Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness 1 Timothy 4:7

Sunday morning. I read my book for a couple of hours before getting out of bed and heading downstairs. Coffee, yogurt, and bread with peanut butter. At eight I turned on CBS and we watched Sunday Morning. Oscars, Oscars, Oscars.

Dave: We should go golf nine holes. So we put on our golf shorts, dabbed a bit of SPF-50 on our nose, made sure we had a 50 peso note to tip the caddy, and off we trudged to the course. Whenever the sun came out from behind the few clouds that are up there, it was hot.

It’s a short walk, maybe a hundred yards down our road, to the golf course. We take a cart path between the ninth green and the first tee, then pass the starter’s booth and the pro shop, past the large putting green, to the clubhouse. The patio at the clubhouse overlooks the driving range, and many mornings there are a couple of golf pros giving lessons there. The caddies usually see us coming and by the time we reach them they’ve brought out our clubs and pull carts. We store our golf shoes with our clubs, so we sit down and change out of our sandals and then go back to the starter’s booth at the first tee.

MaryLou was joining us for the first nine. We waited for a family, a couple and their two girls, who were ahead of us. Oh boy. I hope they can see us standing on the tee box with our hands on our hips, waiting, because they are all over the fairway and it looks like Dad’s giving lessons along the way. It’s a fine way for a family to enjoy the afternoon, but they really should let us play through.

But they didn’t. So after finishing hole two the three of us skipped a hole and it was clear sailing from there. But it was HOT. MaryLou went home after we finish the ninth, but Dave and I decided to continue on and do the back nine. Thankfully it got a bit cloudier and for much of the back nine we were quite comfortable. We even had a few raindrops for a couple of minutes on the sixteenth.

It really is very lovely here — little yellow kiskadees, red-headed woodpeckers, white herons, lazy iguanas sunning themselves on the rocks beside the cart path, beautiful homes lining the green fairways, protected from our errant shots by lush trees — giant ceibas, royal palms, and even some tall bamboos — and every so often, just for contrast, there is a tree in bloom — yellow, red, pink, orange, purple, or white flowers. Glorious!

When we got to the eighteenth tee I sent MaryLou a text and she joined us on the patio bar for lunch. Ceviche camarones (shrimp) and a Modello Especial. Great. I Facetimed with the kids for about half an hour after lunch. They, together with a group of their friends, are ‘stuck’ in Grand Forks for an extra long weekend. The wind and snow has closed the road going home, so Max will get to play in the pool with many of his friends for an extra day. Fun times.

Back at the house, we showered and rested from our hard work on the course. Dave made caesars for happy hour and we watched another episode of Mrs Maisel while the Raptors lost their game and the Jets were getting ready to lose theirs.

MaryLou made pasta with meat sauce and a salad for supper. When we’d finished eating it was time to queue up the Academy Awards show.

For the last ten years, maybe twenty, I’ve watched as many of the Oscar-nominated movies (if not all) as I could before the awards night. I’d seen most of this year’s list, although I did not see the Black Panther movie. Of course, the Driedgers seem to watch all the movies all year through, so for them this is no big deal. There were few surprises during tonight’s show. In the end I guess everything turned out the way it was supposed to. After it was over MaryLou went to bed. I sat on the couch until Dave, on his way up the stairs, woke me up and told me to go to bed. So I did.