Ten-Finger Exercises

Celebration, with evening silliness

Bill cooked us a steak for supper, grilled it after I marinated it, and it tasted delicious. As the meat soaked, he cleaned the filters on the fish pond and I put in a load of laundry.

We have four new koi, as of this spring, and they are growing fast. They don't come up and beg like the old ones, but they do swim around crazily when we appear. Their names-- as if fish came to their names any better than cats do!-- are Uno, Dot, Dash and Flash. Uno is white, with an orange head, and always shows up first for the food. Dot is white with small black spots and two big red ones, like Rising Suns painted on the sides of Zeros. Dash is white with lots of black spots and one long dash, about an inch long, on his neck. Flash is orange with tiny black freckles and is the fastest. I call him Slurp too, because he sometimes makes a slurp sound when he eats his fish food.

We had a bottle of domestic champagne, a sparkling Chardonnay from Barefoot Bubbly cellars, in honor of our new grandson Zachary who will be born in January. Bill's son John is the proud father-to-be, and Trooper Karen is the mom. I mention that because Bill left me a message that Trooper was going to have a boy, and a co-worker of mine thought that 'Trooper' was the name for the baby. Mom is a Trooper with FL State Patrol.

After a wonderful, celebratory supper, I swatted a huge fly, a big hairy fly wearing pajamas and planning to spend the night; and I hit him, and I killed him. Victory! (Every little kill counts when you're battling late summer flies. I am not a Jainist.)

Now, Bill just brought me a small bowl of our last stashed away container of Dreyer's Carb Benefit Vanilla Bean ice cream. Heaven! Anybody who tried it and liked it should write Dreyer's and complain about their stopping production. And if you haven't tried it, take my word that it's really delicious and write anyway. They told me it might make them reconsider.