A Dram of Scotch, a Kayak & a Table Saw

The Move

2012-01-14T21:59:00.000-05:00

Friday, January 9, 2012. The day started in an ordinary way. The sun rose, we got up, had breakfast and awaited the arrival of the movers. I could not have guessed at that moment that I would not shave or change clothes for two days or that I would fall asleep that night under glowing stars with a giraffe watching over me.

The movers arrived a little after nine and backed their huge tractor trailer into the alley behind our house. All seven of them came in, looked lethargically around and then went into hyper drive. I never saw people move so fast carrying such heavy loads. Anything that wasn't in a box, went into a box and got loaded on the truck. It was about the time that all the boxes were loaded that Anne asked me if I had loaded our overnight bags into our cars. No, I didn't do that. I hadn't finished packing mine, but was so diverted by the many questions the foreman had, that I forgot about it. Well, our bags got packed, taped in a box and loaded on the truck, Heavens knew where. Pedro, the foreman, climbed the three story high pile of boxes trying to see, but it was hopeless. In addition to my underwear, my meds were also in my bag. They offered to unpack the truck, but I decided that I would somehow survive.

The loading was finished by about 4:00 o'clock, but it took Anne and I a few more hours to get the cars packed with miscellaneous stuff and to try to give a last minute cleaning to the house. We had hired a neighbor woman we know, who does it as a profession, to clean the house. I was to take care of cleaning the attic and the basement. That task turned out to be impossible, because the movers had also loaded my cleaning equipment.

Evening came and we headed to Ted's house where Patti provided a delicious meal for us. The twins were in bed by the time we got there so we didn't see them until the next morning. We decided to wash our clothes at their house so that we would at least start the next day in fresh clothes.

Six year old Bridget gave up her double bed to us for the night. As I lay my weary head on the pillow, I looked up and there were glowing stars pasted to the ceiling and Bridget's very large stuffed giraffe stood at the foot of the bed watching over us.

Tuesday dawned and after a hearty breakfast provided by Patti and Teddy, we headed North. The weather was great for driving and the views were especially nice. The weather was so mild that we decided to stop at a rest area and eat our lunch half in and half out of the car rather than going to a fast food establishment. It was a good choice. We arrived at our house and did some preliminary preparation for the movers who were to arrive the next day. At least I had some clean clothes that I had previously brought to the house. I hadn't brought all the underwear I would have liked and I hadn't brought a razor.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012. The truck was to arrive between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m., so we were surprised when we got a call before nine that they were about three miles away. This time there were five men, as promised and they worked equally fast and hard as the men who did the loading. Two of the men were the same. As was suggested by the movers, we had color coded the boxes with dots to designate the rooms to which the boxes were to be delivered. That worked relatively well, although I didn't realize how many boxes I had designated for the basement and my workshop. I have been busy clearing a path so that I can begin to sort and unpack. My method of packing was to number each box and then to write the contents in a notebook. That works well also, except that the boxes are not deposited in any sort of order, so I have to take box 75 and look at my notebook to find out what's in it. White Glove Moving and Storage did a fine job at the agreed price. The workers were polite and worked hard. At one point in the unloading process, one of the men came to me and said, "Sorry, Sir. You have a pump for the toilet?" I told him where the plunger was and dreaded the thought of what had happened. When I checked the bathroom later, it was spotless. At another point, I decided that I wanted to move a sofa bed a few inches so, instead of asking two strapping young men to move it, I asked one to help me. He readily agreed and as we started to life, I somehow slipped, fell backwards and hit my back and head against a wooden desk. My head, being as hard as it is, is fine, but my back is still paying for my foolishness. Sometime around 12:00 or 1:00 o'clock Anne found the box with our over night bags and my meds. The movers finished about three thirty and then we went out to dinner with Anne's brother Andy and his wife Mary Kay to the Filling Station for wings night and a beer, of course. I should note that the weather was unseasonably mild during the unloading as well (thanks to the intersession of St. Theresa, I believe). The next day we went out and bought a washer and dryer which were to be delivered on Friday between 9:00 and 11:00. It had snowed during the night and I figured I had plenty of time to shovel before they arrived, but at about ten to nine, I looked out and what to my wondering eyes should appear but the truck from the appliance store. Two young men got out, shoved the snow, took the cellar door off its hinges and got the machines all working. They put the door back too.

Now we are here and have had about five inches of snow so far. I put gas in the snow blower and off I went. When I came back in I found that Anne hadn't got all the boxes unpacked yet, so I set about to help her. We're making progress, but it will be awhile before everything is sorted out. Anyway, we like our house and are not planning to move from it anytime soon, if ever.

Happy Thoughts

2011-12-07T20:16:00.000-05:00

At least I'm not going to write about funerals today. I have been busy packing. Have I said that before? It seems like packing is a new career for me. Books look very nice on shelves, but when you take them off the shelves, they fill an alarming number of boxes. Things in cabinets fill boxes. Things in closets fill boxes. Our mover dropped off 40 boxes today. When I originally told the sales rep how many boxes I thought we would nee, he laughed and said we would probably fill at least 200 boxes.

I have been transporting fragile and delicate items myself, mainly so that I don't have to pack quite as carefully as if the mover was taking them. Then I wonder, where will all of those other 200 boxes go in the new house. Will there be room for furniture? Will we be able to walk around? How long will it take to get them empty? Will it all fit?

The buyers' bank's appraiser is coming tomorrow. The municipal inspector is coming on Monday. We haven't heard about the house inspection yet that was done on Friday. I don't know what's taking so long. I arranged for our New York auto insurance today, so that's one more thing to scratch off the list. One problem is that a great number of residents (and relatives) in our new town seem to be Buffalo Bills fans. I'm not sure I care about them (the team, not the residents or relatives). Of course, the do have "Bill" in their name, but, nevertheless. Maybe I should just be silent about the whole thing and smile when they begin to get all excited. Sigh! Nothing is easy.

Thoughts at a Funeral

2011-12-01T20:19:00.000-05:00

Yes, I am sorry to say that we attended yet another funeral today. This time for my cousin, Liz, who had battled breast cancer and lung cancer for 23 years. The thing about Liz was that she never showed her pain. If you asked her she would tell you about it, but she never moaned or volunteered information. The church was packed and I found out that Liz was a regular volunteer for various ministries. She never mentioned that either. She married an Italian fellow, Harry. Her sister, Rosie married an Italian also and his name was Harry too. He died two months ago. Italians know how to throw a funeral, or at least the luncheon after the funeral. The selected restaurants are good and the food plentiful. That's not to say that other ethnic groups, including us German - Irish don't provide plentiful and good food, but, when it comes to food and drink, the Italians excel.

After listening to the eulogy and the stories at the restaurant, I came to realize that we don't really know people, at least I think I don't We get together with cousins maybe once or twice a year, recently more frequently at funerals. We see them for a short time and then we all go back home. When we see them again, we start up where we left off and I, at least, forget that these people have been living their lives every hour, every day, just the same as I am. They go shopping, watch television, read books, volunteer, interact with children and grandchildren, get sick, take vacations, perhaps feel lonely, happy or depressed and sometimes they die. All without any approval from or consultation with me. Of course, I do the same things. Then we come together and our view of the other person probably hasn't changed. Do we know about the good things they have done, before they're in the box at the foot of the sanctuary? I keep saying "we" when maybe I should say "I." Maybe it's my fault that I don't know these things. Maybe you, gentle reader, have a greater interest in people or have a better information network than I do. I think I will begin questioning people more about what they do. I am interested to know, although I have always been afraid of being thought nosy. I also don't want to embarrass anyone. If I go up to Mary and say, "So, Mary, how are your volunteer activities going lately," and Mary does not now and has never volunteered for anything, she may feel uneasy at the question. Once I have information about what Mary has been doing in her spare time, the problem is to remember it so when I meet her again I don't make the mistake of asking her how her husband, John, is, when she told me at our prior meeting that she had gotten a divorce and was now dating Larry. If we are having a conversation and you see me mumbling into a tape recorder or surreptitiously taking notes, you'll understand.

The Heavenly Closet / Garages

2011-10-14T21:14:00.000-04:00

I call it the Heavenly Closet because it was built to last for eternity. It was really overbuilt, in my opinion. It had painted plywood sides, 2x4 framing, sliding doors, adjustable wire shelving and was really put together very nicely. The only problem with it was that it took up almost the entire back end of the garage and prevented me from driving a car all the way in. I agonized over whether or not to remove it. Would it serve a purpose? It obviously served a purpose for our sellers. Should I get new, smaller cars? No. So, it took me a day and a half at least to get the thing down. Wherever there was a place to put a screw, they put a screw. If they could hide a screw, they hid it. If they could hide a nail, they hid it. I used screwdrivers, both powered and manual, hammers, crow bars, a reciprocating saw and brute strength, but I finally got it down and the car fits in. My back and arms will never be the same, but the cars fit in.

I learned an interesting thing in my agonizing over the closet. Most people that we know in the Rochester area don't put their cars in the garage in the winter. I found that very puzzling, but I was told that the road salt is very hard on the garage floors. My son had a three car garage built next to his house in PA a couple of years ago and he confirmed this. Our new house had a large piece of indoor-outdoor carpet laid down in the garage and I guess I now know why. I know they had a large SUV which they never put in the garage, so maybe they had a small car that was compatible with the Heavenly Closet. I like the idea of storing my cars in a garage. Even on this latest trip, we were constantly brushing leaves off the windshield and the rest of the car that fell as it sat in the driveway. I will have to research the salt / garage floor issue since it seems somewhat defeatist to me to have to scrape ice and snow off your car all the cold winter long when you have a perfectly good building to store it in that you don't want to make into a family room. Someone probably makes some sort of coating for the floor for this purpose, or, maybe a piece of carpet is a good solution. I guess you change it every year or take it out and wash it off, preferably on your neighbors driveway.

Where Have All the Young Folks Gone?

2011-10-05T19:44:00.000-04:00

We went to another funeral yesterday. My cousin Rosie's husband, Harry, died. He was seventy five. That's not real young, but it's not terribly old either. He had Parkinson's disease. He was diagnosed with it when he was forty nine, but you wouldn't have known it until later years. He was a quiet, gentle man. After the Mass, there was a luncheon at a nice restaurant. What was disturbing to me was the gray hair on my cousins' children. Some also had receding hairlines and children of their own, the eldest of whom were now preparing for college. I remember as a child romping around with my cousins, all of whom, except one, are older than me. My aunts and uncles were the older generation. We were the kids. I remember my cousins graduating from high school. I remember them getting married. Life moved on and we're clearly not the kids anymore. We have become the older generation, the old folks. When did this all happen? I don't remember it.

Sometimes I forget how old I am. When I was at the doctor's office a few weeks ago, I had to do some quick math to answer a standard inquiry as to "how old are you?" It turns out that I am a year older than I thought, so I don't think about it anymore. Age is nothing really but a number. Because you are a certain age doesn't mean that you can't do this or that. I still think I can do the things I did when I was twenty. Some I can do, a lot I can't. My body quickly lets me know which ones I can't. When I think about a number associated with my age, I think, "No, that can't be right. That number doesn't apply to me." Well, it does apply to me. Four of my nine cousins have now died and two husbands of the remaining ones are gone. They all had higher numbers than me, though. But where have all the young folks gone? They're still with us, but they are different people. They are the kids we used to be and we're not the kids anymore.

The Microwave

2011-09-26T16:08:00.000-04:00

Our new house has a microwave / convection oven built in over the range, so the small counter top one we have here would probably not be used very much there. Unfortunately, it recently stopped working and since it is handy for a lot of things, we reluctantly decided that we should get another one. You would think that buying a microwave would be a simple thing. Maybe it is for most people, but not for us. I found one on line at Target that was reasonably priced and looked nice. Since Walmart in Old Bridge is closer than Target in Middletown, Anne though that we should look there. She found one on line that she liked and the site said that it was in stock at the store. We got to the store and the first thing I noticed was the large number of people standing in line for customer service. The second thing I noticed was that the microwave was nowhere to be found. A lady employee, who was very pleasant, but ineffective, said that she bet she knew where we got the idea that it was in stock - from the internet and cautioned us not to believe such things. She didn't work in microwaves so tried to conjure up someone who knew about them by speaking into a little box. After several attempts without success she wandered off. We wandered to Home Depot and Lowes where it was difficult to pair the boxes with the actual microwaves with the prices tags on the shelves. By the way, as we left Walmart, the customer service line was now about half of what it was when we went in. We continued to drive south on Route 9 until we were at the Target in Manalapan where we found the one I had first mentioned. It is a little smaller than what Anne wanted, but we got it. We can now microwave things again. Yippee.

Ramblings on a September Evening

2011-09-18T20:23:00.001-04:00

Once again, I have been admonished because I have been derelict in my blog postings. It would be nice if the complainers would themselves post something, or even get a blog, but no, I alone am admonished as though I were the blogger in residence or blogger laureate, expected to provide new and scintillating material for the enjoyment of my readers. Very well, here goes, but remember, I am not Noel Coward (thank God) or John Wayne, or anyone of serious note and nothing much that's exciting happens to me. I suppose that's a good thing for me for the most part, but it makes it difficult to get enthused to write about the normal hum drum of daily life, but I will try.

On Friday I visited my old place of employment because I had a luncheon with Mr. Michael K. I enjoyed my lunch and our conversation, but my real love is seeing the ladies of ETA, my former co-workers. I do miss them. Having said that, I want to assure my readers and myself that I don't miss work and that retirement suits me just fine, thank you very much. Most of my working career I have worked primarily with women and have had mostly women bosses, when I have had a boss. Maybe that gives me a different perspective on things. I have liked almost all of the women with whom I have worked and still keep in touch with some of them through the wonder of Facebook. Maybe I fancy myself as a modern day Gardner McKay sailing to Tahiti with an all girl crew. Hah! What did I have to drink today? Anybody want to go on a sailboat ride?

So, last evening Anne and I went to Best Buy to look at televisions. We need to get one or two eventually for our new home. We have been putting off buying HD TVs in anticipation of our move, so we thought we ought to go look at them and see what we could learn. At first we were struck by the similarity in the pictures between the 720 p and the 1080p sets until we found out that the signal that they get in the store for all sets is 720p. Well, gee whiz, how the heck are you supposed to make a decision on that basis? Even at that, all the pictures looked pretty good. Then there's the thing about smart TVs and do you want Google TV, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and what do all of these things do and who cares. What about 3D? Everybody wants you to pay money to watch or listen to entertainment today. We didn't buy anything, just looked. I need to find a sixteen year old to explain it all to me before we buy anything.

Tomorrow is my father's birthday. He would have been 105, but he died in 1987. We went to the cemetary this afternoon, because I got confused and though his birthday was today. The cemetery isn't being kept up very well, which is disconcerting. The headstone seems to be leaning a little also. I don't know what I can do about either thing. I guess and hope it doesn't matter to my parents. If it does, we all have a lot more trouble than we realize.

Peter is finally in Mexico. Last week they finally got shipments of all of their goods, all on the same day and found themselves somewhat overwhelmed. They don't know where they will put it all because their house is not quite as large as previous ones. Peter's delay in getting there had to do with the government's language school and their insistence that he achieve a high level of fluency in Spanish. Since he's been there he said that he hardly has to speak any Spanish except if he goes to a grocery store.

I know that there were other things that I was thinking of adding to this post, but I don't remember what they were. I believe that will allow me to write another post when I remember them and if I remember that I am supposed to blog about them. So, good reader, you will have to be content with this content for the time being.

A Walk on the Beach

2011-08-24T19:56:00.000-04:00

We took a walk on the beach last evening, Anne and I and our friend Alice. The weather was about as good as it gets; a slight sea breeze and no bugs. I always find the wave action calming and restorative, but it's not just that. I think it also has to do with the sun on the water, the birds swooping after their dinner, feet touching the sand and water, the immensity of the ocean. I was thinking that we have made a decision to move away from this, so I hope that Lake Ontario has some restorative properties. I believe that there is nothing quite like the ocean, though.

I have lived near the ocean all of my life. I started out in Newark, NJ, which isn't quite what would be called "near the ocean," but we spent many weekends at the shore when I was a child, then moving to Sea Girt when I was in my last year of high school. Thereafter, I never considered myself a "Day Benny." I believe that I will be closer to the water at our new house. It is about two miles to the lake straight up Holt Road. It's a pretty big lake. Not big as far as the Great Lakes go, but big, nevertheless. You can't see across to Canada. All you can see is water, so, except for your knowledge of geography, for all you know, it could go on forever. But, I don't know if it will be the same as the ocean. There's something about the beach. There was one sight, however, that somewhat marred the experience and that was the lady in the bikini. An older woman who had no business being in a bikini because a good portion of her hung over the bottom part of it. Shouldn't there be a naturalist or someone to point out to people that they are disturbing the balance of nature, not to mention the view.

Too Many, Too Young

2011-08-16T11:17:00.000-04:00

In the past few years I have attended far too may funerals for people who have died before their time, at least in my way of thinking. The latest was yesterday which was a funeral for the thirty-six year old son of a woman, BJ, with whom I used to work. Michael was, for all anyone knew, in great health. He was an avid kayaker, an archer, fisherman and a lover of the outdoors. Apparently he was in good physical shape, but he was felled by what was probably a brain aneurism. It came out of nowhere, suddenly, and, of course, the family was devastated. When someone "old" passes on, you figure that they lived their life and that's what happens eventually. I don't know anymore what the qualification for "old" is, but a number of the people for whom I have found myself offering condolences are younger than I. I don't think of myself as old, except when it leads to a discount, but certainly someone thirty-six or someone in their fifties is not old. All of the people to whom I refer were active, health conscious and did what they were told we are supposed to do in terms of exercise, eating, etc. Does this mean that I shouldn't worry about healthy living because, no matter what I do, something can come out of the sky and get me? I think that it tells me that I should only renew and intensify my efforts at healthy living. Some things you just can't do anything about, but you can at least minimize the risk factors. I feel bad for BJ, her husband Mike and their family, but they will survive. I saw that they had a lot of support and as BJ said, she wanted not to mourn his passing, but to celebrate his life.

Nothing Much New Here

2011-08-09T16:41:00.000-04:00

They say that no news is good news, but on the selling of the house front, some news might be better than no news. We had an open house over the weekend and ten sets of people came, including the grandson of the original owner who had the house built in 1912. According to our realtor he was telling stories about the house and enchanting the assembled multitude. We were not at home for the festivities and we haven't heard anything since, except that the country is going to rack and ruin, the economy is in shambles and the stock market tanked. It's interesting that investors abandoned their stock and bought up every US treasury bond they could get their hands on, the very things that were downgraded. By the way, Standard & Poors has made some colossal blunders in the past. Remember Enron? They only have 100 analysts to cover over 100 countries. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it turns out that someone, or some group, has figured out how to manipulate the market. Maybe it's all those tea drinkers. No, they're not smart enough.

The garage sale went well, although we still have a lot of stuff remaining. We got rid of a lot of bulky stuff. Anne took a load of books to Goodwill and we will get the Vets to pick up a lot of the other things. They seem willing to take about anything in good condition.

In anticipation of our move, I have been trying to figure out the best values in TV, internet and phone service. Anne's brother in Rochester uses a good old antenna and gets a nice selection of stations. Time Warner is the cable company there and Verizon apparently doesn't service our street yet. You can't find out on line what it costs for basic TV service, only all about bundled services. We cut back to basic here and I wanted to find out how much that service costs there. I guess I'll have to call them. Here we were paying over $80.00 a month for the TV part of our cable bill. They advertize the basic service for $10.14 a month, so I figured we would save around $70.00. Not so, we only save about $50.00 a month because we lose this discount, that discount and the other discount. That's why I'm thinking about using an antenna at the new house, except now, the geniuses in Congress want to sell off a lot of bandwidth to cell phone companies and make it harder to get anything over an antenna. You just simply can't win.

Got in a swim in the pool today before the rains came. It felt good and we need the rain, so all in all it was a good day, although it's not over yet. Hopefully, the best part is yet to come. I wonder what's for dinner.

The Pool Isn't Cool

2011-07-23T22:32:00.000-04:00

It's been a bit warm here. Even getting into the pool doesn't provide much relief. The water was 91 degrees today. Okay, body temperature is about 98.6 (mine is usually slightly lower), but still, 91 doesn't feel very cool. I did take a cold shower tonight and it really felt good, once I got used to it. I guess it lowered my core temp. We had a garage sale scheduled for today, but after trying to set it up yesterday, we cancelled it. We'll do it in a couple of weeks when the atmosphere returns to normal. In the meantime, if anyone wants anything, come on by. All of my readers get a substantial discount and I'll even load the stuff into your cars. That's the least I can do if someone drives all the way from Florida, or the Carolinas, or even LBI. The Woodbridge reader already had a chance and she took what she wanted. We'll even provide a room for the night while your car is being loaded.

