Friday

Well finally a summer like day with blue skies, bright sunshine, warm temps that were close to 80 and a little humidity. What a change from the past several weeks and did the garden plants that are still green love it. The morning started out with a sleep-in until nearly 7:30 for a change and then a phone call from our neighbor and friend Carol who lives a couple houses up from us in Seminole. Well she was a Chatty Kathy as she and Nancy talked for almost 2 hours.

I finally ate breakfast, did the dishes, loaded up the garbage and gas cans and then got ready for our weekly run to Galax, Va. while they were still talking. Nancy and she concluded their catching-up via the land line and we got ready to head out around 11AM. I made a stop at the bank to cash a check, a stop for the ears to be lowered, a gas fill up stop before our shopping stop at Wal-Mart where we loaded up on groceries. Afterwards we made a late lunch stop for a pizza at Little Caesars. It's been awhile but I love the flavor of their red sauce with pepperoni. We headed on back to the cabin around 3 PM.

We decided to get our daily hike in to the top of the mountain. It felt good to work up a sweat as we hiked in the warm sunshine and cloudless skies. Finally a summer like day for a chance and actually we were looking for the cooling off breeze as we headed across the top. I gathered Norm's mail and took it up to him as its quite an uphill walk from his mailbox with his bad legs and shortness of breath. We stopped and visited with Joe and Zeke and I shared the e-mail response from the beef place in Grayson County that advertises range fed beef and my complaint about the toughness of the meat with little or no flavor. I got a favorable e-mail offering free meat that will replace the steaks we bought together and this meat will supposedly be aged. That was a nice surprise for us. Now we will see if they follow up on their offer.

We sat on the front porch with the nice breeze for an hour or so before I got ready to head out for some 2 plus hours of continuous pickle ball play with 3 other guys under the lights. It was a beautiful evening and the play was good and getting better each time these guys play and get use to the game. Everyone had a soaked t-shirt and by 8:45 we were calling it night and setting up the next night to play. Looks like Monday night is the next night for us.

Well it was a hot shower and then I finished the book BAIT by Karen Robards which was a fantastic read and soon there after it was horizontal time for me as the Rays had the night off. I did manage to watch the Panthers football for a quarter or so of pre-season and they looked tough as they were putting a whupping on the super bowl champs, the Ravens. Our Bucs didn't look good or the score indicated the last couple pre-season games they played they were needing some extra practice and some skilled players, LATER