Flannel Shirt

It snowed

Yesterday it started snowing mid-afternoon but nothing was sticking. Izzy looked curiously out the window. When she went out to the backyard right before bedtime it was a little winter wonderland. The motion detector on the garage lit up the blackyard. Our desert dog had to hop down the snow-covered stairs to do her business. This morning it was still white. By the time Iz and I hit the streets things were beginning to melt, but what with a new knee and an old body Joan didn't want us to take the whole walk we normally take, so we just circled the block. 

Tonight Joanie and I went to the theater to see a one-man show, "Buyer and Seller". It was really funny. It was like a one-hour forty minute standup comedy routine. It's about a man hired to work in a shopping mall in the basement of Barbra Streisand's barn. Really. And it was hilarious.

 

(night off)

Loew's 35

The day wasn't very interesting. We picked up Oliver after school. It was Harry Potter Day at his school. Lots of kids running around with sticks (wands) on the playground when I was walking over to where O's class lets out. It was raining today. The big weather news for us is that we may get snow in the next couple of days. It would be our first snow this year, but I'm betting against it. I just don't think it'll get low enough temperatures. Oh, more snow on the mountains and in the gorge but now down here in town. "In the valley," as they say here. 

There are lots of storms smacking into California, rain on the coast down to LA and blizzards up in the mountains.        

I came across the above ad about the ten-year anniversary of the Loew's 35 was back in 1966. I'm pretty sure that's where the family saw "Psycho", the Hitchcock movie. And there was that train for kids that went around the screen. 

In the ad it says a live band was going to play before the movies. That band was the Castiles. Do you recognize the kid in the front row on the left? That's a very young Bruce Springsteen. 

At the park

But night off in Portland.

(night off)

We took Izzy to the dog park. You have never seen a happier dog. First time since before I got the knee done last year.

Restless leg syndrome

I've got restless leg syndrome. My legs twitch at night. They are twitching a lot tonight. No news from out in the world. 

This is a picture I made on the computer. Not tonight. My legs twitch too much.

This is an old picture of Lindsay and Joanie from the day after Christmas. Lindsay was working on Christmas. 

Otherwise, things are still quiet. I think the weather guy at six said that rain was coming in for the weekend, but that'll be fine with us. We're not working out in the rain, or raining going to work. We're retired. The only thing I have to do is walk the Iz. There are several different routes we use for our walks, more will be available in the Summer when I trust my knee going up and down the stairs at the end of our block, but for now we head west through the neighborhood. 

The first block, the way the neighborhood is laid out, is pretty much how we always start out.  Sometimes by the time we reach 47th as our cross street she's pretty much attended to her needs but if she needs a few more blocks we do it. My knee doesn't usually hurt on our walks anymore, so we're not limited to my condition. Maybe my conditioning. But wherever we go, what blocks we walk down, she's sniffing away. She likes to sniff under small plants and bushes where field mice and other little furry things may sleep. There's a pile of yard scrapes that someone left near the sidewalk where it's been slowly decaying over the winter. Izzy likes to sniff that. Sometimes we go where I want to go, sometimes I just let her take us wherever she wants to go. She generally turns around so that we can go past the gas station where they always give her dog biscuits. She's a dog but she's not stupid.

"Mommy, I did it!"

The little girl has discovered... MAKEUP! She got into Mom's makeup, doesn't quite have doing her eyelashes yet. I think that's mascara on her. She almost looks like it's the beginning of Lent.

It was pretty quiet up here. Foggy in the morning, overcast all day. Iz and I took our walk. There was a lot of sniffing around this morning. Like I say, when we go out and she sniffs it must be like a human reading a book. I really do think it's intellectual stimulation for her, whatever the dog equivalent of intellectual stimulation might be. Aside from her opportunity to take care of her bathroom business it's just a great time out for her. And me. 

With Mommy

A picture from Pacifica. 

Cold this morning, and foggy, but we took our walk. I seem to take more naps these days. Kind of nice.

The camera puts on ten pounds

And if you start out around thirty pounds, adding ten is a lot. 

Actually, this is another one of those pictures from a phone, Joan's phone, that doesn't translate well. The last time the photos were upside down. This one came out sideways, but when I flipped it right side up it made everything too wide. 

I asked Joan tonight if we did anything today and she said, "I'm still in my pajamas. That's your answer." Which is pretty much what we did. Izzy and I walked and it was a good walk.