Month: May 2014

  • GeoWaldo at GeoWoodstock

    I have reached the point in recounting our mini-vacation of the reason for traveling to St. Charles - GeoWoodstock. We were not able to stay for the entire day. In fact, we left before noon. We’d already had a great time in St. Charles and attended two GeoWoodstock pre-events; a flash mob and the official Meet & Greet.

    To understand how we spent the morning of GeoWoodstock, you need to understand something about my husband. He’s a nuclear chemist, a nuclear operations training instructor, a logical and analytical person. He is also creative, funny and quirky -- qualities that make him a very good teacher. His mother’s side of the family hails from the small town of Waldo, Arkansas. For about 20 years now, whenever we put in an order at a place like Panera, or are on a waiting list for restaurant seating, or other situations where he is asked what his name is, he has answered Waldo because it’s easily heard and understood in a noisy setting, and there’s not likely to be another Waldo in the building.

    When my daughter introduced me to geocaching, Brett didn’t get involved right away. Once he did start going out with us, he was more often than not the one to spot the cache. While he enjoyed finding the caches, he wasn’t really interested in logging them online, but after about a year of him finding nearly every cache we looked for together, Krysten decided since he was so good at finding them, he needed to be logging them. She set up an account for him and chose waldowalking for his geocaching name and a picture of Where’s Waldo for his profile picture.

    Brett found that so amusing, after another year or so he bought a Waldo costume and occasionally wore it to local festivals or just randomly when he felt like spreading joy and happiness. It’s amazing how many people get excited when they “find” Waldo. People of all ages and backgrounds will call out, “Waldo! I found you!” and ask to pose for pictures with him.

    Every year at GeoWoodstock a group photo is taken and I thought it would be a great opportunity for a real “Where’s Waldo” moment. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack his costume and I didn’t mention it to Brett so he could pack it. So the day before GeoWoodstock we found a party supply store that sold costumes and bought another one, just for the group photo. He didn’t have blue jeans with him, or the cane he usually carries as Waldo, but with the striped shirt and hat and the round glasses, everyone would recognize him.

    So we got to the park on Saturday morning and Brett broke out the costume, and THE HAT WAS MISSING!!! When we bought it, the clerk asked for my phone number and I countered with, “Why do you need that?” She said if I needed to return the costume, they would need my phone number for the refund. Bah! In the first place, I defy a business to deny me a refund for legitimate cause when I have the merchandise and the store receipt. In the second place, there was no way we’d have an opportunity to return it. So I got snippy and refused to give my phone number because I find it VERY irritating that I can’t purchase anything these days without being asked for my zip code, phone number and email address. But I digress.

    Brett was pretty mad about the missing hat, but we decided to create Geo-Waldo instead of the traditional Waldo. He put on the shirt with his cargo pants, put on the round glasses, stuck his waldowalking nametag in the brim of his straw hat, and carried his hiking stick. As we walked onto the grounds, cries of “Waldo! I found you!” filled the air and people began running up and posing for photos with him. Here are a few photos I took or found online:

     

    GW Waldo 3

    GW Waldo 1

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    Even the Groundspeak Lackey (a representative from geocaching headquarters) posed for a photo with him. After I took the photo for us, he pulled out his camera and asked for a photo for himself.

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    And we managed to force our way to the (almost) front of the group photo!

    GWXII group

    If you blow up the photo and look with a great big magnifying glass, you might see Waldo behind the giant frog. I’m standing next to Waldo, murisopsis is next to me, and Old Dog Sparky is next to and slightly behind murisopsis.

    We had a fun morning, but we had to leave right after the group photo in order to make it to Eureka Springs, Arkansas in time for Brett’s high school alumni banquet that evening. We stopped along the way to take photos of 14 signs in a rest area in the rain so we could solve a puzzle and find a cache on our way back east the next day. I’m not entirely sure that one was worth the effort, but we did it.

    We arrived in Eureka Springs with about an hour to spare before the banquet. Our motel was kind of a dive and filled with bikers. I think I got bit by a spider there; possibly a brown recluse. I’m keeping an eye on the bite, but it looks like the swelling is going down and the “blister” in the middle isn’t getting any bigger.