Still Waiting

2011-07-13T19:33:00.000-04:00

The deal that we thought we had for the sale of our house fell through so it is on the market again. We lost a month and the best part of the selling season again. In the meantime we have been hauling our possessions to Rochester. I am almost thinking that maybe this wasn't a very good idea and that maybe we should sell the Rochester house and stay here. However, that would mean hauling all of our stuff back here which is not a happy thought. Someone should remind me of why we wanted to move up there in the first place.

Nothing much else is new or exciting enough to report.

I Should Say Something

2011-06-22T20:27:00.000-04:00

A lot has been going on so I feel obliged to say something about it all, but where to start. First, the school year has ended and all grandchildren have advanced to the next grade. Several have made the honor roll and one has now advanced to high school. It is frightening and wonderful at the same time. I have a granddaughter who will be starting high school. Have I aged that much?

We have a contract on our house and had the house inspection today. Everyone seemed pleased when it was done, but we haven't seen the report yet so we don't know what the laundry list of things will be that they will want fixed. But, things are moving along. We had a mover come in yesterday to give an estimate. He didn't actually give an estimate, but took an electronic accounting of everything we want to ship. We will get a call from the company with the estimate when they have his data.

Roxana, Anthony and Alex came yesterday and stayed overnight. They headed to Englewood today to visit her family and will return here on Sunday and drive back to DC on Monday or Tuesday. On Sunday we will also celebrate Katie and Stephen's graduation / promotion. I guess we'll celebrate everyone else's promotion too.

Packing will now have to proceed at a brisker pace than has been observed for the past month. I was reluctant to pack too fast until I felt that we had a firm deal on the sale of our house. Now I must proceed briskly indeed since none of the stuff that I previously observed in closets has disappeared. The calendar days, however, are disappearing. I note, too, that we have reached the Summer solstice when the daytime is the longest. From now on until about December 22nd, the days become shorter and it seems to me that they become shorter very rapidly. I'm afraid that there is nothing I can do about it.

Summertime and the Livin' Ain't Easy

2011-05-27T21:49:00.000-04:00

We are now the proud owners of a house in Webster, NY, East of Rochester. According to New York State Tourism, we are in the Finger Lakes Region. The nearest Finger Lake is about an hour away. Lake Ontario is only about two miles away. I think it takes about seven minutes to get there. The closing went well in the sense that we paid the money and got the deed, but I don't like the way they do things up there. Everyone makes a concerted effort to see that the buyers and sellers never meet. The realtors claim that they can relay any questions between the parties. Yeah, sure. The sellers don't come to the walk through nor to the closing. The realtors don't even come to the closing. I was surprised that I wasn't told to just leave the check at the front desk and that they would mail the deed to us. I had some issues and questions and the sellers' paralegal said she didn't know if she could get in touch with them as they were in transit to Florida. That was the wrong thing to say to me. I told her that if she didn't get in touch with them I would be in transit back to New Jersey with my check. The burden is on the buyer to accept whatever conditions he finds or walk away. No one is at the closing who can answer any questions.

Anyway, we are happy with the house and we even met several neighbors who were very friendly and welcoming. Two couples were younger with children and one was a man who was retired and sixty one years old. Why do people care so much about age? I don't care how old he is. Anytime someone dies or gets their name in the paper there is a great need to tell how old the person was or is. Who cares? The only time age is important to me is when it comes to Scotch.

Yesterday I was Lawnmower Man. Today I was Pool Boy. We got the cover off the pool and I started on the chemical sequence. I went to Leslie's Pool Supplies to get the water tested. I made it in just in a nick of time because everyone else who wasn't driving to the shore came in right after. Tomorrow I have to clean the chairs, tables and grill in preparation for Sunday's Memorial Day parade past our house and our picnic. I thought that last year was going to be our last picnic here. I guess not. I hope this one is. As you can see, there is no rest for the wicked.

The Lawnmower Man

2011-05-26T22:20:00.000-04:00

That's me, the lawnmower man. At least that's the way I feel about now. We closed on our new home in Webster, NY and I thought that we needed some way to keep the lawn mowed, like hire a lawn service until we moved there. We spoke to one of Anne's brothers and he volunteered to cut the grass for us. He has an older, spare, riding mower that he thought he would bring there even though the lawn is small. Ever since he fell off a barn roof several years ago, fractured both feet and the doctors told him he would never walk again, he finds walking long distance or standing for long periods irritating, so he likes his riding mowers. Before we went up there I had studied Consumers' Reports about electric cordless mowers and had a couple in mind that were rated good. The idea is to get away from the gas, oil and pull starting and to be more environmentally friendly. Anne's brother thought a small mower would be good for places he couldn't reach with the larger mower. So, we went out to the store and the next store and the next store and couldn't find the mowers I had selected. We did find a Worx mower, designed in Italy and made in China. In the store I had no way to check Consumers' Reports to see how it is rated, so I found the side of the box that had some English words and read all about it. We bought it and after one mowing, I'm pleased with it. I hope it is reliable over time.

We returned home last night and found that the lawn here had grown by leaps and bounds since we left on Sunday, so, today, I got out our thirteen year old, self propelled Craftsman and proceeded to get control of the grass. We pretty much need a self propelled model here because our grass is rather thick. I was proceeding along getting control when, all of a sudden, I heard a snap sound and the self propelled mower was being only propelled by me. I decided to finish the back yard the way it was and then have a look to see what was the matter. The matter was that the cable controlling the self propelled part broke. Oh great, now what to do. I didn't want to buy another mower for here that I wouldn't need for our new home (read the paragraph above, in case you missed the story of the lawnmower purchase for our new home). I thought about a lawn service, but the lawn really needed cutting and we do have the house listed for sale. Someone could possibly come to look at it. I thought about lugging it to a repair shop, but was afraid I wouldn't see it again until December. I went on line and found that Sears, in fact, stocked the part and could send it to me by priority shipping for Tuesday delivery. Then I read further that the part may be available at a local Sears store. I called the parts department in Middletown and, wonder of wonders, they had two in stock and the nice lady said she would put one aside for me. Taking the old part with me, I quickly made my way to Middletown, not that I thought that there would be a run on control cable assemblies for a thirteen year old mower, but, you never know. I got the thing. It was only $34.95, plus tax and it went on the mower as easy as pie (I don't really know what pie has to do with things being hard or easy, but people say that, so...).

Now you can understand why I am the lawnmower man. My back also hurts (from typing, I think), so I will stop now and report other adventures as they happen.

Good Friend Jim

2011-05-15T19:30:00.001-04:00

Our good friend Jim Ciskowski died. We visited him in the hospital in New Brunswick on Wednesday. He was on a lot of pain medication to combat the effects of his pancreatic cancer. He had been diagnosed about a year ago. He packed a lot into his final year. He started finishing up projects that he started around the house, hauled a loads of his firewood to his son, cooked dinner for us one night with his wife, Alice, danced at his son's wedding and called us to go kayaking on the Navesink. He always had a smile on his face and never complained. When asked, he would say when things weren't going well, but took it all in stride.

Jim was an avid gardener and was even talking about it with Anne three days before he died. He had a huge vegetable garden in his back yard, a couple of grills and a smoker. He even showed us how to pet bees. Jim was an inspiration on how to live with cancer and how to die with it. Godspeed Jim. You will be missed.

Dizzy Me

2011-05-14T11:12:00.000-04:00

I know that some of my readers would not raise an eyebrow to hear that I was and am dizzy, but I raised an eyebrow. Last evening, Anne and I went to a play at the local Presbyterian church. She knows one of the men who was in it. The group is called Spotlight Players and they do a dessert show where you sit at tables and during intermission the have a very nice cake and coffee spread. Anyway, the place isn't very big and you get to sit very close. When I got up to go for the dessert I felt like I had had a couple of drinks and was unsteady on my feet. My first thought was that if anyone was looking at me they would think I was drunk. I made a pretty good effort to get my chocolate cake, whipped cream and strawberriesand get back to my seat without incident. When I woke up this morning I still felt an equilibrium problem. We remembered that our daughter had some sort of a similar problem a while ago and we found out from her that it was probably caused by allergies causing an infection in the inner ear. Taking allergy and seasickness medicine seemed to work for her. I took some allergy medicine this morning, but don't have any seasickness medicine on hand.

My mother had equilibrium problems, but I have nmever experienced anything like that before now. Anne looked up "dizziness" in one of her books and it said that it effected mainly elderly people. Well, I know that has nothing to do with me, so we'll stick with the allergy approach for now.

Let's see, what else is going on. Our Rochester closing was scheduled for May 20th with the sellers moving out on May 21st. I said, "No, that won't do at all." Now they are moving out on the weekend and we are closing on the 23rd. In New York the sellers don't attend the closing apparently and they're not there for the walk through either. You don't get to talk to them at all. I would much rather be able to talk with them and learn any things they can tell us after having built the house and lived there for thirty years. So, we'll see what happens. Still no activity on our buyers' house, so we are going to list with a realtor if there isn't some action by the time we close on the house up north.

Today is a gray day outside and there is a forecast of possible showers. I have to be doing something, so I had better get to work looking for things to pack or sort or something. Trouble is that I have taken the antihistamine which is beginning to make me feel drowsy. I don't want to fall asleep on the job. Oh hum!

Resting in Peace

2011-04-10T20:45:00.000-04:00

I have been to four funerals since December, four more than I would have like to have attended. It has got me thinking about the afterlife. I must warn the reader that there are no answers here. I have not figured out who goes where, where where is or even what where is. Leo Tolstoy spent a great deal of time railing against the church for deceiving people through the ages and scaring them into believing it's doctrines and, at the same time, paying money so that the hierarchy can get rich and against governments for threatening people with force to get them to do as the government wants. I'm simplifying things here, but he believed that the Kingdom of God is within each of us and each of us has the power within us to change the world and to bring to fruition the things Christ taught us.

All of the great religions of the world, of which I am aware, believe in some type of life after death. Some believe that we are reincarnated and that we keep going until we achieve a state of perfection. Some, like my Roman Catholic tradition, believe that we go to heaven (the good place) or hell (the bad place). Some say hell is a place of torture, others believe it is going out of existence so that we are in the same state as before we were born. But, wait. How do we know we weren't in existence before we were born? Maybe we were in another dimension, or another incarnation.

I was tempted to do a Google search for the afterlife, but then I thought how foolish that would be. I would get a zillion posts with two zillion opinions. I know, I don't believe, I know that it all has somehow to do with love. I don't know how it all works, but I think that we will end up all loving one another, but how? If we don't love one another here on earth, how will we, all of a sudden, become such great people after we die? Don't know. But, I believe Tolstoy is right. We have the power within us, each of us, to love, and to love not only those close to us, but to love every one of our neighbors in the world. It's not easy though. I can like people, but to truly love them is harder. Not that there is anything wrong with the people (except congress people this week), but there is something lacking in me. I have to change myself. Maybe then I can realize that the Kingdom of God is really within me and that I can help to make it come into being here on earth.

This is profound and I haven't even begun to write all that I think on this subject. It is difficult because we don't know what lies beyond this life and, let's face it, no matter how religious we are, or how much we say we accept that our reward will be in heaven, we don't really look forward to going anyplace. We don't want to die. We are afraid of what may be out there, oh we of little faith.

To be continued.

Congress Should Dissolve Itself

2011-04-10T19:57:00.000-04:00

Congress, those lunkheads. How dare they threaten to close down our government. They get paid very well, both the house and the senate, to run the government, not to threaten to shut it down. They would close the national parks and monuments, OUR national parks and monuments. The President showed up at the Lincoln Memorial to greet visitors and told them that both sides had worked out their differences and therefore they could enjoy their visit. How dare he? They have no right to even think about shutting down our monuments, our parks, our country. They would delay our tax refund checks and delay pay for countless soldiers and federal employees. Please note that the members of congress, house and senate, would not do without their own pay. How dare they, these arrogant people who only think about how to get re-elected so that they can take advantage of all of the perks that they get. And what about that guy, presiding in the house, who was caught on camera sitting there autographing pictures of himself while this is all going on. How dare they. The whole bunch of them, republicans, democrats, tea partyers, coffee drinkers, the whole pack of them, should get out and let us replace them. None of them should be eligible to run again. In each district every taxpayer's name should be put in a hat, a kindergarten child should be selected by lot who would then reach into the hat and pick out the next congressman or senator for that district. How much worse could it be? It would probably be a lot better. I'm disgusted with the whole lot of them. They waste or steal money. They can't seem to reject special interest groups. They think only of themselves. Get out. Get out you bums and let us have our country back.

I guess you could say I'm disturbed by the current state of our governmental affairs.

An International Following

2011-04-07T16:54:00.000-04:00

I discovered the heading "Stats" on my blog and found that I had over a thousand views of my posts since I began writing, or since last May, I'm not sure which. I was surprised to see that the viewers are from the same countries that also view my other blog and several others with which I am familiar. And here I thought that my two followers were coming back to read it again and again.

We are going to another wake tonight. Our friend, Jim Carr passed on to a better life. He had some type of cancer. I have been in more than my share of funeral homes lately, although, thankfully, I'm going in and out of my own accord.

Rite-Aid Redeemed

2011-04-03T12:36:00.000-04:00

After the snafu with refilling my prescription with Rite-Aid, I decided to wait to order my next prescription from Shop-Rite until I finally had the one I ordered from Rite-Aid so that, hopefully, the doctor's office would send the right one to the right store. I got a call the other evening from Rite-Aid and I thought, "Oh no, they have the prescription order I phoned into Shop Rite." Instead it was the managing pharmacist calling to apologize for the mix up. He said he had a message from corporate that there had been a problem. That surprised me because I didn't contact corporate, or even really complain other than to tell the person who waited on me that I hadn't ordered drugs B and C, but drug A and that I didn't really understand how that could happen since I used their automated phone system. Anyway, they called up and I told them that all was right with the world and that I finally got the correct meds, but kudos to Rite-Aid for following up.

My Head Hurts / Drug Store

2011-03-31T15:12:00.000-04:00

The two topics really don't have anything to do with each other, but I'll explain. First: My head hurts because I have spent the better part of the past two days dealing with computer issues. I had it in my mind that when we eventually move to our new house, I would like to somehow simplify how music is accessed in the various rooms where one might want to listen to it. We have this thing called a Netgear Stora, which is essentially an external hard drive which automatically backs up the contents of the computer hard drive. You can also use it as a server to store, share and play photos, videos and music. I have part of my music library on the Stora and part on my hard drive in iTunes. So, why not put it all on Stora and then access it somehow. There are devices that can do that and here is where part of the headache comes in. The DMA (Digital Media Adapter) must be compliant with UPnP-AV, DLNA or Windows Media Connect. Okay, all of this is geared for home use and in the home there is generally one of me, a u-hC (nts). That's a user-home consumer (non-tech savvy). So why do they write all of this lingo that can't be understood by one of me? I read somewhere in the on line documentation that if I signed up for the "premium" service for $20.00 a year, I could use an iPhone, which I guess also means an iPod Touch. I can sign up for a 30 trial of this service at no cost. I signed up. It thanked me for signing up, but then said I wasn't signed up and wouldn't I like to try it for 30 days.

The second part of the headache: I got a Word document by email that I was supposed to sign and send back. Well, since I don't have Word on my computer, I couldn't do anything but look at it. I thought I had avoided this problem by switching from a Mac to a PC. Apparently not. I have Open Office which does most of the things that Micrsoft Office does and I thought it would open the document so that I could print it. Apparently not. I then read how if I downloaded Internet Explorer 9, I could edit Word docs right in my email, even if I don't have Word on my computer. I downloaded Internet Explorer 9. You would think that since it is a Microsoft product it would have preserved my home page (MSN) and my Hotmail sign in. But no. I now had a Google home page and was signed in with my Gmail account. My favorites, which used to be on the left of my screen are now hidden on the right side. A yellow star in the upper right corner of the screen doesn't get me to them and seems to do nothing. there were also a series of buttons at the top of my screen which have now vanished. Do people in companies actually get paid to sit around and try to figure out how to screw up your life by changing everything all around for no apparent reason? At least I was able to get the document to wake up and to allow itself to be printed, but what a pain it all was. So that's why my head hurts.

Now, on to drug stores, Rite-Aid in particular. Last week I called, using their automated phone systen, to order a refill on a prescription. A few days later I got a call that it was ready. I got in my car and drove there, about 10 minutes away, to find that they didn't have the drug I had wanted, but two other drugs (I order the other drugs through Shop Rite where they are cheaper). They said that my doctor had sent the two drugs, but that it was not a problem that they could put them back. Where's my other drug, the one that I ordered? They didn't have approval for that yet. I would have thought (silly me) that if I order drug "A" and approval comes in for drugs "B" and "C" someone would say, "This isn't what he ordered. Why don't we check and see what's wrong." What they said instead was, "He ordered a refill on drug "A" but he got "B" and "C" instead. Let's call him up and make him come over here for the wrong drugs. His blood pressure might soar and then we can sell him more drugs."

That's the news from here, where it is cold and rainy and computers, their drives, accessories and software are out of favor.

I Have Been Admonished

2011-03-18T20:34:00.000-04:00

I have actually been admonished twice in the past week for not writing more on my blog, so I guess I had better write something. See? I wrote something, now leave me along.

Okay, okay, I'll write some more. We have been kind of busy lately. We bought a house in Webster, NY. (Mosey on over to the right side of the blog to click on to my link to Flickr where there are pictures posted.) We signed a contract. The closing won't be until sometime in May. Now we wish our buyers would get their house sold so that they can buy our house. We don't want to be real estate moguls for very long.

We also went to a funeral earlier this week for Scott, the husband of a former co-worker, Laura. He was 60 and had prostate cancer. Way too young to die. I feel badly for her. They were so happy together.

I also had two doctor appointments this week, one with my GP and one with my cardiologist. Both pronounced me in fine fettle although I got an A- for my cholesterol. It seems my LDL (bad) is 85 and the Doc wants it to be 77 or lower. So, it looks like I have to cut back on eating cholesterol. After that I had a nice lunch with a good friend and I don't think I ate too many LDLs then.

In the meantime we have been sorting through more stuff and packing. Didn't I say this before? Well, it never ends. Our house doesn't look cluttered, but when you go to put the things in boxes, it seems like we have way too much. It has been suggested that we try Craig's List to sell some things. Not being a child of the modern era, I am somewhat hesitant to try to sell things over the internet. I guess I should check it out because it has been reported to us that people sell all sorts of things on it, even cars.

Today is Anne's birthday. The weather certainly was magnificent. This afternoon we went for a walk on the Boardwalk in Point Pleasant with friends Angela and Bob and had dinner with them at the Wharfside. Many people had the same idea to walk on the Boardwalk and when we arrived at the restaurant we thought that they also decided to have dinner there judging by the number of cars. But, not so. I don't know where they all were, but we were seated right away and had an enjoyable meal.

Tomorrow is Saturday. For some reason I thought this past Thursday was Saturday. [Don't say anything.] Well, I mean I don't have to know what day it is unless it's Wednesday when I have to put out the trash, or Friday when I have to put out recycling, or Sunday when we go to church. The other days are fairly interchangeable. That was one advantage of going to work. I usually knew what day it was and I didn't show up on Saturday or Sunday. It's funny how my mind still thinks of Monday as the end of the weekend and looks forward to Friday as the beginning of the weekend. Now that we are well into the weekend I will have plenty to do until Monday arrives and I have plenty more to do.

Enough Already

2011-02-25T10:26:00.001-05:00

I envy people like my friend MJ (I'll call her MJ in case she doesn't want publicity or her true identity revealed in association with this blog) who just up and moved to a new house, in Florida no less and by all accounts seems to be doing well in her new abode. I, on the other hand, am still at the starting line. I opened my email the other day and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but an email from our seller in Rochester. You remember him, the one who never answered a phone message or email. Well, it seems that his estranged wife still can't decide whether or not to move, even after she said she was ready, so he said he was really sorry that we couldn't make a deal and wished us luck finding a home. We had pretty much written off that house anyway so I guess this was pretty much the final nail in the door jamb.

