Get as far away from home as you can!!!
No, really, I did have a banjo lesson scheduled for today, so I took off for The Cities at about 8:30, and I was thankful for the heated seats in my Subaru. I used to toss them off as frivolous luxury; but I started to use them when the temps dipped below 40. It feels really good on the back. But today the seats would have been frozen solid without the heating feature.
I had a very good lesson. I had been struggling with "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" lately, but as my teacher pointed out, that was just because I had been trying too hard to adhere to the written-out, Earl Scruggs version. When I realized I could just use chords and picking patterns to basically fill in the whole song, I did much much better. I also realized that I have a way of tuning out during lessons when the info comes too much at once. I gotta get over that.
Then I did the obligatory stop at Trader Joe's, where I found horseradish sauce WITHOUT high fructose corn syrup (could not find that at the local grocery store!) and a few other goodies. And a case of Three Buck Chuck. Some wine snobs behind me in line were talking about how they did not like Charles Shaw. Well, fine. Pay eight, fourteen, thirty bucks a bottle, but I LIKE having a decent Merlot or Chardonnay without having to budget for it.
On the way home I saw one raven who performed a special trick just for me. I just adore ravens when they do that flip over thing in flight. :) And I saw three bald eagles, two soaring over the Kettle River and one over Sand Creek. Awesome.
It turns out I returned home just after The Hermit and kids, who had been to Duluth for a McD's lunch and who had picked up Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner. So this totally blows my standing in the locavore/glocavore ratings, but...chicken artichoke bacon pizza is very good...and I didn't really eat all that much... :-)
The chickadees and pine grosbeaks and even redpolls were busy at the feeder. Birds gotta eat.
Parts 2 and 3 to follow. It's a three day weekend! Stay warm!
7 comments:
Seems to me that once the Papa Murphy's pizza gets to your house, the environmental damage is already done, so it doesn't really matter how much of it you eat. At least, that's my rationale.
I've been taking Banjo lessons for the past two years. It's a way for me to access parts of my brain that have gone unused for years since going back to school,in my late forties-fifties. Jed Clampett has proved a bit difficult for me, but getting better with time. Wish I had longer fingers. Once a month bluegrass musicians in the area get together to Jam. I'm still in the Sow Jam group, what a gift to have people to play with on a regular basis. I'm one of two female Banjo players.
three buck chuck that sounds bad must be shipping costs We still have a coupe of cases of two buck chuck in the basement. In my estimation it is good wine and the Chardonnay won a gold medal last year in CA.
Brrrrr.....freezing here. too. I was hoping you'd share a photo of your thermometer so I could see how (relatively) easy we have it! I'll bet that propane heater was worth its weight in gold these past nights.
Sounds like a good start to a 3-day weekend Deb!
Pablo- Yes, the damage was already done. I just wanted to mitigate damage to my waistline.
Lymm- You are fortunate to have people you can play with once in a while. I'm still looking for that here.
Rick- I don't know why it's Three Buck Chuck here in MN, maybe taxes. I don't know, it's still a good deal. I love the Chardonnay.
Denise- you are right, I am absolutely in love with the propane heater. My only complaint is that sometimes the house gets too warm!
RuthieJ- It was a great start. And I had a great banjo practice today, so that was even better.
30 degrees here tonight ... positively toasty by comparison.
That corn syrup is omnipresent isn't it?
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