Got my nose plumbed for SARS-CoV-2 yesterday, and received a negative result by dinner, so I submitted my details to the USVI travel screening portal. Am excited to get back to St. Croix this weekend, visit family and my favorite beach, and walk through Frederiksted.
Oliver used some of his birthday cash to buy a Rubik’s cube. He’s already figured out how to solve it. In my youth I never once accomplished that. (YouTube and the wisdom of the crowd helped Oliver.)
Weekend activities:
Camping solo in the back woods tonight. Family walked out to join me around the fire. Now I am alone, full moon rising, air cooling. Soon will be time to climb into the hammock tent to sleep.
Awesome reference! My copy of The Weblog Handbook is always at hand. @terrygrier
Birthday brunch to celebrate Erin. I made cinnamon rolls and they were a hit. Now we’re in the front yard for games and relaxation. Beautiful day in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
The view from my grill. Looks out onto the back acres of our lots and the stack of lumber from when we milled the blackjack and white oak.
I just feel good. The week at work was nonstop and rewarding. Family gathering in the house is renewing. The world outside is glowing green. And dose 2 of the COVID vaccine is making me stronger by the minute. And scanning the Micro.blog timeline makes me grateful for community.
Family visiting for the birthday weekend (Anna and Erin consecutive days) and the request came in for cocktails so I called up Ruhlman’s Friday Cocktail Hour: The Mojito. In a few weeks I’ll be drinking mojitos at Rainbow Beach on St. Croix.
I am enjoying the M.b posts about watches. I saved up and recently bought a Tissot, partly foe sentimental reasons: Erin & I bought Tissot watches in Geneva post Peace Corps service, but mine was stolen a few years later. More in this blog post.
Showed up for my colonoscopy today and the doctor remembered that a few years ago we had staged a photo for the GI page of the Department of Medicine website with me as patient. Today’s procedure for real went smoothly and I am glad to be healthy.
Starting two days of liquid diet in preparation for a colonoscopy, and I’m so glad that I had purchased two containers of pho broth at the Carrboro Farmers Market last week. This elixir is delicious. I’m sipping it from my usual coffee mug.
Out in the hammock.
So nice to have a day off to unplug from the laptop, the Internet, and the phone (mostly carried as a camera). An adventure with my son, yard work with daughters, then Malia driving the new (old, red, running well) Ford Ranger. Soon, cake.
Took the day off to enjoy my birthday. Drove with Oliver to the farm store for supplies, then to Jordan Dam to birdwatch. No bald eagles but plenty of osprey and great blue herons at the tailrace.
We sold our Ford Ranger this morning. Then gathered up the rusty barbed wired along the property line in preparation for an epic egg hunt next week. Came across this beautiful (and harmless) rat snake near the corner of the land.
Early visit to the Carrboro Farmers Market for plants and seedlings (bloodroot, camellia, basil, chard). Now sitting on front porch with coffee looking out to misty woods. Singing birds and percussive woodpeckers. Spring.
Got my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine today. As luck would have it a good friend was there at same time and captured the occasion.
Erin helping Oliver get ready to return to school tomorrow. She retrieved his backpack and discovered a plastic container with moldy grapes left there since the last day of school in March 2020. Wonder how many other parents are finding similar detritus.
Here’s the more established bloodroot that’s at the base of the big white oak tree next to the house.
Twice this weekend I stopped the car to get out and move this box turtle from the gravel driveway.
The bloodroot I planted last spring out behind the firepit has awakened with the warmer weather.
Pi Day? Ok, went to my go-to pie, sour cherry with the filling I canned last summer from cherries picked by my friend, Rose, at Levering Orchard in Galax, Virginia.
Catching the sun’s rays on Spring morning.
