So Many Good Books to Read

We have a saying in our part of the country:  If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.  The same can be said about Atlantic Beach, where each day brings a drastic change, often playing out very visibly before our eyes.  Dramatic dark clouds may gather on the horizon over the ocean, or smaller clouds will detach themselves and fly swiftly overhead, casting quickly-moving shadows over the balcony.  We do not see the weather playing out in such a visible way in our valley in Highlands, where an afternoon thunderstorm may announce itself with a boom and suddenly appear over the ridge, perhaps catching us by surprise.

Yesterday was no exception.  After our hike on Monday afternoon, it  began to drizzle rain, and then the wind picked up.  By morning, the rain had vanished and it had turned much colder, 32 degrees with a brisk 16 mph wind that made it feel like 21.  I started out the walkway for my morning Tai Chi but after a few steps I realized the surface was frozen, ice gleaming ahead of me.  

I walked gingerly back and began the familiar movements under the building here:  commencing form, parting the horse’s mane, white crane spreads its wings, and on to the end.  I like to run different kinds of workouts and lift weights in different ways, but it is comforting to begin each day with these same familiar movements, day after day, like pearls on a string, as someone once said.

The wind did not die down very much during the day, and it still cut sharply when I went out at 5:30 p.m. for our first experience with take-out food here besides Friendly Market (which is all take-out).  Martha had found that Amos Mosquito, a restaurant just down the road, had different and interesting specials each night they were open, and we had decided to split the entrée - grilled mahi, fiesta rice, and sautéed green beans (and delicious).  As with most restaurants these days, there was plenty for both of us.  

When times were “normal,” we would eat here once or twice each winter, usually Valentines Day or my birthday.  It’s an interesting name, and it originated from a mis-telling of an old-knock-knock joke by founder and original chef Hallock Cooper:

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Amos.
Amos who?
A mosquito!

The website explains:  During a brainstorming session someone suggested “Skeeter’s”. We all liked it because it went along with our décor, but felt it didn’t sound nice enough to reflect the high quality food and service we planned on providing. That’s when Pam remembered how Hallock would mis-tell this joke: Hallock always said “Amos Mosquito” instead of “a mosquito.”

The interior is dark and cozy and festooned with Spanish moss.  But that was back in normal days when we would actually eat in a restaurant – imagine!

This morning the wind had still not died down much, but I knew I could not let another day go by, so I completed another set of “Picnic Area Intervals.”  The wind was coming directly out of the west, so on my return to the condo it was biting shrewdly.  If it had been just a little stronger I might have called this a character-building run.

Now I sit at the table posting to this blog, having gone to Blue Ocean, our local seafood market, for our dinner tonight – crabcakes, prepared here by Martha, with a medley of roasted onions, potatoes, and carrots - and very likely the same crabcakes that Amos Mosquito will be serving tonight, at one-fourth the cost and in a reasonably-sized portion.  

After dinner, both of us will return to our books as we do every evening.  I’m pretty sure that the television works.

There it is, back behind the fresh herbs, and although we may plan to turn it on to watch the Inauguration on January 20, it is unlikely we will do so before then.  Not with so many good books to read.