No Dunkin' Donuts, Week 3

WHAAAAAAAAA?  We came down the hill and looked for a place to park, with our hot tea and coffee and our two donuts and saw this!  WHAT?  What's going on?  Why have they put those orange barrels in our parking spot?

We saw some heavy equipment at the end of the long lines of barrels, and yellow tape for a long distance along the road blocking all parking.  I think there some serious road work about to happen in April.  We will see what happens.

Our beautiful view of the water was not to be today.

We sat in the parking lot at Tappan Beach, a lot further from the water than at our other parking spot.  You can see the water way off in the distance.  Oh well..  It was still coffee and donuts in an unsettled time.

Walking the Line

After we visited Amaka, we went by Trader Joe's because there were a couple of things that Kathy wanted.  One look at this line and we were out of there!   Well, not exactly.  I had my duties as a reporter to park the car and do a photograph to show you.  We are lucky that at grocery stores near us, do not have these kinds of lines.  And we are grateful for that.  I posted a really large file, so click on the photo and it will fill your screen.

Keeping Social Distance!

This is a little bit of a long story.  This is Amaka.  We worked with her and her fiance Chris in the marriage preparation program at church, and they are now friends.  They were supposed to be married two days ago, but had to cancel the wedding, to which we were invited, which was really nice.  You know, no large gatherings.  Amaka is from Nigeria and her family was flying over for the wedding.  Kathy wanted to make her a small cloth purse, so Amaka gave Kathy several yards of this spectacularly beautiful Nigerian cloth.  So today we decided to drive down to Westbury and drop off the purse and the extra cloth.  It was an understatement to say that Amaka was thrilled to see us!  We kept the proper social distance and then left after seeing her for just a minute.

A Couronne for Covid Times

Kathy was getting a bit antsy on this rainy day, so she decided to bake something.  "What do you want me to make?" she asked me.  "How about a Couronne?" I asked.  So this is it.  It is stunning and it has an almond filling.  The couronne technique comes to us from the Bordeaux region in France. Traditionally this ring-shaped loaf is composed of six to eight balls of country bread dough, blanketed by another flat disk of dough that holds the loaf together.  But the main thing?  It is absolutely delicious!

Venus and a Crescent Moon

Oh man, my apologies to all!  I forgot to post the blog last night!  I was so thrilled with the photograph, that I occupied myself sending it to a few friends, and then forgot the blog...   :-)  Stan sent me an email this morning asking where the blog was.  Duh!  I was at home working on some photographs when I got a call from a non-astronomer friend who lives a short distance away. He said: "Have you seen the moon and that star?  Man, I am some astronomer… I said that I hadn’t seen it, and that the “star” was Venus.  I went outside, saw the conjunction, fell down on my face in amazement, got up, and then got my camera!  This is the result!  What a wonderful thing this is to see, so beautiful and uplifting to see  Something, for a moment, that reminds us of the eternal, and which takes our mind off of our earthly problems for a few moments.

Is This a Catnap?

Is this what you call a catnap?  These wonderful animals are endlessly fascinating, aren't they?  Bebe is the gray cat to the right, and Grace is the black and white cat on the left.  Why she would lie down on her back rolled over against Bebe is something I won't ever understand, but maybe it is some sense of wanting to be connected.  She looks so silly upside down - she made us laugh out loud, and then I grabbed the camera.  Lucky you!   :-)

A Bag of Chips

I was walking alongside the harbor and from quite a distance away I saw these three people.  I wasn't sure what the standing girl was doing.  So I looked through my camera and zoomed the lens way out and was able to see that she was finishing a bag of some kind of chips.  The people were something like 200 feet away!  The long lens was able to get me this photograph, which I think is cute!

I thought you would be interested in what the whole photograph looked like with the long lens.  This is as far as the lens would "reach" and so then I cropped this image to get the closer photograph, above.