Miata transmission, ‘Woman is the Future of Man’

(posted from home)
(This post covers 29-30 November, 2008)

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Sunday, 30 November-

Today was a rainy day so I worked on the web this morning and then took my four-miler in a persistent wind-blown rain in mid-afternoon. I used a golf umbrella but still soaked my feet and my lower legs, leading to the sniffles later on. Late in the day we had dinner at the Hillside, a rare meal out for us these days.
We then watched ‘Woman is the Future of Man’, a South Korean film. I don’t know what’s wrong with us but we didn’t get it. We just kept guessing about it and I would be unable to even tell you what the storyline is. Heck, I fell asleep at one point. So I was very surprised to see it rates a 78 on the Tomatometer at RottenTomatoes.com. Normally I like films which rate down to about a 60 and I occasionally (very rarely) like a film which rates as low as 20. But I can’t remember the last time I saw a film rated as well as this one which I just didn’t get. I can’t recommend this one but if it’s a 78 on RT, you might want to take a look.

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Saturday, 29 November –

Today was a warmer day and I wanted to get out in the Miata to thoroughly check out the replacement transmission by putting on some miles. I drove into York and first did some browsing at Gander Mountain, then took a Starbucks break at the new Target on Dover Road.
I drove through the city and took a route I’ve not tried before to Indian Rock Dam then on to Nixon County Park. Nice country out there! I soon became lost but realized all I had to do was head east when I had the chance. I finally saw a familiar road name and blundered into Nixon Park unexpectedly. I love it when a plan comes together.
I walked for about 80 minutes or about four miles on the Nixon Park and Lake Williams trails. This is a hilly area and at one point I found myself on an old and steep trail now covered in a deep layer of leaves. I slipped in the leaves and fell once, then decided I’d better slide down the hill on my rear. It wasn’t elegant but it worked.
My day of driving around confirmed my fears about the transmission. It’s just as noisy as the old one in third and fourth and makes a whirring sound in first and second. Rats.


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Home network fix, small electrical fixes, Miata uh-oh

(posted from home)
(This post covers 25 – 28 November, 2008)

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Friday, 28 November-

Today is Black Friday and a good-weather day (sunny and 45) so I’m definitely staying out of town.
I worked on the blog and email in the morning and then drove up to the garage to drop off Cherry Larry (it has a hydraulic leak) and pick up the Miata (transmission replacement and exhaust work). Well, this isn’t good. The used transmission swapped in has almost as much noise as the one taken out. Getting this resolved isn’t going to be fun.
That afternoon I walked my four-mile course at home. I saw three perfectly-sunlit bluebirds flying around in our paw-paws. (Now THAT is a great start to a walk!) And on the way home, I saw two great blue herons in an aerial fight along the creek—apparently a territory dispute.

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Thursday, 27 November-

Happy Thanksgiving!
Labashi and I decided to spend Thanksgiving at home this year. Labashi worked on re-upholstering the seats of her dining room chairs much of the day. I spent the morning on the web while the day warmed up a bit (it was 22 overnight but mid-Forties by afternoon).
I rode the Concours in to Starbucks in East York, then up to Rocky Ridge County Park for a walk. Today I walked a new route— I’ll call it the ‘perimeter course’. I stayed as close to the park’s outer perimeter as trails permit. I walked about eight miles, perhaps a bit more, in 2:45.
I had a problem with one section. I took an old overgrown trail I’ve not been on for a few years at the far eastern end of the park. This trail eventually led to private land and No Trespassing signs right across the trail. Rather than retreat back up the steep path, I bushwhacked along the boundary until hitting more in-the-park trail again. I remember seeing No Trespassing signs beside this section of trail so I’d guess the owner had a survey done and found his boundary went further into the park than he had previously thought.
That evening we watched ‘Survivor - Gabon’. It was a mid-season recap but that was good for us; we had missed some episodes.

