1. Today was Mom's 86th birthday. I waited until after 10:00 EST to call her and wish her a happy birthday. She sounded really good. She told me she'd "been kind of lazy" and that sounded good to me and she didn't report anything troubling about her health. She had a good day planned. Jane, her next door neighbor, would be baking her an angel food cake with lemon frosting, a favorite of Mom's, and Carol and Paul would be hosting dinner for her at their house. I haven't heard yet if they were able to do that. I know if the snow and ice was bad, they were going to have the dinner at Mom's. I'm sure I'll get some updates on Friday.
2. For the first time, I performed my water exercises with aqua dumbbells, pushing them away and pulling them back while I jogged in place, swinging them at my side while I cross country skied, and devising other ways to make good use of them. It was an invigorating hour in the pool.
3. The Deke and I went to Old Line because DC Brau's Wings of Armageddon was on tap -- this is a rarity. As we settled into our beer and some conversation, a party of Beltsville business people was forming very close to our booth. Before we knew it, we became part of this party. A retired guy, Frank, introduced himself to us, started yakking, and then he brought Bob to our booth and then Craig came by. Craig had art work hanging on the wall leading to the restrooms and he and Deke walked over to look at them and then Bob's wife, Jean, a local high school English teacher, sat at our booth with her ruby grapefruit vodka cocktail and recited her grievances about the local school system and then, out of nowhere, Leda popped up and sat down and told us about her work as a horticulturalist for several offices in downtown D.C., keeping plants looking good in law and other offices and right after she left, Craig, who runs a small print shop, returned and we had a long, intelligent, and calm talk about the transfer of power in our country and all kinds of other stuff.
It was around 10:00 when we left. We never stay this late. We've never had a party evolve at our booth. I looked around a couple of times to see if Federico Fellini was filming us. In fact, as we left Old Line, the Deke and I looked at each other and asked the same question I've often had when a Fellini movie ended: "What just happened?" 😊
BONUS: I listened to two more episodes of the podcast series In the Dark today, in the public library and while driving around town. I love how this series is structured. The editors shuffle the story's timeline in intriguing and enthralling ways while reporter Madeleine Baran investigates how it took over twenty-five years for the case involving the kidnap and murder of the boy Jacob Wetterling to get solved.
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