Good Friday

We arrived back home in Louisiana yesterday, March 20th, and today is Good Friday. It is quite warm and sunny today, the temperature in the high 70's F. Our azaleas are in bloom (LEFT). We don't get to see them every year as our house is a bit like one more stop on our ongoing tour of North America and Western Europe. There is evidence of daffodils and crocuses, the dark green stalks that are left behind after the blooms have fled. I won't mow them for a few days, so when I'm sitting out in the sun I can ponder them. The travelogue tour continues in under three weeks: we'll be off to California around the 8th of April.

The picture of our van is the morning after the snow. We have rinsed the road salt off, though yesterday and the night before it got a good rain-drenching. I went to the car wash this morning where I was accosted by a man speaking some form of Louisiana ebonics, and after I had him repeat it four times I discerned that he said something after the order of: "Too bad I didn't talk to you before you started cuz I woulda did it for yuh." I told him I was OK even though I may have looked like a doddering old fool struggling with a soapy brush and shooting powerful streams of water which kept bouncing back and drenching me in clouds of mist. He obviously wished to make a little coin, but why?, did he think? didn't I take it to the car wash where they do all the work for you? Because I'm also a doddering old miser. And I'm trying to stay alive by getting as much exercise as possible.

Marsha's little grey cat, Amber, has returned, though she is a little nervous about us, since we keep leaving for extended periods of time. Still, we thought that was the deal. She obviously got too attached to a routine during December, and parts of January and February.

We managed to get to Pub Quiz on Tuesday night at Veach's Office Bar in Jackson, Michigan, and our team, the Blarneys, which plays every week whether we are there or not, won with over a ten point margin. It was a major victory, and a distinct team effort.
The distance from Jackson to Bossier City is 1055 miles, so we don't get to Pub Quiz all that often, but when we are in Michigan we try to get there every time we have a free Tuesday. As it happens, last Tuesday was the first one this year.

The night before we had driven down from Oakville, Ontario. the site of our last show of this tour segment. Most of the time we were in Ontario, we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott in Mississauga, where we took advantage of the swimming pool and exercise room. The accompanying photograph is of me in the pool at the Holiday Inn in Huntsville, the night after the Great Storm of '08; we had also been in the pool during the storm, underneath the faux palm tree.

During our stay in Ontario we went to the McMichael Gallery in Kleinsburg (BELOW: Marsha in front of the gallery) which houses the Group of Seven, Totem Poles, Etched stone, and Inuit stuff and we trolled about in the art for a few hours. I had always wanted to learn more about the Group of Seven (turns out there were 8 or 9 of them) as I actually referenced them on the trip between Huntsville and North Bay. Some of the scenery looked like Group of Seven paintings, as well it should, I soon found out. And I rediscovered Emily Carr who had been held up as a bit of a heroine during my schooling in Victoria, BC.