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Wednesday, 26 November –

Today I worked executor stuff on the phone and tried to organize my new office a bit. With all the paperwork for the estate I need to get my act together. But it seemed I couldn’t get anywhere. Labashi gave me a standing lamp for over the desk but when I plugged it in a large spark shot out of the plug. I found it had exposed wires internally and I had twisted it just right to short-circuit the wires as I plugged it in. I found a new plug in my electrical spares box and installed it. But I think I damaged the upper socket of the receptacle—I can’t plug anything in there. Now I have that to fix.
This afternoon I changed out the motion sensor unit on our outdoor pole light. The old one began working oddly about two weeks ago. After a very foggy night, it didn’t work at all for a few days, then apparently dried out and started working again. But then after another fog, we had another few days of flaky operation. Recently. it would work one night but not the next. The changeover was easy enough but now I’ll have to test it and adjust its sensitivity for a few nights to get it just right. If the sensitivity is too high, it senses passing traffic. If too low, it doesn’t turn on at all or only after passing right in front of it.
I did my four miles late in the day, jogging about a third of it. We spent most of the evening on the web. The DVD store doesn’t have anything interesting lately.

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Tuesday, 25 November –

I spent the day working on executor stuff and fixing our wireless network problem. For the former I spent an inordinately long time setting up online access to a new account because of a software glitch. The security subsystem tried to force me to answer security questions which hadn’t been set up yet so of course I didn’t have the answers. When the customer service rep tried the same logon keystokes, she was presented the correct setup screens. Apparently there’s a bug wherein the correct sequence is over-ridden by a security challenge when it detects the user is coming in from an unrecognized network.
Our home network problem has to do with a flaky MAC filter on the router. Sometimes it works, sometimes it locks us out. Several days ago Labashi was talking away on a Skype session when the call was disconnected and network connectivity lost. Her PC then refused to re-connect to the network until I disabled the MAC filter. Today I switched to WPA encryption and it came up fairly easily. I say ‘fairly’ because Labashi’s PC came up right away on WPA but my laptop refused to connect on the first several tries and it wasn’t looking good. I started writing up a problem description on TechSupportGuy.com and tried the connection again so I could get the messages—and this time it connected. It has been working fine since. Don’t you love PCs?
I had a late start on my walk today but did get my four miles in. I love the evening sky in that last hour of daylight. And for a bonus today, I saw three bluebirds chasing a small hawk along the creek.

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‘Far North’, Manitoba snowburns, ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’, home networking problems

(posted from home)
(This post covers 20 – 24 November, 2008)


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Monday, 24 November-

Today I wanted to get out of the house for a bit. I drove down to ‘Flying Feet’, a running shop in York, and bought a new pair of walking shoes. I bought newspapers at Bookland, then spent an hour reading them and enjoying a mocha at the Starbucks near Dallastown.
That afternoon I dropped off Mocha Joe for its inspection appointment tomorrow and walked home the mile and a half, then worked on my wireless networking problem and finally solved that.
After supper I drove to the library only to find it closed (oh, yeah— today’s Monday!) and then spent a few hours on the web and posted my blog update.

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Sunday, 23 November-

This morning Labashi gave me my periodic buzz-cut haircut. I made a few blog entries and wrote up a description of a network-intrusion problem we had a few days ago for TechSupportGuy.com. Hopefully someone there can help me work out what the intruder device was on our home wireless network the other day. While our PCs show up with a lot of identifying details, this intrusion device only shows as ‘network device’ with no details. That’s ominous. I had the network temporarily unsecured because of a problem when this happened and immediately shut it down when my network software popped up a warning about a possible intruder. I’m mostly just curious about what it could be.
In the afternoon I decided I’d take our DVD rental back to the shop by foot rather than drive it. The roundtrip is almost exactly ten miles so I started at 1430 and made it back home at 1715. I was comfortable for most of the walk but the dropping temperatures at dark stiffen up my muscles so I took some ibuprofen and a hot bath. That seemed to help ward off stiffness later in the evening.

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Saturday, 22 November –

This morning I cut Labashi’s hair (I just do some trimming, actually) and caught up with my blog updates. After lunch I called Orat and talked at some length about progress on his house (we don’t need to go back up there at this point but are willing to if the schedule gets behind) and then I did some estate work.
Today was very cold so I over-dressed for my four-miler this afternoon but that turned out to be just right. I was a bit over-heated going downwind but once I turned back into the wind, I cooled very quickly and had to button up tight. Time for longjohns!
That evening we watched ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. I see RottenTomatoes only rates it at 40% but we liked it. Actually, Labashi liked it and I thought it generally ‘okay’. Anne Boleyn is well known in English history but the role of her sister, Mary, and her relationship with Henry less so, even though it appears she had two children to Henry. While looking for the trailer in the Extras section, we found a good little intro to the characters and that helped us get up to speed quickly rather than wonder who the characters were as they were introduced. Recommended if you have an interest in the 1500’s or Henry the Eighth.

