Mozart's day

very restless night of sleeping for all of us as we turned the clocks ahead and lost an hour of sleep and at the same time i think our one remaining cat is going through some kind of cat grief or simply cannot figure out where the now deceased cat is and spends his time loudly crying out for him.

so it was no trouble getting up early and i am sure the about 3 hours of sleep will catch up to me sometime. but out the door i went. almost 50 degrees and not raining yet so i headed north and did my usual to the church run and then stopped on the way south and ran 12 x 100 striders to try and wake up the legs. then ran past the new bunch of sheep and over to the river. very pretty this morning as it was now about 7:30 which normally would have been 6:30. nobody out at all as i headed down the thames and i went all the way to botley road. then i decided to keep it simple today and just turned around and went back up the river. i did cut over to the canal and went north and got off at walton well road and headed back through port meadow and looped around and then back down binsey lane and home. just short of 8 miles and that was enough and all i had time for as we had a morning "coffee hour" mozart concert to go to.

held at magdalen college today as there were too many people for the more usually used holywell music room. a nice 70 minute concert by the adderbury quintet group. and after we headed over to the white house pub and had the uk version of fish and chips. this pub claims to make the best fish and chips in oxford and it was the best we have had so far by a lot.

then we walked over to the botanical garden and took a tour of the lovely gardens. they have great soil here and lots of rain and things grow very well. wonder how they would deal with my Virginia red clay?

we left the gardens and headed over to christ church meadow. walked the loop along the cherwell river over to the thames river and then walked up the thames through grand pont park back to botley road and over to binsey lane. probably about 7 miles of walking all together.

home for a bit and then beth went out to walk some more while gail had a bit of time to do some work and i went to the range to hit some balls. still nice out and no rain- the predicted storm must have passed us by. today's range session went ok. by ok i mean i continue to learn some things and i hit some nice balls and also some less than nice, but i still feel i can get there. my swing was longer and smoother for many swings and i even hit my fairway wood pretty good. worked on finishing the swing in a balanced way and also on my turning the sternum move without the hands. then added staying down and flexed. will keep at it. one bucket was all i had time for and i will get to do more at some point. after hitting 2000 chips and pitch shots and putts while i was home, and not getting to do any short game here at all(at least yet) the full swing is it for now. i have come up with a plan for the shorter stuff, but have to wait to implement it.

and that was the day- dinner and sunday paper, etc will fill up the evening and beth and i have a long walk planned for the morning in the three hour window we have before the big storm is supposed to hit. will adjust on the fly so to speak and see what the day brings us. london trip on tuesday we hope.

last day of 8 months tomorrow. april 22 makes us two digit midgets for those of you who have counted down days before.