We are scheduling a trip up north in the near future and have a number of houses to look at, but who knows what the weather may be. Will we be able to go, or not? Will they have snow up there, or not? Will we have more snow here? Don't they need this snow someplace else, like in Sweden or Russia or someplace?

So, we have our list of houses. Our buyers have lowered the price on their house by $20,000, so we are hoping for more activity on that front. In the meantime we are still getting rid of stuff that has accumulated through the years. That process takes longer than you might think because we are now down to stuff that requires a little more careful examination before it is relegated to the trash pile. That is where things stand and I will now go and find more things that require careful examination.

Oh Boy, Oh Boy

2011-02-06T21:53:00.000-05:00

Someday, hopefully, I will no longer be writing about moving or buying a house, but not yet. We had the idea last week to go look at active adult communities nearby. I had the idea that moving to Rochester would put us too far from our children and grandchildren. I asked Anne not to tell our children about this for fear that they would arrange to have people come here and take us away for evaluation and/or confinement, but she told anyway. So far, people haven't come to get us, but, you never know.

We went to look at K. Hovnanian's Four Seasons at Metedeconk Lakes and Four Seasons at South Knolls, mostly South Knolls. I didn't go there because I used to work for them, but because they were relatively close by. They either put something in the coffee that they gave us or something sprays on you when you walk into a model home. The models are seductive. Every detail has been thought out by a team of decorators to make you want to go back to the office and buy one right away. I haven't been in many adult communities so I don't know what others are like, but these homes are very, very nice. Buying a home gets you a clubhouse too where there is an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a fitness center, billiard room, library, craft room, rooms to play cards and on and on. They mow your lawn, shovel your snow and guard the gated entrance. All of this is not without a price and pricey the models are. We liked a two bedroom, two bath model that has a den, living/dining room, family room, kitchen, of course, breakfast nook and two car garage. The master bedroom is huge. The base price is $300,000., about in the middle range of the model prices. You can upgrade. Oh, you want doorknobs? A faucet? Everything costs, so that the average buyer spends another $50,000 or $60,000 on upgrades. Then there are restrictions. You can't have holiday lights outside your house, or plant anything, or do anything without the approval of a committee. Not exactly the way we're used to living. Daughter, Christine thought we wouldn't be happy there. Son, Peter, called yesterday and started out by saying the we must be out of our minds. I thought he had found out about our excursion, but he thought we are out of our minds for thinking about moving to Rochester. He just got back to Florida from D.C. to be with his family for the Super Bowl and gave a litany of reasons why it would be better to live there; how you wear more comfortable clothes there; how you eat better there because you don't eat such heavy foods; how the evenings are nice, even in the heat of the summer; how it rarely gets to 100 degrees there. So, oh boy, oh boy, what to do.

We had much discussion about all of this and decided that the Rochester option was still probably the best course for us to follow. What we save by not buying in an adult community can be put toward travel to Florida, Mexico, Arizona, Tijuana, or anyplace and to stay in those places for a while each winter.

I did more packing of cellar stuff today. I don't want to pack too much yet because if our current deal falls apart, I will have all of these boxes lying around and I don't want to lug them all up to the attic, otherwise I'll be in need of a mortician before I'm in need of a realtor.

The Super Bowl will soon be over (I can't bear to watch too much with a son a Green Bay fan and another one a Steelers fan) and that will start the Spring real estate season, according to our realtor. Things will be popping soon, or not.

A Day Off

2011-01-28T17:25:00.000-05:00

I took the day off today. "Took off from what?" you are asking. I know I'm retired so it gets difficult to define just what a day off means. This day off means that I decided not to shovel snow or do any physical labor. I didn't really decide, my body decided. Wednesday I shoveled and horsed the snow blower around to get the area in front of our garages cleared and yesterday I shoveled some more to clear up the front sidewalk to make an opening to the street. Anne shoveled too, but she's more sensible and stops when she feels tired. I have no such sense and just keep on going. Anyway, today my body was telling me that it was time to take a rest. So I did, until a little while ago when I got the shovel and cleared up some ice on the walks.

I always like to clear a path to the street, but it is difficult when the plows leave three feet of the edge of the street unplowed until hours after the snow stops and then come by once again. This is, of course, after everyone has cleared their walks.

We were without telephone, Internet and TV all day yesterday because our cable wire came loose from the house and was dangling low over the street when a snow plow hit it and took it out all the way. Cablevision showed up after dark and was ready to fix it, but the police wouldn't let them do it in the dark. They were here before 9:30 this morning and got it all back up running. I was impressed by the service. Last March, when we had another major snow storm, the cable wire came down and they got here the next day and fixed it.

So, while we were in the dark ages, Anne and I had to actually talk to each other and listen to radio to stay informed. For you younger folks, radio is like television, but it doesn't have any pictures. All you get is the sound. I know, primitive. It got me to thinking about what people did before Internet and television. My parents had neither. We got a television when I was in the third grade and I remember that there wasn't all day programming, but mostly a few shows on in the evening and only in black and white, if you can believe.We had a phone, but only one in the house and we had a private line. Many other people we knew had party lines. That was where one, or two, or even three families shared one phone line. These were people you didn't know and the idea was that if you were on the phone and you heard a click meaning that one of the other parties was trying to make a call, the custom was for you to hang up and let the other person do so. If you were the one trying to make the call and you picked up two or more times and the line was still busy, you could say that you needed to make a call and the other party usually hung up. You could also eavesdrop on another party's call but, in polite society, that wasn't done. We didn't have any of these problems because we had our very own private line. I remember playing with toys, building things with Lincoln logs and blocks and something resembling Lego. I played outside a lot with friends or went to various friends house to play there. My mother liked to sew, make delicious meals and putter around the yard in the summer. My father liked to work in his shop and kept busy with house maintenance in nice weather.

Yesterday we listened to the radio some and I read. I find that I don't watch television all that much and I use the computer mainly for reading emails and finding out what's going on. That doesn't take much time at all. Most of the emails I get are ads for something. But, it feels like without the Internet and television we are somehow not properly connected to the world. We didn't have our regular phone either, of course, but we were able to communicate with a cell phone. We have become so reliant on being able to connect with the whole world. Why, you can even take classes on the Internet and get legitimate credit at a scholastic institution. I understand that some of the teachers of these classes are quite good. You only realize how connected we have become when you become unconnected. Anne was trying to find a particular radio station, but wasn't sure of the frequency. We couldn't look on the Internet. The newspaper no longer lists radio stations and the phone book only lists two radio stations, neither of which were local.

So, how do we stay connected when a storm disrupts our communications? In this instance it was only for one day, but what if it were for a longer period? Do we all really need to be that connected? Do we all need cell phones and wi-fi hot spots in addition to our home based links? When we go off on vacation we are usually happy to be without these facilities. Has the Internet become an essential tool in our modern society? I think it is becoming more so every day. There are more and more links to things that are only available over the Internet. Messages, coupons, notices of this and that, emails and on and on. It was not that long ago that the Internet was unknown to most people who are now thoroughly ensnared in its web. I don't have an answer and I don't even know if there is a question, but these are some of the things I have been thinking about. I need to get back to my book.

Music, Music, Music and some Wolves

2011-01-22T20:31:00.000-05:00

I am still hard at it. Sorting, disassembling my train layout and trying to figure out whether or not to convert my LPs. My neighbor, who was helping me to try to figure out how to get photos to sync to my iPod (still no answer to that yet, but I've moved on), let me borrow a portable hard drive that he has with 100 GB of music on it from a DJ that gave it to him. It has all sorts of music from the 40s through the 90s, the kind that would be played at weddings, parties, etc. I copied a whole lot of it, but not all. I'm really not into hip-hop or rap or some of the other genres of today. I copied in batches and it took probably a total of nine or ten hours to do that. It's amazing; I just clicked "copy" and then "paste" and the computer did the rest.

I have a lot of classical LPs also that I have been agonizing over whether or not to convert them. Today I decided to look over our CD collection. I was surprised that we have about a foot's worth of CDs of classical music. Where it all came from, I am not sure, but I went straight to the cellar and, no longer feeling guilty, removed about six boxed sets of Beethoven LPs from the shelves. It was hard because I realized that quite a few of these records had probably never been played. Why did I feel guilty? If I hadn't played them in thirty years, well, duh!

I seem to have things that most people don't have and maybe don't want to have. As I was sorting through LPs, I came across one titled "The Language and Music of the Wolves." On one side, Robert Redford narrates about wolves. On the other side there are tracks of wolf sounds. Here is the list:

Band 1 - Opening Howl
Band 2 - First Growls of Wolf Pups Inside the Den
Band 3 - Pup Howls - Spring and Fall - Contrasted with Adult
Band 4 - Barking
Band 5 - Series of 3 Adjacent Single Howls
Band 6 - Comparative Difference in Howls
Band 7 - Single Howls Joined to Give Illusion of Pack Howl
Band 8 - Combined Sounds of the Wolf
Band 9 - Distant and Close-up Howling Ending in Group Howl
Band 10 - Series of Group Howls
Band 11 - Joint Group Howl

I'm not making any of this up. Who could make such stuff up? Okay, maybe Stephen King. But this is the truth. Do you think I have to be more aggressive in throwing out records? I bet you can't imagine how many happy and relaxing hours I have spent through the years sitting in a comfy chair with a glass of Scotch and a good book (Jack London, probably) listening to my wolf howls. Actually, I may end up converting this one. I can see a great deal of entertainment value if, by chance, we buy the house next to my brother-in-law. Ah, I see it now. A cold winter night; a loud speaker set in our yard facing his house, but the volume not set too loud. We go over to visit and sit by the fire. Everyone is relaxed. Suddenly, a bone chilling howl fills the air outside, followed by Distant and Close-up Howling Ending in a Group Howl. I think I will hang onto this LP. It most assuredly has possibilities.

Busy Days

2011-01-17T21:50:00.000-05:00

I've been busy, which is good because I like to be busy. I have been disassembling my train layout for one thing. I am amazed by how much work this involves. I guess I shouldn't be surprised when I think about how long it took to get it together. Did I really put all those wires under there? Did I really wire all those control units under the layout? How did I manage to crawl around under there? Well, I guess it was me because I don't remember seeing anyone else under there. So, I now have all the trains, cars, people, vehicles, buildings, track, switches and landscaping packed away. I have pulled out all of the wiring and need to decide what to do with the control boxes attached to a panel under the layout. I was thinking of leaving them attached and just removing the panel, but it would save a lot of space to pack the controls separately. Besides, I don't know where they might go on an entirely new layout. I have to figure that out.

While I'm doing all of this demolition I am multi-tasking. I am listening to old LPs (phonograph records). The idea is to decide on which ones to keep and record onto my computer with the idea of discarding the LP once it is digitized. I am finding that the discard pile is growing bigger than I thought it would. It seems that my tastes have changed over the years. I hope that they haven't just changed for the day that I'm listening. I would hate to make a mistake and throw out music that I want to listen to again someday. Some of these records are old, but not as old as the 78 rpm records I still have somewhere. This is what it says on the back of one LP. The tile is "The Fabulous Four Hands of Frankie Carle." Frankie Carle was a piano player and the album features some blues on a grand piano and some old time songs on an upright honky-tonk piano, hence the album title. This is what it says:

This is a "New Orthophonic" High Fidelity recording,
designed for the phonograph of today or tomorrow. Played
on your present machine, it gives you the finest quality of
reproduction. Played on a "Stereophonic" machine, it gives
even more brilliant true-to-life fidelity. You can buy today
without fear of obsolescence in the future.

The LP is copyrighted by Radio Corporation of America in 1961. I wonder if any of the engineers of that time had any idea of how we would listen to music fifty years later. And I'm thinking, "WHAT, I remember this record. I used to listen to it, but IT'S FIFTY YEARS OLD!!! You can see how this is traumatizing me.

So, I am choosing the records that I enjoy listening to and that have superior sound quality for processing. There is so much music available to us today. Back in 1961, I'm told (it's a little before my time), you had records, tapes and radio. Radio was very local, except at night when you could pick up signals from all across the country. Now we have Internet radio, satellite and the ability to download any kind of music from anywhere, anytime. With cable TV, we also have music of any type available 24 hours a day. How much time do I want to spend recording old LPs when it takes about 45 minutes, give or take a few, to get each record digitized including typing in the names of all the tracks?

In the meantime, I am still trying to get my iPod Touch to sync photos from my computer. I called in my neighbor who knows almost anything to do with computers. He spent over a half hour here yesterday and about an hour or more today and he is baffled by it. He has been searching the Internet for some kind of answer and while some folks have similar problems, none of them has found a solution. We will eventually figure it out, but at least I don't feel so bad that I couldn't figure it out myself. By the way, speaking of music, my neighbor lent me a hard drive with 100 GB of music on it and told me to copy whatever I want. The hard drive has all kinds of music, the kind a DJ would use for a wedding or party.

When I get done with all of this multi-tasking I will have to post some new pictures on this blog. Also, I have not forgotten about my novel that I am writing. I'll get to these things. I should probably listen to some music, but there is so much to choose from. Decisions, decisions.

Crossing Over

2011-01-08T21:56:00.001-05:00

I bet you think I'm going to write something about dying and going to the Great Train Layout in the sky, but that's not what I mean with the title. I'll explain.

This may be long and drawn out, but I want to write it and you can stop reading if it gets boring. I have a 3rd generation iPod Nano which I use for my music. It is only 8GB and it is just about filled . I mentioned this to Anne who has an iPod Nano and an iPod touch, the last generation. She said she doesn't really use it and that I could have it. I said, being generous and kind, that, if she wanted, I would get her a new iPod touch that has a camera in it and can wash the dishes and set the table. She thought that would be nice. Anyway, I took her iPod touch and proceeded to sync my music onto it. I thought that since it is an iPod touch, I would also sync some photos and my contacts and calendar. I did that on my old Nano before it got too crowded. Previously I had used a Mac computer to do that. We're getting to the "crossing over" part. Now I am using a PC (a Windows based machine). I cannot get it to sync my photos from Windows Live Photo Gallery to the iPod Touch, nor will it sync my contacts or calendar. It's supposed to be easy, but there is some funny language in the online instruction manual (they don't give you one with the product anymore) that seems to imply that you should use Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 or later, but it should work using folders on your computer, so it says. Once again, I have learned that, despite what they all tell you and how easy all the commercials make it seem, it is never easy crossing over from one platform (Mac) to another (Windows) or the other way around. Mac stuff all works very well if you stick to Mac stuff, but as soon as you start mucking around with Windows and Mac, things get sticky.

I have been using Steve Jobs' (CEO of Apple) philosophy of technology, or my version of it, which says that before long, everything will be internet based and we won't be using CDs or DVDs. All music, photos, video, etc. will be on a hard drive or on the internet. I believe that he is correct and that this is already happening in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. We are far behind, but we are going in that direction. But, if machines don't talk to each other, how can any of this be accomplished?

I did find a work around. I discovered that when on the iPod Touch, I could go to my pictures on Flickr, click on a picture and it would give me the option to save it. I found this out by accident. I didn't know where it would be saved or why I would want to since the picture is already on Flickr. I clicked save and didn't think anything else of it until I realized that the "saved" pictures were now on my iPod Touch without having to sync anything. You can view all of my Flickr photos by going to the clink (my word for a link that you click) on the right side of this blog. Somewhere there it says "Bill's pictures" or something. If you have any trouble with that, please let me know so I can spend another three or four hours trying to figure it out. I realized that I am almost a year behind in posting pictures to Flickr, so please forgive me. I am trying to get caught up. By the way, Windows makes it very easy to get pictures from Windows Live Photo Gallery to Flickr. I think it's easier than from Apple's iPhoto. I am also in the midst of disassembling and packing my train layout in anticipation of a move to somewhere, sometime in the future. There I am also far behind SOME people who have managed to make a move to a nice warm place just in time to avoid the thirty inches of snow at Christmas time. Sigh!

The Year 2011

2011-01-02T21:18:00.000-05:00

As you all know by now the new year has come. I had nothing to do with it as I proved by sleeping through its birth. On New Years Day we had our traditional party with two other families of friends. I think we started this almost thirty years ago and now the number of attendees has increased substantially. We all (well, most of us) gathered and had a great time.

Roxana and the boys had to be at LaGuardia at 5:00 p.m. for their flight back to Florida. Had she known what was going to happen, she could have come to the party. They boarded their American Airlines flight and it took off on time, but after about one-half hour of flight the pilot announced that they were diverting to Kennedy Airport for an emergency landing because of engine problems. When they got on the ground they were directed to a nearby gate. After a while the were boarded on a second plane, but after being on there for about one-half hour they were told that they couldn't fly because the flight crew had exceeded its hours. They had to stand in line to get vouchers for a hotel where they stayed overnight.

They were told that the flight was at 8:00 a.m. the next morning, so they got up to get a 5:30 a.m. shuttle to the airport. It got to be 8:00 o'clock and no one was at the counter at the boarding gate. Finally someone showed up and Alex, yes Alex, went up and asked why their plane was delayed and when they were going to leave. The people were nice to him and they found out that the flight was at 10:00 a.m. and not 8:00.

When they boarded the plane, Anthony and Alex were invited into the cockpit and allowed to sit in the pilot's and copilot's seats. Roxana cautioned Alex not to touch anything fearing that he might decide that he had waited long enough and try to fly the plane.

Pete and his family had a nice hotel room and choice seats in Times Square for the ball drop on New Years Eve courtesy of NYPD. As they were escorted through the crowds, people cheered them and tried to give high fives. Pete said the people didn't have anything to do and probably thought they were celebrities. I guess they were in a way. Commissioner Kelly came over to talk to them and shook hands with Anthony and Alex. This was all the result of some courtesies Peter had extended to the Commissioner when he visited Haiti.

So, I started to dismantle my train layout today. I realize that this will take some time as I survey the mass of stuff that has been accumulated through the years. While I'm at it, I'm trying out some of the engines to make sure they still work and I'm trying to organize things because I know that the minute I put a cover on a box I will forget what's in it. I want to pack things carefully so that nothing gets damaged when we move. I'm not sure how I will transport these trains, but I can decide that once we have a place to move them to.

More Pain and Suffering or The Mail Must Go Through

2010-12-29T21:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Anne saw the mail lady on the street when we had finished our walk and she went over and got our mail. The mail lady said that she was glad she came over because she wasn't going to be able to deliver our mail since the sidewalk was blocked and the snow was too deep to walk across the front yards like she usually does. Never mind that all of the houses are also accessible through the alley which was plowed and people could get into their houses that way. I guess the mail has to be delivered to the front door. Anyway, after having said I wouldn't shovel today, I went out and cleared the sidewalk from our front walk to our neighbors house where he had cleared his walk. Our two neighbors to our left have young, strong men living there. We only have an old man who is getting stronger every day. I did that and made a path to the street where the plow had come by since the last path I made to the street. I came in and said "I am done shoveling for today."

I got out of my snow clothes and thought I deserved a drink which I was about to procure when the phone rang. Anne answered it to learn that another neighbor who lives behind us had been away during the storm and just returned home to find that her garage was blocked by snow and that her front walk was blocked by snow. I put on my boots, got into my coat, found my hat and gloves and went out to help shovel her front walk. Anne came out to help also. She was visiting relatives where they only had a dusting of snow. Where was she visiting, you ask? Why, Rochester, NY, of course.

I did finally get my drink.

Guilt and Pain and Suffering

2010-12-28T21:43:00.000-05:00

They sound like serious topics and they are, especially when they happen to me. I think I am genetically incapable of sitting down and relaxing without feeling guilty about it. Two days ago we had a big snow storm from which we acquired about twenty four to thirty inches of snow plus drifting. Yesterday, I went out with my shovel and snow blower and cleared paths, our parking area and several neighbors driveways also. Then the plow came by and we did it again. When I was all done for the day I discovered muscle groups in my body that I had completely forgotten about. I said to Anne today, "Anne, today I will rest and not do physical labor." She agreed that it was a good idea. So I proceeded to not do anything physical and I sat down to read.

I enjoy reading and find it relaxing and informative, except, I also feel guilty because I am indulging myself when, surely, there must be some labor to do. In the past (pre-retirement) I would set about to do my chores and work and only then would I read. This usually had the effect of bringing on a state of unconsciousness as I sat in a comfortable chair with book in hand. Now, (post retirement) I can read anytime I like, except I feel guilty. So, today, Anne wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood in the afternoon. We did and found that pedestrians are not provided for in snow removal efforts by the Borough, so we abbreviated our walk. When we got home I noticed that the end of our alley was full of uneven snow tracks and therefore got my shovel and cleaned some of it up lest it freeze and get even worse. Then we removed some more snow from the alley opposite our garage and then went after the snow on our porch. This is the part where the pain and suffering comes in. We were just about done when I said that I thought I should stop, because, in addition to the pain already exhibiting itself in my legs, arms and shoulders, my back was now beginning to complain about the workout.

