I’m always in awe of the sunset views from Clorinda’s home. Amy captured this one:
I told you about mandalas last week. Amy made this outside one with native flowers from Gypsy Hill:
One of the pleasures of this trip has been getting to know Marco’s best friend, Jeff, much better. He’s been doing a lot of work around the house, while helping to care for Clorinda, and working on finding a new job. Here he is at a local coffee shop, working on that job:
Jeff washed all of the large windows, with some help from several little ones. Then he tackled a dead tree by the deck, and had that chainsawed into submission very quickly and efficiently.
Channeling his inner Elon Musk.
We had an emergency situation on Thursday morning – the coffee drawer was stuck. It appears that a food thermometer was vertical and stuck into the top of the cabinet. Adamo worked on it for a while, ultimately breaking the drawer free with a stick he found outside.
Fall out from the stick opening routine was that several of the pods had been broken, spilling grounds in the drawer. Marco said his Mom would want him to reuse those grounds. We got him set up with that on Friday morning:
Marco showed up on Saturday with equipment to make a “pour over” out of those “re-use” pods:
I enjoyed the NCAA basketball final four games on Saturday. Particularly the crazy comeback by Houston to beat Duke. Here’s what the local newspaper had to say:
“Duke faces fallout of epic meltdown in ‘heartbreaking’ Final Four loss to Houston
SAN ANTONIO — The lead was nine points with 2:15 remaining, and even as Duke struggled to convert on the offensive end there was no thought given to the idea the Blue Devils might actually lose to Houston in this battle of No. 1 seeds in the national semifinal at the Final Four.
The lead was down to seven points with 1:26 to play. To six points at the 42-second mark. Again, the very idea the Blue Devils’ season would end before the national championship game was ridiculous, ludicrous, preposterous.
But it’s called March Madness for a reason. Trailing 64-55, Houston outscored Duke 15-3 over the final two-plus minutes to reach Monday night’s matchup against Florida. No team had ever given away so much in so little time on college basketball’s biggest stage.”
Alicia’s cat, Fri Fri, has been staying in our bedroom since Marco has an allergy to cat dander. I’ve renamed her the terrorist since she loves to jump on my head from behind when I’m sitting on the couch, nibble my toes in the middle of the night, and generally be a nuisance. And then she has the gaul to sleep on my side of the bed.
I’ll end this section with a huge thanks to Amy and Diana for working so hard feeding the masses – breakfast frittatas, rack of lamb, lasagna, Goudarooni, salads, and on and on.
I started “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace. I’m not sure how far I’ll be able to make it through this. Some chapters are entertaining and some are just very strange, and it’s a very long tome (1500 pages). More to come.
Two very good new albums were released this week. The first is a collaboration between Brandi Carlisle and Elton John:
And the second from Jason Isbell. This time solo and accompanied only by his 1940 Martin O-17 acoustic guitar. While I enjoy his electric guitar skills, this stripped down approach is very effective and a nice change of pace:
Coexist peacefully, with patience and kindness for all!