Heat Advisory

8:22

6:29

It's 8:00, and I just returned from an hour paddle down to the Power Boat Club and back to Woodlawn. It was 71º when I woke at 6:15, and for the first time, I worked up a sweat while kayaking. It looks like we'll have temperatures in the high 80s for the next four days. We may see rain on the fourth, with temperatures in the low 80s.

Kayak Morning

Northern Sky

Great Blue

Osprey

Yesterday was a different kind of Monday — no biking or hiking, just another hour paddle early in the morning. The Chautauqua Institution opened its season Monday, and its 10:45 lecture series began with two women, Norah O'Donnell and Deborah Roberts, kicking off the week's theme: Women Who Change the World. So after kayaking, the blog, and breakfast, I grabbed my bike, hooked it on the Outback, and drove to Chautauqua Shores, a neighborhood next to the Institution. I rode my bike half a mile to the gate and stood in line with 15 or 20 people, waiting to get my ticket to enter the grounds. I found a bench in the Japanese Garden along with a few others and listened to the hour-long talk. Both women are passionate about women's rights and filled the audience with stories of women from the past who affected great change. They ended by taking questions from the audience but punted when asked if their media outlets censored some of their stories — both said trust was important and they wouldn't compromise it. I rode my bike back to the car and drove home.

View Of Ampitheater

The Assembly

O'Donnell And Roberts

I was home by 12:30 and had leftover pizza for lunch, then started the second season of my Paramount+ series, The Agency. After lunch, I tried to nap, since I'd gotten up so early, but had no luck and ended up reading instead. Around 2:30, I put on my bathing suit and went out on the dock, took the cover off my boat, and started it, letting it idle while I finished putting up the bimini top. Then I spent a good hour in the water cutting weeds, putting them in a floating container, then hauling them onto the dock to dry. Later today, I hope to take them up the hill once they've dried out some. It was tough going — the weeds were up to the water's surface, four or five feet tall. I basically cleared a 30- or 40-foot square just off our dock, so we can swim and get wet without fighting the weeds. When I was done, I got a ladder and took down a couple of bird feeders for the summer and put them in the garage. By the time I finished, I was ready to relax on the porch with a glass of wine.

While I was out working, Evie was on the phone with our daughter Beth for a good hour. For the first time in years, Beth has an empty house since Marisa headed back to med school on Sunday. It's a big change, and she's doing well.

Chautauqua Belle

I changed into dry clothes, and Evie already had a glass of wine waiting for me on the porch. We enjoyed it for a bit, but it was a little too warm out there, so we came back inside, which was cooler despite not running the air conditioner. Around 6:30, Evie breaded a couple of pork chops, fried and baked them along with potatoes, and we had dinner at 7:00 with a salad and applesauce. We watched a miniseries called Families Like Ours on Netflix — Denmark will soon disappear due to rising sea levels, so the entire country is asked to leave and start new lives in neighboring countries. It's decent, and scary because there's so much truth in the rising water levels.