Author: Paul

Time goes so fast these days it is starting to scare me. And that’s one reason why I am enjoying this prolonged, cool, wet, dark, rainy Spring. As Jeffery said in yoga class last night, “My Forsythia has been in bloom for a month!”

Peggi and I took a walk down Hoffman and we stopped at the marsh for the longest time. We were watching a doe with her brand new fawn and then a bright yellow bird caught our eye, a Warbler no doubt, and then a whole group of them dive-bombing bugs near the crumbling willow. The Warblers are bright yellow. They make the yellow in the Baltimore Orioles look orange and there were quite a few of them darting about. Our favorites, though, are the descriptively named Red Winged Blackbirds, although that only describes the male. They have a chirp and a distinctive call, something that sounds like one of Peggi’s sax lines. We watched them land on cattails, those still standing from last year. The cattail bends under the weight of the bird but it springs back to an upright position and male performs his mating call.

Pete LaBonne joins Margaret Explosion on the grand piano on Wednesday night. I hope you can stop out. We tend to get into a blues groove when he sits in. Here’s a song from last year when both he and Bob Martin were sitting in with the band.

Jared told us the lake was 21 inches above normal so we had to walk down there and see for ourselves. We chatted with a wind surfer, who was suiting up, and saw that the waves were pretty big. There is a five mile an hour speed limit in effect for boats so there were hardly any on the water. We walked out the pier, timing our pace so as to miss the crashing of the big waves. I got soaked anyway.

Our friends, Kerry, Claire and Benny, are all going to France for the Women’s World Cup this summer. We saw the US in the semi finals four years ago in Montreal. Paris is too far, especially in the summer when things get so busy here. The team plays South Africa on Sunday in a friendly and they play Mexico at a stadium that is only nine minutes from my brother’s house in New Jersey so we might go down there for that one.

As hard as it is to believe, we saw the two best soccer games in my life in the last week. Barcelona (our favorite team) who beat Liverpool in the first half of their two match semifinal in the European Champions League, met Liverpool again, this time in Liverpool. Barcelona was heavily favored to win and to go on to take the trophy. But Liverpool, playing without their key striker, Salah, came out aggressively, playing so fast, stealing the ball at every opportunity and preventing Barcelona from controlling the flow, as is their wont. It was shocking at first and then thrilling. They played so well we switched allegiances.

The following day, in the second semifinal match between Ajax and Tottenham, Ajax, after winning decisively in the first, dominated the first half and scored twice. We assumed it was all over. We recorded the second half and left to play the Little. We queued up the second half after the gig and the tables were turned completely. Tottenham, the underdogs in anyone’s book, playing away, dominated possession and scored three goals, the last in the final seconds!

We’re getting together with Jedi to watch Barcelona meet Liverpool in the second of their Champions League semi-finals. Although Barcelona won the first in their home stadium Liverpool performed a lot better that the final score indicated. But then the great Salah got injured in a Premier League match so Liverpool will have a tough time this afternoon.

We celebrated Matthew’s birthday at Captain Jack’s in Sodus Point where the bar was just barely above water. Matthew suggested a Mexican place in Alton, Mi Hacienda Jalisciense. It’s on Old Ridge Road just a mile or so from El Rincón. That’s a serious matchup right there. If it was a horse race. I would put my money on Mi Hacienda Jalisciense. We had some mind blowing ceviche.

We drove out with Jeff and the three of us stopped in Ontario on the way home to take in the Kentucky Derby. We always make a point to watch it, the anniversary of our first date, and this year’s was something else. We stood at the bar in front a tv with the sound off so the excitement level was missing. And the silent elation of victory, the countless video reviews where we saw something different each time and then the long shot reversal all played dramatically.

Chipmunks are driven. I recognize the trait. Whether it’s chasing one another or darting into holes. they run the same pattern over and over all day long. We found a chipmunk in our screened-in porch. I opened the door and let him out. Next thing you know he was back in there again franticly looking for a way out. I showed him the door and we went back to reading the paper. I couldn’t see any hole for him to get in. About ten minutes later the Woodstock chimes that hang on the porch started ringing. There was no wind. He must be getting in through the rafters and dropping down the chimes, an impossible route to do in reverse. I sealed up three possible openings and we haven’t seen the guy.

Chipmunks are cute but they are really a garden pest. They ate all our tiny beet plants before they had a chance. Our neighbor on one side shoots at them with a BB gun and Jared, on the other side of us, wired his garden with electric fencing. The lowest line is only a half inch above the ground, chipmunk height.

We spotted some beautiful birds near the ground on the other side of our bedroom window. They have Mohawk striped heads and a Zebra-like chest. They are a dull yellow overall. We found them in a bird book and were able to identify them as “Ovenbirds,” in the Warbler family. I am not in a hurry for summer, this has been a perfect Spring.

Earl, the Cassorla brother on the right in the poster above fell asleep at the wheel while driving back from Reno. Randi Winterman, who was sitting behind us at Earl’s services yesterday, ask us how long we’ve know Earl. Without thinking much I said forever. Earl was legendary and we knew of him and his brother way before we met them. Friends of ours who went to Irondequoit High with them had incredible stories of their high school pranks. The Rabbi yesterday talked about Earl wearing a key ring, like the janitors, in high school. He told the knowing crowd that Earl could get into any room in the building.

Earl was an all around great guy and everyone who knew him has stories to give witness to that. The Rabbi told us that Earl’s spirit, there is a Hebrew term, would now move to his brother. And I saw Steve’s head nod in agreement. The Cassorlas opened a fireworks store in Nevada where everything is legal. I wrote a bit about about the Cassorlas last year in a post that includes a short movie about their venture. They will remain legendary.

A few weeks back a branch broke off a tree above our house and went right through the roofing and tongue and groove boards below it. It landed between the rafters and luckily it didn’t break through the plaster and copper plumbing in the ceiling of our living room. It got me wondering about Newton’s gravity thing. The branch was hanging horizontally above the house and when I found it it was standing up in our roof. The thickest part of the branch apparently fell the quickest.

We walked up to Wegmans to pick up some fish. Our branch gets fresh seafood in on Thursdays and we always find something – scallops, perch, red snapper or tuna. Last week we bought one swordfish steak to split. They call it steak for a reason. It is oily and meaty and tastes great on the grill. I knew there was something funny about swordfishes. I looked it up and found most healthcare organizations recommend that you don’t eat any because it’s full of mercury. And how does mercury get in the ocean? The number one source is airborne particles from coal burning power plants. So glad the Trumpster is bringing back coal, “beautiful coal..” That will be our last piece of swordfish.

Blue is my favorite color so Rick gets the green. By the end of the season we will hardly be able to tell these apart. They should be dry by tomorrow and it may be opening day.

The blue paint was suspiciously thin and we plan on painting our metal chairs so we walked over to Home Depot and bought a pint. I brought the stick that I used to stir up the old blue and they matched the color. It is about a seven mile round trip but we made it fun by stopping for a Flat White at Starbucks and calling Duane in Brooklyn.

The recap of my carpentry career in my last post didn’t mention why I got out. Swinging a 20 ounce hammer all day, lifting walls that were built on the deck, getting the scaffolding up on the metal brackets, carrying full sheets of three quarter inch plywood in the wind and hoisting tresses up to the second floor completely drained me. As satisfying as the job was, there was nothing left at night. So I got a commercial art job. A “pud” job as they would say in Indiana.