School Days in Sunny Florida

Well, school has started in southern Florida. Anthony is in the 6th grade in a new school. Alex is now in 4th grade in the same Lakeside school. Roxana reports that Alex wants to study hard to get on the honor roll just like Anthony did. Anthony's new middle school campus has seven buildings and he has to change classrooms now for some classes. He only got lost once on the first day of school. He is taking ninth grade math and a few other advanced classes. I know he didn't get the math skills gene from me. Math was never one of my strong subjects. So things are off to a good start in south Florida and will be more improved when Pete gets home from Haiti next Thursday and has two months off before he heads to DC for language training. I'm sure he will miss being in the thick of things, but will certainly enjoy the time with his family. They have vowed not to take another assignment where they are separated.

Rescue at Sea

Yesterday evening Anne and I went to the beach at Sandy Hook. It was about 5:00 o'clock when we got there. We spotted an empty place near a life guard stand and had just arrived, but had not yet spread out our stuff when, all of a sudden, the two lifeguards leaped from their stand and rushed toward the water. There were not many people in the water and we could see the object of their attention waving his arms and splasing furiously. As they ran, one lifeguard gave many short tweets on his whistle to alert the other lifeguards. One guard from another stand rushed over to the stand near us and grabbed the yellow rope attached to a float the guards had with them. As they approached the swimmer, he slipped beneath the water. We couldn't see what was happening out there, but soon the guard on the stand began pulling the yellow rope until the guards with their prey were close enough that they could stand. Soon they were able to pull the man from the water, a burly lifeguard. The whole thing had been a training exercise. Very realistic though.

We went in the water which was warm, but there were some jellyfish floating around. It was a very lovely evening at the beach with some built in drama. Better than television.

I Think I Should Write Something

I don't have anything particularly exciting to write about, but Anne is out at a Master Gardener meeting, I don't want to watch television, I'm not into any book right now, I practiced my banjo earlier, although, God knows, I should practice all day, so what else is there to do. Besides, this lets me use the back lit keyboard on my new laptop.

We still have nothing definitive from our seller in Rochester. We spoke to him on Thursday and he agreed with everything we said and said he would speak to his estranged wife about a price for the house and get back to us on Friday. On Friday, I got an email from him (be still my beating heart) that he couldn't get us the information until tomorrow (Saturday) because he got very busy. Saturday came and went. Sunday came and went. Monday came and I emailed him suggesting a price and a closing date. Monday went. Tuesday came and went. Wednesday came and has almost went. In the meantime we have signed a contract to sell our house. I have little patience left. It is getting depressing.

I hate to throw out books, but I'm throwing some out tonight. Maybe someone, somewhere in the world would want them, but I don't. Old reference books, college history books, an out of date thesaurus. We won't have room for half of the books we have now in our new home, assuming we get a new home, so I have been busy sorting through stuff. I previously posted about how I really only need three books because I won't remember what I read and each will be like an entirely new book each time I read it. I am looking up over my desk to the books lining the wall above me and am getting even more depressed. That's only one area of shelving with books. I told our buyers that I was thinking of selling them the house furnished and just walking away with the clothes on our backs. they looked horrified. We aren't nearly as bad as some people. Everything is at least neat and somewhat organized. I mean there aren't piles of stuff all around the floor or anything. We just have too much stuff.

I got a call from the dermatologist today that the biopsy they took from my right shoulder is positive for basal cell carcinoma and they want to excise it. Of course they do. That is scheduled for August 30th. I figure, let's get it over with. Sigh.

I find that I'm not following up on my retirement rule to work in the morning and to relax in the afternoon. I have been having a great urge to keep on  working in the afternoon as well and then giving in to the urge. I know that some of you readers are thinking, "Give us a break," and "Woman's work is never done," and things like that and maybe some things that are more unkind. But, at least I'm giving in to the urge, sometime.

This morning, in addition to tying up books and magazines, I also filled out our applications for passport renewals. You can do it online and then print them out. It seems simple enough, but I wanted to check everything carefully. Then I took them to the post office and mailed them away. Hopefully, we will have our new documents before we travel to Mexico, maybe sometime next year.

I guess I've run out of things to say, so I will stop saying them. The AARP magazine that came today has an article about how people become creative in their "later" years. I should go and search out my creative muse or muses. I think they're hiding out somewhere. "Here muse, let's have a little talk, you and I."

Who Was That Guy Anyway?

Yeah, the guy that invented the computer. What kind of a person would do such a thing? I seem to remember that I was perfectly happy (technologically speaking) before we had these things. I remember calling people on a telephone that was wired to the wall so you couldn't misplace it. There were clocks  that told what time it was so if you were late for something it was your own fault. You could write a letter to someone on a piece of paper and for a small number of cents a man in uniform would deliver it for you. You could buy a small notebook made out of paper to write things in so you wouldn't forget. If you ran out of pages, you could buy another one and another and another. My father-in-law did that and he kept them all well marked and organized.

