Terry was down at the New Jersey Shore from Friday until late last night. (Have to be careful when I say Jersey Shore around these parts of north central PA. There's a town of that name just a short hop down Route 15 and a jog to the southwest from Williamsport. It can get confusing at times.) She drove east to meet with some friends from the SAGA group at one of the women's home just north of Seaside. There were something like 8 or 9 women there for the three days and two nights, all with just one bathroom. The two dogs one woman brought had it easy. The backyard is fenced.
I don't know how much stitching they got done, but Terry says there was a lot of eating and gabbing going on. Even the rain wasn't much of a deterrant to having a good time.
Me? I stayed home with the cats and watched the weather go from lovely spring time warm and sunny (Friday) to chilly and raw wintery with a threat of ice and/or snow flurries (Sunday into Monday). I also watched the bird feeders get raided by a couple of raccoons (Friday and Sunday nights); an oppossum (Saturday night when Julie led me on a wild goose chase outside when she slipped between my legs. She ran after a rabbit, hid under the car and then ran back to the door to demand to be let in while I chased her. The oppossum cowered against the retaining wall and watched.); and a small black bear (Sunday night and again tonight). Other than that, the weekend was a bust. The long day out on Thursday to go up to Montezuma caught up with me and I felt like doing nothing but sleep on Sunday. Sort of like the RU women did against Purdue in the first half as they lost in the sweet sixteen round of the NCAA tournament.
Major League Baseball is still a week away but the Mets will be heading north soon to play two games at their new ballpark. They did open Citi Park yesterday for a college game and the reports of the new facility are very positive. (Although the price factor may still keep me away. Binghamton (AA) and Buffalo (AAA) are just as far away (or a lot closer in the case of Binghamton and a heck of a lot cheaper.)
And trout season starts in New York State on Wednesday, April 1. An appropriate day as it so often finds anglers standing in frigid water as snow flurries fall around them and they try to coax hatchery raised fish (which taste like cardboard, in my opinion) to take a worm of fly when they've been raised on pellets of liver and such. I've got my NY license but I think I'll wait until I get back up to the Bolt Hole. The streams around there hold native trout and although they are small, their pink flesh is as sweet as cherries. It will be a week or two before trout season opens here in PA and I've yet to get my license--maybe tomorrow. I never used last years license, but this year I WILL wet a line.
I started another quilted wooden square in the workshop today. Using the techniques I learned on the last one, I got all the strips cut today and four out of five groups glued up. (Short a couple of clamps or I would have had them all glued up this afternoon. I may even go down and pull the clamps from the first to glue up this last batch before I go to bed.) This square uses not only the walnut and oak of the last one but also cherry. There's not a lot of difference in the color of the oak and cherry, but the wood grain is very different. The color difference may be more pronounced once a finish is applied. I did swipe the two with a damp cloth and saw that the cherry was slightly darker when wet in comparison to the oak.
The rain we had yesterday was from a front that swept through from the west. The breeze that was ahead of it blew from the south and brough some nice warm temperatures on Friday and Saturday. Once the front moved past, however, the winds switched around to blow out of the north. The temperature last night dropped from 37 degrees at 1 AM to 28 degrees at 8 AM. It stayed in the mid to low 30s all day with a leaden overcast sky. The wind was quite brisk with gusts up to 35-40 mph. The bird feeders were swinging back and forth all day. Things should be better tomorrow. The winds are supposed to deminish and the sun is supposed to shine. I've started to take all the forecasts with a grain of salt. At times I want to shout, "I'm from Missouri! Show me!"
Could be worse, of course. The folks in Fargo are battling floods AND blizzards simultaniously. Alaska is shoveling snow and volcanic ash.
Polotics...Bah, humbug on 'em all!
If GM hadn't packaged Onstar! into their vehicles, I would have bought a Silverado instead of a Tundra. Sure, Onstar! is free...for the first year. After that it costs between $150 and $300 a year depending upon the level of service you want. I didn't want any--I can read a map and have a cell phone--but would have been stuck with the dinky antenna or a hole in the roof of the cab. I wonder how many others walk out of the dealership after doing the math. Still, I feel the government had no business bailing GM and Chrysler out using my tax money. They should have been allowed/forced to declare bankruptcy. It would have hurt like hell for around six months while things got sorted out, but the companies could have come back stronger with a new set of work rules for their union partners. Right now, I've only heard of the company being restructured, nothing about the union.
The Secretary of State visits the shrine of the Lady of Guadalupe and doesn't know/learn about the history before the visit. She then proceeds to make some really, really stupid comments ("Who painted it?" "You have a nice Virgin there.") The Vice President thanks the President of Spain for the help they gave in Iraq when the curretn President of Spain pulled his troops from the field immediately after being sworn in this rendering zero assistance. Great foreign policy team we've got. Hope they can handle the G20 summit in London. Then again there will be 500 folks going to assist President Obama in hammering out deals. Heck of a committee. I believe President Clinton deployed smaller invasion forces. What can go wrong? Stay tuned to FoxNews to find out, 'cause those other channels won't tell you.
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