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Friday, 21 November-

Today Labashi, Maypo and I met with the lawyer for Mom’s estate and started the legal processes for it. And of course, today was the first snow of the season. We only had about an inch but the roads were slippery and we saw a miles-long backup in the other lane on I-81 as we came home.
We didn’t get home until late evening so just watched ‘Bill Moyers Journal’ and ‘Now’. The latter had a particularly good piece on what happened at the Standard and Poors, Moody’s, and Fitch securities-rating agencies with regard to the sub-prime mess. In short, subprime loans which in themselves were rated at ‘B’ were separated out from other loans and packaged together into securities which were inexplicably rated ‘AAA’. The reason? Pure greed.

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Thursday, 20 November-

This morning I did our grocery shopping and made a DVD run. After lunch I worked for an hour or two starting to organize my new office and then took my four-miler. On my walk I listened to an interesting piece on Manitoba This Week. Now remember, I’m listening to podcasts I’ve collected for the last year and I’m just up to Easter 2008 on the Manitoba podcasts I’m listening to now. The story is about Manitoba farmers burning the snow off their fields in order to start planting earlier. We are led into it by a discussion of the wheat farmers burning the stubble off their fields each Fall. But now they’ve discovered they can use a propane torch--- under just the right conditions, of course – to light the snow afire in the Spring. By careful timing, they not only clear the fields of snow, the byproducts of the burning fertilize the fields. A search of practices in other cold-climate wheat-growing areas found that nine out of ten wheat farmers in Finland were able to increase their yields by as much as 50 to 67 per cent using this new and innovative technique. Environmentalists are concerned, however, and report that the burning reportedly not only threatens to increase global warming, it has an adverse effect on the reproductive systems of any kittens which happen to live near a snow-burn. A local farmer demurs: the local wheat-growers society reports that it actually seems to increase the libido of such kittens.
But the scariest potential problem came from a neighbor who fears the snow-burn could get out of control and cross onto his property. And what happens, he wanted to know, if during one of these snow-burns, it starts snowing? Isn’t it likely the whole sky could catch fire?
Anyway, what a super, super April Fools story.
That evening we watched ‘Far North’, an odd little film starring Michelle Yeoh, Michelle Krusiec, and Sean Bean. Saiva and Anja live well above the Arctic Circle in isolation. When Saiva finds Loki, an escapee from a forced-labor crew, he’s near death and Saiva makes the fateful decision to save his life. After Loki recovers, his presence drives a wedge between the women, ultimately leading to disaster.
This is one of those ‘I see what they were trying to do’ films which doesn’t quite make it. There are holes in the storyline and the film feels like a first-time effort. On the one hand we have to respect the challenging conditions under which the movie was filmed and the scenery of the film is wonderful. But the story doesn’t cut it. If the filmmakers were to tell us the story is an ancient legend, we’d be more forgiving. The storyline simply would not work in real life. We’d be willing to suspend disbelief and think of it as a legend-brought-to-life but if we’re supposed to believe the actions could literally happen, then that’s too much of a stretch for me.


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Painting trip, Mom’s funeral

(posted from home)
(This post covers 7 – 19 November, 2008)

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Wednesday, 19 November-

We drove home last evening feeling greatly relieved. The services had gone well and there was so much positive energy from visitors and friends that our spirits were buoyed. We found ourselves hungry and stopped in Boiling Springs for a light meal at the historical old Tavern.
This morning we woke very early – around 0500 -- and my sniffles are back. I read a bit but there wasn’t really any chance I’d be going back to sleep.
I spent much of the day catching up on the blog and running small errands.
The day warmed up to almost 40 degrees this afternoon and I wanted to go for a walk but figured I had better wait a day for the sniffles to subside.

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Tuesday, 18 November-

We went out to breakfast this morning at Bob Evans’ and ran a few last-minute errands before the funeral.
Today was considerably colder than the last few weeks and in fact we saw a few snow flurries. The pastor did a very nice job with the service and my remembrance piece went fine (though I may have overdone it a bit with stories about Mom chasing my brothers and I around with a yardstick in hand).
The graveside funeral service was brief but poignant on this blustery day. As I sat listening to the preacher’s words, I could see the sun dropping below the distant clouds in my view across the casket. The sun’s revelation seemed to coincide with the words telling us not to mourn for her earthly life but to rejoice in her heavenly one and my sadness lifted a bit.
God Bless you, Mother.

