Had a very nice weekend overall, even though the weather was a little bit on the dicey side for most of it. Saturday was mostly cloudy, but warm enough to be outside. I took a trip into town to pick up some more fence building stuff. Found the little tool that is needed in order to turn the tension adjuster on high tension wire. It's nothing more than a little 'U' shaped piece of metal with a handle and a small rod that clips into the cogs that are on each tensioner. It looks very much like the mechanism on a standard 'come-a-long' if you know what one of those are.

    In addition I stopped at Home Depot and picked out a new 20 amp drill/hammer drill combo. It's beautiful.... and it works too, as I found out later while drilling holes in a couple of fence posts. I managed to get a couple more post holes dug and the posts set as well as finishing up the brace posts at the end of the fence line. All in all it wasn't a bad days work.

   It being Saturday night and all, Rima and I went out and had dinner at the local Mexican restaurant in Floyd. I have to say that I am starting to like that place more and more as I eat some of their different meals. I am finding that the secrete is to stay away from the more Americanized meals like burritos, enchiladas, tacos and anything that comes with their 'cheese sauce' on it. Instead go with more of the traditional meals and you'll do fine.

    Sunday was cold and grey, and later in the day rainy and snowy. So not a terrific day overall. Mostly it was an indoor day of reading and working on a jigsaw puzzle. We did get out and take a nice walk, but it was rather cold and wet to stay out for very long..

   Yesterday, Monday,  was even colder and wetter than the day before. All the schools and govt. services shut down because of all the ice and snow on the roads. There wasn't a lot of snow really, but everything was coated with a layer of ice that didn't really melt any until well into the afternoon. Rima got to stay home for the day also, which was nice. She worked of course, while I just goofed off, but we had a good time and got to interact some during the day. I had put one of those corned beef roasts in the crock pot on Sunday night and by lunch time on Monday it was 'fall apart' tender.... tasted good also.

   Rima had tickets to the symphony that night and we debated off and on if it was safe to go or even worth going out for it. In the end we decided to take a short drive down to the feed store for some sweet feed for the horses and then decide from there whether we were going on or not. We ended up going with it, and very happy we did. The program was made up of mostly Russian composers including Igor Stravinsky's 'The Firebird Suite' and Sergei Prokofiev's 'Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78'. In addition to the full symphony this time, they also had nearly 175 choral singers from 3 different choirs that sang the choral parts of the Prokofiev's piece. They also had a separate Mezzo Soprano, Tara Bouknight singing the part of 'The Field of the Dead' in Prokofiev's piece, where she is lamenting the loss of her loved one. It was profoundly beautiful and doubly nice because Rima actually knows her and her family.

   There were also two other pieces performed last night. The first by a local composer, Steve Brown, was entitled 'Blue Ridge Rhapsody'. A very pretty little piece that invoked some of the big time symphony sound at first, as well as some that had a more 'back hollow' fiddle jam feel to it near the end. I liked it!  Then finally, for an encore, and because it was St Patrick's Day, the strings in the orchestra performed 'O Danny Boy,' with the whole choir humming along to the tune.  What a splendid way to end an evening.

   Today has started out cold, snowy and grey again. Everybody is still shut down and it now appears likely that the schools will now have to extend their year because they have already used up their regular 14 days of 'snow days' for the year. It is warming up enough that the ice is starting to melt off of the trees, but now it just looks like it is raining again. If it stays calm then it may be nice enough to go out for a walk later. There are a couple final pictures from the contra dance week down in St Croix posted below. They involve a few of us learning how to make baskets out of native materials from one of the locals there on the island. They only thing that isn't shown is the finished product, which we did manage to get back to the states in Rima's suitcase. I just haven't gotten around to taking a picture of them yet. But right now I need to get on to doing my income tax for the year.

Contra Dance Week on St Croix - Feb 2014 

A local women, in the middle in the dark blue shirt, brought a whole lot of local plant materials over and held a class for a few of us on how to make some simple native style baskets. Rima is busy with the style she was teaching that day, while I worked at making one that looked more like the one at the bottom of the photo.

Rima is busy weaving away while in the background you have the bay to look at any time you needed a break. 

Rima managed to get hers done, and a very fine basket it is considering the rough material and the time constraints. Just right for gathering chicken eggs I think. 

One final view from our island beach as in the distance the schooner Roseway sails in towards the harbor. What a wonderful week it was to be down on a warm tropical island.

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