a great breakfast, potatoes, eggs, and toast and we watched a bit of the Bengals/Pittsburgh game. Since we didn't have much invested in that game, I decided to finish my book and nap if possible. I did. I forgot to mention that my Outback which had been sitting in the garage for two weeks wouldn't start so I called AAA and a guy came by to give it a charage. Earlier, I had tried to charge with a charging device I bought from Amazon but it didn't seem to work. When he came, we tried it again and then realized that if the battery was completely dead, I needed to push the manual override button, which allowed for greater power, and viola, the engine started. I let it idle for 35 minutes and hope it starts this morning. 

Around 5:00, we started to watch the Buffalo Bills game and hoped unlike the other two teams I tend to favor, Ohio State and the Cleveland Browns, they might pull off a win. And it looked like they would until the last minute of overtime when they allowed a game-winning score, ruining my weekend with a losing trifecta. Dinner, however, was great, Lex's Roast Chicken, from the Zingermen's Guide To Good Eating, from the famous deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Basically, its chicken thighs are arranged on top of sauteed onions, celery, herbs and sourdough bread, then baked, the juices from the chicken and onions flavoring the bread. We ended the night with the last two streaming episodes of The Crown, we were into it and thought the actress who played Diana was amazing. She looked and acted just like the Diana from the newsreels. 

O What A Day

7:28

7:28

It's 7:50, the sun is up and I have been up since 7:00 on a 30º morning. It should be a decent day until late afternoon when the rain comes and snow tomorrow and Tuesday. Because of the bright sun, I have had to move twice on the couch to avoid it. It's 9:30 and I paddled down to Sandy Bottom and back along Woodlawn for forty-five minutes and scared off both Canadian geese and mallards.

Kayak Morning

 Northern Blue Skies

Paddling Home As The Wind Picks Up

Yesterday was as fine a fall day as I can remember. Blue skies all day, the temperature in the 30s, perfect for a walk in the woods or working in the yard, both of which we did. The day started with a paddle for close to an hour on a calm lake and a photo of an eagle. We had a leisurely coffee as we finished up the blog and then gathered up what little trash we accumulated over the past two days. By 10;30, we were off to the Transfer Station, then drove on Lakeside Drive for a walk in Long Point State Park. It was a good choice, as we were the only ones on the trails, and it was perfect hiking weather. We were out for an hour and loved it, the leaves, the sun, and the empty trails.

Happy Hikers

Long Point State Park

Winter's Coming

Evie In The Woods

When we returned, I had the leftovers from our neighbor's turkey dinner and watched the first half of the Ohio State game. I had a bad feeling, that they were just not good enough so at half-time, I taped the second half and went out in the yard and started raking and mulching leaves. Evie joined me and we worked for over an hour, cleaning up the leaves in the bushes and taking a couple of barrels of leaves up the hill. We were done around 3:30 and I watched the rest of the loss to Michigan, a sad day for Buckeye fans, the third year in a row that they have lost to bitter rivals Michigan. The past few days have strengthened my belief in a saying from a sign we saw in Greece on one of our summer jaunts. It proclaimed that 'Futbol is the opium of the people", true not only for Europe's soccer fans but also in the US's American football. As the world seems to be falling apart, over 100,000 fans watched the Ohio State/Michigan game and stadiums are filled every Saturday and Sunday as well. 

Long Point Afternoon

Afternoon Blue

We enjoyed a libation around 5;00, listened to the news, always depressing, then watched a fairly new film on Max called Reality, based on the story of a young woman whistleblower who ended up serving four years in prison for stealing classified documents and sending them to the press. It was decent, not great but filled our evening as we enjoyed another meal of chili over sweet potatoes. We ended the night with two episodes of The Crown. 

Back In The Saddle Again

Back On The Lake

6:47

7:27

7:33

7:34

It's 7:18 and I have been up for an hour, watching the colorful sky change and, fortunately, the lake is calm and inviting. I cannot wait to get out there for a paddle. It's 730, and the sun is trying to rise above the clouds near Tom's Point. What a great morning for kayaking, the sky was amazing, and the lake was calm, I photographed an eagle and was out for an hour. This is why we love living on the lake. Every morning is different.

Kayak Morning

Northern Sky

Into The Reeds

Southern Sky And Sun

Eagle In Pine Above Sandy Bottom

Yesterday was back to our routine, with an early rising, a brief paddle, the blog, and breakfast, all before 9:00 when Evie got up. It felt like I had never left, never been on a road trip. The fridge and pantry were fairly empty so Evie spent the first hour of her day making a Wegman's list on her phone. I volunteered to go shop so by 10:30. I was off to Wegman's and despite the fact it was Black Friday, it was not particularly busy. I guess grocery stores don't have deals like Target might. So I easily pushed my cart around, filled it literally to overflowing, and checked out quickly. I then stopped at Evans for some libation and was home by noon. 

For lunch, I finished the Subway sandwich and returned to my show, The Wire. As I said above, it felt like I never left for a couple of weeks. I then returned to my book, Richard Osman's The Last Devil To Die, the fourth Thursday Murder Club novel set in an independent living home. All four of them are fun and easy reads. Of course, I also napped, for over an hour and woke refreshed and ready for bear. Unfortunately, I had nothing to do or needed doing so I read and watched some of the NFL game while Evie put together a soup, 

Around 5:30, we treated ourselves to a Manhattan, chips and hummus, and veggies, and listened to music as a few snowflakes fell. I forgot to mention that Thursday night, we watched Stephen Colbert because he had David Letterman on the show and our favorite group was going to play, The National. Well, it turned out the group was also David Letterman's favorite, and as a favor to David, they hopped on a plane just so they could play on Colbert when David was a  guest. We first heard The National on Colbert a few years ago and have liked them ever since.