This Wednesday evening, I came down with food poisoning from some frozen yogurt popsicles that had gone bad from freezing and thawing too many times.  I was sick for three days and am still on the weak side. I can finally do all my tasks today and worked all day, but I have to rest between each task.  Still, it’s a great improvement. I was able to eat supper last night.  I made enough lamb with orzo to last two nights so we can watch the Super Bowl without interruption. With it I’ll make a pear and fennel salad from Lydia’s PBS program. 

I worked on the enormous pile of mss. that came in for first the regional contest and then a huge, huge pile for national entries.  I stopped letting there be trash readers as their taste was too academic. They would discard poems because they were political or straightforward.  I read every entry myself now.  It takes a lot of time and I tend to write no poems while I’d reading and judging.  I have the winners and runners up chosen for the regional, but I’m still slogging my way through the first reading of all the national entries.  It will take at least three more days, maybe longer, before I can begin the pile of the poems that have some merit.  It will take a few days to rank them, discard whatever I can first. 

The two remaining cats are more and more friendly with each other. This afternoon they were lying on the bed together.  They don’t cuddle yet, if they ever will. Both of them used to cuddle with Mingus.  Two years ago, we had four cats; now only two.  We want to get a male kitten when and if any can be found. It’s hard these days.  I can’t introduce an older cat.

We had a mostly extremely mild week until last night, when it turned colder and we had a light snow that is just left in a few patches.  Instead of a January thaw, we had a February thaw.

Dale and I have a lot of work to do Monday.  I have two email addresses.  For years, I used the old one for submissions only.  But now the provider is going out of business and it’s being sold to a big company, not on the Cape, that intends to raise the rates.  So, I’ll just use the gmail address for everything. But I’m slowly making a list of all the people and places I still want to hear from, notifying each one that the c4.net account will soon be closed [often very complicated and difficult]. I will be making that list for some time, but we need to get started on it.

I’m done with reading for pleasure or knowledge until these manuscripts are all dealt with.  I was watching the Olympics for quite a while but as of now, if I never see anyone on skis for a year, that will be fine.  Now I only watch figure skating and speed skating now. I will miss football Sundays. It’s a great excuse to take off Sunday afternoons and relax.  Both Woody and I need a reason to take it easy.  We’re both workaholics. I have begun watching certain stakes races on Saturday, but that doesn’t take much time.  Just a few preliminaries and a two-minute race.