I don't think I did any long lasting damage to myself, except that if my cardiologist ever reads this, I'm in deep doo-doo. I then came in and did some reading. Tomorrow, I think I should rest, but I may have to clear a path to the street in front where the plows piled a mountain of snow. See? It's not my fault.

A note about my novel. In case I didn't mention it, or in case some of you were moving or doing other things and weren't paying attention, my daughter and granddaughter got me signed up on a site that expected members to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I got to about 10,000 words and then ran out of month. I haven't abandoned it, but am thoughtfully researching some points. I figure that if I'm going to spend the time to write something that long, or longer, I should try to do a credible job of it. Unless you're very, very good, I don't think you can write the great American novel in so short a time. At least, I can't. I'm sorry, please don't ask, but I can't reveal the story line, so you'll all just have to wait and wait and maybe wait some more.

Charlotte's Web / Bonnie

2010-12-23T10:51:00.000-05:00

We saw Charlotte's Web last night at Two Rivers Theater in Red Bank. It is a childrens' story, but was well and cleverly done by mostly adult actors. It is a story of a runt pig that is headed for the chopping block, but is saved by the actions of a smart and talented spider. Speaking of talent, I am always amazed at how much of it there is out there. Of course, these were professional actors, but nevertheless, I think they have day jobs too. It just seems that you can encounter good entertainment in many venues, be it theater, music or whatever right in your own back yard.

Our friend, Bonnie, passed away yesterday. She was a lovely person, just turned 61, also talented and a well liked teacher. Lung cancer got her in the end. I don't want to preach at anyone, but if any reader smokes, I urge you to do whatever it takes to give it up.

Downsizing and My Own Phone Line

2010-12-07T16:34:00.000-05:00

As I have mentioned before, we are trying to downsize in anticipation of buying a smaller house and moving. We set our criteria for bedrooms at three when looking for houses, but I am seduced by the houses that have a fourth bedroom. We don't need it, but... it would be nice, especially if we have family or friends come to visit. Plus it would be a good place to keep some of the furniture we have now. I did say we are trying to downsize, which means, in my mind, getting rid of stuff that we don't need. Today I spent almost the entire morning carrying boxes of Christmas decorations from our attic to the first floor in anticipation of decorating the tree and finding out what we no longer want. There are 31 steps between the first floor and the attic and I must have made 20 trips, at least. That's 620 steps and 620 steps down, which must be the equivalent of climbing some national monument or other. Of course, when you're coming down a national monument you don't have to carry boxes.

So now I have filled pretty much our whole parlor with boxes and bags and this is just Christmas decorations, a fraction of what is stored in the attic. It's a big attic.

I know that whatever house we buy probably won't have a walk up attic, if it has an attic at all, so we must seriously get rid of stuff. We have been offering stuff to anyone who comes into the house, but the piles are dwindling very slowly. Do you suppose that no one is interested in the treasures of a lifetime that we have been carefully storing for all these years and that none of it is really worth anything?

On reflection it may seem a sad commentary that I am now seduced by a room. None of the ladies of my acquaintance need have any fear. I have in recent years been seduced by tools, boats, toy trains, musical instruments and garden tractors, but I now have an assortment of all of them, except a garden tractor. I don't have a garden tractor. In my current state of affairs, I am down to drooling over the four walls of an extra room. Sad, but true. I don't even know if I will get the extra room, but it is looking more and more attractive with each flight of stairs I ascend or descend.

I also mentioned in the title an extra phone line for me. I rarely get phone calls. When I do it is usual some recorded message reminding me of a doctor appointment or telling me that my prescription is ready. Yesterday, however, I decided to use the phone to initiate a call. First I had to wait my turn while others completed their telephonic business and then wait some more while additional business was conducted. I then got my chance, but not without attempted interruptions and concerns that I was not listening for call waiting for a return call that others were expecting. Never was a phone call so fraught with anxiety. And, what was it that was so important for me to use a phone? I had to call to sign up for a new Medicare Part D drug plan for the coming year. My old plan had raised its rate from about $15. a month to over $41. Now, I don't use the plan to get any drugs. The plan has never paid a penny on my behalf. Anything I take is in the form of generics which I get directly from a drug store cheaper than I could with a plan. I have the plan only so the government doesn't charge me a penalty for not having one. The process is a daunting one. First you speak to a lady who has to read to you all sorts of disclosures and then you are connected with a robot lady that asks a series of questions to determine if you understand what you're doing. You are admonished to answer "yes" or "no" clearly and distinctly and not to make any extraneous sounds as that may cause the system to boot you out. Heaven help us all. While this is going on, I am cringing in fear that call waiting will produce a signal or someone will come into the room and make a sound that the robot lady finds offensive and that she will then punish me by kicking me out and making me go through the whole process all over. Well, I only have to go through this once a year (and you can't do it online), so maybe I won't get a separate phone line just yet. I don't need a phone to be seduced either. I can go online to Craftsman tools or go onto Homestead.net to look at that fourth bedroom.

Blindsided

2010-11-10T10:35:00.000-05:00

Anne and I took a walk in Cheesequake Park yesterday along the Blue trail. That's about 2.5 miles along various water features. We were surprised that we didn't see a single animal or bird. We arrived at a bird viewing blind by a lake and went inside to see if we could spy a fowl. We saw nothing. Anne didn't like the height of the viewing windows, so she stepped outside to get a better view. A great blue heron squawked and flew out of a tree right next to the blind and flew across the lake. I guess you could say that we were blindsided.

Okay, Writing

2010-11-07T20:45:00.000-05:00

On the last post I said I wasn't writing, but then late at night I did write. I guess I have written something every day, except today. Today we talked to my cousin who lives in Toms River and Florida and we were considering the possibility of doing something similar, that is having a home in an adult community here and one in an adult community in Florida. Then I found out that living in an adult community wasn't the same as watching an adult movie. In the former case the word "adult" just means "old." I also felt that if this idea should leak out, our children might start commitment proceedings against us. We had been talking about buying a house in Rochester and now we are thinking about being snow birds? I think that we have abandoned that idea although my cousin thinks it is the best life possible.

I don't feel like writing every day. It's a good thing I'm not trying to make a living by being a writer. I would be very poor. It's just that I don't get inspired each and every day. Some days I think of something to write and other days I don't. Creativity can't be rushed, so I will not worry about it, at least not tonight.

I did do something useful today. I grilled some nice London broil. I used my grill light because it was very dark outside. The light worked fine and the meat came out fine. I even found my way back into the house with it. The characters in my novel aren't too helpful. They can't seem to decide what to do next. Do they expect me to decide for them? Maybe I need some new characters.

Does anyone know how to make the task bar go away in Windows 7? I have set it for "autohide," but it doesn't do it. That's probably why I can't write, because I'm distracted by the task bar.

Not Writing

2010-11-04T14:04:00.000-04:00

I haven't written a word today toward the end of completing my "novel" by the end of November as per the nonawhona site, or whatever it is that my daughter got me sign up on. I may write something, but I have not so far and it feels liberating. I was busy though. I had to go out and get a new smoke alarm for our upstairs hall. The old one started chirping the other morning about four or five o'clock. They can never chirp during the day; always at night. Are they programed to run out of battery power only when it's dark? I got it down and figured I would change the battery. But, no, not so fast, innocent consumer. There is no battery to change. This was one of the new, "maintenance free" smoke alarms. You can't replace the battery. You must take your smoke alarm to the nearest trash can, throw it in and then go to the store and buy another. Marketing people must get a tremendous rush when they think of things like this. "Don't let him just have to buy a battery for a few bucks. Make him go out and get a whole new alarm." And you have to go out because, while you may have had the foresight to have a new battery on hand, I bet you don't have an extra smoke alarm sitting in a drawer.

So, I have not written yet. I have been smoke alarming. That's my excuse.

I went to the dermatologist this morning and try as they might, they were unable to discover any part of me that needed surgery. I have to go back in three months at which time they will scan me and try again.

Bust at Green Bay

2010-10-18T09:46:00.000-04:00

This is the story as I heard it, third hand anyway.

Readers may know, or not know, that our son, Peter, is a died in the wool Green Bay Packers fan; has been since he was little and Anne got him a Packers helmet at a garage sale. Teddy got a Steelers helmet and has been a fan ever since. I don't know which one is a more ardent fan for their team. I do know that when their teams lose, there is a lot of depression. As you can imagine there has been a lot of depression over the years.

That's the background. Peter took Anthony and Alex to Green Bay this past weekend to watch the Packers play the Dolphins. Alex, much to Peter's consternation, has become a Dolphins fan. Roxanne sent him with a Dolphin shirt and jacket, but Peter dressed him with his shirt covered with a Green Bay jacket. After all they were at the holiest ground in sports, Lambeau Field. As the game progressed, the Dolphins were down and Alex became concerned that they would lose. Maybe he didn't see any other Dolphin fans and thought that his team needed some support. So, he took off his Packers jacket revealing his Dolphin shirt and his true self. Surrounding fans made comments like, "So, you're coming out of the closet." and "Now we know your true colors." None of which was too bad except the show of support worked and the Dolphins won. One out of three was happy after the game and Peter assured Roxanne that he would bring Alex home with them. I guess he had better start feeding him some Wisconsin cheese.

Tetracycline

2010-09-22T20:05:00.000-04:00

This is an antibiotic I have to take twice a day for seven days following my surgery. That seems simple enough except that when you read the directions, things get complicated. You have to take it one hour before or two hours after a meal. I thought that I could get up an hour before breakfast, take the pill and then go back to bed. But, no, you can't lie down for thirty minutes after you take it. You also have to wait for two to three hours after eating certain products that contain milk, calcium and a host of other things. I mentioned to the doctor that the last time I took this I had a lot of gas and general stomach discomfort. He said that is common with antibiotics and that I should take an over the counter drug called acidophilus, a pro biotic contained in yogurt. I have to take that three times a day with meals, but it needs refrigeration after opening, so I can't keep the bottle on the table where I can readily see it. I have to remember to get it out and, of course, then put it back. The directions with the tetracycline also warn to stop taking the drug if I have shortness of breath, and a range of other maladies. At least it doesn't warn that it can cause suicidal thoughts and tendencies. There is a drug advertised on the morning news that has those possible side effects. Why anyone would take medicine that can cause suicidal thoughts and tendencies is really beyond me. It's interesting that the cost of the tetracycline was $2.05 and the cost of the acidophilus was $14.99. With all the pills and supplements that I take I hardly have to eat anything else. So, I must now get organized so that I take my pill on time. This whole business has me scratching my head. Oh, I had better not scratch too hard. My hair might fall out. I'd better check those instructions again.

Canoeing, Lunch, Surgery, Autumn

2010-09-21T17:53:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of topics in the title so let's get going. Yesterday we decided to go canoeing because I didn't know how I would be at paddling after my surgery today. We went to Lake Lefferts in Matawan, our fall back site. It is a nice lake and the houses are mostly all hidden by trees, so, as Anne said, you think you are in the Adirondacks. It was breezy with a little chop on the lake so we paddled for an hour. There are three lakes, or one lake separated into three parts by bridges and you can spend an easy hour and a half just paddling. You can fish there too, but we just paddled. After that we went to lunch at the Brass Rail on Route 79 in Matawan. It used to be called the Poet's Inn. It has been redone inside and is very nice. they have a $5.00 lunch menu which offers soup or salad and a choice of 25 items. I had a corned beef and Swiss sandwich on toasted rye which came with fries and chicken noodle soup. Anne had a chicken breast sandwich on a long roll and cream of asparagus soup, which was quite good. The portions were good and the service was quick and friendly. If you hanker for a glass of wine, that costs $6.00 or $7.00.

So, surgery was today on my right shoulder. My appointment was at 1:40 and I was to call the office an hour before to make sure everything was on time. We were going to have lunch, but they wanted me to go over then, so I said I would. They took me in right away and it took about 45 or 50 minutes to remove the offending cells and to stitch me up. I am now carcinoma free, I guess and I hope.

Autumn is coming tomorrow night around eleven o'clock. I don't know if I'll stay up to witness the yearly event or not. There really won't be much to witness at that hour, so it might depend on what's on television. I love autumn. I love the change in the air, the leaves, harvest time (I don't do harvest myself, but I love that other people do it.) and all of the great food that seems to appear at this time of year. I like to experience the color as leaves change and I wish they would stay just that way for months, through winter actually. I now put socks on in the morning until the chill leaves the air. My usual summer attire, when the pool is open, is a bathing suit, tee shirt (any old one will do) and sandals without socks. As the weather gets cooler, I substitute shorts for the bathing suit and add socks and sneakers. When it gets really chilly, I might have to put on a sweat shirt and long pants. This will be my second autumn and winter as a retired person. My, my, that time went by alarmingly fast. I note that I have yet to become proficient at playing the banjo, piano or mandolin and that I haven't mastered, or tried to master, a foreign language. In my defense I should also note that this past summer was exceedingly hot and a great deal of time was necessarily spent in the pool as a refuge from it. I enjoy being outside in the fall more too. I did enjoy most of the times that we went to the beach, except for the time when we got sand blasted and bug bitten, but I enjoy long walks on nature trails in the fall. So, Thursday will be the first real day of fall and I should hesitate not upon my going out, but go out at once, lest before I know it, winter descends. Well, there's always cross country skiing.

A Medical Day

2010-09-17T19:21:00.000-04:00

Today I had two doctor appointments. The first was with my GP where my vital signs were present, I got a flu shot and got my ears cleaned out. That comes from saying "What?" too much when the doctor is questioning you. I asked about the call I got from the colonoscopy guy's office when I was told that I was due for one since it had been five years. I thought the guidelines were for ten years when he didn't find a single thing the last time. The guidelines have changed and now it's five years. That aside, I was pronounced fit to proceed to my next appointment.

Next up was the cardiologist. This is the conversation as he entered the room with a woman doctor?, PA?, nurse? in tow. No "Hello" or "How are you?" [Of course, if he had said that I would have said, "I don't know. That's why I'm here."]:

Doctor: "Are you still retarded?"
Me: "Yes."
Doctor: "For how long?"
Me: "Since September and I highly recommend it."

The woman must have thought we were both insane.

I like my cardiologist. My vital signs were present there also and, even though I had lunch between appointments, I lost a whole pound between doctors' offices. Not enough though. I still have to lose more. Then we discussed Rochester and movies. He is a real movie buff. His parting words were that I shouldn't move.

Fall, Chores, What Next?

2010-09-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

We got the pool closed for the season. Hopefully, I won't have to open it again because we will be moved by the time June rolls around. Not much progress on that front so who the heck knows. In the meantime, I have been doing some house chores like painting outside windows. But, of course, one doesn't just paint, one scrapes and caulks before one paints, which is more tedious than the painting part. Also, I do not like being on a ladder high above the ground. I feel that if God wanted us to be able to reach high on the side of our dwellings he would have given us longer legs or instructed us in the Bible to build shorter houses. I hope our next house is a ranch because I don't mind too much getting up that high. A ranch qualifies as a short house in my opinion.

I feel good that I got three windows painted. That may not sound like much, but it took two days, mostly scraping and caulking. There are a lot of windows in this house, but I think they don't all need painting. The ones I did were the worst. There are still more windows to do and there is the never ending task of sorting and disposing of stuff accumulated over the years. Some of the stuff is really just stuff (junk) and is easy to throw out. Other stuff isn't junk, but isn't stuff we want to keep anymore. Our kids don't seem all that anxious to have a lot of it, so I will proceed to Plan "B." Plan B is to secretly bring these things to our children's homes and hide it there while they are otherwise preoccupied. That may seem underhanded, but I believe that's how we got a lot of these things ourselves. My parents, I believe, would just bring stuff and leave it. Then they actually moved in, then died, so we wound up with all of their things with no one to complain to about it. I haven't died but I still think it's a good plan. If anyone complains I'll act all innocent.

So, what's next? I'm sick of all this house stuff and I think it's time for more relaxation. After all, I'm retired. Isn't that the time I'm supposed to do all of the things I always wanted to do but didn't get to do while I was working? I certainly didn't dream about scraping, caulking and painting windows. I mean I'm not that bad. I will have to concentrate on more enjoyable things to do, but I do wish that this house situation was more finalized because it leaves a hole in my thinking and planning. I don't like holes in my thinking. I think it is time for lunch now. Anne is a a Master Gardener meeting so I have to fend for myself. Peanut butter and jelly, here I come.

Ribs

2010-09-09T20:01:00.000-04:00

The spare ribs turned out pretty good. I don't know why they are called spare ribs. It's not like the pig had an extra pair that he donated to the cause. Anyway, it took about two hours to cook by the indirect method, that is to build the fire on each side and put the meat on the grill in the middle. We used a rub consisting of equal parts salt, black pepper, brown sugar and paprika, plus a few other things to add interest. We then added barbecue sauce from Stick Fingers in Charleston, SC flavored with Tennessee whiskey. I credit Scotch with helping to make the meal a success. No, I didn't apply the Scotch to the meat, I applied it to me, or rather in me. Whatever the reason, it all turned out swell.

The Sequence Has Started

2010-09-09T16:44:00.000-04:00

The weather has gotten cooler and Fall is fast approaching so it is time to cover the pool. I have started the sequence of adding the winterizing chemicals and by Saturday I should be ready to put on the cover, maybe Sunday. The pool is not so inviting as it is in the high heat days of summer and more leaves are falling in, so I think it is time. We went to the beach at Sandy Hook yesterday afternoon. The crowds have gone home, but the flies didn't. They don't seem to respect the fact that I sprayed Deep Woods Off on my legs. But, I shouldn't be surprised. After all, this isn't the deep woods, it's the broad beach. I guess I need a different kind of Off. Besides the flies there was the wind. It was blowing sand at our backs constantly. Anne went in the water and I was contemplating the same, but she didn't stay in complaining of those small, one celled jelly fish, plus cool water. It was the first time this summer that we had a land breeze and hence the flies.

I must not tarry long at my writing because I am cooking spare ribs on the grill and I must attend to my duties lest I produce a meal not worthy of me. I'm using an indirect grilling method, so we'll see how it all turns out. I will report, but only if it is a success. If not, I will just ignor the topic and write about something else.

School Days in Sunny Florida

2010-08-26T17:00:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-20T13:30:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-18T19:11:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-08-06T14:05:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-01T21:45:00.001-04:00

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

2010-08-01T21:06:00.000-04:00

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

I Don't Think I Get It

2010-07-19T17:52:00.000-04:00

When I first retired I vowed that I would work in the morning and then relax in the afternoon. It seems like too much relaxing, but the way this summer has been so far with the heat and humidity, it's hard to get the motivation to do much in the way of physical labor. I still try to do some work in the morning although it is becoming apparent that I am doing more relaxing than working. Some days I don't get much done. This morning, for instance, I went to the bank, Home Depot and Lowes. I was looking for a grout removal tool. I know I have one because I saw it not long ago, but, of course, I don't remember where I saw it. I don't really need two of them, so I resolved to undertake a more thorough search. It was raining very lightly when I went into Home Depot, so I carried in my umbrella, but didn't use it. When I arrived at Lowes, it was hardly raining at all, so I left my umbrella in the car. Big mistake. When I started to leave Lowes, the sky opened up trapping me there for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. I next went to Best Buy and while the skies were sunny, I brought in my umbrella. They were still sunny when I left. I went to Best Buy to see if I could get some first hand information about laptop screen resolution vs. graphic card vs. processor. I got some information, but after I left, I thought of many more questions. They always want to know what I do with the computer. I know what I do with it today, but I don't know what I may want to do tomorrow or what programs may become available requiring who knows what processor or memory or graphics card and on and on. In the past I always bought a computer with the biggest hard drive, the most memory and the fastest processor that I could reasonably afford. Now I'm told I don't need the fastest processor. Anne thinks I'll be wanting a new one in five years anyway, so why spend extra money for things I may never need. She may be right.

But, I digress. I was talking about retirement and my approach to it. Time is going by with alarming speed and I feel that I don't have complete control of my life. Maybe no one does. And, there is too much relaxing by the pool. Whenever I sit by the pool, I think it's a Sunday and that I should have a drink. I don't have one each time (maybe only twice a week), but I think I should. Well, it looks like I still have to figure out retirement. Also, I think part of the problem is that we're still waiting to hear from a certain seller in Rochester. This is a big deal, but my mind is and has been in idle about it for a couple of months. I think when we finally hear something positive, I will shift directly to over drive and I'm sure that will be the subject of another post or two or three.

