Strings, Fish, Lake, Etc.

I was off work yesterday and Mary Beth and I had a bit of a date day. We went out to Germantown again to see Iris Collective do a little show of love songs for the upcoming Valentine's Day with a piano trio (piano, violin, and cello...with Otávio on cello). They did love songs going back from the baroque period to pop songs of somewhat recent times. We got to talk to Otávio for a little bit afterwards. Then we had late lunch reservations at Coastal Fish and we all had most of the same very delicious things. This time we were seated outside (though their outside is roofed and semi-walled...it had been raining but it wasn't while we were there, though overcast). So it was a nice view of the lake. And while we were there we even got to watch a heron catch and eat a fish! For a while it was just sitting on the shore, gazing out, looking very contemplative. Then it started making these small, quick movements of its neck (very similar to the kind of little head and hand jerks that a cat makes when hunting) and then it dived its neck into the water and came out with a fish. After a wonderful meal (oh, and I had a different dessert...tropical cheesecake that was absolutely amazing with all this tropical fruit), we decided to walk around the lake. With it being overcast and not raining it was perfect for it as the sun wasn't just beating down on us. Over on the one side where the islands are nearby, it goes into a bit of a marsh. We got to see lots of animals. The herons (blending into the island shrubbery), ducks, coots (which we thought were black ducks at first until we saw an information sign about the wildlife, their beaks are different when you see them up closer, but otherwise do look a lot like a duck). We saw these black and white smaller things that may have been baby or young ducks, not sure, we didn't get too close to them. And that was my first thought, then I thought maybe they were something else, but then we saw a pair of larger ducks, one black and one mostly white with some black markings and we figured then those could be the parents. The coots were doing a lot of diving. Then Mary Beth saw one she thought never brought its head back up after diving and was kind of confused. But we saw another from closer and realized it was a fuzzy rodent. We thought they might be beavers (later we saw an informational sign that mentioned beavers) but then the tail didn't look big enough so we thought maybe they were otters, but they otherwise looked just like in the sign so maybe they were beavers after all and we just didn't get a good enough look at their tails? But yeah, lots of float, dive, nibble, repeat. One came up almost right next to us right against the shore and Mary Beth exclaimed "look at your ears!" and it immediately went back under with a loud plonk! (They usually were much quieter going in and out, but they apparently didn't like their ears being looked at.) Then we started to see lots of tiny open shells on the shore so we know what they were eating! Later we saw a coot catch a fish (it was a little less elegant than the heron as it kept slipping away). Lots of goose poop on the other side of the lake. Anyway, it was a pretty magical time and walk around that little lake. We made a stop at Home Depot on the way home. I came home to a package with some cds: Sonic Youth: Walls Have Ears, Body/Head: No Waves, Yoko Ono/Kim Gordon/Thurston Moore: Yokokimthurston, and an SYR shirt. A little later we jumped back out to Fresh Market for some things. This morning I woke up to hear that Damo Suzuki has died. Pretty bummed about that. Especially sad that the onset of covid caused him to not make it back to Memphis in 2020 as had been planned. At least I did get to see him back in the early aughts with Cul de Sac at Hi Tone. Anyway, one of the greats.