Friday, Feb. 17

Up at 6:30 to get ready to go to water aerobics. The pool was pleasant, but only about a dozen of us showed up. Fewer showed up Wednesday, though. Guess the rain kept them at home.

Back home, I downed a cup of hot coffee, and then hurried to get ready for the day, because yesterday we planned an outing to another town to see bald eagles that are residing at a pond.

There was a news story on TV about the eagles, but the reporter was purposely vague about the location of the pond. So I called the town's Chamber of Commerce and got directions.

We left home around 10:30 a.m., so we could arrive at the other town in time to visit our favorite restaurant for lunch. On the exit ramp, we were behind a van sporting large white letters on the back window that declared: "Mean People Suck." We agree with the sentiment, but we think it is also pretty sucky to block one's view through the rear window with large white letters.

We each chose something different for lunch...Mother had fish, macaroni and cheese, and veggies; Hubbie went for the Mexican food; and I stuck with baked chicken, baked potato, and steamed veggies.

From the restaurant, we went to a home improvement store, where Hubbie picked up stuff he needs for starting plants in the sunroom.

Then we went to the pond. Lots of folks were already there, parked along the shoulder. There is a ditch between the road and the pond, and the pond is surrounded by a fence. The eagles...there were four today...were perched on trees way out in the middle of the pond.

I took lots of snapshots, but my telephoto lens was not adequate to the task, really. By the time I cropped the photos on my computer to bring the birds closer, they were soft-focused. Hubbie brought a pair of binoculars, which helped us see the eagles close up. They are quite beautiful.

Today, we saw an eagle pair, and what we think was their offspring. The juvenile eagle does not yet have white feathers on its head. The eagle pair stayed close together on one of the trees. One tried to catch a fish, but missed.

We spent about thirty minutes at the pond, before returning home. At home, Mother was ready to go to her house. It doesn't take much to exhaust her. Even though she was in the van most of the time (she was even able to observe the eagles from her seat), and she only had to walk into the restaurant, she was tired when we got back home.

I spent the rest of the afternoon downloading the eagle photos and uploading a few of them to my social network page.

Later, I heated a bowl of split pea soup for Mother's supper, and Hubbie took it to her. After our big lunch, it was around 7 p.m. before we were ready to eat again.

Turned the TV off at 6 p.m., and Hubbie and I each pursued our own activities...he reading his John Grisham novel, and I playing on the computer, and then reading "Anna Karenina" on my e-reader.

Speaking of e-readers, I think when Mother was playing games on mine one day, she pushed a function that took her out of the game and onto the main window. In attempting to get back to her game, she accidentally pushed a function that charged $200 to my Amazon credit account. The charge was for a voucher to a resort in Montana.

Knowing, though, that customers might accidentally do this, there came a notice in my email giving me a telephone number to call to cancel the charge, if I wanted to, and I certainly wanted to! The customer rep knew I wasn't pleased about this, and was anxious to take care of the problem immediately.

Turned the TV back on at 7 p.m. Had bowls of split pea soup, with peanut butter and crackers, for supper. Spent the rest of the evening watching a couple of one-hour shows I'd recorded on DVR.