Turning Over

As Mondays go yesterday wasn’t tragic, which is about the nicest thing that can be said about that accursed day. Actually I don’t really despise Mondays as much as I should. I’m at an age when I’m supposed to be slowing down and working on exit strategies but I still enjoy going to work and when asked what I’ll do following retirement I still pull a blank slate look out of my repertoire. Other than hanging out with friends I’m not truly invested in any activity. I’m not a golfer which seems to be the retiree’s go to option. Of course there’s the beachfront condo in Panama beckoning so maybe I’ll try to set some sort of age group record for body surfing. All this being said going to work still helps during these solitary months.

We took another tour of the new facility being built for us on the other side of Worcester. It was cool to see all the work accomplished in the short weeks since the last visit. The place is immense and it’s much easier to get a sense of the place now that the dry wall is up.

I received some very good news yesterday in that my sister confirmed a Rhode Island thunder run to our favorite Irish bar, McShawn’s, is on for this coming Saturday. The Keene Friend has also confirmed he will accompany me to the place he’s known as “The Senator”. When you combine that with the annual Worcester St Patty’s day parade on Sunday with the attendant bagpipe bands, well I think the operative phrase is “psyched!”. 

All this late breaking activity will delay my pilgrimage to NYC to honor Matthew Scudder, Lawrence Block’s fabulous hero who dominated my literary world for the better part of last year. I’ve got a list of Scudder’s favorite hang outs and I’m going to make a day trip to the Big Apple to soak up some Scuderrian atmosphere. That will now happen the following Saturday, if the river don’t rise!

My immersion in the new season of House of Cards was interrupted last night by FaceTime calls from my favorite ladies in the world. The Favorite Panamanian related the groundbreaking news that it is still very hot in Panama. They did receive the first volley of the impending rainy season which will be welcome. Her usually very quiet niece even performed a very effective rain dance on the front porch which had her aunts trying to figure out how to franchise her efforts.

The Rain Dancer

The second call was from the First Blog Reader in which she demonstrated her newly acquired ability to flip over onto her stomach. Her mother reports she hasn’t started crawling yet but pulls herself using solely her arms. If so this could be an indication she’s pulling a page out of her grandfather’s book. My mother always reveled in telling people I never crawled and just used my arms to propel me around. This stood me in good stead a couple decades later when I discovered the Army push up and the front leaning rest position.  The first few photo's demonstrate her "technique".