Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 6:00 a.m. in "The City."

The current temperature is 37° under cloudy-skies. Winds of 9 mph make it feel like 31°. Today's high of 52°, will mark yet another day of below-seasonal average temperatures here in W. MI. There is a 40% chance for rain-showers this morning. The current forecast calls for several more days of sub-60° temperatures well into early May. Enough already! The sun will rise this morning @ 6:49 a.m. and set later @ 8:37 p.m. There are no Advisories, Watches, nor Warnings in the forecast.

My plans to stay out of the kitchen yesterday were only partially successful. I was pressed into service to make another batch of my generally successful vegan Italian meatballs. I'm going to chalk up my one less than stellar batch to a "Senior Moment" in the kitchen

I also was asked to make more of my soon to be famous, yet ever evolving, Cole slaw creations. Mary has plans for that in today's meals.

Speaking of meals, yesterday was a twofer for yours truly. Lunch was a bowl of tomato soup with oyster crackers. Now if I can just convince Mary that I'm okay if my soup is merely tepid when served. I think her desire to make it extra-hot stems from the days when her parents heated everything to the well-done and probably overcooked point.

She was so thankful when the folks at Green Giant™ came out with their frozen "Boil in Bag" vegetables. Mary's mother always followed the directions on the box, ao instead of overcooked and tasteless broccoli etc., Mary got vegetables that were done "Just right!"

Earlier in the day, I had suggested that we could have one of my favorites for dinner, vegan Veg-a Roni. That morphed into one of Adam's favorites, Spaghetti Role Casserole. I was good with that too, as I've always liked it a lot. The veganized version uses TVP in lieu of ground-beef, and vegan cheeze shreds, but it tastes the same and can always be included on my dinner table menu.

Mary always uses one of two antiques left from her wedding shower to serve this dish to her other leftover antique.

A wedding shower gift, an antique mushroom casserole dish, from an old friend of Mary's almost 47 years ago.

The Spaghetti Role Casserole!

For those in the know, gasoline prices continue to be low here in the Grand Haven area of W. MI. At the nearby big-box nearly everything store's gas station, the price for regular unleaded is $1.19/gal. That is also true for the D & W Quik-Stop that we often use, where the price is the same.

I managed to complete that home-maintenance project yesterday with no problem. That may well be a first. One tool required, which I had in our junk-drawer, and I was all done in about 10 minutes. That too may be a first.

I spent some time yesterday adding to my manuscript and practicing that musical piece I've been working. In all the years that I've been playing guitar, I've never had an easy time laying down a B7 chord. The song I'm working on has one in its bridge, so more practice is in order. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, I'll get it recorded for posterity.

I heard the southbound passage of the train on the RSTL @ around 9:45 a.m.. But as I was lying in bed at the time, I never witnessed its passage. Later, Ginger and Mary alerted me to the northbound passage @ 1:45 p.m. We watched as MMRR EMD GP 38-2 locomotives 2019 and 2025 passed by at the head of a long line of fully laden cars that included: 20 CHCs, five DBTCs, one DWTC, and one GTC.

Today, we will likely postpone our latest adventures in dog-grooming, due to the weather. We'd like to work outside, but we won't consider trying to work in cold and rainy conditions.

Instead, I'll be playing with the girls in my studio along with more writing. I also need to water my seedlings in the man-cave. I have to remind Mary that our plants in the foyer are also due for watering.

Mary is making great progress on her coloring project. Her subtle shading technique is really very good. She often comments that she is the last one to finish in a group, whether knitting, weaving or whatever. But as that old saying goes, "Haste makes waste."

I like to think that another old saying, applies too, "The hurrier I go, the behinder I get." That saying, is purportedly from Lewis Carroll, the pen-name for a 19th Century English writer of children's fiction, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He is most notably known as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass.  Ciao.