Starvation Island

2010-06-30T10:37:00.000-04:00

We finally got out kayaking. I had been admonished by my friend, Laura S. (also known as Mrs. T) because I had yet to be kayaking this year. Well, wouldn't you know, but the very next day I got a call from our friend Jim who asked if we wanted to go kayaking on the Navesink River Saturday evening. So the Corp of Adventure consisting of Jim, his wife, Alice, their son, Mike, Anne and I met at Lafayette Park in Rumson and launched our vessels. We paddled down the river and under the Oceanic bridge towards parts unknown. The river used to go right out into the ocean without having to make a left turn and go around Sandy Hook. The opening has long ago silted over and now Sea Bright pretty much sits where the opening was. That's good because I didn't want to get carried away paddling and suddenly find myself in the North Atlantic as darkness approached (we launched at 6:30 p.m.). We passed by the residents of Rumson (I'm sorry, the river front residents of Rumson) enjoying the summer evening on the lawns and several boats and skidoos passed us.

We could see it in the distance and as we got closer we could discern some sort of structure on the land. Starvation Island is a small, uninhabited (so they say) island in the Navesink where the students from the Monmouth Boat Club sail during their summer lessons, take a break and then sail back. A nice day's adventure for new, young sailors. We drew closer still and I, using my acute skills of history and seamanship recognized that the structure we saw was clearly a pirate stronghold. It consisted of a rough lean-to with a pile of fire wood and something that looked like a rustic trash can. I suggested that we circumnavigate the island. The men suggested that I go first. The ladies were still far up the river leisurely chatting and occasionally dipping their paddles in the water. So, I started out, cautiously, keeping a low profile and noiselessly as possible got around the island. We didn't actually see any pirates, but I thought I could see some movement of the reeds and grasses and hear a murmuring from within. We got back to our launch site in the twilight and were glad we had escaped the clutches of the pirates of Starvation Island.

My, My, How Time Flies

2010-06-22T20:18:00.000-04:00

I have been reprimanded by a couple of followers of this blog for not blogging. Well, I am guilty. Something must have happened since May that was worthy of blogging about. We had a picnic here for the Matawan Memorial Day Parade, I had surgery on my face that is healing nicely, we celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary and summer has already arrived. Tonight we await thunder showers that never seem to come. [There is now some light rain.] For a couple of weeks, the prediction has been for rain or showers in the late afternoon, but they never materialize. I was waiting to paint our garage doors for over a week after I primed them because of the threat of rain.

We took a trip to Rochester to visit family and to look at a house that is supposedly for sale. The owners showed it to us very enthusiastically and we liked it, but we can't seem to find out if it's for sale. Oh well. The thought of possibly selling our house has motivated us to start cleaning out, something that we have been doing gradually and talking about for some time. What do we do with all the stuff? Where did it all come from anyway? We have concluded that we certainly don't need it all or even most of it, but most of it is also not stuff we would want to consign to the garbage heap. Anne thinks we should have a garage sale. I'm not sure that's worth the trouble. You have to organize and label everything, sit there while people come around looking for little glass dishes and bowls and then make a pittance for your efforts. We have an old Coast Guard uniform of my fathers from World War II, old wool bathing suits from who knows when, a World War II gas mask (I'm keeping that), a thing that is used to convert 8mm movies to VHS tape, an 8mm projector, fishing poles, reels, tackle (what happened to my promise to myself to go fishing when I retired?), scuba fins, weights, masks, cameras, photographic equipment, oil painting supplies, watercolor painting supplies, easels, paintings, pictures, picture frames, record albums, tapes, CDs, books, books and more books, not to mention trains, trains and more trains and the list goes on.

So, you see what I mean. The task of sorting through all of these sacred possessions is a daunting one. Even if we stayed here, we knew we wanted to eliminate a lot of stuff, but the thought of moving to a smaller house makes the job mandatory. Oh shaw, I'm getting myself depressed. But, I guess it's good to know that I won't get bored any time soon.

I should put a new picture or two on here, however, that always seems to present some difficulties as the pictures don't seem to want to go where I want to put them. I think I'll do that another time, but for all of my fans, please take note that I have, in fact, updated my blog.

Florida Adventure, April - May 2010

2010-05-16T20:10:00.001-04:00

There follows a complete and accurate account of Anne and Bill's excellent excursion from Matawan to Florida and points in between. The writer has not relied on what small amount of memory remains to him, but has written notes of the trip contemporaneous with their happening, or something like that.

April 30, 2020, Pembroke Pines, FL

Every time I come to Florida I think it is the perfect place to live. We used the pool at the complex today, a beautiful day. Not many people at the pool in the early afternoon before school lets out. Not that many after school lets out either. Of course, I'm thinking how nice Florida is while sitting on Pete and Roxanne's screened (roof and three walls) patio looking at the accordion type metal hurricane shutters on each window and the 12' patio doors. I haven't experienced the Sunshine State during earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes or volcanic eruptions, so I can't speak to its pleasantness during these events, but there is something exotic about the palm trees all about.

At dinner tonight on the patio, we were learning (trying to learn) Spanish from Santos and Jorge, Roxanne's parents. Anthony was chiming in frequently with various words. We have been here in November and now in April and in both months the weather has been seductive. The cares and concerns I seem to feel at home in New Jersey seem to fade from my mind. Why is that? My life is still my life and nothing has really changed except the geography.

The ride down here wasn't as arduous as I had supposed. [The return trip proved more tiring.] We spent the first night with Anne's sister, Peggy and her husband, Greg in Annandale, VA. The second night in Florence, NC and the third night in St. Augustine. The longest part of the trip, in my mind, was between St. Augustine and Pembroke Pines. That was about 5 1/2 hours driving time plus a little more for rest stops. [As I learned, this was as nothing compared to the nine and ten hours days on the way home.] I think that was because on the first two days we got started in the morning. In St. Augustine we started the morning with a half hour walk on the beach. We then toured Our Lady of La Leche shrine, the Fountain of Youth and the Castille de San Marco National Historic Site with 1,000 color coded elementary school children. Each group had on a different color tee shirt, the varieties of which were amazing. We got on the road about 1:30 p.m., so I was already getting tired by the time we started out.

I drank from the Fountain of Youth a cupful of the fable water, but as yet I cannot perceive any retardation of the aging process.

Friday Night at the Cigar Store

Peter likes his cigars and Roxanne has bought him some very nice ones and found out that there was going to be a man rolling cigars at his favorite shop starting at 6:30 p.m. We didn't get there until close to 9:00 p.m. and I though they would be closed. Not so. When we arrived the son of the owners was outside and greeted Peter with a hearty handshake and embrace. He remembered me also from our visit in November and greeted me warmly also. I didn't get a hug from him, but I did get a hug from his mother who also remembered me. I didn't even buy anything the last time.

In addition to selling cigars, they have a selection of fine wines and this night, as in November, they were offering a free wine tasting. They had a representative of the distributor pouring and explaining the fine points of the varieties offered. She poured enough in our large glasses for a fair taste of each wine and was ready with another selection as soon as we were ready. When she left, around 9:30 or 10:00, the owner lady took over and filled our glasses half full. I bought two bottles of wine and Pete bought several cigars. They gave him several extras as well. The people there know and respect what Peter has done in Haiti. I think he is also a good customer. I would be too if I smoked cigars. I don't remember a store where I was treated so nicely. We left about 10:30 p.m.

First Communion - May 1, 2010

St. Maximilian Church is large and is usually filled when we have been there. Although there was a First Communion Mass in the morning and two more on May 15th, the Mass at 1:00 p.m. was filled to capacity with people standing all along the sides and in the rear of the church. The children (and therefore us) had to be there at noon. The Mass lasted one and a half hours, so it was a lengthly time.

Alex announced in the morning that he didn't want to make his First Communion and kept saying it until his mother and father told him that he was getting dressed. We never know what Alex may do, so after he got dressed, he wanted to practice receiving communion so Anthony acted as the priest and pretended to to give give communion to Alex who dutifully bowed, said Amen and then pretended to spit out the host.

During the homily, the pastor asked for second and third grade volunteers to come up to answer a few questions. Alex wanted to go, but Roxanne discouraged him. The questions were "What is your name?" What is your favorite food? and If you could eat as much of it as you wanted to without getting sick, how much would you eat?" Those were simple enough questions and Alex could have handled them easily, but he could also start asking his own questions. When we attended his first reconciliation (penance), the pastor told the children that Jesus was going to be there with them that afternoon. Alex was sitting in the front row and, not being shy, asked every priest who came in to help with the service, "Are you Jesus?" Well, what do expect a third grader to ask?

Mass went along swimmingly until just before the Lord's Prayer, after which the communion was to start. We were about two rows behind Pete, Roxanne, Alex and Anthony and to their side. When the congregation rose, Anthony remained seated and was obviously in distress. Peter walked him out of the church as we started the Lord's Prayer. "Our Father, who art in heaven." What would happen if Anthony was sick and was unable to participate? "Hollowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Still no sign of them. "Give us this day our daily bread." Then they walked back in and Anthony resumed his place and was smiling. "Deliver us from evil." The procession started and Alex followed Anthony and did exactly as he was supposed to do. We were so, so proud of both boys. They were so handsome in their suits and white ties.

We returned to Casa Kolshorn after I got slightly lost coming back from the church and shared a wonderful bar-be-que of skirt steak, Bubba Burgers, salad, a bakery cake and a cheese cake made by Roxanne with a number of Roxanne and Pete's friends and Roxanne's parents.

Key West, May 3, 2010

I finally got to Key West. It is someplace I have heard about and read about for a long time and now I have done it. I'm glad we went and I found it interesting, but I believe that I would not want to live there. To be fair, we only went for the day and didn't stay overnight which had been recommended to us. We were tired from walking in the 90 degree heat. If we had stayed overnight we could have proceeded at a more leisurely pace. However, Pete and Roxanne were amenable to a one day trip. That allowed Pete to spend all day Sunday with the boys since he is only home for a little over a week. I felt that our visit to Key West was something like an orientation trip.

Key West is not a place that I would describe as kid friendly. It is more of an adult party town with many bars and restaurants and restaurants and bars. They are everywhere. One of the most popular nighttime activities is bar crawling. Anne and I are not big drinkers and while there is live music at most of the locations, it is not something that we wanted to do. We did stop in a bar called Fat Tuesdays and I had a drink called "Swamp Water" the main ingredient of which was rum with an additional shot for a buck. I drank about a third of it when I had pains in my stomach like severe indigestion, so I stopped. I had the same experience on Saturday when I had two double Margaritas, after two beers. I think I should stick with my Scotch. No such problems when I drink that.

When we arrived at Key West around 1:00 p.m., we were hungry and decided on a Cuban restaurant. I had a Negro Modelo beer and a Cuban sandwich. Anne had a fish sandwich. Either one would have been enough for us both to share.

I bought a fedora hat and a shirt that I had a dye transfer put on the pocket that said "Key West." When I went into the store selling the shirts, I asked how much they were. The lady pointed to a small tag on the rack that said $34.95. I had been in another store where the same shirt was $14.95, but they didn't have my size. I said "$34.95?" The lady said that was correct, but that I was lucky because they were on sale today for $20.00 and any logo of my choice was free. Sometime you just get lucky.

We visited Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West where he lived for seven years. After his death, his sons sold it for $80,000. The people who bought it (the Dicksons) were so continuously disturbed by people knocking on the door that they decided to move out, turn the place into a museum and charge a righteous admission fee - a good money maker for them.

It was five o'clock somewhere, actually, right there about the time we were in the Margaritaville store and bar. The habituants, however, had started their toasts about 3:00 or 4:00 and were likely to continue until 4:00 a.m.

I think that some of the other Keys would be interesting as they offer snorkeling, glass bottom boats, fishing and other water sports with a less congested environment than Key West. Key West reminded me of a cross between New Orleans and Ocean Grove, New Jersey. It takes about four hours straight driving from Penbroke Pines. On the way back we stopped at a McDonalds for a light snack and got home around 10:30 p.m.

Alligator Alley and Alligators in the Backyard - May 10, 2010

We took Peter to the Fort Lauderdale airport for his flight back to Haiti and then proceeded West along I75, Alligator Alley which runs from Ft. Lauderdale to Naples, Florida. We didn't see any alligators this time, but had seen some along here the last time we were in Florida.

When we arrived at our friends, Rosemary and Bob's house in Trinity Communities (New Port Richey) we learned that the water level in the lake behind their house had risen and now is about 50 feet behind their screened pool enclosure. From that point waterward there is thick vegetation about ten feet tall with about a dozen trees much taller with Spanish moss clinging to the branches and bending them over. In the late afternoon and evening you can hear them grunting, the alligators that is. They sound something like pigs. Then there are bobcats, water moccasins and mink all walking or slithering through the back yard. We were safe, of course, because nothing could get through the fiberglass bug screening that surrounds the pool.

Bob and I walked to the edge of the bushes with my binoculars to see what we could see. We didn't see any alligators, but only a large rabbit.

We all went to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. It is very large with many interesting exhibits. My favorite aquarium, however, is Jenkinsons in Point Pleasant. Okay, the aquarium in Monaco was better, but is far, far away.

Charleston, South Carolina - May 13, 2010

After we left New Port Richey, we drove and drove and drove to Charleston. The city is about one hour east of I95, but that road seemed like a five hour journey. The Tom Tom led us into town. We had used the street address to find our motel and when it said "You have arrived at your destination," we were next to a dilapidated building with a sign that read "Jesus Saves." The GPS should have told us to turn right instead of left and then we would have truly arrived at our destination.

We used the afternoon and evening to walk around Charleston and to eat pulled pork bar-be-que at Sticky Fingers on Meeting Street. The next day we toured Magnolia Plantation which included a house tour and a boat ride. We saw plenty of alligators on the boat ride.

We left Magnolia Plantation at about 1:00 p.m. and decided to drive until we got tired and stop for the night. A few hours later we stopped at a practically deserted South of the Border and bought a sub sandwich. We drove and drove some more until I felt that we had probably traveled enough. We stopped at a rest stop at which I bought a bottle of Mountain Dew. That rejuvenated me with vim, vigor and vitality so much so that we drove to Peggy & Greg's in Annandale, VA, riding through a prodigious thunder storm and arriving at 11:00 p.m.

We visited with Peggy & Greg until 1:00 p.m on Saturday and then headed home. Of course, the Beltway turned into a parking lot almost as soon as we got onto it. It seemed like forever, but we only lost about 20 minutes. We arrived home very tired, but glad to be here. There's no place like home and that's because that's where all my stuff is. Our next trip of any significant distance will probably be by air.

Anne asked if I didn't feel like it was time to go back to work since we had returned from a trip. I said "No, I don't feel that way." She said that she felt like that. I said "I'm not going."

The Porch is Done, the Porch is Done

2010-04-24T20:02:00.000-04:00

It was done last weekend, but we just put the furniture back today. Actually, it's not done. I still have to do the railings by the front steps, but the painting is done and that's good. The railings will have to wait for another month as I have other things to do in the meantime. I just wanted to report that the painting was done, lest some reader conclude that I was slacking in my responsibilities.

I Am Tired Tonight

2010-04-17T19:15:00.000-04:00

I decided that today was the day to get busy scraping and sanding the porch, so I got busy doing it. I opted not to rent a commercial sander. I had done so the last time we painted the porch and was not all that pleased with the results. Also, the paint on a good portion of the floor was solid and in good condition. I got on my knees, with knee pads, of course, and proceeded to scrape away loose paint then to sweep up the debris. I then sanded as best I could and again swept up the debris. I divided the porch into five sections, I think (remember I'm tired) and did the same for each. By the time I was half way through the third section, the nice, cushy knee pads were feeling mighty thin and my arms and back were feeling like they had done some work. It was also getting embarrassingly difficult to get back up each time I got down. But, in the end I did it and feel quite good about the accomplishment. The next step is painting, which will be a piece of cake compared to today. I will use a roller on a pole so that I can stand the whole time. With the painting, the most work is putting masking tape on everything that's not supposed to get floor paint, something I wish prior owners had thought to do. It is particularly difficult to get paint off brick and they were not especially careful when they painted resulting in a lot of extra work for the current occupants. Again, this is one of those jobs that people may not notice has been done. With tables and chairs on the porch, the floor will be less noticeable. After all, when we invite people over and use the porch, we aren't expecting for them to stand around marveling at the floor. If they did, I would think that our entertainment or food service skills were somewhat lacking. It would be okay though if someone said, "Oh, doesn't the floor look nice. Did you have it painted recently?"

Another Busy Day

2010-04-14T19:57:00.001-04:00

Today I actually got started painting our porch columns and soffits. I had filled in gaps with wood putty and sanded and scraped until I didn't care anymore and now the painting has started. Anne did the outside soffits while I did the inside and columns. Two more columns to go and more soffits tomorrow. Then it's on to the porch floor. The floor needs to be sanded and I'm not quite sure how to do that this time. The last time I painted it, I rented a commercial sander (the vibrating kind, not a drum sander) and I wasn't really happy with the results. I'm afraid that a drum sander would be too aggressive and could cause more damage that I care to deal with, so I will have to figure something else out. I have a powerful pressure washer, but that didn't do so great either. The most powerful nozzle started scoring the wood and the next most powerful didn't seem to do much. I may be on my hands and knees for this one. The painted columns look great. If you get close, you can see the imperfections, but from a distance they sparkling white and bright. I said to Anne that this is one job that people won't notice that we did, but would notice if we didn't.

I am a little less than a third of the way through reading Under the Dome by Stephen King. Other than the fact that an impenetrable dome plops itself down over a town, the story seems like a plot for a B movie. Mr. King has, so far, not provided his usual harem, scare'um, out of nowhere effects. But, they may be coming. Kids are starting to see weird things in their minds. He has some time left, like 700 more pages, so I'm hoping he comes up with something. He does have a way of making you want to keep reading though. There is a list of important characters in the front of the book, but so many of them had been killed off by page 100, I wasn't sure how he was going to make it to page 1074. I'll have to keep on reading.

I noticed that when I published this post (this is an edit), I got an ad for NJ Hardwood Flooring. How do they do that?

A Busy Day

2010-04-12T19:09:00.000-04:00

It was a busy day. I got up early to get a routine blood test, had breakfast, mowed the front lawn, had lunch, went to the dentist for my next to the last appointment for my new cap, worked on scraping, filling and sanding two more porch columns and watched the aftermath of a bad accident around the corner from our house. I saw the fire company extricate a man from an on fire, turned over car. According to neighbors, he was traveling at a high rate of speed south on the north bound side of Route 34. The car left the road and traveled along a couple of empty lots and then turned over and caught fire. Apparently there were no other cars involved. One of our FBI neighbors said he saw no skid marks anywhere. I don't know what happened to the man, but I saw them put him in the ambulance and then the ambulance just stayed there for quite some time. Paramedics arrived, but they didn't even get out of their rig. From my years on the first aid squad, that to me, means one of two things. He was not injured and was sitting in there chatting with the first aid people, or he was lying in there having had his last chat. I sincerely hope it was the former.

Every job seems to take longer than I think it will. I had allocated about an hour or so to dealing with the two columns, but it took most of the afternoon. Of course, I stopped to go see the accident, but I didn't stay there that long. I shouldn't complain because I have every day to get this stuff done, but at some point I would like to get it done so I can move on to the next project. I suppose I could approach there little tasks as a model ship builder who I once heard say, "It doesn't matter how long it takes to finish one model, because when I finish with this one, I'll be starting another one." I guess, but I'm not building model ships here. I do get satisfaction and have pride in what I have done when these jobs are completed, so I should stop complaining and go do something constructive.

The Twins and Seven Presidents

2010-04-09T19:31:00.000-04:00

The twins are staying with us for two nights so that their parents can get a little away time and have adult conversations. Yesterday we went to Seven Presidents Oceanfront Park in Long Branch where there is a nice playground and, of course, the ocean. It was very warm at our house, but freezing at the beach with a strong breeze blowing off the ocean. The kids loved the playground and the beach. We hunkered down near some dunes to shelter us from the brunt of the wind, but Timmy and Bridget ran back and forth to the water to bring water to make sand things with the beach toys that we brought. By bedtime, two people were very, very tired and it wasn't the twins.

