Thursday, March 4, 2010

love is in the air


It’s springtime and love is in the air as the expression goes and we evidently have a woodpecker who is in love. He has made a hole in the side of the oak tree looking for a meal but removed the bark in a heart shaped pattern. Very romantic.

Mary and I went to Denny’s for our free hamburger and fries. We had each gotten a coupon through the email from Denny’s for this offer. I was just a little bit skeptical and was waiting for there to be a catch when we went to pay. There wasn’t any. They took $ 16 off of our meal ($8 each). The whole meal for the two of us came to less than $ 5 because we had to pay for our drinks and we upgraded the hamburgers a little. Mary had a mushroom swiss hamburger and I had a barbeque hamburger (naturally). Plus the french fries were good. And endless. They also have a special that you can have all of the french fries that you want when you have a meal. They call it “endless fries”. It was good but it was a lot of food and we both went away stuffed. And we didn’t take them up on their “endless fries” offer. To top it off, the waiter gave us refills of our drinks in a large styrofoam to-go glass. So we made out pretty good.

Yesterday we went to the library and got some more DVD’s. The expression that “you can’t tell a book by its cover” is true and applies to DVD’s as well. You really can’t tell how good a movie is by the picture on the cover or the brief description on the cover which always says that it is a wonderful movie (naturally). We have gotten some real “stinkers” but then we have gotten some really good movies. For the price (free), I guess that I can’t complain.

Oh, the agony of modern technology. I have gotten this device that gets plugged into a tape player on one end and the computer on the other end. It feeds the sound from the tape player into the computer converting the data from analog to digital in the process. A great idea since I have a lot of audio tapes (analog format) and I would like to put them on CD (digital format). Of course it comes with a software CD and a 40 page instruction book. I have not yet gotten it to work properly and am tearing my hair out (not literally, only figuratively) trying to get the whole thing to work correctly. I get to a point of frustration where I have to take a break from the attempt for several hours to de-stress and then back at it again.

I am working on a jigsaw puzzle which I have had for about 25 years. It is my favorite and every so often I put it together. It is a beach scene of the pacific ocean in Oregon but it reminds me of the beaches in California which is why I like it so much. Even though it is a 1000 piece puzzle, I usually zip it together in a few evenings. But not this time. It is taking me a long time but then that just extends the joy of putting it together even though at times it may seem just a little frustrating, but it really isn’t. The pieces are becoming worn and so this will be the last time that I will put it together.

Today is lawn day and I plan on doing some grass mowing of the yard. Time for some “spring cleaning” of the yard. I remember my mom doing the spring cleaning of the house. The entire house got cleaned, upstairs and downstairs, and all of the doors and windows were open to let the stiff breeze to blow through the house to air it out after being closed up all winter. We had a coal burning furnace in the basement and the hot air would just rise through a grate in the floor. It was really just a giant pot belly stove in a way. We would just shovel coal in through the door on the front of the furnace like they did on the old steam locomotives and the old steamships. I would imagine myself as a stoker in the bowels of a great ship shoveling the coal into the boilers. Imagination made the job more of putting coal into the furnace less of a chore and more of an adventure. And yes, the fire would burn down during the night and we always awoke to a cold house until the furnace was fed more coal. Living in Florida is much nicer and warmer.

And to all of you blue-bellied yankee’s up north I have only one question, What are you still doing in that freezing cold icicle weather when you could be basking in the sunshine and warmth of Florida? And to put the icing on the cake, we have Disney as well. Disney is such a fantasy world where all of your cares just melt away. A great place to relax. Have a magical day. Lew

1 comment:

seaside said...

It is nice to have a woodpecker around as long as he isn't pecking at your house.