It’s Sunday morning, the perfect time for a poet’s prayer of thanksgiving.
Except for the fact that I’m not really a poet nor an expert at prayer. But there is much for which to be thankful. Take, for example, everything that happened Saturday. It was a nearly perfect day.
It started by waking up before sunrise to a beautiful sight. I got up, made coffee and fixed breakfast: Eggs scrambled with feta cheese and spinach.
While Janet went shopping, I got bicycles ready for the four of us to go on a ride. It turned out to be kind of a short first ride of the season, but:
- It was the first of what will hopefully be many rides the four of us go on together.
- We did it a full week earlier than the first ride of last year, according to my 2014 mileage log. And that’s a really good thing since the four of us are going together on RAGBRAI XLIII, which is just 125 days away.
After the ride, at least a couple of us may have sneaked in a short nap. After I woke up, I headed for the grocery store, where I bought chicken kebabs, twice-baked potatoes, asparagus and pie. I came home and fixed dinner.
Even though Saturday was Pi Day, we skipped the pie and instead headed to the video store and then a local ice cream shop. We came home with the ice cream and watched Gone Girl. a movie I picked that was met with approval.
Like I said, it was a nearly perfect day. In fact, a slightly longer bike ride might have been the only way the day could have been better.
So, I’ll end for today with a real poet’s prayer:
Thanksgiving
For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet (1803-1882)
Brome Hill 
Perfect. You all biked past me as I worked outside my Third Street property. Felt happy for the four of you. Perfect.
Wait a minute, here, Chris. You bought prefabricated chicken kabobs, prefab twice-baked potatoes, a vegetable and a store-bought pie and you “fixed” dinner? No! No! No! You “served” dinner. “Fixing” would imply to a lot of us scullions that you actually performed some form of transformational operation. Unless 60 seconds on high in the zapper is transformational, leave it with “served” in recognition of us lowly kitchen help who peeled the carrots and spuds, seared the pork shoulder, put it in the oven and made the gravy at a kitchen stove.
Well, now that I have that off my chest, I’ll confess that chicken kabobs, twice-baked potatoes and asparagus sound pretty good. We’re having the “obligatory in an Irishman’s house on March 17” tomorrow, but Wednesday night, we’ll have left-over pork roast on buns. Why don’t you and Janet and the kids drop by? We serve at about six.
I’ll check and let you know. Thanks.