    I dropped Brett off at his banquet and took off for Springdale (an hour away) to spend a couple of hours with my uncle and cousin and drop off a couple of loaves of almond braid I’d baked and hauled from Michigan before the family starts arriving for my aunt’s funeral this weekend. And then I drove back to the dive in Eureka and we left the next morning to head home.

    I am leaving today for the first leg of the journey back to Arkansas for my aunt’s funeral. I’ll be going with my cousin from Chicago, and I’m not taking my computer with me, so no more updates until I get back next week. I’ll be able to read posts and comments on my Kindle, though, just in case anyone is reading this and/or still blogging here.

  • A Perfect Day

    I ended my last post with our arrival in St. Charles on Thursday night. If you missed that post, here's the LINK. I logged our cache finds online and we were soon settled into our comfortable bed and asleep.

    Val and Sparky had plans to hike in a park filled with geocaches on Friday. My knee was swollen and painful so Brett and I opted to spend the day picking up a few caches around town, attending a flash mob, finding a costume shop, driving 90 minutes to an interesting town, and meeting our friends at the Meet & Greet that evening.

    We started the day with a four-stage multi-cache through the historic Old Town. The first three stages were all nanos and when we got to the first one, we found someone already looking. That's how it goes at GeoWoodstock; you are never alone when you cache near the festival. But the guy we ran into at Stage 1 and the two guys we met at Stages 2, 3 and 4 were all friendly. Brett found one of the nano stages and I found the final cache, which made me happy because it was my 1400th find. Woot! One of the guys gave me two pathtags, so I was doubly happy.

    We grabbed a couple more caches with no problems and then made our way to the Original State Capitol for a flash mob. In the geocaching world, a flash mob is an event that lasts 15 minutes. Geocachers gather, sign a log, and sometimes stand in a group for a photo. This was the biggest geocaching flash mob I'd ever seen. Brett and I are somewhere under the flag.

     GWS Flashmob

    Through those arches is a lovely courtyard where we enjoyed a picnic lunch. It was actually quite peaceful back there. After lunch we packed up our ice chest and bag of food and went in search of a costume shop. We had forgotten Brett's Waldo costume and, since his geocaching name is waldowalking, he wanted to dress the part for GeoWoodstock the next day; particularly for the Group Photo. Luck was with us... we found a shop and a costume, although we later discovered the hat was missing.

    The highlight of the day for me was going after the cache in Kaskaskia, Illinois. We almost didn't find the cache, but it was the town I really wanted to see. Kaskaskia is about 90 minutes south of St. Louis. It is on the west side of the Mississippi River. It is in Illinois. Kaskaskia played a role in the Revolutionary War. The sister bell to the Liberty Bell is located there and was rung when the town was liberated from British rule. The Liberty Bell of the West is also cracked.

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    Kaskaskia was founded as a mission by Jeuits in 1703. It thrived in the 1800s, even serving as the state capitol of the Illinois Territory from 1809 - 1818, and the state capitol until 1819. Louis and Clark stopped here in 1803 and recruited several men for the famous expedition they launched the following year. In 1881, an earthquake changed the course of the Mississippi River, leaving the town of Kaskaskia, Illinois on the Missouri side of the river. The population has dwindled over the ensuing decades and hovers around 14 residents at this time.

    We had to solve some puzzles to find the cache and one of the clues was wrong (or else we couldn't find the right sign, but not sure where else we could have looked), so we ended up on a rather wild tour of the surrounding cornfields, the top of the levee (where we weren't supposed to be), and the cemetery. Finally, I figured out the only thing that made sense, changed one of the numbers in the coordinates, and we found the cache. Even if we hadn't found it, I would have considered our time in Kaskaskia well spent.

    We got back to St. Charles around 5:30 PM and had time to return to our hotel room and rest for a bit before making our way to Frontier Park for the Meet & Greet. We picked up our registration packet, found Val and Sparky, and Val and I worked hard to get our Geocaching BINGO sheets filled out. There were at least five different Bingo sheets filled with different geocaching situations or achievements. You had to find different people to sign your squares. I was sought after for having gotten my vehicle stuck, locked my keys in my vehicle, caching in over 12 inches of snow, and requiring medical attention while geocaching. I managed to get my Bingo card completely filled in just before we left the park for supper. The hardest square for me to get signed was, "Attended a Geocaching Event on Christmas Day."

