A Night At The Ellicottville Brewery At Chautauqua In Bemus Point

The Birthday Boy Turns Seventy Eight

6:18

7:00

7:47

Woke up to a cloudy morning but now, 7:15, the sun has popped out although much of the southern sky is dark gray. It's windy so I am skipping a paddle, mostly because I have breakfast in forty-five minutes in Bemus Point. It's 7:35 as I finish this draft and it's almost time to head off to breakfast. It's late, 9:35 because of breakfast and talking about the good old days when the three of us loved baseball, especially playing catch, chasing flies, playing grounders, and then playing softball in our dotage.

Yesterday was another decent, maybe good day. It started as usual, with my morning routine for the last ten years or so, a paddle, writing the blog and breakfast, Evie's homemade granola, hemp hearts, chia seeds, yogurt, topped with blueberries. Today, however, like most Thursdays, I will have an English muffin with bacon or sausage, egg and cheese. Anyways, yesterday Evie wanted me to help with weeding her garden but I wanted to first wash down our metal chairs. They have been sitting under a tree and the sap had made them sticky. So soaped and washed down four of them and two chaise lounges before 10:30 and then joined Evie in weeding her garden. By 11:45, I was soaked with sweat from the sun and since the garden was mostly done, I went out on the dock and took a swim to cool off, the water was surprisingly warm. 

I had lunch around 12:30, the leftover fried rice and watched my series, Babylon Berlin, the first season. I was happy to get back to my book, a Chautauqua library group read, Twilight Territory, set in Vietnam in the late 1940s when it was occupied first by Japan, then France once again. While I was reading, the sky darkened and rain began to pelt our roof but it lasted for ten to fifteen minutes then cleared up and was a sunny day. And that'ss how the afternoon went, a darkened sky, perhaps some rain or drizzle, then clearing up. Neither of us did much in the afternoon since we accomplished what we wanted, weeding the garden. The extent of my exercise was to walk to the mailbox.

We showered around 5:00 and Linda and Ron picked us up at 6:00. We were celebrating Ron's 78th birthday in Bemus Point at the Ellicottville Brewing Company. It was a fine night so we sat out on their porch and had a great young waiter, soon to be a freshman at Penn State. We ordered beers, of course and their pretzel and beer cheese, a tasty way to begin our meal. I ordered the Bahn Mi Baguette at our waiter's recommendation with fries and it was great. I think we filled up on the pretzel because all of us took home half of our meals so today I have a Bahn Mi Baguette for lunch. 

We were home by 8:30, in time to watch the pundits applauded Biden's address and since we saved it, we were able to watch it as well. He appeared upbeat, and healthy and spoke with clarity, so unlike Trump's verbal dumps, snide remarks, and infantile name-calling. The enthusiasm for Kamala is encouraging and all four of us are daring to hope.

The Better Halfs