Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday

Lazarus Saturday I made a big dinner.  The menu was 4 kinds of caviar (I ordered it from Marky's.  They always provide good service.), humous with celery, green onions, and carrots for dipping, kalamata olives, a three-been salad, a beet salad, pita, baklava from Greece, rose, mint and lemon  loukoumi from occupied Constantinople, and halva with nuts from Lebanon.  We prayed the troparion before eating and read a sermon on the resurrection of Lazarus while eating. 

On Palm Sunday I fried three big wild tilapia and a whole big bag full of okra.  Basil made hushpuppies.  Again before the eating we prayed the troparion.  It was the first time I had fried a fish since 1989 when I lived in Tennessee with my first wife.  Wow.  That seems like so long ago.

After dinner on Saturday we watched the first half of the BBC The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.  We watched the second half on Sunday night.

Today is Holy Monday.  I watched a recording of last nights Bridegroom Matins service while I cleaned the guns.  (I know. I know.  I should have done it days ago.  I've been busy taking naps.)  I think I'll go work in the garden now.  I'm thinking about planting radishes and beets around the tomatoes.

Things I'm doing during the pesitlence.

Today is Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt.  All I've done today is make a quiche (eggs, heavy cream, shredded gruyere, sauteed mushroom & onions in a pie crust), and restock the first aid kit.  Because we want to avoid going to the ER for anything during this Bat Disease plague we want to be able to treat as much as possible at home.  I still need to get sutures and inflatable splints but I have everything else I might need..   

It has been raining heavily, even some hail, since about sunset last night.  This is not the expected weather for April, and I'm a little bit worried about the garden.  The forecasters say to expect weather like this through tomorrow.  

Kathleen is still teaching remotely.  I've been grading some of her students work for the past three days.

I'm still kind of hobbled by that foot injury.  Trying not to walk or stand too much.

I still need to clean the guns after going shooting with Anselm a few days ago.   But first I'll take a nap.

A Little Shooting

Yesterday, Anselm Samuel and I loaded all the guns into the car and drove over the Pacheco Pass to go to the Panoche Hills near Mercy Hot Springs.  It was weird.  Almost no one is on the road.  When we got to the BLM land we set up a some targets on one side of a canyon and shot at them from the other side; about 150 yards.  He's a pretty good shot.  He wasn't prepared for the kick from the Mauser and shotgun and got bruised up pretty bad. 

From the tops of the hills we could see clear across the San Juaquin Valley to the snow-topped Sierra Nevada.  While we were there I got an alert on my phone saying they were going to close the county because of the disease.  I was a little bit worried about getting home but there were no roadblocks at the county line yet.  So, now I am at home, I guess for a month.  But that's okay.  I seem to have injured my left foot pretty seriously yesterday (sprained or broken.  I don't know.) and am not able to walk.