    Sparky wanted to eat at the nearby casino, which had a buffet. That was our next destination. The casino was easy to find; it towered over the town and the driveway was a tunnel of lights.

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    Finding the buffet inside the building was a bigger challenge, but we eventually discovered it right across the hall from the actual casino, about as far from the building entrance as possible.

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    Once there, we found Val and Sparky waiting in line. There were only about three couples ahead of us, but it took forever to get to the front of the line. And then we had to wait to be seated. Once seated, everything went smoothly. We were able to get up and fill our plates from the abundant choices, and our server kept our glasses filled, dirty plates removed, and made sure we wanted for nothing. It was smoky and noisy, but the Kahlua Pork was out of this world and the company was the best.

    The next morning was GeoWoodstock. This post is already too long, so I'll talk about that tomorrow.

  • I'm Back!

    Bookmark61 and I got home yesterday from a long holiday weekend trip to GeoWoodstock XII. We left on Thursday morning and spent much of the day trying to catch up to murisopsis and Old Dog Sparky who were on a serious geocaching quest and making quick work of finding each cache on their list and moving on to the next. We actually caught up with them in Goodland, Indiana, but they don't know that. As we rounded a corner on our way to a cemetery, we saw them getting in their car which was parked at the curb. Brett pulled in close behind them and we sat there leaning toward the windshield and grinning as Sparky nearly backed into us and made a U-turn. We waved at them as they drove past, but they never saw us.

    Since we were so close to the cemetery, we decided to go on and get that cache and catch up with Val and Sparky afterward. We found an old house on the edge of the cemetery and spent some time exploring it. Brett went inside and walked through it. I tried, but there were birds flapping around in there and it unnerved me completely to have things flying over my head inside a building, so I admired it from outside. We found the cache and got back in the van, but Val and Sparky were long gone.

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    I should mention here that we were way out in uber-rural Indiana and none of us had cell phone service and we were way outside any 3G coverage. We didn't even bother checking for 4G. So we kept working our way through the list of caches Sparky had sent us, skipping ahead two or three towns trying to catch up. Eventually, my phone beeped at me and I found a voicemail from Val. It was really garbled, but I thought I caught the words "highland" and "picnic." I checked the list and found a Highland Cemetery so we headed to Attica, IN, but Val and Sparky had signed the cache logs before us and were nowhere to be seen in the cemetery. We were hungry and decided to go ahead and pull under some trees for a picnic lunch. As we sat eating our tuna salad sandwiches and enjoying the peaceful surroundings, a long freight train rolled past on the railroad tracks at the edge of the cemetery. We finished our meal and cleaned up our trash as the end of the train cleared the crossing on the road outside the cemetery.

    We figured we were far behind our friends by now, so I looked ahead on the list and chose the one cache out of the entire list that I really wanted to stop at, near the Billie Creek Covered Bridge. We left the cemetery and as we crossed the railroad tracks and came down the hill, we realized that there was another cemetery right up against the other side of the tracks. It looked really pretty, but we still wanted to try to catch our friends, so we took off down the road to Rockville, IN.

    DSC07283

    The bridge was wonderful, and there was a second bridge nearby which had been moved there, along with several historical buildings, to form Billie Creek Village. The village was closed, but we walked through it anyway. We entered through the back and it wasn't until we got to the front that we realized we weren't supposed to be trespassing. Oops. We found the cache and discovered that we had beaten Val and Sparky there, so we decided to wait for them. Here are a few of the things we looked at while we were waiting.

     

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    Val and Sparky eventually caught up with us and we spent the rest of the afternoon tagging along with them as they searched for caches to complete their Indiana Counties Challenge. We were talking about eating lunch in the cemetery when they mentioned they'd found some caches in the cemetery on the other side of the tracks. I asked them if a train had gone by while they were there and they said yes! So while we were eating our picnic lunch on one side of the tracks, they were just a stone's throw away from us on the other side of the tracks. If only our cell phones had been working! But then we never would have had the time to explore Billie Creek Village, so I guess it all worked out for the best.