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Monday, 17 November-

Today we drove to the hour-plus to Maypo’s house. That afternoon we had the family private viewing for an hour, then a two-hour public viewing in the evening.
The viewings went fine. Labashi did a terrific job making up a large poster-board of photos documenting Mom’s life and Orat brought a thick album of family photos. Those served well for initiating conversations with our visitors and we learned many new things about Mom and her interactions with her friends, pastors, and our relatives.
Afterwards we sat around at reminiscing at Maypo’s house.

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Sunday, 16 November-

I felt surprisingly good this morning so went to work writing the remembrance for the funeral. I struggled getting started but then one paragraph led to thoughts for another and by day’s end I just wanted to let it sit overnight.
I took my four-miler and foolishly allowed myself to get overheated, then chilled. Hopefully that won’t come back to haunt me.

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Saturday, 15 November-

I must have picked up a bit of a cold or flu on our visit north this week. Or perhaps I was just exhausted from the unaccustomed work. I started to work on a remembrance for Mother’s funeral but didn’t accomplish more than taking a few notes. I napped for an hour in the afternoon and went to bed early.

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Friday, 14 November-

This morning we got the call we knew would be coming sometime relatively soon, but dreaded. Mother died this morning.
We drove to Chambersburg and kept in contact with Maypo by cell phone along the way. We ended up driving directly to a meeting at the funeral home. By the end of the day all the arrangements were made and the obituary sent into the newspaper. The funeral director did a wonderful job of guiding us through all the details.
That evening we drove back home.

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Thursday, 13 November-

Today we started painting the walls of the refurb-house. The three-year-old wanted an orange room and by golly he’s getting it. The color is so bright, you need sunglasses to enter in the daytime. Our biggest problem was making straight-enough lines at the ceiling. The ceiling’s are white and it’s amazing how our eye detects even the smallest mistake in the joint-line, i.e., the intersection of the wall and ceiling colors. We finished the upstairs plus the living room today.
That evening we went out to a Five Guys hamburger joint for supper. The guest of honor was the newest member of our extended family, our eight-month-old grand-niece. This was the first time we were able to spend more than a few minutes with her. She’s a charmer.

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Wednesday, 12 November-

Another painting day at the refurb-house. We worked 0830-1800 and managed to get the ceilings painted throughout the house and the worst room primed to help cover the many sins of past residents. Long day.

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Tuesday, 11 November-

Today we started on the painting project at Orat’s new house. We didn’t even open a paint can yet, though. We spent all day repairing defects in the drywall. The quick-spackle we were using is pretty good. It’s easier to use than regular spackle and dries in an hour so long as you don’t slather it on too thick.
I’m not used to this working stuff so I was exhausted that evening. After supper I did rally a bit and took the kids for a walk to the corner and back. The three-year-old pirate barely got to the neighbor’s yard before he was having second thoughts on this dark night but his sister kept his attention diverted and we were fine until we came to a very dark line of white pines. I made the mistake of hooting like an owl only to find the kids were afraid of owls. But we all just held hands and that seemed enough for us to go on past the imminent threat of suburban death-by-sceech-owls to the corner. The seven-year-old had a little scary fun of her own. She claimed to see an owl in a dark corner of a neighbor’s yard and had me looking for it, then burst out laughing. Cool!

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Monday, 10 November-

Today was a travel day. We drove up to Orat’s home near Rochester. He bought a house and could use some help refurbishing it. This is mostly a timing issue. His daughter and grandkids will be moving in when their lease expires on their apartment and he needs to have the house ready by then.
We spent the day making the trip north and had a beautiful day for it. I like to hit the Starbucks at Williamsport on the way up, then take a break at Mansfield. I always stop in at Coopers Sporting Goods there to see the used-guns inventory, mostly just for curiosity but also to talk with the nice folks there in this little family-owned business.
We spent the evening catching up on the news and playing with the little ones. My grand-nephew is three and his sister is seven. He’s into pirates lately and they tricked Labashi and I into a massive nerf-sword battle and general mayhem-making.
The jogging yesterday may have been a mistake. I’m having to take ibuprofen to keep the pain in my spine at bay. This pain shows up once in awhile when I over-do. I cracked a vertabra years ago and may be in for some chronic pain in the future.