Today was not as nice as predicted, but while Anne was at the oral surgeon, the twins and I set up a racing car set in the cellar. Two days ago I had lugged the thing up to the attic figuring I wouldn't be needing it for a while. Timmy spotted it up there and kept pestering me to get it working, so I did. After lunch we went to Holmdel Park to take a walk around the lake and to use the new playground at the top of the hill where there is a big climbing dome. We also stopped in to the interpretive center at Longstreet Farm where the kids remembered seeing a cat. The lady there let them see the cat who was in another room resting. Riley (the cat) looked like a larger version of Bootsie (our deceased cat). There were a few sprinkles while we were at the park, but not enough to stop the fun. In the parking lot, a woman was returning to her car with a large collie and Bridget said, "Oh, I love that kind of dog" and called "Hi, doggie" to it. The woman brought it around for the children to pet. She said it loved children, which was obviously true and the kids loved the dog as well.

Books, Spas and Automobiles

2010-04-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

I have finished reading the books in Six Gothic Tales. They were Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, Mission to Malaspiga by Evelyn Anthony, Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, The High Valley by Jessica North, Thunder Heights by Phyllis A. Whitney and Tregaron's Daughter by Madeleine Brent. They were all written by women and the chief character in each was a young woman who in one form or another manages to get herself tangled in a web of mystery and danger and they were all very enjoyable. I have also just finished reading Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer a tale about the attempts in 1922 and 1924 of George Mallory to conquer Mount Everest. We learn at the very beginning of the book that his body was found in 1999 about 600 feet from the summit and the question is whether he made it or not. This is a novel, but a compelling tale and you start to feel the agony of the climbers around 27,000 feet, 2,002 feet from the summit. This was another good book. Thank you, Christine, for recommending it. I have been doing all of this reading because I want to start on Under the Dome by Stephen King, which was a birthday gift from daughter Christine and family. There is not a word on the dust jacket of the book except the title, author and publisher, so what the heck is this story about? I guess I'm about to find out.

We were sitting in the spa the other evening and I was looking at the planes passing overhead. I wondered where all of the people were going to or coming from. Some planes were very far up and others were much closer to the ground. Not that close that I could see the pilot waving from the cockpit, but closer than the ones higher up. Anyway, pilots don't wave from the cockpits anymore, not like they did back in 1954. I thought that each passenger in each plane has a story, a family and a life, 99.9% of whom I will never encounter. I thought the same thing watching cars and trucks passing in front of our house earlier in the day. It reminds me of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant in which civilization is described in terms of a river flowing past the banks. I never read that, but maybe I should. I have time now, when I'm not sitting in hot water looking up at airplanes.

Water, Water, Everywhere

2010-04-01T19:58:00.000-04:00

We have spent the last two days blotting the water out of our cellar. We had about an inch over the entire floor, a first for us since we have been in this house. Sometimes, after a heavy rain, we get a little water in one corner, but never over the whole floor. So, we used a pool cover pump and a wet vac, both of which worked well. Our neighbor, Phil, came over and did Yeoman service. He worked harder than both other methods despite the fact that he had water in his own basement which is equipped with wall to wall carpeting. Some of my model train stuff got wet. A lot was stored in cardboard boxes under the train set, where it had never even been approached by water. I went to the Depot of the Home and bought a number of plastic boxes so that I don't have to worry about this again. Our cellar seems to have several low spots, so a sump pump would not have helped; maybe several would do the trick. Fortunately, we didn't have anything of great value on the floor. Most things subject to water damage were up on wood pieces or something to protect against water. It was a lovely day today, but I was beneath the earth's surface attending to my problem. Tomorrow, Good Friday, will hopefully, be good, at least better in the water department than today.

A new picture has been posted over to the right. It is me and five out of seven of our delightful grandchildren. That was the only one of several where everyone was recognizable and in good humor.

Saturday (After my Birthday) / Liquor

2010-03-27T17:15:00.001-04:00

I didn't want to forget about my birthday just yet, although having birthdays isn't as exciting as it once was.

Today, I went into the cellar to clear out some shelf space in our cold room (that's what it says on the blueprint from 1911) for wine bottles that had been stored on a table in the main part of the cellar. Anne noticed that the sun would hit them, even on cold days and warm them. Not something that should happen to wine. After I had accomplished this, Anne said, "We have an awful lot of liquor down there. We should use it up." I said, "Okay. I will proceed to do that." I don't think we have an "awful lot" of liquor. We have a number of bottles of various kinds of spirits that have been acquired as gifts or by purchase over the years. Some are actually quite ancient.

Since Anne went to a shower this afternoon, I decided to go down into the cellar and proceed to carry out her instructions.

I lined up the bottles on the drain board by the sink. I picked up the first bottle, pulled the cork out of it and poured it down the sink, except for one little swallow, which I drank.

I picked up the second bottle, pulled the cork out of it and poured it down the sink, that is, all except for one little swallow, which I drank.

I picked up the next bottle, pulled the sink out of it and poured it down the cork, except one little swallow, which I drank.

I picked up the next cork, pulled the bottle out of it and poured it down the sink, all except one little drink, which I drank.

I picked up the next sink, pulled the cork out of it and poured it down the bottle, all except one little drink, which I sank.

I picked up the next drink, pulled the swallow out of it and poured it down the sink, all except one little drink, I think.

Now, let's see how many bottles do I have left, which I drank. I ask you, though, wasn't that a terrible thing for my wife to ask me to do? But, bless her little heart. I know she only has my best interests in mind. And you listen, buster. Don't say anything against my wife, because I have the wifest little nice you ever saw, which I drank.

Birthday, the Day After

2010-03-26T10:52:00.000-04:00

I got through my birthday without pestilence or a plague of locust descending upon us. Since Anne had such a beautiful day for her birthday, a week ago, I thought surely that one of those would befall my day. It turned out to be a nice day, not as sunny as was predicted, but nice anyway. We started out with mass, had a lovely breakfast and then went for an hour long hike on the Blue Trail in Chesequake Park. I did not bring binoculars, but wish I had because we saw a bit of wildlife including a raccoon, osprey and cormorant, along with ducks and geese. We went to dinner at Charlie Brown's and then went to a play at Two Rivers Theater in Red Bank. The play was Orestes by Euripides. It is a Greek tragic romp written 2400 years ago, but is still funny today, with some tweaks to the language to make it more relevant to the modern audience. It is amazing how human emotions and conditions can transcend the centuries and be recognizable even now. You see, Apollo (the god) ordered Orestes and his sister, Electra, to kill their mother because she had killed their father, Agamemnon, who had killed their sister, Iphigenia, to get the winds to blow so that his ships could get to Troy to do battle because of the trouble started by their aunt Helen. Well, now the whole town is upset and has condemned Orestes and Electra to kill themselves for their deeds, but they reason that their mother was a bad person anyway and they were ordered to kill her by Apollo, so they hatch a scheme to save themselves and be hailed as heros for what they did.

My birthday celebration really started on March 12th when my friend, Marie, took me out for a delightful lunch. Today, two former coworkers, Laura and Kate, are taking me to lunch. On Sunday three of our children and their families are coming for a March birthday celebration. By the time all the celebrating is over, I will have gained an unmentionable amount of weight. On Monday, however, the gaiety ends because I have a dentist appointment to begin putting in a crown or cap or something. A couple of weeks ago I had a root canal done in preparation for this. Oh, joy, joy, I can hardly contain myself.

Birthday

2010-03-24T19:34:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow is my umpty umth birthday. Oh, what the heck, I'm going to be sixty seven. Why hide it? That's how old I am. I can't do anything about it. Today was my pre-birthday celebration day. Since we are going out to dinner tomorrow evening and I am the designated driver, I decided to have my birthday drink ( a wee dram or two or three) today. Anne made me one of my favorite dinners, chicken cordon bleu. Yummy. We had peanut butter Girl Scout cookies and chocolate ice cream for desert. That is living.

We also took a walk in Holmdel Park. It was windy, but pleasant. I listened to music of Chris Via and the Giles Mountain String Band. Chris, who I met at the Folk Musicians' Retreat made my new banjo, the one I got myself for a retirement present. Neil Turner, who I also met at the Retreat, made the neck, shipped it to Chris who then finished the neck, built the pot and put the whole thing together.

So here I am on the threshold of another birthday, getting another year older. Really, I've been getting a year older all year. Tomorrow I will only be another day older, but the number changes. It increases. Sunday we will have three of our four children and their families gather at our house. This, to me, is the best birthday present and I am thankful for each of them, Anne, my health and my friends. I guess my health is okay. Who ever knows? I'm still here, so that is one criteria of well being. A former colleague from work lost her brother this week and he was only forty nine and in "good health." They say he was in good health, but he obviously wasn't since he had a heart attack. He and they only thought he was in good health.

Today was a beautiful day to be outside to appreciate my health and the world. I like to get outside, even away from the house, to experience life. I like our house and being in it in the winter and lousy weather is fine, but when the weather improves, it is beneficial to go out, to go to the ocean or the bay and see the rest of the world. Tomorrow is predicted by the weather gurus to be a nice day and I will go out in it and breathe in whatever it has to offer.

Just so you don't think I spent my day boozing and listening to mountain music all day, I did do some constructive things. This morning I went into the garage and rearranged the seasonal power equipment, the snow blower, wheel barrow, lawn mower, etc. I tried to run the gas out of the snow blower, but did not succeed. I guess there was more gas in it than I realized. I cleaned up the mower housing and pull cord mechanism which had been getting stuck and I swept a large portion of the garage. I also did my weight training. It takes some time to lift all those little dumbbells. Then we went for our walk, then I read some and then I listened to music. I try to get something productive done each day, usually in the morning, before I allow myself to relax or do something frivolous like playing the banjo. I've got myself curious now about what I will do tomorrow.

Depressing Days

2010-03-23T20:26:00.000-04:00

Rain, rain go away. Today was another one of those dreary days when doing outside activities was not very enjoyable, so I didn't. I sometimes wish for a day like this so I can do things inside that I can't do because I am forced to do things outside. Actually, I am happy to be outside when there are nice days like we had this past weekend and it seems that spring should provide those days for us, having given us a foretaste. I decided to practice some music. (You'll have to amble on over to my other blog, Barrister Bill, to follow my musical career.) I could have gone down into the cellar and organized stuff, but that's always there to do. If, at some point, I don't take a break from household chores, I will never do any fun things.

I also took some time to read some more of my Gothic Tales. In addition to Jamaica Inn, I have also read Mission to Malaspiga, by Evelyn Anthony, The High Valley, by Jessica North, and Mistress of Mellyn, by Victoria Holt. I thought the last one was particularly good. Lots of twists and turns. I have just started Thunder Heights, by Phyllis A. Whitney. All of the stories, so far, have as the main character, a young woman who somehow goes to stay with a very wealthy family and then finds herself in a dangerous situation. I'm not going to tell you any more because I'm afraid I will give away some of the plots and that wouldn't be fair. I am enjoying all of these stories.

I mentioned to my daughter, Christine, that I wished I had some way to keep track of the books I read and what I thought of them. She recommended a free site called Goodreads where you can list books that you have read, comment on them and read comments that others have made on books that they have read. I joined up, but I haven't actually listed any books yet. I'll get around to it. I had better do it soon or I will have forgotten the names of the books I read, never mind what they were about.

What is it about Facebook? That is the most frustrating site. One minute something is on my wall, or whatever they call it, the next it is gone. Some friends' posts don't show up and I have to go looking for them. Very annoying.

Tomorrow the sun is supposed to come out. Maybe I'll be able to get outside and catch up with some chores.

The First Day of Spring

2010-03-20T18:06:00.000-04:00

Yes, indeed. Spring arrived at 1:32 p.m. this afternoon and I have been busy greeting its arrival, although not in the manner that I had expected. When spring arrives, a young man's fancy turns to...to..., I forget to what a young man's fancy turns, but my fancy turns to thoughts of kayaking. However, we must first accomplish our garden tasks. My assigned task was to continue to rake out the flower beds, but first I decided to turn on the outdoor water faucets, which consists of simply turning on the outdoor water faucets, except the one by the garage. On that one I had installed a union (plumbing gizmo) so I could separate the pipes in the winter to avoid freezing and splitting of pipes and all sorts of mayhem. I put pipe dope on the connections and tightened them then went to turn on the water. Of course there was a drip, so I went back into the cellar to turn off the water, came back out, disassembled the whole thing, put on more pipe dope, reassembled the contraption, went back down the cellar to try again. Still a leak. I should add at this point that turning on the water to this particular line requires one (me) to climb on top of the clothes dryer and reach down behind it, almost to the floor to get at the valve. In addition to this exercise, I discovered that I had two bottles of pipe dope. On one, the in bottle brush had detached itself from the jar lid which serves as a handle. On the other, the brush had detached itself from the tube that holds it to the lid. It was interesting.

Water was leaking from two spots that I could see, so I decided that I needed a new thingy that joins the pipes together, but I didn't want to go to le depot de la home, because I don't like to do that on weekends. I have often told our children that they should never buy anything until they first check with me to see if we might have a spare one here to give to them. It has frequently proved true that they could go down into my parts department/supply room/museum and come up with what they needed. Even one of our neighbors, also not wanting to go to the Home Depot, came and asked if I had a piece of 1/2 inch conduit. Of course I did, so I gave him a piece. So, I went down there myself and, not surprisingly, I came up with just what I needed, a 3/4 inch nip (that's what it says on the plastic wrapper that it was in). Getting the old nip off wasn't as easy as finding the new one, but I succeeded, thanks to my renewed weight training. I then reassembled the whole mess, went down into the cellar, climbed on the dryer, reached down behind it and turned on the water. I have to say that I was fairly pessimistic by this time, but voila, no leak. My next step was to get out all of the hoses and attach them, which I did without incident.

Spring comes upon us quickly every year it seems. Only last week we were dealing with rain and floods and a few short weeks before that, a major snow storm. Then, all of a sudden, here comes spring. I like spring, but it brings with it a plethora of chores that must be done now. Not in a couple of weeks or months, but right now. Most of those chores have to do with gardening and outside maintenance. There are also the other handy person things to do that were saved until spring. What happens to me is that I don't to the spring things because of other things, so I say I will do them in the fall, which, of course, I don't do, but there's always next spring. Happy spring.

St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T20:45:00.001-04:00

I was busy working on the porch today in preparation for the painting thereof. Trying to get some of the dirt off of the soffits is proving challenging. I scrubbed with washing soda without any noticeable effect, although the water in the bucket got dirty.

This afternoon, in honor of Anne's birthday tomorrow, we went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. It was so-so, but it only cost us $4.50 each as seniors. Avatar cost $4.00 apiece, so even the movies are getting expensive. Next thing you know, they'll be charging us $5.00 to see a movie. At least on Tuesdays we can get in free, but our theater doesn't have 3-D. Tomorrow, we will go down to Point Pleasant to walk on the boardwalk and have lunch. On Friday, still in honor of Anne's birthday, we will see Children of Eden by the Spotlight Players at a church within walking distance. In another couple of weeks, still in honor of Anne's birthday, we will see Nunsense in Atlantic Highlands. Next week is my birthday, but I have nothing planned except lunch with some friends. That will probably be equal to a week's worth of entertainment.

Windshield Wipers

2010-03-15T14:41:00.000-04:00

I just changed the windshield wipers on the minivan. That's basically Anne's car and she has noticed a deterioration in the wiping ability. There are people out there somewhere whose job it is to design all sorts of connection types for windshield wipers. If you change them frequently, you probably remember how it was done the last time and it's a snap. But, most people don't change their wipers more than twice a year, if that and, up to now, I almost always had them changed when I was getting the car serviced. Now that I'm retired, that's one luxury that has to end. So, I'm confronted with not so clear instructions and tiny pictures showing me what to do. I got them changed and I hope I did it correctly because the last thing I want is for Anne to tell me that a wiper fell off while she was driving in a rain storm. Since I have now been successful with the Pontiac, I will move on to the Chevy. I have a different brand of replacement blades for it and, I'm sure, a different connection gizmo. I wonder how people get jobs like that. Do you apply to be a windshield wiper designer? Are there courses for that? Can you get a job doing that after you retire from something else, or do you have to start young? Do they have contests and award prizes for the most convoluted design? I wonder about all of this.

Rain, Rain, Rain / Splitting Firewood

2010-03-13T20:56:00.000-05:00

There's a song about raining, raining, raining. I think it may be by the Dillards. Whether there is or not, there ought to be. I don't remember this much rain and wind together since we lived in this house (about 11 years). Now, I could be wrong. I have been wrong once or twice before, so this could be the third time in my life. It's supposed to subside by midnight. This afternoon we went to the Matawan library to hear Heather Mulvey sing Celtic songs in honor of St. Patrick's Day. This is the third time we have heard her and she really is good. She has a beautiful voice.

My back and shoulders have been slightly sore since Wednesday when I split some firewood. We were running low and with the forecast for a wet weekend, I thought it might be nice to have a fire in the wood stove on Sunday. When we had two large trees removed a year or so ago, I asked the tree service to cut fire place size logs for me which they did. I then carried a number of unsplit ones down into the cellar to let them dry. I pulled them out now for splitting. However, I learned that you are supposed to split firewood when it is still wet. Letting it dry only makes it harder. I don't know how to do anything easy, but, now I have a small supply of split wood and a couple of sore shoulders.

My computer is not behaving itself properly. It is taking a long time to play YouTube videos. I like to listen to various artists who have folk music videos, but lately, it is taking forever to load them. I tried Anne's new computer and found no problem loading them on it. As a bonus, I discovered that my ear buds produce a much fuller sound on Anne's computer. I had always thought they were fine on mine. What to do. What to do. I'm not ready to get a new computer yet. When I do get one, I believe I will get a PC laptop instead of a Mac this time. Apples are nice, but they are very expensive. I really don't want to think about that now, but I may be forced into it.

Gothic Tales, Pictures, Spanish

2010-03-09T21:29:00.000-05:00

The title to this post is ambitious so I'd better get busy. Previously, I wrote about starting Jamaica Inn by Lady Baldwin (D.B.E.) better known as Daphne de Maurier. I had read it before, but it is a very well written tale of murder and mayhem. I shouldn't tell about the story as I think it will detract from the excitement of reading it. It is told from a young woman's point of view, written by a woman, of course, and will be enjoyed by any man who likes a good adventure story and by any woman who might fancy putting herself in the place of Mary Yellan, who, upon the death of her mother goes to live with her aunt Patience and her uncle, the landlord of the infamous Jamaica Inn. Twists, turns and surprises along the way. Get thee to the library, or wait until I'm finished with the book that it's in and you can borrow it from me.

Speaking of the book that it's in, it is a Reader's Digest book called Six Gothic Tales. All of the authors are women and all of the tales are condensed versions. I usually abhor condensed versions of books, but I found this book lying around and the stories looked interesting. The next story (book) which I have just started is Mission to Malaspiga by Evelyn Anthony. Once again, the central character is a young woman who has just lost her brother in what appears to be murder orchestrated by aristocratic members of her own family to whom she is distantly related. It involves drugs, international intrigue and affairs of the heart.

Pictures - I am now through 2007 and am ready to start on 2008 which appears to be the last year of the mysterious numbered files. I can't wait to see what other surprises are in store for me there.

I decided, again, that I want to learn Spanish. I have a series of eight CDs by Michel Thomas which I listened to three times and was no better off for my efforts than when I first began. I thought I would buy the Rosetta Stone program and went on the internet to find out that I could pay $699. for the whole five series course or $263. for the same thing at another site. Huh? I mentioned my intention to Anne who said that Katie had used that in school and was very disappointed in it. Now, Katie is 13 years old, but I trust her judgment and do so especially in matters of learning in which she is currently specializing, whereas I am not. Therefore, I will not get the Rosetta Stone program. Looking at my book shelves, I discovered that I had another Spanish language program called Learn to Speak Spanish Deluxe. The box has never been opened and I don't recall where it came from, but it is titled in the very thing I want to do: learn to speak Spanish. I have now opened the box and will proceed to load the CDs onto a computer. I guess I'll have to do something else with it as well before I can actually speak Spanish. I also discovered Learn to Speak French Deluxe in another unopened box. I will perhaps need that as one of my Facebook friends, Esther, from Haiti thinks I speak French and wants me to learn Creole. This is why my days are flying by.