    We stopped for supper at Effingham, Illinois and then got serious about getting to St. Charles, Missouri. We were staying in separate hotels and we were all pretty tired by the end of the day, so we planned to meet each other at the Pre-GeoWoodstock Meet & Greet event the following evening.

    I have a hundred things to do today and I've already missed one - tai chi at the library. By the time I was ready to go, I'd missed it. I guess that means I only have 99 things to do today. I will share more about our GeoWoodstock adventures later.

     

  • Feeling Overwhelmed

    Today I had a gazillion things to do and I only got a million or so of them done. I knew it was going to be hard to get everything ready for our mini-vacation to GeoWoodstock. Our daughter moved last week, and the day she finished moving, our houseguest arrived. I knew it would be hard, but I was sure I could do it. Then I hurt my knee and could barely walk. Today it's somewhat better, giving me hope that maybe I won't be completely crippled on our geocaching jaunt.

    But then, while our houseguest was still visiting, my aunt died and Bookmark61 and I found ourselves discussing options. You see, we will be in northern Arkansas before coming home so Brett can attend his alumni banquet, but we are only going to be there for one night. We were trying to decide if it would be better to come home from Arkansas and then I'd have to turn around and drive back a couple of days later, or take two vehicles to GeoWoodstock and the reunion, or drive in one vehicle and I would stay behind in Arkansas and he would rent a car to drive back to Michigan. We had decided on taking two vehicles when I got word that the memorial service will be a couple of days later than expected. Then my cousin in Chicago offered to carpool with me, so we changed our plans. We will be in Arkansas for one day, drive home, and a couple of days later I'll drive to Chicago and my cousin and I will go to Arkansas together.

    That leaves me rushing to do the grocery shopping, find a birthday gift for my mom, bake bread to take to my uncle, make munchies for the road, get my hair cut and colored, do the laundry, download geocaches, change the bedding, catch up on Grimm and Bones, go to chorus rehearsal and quartet rehearsal, hopefully make it to a water aerobics class, and think about the possibility of maybe packing a suitcase. I thought I might have to go to the doctor for my knee, but I decided since it felt better today I'll tough it out. There is no time in my schedule to be sick or injured.

    I was going to bake cookies tonight, but I'm too tired; I'll have to squeeze that in tomorrow or not do it at all. May is becoming one of those months when everything seems to pile on. I think we're going to have to stop planning geocaching vacations in May.

     

  • Sorrow Upon Sorrow

    If you are very lucky, you have at least one aunt and uncle in your life who, as my brother so eloquently put it, are Aunt Mom and Uncle Dad. In my family, Aunt Mom was my mom’s sister and Uncle Dad my dad’s brother, and they just happened to be married to each other.  Uncle Jerry and Aunt Wilma (called Aunt Willie by her precocious adopted brood) have played the role of Mom and Dad to scores of people besides their own children; their kids’ friends, friends’ kids, nieces and nephews, neighborhood children, church kids, second cousins once removed, and pretty much every last person with whom they’ve ever come in contact.

    When I was a teenager, Aunt Willie took my younger siblings and me and put us together with her four kids and made us a singing group. We called ourselves The Seven Ups and occasionally sang at church. Mostly, we just had a lot of fun getting together and rehearsing. For a year or so, we lived in the same small Arkansas town and my four double-first cousins, two younger siblings and I went to the same school. We cousins were always at each other’s houses and I don’t think the residents of that town (and I suspect the school administration as well) ever figured out which kids belonged to whom. Not that it mattered; my parents were the Aunt Mom and Uncle Dad for my cousins, and if any of us misbehaved, a phone call to any of the parents would get us in trouble.

    When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I enjoyed shedding my strong German ancestry and celebrating my less dominant Irish heritage every March 17th with the wearing of outrageous hats, tee-shirts, and any green thing I could find back in the late 70s and early 80s. Since that time, Aunt Willie has sent me a St. Patrick’s Day card nearly every year, often accompanied by a St. Patrick’s Day scarf, beads, book, or other green frippery.

