Light winds


Untrimmed vines
Vines before trimming

After a frigid start to the week, our weather finally broke and by Thursday, if it wasn’t nice, it was at least nicer.  Friday morning out at the Bluff I expected it to be pretty cold but with the light winds and bright sunshine it wasn’t anytime before I was shedding layers.  The forecast for the coming week is for mild weather, which will be handy with Jill and them Wylie girls visiting SA.  They should be able to be outside playing quite a bit.  Unfortunately, the Amarillo ISD spring break isn’t until next week so Li’l r won’t be able to play with them until after school.  However, I think Kari plans to take her out of school at noon so maybe it won’t be so bad.  Of course Kari may wind up in the penitentiary for taking her child out of the public school gulag but that seems like a small price to pay.

In spite of the cold weather I’ve been able to move along with the winter cleanup in the garden and the yard at 1911 and I feel pretty good about the state of things relative to the calendar.  I’ve even manage to clean — a relative term — the lily pool a couple of times over the winter.  I plan to trim my vines in the coming week.

Sadly, the snail I got for the aquarium a few weeks ago seems to have expired.  I don’t know the life expectancy of a snail.  Maybe it died of old age but even still I felt like I got my money’s worth.  It really did a good job cleaning up in the short time it was here.  Snail, we hardly knew ye.  Joyce and I stopped by Petsmart Saturday to purchase a couple more snails only to discover Saturday is not the best time for a couple of elderly duffers with plenty of discretionary time to visit Petsmart.  We left as soon as we saw the crowd and resolved to try again sometime during the week.

Joyce woke me from a sound sleep Saturday morning saying we forgot to set our clocks forward an hour.  We generally go to the bagel shop around 7 o’clock on Saturday mornings but it is our unspoken policy to let our mate sleep if they aren’t awake so I was a little bewildered when she woke me up.  I got up, though, and was starting to make my bed when she realized her error in thinking it was Sunday.  About midnight Saturday night a couple of the myriad cats around the place started quarreling outside my bedroom window.  I got up and took a shot at one with my cat shooter but missed.  Between the two sleep interruptions, I found it difficult to stay awake in church.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t.  Neither did my friend Charles who sits next to me.  I have asked several people who daylight savings benefits and no one can tell me but being the nation of sheep we are we just go along with the indignities small and large our masters inflict on us.

For some time Joyce has been working in the coffee shop at church a couple of Sundays a month.  I would go on home after the service while she went to work, then she would ride home with the neighbors since they went to a later service.  Since they started attending the new northeast campus we had to make a new arrangement.   That arrangement is that I work with her in the coffee shop and yesterday was my first day.  There were plenty of people round who know how to make the various concoctions so, while I pitched in as best I could, I never had to deal with an order for something I didn’t know what the heck was.  Although it will take longer since I will only work a couple of hours a couple of times a month, I’m sure I’ll eventually be a regular baristo.  Yes, I know they are called baristas but that made-up name sounds vaguely Spanish and since nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine in Spanish, I prefer the masculine form, baristo.