jimsjournal
Looking ahead to spring -- 10/14/02

.




We had a rainy weekend here. I had thought that the rain would end by Sunday morning but it lasted all day and into the night.

Nancy and her mother went over to New York on Saturday (a number of Nancy's siblings live in the Westchester County, NY, and eastern Connecticut area), the proximate excuse being a cookout and party for Nancy's youngest brother (a U.S. Marine captain) and his girlfriend. (He's going to be running in the Marine Corps Marathon down in Washington, DC). They were staying over night because there was a party in CT for one of Nancy's cousins to introduce his wife (she is from China, they had met and married there)... and I stayed here, holding the home front together.

After dropping Nancy off at her mother's house Saturday morning, I went to work and spent three hours or so finishing the set-up for a class I'm teaching this week. This is a four day class that starts on Tuesday, so by having finished the preparation I was able to take today off as a vacation day.

I got in a good run on Sunday. After giving up on an end to the rain, I just went out for a run. It was not raining hard, just very light, not much more than a drizzle. The only problem was with my eyeglasses being rain-splattered. I wasn't sure how far I would run but thought I might do three and a half miles but when I came to the point on the bike path where I would normally turn around when running three and a half miles, it seemed almost a surprise, as if it had come too soon... so I figured that since everything seemed to be going so smoothly, I would keep going a bit further... and I ended up doing a five mile run. It felt great. Oh, okay, so later in the day I was tired and my feet hurt, but it had been a good run.

Later in the afternoon Sean and I dropped Nancy's car off at her mother's house so she could drive herself home. We were both concerned that she might get there late enough that whoever picked her up would miss the beginning of Sopranos. As it turned out, she was earlier than that, getting home a little before eight-thirty. I fixed her some dinner and then at nine we went upstairs and watched Sopranos in our room while Sean had three friends watching with him in the living room.

Today we had beautiful blue skies, bright sunshine, cool temperatures -- maybe mid-50's -- and I woke up with a terrible sinus headache. It finally cleared up, although I still feel a little bit off.Then it was time to get ready for spring... I went to Agway and bought a lot of spring bulbs -- some tulips and iris, etc. but mostly daffodils and such -- and Nancy and I spent much of the afternoon planting them. We had planned on taking a bike ride but ended up spending too much time digging holes in the ground. So now I have a turkey breast in the oven and Nancy is off at her tennis match. In fact, I have to end this and start cooking some potatoes so I can mash them.

Weather forecast calls for frost tonight. The leaves are changing now... all this past week I kept noticing on my way to work. We don't have the preponderance of maple trees that you find in northern New England and upstate New York -- there seem to be more oaks around here than anything else -- so we don't get quite as colorful a display but it can still be quite striking. Most trees are still mostly green, but more and more are being touched with color, a number of dark reds, almost maroon, while others are turning yellow.

But even as the leaves are changing, my thoughts today were about spring as I planted those bulbs that will bring us color in April and May.




previous entry

next entry

To list of entries for 2002

To Home (Index) page