    Aunt Willie and Uncle Jerry went through more pain than most parents ever will. They buried their youngest child, Susie, in November, 1975. They buried their second-youngest child, Diane, in August, 1976. Their son Mike passed away two months ago. Saturday morning, Aunt Willie, my Aunt Mom, passed away in her sleep. It has been almost beyond bearing as a niece and a cousin to witness the grief of my aunt, uncle and cousins at each unexpected blow. I will be returning to Arkansas soon for another family funeral, just two months after the last one. As devastated as the rest of the family is, I cannot imagine the grief Uncle Jerry, my cousin Gary, and Mike’s wife and daughters are feeling.

    I know Aunt Willie, who loved singing so much, would have greatly enjoyed hearing the barbershop chorus I joined last year. One of the songs we sing is called Irish Blessings and because of all those years of St. Patrick’s Day cards and gifts, I’ve always thought of her when we sing it. (I can’t figure out how to embed a video in this version of Xanga so here’s a link to the YouTube video.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XafIws0vwtE

    I am not linking this post on Facebook because I don’t want the comments to be filled with expressions of condolences to me. I am sad, but the condolences need to go to the husband, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters Aunt Willie left behind, not to me. They are the ones who, just a few weeks ago, buried a son, brother, husband and father. I am just the niece who moved away and didn’t keep in touch like I should have; who thought Aunt Willie and her cackling laugh and her St. Patrick’s Day cards and trinkets would always be there; who didn’t appreciate fully how big a place she had in my life until one day she was suddenly gone.

    Godspeed, Aunt Willie, until we meet again.

    Wilma

    May the road rise to meet you,
    May the wind be always at your back,
    May the sun shine warm upon your face,
    The rain fall soft upon your fields.
    And until we meet again,
    May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

  • Another Late Night Update...

    ... because late night seems to be the only time I can sit in complete silence and fall asleep on the couch while trying to update my six subscribers on my life. Remember old xanga, where we had hundreds, maybe even thousands of subscribers? Good times. I was chatting with Bricker59 on Facebook the other night (okay, I was trying to chat with him, but I dozed off because I'd just spent 5 hours in the rain), and it made me realize that I've gotten lax about posting again. Sorry... I've been kinda busy.

    The month of May always seems to be stressful and/or busy. Last May we canceled our Seattle vacation plans in order to go to Arkansas and help clean my mom's house. That was a stressful month. This year May is heavier on "busy" than "stress" - for me, at least. Don't ask joyouswind about her month so far unless you've come armed with chocolate. She moved from a fairly roomy two-bedroom apartment to a little studio apartment this month. All of her belongings had to come down a narrow staircase from her second floor apartment, hauled two or three miles down the road and carried up a wider staircase to her new third-floor apartment. She got a little stressy for awhile. I spent last week going over to her place and spending a couple of hours each day packing while she was at work. Most of her big stuff got moved on Saturday, and I've spent this week going over to pack the odds and ends and move all the boxes and small bits of furniture out of her bedroom and into the living room and dining room. Then, as that stuff got moved, I shoved everything from the living room into the dining room. I just kept emptying rooms into the dining room, and then into the kitchen. By Wednesday night there were a couple of vanloads of small boxes and miscellaneous things to move and she was in meltdown mode and running a fever, so I skipped water aerobics and we stayed up late moving that stuff in the dark and the rain and filling nail holes and cleaning the empty rooms. Thursday morning Brett went over and hauled away the stuff that was being donated to a thrift store, and I went over later to help throw out the trash and haul the vacuum cleaner and bucket and mop and stuff to her new place. She was still running a fever, but I'm happy to say she survived the move and got all of her cleaning deposit back, plus 40 bucks for the curtains she left behind.

     

    Elm St.

    In the middle of all that, I had a barbershop chorus rehearsal, a performance, and a quartet rehearsal. About 30 minutes after I got home from Krysten's place on Thursday, our houseguest arrived. I've had no time to get the house in order, but I don't think our guest is too worried about a messy house. I did get the towels washed and I bought food and toilet paper, so the important stuff got done.

