Up around 7:30 on this chilly morning, and did a treadmill session and resistance exercises after breakfast. Mother came over mid-morning and relaxed while I got ready for the day.
We didn't accomplish much for the rest of the morning. Around 11 a.m., Mother ate a slice of bread with butter so she wouldn't get too hungry before we returned from an outing to one of the local colleges, where we attended the opening ceremony of a group of Tibetan monks, who are here to create a sand painting.
The ceremony occurred at exactly noon. Before we went to the college, we dropped by a grocery store, where Hubbie exchanged a block of reduced-fat white cheddar cheese for a fresh block. We bought the cheese on Monday, but discovered as soon as we got home that it was moldy, even though the expiration date was for the end of March.
We arrived at the college around 11:30 and claimed three seats right away. We weren't seated long, when a flood of people arrived, including a bus load of elementary school students from another town.
The event was held in the three-quarter round theater. I don't know what the capacity of that theater is, but its recommended upper limit was surely reached or exceeded today.
The ceremony consisted of eight Tibetan monks, clad in red robes and yellow headdresses, who conducted religious chanting and horn/bells/drum/cymbals instrument rites, as a prelude to designing a pattern for sand painting.
It was obviously a solemn occasion, which was lost on the children, who found the from-deep-in-the-chest chants amusing. I think the children would have been better served to have visited the college during the actual sand painting (or mandala), which will continue every day through Saturday.
But afterward, the kids crowded around a table of handmade items and bought bracelets, pendants and the like.
We stayed long enough to watch the monks carefully mark off a pattern on a tabletop, using chalked string. We'll return Friday to check the progress of the mandala. The design which is painstakingly and beautifully created, will be destroyed in a ceremony on Saturday, as a symbol of the impermanence of life.
We were back home around 1 p.m., when we heated homemade tomato soup for lunch. Afterward, I posted snapshots of the Tibetan monks on my social network page, and did other things on my office computer, while Mother napped, and Hubbie occupied himself with his own projects.
Since we'd eaten a late lunch, we postponed supper until 6 p.m., when we had Ziplock bag omelets, sauteed potatoes, and toasted thin bagels.
Mother went home afterward, and Hubbie and I settled in to watch the 2009, PG-13 movie, "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt," starring Michael Douglas. A high profile attorney, up for governor, has an impeccable record of consistently putting criminals behind bars, until an investigative journalist learns he has tampered with evidence to get his convictions.
Later, we watched our favorite college basketball team play to a very hard fought and much deserved win by one point in overtime.
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