2023 Life Logs, Day 266: Change of Plans
Date: Saturday, September 22, 2023
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High 68, Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

First, I was going to have three guests this weekend, then two, now none. My friend Lynne is now arriving sometime this week, hopefully Wednesday. But my friend Peppe, and her sister Lynne’, are not coming at all. But a storm is coming, so tomorrow should be windy and rainy, and Sunday could be more of the same. On Monday, I will drive to Newburyport, on the coast just before you reach New Hampshire, to have lunch with Peppe and her sister before Peppe flies back to Seattle on Wednesday. So, instead of going into high gear to get ready for company, I spent part of my day slowing cleaning house. At 4 pm, I went to the high school to watch Jonah’s soccer game. Sam has either a cold or severe sinus issues and did not go to school today. He couldn’t play in the Varsity game, but he did go to watch.

I did some future trip planning today. I am contemplating going to Puerto Rico for Thanksgiving, and I have to make that decision quickly. Flights that were available earlier this week are already filled. My first task tomorrow will be to make a final decision and make flight reservations. I also need to make reservations for the next trip to North Carolina to see my sister.

In last night’s log was titled “Happy First Birthday to Shadow.” Well, it wasn’t his first birthday, it was his 4th. And I must add that he loves his new stuffy that Ollie and I bought for him. He spent a great deal of time today cuddling it.

2023 Life Logs, Day 265: Happy 4th Birthday to Shadow
Date: Thursday, September 21, 2023
Weather: Yet Another Beautiful Day; High 72, Low 55 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

Yeah! Today was a one meeting day, but I did have one more appointment, a visit to my chiropractor. I called his office early this morning begging for an appointment today. My back is giving me fits making it difficult to sleep or do anything else. The chiropractor tried to help but said there was very little he can do at this point. He suggests I go back to the pain management doctor and see if there is anything else he can do to help control the muscle spasms. He also recommended that I see my neurosurgeon again. All the neurosurgeon can do is recommend surgery, so I am hoping for some other miracle.

I spent the time between the chiropractor visit and the Newcomers-Encore Field Trip group meeting preparing for the meeting. Christina Brodie and I are the co-chairs, so I had to lead part of the meeting. We had a number of new people attending and came up with great list of field trips for this year.

Today was Shadow’s 4th birthday. Actually, yesterday was his birthday, but as I explained in last night’s log, Ollie wants to celebrate it on the 21st and Shadow has no complaint with that. Ollie rode his bike over after school and we then went shopping for birthday presents. We came home and gave Shadow a new stuffed animal to destroy and a very expensive Yak bone. Ollie presented him with his gifts and Shadow definitely prefers the bone. While Ollie was here, he cleaned up all the branches in the backyard left behind after the limb fell on Sunday morning. He is a great little worker.

The weather is slowing cooling down. The days have been warm, but the nighttime temps are now down in the 50’s. We have one more nice day and then the temperature drops and the rains come down. Not a great weekend for my friends to visit the Cape, but no complaints. This week has been spectacular.

2023 Life Logs, Day 264: First Meeting, Second Meeting, Then Ollie to Sax Lesson
Date: Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Weather: Another Drop Dead Beautiful Day; High 69, Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

The first General Meeting of Encore was today and it was my turn to run the business meeting. I spent my morning preparing for that and then went to The Flying Bridge for the luncheon meeting. It was a beautiful day, and The Flying Bridge was a perfect place for lunch. It is located on Falmouth Harbor, so we all enjoyed the water view as we conducted business and then had a wonderful lunch. It was after 2:30 pm when I got home, so I took Shadow out, changed clothes into something a little more comfortable, and headed to the first Public Policy meeting of the year. The question we addressed was: What is the state of childcare in Massachusetts and in Falmouth in particular? This also included a discussion of foster care. I left the meeting early to go pick up Ollie and take him to saxophone lesson. When I got home around 6 pm, I took Shadow out to play fetch and then I came in and crashed. It was a good day, but a long one.

As I have written before, Christina Brodie and I share the role of co-presidents of Encore. Olivia White took a photo of us today that really captures the essence of how we work together. I am sharing that photo here.

PS … Shadow’s fourth birthday was today, but Ollie has talked me into celebrating his birthday on the 21st instead of the 20th because both Sam and Ollie were born on the 21st day of the month, one in January, the other in March. Ollie comes over after school tomorrow and we will celebrate then.

2023 Life Logs, Day 263: Monomoy Seal Cruise and FHS Soccer
Date: Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Weather: Drop Dead Beautiful Day; High 70, Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

What a beautiful day! The temperature was 70 degrees F, the wind was blowing in warm air from the west, the sun was shining brightly in a Cape Cod blue sky with just a few puffy white clouds to punctuate the beauty. And I went on a seal cruise on the Lower Cape, getting on the boat in Harwich Port and traveling by water out to Chatham to see the seals on Monomoy Island.