    My knees have had me almost crippled this week. My left knee has been almost unbearably painful, which is significant because it's been my good knee up 'til now. Did I mention Krysten and I were signed up for a 5k walk for charity this weekend? Our houseguest also signed up to do it with us. I've been wondering how in the world I'm going to walk 3 miles when I can barely make it from the couch to the bathroom. Tonight I went to tai chi because I was feeling guilty about skipping the Tuesday morning class AND Saturday morning water aerobics, AND Wednesday night water aerobics, AND I'll be missing tomorrow morning's class as well. Not that I haven't been getting any exercise, what with the moving and all, but I'm pretty sure that kind of exercise is what blew out my knees. So anyway, I went to tai chi and my knees were hurting and popping and I was gimpy, but afterward I could walk better. So I'm hoping that after a night of rest, I might actually be able to complete the walk in the morning.

    Brett and I are leaving later this week to go to GeoWoodstock in the St. Louis area. Our friends murisopsis and Old Dog Sparky are also going and, although we haven't actually coordinated anything, I'm hoping we might meet up on the road and do some geocaching on the way down. I should probably be giving some thought to packing for that trip, but I've barely had time to even think about it. Between now and the day we leave I've got a houseguest to visit with, a 5k to walk, church, an afternoon of volunteering at the Red Cross, a barbershop chorus rehearsal, a tai chi class, a hair appointment, a quartet rehearsal, and a water aerobics class. Plus I probably will need to do some laundry in there somewhere.

    Yikes. I really wish I hadn't listed all that because now I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. But my knees are feeling better, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

  • Ditch Flowers 2

    I drove over a little bridge the other day. The grass is green and tall and I expect any day now the wildflowers will shoot up around the tiny creek in a profusion of purple and white. It reminded me of this poem I wrote and posted a couple of years ago, inspired by the wildflowers that grow around that bridge. Spring was so long in coming this year, it's hard to believe that we are closer to the middle of the year than the beginning; nearer the summer ahead than the winter past. I am hoping for a longer than usual spring, summer and fall to compensate us, the farmers, and the battered roads. I still feel inexpressibly happy when I feel a breeze blowing through the window, hear the gentle ringing of the wind chimes, and see the beautiful yellow-green of new leaves and grass. Even the dandelions make me happy.

     

    If life is a garden and we are the flowers,
    I want to be a ditch flower.
    I have no pretensions to superior breeding,
    no delusions of delicate beauty.
    I am common.
    I hope that, like the flowers that spring up behind the guard rail,
    I am tough,
    tenacious,
    resilient;
    Able to flourish wherever the wind takes me.
    I want to be that splash of vibrant color around the curve
    that causes people to pause on their journey
    and marvel at the unexpectedness of me.

  • Late Night Update

    I've been busy this week helping joyouswind pack in preparation for moving to a smaller apartment this weekend. I have firmly announced that I am officially too old and decrepit to carry boxes and furniture - especially down from a second floor apartment and up to a third floor apartment. So I am making myself useful by spending some time every day over at her place while she's at work, packing books and pictures and knick-knacks. We did the kitchen on Sunday. Tomorrow I'm going to start tackling the pantry, which is really a big, walk-in storage closet with food on one or two shelves and a whole lot of other stuff everywhere else. It's the smallest room and the most daunting. It's actually been rather peaceful going over there and spending a quiet couple of hours wrapping and boxing things up. Packing to move is not nearly as stressful when you're not the one moving.

    Spring is well underway in our little corner of southwest Michigan. Daffodils have bloomed and peaked. Tulips are blooming now. Our cherry trees are blossoming and I noticed a few blossoms have started on our plum trees. The lilacs are working on it, but it's still a bit early for them to bloom. The grass is green - in fact, Bookmark61 mowed last weekend - and the leaves have been popping out on the trees. And of course my allergies have been terrible, but it's so worth runny eyes and nose to finally see some color outside.

    I went to my very first barbershop quartet rehearsal recently. The four of us have never sung together as a quartet before and we got off to a bit of a rough start, but it got a lot better by the end. We haven't got a name yet. So far, the main contenders are Harbor Lights (to complement the name of the chorus - Shoreline Sounds) or Miss Demeanors. If you have a suggestion, put it in the comments and we'll consider it. The barbershop chorus has its first performance of the year next Tuesday. We're nowhere near ready to sing the new songs we've been working on, so we're doing mostly songs from last year's lineup.

    My toenail is falling off again. I have no idea why, unless it's from wearing my hiking boots so much over the winter. Last time I blamed it on hiking, but we just did our first real geocaching hike last weekend so I know it's not that. Maybe it's the hereditary bad toenails from my Dad's side of the family; I just don't remember anyone else having them fall off.

