Sunday, June 14

We had a pretty ordinary Sunday. I got a treadmill session and weights exercises in, as usual. Then I spent some time programming the DVR for this week's favorite shows. I really don't like this new system that won't let me use an alphabet menu to search for future programs. I have to search day by day, which is very inconvenient. We're happy, though, that the switch-over from analog to digital TV went off without a hitch. We don't have HD TV, but the picture on our old TV is sharper, we notice.

Lunch today was pork chops cooked in sour kraut. The sour kraut was rinsed, rinsed, rinsed to get rid of as much salt as possible. Hubbie thought it also removed the flavor, but Mother and I still thought it tasted fine. We had mashed potatoes and baked sweet potatoes with the kraut. It probably seems unusual to have two types of potatoes at a meal, but the mashed potatoes cut the sour taste of the kraut (which it didn't have today, anyway), and the sweet potatoes provide a sweet-and-sour combination, which is tasty.

Later this afternoon, we went to the museum for a program about fishing nets and how they were made in the 1940s and 1950s. Two local folks, a man and woman, spoke about how their fathers made the nets, using handmade wooden needles and shuttles, and how they used the nets, treated with tar to protect them from rotting, to catch large quantities of fish to sell commercially or use personally. This was in a time before the river was dammed and polluted, making it less habitable to catfish and other fish types.

At the end of the program, the man read a touching poem to us...one that his father loved. I found it featured at an online site:

Fisherman's Prayer

God grant that I may live to fish
Until my dying day
And when it comes to my last cast
I then most humbly pray
When in the Lord's safe landing net
I'm peacefully asleep
That in his mercy I be judged
As good enough to keep

Back home, Hubbie made a recipe of dog biscuits, while I mixed a batch of pancake batter for our supper. Hubbie is fond of having pancakes for Sunday supper. When he finished baking the biscuits, he fixed the pancakes in the electric skillet, while I set a table in the den (it's a little pull-down table in the couch), heated plates and pancake syrup, peeled and sectioned an orange, etc. Since we eat later on Sunday nights, we prefer to watch a movie while having our supper in the den.

When I checked the eagle nest, I saw that the baby has grown tremendously and is much darker in color. He seems to be getting around the nest much better. Both adult eagles were gone when I checked, and a wind was blowing. So the baby snuggled into a little alcove of the nest and snoozed. It was around 6 p.m., nest time, when I looked in, and the shadows were deepening in the twilight.

In all the times I checked the nest tonight, the adults stayed away from the nest. The baby stretched his wings, and looked over the edge of the nest, as if longing to fly and wondering if he should give it a try. But finally, he nestled back into the alcove for a snooze again.