No Pictures / Root Canal

2010-03-05T19:15:00.000-05:00

Don't worry, there are still pictures (movies too), but I just didn't feel like dealing with them today because I had my first ever root canal. I went to the same doctor that Anne had used a couple of times and she is really nice. She made me feel as comfortable as she could and worked very efficiently for over an hour on me. There was no pain and the worst part was not knowing how long it was all going to last. When I have had a cavity filled, I have a pretty good idea of how things are progressing by what's going on in my mouth. Never having had a root canal, I was clueless as to how long things would take. I am not feeling any residual pain, except for a slight headache, so I'd say that things went very well. Although the doctor and her staff couldn't have been any nicer or more professional, I hope I never see her again, in that setting at least.

Pictures / Root Canal

2010-03-03T20:59:00.000-05:00

I'll start with the root canal first. I have to go to the endodontist on Friday for that exciting procedure. Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to it, but, I ask you, what are my choices? I was to see the dermatologist last Wednesday, the Cardiologist yesterday (Tuesday) and the endodontist is Friday. When does it end? Okay, I know when it ends. Then I go see the mortician, but hopefully, that won't be for another 50 years or so. It will take me that long to get the pictures on the new computer organized.

I have been working every day on those darn pictures and I hardly feel that I'm making any progress. Right now I'm trying to get groups of pictures in categories. I haven't even started to label each of the thousands of photos and now the computer wants me to identify each individual person in every picture so it can show off and tell me who they are when they appear in any picture. There's one good thing that comes of all this. With new computers coming with cameras, GPS and face recognition built it, I think I will simply take the laptop along and when a picture opportunity presents itself, I'll just point the computer at it and say, take the picture, label it with the names of the people in it and the place where it was taken and refer to my calendar and also put down the event taking place. Why should I have to do all of this stuff?

I'm Not in Trouble

2010-03-02T12:19:00.000-05:00

I went to the cardiologist's office today to see Mary the Nurse Practitioner and I didn't get in trouble. She didn't like the idea that I was shoveling snow, but didn't give any guidance on how I could remove it without shoveling. My blood pressure is good, my blood work was good, so I'm allowed to keep going for the time being, but I should be very careful shoveling snow. Hopefully, that won't be a concern for too much longer.

I have been spending my time trying to organize pictures on Anne's new computer. We transferred a lot of files from her old one and somehow, there were a lot of duplicate pictures. There were over 2,800 of them and I had to delete each one individually. Not a fun job. I think I have things in some order and now I am setting about to organize them so that they are easier to find.

I'm In Trouble Come Tuesday

2010-02-25T19:29:00.000-05:00

Yes, I will be in trouble. That is if I turn myself in I'll be in trouble. I have to go there, but I don't have to tell on myself, do I? But, then, what's the point of going if I'm not going to be honest. I hope I don't get recalled or sent away for evaluation. They like to evaluate me though. They always come up with something to do to me. But, this appointment is with the nurse practitioner, not the cardiologist. She's a tough cookie and won't let me slide, so I don't know what will happen if I tell her about the snow shoveling that I did today and will probably do tomorrow.

I did a little more shoveling than I thought because a sheer bolt on my snow blower broke so that only half of the tines were actually pushing snow. I thought something wasn't right, but I realized that when I engaged the tines (you have to keep your hand on the lever), I couldn't see around to the front to see if both sides were working. I had to have Anne come to the window to look at it from the house. Fortunately, I had another sheer bolt, but I had already put the machine away, so I just finished shoveling by hand. I have replaced the bolt, so now I'm, hopefully, ready for tomorrow and, hopefully, tomorrow's snow will be not as heavy as today's. If it's heavy, I'll really be in trouble on Tuesday.

Monkeys in the Cellar

2010-02-24T20:21:00.001-05:00

There were two monkeys in our cellar yesterday and today and they can even do jig saw puzzles. We had Timmy and Bridget overnight last night as their parents went skiing at Camelback. At one point, Timmy said to me, "Grampy, can we climb the poles?" I said, "Sure, you can try." I thought it was just something they would like to be able to do, but wouldn't. I turned around and, both of them were climbing like monkeys up and down the poles. Later I mentioned to Timmy that we had monkeys in the cellar climbing on the poles and he said, "No, Grampy, that was just us."

We had a jig saw puzzle set up on the table in the cellar which Anne and I have been periodically working on. It has 500 pieces and for persons 12 and older. I had actually set it out because a few weeks ago we had some company and I thought that maybe someone would like to try their hand at it. It is one of those puzzles with an irregular border and is a little complicated so I haven't found it very easy, although I did find the challenge enjoyable. We had the puzzle about three quarters completed when two five year old monkeys descended upon it and finished it up in about fifteen minutes. Anne asked how they were able to do it so fast. Did they look at the colors or the shapes, or what? They said they looked at the shapes. Well I've been looking at the shapes and the colors too.

We also painted two bird houses that we had in the attic. The twins did a very nice job and hopefully some bird families will think so too.

This has been a rough week for me and we didn't even get the next round of snow yet. Sunday, I was eating some snacks including some nuts and found that a part of a tooth had broken off. I saved it and went to the dentist on Monday. I gave him the piece and said that if he would just be good enough to glue it back on, I would be on my way. Unfortunately, he said they wouldn't work and now I have an appointment scheduled for next Friday for a root canal. In our family, this is not supposed to happen to me. It is Anne who has all the appointments with the dentist, endodontist and and oral surgeon. I still have all of my original teeth with no bridges, aqueducts, canals or anything, so it is very traumatic for me to have to go through this. Today, I went to the dermatologist for my two month checkup and in addition to finding more spots on my face to squirt with liquid nitrogen, she took another biopsy. The last two times they have taken biopsies they have been negative, but I have had to have several surgeries on my face, so I don't like the idea of another biopsy. I have an appointment with my cardiologist on Tuesday. I feel okay and I'm hoping my luck is better there. Well, I think it was Red Buttons who said that you know that you're getting old when all the names in your little black book end in MD.

My one year old grandson, Tyler, gave me a hat that says, "Old Guys Rule." He knows.

Four Months More / Snow Blower / Computers

2010-02-19T10:51:00.000-05:00

According to the Charlie Gibson/Bill Bradley formula for retirement, one should wait about nine months to decide what to do with the rest of ones life. It is about five months since I have retired, so I have four months more of reading and thinking left to decide if I want to climb Mount Everest, or to continue on with the reading and thinking. I think I won't climb Mount Everest, but I might like to read about someone else doing it. Oh my, have I become so complacent, such a couch potato? My friend, Angela, mentioned that she and her husband, Bob, were planning an overnight in New Hope with a visit to a nice restaurant and wine tasting. That sounds so much more civilized than getting all dressed against the cold and trudging up the side of a mountain, although, I imagine that like apres ski, you could have an apres mountain drink by the fireplace in some lodge. I'll think about it.

I believe that I mentioned in an earlier post that my snow blower has been running rough of late. The carburetor probably needs cleaning and maybe it needs a new spark plug. To clean the carburetor will require either, sending it off to some service to do it, or to do it myself. I'm not a small engine expert by any means, but I think I could do it, given the time and without any pressure. Since we may get more snow Monday night into Tuesday, I think I will wait and hope for the best for now.

Anne got her new computer, but keeps using the old one. After the old one was giving us trouble, and we decided to get her a new one, I tried the old stand-by fix of unplugging the thing from the electric and from the cable, and it appears to have fixed it for the time being. The thing is seven years old so, even if it continues to chug along, I think it was time for a replacement. My computer, a Mac, seems to be slowing down and the screen seems positively dull compared to Anne's new one. Macs are nice, but expensive. Even taking into consideration the software that comes with the Mac, a laptop is still a lot more expensive than a PC laptop. I like the Mac, but do I like it that much more. After all, either a Mac or a PC will last just about the same amount of time with software updates constantly making everything obsolete. So, do I think about a Chevy or a Caddie? In terms of cars, I've usually found that a Chevy will do just fine to get from point A to point B. I don't have to make that decision just yet, because the Mac, despite being five years old, also keeps chugging along.

So, there, I have posted a post. There are those readers who were alarmed that I hadn't written anything for a week and were concerned about the state of my well being. My being is well and I will try to post more regularly. Generally, my life isn't that exciting that I think anyone else would be interested in what I'm doing or not doing. I think I don't want a life all that exciting that I feel compelled to write about it. But, I know my responsibilities to my public, so I will try to do better. By the way, public, you too could start a blog if you so desired. Your life is probably more interesting than mine. I must now again get busy reading and thinking and, I almost forgot, playing my banjo.

Verizon, Line Repair, Etc.

2010-02-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

When the phone and cable lines fell down across the road on Wednesday night, the fire company told me to call the cable company and the phone company. I called the cable company and they were out the next day. I called the number for Verizon residential repair in the phone book and spent ten minutes on hold. When a real person came o, I explained the problem, gave my address and phone number and he said, after asking if there was any other Verizon service that I would like today, that he would transfer me to the repair service. I waited on line another ten minutes and was then disconnected. I went on line to the Verizon repair site, but when I tried to email them, I was told that they couldn't complete my request, why don't I call them. I'm glad I don't have FIOS or we would really be in trouble.

More Snow and The Olden Days, Almost

2010-02-11T19:30:00.000-05:00

We had more snow last night, a lot more. Early yesterday, I had removed the mass of snow the plow had left in our alley blocking our garage. Anne went out in the afternoon and saw that it happened again. She saw the plow driver and told him about it. He said the next time he came through he would pile it the other way. She thought he was going to plow some of ours away, but, no, he just came through and piled another mass of snow on the other side of the alley. So, I had to remove it again. My body feels like I just spent a week at the Fitness Guru.

Last night, about 8:30, Anne said that there were police and fire trucks outside because our power line had fallen in the street and that our neighbor had no power. I thought that was odd since all the lights were on in the house and why should our power line falling have anything to do with our neighbor. I got on my coat, put on my boots, put on hat and gloves and went outside to have the fire company warn me to stay back because there was high voltage in the road, which was now blocked by the police to all traffic coming in both directions. Realizing that the power line wasn't down, I quickly determined that what had fallen were two old telephone lines and our cable line. When the fire company became convinced of the same thing, they simply cut the wires and traffic resumed.

I called the cable company at about 10:00 last night, got to talk to a human and was told someone would be out by 8:00p.m. tonight. At 4:00p.m. the Cablevision people arrived and put up a new wire in about an hour. Pretty good service, I think. However, their fast action deprived us of the opportunity to find out what it would have been like to live without TV, internet or phone. We do have a cell phone so Anne called our daughter to tell her so that she could pass the word in case any family member wanted to contact us. We also didn't get a newspaper today, so I said, "My gosh, we're actually going to have to talk to each other." The whole thing did make me wonder what we would do with ourselves all day without the now traditional pastimes. I was reading a book, so I spent time doing that, played my banjo and, oh, how could I forget, shoveled snow. Hopefully, shoveling snow won't become a daily, winter occupation. What else would I do? I think I need another hobby.

Snow, Snow, Snow & Computers (or I Need a Drink)

2010-02-10T15:37:00.001-05:00

Well, it is certainly snowing in ernest now (3:15p.m.). It snowed over night and I went outside to see if I should try to remove the wet snow. The walks were relatively easy, but when I came to the alley, it was another story. The plow had come through the alley during the night and contrary to prior practices, had piled the snow all on one side of the alley - ours. This left a three foot pile of wet snow that had to be removed before we could get cars out. My 9 h.p. snow blower had a tough time with it. I'm glad I did it though, because with the next round of snow that we're getting now, it might have been an impossible task.

Anne's computer has been acting strangely so we decided that it was time to replace the seven year old machine. I had thought that she might want a laptop, but she was pretty sure that a desktop was for her. Since she was the one using it, that was fine with me. Then I saw an ad for an Acer 23" all-in-one with a touch screen and she liked that. We went to Best Buy and saw an HP with a touch screen and she liked that. Then the next day we went to Staples and she saw the 17" laptops and thought one of those would be nice. Then we went back to Best Buy and saw an 18" Toshiba laptop which she liked. We went home and I found out everything that I could about that computer. Anne talked to Christine and I emailed my friend, Mary Jane, who counseled to use Google tools instead of Microsoft Office and to get a desk top. Anne decided to get the 18" laptop, so back to Best Buy we went and as we went in, what to her wondering eyes did appear at the end of an aisle, but a 15" Dell which had a superb picture on it. That's what we got and I have spent most of the time since, when not shoveling, transferring stuff from the old computer, downloading updates and doing all the stuff you apparently must do when getting a new computer. No wonder people are willing to pay the Geek Squad and similar outfits to do it for them. My gosh, is nothing easy or straightforward? I love it when you get a message that you need to download a certain program for which you are provided a link, but when you get to the page, Microsoft tells you it doesn't know what program you're talking about. I will not shovel anymore today, nor will I do anything more with the new computer today, I hope. I am having a drink and I think I deserve it.

Shovel, Shovel, Toil and Trouble

2010-02-06T16:49:00.000-05:00

The trouble came first when the spring holding the drive cable on my snow thrower broke again. Our neighbor, Rich, had made a quick repair the last time it snowed, but it came apart. I had to turn the darn thing over and make another repair with galvanized wire. It held for today. After that was finished came the task of actually blowing the snow and shoveling. I started about 12:15 and finished up at around 2:30. Anne shoveled the front walk and porch and some other stuff. There are some other places I wanted to do, but I thought I should stop. I had been warned not to overdo it, so I didn't, I think. My shoulders, arms and back most certainly got enough exercise for today. I would guess we had approximately 10 to 12 inches, but it's hard to say because of the drifting.

More trouble presented itself by way of Anne's computer. It stopped recognizing the printer and then wouldn't open Control Panel or My Computer. When you "troubleshoot" you get instructions to do inane things or get sent to menus that don't exist. I don't know why they don't just have a message pop up that says, "No user serviceable stuff inside. Take me to a repair shop." At least that would be honest. We may go out in a day or so to look for a new computer. This one is old enough and has had enough issues that I think it is looking to do what I did, retire. We had a long discussion about what to get with me pushing Apple and maybe even a laptop and Anne pretty sure she would be happy with a PC desktop because she likes the larger screen and because she is content working with it at her desk. A desktop is okay with me because when it's time to replace my laptop, I will almost certainly want another laptop. We would then have a laptop in the family which could be moved around or taken on trips, etc. I like my Apple iBook, but I'm not adverse to considering a PC laptop, so this story will be continued.

Victoria, Snow and Weights

2010-02-03T11:03:00.002-05:00

Yesterday afternoon we saw "Young Victoria" at our local cinema. It was free movie night, of course and guess what? They have installed all new seats in the theater. The old ones were there from the dawn of time and were really starting to fall apart, literally. That had been one of my big objections to that theater; I couldn't get comfortable. The new seats are nice.

So, the movie was about Queen Victoria from the time that her uncle, the King, died until sometime after the birth of her first child. It was really a love story between Victoria and Albert and it was nicely done. I always liked Queen Victoria. I thought she was a good ruler interested in the welfare of her subjects. I'm not quite as impressed with her progeny, but the story was about her, not them. The actors were real people and not generated on a computer. I would like to live in one of those palaces and have servants to wait on me, but my guess is that won't be happening any time soon.

It snowed last night and we got about an inch. I shoveled the walks this morning with the idea that if I did that I wouldn't have to do all of my weight training today. I figured that I would just do the lower half of my body. Well, I got started on my routine and went through the whole thing anyway. So, yeah for me.

I was holding off writing on my blog in the hope that I would have heard from Peter. I emailed him the other day, but haven't heard anything yet. I'm not sure how long it takes emails to get to or from him, but we'll call Roxanne tonight to see if she has heard anything.

Dinner and All

2010-01-31T22:12:00.002-05:00

I feel like it's Christmas night. We had been planning for this evening's dinner with some good friends and now that it's over, there's nothing more to plan for the time being. It was a wonderful evening though, with good food and very nice people. It is important to remember how valuable friends are. I don't mean economically valuable, but, I guess what you could call spiritually. Nice friends are good for the soul. Friendships are like plants too. If you neglect them, they will wither and die and that would be sad. I think I will resolve to at least keep in contact with friends. Sometimes it's not possible to get together with friends physically, because of distance or other circumstances, but it ought to be possible, in this day and age, to contact them by email, phone, letter, or by some means. I would not want to lose the friendship of the people that we were with today, or any friends, because of neglect on my part. These people add such a rich dimension to life, it would be foolish to let them slip away. I hope also that I, in some small way, can add to the fabric of their lives.

Friday and Haiti

2010-01-29T17:13:00.002-05:00

It's Friday and I did my weight training exercises today. Will I keep this up? I'm doing exercises for muscle endurance, not muscle size. There is a difference and I think endurance is what I want. Especially, I want to be able to get out of my kayak in the warmer weather without looking like a beached whale. I can get in it just fine, but after sitting for an hour or so, uncurling myself to get out has presented some moments in the past. I have always managed to get out, but not always as gracefully as I would have hoped.

Peter is back living in his office from a couple of days of R&R in Santo Domingo. His tour in Haiti ends in August. His Spanish language training starts in January in DC, so in addition to leave time and vacation, he needs to work someplace for a couple of months before he goes to Mexico. He has asked for Miami. I think the government should give that to him after all that he has had to endure in Haiti. He didn't sign on for earthquake duty or to see his neighborhood crumble around him. So, we'll see what happens.

We had a little snow yesterday, but it wasn't real cold. so it melted. I hope we don't get anymore for the weekend because we are having guests for dinner on Sunday and I would rather not have a major snow event to deal with before then. But, if we have a blizzard, I will go outside in the freezing cold and remove every snowflake that could impede anyone's progress to our door. That's just the way it is.

Splitting Wood

2010-01-26T14:18:00.002-05:00

I didn't do any weight training today. I'm not slacking off. I'm only supposed to do it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I did move some dirt around the yard and I split some firewood. On Sundays in the winter I like to get a fire going in the wood stove in the cellar. This Sunday we're having company, so it seems like the perfect time to do it. I now have plenty of wood split. I do wonder about this wood or my splitting technique. These logs have been drying for a year now, but are they ever tough to split. I have employed an axe, an eight pound splitting maul and a sledge hammer and wedge. I have read that the 8lb maul may be too heavy and that it just bounces. I would think that the thing could go through a building once it gets going, but it does bounce a lot. The axe stick in the log, but the head isn't broad enough to act as a wedge. The whole process seems to be more work than it ought to be.

On an older post I mentioned that a spring had broken on a drive mechanism under my snow blower. Our neighbor, Rich, had jury rigged an additional spring to get it to work. Today I turned the thing on its side and ran some galvanized steel wire through the spring he used and through a hole in the drive cam as an extra safeguard against the thing coming out. I hope that I'm ready for any snow that may come on Saturday.

Haiti, the Dentist, Weights

2010-01-25T21:09:00.002-05:00

Peter got a couple of days R&R in Santo Domingo from today until Wednesday. His hotel is nice, but it's a half hour from the beach and he has no car. He may try to get there tomorrow. Apparently, no one else from the embassy is there, but he met some people he knows who were providing aid work or something. Wednesday he has to go back to the cot in his office, but at least he's getting a little respite.

I had an appointment at the dentist for cleaning today, but the hygienist was sick so it got postponed until next Monday. We're having a few folks for dinner on Sunday and I wanted to look spiffy. Oh well, I'll have to be unspiffy, or just keep my mouth closed.

I restarted my weight training in ernest today. I had been reacquainting myself with some of the exercises, but today I put them all together for the first time in a while. I was glad I did it, but I discovered muscles I had forgotten existed. I think I'm supposed to do this more than once, even on a regular basis. I have these record sheets that expect you to record your progress several times a week. One curious thing is that my old sheets show that I did certain exercises with 20 lb dumbbells, but I only have 15 and then 25 lb ones. I don't know where the 20 lb ones could be. Curious.

Haiti and Peter

2010-01-22T17:18:00.003-05:00

Peter now has a cot in his office with a blanket and pillow. He was also able to get a shower and a meal at the home of a coworker that wasn't damaged. His bodyguard went back to his house to retrieve Pete's laptop and some clothes. While he was in the house, there was an aftershock, so he got out pretty fast. Pete may get a two day break in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, but that probably includes coming and going. Hardly a big break. Why those two places? Apparently. that because that's where the military planes fly. I guess U.S. Military planes don't fly to Miami, or maybe because there is no air marshall to fly along. Think that's far fetched?

When Teddy was on protective detail for the Vice President, he would act as an air marshall whenever he was flying to or from an assignment. He would speak to the pilot ahead of time and the crew would know where he was seated. One time he was returning from Wyoming with about 40 other armed Secret Service agents. They had left their cars at one Washington area airport (maybe it was Reagan, maybe a military base, I forget which), but they weren't allowed to fly into the airport where their cars were parked because there was no air marshall aboard. They landed at the other airport and were bussed back to their cars. That's your government at work folks.

