Canoeing, Lunch, Surgery, Autumn

There are a lot of topics in the title so let's get going. Yesterday we decided to go canoeing because I didn't know how I would be at paddling after my surgery today. We went to Lake Lefferts in Matawan, our fall back site. It is a nice lake and the houses are mostly all hidden by trees, so, as Anne said, you think you are in the Adirondacks. It was breezy with a little chop on the lake so we paddled for an hour. There are three lakes, or one lake separated into three parts by bridges and you can spend an easy hour and a half just paddling. You can fish there too, but we just paddled. After that we went to lunch at the Brass Rail on Route 79 in Matawan. It used to be called the Poet's Inn. It has been redone inside and is very nice. they have a $5.00 lunch menu which offers soup or salad and a choice of 25 items. I had a corned beef and Swiss sandwich on toasted rye which came with fries and chicken noodle soup. Anne had a chicken breast sandwich on a long roll and cream of asparagus soup, which was quite good. The portions were good and the service was quick and friendly. If you hanker for a glass of wine, that costs $6.00 or $7.00.

So, surgery was today on my right shoulder. My appointment was at 1:40 and I was to call the office an hour before to make sure everything was on time. We were going to have lunch, but they wanted me to go over then, so I said I would. They took me in right away and it took about 45 or 50 minutes to remove the offending cells and to stitch me up. I am now carcinoma free, I guess and I hope.

Autumn is coming tomorrow night around eleven o'clock. I don't know if I'll stay up to witness the yearly event or not. There really won't be much to witness at that hour, so it might depend on what's on television. I love autumn. I love the change in the air, the leaves, harvest time (I don't do harvest myself, but I love that other people do it.) and all of the great food that seems to appear at this time of year. I like to experience the color as leaves change and I wish they would stay just that way for months, through winter actually. I now put socks on in the morning until the chill leaves the air. My usual summer attire, when the pool is open, is a bathing suit, tee shirt (any old one will do) and sandals without socks. As the weather gets cooler, I substitute shorts for the bathing suit and add socks and sneakers. When it gets really chilly, I might have to put on a sweat shirt and long pants. This will be my second autumn and winter as a retired person. My, my, that time went by alarmingly fast. I note that I have yet to become proficient at playing the banjo, piano or mandolin and that I haven't mastered, or tried to master, a foreign language. In my defense I should also note that this past summer was exceedingly hot and a great deal of time was necessarily spent in the pool as a refuge from it. I enjoy being outside in the fall more too. I did enjoy most of the times that we went to the beach, except for the time when we got sand blasted and bug bitten, but I enjoy long walks on nature trails in the fall. So, Thursday will be the first real day of fall and I should hesitate not upon my going out, but go out at once, lest before I know it, winter descends. Well, there's always cross country skiing.