It was a free HBO/Cinemax weekend on Dish Network. My basic cable package is plenty pricey without premium channels, and I do okay without them. But it's a treat to have a free weekend once in awhile, and I watch and record as many movies as I can. It's a chance to see a lot of okay movies and a few that are supposed to have been big blockbusters.

And I got some housecleaning done, preparing for next weekend when people are coming to spread somebody's ashes at our waterfall because she always liked it so much. She has had physical limitations for the past twenty years, and has been unable to get up there. Had we only known, we would have made the effort to get her there before the 2013 floods because all that water reshaped the watershed, and now it's even more difficult to get there. Well, now that her spirit is free of the mortal remains, she can go up there any time she wants.

The old folks in that family are not able to go up there, so we have to find a place down here to strew some of the ashes. I don't know where that will be. They will probably lounge around my house waiting for the group to get back from the waterfall - probably 90 minutes all together - so I have to come up with some refreshments for them to nibble on.

This family was friends with my family when I was growing up, and I got to thinking about serving the foods our mothers made back in the 1960s. Here's what comes to mind: cream cheese clam dip and potato chips - just plain old potato chips; fancy Jello dessert that is layers of Jello with fruit, then mini-marshmallows, with a cooked sweet topping and cheddar cheese grated on top to offset the sweetness. One time I sent the recipe to the deceased and she got all excited because she'd been trying to find it for a long time.

One of the things my mother used to make was red rice. It's where you bake tomato juice into cooked rice seasoned liberally with bacon. I finally saw a recipe for it in a cookbook from Charleston, SC. If I serve that, it's an inside joke with myself because it was on a vacation trip there that her boyfriend thinks she started drinking again, after about 12 years of sobriety. I'd no idea she'd fallen off the wagon, and if did, that explains a lot of her mental problems of late, and probably contributed to her death - along the lines of a Marilyn Monroe situation.

For dessert, I could make peach pie or cobbler. I wouldn't tell the family, but she gave me those frozen peaches last time I saw her. I was thinking I could make them into a pie to give back to her, and she said: "And don't give me these back in a pie." This upcoming occasion seems like a good way to use them and get it over with.

Beverage-wise, I don't know how many of the friends are alcoholics who've been through AA, so I'm not serving any kind of alcohol.

Remember our friendly fox? I would dearly love to have him back.