Communications with Peter is still an iffy situation. Sometimes he can get a call through to Roxanne, sometimes not. She has the same problem when trying to call him.

Haiti, Africa, Peter, Leo

2010-01-21T09:34:00.002-05:00

I finally communicated directly with Peter last night by email to his government email account. I don't like to do that because I know he is okay, but busy and there is not much more than the obvious that we can say to each other. He was answering at 9:00 p.m., so that was a pretty good indication of where he was at that hour since I believe his laptop is still in what remains of his house. He is still very, very busy and promises to write more when things let up a little.

In another twist, I learned that our youngest son, Leo, has volunteered to go to Haiti. The Immigration Service had requested volunteers and Leo put his name on the list. He already has all the shots he would need and is cross trained in adoption and other necessary paperwork. Peter said it would be great if he came, but that decision would have to come from Leo's headquarters office. Peter will speak to the people he knows in Haiti.

The reason that Leo has all of his shots is that this Wednesday (yesterday) he was scheduled to deport an illegal criminal back to Africa. This is part of what he does as part of his job as an ICE agent. He was already on the plane with the person at Kennedy airport, but the man was being uncooperative, resisting and refusing to sit. Since this was a commercial airliner, other passengers were starting to get nervous. After discussions with the crew and pilot, it was decided to abort the trip (of the man, not the plane). Leo said that the man will still be deported, but either sedated or put on a special deportation flight. Leo wasn't all that keen on traveling to Africa anyway. He would have been staying at a five star hotel, but not long enough to even see any sights. That is usually the case when he goes abroad (usually two agents go together). Mostly the return flight is the next available flight and if he wants to see anything he has to use vacation time and then he's usually there by himself, so depending where he is going, it's usually not that much fun. On one of his first trips (I think it was to Sarajevo, not sure) he and his partner decided ahead of time to take the following morning flight home, when they could have taken one within a couple of hours or so of arriving. When they turned over their prisoner, the local police were incredulous that they would do that. "Why would you want to stay here any longer than necessary? There is nothing here to see." Which turned out to be true.

I have a concern about other family members wanting to go to Haiti. I certainly admire the courage and volunteer spirit, but I would feel uncomfortable if it should become a trend. Someone may remember that I got a Bob the Builder outfit as a retirement gift and may feel that with extra time on my hands, I too should head to Haiti. I don't know. My French is very rusty and I don't speak Creole.

Haiti - One Week Later

2010-01-19T20:17:00.002-05:00

Not much has changed for Peter in one week. He is still sleeping and living in the Embassy and overwhelmed with work. He hasn't heard about any relief for himself or his coworkers. He told Roxanne that when the quake struck and he was at home, all of a sudden, things fell off shelves and his china cabinet came crashing down with glass flying everywhere. He ran out of the house not knowing what was happening. He says that this has changed his outlook on life and toward people.

Crisfield, MD

2010-01-18T20:50:00.002-05:00

With all of the activity related to the earthquakes in Haiti, I have been remiss in writing about our trip to Crisfield, MD on January 13th. Right before we left, we heard that Pete had sent a text message that he was okay. Our trip was much more relaxed after that. I can only imagine what parents of missing college students and others are going through when they have no idea what condition their children are in.

Crisfield is at the very southern tip of Maryland's Eastern Shore, on Tangier Sound, right above Virginia. It is an old oyster fishing town that has seen better days. We went there to get my new banjo. They would have shipped it to me but I wanted to go and I wanted Anne to meet Pat and Patrick Costello and Pat's wife Trudy. Anne wasn't all that excited about the five hour ride down and the five hour ride back, but I think she had a good time. We had a nice dinner with the Costellos. Anne and Trudy discussed quilts and sewing and such stuff, while Pat, Patrick and I talked about some of the finer points of the music business. The Costellos facilitate the construction of the Somerset line of banjos, which are very high quality at reasonable prices. The neck for my banjo was made by Neil Turner in Buzzard Mountain, Georgia, sent to Chris Via in Rich Creek, Virginia and then Chris builds the tone ring and pot, finishes the neck and puts it all together.

Since it is a five hour drive down there, we stayed over night at a bed and breakfast. The place was okay, but not quite up to our bed and breakfast standards. The couple that owned the place were very nice indeed, but the house needed some renovations which they were slowly making. The breakfast was fine, but Anne pointed out, that since we were the only guests in residence, we could have been given a choice of what to eat.

A long drive to get something that the UPS man would have been happy to deliver at a fraction of the cost of the trip and overnight, but, these are good people and I want to stay connected with them. Actually, the UPS man did get in on the act because Chris forgot to send the case with the banjo so he sent that directly to me and it arrived on Friday, the day after we got home.

If you ever find yourself in Crisfield, why that would be I don't know, but if you do, you should visit the Blue Crab Cafe near the municipal harbor which is owned by the same people that own the B&B. Therein you will find a relic of history, or so the legend goes. The proprietor's great, great grandmother and grandfather ran a hotel in the 1860s, in Washington, D.C. where the National Archives now stands. One day when Grandma was scrubbing the floor, a man came in and she asked him to remove his spurs and boots because he was getting the floor dirty. He said he had only come in for a drink and went to the bar. Grandma then told Grandpa to get him out of there, so he asked him to leave. Indignantly, the man left and went up the road to a hotel run by Mary Elizabeth Surratt. History buffs may recall that Mary's claim to fame was to have been hung by the neck until she was dead for participating in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. The gentleman with the dirty boots was said to have been John Wilkes Booth. Could it be that if he was allowed to stay in Grandma's hotel, her fate might have been that of Mary's? Anyway, the brass foot railing upon which the same John Wilkes Booth rested his dirty boots is now in the Blue Crab Cafe in Crisfield, MD. Oh, also, the last lynching in the country supposedly took place in Crisfield. Who knew? Now you know. I should charge for this blog with all of the information that I dispense here.

Ears

2010-01-18T20:06:00.002-05:00

Roxana didn't get a call from Pete yesterday, but did get an email that he has been very busy and just didn't have the time to call. He will try to call her tonight.

I was having trouble with my hearing and with my left ear especially, so when we visited my cousin Bill and his wife Joan, Bill had a solution. He had been having the same problem, so he got these small ear probes from Walmart and he gave me a couple of them saying they really worked for him. I tried them, but my hearing was getting so bad I could barely hear out of my left ear. I finally decided to go to the doctor who cleaned out both ears. It turns out that Bill also wound up at his doctor for the very same thing. The doctor told him that he should continue to get those little probes and give them to his friends. They will then push the wax so far into their ears that they won't be able to hear and they will come to him and he will have a lot more business. I told my cousin that I will never take any suppositories from him.

Haiti2

2010-01-17T19:39:00.003-05:00

I couldn't edit the prior post to add any additional word for some reason, so I decided to do a new post, although there are no words that I can add to what Peter so eloquently said.

I never thought I would have sons that would be so involved in something like this situation. Peter was there on the ground from the beginning and the enormity of this tragedy will haunt him forever. We were at Katie Rose's 13th birthday party this evening and Teddy was there texting and on the phone arranging assignments of Secret Service personnel for Bill Clinton's departure from Newark to Haiti.

You never stop being concerned for your children, even when they become adults and have families of their own. Now there are not only children to be concerned about, but spouses and children. I'm not "worried" about any of them because they are all responsible, caring people (Tyler is only a baby, but he will be responsible and caring. Timmy and Bridget are almost five, so they are getting to be big kids.), but I will always be concerned for them.

Haiti

2010-01-17T19:33:00.003-05:00

We haven't heard anything new at this point from Peter, except his Facebook posting.

Pete Kolshorn I want to thank my family, friends, co-workers and DS Brotherhood for all of your wishes of support this week. It means a lot to me. It has been horrific, heartbreaking and unimaginable. To all of my Haitian friends...the human spirit that comes through in a tragedy such as this defies words. You are strong!

Haiti / Tijuana

2010-01-16T10:16:00.004-05:00

This is a summary of what we have learned so far from our son, Peter, who is the Deputy Regional Security Officer at the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

When the earthquake struck, he was in his house which is two blocks up the hill from the Montana Hotel which has been featured on the news because of the rescue of several people from its collapse. He wisely ran outside in only shorts and sandals, but then went back in to get some shoes. Three other houses around his had collapsed or fallen over the cliff. This is a better area where diplomats and more well-to-do people live. A doctor lived in the house next to his. Pete has a private swimming pool behind his house, but they are all situated on a cliff. He saw that a house two doors away from him had collapsed and he knew some embassy employees lived there, six people in all. He spent six hours helping to dig them out of the debris. Five survived. He also came upon a woman trapped in rubble. A military person who was there said that it was too dangerous to try to rescue her because the whole area was in danger of collapse and he left. Pete and a Haitian guard decided to try anyway and they were able to free her. Somehow he managed to get to the embassy and eventually get a text message to Roxana that he was ok. This was followed by email messages and finally phone calls when he was able to talk to the boys also.

He went back to where his house is remarkably still standing. He didn't go in because he felt it was unsafe. He has been going out on various missions and has had little sleep and what he has had has been on the chair in his office. He is eating military rations. His boss said that he doesn't know how long they can keep this up with so little sleep. Many Americans are now camped out at the embassy (Peter estimates about 600 people), which doesn't have any facilities for so many people. There are only three bathrooms.

On a positive note, Pete got a call from the State Department that his next assignment would be Tijuana, Mexico. That was one of the places on his request list. Not his top choice, but not the worst either. The boys will go to school in San Diego, right over the border. He will have to go to Washington for up to six months of language training and they will have to decide whether Roxana will stay in Florida so that the boys can stay in the same school, or uproot them to three different schools for the transition period. Ten year old Anthony would rather go to three schools so that they can all be together. He has been rather afraid for his father, although he doesn't show much emotion. He has been watching all of this tragedy unfold on TV and has confessed to having some nightmares.

The State Department asked if there was anything they could do for him now and Peter said, "Yes, send me to Barbados." That was another place on his list. I guess they didn't want to do that.

Pete told Roxana that he will try to call us today or tomorrow. We are very proud of what he is doing, but are still concerned for his safety. We ask for everyone's prayers for him and for this unbelievable tragedy in Haiti. I will post updates as more information becomes available.

Books

2010-01-08T15:35:00.002-05:00

I was looking for a book this afternoon. It is Dean Ornish's Program fro Reversing Heart Disease. I wasn't looking for it in the book store or online. I was looking for it in the many shelves, nooks and crannies in our own house, because I knew it was somewhere. I eventually found it and I also found, or, should I say re-found books on many subjects. To name a few: law, sailing, kayaking, canoeing, walking, camping, navigation, fly fishing, surf fishing, fresh water fishing, photography, water color painting, oil painting, travel, health, cooking, herbs, gardening, fitness, exercising, weight training, literature of all kinds, music theory, piano books, banjo books, mandolin books, song books, scuba diving, biographies, field guides on various subjects, woodworking, model trains, dollhouses, books on learning Spanish, French, German, Italian, Arabic and Turkish and the list goes on. Yes, I have looked at most of them and read quite a few of them. No I can't speak any language very well, including English, but I can speak a word or two in all of them. No I can't identify all the herbs, plants, flowers and bugs described in the field guides, but I'm pretty sure I can point out a field if one presents itself.

I did scuba diving and sailing for a while and fishing, still do kayaking and canoeing and still play the banjo, but I'm hardly the expert in any of these pursuits that having all of these books would imply. Anne tells me that I should stop buying books and go to the library, but I noticed that a fair number of books were on subjects of unique interest to her. I'm not buying many books any more and I have resolved that I ought to read or re-read the ones that I have. After all, I've forgotten most of what I read anyway, so they will be like entirely new books to me. I guess I should settle down with a dram of Scotch and start reading.

It's Complicated or Why are all these People here?

2010-01-05T20:23:00.003-05:00

Tuesday night is movie night for us, free movie night, because we have the Optimum Triple Play. We discovered that since I'm now retired, we can go to the late afternoon show instead of the evening. Today we went to the 4:15 show of It's Complicated starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. It seems like anything that Meryl Streep is in is good and this was no exception. It was funny; even I laughed and when was the last time I laughed in a movie. But, why were all those people at the theater at 4:15 on a Tuesday afternoon? There were no kids because it was an "R" rated movie. There were a fair share of geezers, but also a lot of other people that are still working age or should have been home taking care of kids. The theater was packed. We got there a little before 4:00 and the 7:00p.m. show was already sold out. It was a good movie. The actors were real people, not computer generated, there was no nudity (darn), no violence and no foul language. The theme, however, was adultery, which is probably why it had the "R" rating. Go see it and have a few laughs.

New Year's Weekend 2010 / Annie

2010-01-03T20:33:00.003-05:00

This was a busy weekend. On Friday, Chris, Adrian, Katie Rose & Stephen, Teddy, Patti, Bridget & Timmy, Leo, Kristen & Tyler came to our house to celebrate the new year. It was nice to have three out of four families together. On Saturday we all traveled to Chip & Shannon Maruca's house in Hainesport to celebrate our annual New Year's gathering with Rocky Maruca, Betty & Ray Wheeler, Maria (Maruca) Brown, Tracy (Maruca) and John Schoene and loads of grandkids and even more food. Rocky & Jackie, Betty & Ray and Anne & I started this tradition in 1976 and have continued it ever since. It was a real nice time and I know Jackie was there in spirit also.

Sunday, today, Anne & I went to the Forum Theater in Metuchen to watch the musical Annie, in which Katie Rose had several parts. The cast was mostly children, but there were a number of professional actors and actresses as well. It was very well done and a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. It is always amazing to me how much talent ordinary people have, both kids and adults. I wish I had some of it, because it looks like a lot of fun.

Thinking of Kayaking

2009-12-31T15:15:00.003-05:00

I was cleaning out some old magazines and came across my next to the last issue of Canoe & Kayak magazine, so naturally I started to think that it would be nice to go kayaking again. Not right now, though. I think I can wait until the weather is a little better. Last summer we were planning to run the Delaware from Milford to Dingman's Ferry. It usually takes about three hours, but on the day we had picked, the river was running very high and fast. We decided it wasn't a good idea. A ranger told us that if we tried it then we would do it in about an hour, if we didn't turn over before we got there.

I want to do some fishing this year too, being retired and all. The big craze now is kayak fishing which gives you the maneuverability of the kayak, yada, yada, yada. People buy a sit-on-top kayak with rod holders and built in bait wells, attach an electric motor (with heavy deep cycle battery), add a fish finder (with battery), tackle boxes, poles and something to keep the catch in until you might as well just stick with a canoe or aluminum boat. I want to keep my recreational pursuits as simple as possible and as inexpensive as possible. We do have two kayaks (three if you count the Folbot) and a canoe, so I don't really need another boat. The canoe is fine for fishing and what's wrong with using the sit inside kayak. For all the fish I'm likely to catch, I don't think I need to go crazy.

So, anyway, I was thinking of kayaking all by itself, which is an enjoyable pastime without cluttering it up with extra equipment. I'm not talking about boofing or playboating, just gentle lake or river kayaking. I would like to expand the list of places where we kayak, but you have to consider where and when green flies and black flies and mosquitos will be out looking for you. Green flies are the worst. I guess I will just lather up with deet, sun screen, put on a cockpit cover and paddle off into the sunrise. That's what I was thinking about on this last day of the year, now maybe I'll think about something else. Let's see, what other magazines are there. Here's one about extreme snow skiing. Ugh!

Pictures on the Wall II

2009-12-30T17:28:00.002-05:00

So we arranged and rearranged the pictures on the wall and finally decided that it was good enough for now. If we want to change it at some future time, that will be all right, I think. I filled in the old nail holes and when the spackle dries, I can sand them put some paint on.

We seem to have a large number of pictures, etc., classified as wall hangings. The trouble is, in our house, there isn't a lot of space to hang things on walls because of the large and plentiful windows and the number of doors. Sometimes we switch the pictures, but if they aren't the same size, it can be a bother.

I think I'm ready for Christmas to end and to put away the decorations. I know, it hasn't even been a week since the holiday, but it seems like it was long ago. I'm ready to start on something new now. I don't know what that is, but I'm ready. Maybe I should just paint the darn wall. I can't do that right now anyway. On Friday, our kids and families are coming here for New Year's Day. On Saturday we are all traveling to Chip's house in Burlington County for a party and on Sunday, we will go to Metuchen for the postponed play, Annie, in which Katie Rose has several parts.

Pictures on the Wall

2009-12-29T19:09:00.002-05:00

There is a stairway going to our second floor that has a wall along one side of it. The wall needs repainting. Before we had our new roof installed, moisture must have gotten behind the plaster and blistered some of the paint in one spot. I fixed that and put a primer coat of paint on it and now must gather the courage to do a little more patching of some minor cracks way high up on the wall. The wall is hung with many pictures, some painted by my father, some acquired during various travels, one painted by Anne and one photo contributed by our son, Leo.

At one point, these pictures were arranged in a beautiful symmetrical arrangement, the likes of which has rarely been seen. However, over the past few years, a couple of pictures have taken to fall right off the wall and several new pictures were acquired that needed to be squeezed in. It is sad to say that the arrangement has lost some of it beauty and symmetry. So, in anticipation of painting the aforesaid wall, I wanted to arrange the pictures, once again as a beautiful array and patch the excess picture hanging holes. (Making holes in plaster is not quite as neat as making holes in sheet rock.) The rooms on our second floor all have picture rails going around the perimeter of the room from which pictures are hung by wires from hooks that slide on the rail, thus eliminating the necessity to poke a hole in the plaster. Apparently, these rails were on the first floor at one time but were removed long ago. We tackled this today after I returned from lunch with two associates of my former employer. I can only say that arranging pictures along a stairway while trying to keep the viewing height consistent and the display pleasing with pictures of various sizes is challenging. Some people seem to have a knack for decorating and can make their homes beautiful without effort. I am not one of those people. My creative abilities must lie elsewhere. I only hope that I am able to find where they lie before it is too late to do anything about them. After a couple of hours of resetting painting and pictures in frames, cleaning glass, etc. and trying to arrange the pictures on the wall, we decided to try again another day, which better be tomorrow if we don't want the place to look like a wreck for New Year's Day. I will report further on progress after there is some.

A Dram of Scotch, a Kayak & a Table Saw

The Move

Happy Thoughts

Thoughts at a Funeral

The Heavenly Closet / Garages

Where Have All the Young Folks Gone?

The Microwave

Ramblings on a September Evening

A Walk on the Beach

Too Many, Too Young

Nothing Much New Here

The Pool Isn't Cool

Still Waiting

I Should Say Something

Summertime and the Livin' Ain't Easy

The Lawnmower Man

Good Friend Jim

Dizzy Me

Resting in Peace

Congress Should Dissolve Itself

An International Following

Rite-Aid Redeemed

My Head Hurts / Drug Store

I Have Been Admonished

Enough Already

Oh Boy, Oh Boy

A Day Off

Music, Music, Music and some Wolves

Busy Days

Crossing Over

The Year 2011

More Pain and Suffering or The Mail Must Go Through

Guilt and Pain and Suffering

Charlotte's Web / Bonnie

Downsizing and My Own Phone Line

Blindsided

Okay, Writing

Not Writing

Bust at Green Bay

Tetracycline

Canoeing, Lunch, Surgery, Autumn

A Medical Day

Fall, Chores, What Next?

Ribs

The Sequence Has Started

School Days in Sunny Florida

Rescue at Sea

I Think I Should Write Something

Who Was That Guy Anyway?

Haiti

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

I Don't Think I Get It

Starvation Island

My, My, How Time Flies

Florida Adventure, April - May 2010

The Porch is Done, the Porch is Done

I Am Tired Tonight

Another Busy Day

A Busy Day

The Twins and Seven Presidents

Books, Spas and Automobiles

Water, Water, Everywhere

Saturday (After my Birthday) / Liquor

Birthday, the Day After

Birthday

Depressing Days

The First Day of Spring

St. Patrick's Day

Windshield Wipers

Rain, Rain, Rain / Splitting Firewood

Gothic Tales, Pictures, Spanish

More Pictures and a Reading List

No Pictures / Root Canal

Pictures / Root Canal

I'm Not in Trouble

I'm In Trouble Come Tuesday

Monkeys in the Cellar

Four Months More / Snow Blower / Computers

Verizon, Line Repair, Etc.

More Snow and The Olden Days, Almost