Dodging the Rain -- Joys of YouTube -- Back to the Paper Chase -- May 30

Another early morning (5:30) up and about.  Enjoyed returning to The Paris Wife.  For some odd reason I had the sensation of returning to the reading of fiction that I indulged in when I was in my early twenties.  And the "tales from the road" that McLain treats us to was vaguely like what I remember from some of Hermann Hesse -- but then he was also writing in the post-WWI era, too. Anyway I later on somewhat satisfied myself about spaghetti -- found a piece surveying the history of pasta at www.thenibble.com which suggested that "the Great Depression of the 1930s made inexpensive food like spaghetti a necessity."  So the jury is still out.  As far as "damned straight" and the other expressions that jarred me, well, I will have to do some library research on those!  Fortunately no others cropped up to distract me from the really excellent writing, so I made very good progress.  BTW, I found a nice photo of Ernest, Hadley, and their son on Wikipedia.  Much better than their passport photos!

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And progress, once more at the exercise circle.  I looked through our big sliding glass doors into the backyard, filling with sunshine as the sun rose.  My energy level was back and I managed the 800 calorie burn easily.  Weighed in at 169.5 and felt like I had crossed some kind of Rubicon, heading for a destination where I want to be.

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Completing breakfast I was out in the backyard, sans shirt in that wonderful warm sunlight, finishing off the backyard lawn.  It's remarkable how much rain we have received.  I puttered around with flower beds, attempting the near impossible feat of preventing an overgrowth of sweat peas which have been taking over our beds by the end of summer.  Lois Darrow, the owner (with her late husband, Dan) who resided here previously put in many beautiful perennials which we enjoy every Spring -- but I wish she hadn't planted sweat peas!  

I've been waiting to transplant some of our seedlings, and completed the fill up of all containers destined for our upstairs deck and got them moved indoors.  By 1 p.m. we were graced with another quite hearty downpour, and rain continued intermittently well into the evening.  It's bringing up our grass, alright, but mowing is required frequently just to keep up.

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Apart from this blog, I have spent very little time on the Internet since I retired.  But this evening I did spend some time looking for music on YouTube.  I found several pieces I really like, but one fairly blew me away -- a Chet Atkins piece, Sunrise.  Very smooth and dreamy (not all of my sunrises are so glorious, because about that time I'm usually half-way through my situps!).  The piece brings to (my) mind a sense of freedom and carefree release from the burdens of everyday life (burdens that, trust me, a good many administrators feel keenly). 

For the past couple of years I've dipped into the free software offerings of giveawayoftheday.com, a site which offers legitimate, licensed software that can be registered and activated during one day only (once activated the software itself does not expire).  Occasionally they'll offer a selection a second time, but you have to watch for the "keepers!"  One program that I found on giveawayoftheday.com is called VideoGet -- it permits the capture of a YouTube video's audio track -- the sound files thus produced are not always the greatest quality fidelity, but passable.  Obviously one ought not make this a commercial venture (enough said!)

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But, just so I couldn't be accused of playing around too much, I tackled filing away household bills and accounts.  A necessary evil.