Temperature lows—60′s to 40′s. Temperature highs—78 to 69.

It’s one of those years…I simply cannot get the pond to balance: we keep dropping into areas where biological function slows down. The flowers are blooming more or less on schedule. We’re still in peonies and iris and the cherries and rhodies are past. But in the pond, we have yet to see anything but leaves from the lilies.

And if this go round with the biofiltration stuff doesn’t work, I’m going to do another drain-down.

We’re talking, btw, about going to Chattanooga TN next year, which will be our closest pass to the east coast in a while. I think it’s likely a done deal.

Meanwhile—the diets are stuck on a sticking point, but we’re persisting. We were very excited that Atkins has put out a new frozen dinner, but they should send this one back to the drawing board. Smelled bad while cooking and tasted worse. There are two of the dinners neither of us can stand, one of which makes me sick: the turkey one is that one, and the new one, Chicken Marsala, is really quite strangely vile. The rest are all good, and we are back on those, just patiently slogging away in a determination to hold the line: we’ve got a convention upcoming, so we can’t regulate what we’re eating as well, as we kind of had to eat the toppings off pizzas and the middles out of sandwiches this last week. We haven’t really gained, but we’re hoping to drop a pound or two before we have to go on the road again. Bad marks to restaurants who simply will not ‘hold’ a bad (and attractive) item off the plate, like French fries. I have gotten curmudgeonly, and when they serve it with, I simply ask for an additional plate, slide the offending item onto it, and ask the waiter to carry it back to the kitchen. SO there.