The other day I bought a new computer for my lap, although I hardly use the one I have on my lap. I use it on the top of my desk.  I bought it at Staples like my daughter suggested. She was right. The prices are better and they now have the equivalent of the Geek Squad only their prices are cheaper.  They were very helpful in answering questions. I had them set it up and get rid of the "bloat ware" that seems to come installed on all new computers. They did it in a day. Then came the hard part; getting all my pictures, music, etc. from my Apple iBook to my Toshiba PC. A Google search gets you a number of sites that tell you how to go from a PC to a Mac, but precious few that say anything about going the other way. I found one that was promising and it started out telling me what to do and then half way through switches to how to go from the PC to the Mac. There were even comments from people who couldn't fathom why anyone would want to transfer anything from a Mac to a PC. Hadn't we, the great unwashed, learned anything about computers? Didn't we know that Apple was the second coming and that those who used them had reached Nirvana? Yes, I know all that already, but I got this one for less than half the price of the Apple, so end of story.

So, anyway, I was getting confused about all the steps to take to copy my music from iTunes on my Mac to iTunes on my PC. I decided to burn my music library to a few discs and see what would happen. The end result was that my new computer copied all of my music, but didn't copy the playlists. I reasoned that I should  quit while I was somewhat ahead and to just reconstitute my playlist manually. That's not too big a deal. The next job was to copy the pictures. In our household we have had the practice of downloading pictures from cameras to my iBook and to Anne's PC, so most of the pictures are in both places. Rather than to spend a lot of time figuring out a cross platform transfer, I just copied the pictures from her new laptop to an external hard drive and then plugged it into my machine and voila, there they are in Windows Live Photo Gallery. I'm still manually entering favorites, blogs and such stuff. Not a bad thing, because I now have to look at some of these things I've been carrying and realize that I no longer need or want them, but this process is taking hours and hours. I now have to become familiar with Windows Live and Windows 7 because they seem to offer a number of free applications. What they also do that's not so nice is to populate my Favorites Bar with stuff that they want me to have, but that I don't care about. There may be a way to stop that, but I'm a few years away from figuring it out. I also have to move my Contacts, but it is time to review that list also. Who the heck are all of these people? I know one thing for sure. If the name of the guy who invented the computer is on that list, I'm deleting him.

Haiti

Our son, Ted, found the attached in a Google search. Peter had to write his account for the State Department, but was somewhat embarrassed that they published it. http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/entry/memories_haiti_quake

I Fell Out of the Boat, Which Wasn't So Bad, Except for My Knee

We spent a week with Anne's brothers and their wives and our son Leo and his wife and various relatives and dogs at Anne's brother's cabin near Canadice, NY. Andy, Anne's brother, likes to go on the lake with a small boat and motor and just putt around. Canadice is a restricted lake in that it is part of the water supply for the City of Rochester, so you're not supposed to make contact with the water; no swimming, wading or anything. So, when we were coming back to the take out spot, Andy asked me if I would put on the waders and pull the boat in. "Sure, no problem," so I slipped into the waders and when we got close, I put one leg over the side and promptly slipped, landing on my left knee, which was just recovering from a prior fall. At this point my right leg was still in the boat being difficult to extricate while I was floundering around trying to get up. I almost succeeded when Andy, seeing the my leg was still in the boat, freed it and sent it overboard, whereupon my efforts to right myself were thwarted and I fell again. Fortunately, the water was only about ankle deed, but I felt like a walrus flopping around. Also, fortunately, there was only one other boater there to witness this debacle and he was very kind about it and didn't laugh until he was far away.

Andy and Art, another of Anne's brothers, decided that a shower was needed at the cabin, so Andy built an outdoor shower consisting of a wooden framework with a bucket that you fill with water and then raise with a rope and pulley until it is above you. There is a lever at the bottom which you operate to let the water fall on you. Art made two kettles from old propane cylinders for heating the water (don't worry, he knows how to cut them without causing an explosion) and he dutifully sat by the outdoor fire making hot water for anyone who was brave enough, or felt dirty enough, to venture into the shower.

Now the shower is in the woods and no one can see you in it, so it had no sides until some of the ladies protested causing tarps to be erected. The water was another concern. It was fairly clear when it came out of the spout (well water), but after it was heated, it took on the color of something from the Big Muddy. I thought I would at least look like I had a nice tan and the gray would have been washed right out of my hair, but, alas, by the time we got home and took proper showers, I look once again like a gray haired paleskin. Despite this, the shower worked surprisingly well and at least gave you the feeling that you were taking a nice, hot, clean shower, out there in the woods