2020 Life Logs, Day 7: Slowly Back to Normal
Date: Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Weather: Cloudy; High 42, Low 31 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Last night I wrote that I am finally diving into 2020 after three weeks of battling a cold or the flu or whatever. But it is a slow dive. Very slowly I am trying to get back to a normal schedule. I still have congestion and can’t say I feel great, but I’m going to ignore that for now. My morning began, again, with news from Puerto Rico that another earthquake had hit. This time Justin and Jo could feel the tremors where they live and they were without power. The power outage was a result of an emergency shut off system to keep the grid from being damaged. Today’s quake was stronger than yesterday’s and seems to have done much more damage to homes and other buildings on the south shore of Puerto Rico. I have heard nothing further from Justin and Jo, so I am hoping no news is good news. They are far enough away from the epicenter that they should be fine. I then continued by my morning playing outside with Shadow, finishing the book I was reading, starting a new book, and working on my puzzle. I’m trying to train Shadow to be outside without being on the leash, so today I worked on the ‘come’ command. With enough treats as rewards, he does great. Without the treats, he still doesn’t come, but hopefully we’ll get there. While he ran around the yard, I continued my quest to dig up the briars in the woods around the cottage. We also played a little soccer and then came inside. Last night I finished the book I have been reading and started a new one this morning. The book I finished was ‘Clara and Mr. Tiffany’. It is my book club’s choice for January and I really enjoyed it. Mr. Tiffany is Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, who founded the company. His son Louis diverged from silver and jewelry and focused on the decorative arts, especially stained-glass windows and lamps. Clara Driscoll worked for him and is most likely the person who conceived of the idea of stained-glass lamps. So, the two main characters are real, but the book is a fictional account of how things happened. The author, Susan Vreeland, does a masterful job of writing in detail about the design and detail of making the stained-glass lamps and about life in New York City at the end of the 19th century going into the 20th century. I was right there as each little piece of glass was placed just so. My new book was a Christmas present from Heather, ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers. I’m well into the second chapter and am finding this book fascinating. It is described as an eco-novel about trees, but what it really does is to get you to think about the world we live in from a totally different perspective. I finished the morning by working on the Vintage Christmas Card puzzle. I’m getting close to finishing, but it is getting harder, not easier.
I took a break to eat lunch and got a text from Heather saying a large package had arrived for me from Amazon. It was a wooden folding table. I went right over to pick it up and when I got home I took Shadow for his daily walk through the neighborhood. Then it was time for me work on the Voyage of Windbird presentation for the Newcomers General Meeting on Thursday. In between cooking and a trip to the grocery store, I think I have put the polishing touches on the PowerPoint presentation. I will go through it again the morning to make sure I am there. And then I’m going clothes shopping and out to lunch with Heather. She has this week off before starting her new job and needs some new clothes. So that should be a fun outing. Then tomorrow night I host my Mah Jongg group, thus the need for the new folding table. Onward, slowly.
