Before the groundhog awakens the insomniacs get the worms or something

Three thirty in the morning on Feb 2, 2018
Kelly has sent me the picture I tried  to describe in my last comments, and I can see many more pieces to describe. I think I could get to 1000 words maybe. There is yellow flowered wallpaper in the background, and yellow flowered curtains that I made and Barbara Brown thought clashed  with the walls. He is sitting at the round oak table we bought in Brown County  on a trip there one fall day.  On the table, his hand is resting upon, it is one of those portable radios he always had. Often he had two or three at a time. I never knew how he knew but they always had good reception and good tone and worked in the car or truck or house. I wish I could find one like them today, but I think the stations would be different now so it wouldn't be the same.
He is wearing a Los Angeles billed cap, which hides part of his face and his bald shaven head. Not shaven like today, to hide the baldness, but shaven for comfort and convenience. And his scalp would have been brown, like his face. He looks as if he just sat down after a softball game, which he may very well have,  and is daring someone with a camera to  capture his glare in a photo. It is that glare that once made me weak in the knees. Finally, now, after many years, it only brings me the memory of weak in the knees and, unless I dwell on it, which I choose not to do any more, the actual weakness has gone. But the memory is there.
The piercing eyes are still full of life and some sort of challenge. He was a ...well, you can see from the photo what he was.
I just got up to go look at the picture that I  put on the front of my frig  after getting it from Kelly yesterday. It was a total surprise and a pleasure and a relief to have it. The mustache, which I had forgotten, makes it more poignant. In fact, I didn't remember the  wallpaper or the curtains or the hat or the shirt or the table or the radio because the effect of the eyes was so strong. It is the intensity in the brown eyes that make the picture, for me, so affecting.
He is wearing a red and gray baseball (I think)  shirt and has a brown mustache.
I wonder who took the picture and if he had been playing softball. I wonder if the look was meant to be scary or seductive or just indifferent. I wonder how it would feel today to see that man. Well, that's only 465 words. It might be worth a thousand if I were a better describer. Dip could probably do a couple thousand at least.
Now, rather than a portable radio I have and Echo. And a card table rather than hand make oak.  No wallpaper, no curtains, no young softball player either.
And life goes on.
On the same day I received the photo in the mail from Kelly I made reservations at a hotel in French Lick for February 14 for a Valentine's Day/night mini vacation with a friend here who has become very close. We plan to visit a casino and I will gamble for the first time ever. I am nervous because my image of a casino comes from Oceans However Many and I don't know what people actually wear in those places. I do know that bus loads of people from old people residences go regularly, so how fancy can it be? Still, I will be glad to have had the experience and to know what casinos are like.
I will drive, as my friend in legally blind and cannot.  This will be a special trip. I haven't driven on an adventure for years and am eager for the trip and I have a sidekick. I have AAA because I  am a worrier and my car is 13 years old now and this assuages my fears of  being lost on a highway in a snowstorm on the dark cold night without boots and unable to hike through the blizzard and the mounds of snow pursued by a band of hillbillies intent on mayhem or worse. An ounce of prevention and all that jazz.  Car and driver are the extent of my contribution to the trip. Except, of course, for my scintillating presence.
All this is contingent upon there being no inclement weather and will begin at sunrise, which, by the way, will not arrive until 7:38 AM.
PS: I still can't figure out how to post to alicelee adlib from this computer.I am becoming familiar with other functions and do not hate it anymore. It is the best keyboard I've had so far. Although my hands position themselves wrongly and I hit one key to the left with my right hand a lot. I can do stuff when my head is awake and I am patient enough to spend the time to search around.