2019 Life Logs, Day 317: Lunch with Barbara Semple
Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Weather: Sunny and Cold; High 35, Low 21 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

The high temperature yesterday was 62 degrees F. Today it was 35. And it is going to be another cold night with temps in the low 20’s. Then, thank goodness, it starts to warm up a bit. Last night I said that it didn’t snow here at The Cottage, but when I woke up this morning, I could see remnants of a dusting of snow in the back yard. When I looked out front, however, I saw no evidence of snow. How strange. So last night when I was only looking out front and saw nothing, it must have been an illusion. I will go on record as saying we had our first snow of the 2019-2020 winter on November 12. Way too early.
A week and half ago I went to Harwich to hear Barbara Semple’s talk on Women at Sea, the story of her aunt who sailed aboard her husband’s ship in the days of the China trade. Barbara attended my presentation to the Chatham Harwich Newcomers Club in April and came up to introduce herself to me afterwards. At that time, she invited me to her presentation. When I went to that presentation last week, we had to get to know one another a bit better and found that our lives have crossed paths. So today when she was making her presentation in Falmouth, I offered to take her out to lunch. I got up and watched the opening of Day One of the Impeachment Hearings and then headed downtown to meet Barbara. We had planned to walk Main Street, but it was a bit chilly for that today. Instead, I drove her along the water to Woods Hole and did a car tour of the village. I then drove her to Highfield Hall to see the Stix Works installation and then on to Main Street. She wanted to go to the French bakery to buy some things to take home and then we went to lunch at La Cucina Sur Mare. During lunch we learned of new connections in our lives. We both had our first child while living in the greater Washington, DC area. The world just gets smaller and smaller. Barbara and I will definitely continue getting together as we have so much in common and truly enjoy each other’s company.

I came home after having lunch with Barbara and caught a bit more of the first day of the Impeachment Hearings, but it was very little as I got a call from the heating and air conditioning guy I called on Monday to come check out the problem of gas leakage from the flue of my water heater. The company is called Cool It and Mark is the ‘cool’ guy. He took apart the flue system and used my shop vac to clean out more gunk than he anticipated. He thinks that might have been the problem, so I will call the National Grid technical team and have them come back and test. If this is not the solution, Mark says the next step is to spend $500 to make changes in the flue system that might solve the problem or spend about $3,000 for an updated water heater that vents horizontally out of the basement. That decision will be up to Shirley, my landlord, but at least we are getting closer to an answer to the problem. After Mark left, I watched a bit more of the Impeachment Hearings and was then off to pick Ollie up after school and deliver him to violin lessons.

By the time I got home, the Impeachment Hearings were over for today, but I watched a bit of recap. I have to say that I was so very impressed with the testimony I did hear from US Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor and George Kent, State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. I would think that no matter what your political leanings, you couldn’t help but be impressed with these two men. Ambassador Taylor has served our country for over 50 years and Kent for 30 years. I agree with MSNBC news program host and political commentator Rachel Maddow that George Kent got today’s best quote: “You can’t promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.” Not sure where these proceedings will lead, but I hope I get to ‘meet’ more high-minded people like Taylor and Kent.