Monomoy Island is an 8-mile-long spit of sand that is truly beautiful. And those seals punctuated the beauty of the island just as the clouds punctuated the beauty in the blue sky. This was a Newcomers-Encore Field Trip group excursion, and it was a wonderful way to celebrate the end of summer. Summer officially ends at 2:50 am on this coming Saturday morning. I am hoping for a long second Cape Cod summer, but that doesn’t keep me from celebrating the calendar summer. Then I can celebrate again at the end of our second summer.

We had lunch at Clancy’s in Dennis on a little inlet from sea. The food matched the day. It was beautifully presented and tasted great. I got home around 3 pm, took Shadow out for a bathroom break, and then headed to the sports fields at Falmouth High School. Sam was playing a Varsity soccer game on the main turf field and Jonah was playing a Junior Varsity game on an adjacent field. I moved from one to the other and loved watching both grandsons playing the game they love for Falmouth High School. They have both been playing league soccer for the past couple of years. That was great but watching them on the fields today brought back memories of my high school days going to football games. There is something very special about participating in sports for your school and I am glad they made that choice this year.

2023 Life Logs, Day 262: Rainy Day
Date: Monday, September 18, 2023
Weather: Rain, Rain, and More Rain; High 68, Low 61 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

The last time I named a log “Rainy Day” was on July 14. That was an all-day rain. We had plenty of other rainy in June and July, but much of it was heavy rain overnight or for just a period of the day, not the whole day. July 4th was one of those days. We had rain overnight and in the early morning, but then the rain held off. We thought we were going to have fireworks that night, but then the fog came in. During June and July had lots of thunderstorms and heavy rain in the late evening or overnight, lots of cloudy or partly cloudy days, but there were not that many days when I needed an umbrella to go out. But today. I could have used an umbrella. The heaviest rain was in the afternoon, but it was raining when I took Shadow out this morning and still raining when I took him out this afternoon. I don’t think I have put his rain jacket on him since I moved here, but he had to wear it today. The rain did stop for a bit around 6 pm, but then it started raining again and thunderstorms are predicted for tonight. Sometime this week, I am going to buy an umbrella.

The whole summer weather reflection happened after I called Heather this evening. She leaves tomorrow, not for Boston as I thought, but for New York City for Climate Week. That is timed to occur when the UN is in session and that is this week. When I mentioned to her that I needed to buy an umbrella if it is going to continue to rain like this, she reminded me that it had been raining all summer. True, but I have always been able to find a break in the rain to take Shadow out. Not today.

I went to Olga’s house for lunch today and to pick up some clematis that she offered me. It is cuttings, not rooted, but I have read that if you plant the cuttings in soil, some of them might survive. We shall see. And despite the rain, we had a lovely lunch on her beautiful side porch.

I then spent the rest of my afternoon trying to get out from under a ton of emails and paperwork that needed to be filed. I had to go through my emails and delete many of them as my Outlook mailbox was full once again. That has happened to me three times this summer. Becoming co-president of Encore means lots of emails with attachments, so I either have to file the attachments on my computer and delete them from my email or print them out and file them in a notebook. One way or the other, I have to delete them Outlook. Figuring out an email strategy was my afternoon.

2023 Life Logs, Day 261: Dining-In at the Brodies
Date: Sunday, September 17, 2023
Weather: Sunny; High 71, Low 65 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

It was a much needed lazy day for me. My back is giving me fits, so I did stretches, laid on the deck flat on my back and then flat on my stomach which seems to help, iced my back while watching Sunday morning television news programs, and then made cucumber soup to take to my dining-in group dinner tonight. That was my day.

This evening I went to Christina and Warren Brodies for our group dinner. We started with a shrimp cocktail brought by Peter and Karen Baranowski. It was the biggest and best shrimp I think I have ever eaten. My cucumber and basil soup (both from my garden) soup was the first course, a fabulous salad with blue cheese and fresh figs from a friend of Midge’s who has this fig tree in her yard in Queens in New York City, a fabulous entrée presented by Christina with chicken, fennel, and clementines (so delicious), and a plum torte dessert brought by Jane Woodin. The entire dinner was a gastronomic delight.

2023 Life Logs, Day 260: Tropical Storm Weather
Date: Saturday, September 16, 2023
Weather: Cloudy, Windy; High 71, Low 57 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

The wind from Hurricane Lee continued all night and most of today, but the wind was not as strong as predicted. We did get some rain overnight, but not as much as expected. That was all good news. But at 8:45 am Shadow and I were jolted by a very strange sound. I immediately looked out all of the windows and saw that a large limb, the size of a small tree, had fallen inches in front of one of the storage sheds in the back yard. It was too windy to go down to inspect the damage as I feared other limbs might fall, but I got close enough to take photos. Jed came over this afternoon to get the tree down on the ground and cut it up for firewood. Thank you, Jed. While he was doing that, Lynda came over to inspect the damage. We were just lucky it fell inches away from the shed. Otherwise, this in the shed, including my bicycle could have been crushed. We lucked out with this storm, as it moved far enough to the east to not do too much damage here on the Cape.

