it’s chilly and rainy today so i’m taking a break from painting the old entrance to the house. i started the project yesterday and spent two hours taping all the glass that needed to be taped and then another couple hours applying primer but i got so tired and it got so late that i didn’t finish priming.

maybe tomorrow. it’s supposed to warm up into the 70s again next week, so maybe tomorrow i’ll do something else fun, like cleaning my house a little.

but not too much. don’t want to overdo it.

here’s us on Kevin’s sailboat on August 13th. i think this is the only time we actually wore our life jackets. what a lovely day.

Kevin bought his sailboat, an18-foot O’Day, in 2010. it came with a main sail and a smaller sail that he thought was the jib, which is the sail in front that gives the boat more power, and a third sail that he thought was a spinnaker. i think. and i believe that a spinnaker goes sideways to give you power against the wind another way.

but then he realized that the jib was a storm jib, a smaller sail for sailing in stormy weather when you didn’t want the wind to overpower you. he used the storm jib but didn’t get so much speed.

then he realized after only ten years of owning the sailboat that the other sail was actually a jib. i think he realized it because we saw another sailboat out when we were out and they were going much faster. suddenly it all clicked for him. at least this is my recollection of events; you’d have to ask him for the real story.

anyway, here’s the great big jib, a very exciting day!

We’ve definitely been out with the mainsail and the jib and did go much faster. i’m hoping we’ll get to go out again this week.

meanwhile…here’s mom’s row of new roses of sharon, which the deer haven’t devoured yet because we’ve been spraying them. plus mom has done such an excellent job of watering them that a couple that looked totally dead suddenly grew a bunch of tiny leaves. nice. that’s not mom’s house in the background, that’s the neighbor’s house between mom and us.

Les Paul and Riley were lying on the floor looking so peaceful but by the time i picked up my phone to take a photo, Riley was leaning in to start gnawing on Lester.

September 16th was our 14th anniversary, and I’ve already written about how kevin said we should ride 16 miles for 16 years and i told him it was only 14 years. We rode on the Sangamon Valley Trail, which is 11.3 miles one way. it was a lovely day, not too hot, not too many people on the trail. It was fun to go on a path that i haven’t been on for most of it. as we rode kevin kept asking me if i was OK, and i was quite ok and we made it all the way to the end. Here we are.

This section was mostly fields but there was plenty of shade along parts. I hope we ride this trail again soon.

and that’s all for right now.

ok then,

g.h.