Sunday, April 10

Got up around 7:30, but skipped my exercises again, since Great-Nephew was asleep in the spare bedroom, where the treadmill resides.

After breakfast, Mother came over and put a beef roast and veggies in the slow cooker. When we planned the meal, we anticipated that Great-Nephew would join us for lunch. But as it happened, he needed to go back to the college to perform with the Celtic group at the Scottish Festival, which ended today around 2 p.m.

We don't know when he came in last night after the festival...we were asleep. But he got up around 9:30 and had a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee for his breakfast.

Then we visited for a while, before he needed to leave a few minutes before 11 a.m. Great-Nephew has recently become a member of the newspaper staff at his high school, so he was interested in talking with me about journalism, particularly opening paragraphs. I provided copies of several articles I've written, as examples of different approaches to hooking the reader in the first few sentences.

He said that he's enjoying journalism, and agreed that learning to write a concise newspaper article has taught him how to better organize his work in other school writing projects.

We were sorry that he missed having lunch with us, because the beef roast, with carrots and onions, and mashed potatoes and gravy, along with hydroponic grape tomatoes, and slices of Irish soda bread, was delicious.

Mother went home afterward, taking a few slices of the bread for her breakfast, and a couple of slices of the wonderful Irish chocolate cake for evening snacks. I saved enough of the cake aside for Hubbie and me, too, and then put the rest into the freezer. It's too good to be good for us, so it's best that we save some of it for a future special occasion.

Around 1 p.m., Hubbie and I dressed to go to an anniversary reception in recognition of the 50th anniversary of my Alma Mater's honor society, of which I am a member. As a non-traditional student, I was inducted in 1988. The members of the society are drawn from the top ten percent of each year's class. In 1988, there were only 90 in our class (the same number that graduated in 1990).

It seemed appropriate to wear dressy clothes, which is what Hubbie and I did, but of course, there were some who came much more casually attired, including a couple who wore blue jeans. Most of the older ones among us dressed up, though...we obviously come from an age when there was a dress code for certain occasions.

About 25 of us were in attendance, and it was a pleasant gathering. We enjoyed visiting with folks, and hearing the comments made by college administrative staff, which included the unveiling of a large, framed, listing of the names of all inductees, beginning in 1960. A staff member agreed to e-mail a copy of the list to me, so I can study it at my leisure. I want to see how many folks I recognize. The framed list is to hang outside the office of the honor society advisor.

Funny: thanks to a battery-operated clock in the den that obviously isn't working correctly, we were a few minutes late leaving the house for the 2 p.m. honor society reception. That clock said it was around 1:20 when I happened to check the clock on the cable box, which read 2:10! I had intended to arrive "fashionably late," not real late.

Fortunately, we got there before the speeches, which was more than can be said of a member who was inducted in the first class (1960). She arrived after the speeches and the unveiling. She apologized, saying she had gone to the wrong place on campus. "Obviously, I didn't learn how to read when I was a student here," she laughed.

It was obvious that the organizers of the event had hoped for a bigger gathering, because there was a table laden with refreshments that included a variety of fruits, vegetables, including mushrooms and asparagus, and dip, as well as white cheese logs, one made of a combination of cream cheese and blue cheese, and one that the president's wife and I thought was herb-coated goat cheese, and fancy crackers.

Following the event, Hubbie and I visited the gallery, where a student juried art show is on view. A couple of works intrigued me. One was titled, "The Birds and the Bees," a literal interpretation represented by paper mache birds and bees suspended on a mobile. The other was a hen in a nest, both made entirely from broken egg shells. Neither of these won ribbons, but I like them anyway.

Back home, Hubbie and I watched the 1992, R-rated movie, "The Last of the Mohicans," starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. Adventure and romance in Colonial America, as Hawkeye, an adopted son of the Mohicans, and Cora Munro, the aristocratic daughter of a British Colonel, fall in love during a conflict between the British, the French, and their Native American allies.

After a sandwich supper, we watched the 2009,R-rated movie, "The Cry of the Owl," starring no one I recognize. A young woman becomes attracted to her stalker. When her boyfriend goes missing, the stalker is naturally suspected of foul play, but jealousy turns things deadly.