Nice weather continues; Maggie time off; run in Hélécine; bulk food store opens in Wavre; heritability of G.A.S.

Maggie is enjoying her time off, and has been doing some sorting and organising around the house.  As well she's loving the free time to work on her latest embroidery project, and since the holiday started on Saturday the 16th, she has managed to add 2,800 stitches to her current project.

Frequently Clyde has been the one who likes to play with the loose threads, but tonight Bonnie is captivated by the ligh reflected by her scissors bouncing across the ceiling, so she is sitting sentinel instead.

Yesterday Maggie and I drove out to the Jodoigne area for a morning run with Tiffany and Lawrence, and then a nice lunch together.  Yoshi was a bit difficult.  Lawrence is quite fast and runs at the front of the group, and I do my best to keep up with him, while Tiffany and Maggie tend to take a more relaxed pace and a shorter distance, but Yoshi seems to think that we are all supposed to stay in one group, so he gets a little stubborn if we get separated.  I finally gave up trying to drag him along with me, so handed off the leash, and he ended up running with Maggie and Tiffany on the shorter route, while I ran my first 12km in several weeks with Lawrence.  It's good to run with a training partner who will challenge you a bit, and I was well-rested and so felt pretty good.

The weather continues to be clear, with sunny days and temperatures in the teens, while at night there are usually frosts.  The one down side to such an extended stationary high-pressure system is that the air quality was noticeably bad today, as there hasn't been a strong wind or a good rainstorm to clean the air for several days, and the air pollution - I think from traffic mostly - tends to stick around.

This morning I had another physiotherapy appointment, and then Kiana came by to go with us to the opening of Macavrac, a new bulk food coöperative that has just opened up in Wavre, not far from our house. Like many of our friends we are concerned about unnecessary plastic packaging, and are also conscious about prices, so we wanted to go check it out.  Their focus is on organic, locally-grown, and bulk food.  For example, the "LLN" on the pointed red cabbage shown above indicates that it was grown in Louvain-la-neuve, only a few kilometres away.  We only bought a couple of things there but are considering becoming members of the coöperative.  A television crew was there and did a report; we are briefly visible around the 1:45 mark...

This afternoon was a long editing session with Evan to prepare the church video.  It's coming together slowly, but I'm thinking now that we might actually do a couple of versions, sort of like how movie distributors have teaser trailers, and then multiple versions of their trailers to promote films.  Evan is a really talented editor so it's not a hardship at all, but one does have to put in the time.

Malcolm called us up this week and we had a good conversation.  He has been working very hard on his mandolin and classical guitar, so much so that we haven't seen him for several week-ends.  But he's making great progress.  Here are some photos that he sent us recently...

I found something on Facebook marketplace that he was interested in, and after some discussion it looks like it will be his: a gently-used Dobro resonator guitar...

He is always noodling around with my 1934 resonator "Ophelia" whenever he is home, but would like a resonator of his own to play whenever he is at a Bluegrass or old-time jam session, and the price is very reasonably on these spider-cone resonators, especially on the one that we found.  The owner has reserved it for Malcolm but he won't get it until next week.  (* note: in case you were wondering what the acronym G.A.S. stands for in the title of this blog, it is "Gear Acquisition Syndrome", and I think that Malcolm has inherited it from me).

Duncan's bulletin came back, and it was an improvement over the last one, but still not spectacular.  We know that he can do much more, and are trying hard to encourage him to study, and to give him some pointers on effective exam preparation.  Apart from his schoolwork, karate, Japanese superhero comics, and hand-painted models, he seems very interested in the piano or the drums; two instruments that no one else really plays in our family.  I am going to cautiously support these interests and see about some drum lessons at a nearby school, and I've dug out some of my beginner piano music and left it lying around.  We'll have to wait and see what he does.

In the meantime we are just enjoying the wood fire with the furry beasts...