Idol - Eyes

I woke feeling very rested at 5am just as I had planned. My goal this morning was to get my run in before heading to work so that I could comfortably meet an old co-worker and friend for lunch. As usual, I whipped out my exercises and walked Ykraps before having coffee. I had to manually flip the coffee maker on since it’s preprogrammed to begin brewing at 5:25am. The morning sky was clouded over but the temperature was still fairly high – 63 degrees - for so early in the AM. After some coffee and meditation, I dressed for a run and was out the door just before 6:00am. As it often is, my body was a little shocked to be up and running before 6:00am, but once I had about half a mile in, all the kinks were worked out and I caught my stride. I was back home by 6:30am and the sky had brightened fairly significantly. Still, we were expecting rain later this afternoon and according to the weather gods, it was going to be heavy rain. That was swell by me, though. My grass is showing signs of stress since we haven’t had a significant amount of rain in over two weeks. That wet stretch in April – albeit most of it overnight – was now history. The thing I don’t like about the upcoming forecast is the expected seven or so days in a row of below normal highs with cloud cover. That puts a damper on my mother’s day planting. Each year, sometime in May, we get stuck in one of these spells where the weather turns cooler and it rains for days on end. We get stuck in one of those swirling rain patterns where the clouds spin over top of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Just when you think the rain has moved on, it comes around again like a wagon wheel. I thought that we might escape it this spring but that’s not the case. The good news is that once that moves out, we’re usually cast into the throws of summer. So, the moral to the story is that to get to where we want to go, we’ve got to go through a little bit of yuck first. I went about the rest of my morning prep without any hurry. Since I would be going out for lunch, there was no need to spend the fifteen minutes it normally takes packing one. I was ready for work at 7:23am and left the house at 7:35am after a few blasts on my guitar and a pic or two. I talked with Mindy until I entered the building and was about to lose reception. This would be a Mindy Wednesday later this evening. Work was impressively tame for a Wednesday. Things were happening but they were kept well under control. Before I knew it, it was time to meet my buddy for lunch. I left at 11:15am and made it to Bravo by 11:25am. He was already there waiting. Bravo was uncharacteristically not busy. We had beaten the lunch rush. We were seated right away and took our time looking over the menu options. As an appetizer, we ordered calamari – one of my favorites. Truly, though, theirs is nothing special. I ordered wedding soup and a salad. My buddy ordered Pasta Bravo! The food was good and the service attentive. We hadn’t hung out in a while and spent about an hour catching up about all sorts of stuff. We parted ways at about 12:30pm. I had already decided that I’d stop at Strader’s on my way back to the office since it was right around the corner. I like hanging out at the nursery this time of year. I get lots of inspiration there. I spent a good thirty minutes looking at all the annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs. When I got back to the office I felt fully refreshed and re-energized. The majority of my afternoon was spent in various meetings. It was 4:30pm when I reappeared in my office. I had just enough time to wrap up a few loose ends and that’s about it. I left for home around 5:10pm and it had just begun raining. In fact, it was raining fairly steadily as I made a dash for my car. Mindy was just about to my house when I placed a cell call her way. She had stopped and bought me a new battery for my garage door opener. I reminded her that I had replaced it with one that was working the night before even though it was an old, weak battery. She was able to get in before my arrival. I arrived minutes later and while Mindy took care of some of my chores, I took Ykraps on his evening walk in the rain. When I returned we finished the chores and decided to make some low-carb tortilla pizzas for dinner. Each one probably contains about 7 carbs. Not bad for pizza! During the prep, I phoned brother Bob for a couple reasons. First to congratulate him on his recent announcement, and number two request his help lowering my hot tub into the deck this coming weekend. After some debate, we decided that next weekend would be best for both of us. We tentatively booked it for Sunday, May 21 at 10am. I will now call dad and Tommy. After Mindy and I enjoyed our dinner, we headed upstairs for some snuggling and a nap. And it should come as no surprise that we both fell asleep. We didn’t sleep all that long since Mindy had to be home by 8:30pm. She was up and out the door by 8:20pm. I chose to spend the next 1.5 hours bouncing between the Cincinnati Reds baseball game, American Idol, and updating my blog. Chris was eliminated from Idol tonight, The Reds won, and my blog was updated through Monday. Tuesday was completely written, but not posted. I went to bed shortly after 10pm.