    And while we're talking about gross stuff, Boo got poop stuck in his tail today and spent several minutes scooting across the grass on his butt trying to get it off. He wouldn't let me clean him up outside and I wouldn't let him in the house, so he sat on the porch and whined until Brett got home and gave him a bath, which he needed anyway. Getting clean exhausted him;  as soon as he finished running around and rolling on the rugs and arching his back against any furniture he could fit under, he started sleeping it off.

    It got up around 80 degrees today and it's supposed to be warmer tomorrow. I broke out the sleeveless shirt, capris and sandals today for the first time this year. Yes, I wore sandals even though my toenail is falling off. Maybe it's the prolonged wearing of socks that's causing it.

    Lots to do tomorrow and it's past my bedtime. Goodnight, Xanga!

  • Packing

    I spent several hours yesterday helping joyouswind pack for a move to a smaller apartment. I think we spent about six hours, with a break to go buy more packing paper, tape and boxes, and run a couple of other errands while we were on that end of town. We got her kitchen packed. I don't think she's going to fit into the new kitchen, but we'll see.

    As we finished packing each box, Krysten moved it out to the "loft;" a wide shelf built over the inner staircase leading up to her apartment. She was scaring me silly!

    Krysten loft

    She is having to downsize her possessions in order to downsize her living space. This means letting go of some things that have sentimental value to her, but mostly sit around gathering dust. There were a few things I gave her as she made this apartment her home that  I brought back home with me yesterday, including my Princess House lead crystal ice bucket and the cheese dome we were given as a wedding gift. She never used either, and we only used them a couple of times each in all the years we had them. I guess Krysten inherited our delusions of classy entertaining, which kind of requires that you actually invite people into your home on occasion. Neither of us is good at that kind of thing, but I love that ice bucket anyway.

     

  • This post is not poetic

    Okay, people - it's safe to start reading me again. No more poetry for awhile, I promise. I just had way too much fun doing the National Poetry Month Scavenger Hunt.

    What have I been up to since then? A lot of sitting around and whining about various aches and pains. But besides that, I've started going to barbershop chorus rehearsals again, and starting this week there will be another barbershop quartet forming and yours truly has been asked to be the baritone in that quartet. We shall see how it goes after a few rehearsals.

    I'm back at water aerobics after missing several classes during Easter week. The pool was actually warm yesterday morning, which was nice. I've been going to tai chi classes still. In fact, April 27 was World Tai Chi Day and I participated in that. I still don't know the sword form, but I'm getting better at following the instructor and doing the moves.

    I was informed last week that if I didn't teach two classes soon, I would expire. I'm pretty sure they meant my Red Cross instructor certification would expire, but I didn't want to take any silly risks so I helped teach a class last week. My very first class and I was really nervous, so OF COURSE the first person to introduce himself to me did so by saying, "I know you from church! I sit a couple of rows behind you." I later learned that he also works for our local congressman, AND he sits on the Board of Directors for our Red Cross chapter. NO PRESSURE AT ALL!!! Good thing I made some of my sisters' incredible cookies the night before and brought some with me. I passed them around during break, and again as everyone was filling out the course evaluation sheets. We got high marks, and Mr. Church Member, Congressman's Staff, Board of Directors said, "You should sell these cookies." If my sisters are reading this, that is the second time someone has told me that.

    Yesterday was a gorgeous day, so Bookmark61 and I decided to take Boo and go geocaching on a couple of nature trails in the area. I think we hiked a couple of miles total. Boo was fascinated by the fornicating turtles we (literally) stumbled upon. He watched for a bit, strained toward them, and then started barking at them and wouldn't quit. We had a great time and found all three geocaches we were looking for, including this pill bottle in the woods.

    Roman 1 cache

    Brett was trying to mow the lawn when I dragged him off to go geocaching. When we got home, he started mowing again and then joyouswind dragged him off to see the new Spiderman movie.

    And that's what I've been up to. I'll probably be helping Krysten get packed this week for her move to a new apartment next weekend. That'll be fun.

    Okay, I've used up all my time. Gotta put on my shoes and get to church.