2023 Life Logs, Day 259: Workday at Home
Date: Friday, September 15, 2023
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Windy; High 66, Low 60 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

Hurricane Lee is still swirling full force to make landfall somewhere between Maine and Nova Scotia on Saturday. Here on Cape Cod, we are getting tropical storm weather that will continue through Saturday afternoon before calming down. But we have been spared the brunt of the storm. As Lee rotates counterclockwise, we are currently at about 9:30 pm on that clock getting the outer bands of the storm—cool winds from the north. The wind will really ramp up overnight and we will get rain and heavier winds. But it could have been a whole lot worse.

I had no meetings or appointments today and took full advantage of my day at home. I slept in and then spent the whole day dealing with an onslaught of emails, dealing with some issues for my sister, and dealing with Encore issues. Then at 6:45 pm I headed to Heather and Jed’s for a Rosh Hashana dinner to welcome in the Jewish New Year.

Last night I talked to my good friend Lynne Kirwin. She will be arriving next Saturday for a few days. On that same day, friend Peppe Christianson and her sister from New Hampshire will also arrive. They will be staying until Monday. So, I am going to have a house full next weekend. Lynne, Peppe, and I met while sailing around the world, so it will be great fun to be together once again. The last time we were all together was in South Africa in 2010. Then tonight I talked with friends Helaine and Alan Kanegsberg who live closer to home here in Massachusetts. I haven’t seen them since May, so we must find the time to visit soon.

2023 Life Logs, Day 258: Happy Birthday to Justin and Kevin
Date: Thursday, September 14, 2023
Weather: Sunny with White Puffy Clouds; High 77, Low 61 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

Happy Birthday, Justin. He turned 46 today. How did that baby boy get to be that old? My “adopted” son, Kevin, shares a birthdate with Justin and turned 49 today. And next week Shadow has his 4th birthday. Three of my favorite guys have September birthdays.

And happy birthday to Kevin who turned 49 today. The Newcomers Activity Fair was this morning. This is a two-hour meeting where members of Newcomers and Encore can come and learn about all of the activities offered by the two clubs. There are more than 60 activity groups, so lots of leaders. Tables are set up so each activity leader or leaders has a space so interested people can talk to the leaders to find out more about the activity. I co-lead two activities, Field Trips and Exploring Public Policy, and there was lots of interest. It was quite exciting to see so many people interested in keeping their lives active.

My friend Olga came over for lunch this afternoon. We had not seen each other since last spring, so we had lots of catching up to do. After lunch, Olga helped me pick the ripe cherry tomatoes, some Hungarian peppers, and cucumbers. I wanted to pick things so they don’t blow away with the wind this weekend.

Hurricane/tropical storm Lee passes to the east of Cape Cod tomorrow night and Saturday. By Sunday, it looks like things can get back to normal. I spent the afternoon left after Olga went home to securing things in the yard and after soccer practice, Sam came over and helped me put things in the basement. Hopefully the forecast is correct and we are not going to get super strong winds.

2023 Life Logs, Day 257: Head Spinning
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Rain Early; High 78, Low 59 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA

Kevin and Claire had to leave this morning, but I didn’t really get to spend the quality time I wanted with them before they left because I had to leave before they did. I had to rush off to an Encore Board meeting and that left my head spinning. They are the best friends a person could have, and I just hated running off so quickly. I know they understood, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Our visit was too short this year, but it was a good one. I’ll just have to plan to have more free time when they come to visit next summer.

The rest of my day was a blur. A two hour Board meeting, errands I had to run, home for lunch and to walk Shadow, checking out the latest info on the approaching storm, out again to take Ollie to sax lessons and a trip to Staples to run off some things I need for a meeting tomorrow morning, home for dinner. Then I crashed in front of the television for way too long. I just needed some down time to clear my head.

I do have another all morning meeting tomorrow followed by lunch with a friend. Then I have to get serious about getting ready for the effects of Hurricane Lee. It is expected to bring hazardous coastal conditions here on the Cape with lots of wind. That means all outside furniture and anything else that might blow in the wind needs to be moved inside or lashed down. Heather and Jed have to go to the boat to take down the sails and dodger and also get their outside furniture secured. It could move further to the east and cause less damage here, but you do have to be prepared. The winds should start ramping up late Friday and by Sunday the storm will have moved on.