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Sunday, 9 November-

Today I fired up the Concours and rode into York. I wanted to get out on the bike on this pleasant 50-degree day and get the oil circulating and battery charged before we go away for a week. I rode in to Home Depot to again at the sliding compound miter saws for Labashi. We’ve been reading reviews and I’m a little concerned about how much sawdust they throw. The Milwaukee-brand saw has a good rating for dust-control but I don’t like the layout of controls. I was trying to figure out how I might improve dust control on the Ridgid or DeWalt models we like better.
Afterwards I visited the gun shop at Stonybrook to see what’s been going on since I left for Alaska. I talked with John and another guy I don’t know about the Alaska trip.
I took the rental DVDs back today but didn’t rent any more since we’ll be gone for a few days.
I then went to Rocky Ridge and walked and jogged my five-miler-- the end-to-end route. I started out walking but felt really good and about a third of the way through started jogging.

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Saturday, 8 November-

This morning I worked on the blog a bit and read through my news sites. It’s amazing to me that I don’t read or listen to the news while traveling but when I’m home I spend a lot of time reading online news.
That afternoon we drove in to Sears to check out their sliding compound miter saws. We weren’t impressed by the Craftsman saws and name-brands are the same or slightly higher (in price) than the competition.
I did my four-miler late in the day and then we finished up “Weeds- Season Three” that evening.

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Friday, 7 November –

Today I took the fishing boat out on the Susquehanna to see how it starts and runs after the long lay-over. The boat had spent some of the Spring and all of the Summer at my brother Maypo’s place but unfortunately he was so busy working he never was able to get out on the boat.
I was very surprised to have the outboard start immediately. I don’t think it even turned over a whole turn before firing up. In the past I’ve had problems starting it the first time after it hasn’t run for awhile but I’ve learned the secret. On these fuel-injection Honda outboards you don’t touch or adjust anything prior to starting. Just turn the key (once the water pickup is under water, of course). In the past I would move the fast-idle lever. But I now know moving the fast-idle interferes with the normal operation of the starting circuit.
I launched at the Fish Commission ramp at Goldsboro and spent about an hour running about. Today was (incredibly) a 70-degree day and I wasn’t the only boat on the river—I saw at least 25 empty boat trailers in the parking lot.
Back home I washed off the accumulated black gunk from the boat’s summer stay under trees and called it a day.
Late in the afternoon I walked my four-miler. That evening I picked up the Weeds- Season Three disk set and we picked up where we left off, watching three episodes. The quality of the writing has taken a definite downturn this season. Labashi is thinking of abandoning ship entirely but there are occasional bright spots and we’re on the last disk so I want to finish it out.

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“The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, Mom’s 90th, unexpected overnighter

(posted from home)
(This post covers 1 – 6 November, 2008)

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Thursday, 6 November-

Today Labashi and I went into town on a few errands. We took Mocha Joe in for an oil change (I’ve found I can get it done at Wal-mart for just a little over the cost of doing it myself) and shopped Wal-mart for a few small items. We had a great lunch at the nearby Isaac’s using a coupon from the ‘One Book, One Community’ program. After taking a “should-we?” look at the sliding miter saws at Lowe’s (Labashi loved the one we borrowed from Maypo last Spring when we were doing the crown molding work), we went looking for a new telephone calling card at BJ’s. The cards were a big disappointment. The cards are a rip-off. Both AT&T and Verizon (the provider for the BJs-logo card) sell you a card for ‘n’ number of minutes of about 3-cents-per-minute calls. But the rate only applies to state-to-state calls. If you read the cards carefully, you see they deduct FIVE minutes for every minute of in-state calls in Pennsylvania. You think you are getting 3-cents-per-minute calls but are actually paying 15 cents per minute for most calls. And if you make the call from a pay phone Verizon deducts $.95, AT&T $.35. No thank you!
Our Costco MCI card is about to expire and the reload price has gone up but even with the price increase it’s a far better deal.
We stopped by Target and bought a replacement blender and then headed home. I walked three miles along the creek today (plus another mile or so in town).

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Wednesday, 5 November-

I spent much of the day reading the post-election news on Dailybeast, Slate, Salon, NewsMax, Anchorage Daily News, CBC.ca, The Economist, and the local newspapers. Then I turned to the gun forums I regularly read and saw a different type of “shock and awe”. On the Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association web site, a few members admitted to voting for Obama and were heavily attacked, leading the moderators to delete multiple posts and issue conduct warnings and a temporary suspension (to the offenders). One guy was distraught upon learning his daughter voted for Obama and told her he will no longer pay her college tuition. Another declared
Late in the day I walked my four-miler.

