An 8º And Mostly White Saturday Morning

7:31

9:15

It's hard to tell the sky from the frozen lake this morning as all seems to be white. Light snow is falling and the ice fishermen have been out since 7:00, perhaps earlier. The birds, mostly finches, are literally attacking each other as they fight for the black sunflower seeds in our front window feeder. 

Ice Fishing This Morning

Hungry Birds

These days all seem the same, usually, but yesterday was different because Evie had a doctor's appointment in Jamestown. Much of the morning was the same, however, getting up early, having my coffee, reading, writing the blog, and having breakfast. Once Evie was up, we went through a list of groceries we would need for a couple of upcoming dinners and appetizers for a party tonight at our neighbor's home. Once we had that settled, I went outside and cleaned the snow off the car and shoveled the parking area of three or four inches of light snow.

7:30 This Morning

We left for Jamestown at 11:00 and I dropped Evie off for her appointment and then drove to the UPS store on Foote Avenue and dropped off a couple of returns to Amazon. By the time I was finished and drove back to the doctor's office, Evie was done. We then drove to Wegman's and spent a good amount of time and money on groceries. There's no doubt that it's more expensive to grocery shop, that inflation has affected the price of food yet according to experts, other things are cheaper like TVs and large appliances, things like that but because we shop for groceries at least once a week, we think inflation is hurting our wallets.

We were home later than usual, by 1:00, and I carried all the groceries in while Evie put them away, finding room in the refrigerator for all the items that needed to be kept cold. Lunch was a throwback to the 1950s, fried baloney sandwiches, with pickles and mayo along with soup. Yum It was after lunch that I could not find my keys to the car so we spent the next hour or two, trying to figure out where I put them in the house to no avail. Finally, when I went outside, to get something out of our car, I found them sitting on the passenger seat. How they got there and why they were there, we could not figure out. But I spent the next 15 minutes looking at Apple's air tags which when attached to your keys, keep track of them via an iPhone app if you have lost them. And if you have an Apple Watch like me, I press a button on it, and my iPhone pings so I can always find it. 

Hiking Out Yesterday Afternoon

Pulling His Gear

The rest of the afternoon I was either drowsing or reading or on my computer, waiting for happy hour at 5:30. We had a glass of wine but unfortunately, forgot we had sushi. By 6:30, we were hungry and Evie had the pasta and meatballs heating up in the oven. So with a salad, we had dinner and decided to watch a film based on a P. D. James novel called Children Of Men. It's an apocalyptic novel, set in the future, where women are barren, governments are either fascist or have been overthrown, immigrants are rounded up and deported, and 'patriot groups' rule the suburbs with violence. Sounds familiar, uplifting? Neither one of us liked it much but we stuck with it. On a sad note, we watched the last two episodes of ER, so we watched 15 seasons (331 episodes) over the past couple of months and Evie wondered if we should go back and start again at the beginning because we probably won't remember any of the episodes. That's sort of a joke but both of us will miss it. The series began in 1994 and ended in 2009. Over the years, we watched the series on and off, mostly when George Clooney, Anthony Edwards, and Julianne Marguiles played the main characters,  but never all 15 seasons until recently. Maybe Gray's Anatomy or St. Elsewhere is next but I think we have had enough of life and death in emergency rooms.