This Saturday morning heading towards the middle of August dawned bright and clear and pleasant. I’m approaching the end of the recommended 10-day isolation from my first experience of coronavirus, and I feel pretty good even though I look forward to taste and smell returning and shaking off the lingering tiredness. Sumner and I started our day with coffee time on the driveway, appreciating that the July intensity of summer made its exit with the turning of the calendar page.
Over the last several weeks, when it wasn’t blistering hot, it was rainy, and then I was in Senegal and then I had Covid...and the yard got rather out of control. In short bursts with care about resting I did a fair amount of weeding and then fired up the mower before it got all that warm today to bring decency back to the front lawn. The grass had been growing quite slowly in the heat; it had been a full month since the last mowing.
The July on/off switch applied not just to elevated heat and humidity but also to mosquitos and flies. They were prevalent all that month but now they are hardly to be seen. I have missed my summer cicadas, though, as they have been all too silent. A little out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new moment was presented this morning, though, upon one of the bricks I use for my incense sticks:
Last night, when I took Sumner out before bedtime, I snapped this photo to show how much better lit is the driveway area. That was a quick but arduous task right before my journey to West Africa: getting out the extension ladder to change the bulbs on the high floodlights. One of the bulbs I changed out had been burning every night since 2009! I’m glad to be better secured with better visibility, especially for the vehicles.
Fortunately, I was well enough recovered this past Thursday to sit down for a Google Meeting with a colleague who has just become superintendent down in Sampson County, which neighbors my home county of Harnett. We had a great and productive conversation, with a bit of catching up but also focused on ideas for some possible collaboration on instructional leadership needs in his district.
I suppose I'll use this screenshot as an excuse to point out the new spectacles I'm sporting, which I picked up on a very rainy Good Friday in April. When the struggle to read recent UNC and UVA alumni magazines became all too real, I finally scheduled an eye exam...my first since 2016. One of the marvelous perks of downtown living is the short stroll to an excellent Eye Care Center, less than two blocks away. I’d been wearing my most recent glasses (and its prescription) for a good seven years, nearly, and I guess I’m lucky that I’d not experienced a critical decline in my vision. Decline, though, there had been! Not to a seriously functional degree, but once I put on the new pair, I could triumphantly ogle the vast improvement. Ranging from general clarity as I took in my surroundings, to how my phone and laptop screens looked . . . and including how visible were the previously overlooked stray face hairs that required pulling or pruning! So that’s the new look, and whether or not it’s nice to see, I’m glad to see better.
No comments:
Post a Comment