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Tuesday, 4 November-

Labashi and I only had an hour’s sleep overnight. My brother took over the watch this morning. Labashi and I went downtown to breakfast, then parked Mocha Joe in a nearby parking lot (at the library) and zonked out for a couple of hours of catch-up sleep.
We spent the afternoon and most of the evening with Mom. Around supper-time she was transferred back to the nursing home, apparently having weathered this crisis.
After a short visit with Maypo, we headed home and made it back home by 2130 and watched the election news. At 2300, CNN projected Obama as the winner. Yes!!
No walk today.

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Monday, 3 November-

Until yesterday we had thought we’d be leaving home today to help my brother Orat. He bought a house last week and we volunteered to help paint. Yesterday we learned the project would slip by a few days. I mowed the lawn today (hopefully for the last time this season) for my walk-time.
And late today we received a call about Mom. She seemed fine yesterday but today was admitted to the hospital with a serious condition.
We loaded up the van and drove to the hospital, where we spent the rest of the day and the overnight hours with her.

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Sunday, 2 November-

Today we drove to Chambersburg for a birthday party. My nephew had driven down from the Rochester area yesterday and brought along some toys. We flew radio-control helicopters and a plane. We foolishly tried to fly the plane in windy conditions and crashed it. It looks bad but hopefully will be repairable.
The party was for my 90-year-old mother. It was a small cake-and-ice-cream get-together with Mom in a very nice private glassed-in area at the nursing home. She was in good spirits and particularly enjoyed watching her one-year-old great-grand-daughter and three-year-old great-grandson.
After the party we returned to my brother’s home. It didn’t take long for the boys to want to go outside to fly the helicopter. I hung around with them for a few flights, then I went for a walk.
I walked over to and then behind Penn Hall to the Conococheague Creek. Near the railroad bridge I found the Wilson College Interpretive Trail—a new one for me. It appears to now be abandoned as an interpretive trail (the signs are old) but the trail is still open enough to be enjoyable. It leads along the creek and past the heavy stone remains of a fulling mill before climbing into a heavily over-grown farm field. I remember this field from my days as a teenager living in this area (in the Sixties). At the time this field was a grassy pasture and I remember having to be careful to check where the bull was before I climbed over the fence. I always made sure to leave myself an out by not venturing too far away from the fence when the bull was around and on more than one occasion I made a dash for it when he headed my way from the far end.
But today the field is heavily grown over but has wildlife-management trails. Apparently someone mows the trails once or twice a season with a bush-hog to keep them from being closed off by the heavy growth of bushes and briars. I was very surprised to see fifteen-foot-high bushes and thirty-foot-high trees in this old field. Has it really been that long since I’ve been here?
The trail paralleled the high bank of the Conococheague—an area where I used to hunt squirrels and try my luck at bow-fishing—but then turned up the ravine toward a mature woods. That woods also shows the signs of active management. I began seeing the little numbered metal disks used to inventory trees. And I saw seedling tubes used to protect new seedlings from browsing deer.
The trail led to the top of the hill, where it ended at the new (to me) soccer and softball fields. This area was all open farm fields when I lived nearby. This would be a GREAT place to fly the RC planes and maybe even do some winter-night star-gazing.
As I walked toward home, Labashi called me on the cell and said everyone was going out to supper. I was only a twenty-minute walk away so she left the car for me and and went on with the group. Afterwards we sat around talking about the election before Labashi and I made the trip home.


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Saturday, 1 November –

I spent much of today cataloging video clips from the Alaska trip. This is a slow process and I never seem to make as much progress as I think I should. The day was a pretty, above-sixty one but I spent most of it in my reading chair, working away on the laptop.
By 1530 I couldn’t take it anymore. Labashi and I took the four-miler along the creek and stopped to chat at some length with one of our neighbors. She and her husband used to buy ring-necked pheasants each Spring and try to get a local population of them going but foxes proved too devastating to their efforts.
That evening we watched “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, a movie about 1920’s Ireland and the Irish Republican Army’s attempt to cast off British rule. The storytelling was a bit confusing for us. We don’t have enough background to pick up on the references. We watched with the subtitles to help us wade through the accents and that helped but we still felt like we were barely keeping up with the storyline at times.

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