Two Great Weekends!

Last weekend (first weekend in August), 3 of my 4 kids came to the family vacation home in New Hampshire, along with their spouses and one toddler! (We missed Joanna's family but had to make do.) Erica has done such a great job of covering our weekend in detail that I'll refer you to her blog for details and photos.

We spent this past weekend with several of my high school friends (and significant others) in Cincinnati, at the home of Fred & Warren. In addition to chillin' time, watching the Olympics opening ceremony, and good food, we took a great historical and architectural walking tour of the "Over the Rhine" area of town, marred only by a few little gun shots (after which a guy on a bike ducked behind a car) about a block away. But the neighborhood is improving, they say... We also visited a David Macaulay exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum. (He's the guy who writes books like Cathedral, Castle, and Mosque, with detailed drawings and lots of information about the construction of complicated buildings.) Bill added a puppet to his collection (think furry and orange), giving my friends a glimpse at another facet of my new husband's personality. A great time was had by all!

How Do You Spell "Scuzzball"?

Bill had a call-back tonight, and he's landed the role of a scuzzball lawyer in "Sly Fox," a satire. Rehearsals start on Tuesday, the night before we leave for a week in NH. Yea, Bill!

(I had to check the spelling of "scuzzball" but that's it.)

Fun outings

We've already had a busy weekend, and there's still one day left!

Last night, we went to Kiwanis Night at the Lakewood BlueClaws minor league baseball stadium. The BlueClaws were clobbered by the Kannapolis Intimidators, but it was fun, and the weather was perfect (cool and clear)! I also discovered, while I was perusing the printed program, that Charleston, WV's minor league team is now named "West Virginia Power," so I now have to get a shirt with that logo! (To top it off, when I told my parents what I had discovered, they said that the baseball team's phone number is just one digit different than theirs. When they occasionally get a phone call asking "Is this West Virginia Power?" my dad replies "This is ONE of them.") Speaking of the team name, one of their older names, the "Charleston Charlies," is apparently still a sentimental favorite, because the team store still has a lot of "classic" Charleston Charlies shirts. Or maybe they over-ordered decades ago and still have plenty in stock. ;-)

Today, we drove into NYC to see a matinee performance of "South Pacific" at Lincoln Center with Jim and Jennifer (friends in Brooklyn). We found a free parking space on 82nd street and had time for a quick trip to Zabar's, self-proclaimed as "NYC's Gourmet Epicurean Emporium" and one of Bill's favorite stores. We got a new stainless-steel coffee measure (to replace a badly-cracked plastic antique), some barbecue tongs, a pound of coffee, some ginger/lemon cookies, and a bar of the store brand of chocolate (milk/dark). Nothing to break the bank or do serious damage to the diets.

I've been squeezing in as much proof-reading (currently my only paid work) as I can -- thank goodness for the car voltage enhancer, which makes the laptop work with the cigarette lighter socket -- but I'll need to finish a bunch more by Sunday night, so after church, it'll be nose-to-the-digital-grindstone for me! (Bill has a call-back for an audition, but I don't need to leave the house after we get back from church.)

Stay tuned!

July -- before it's gone!

I've not been living up to my resolve to post more frequently, but I don't want to let July go by completely without posting, so here's the first 2/3 of the month, in a nutshell:

I spent a few days in Chicago as an advisor for a 3-day, CSTA-sponsored Leadership Cohort training session. While I was in town, I seized the opportunity to meet Emily, my nephew's soon-to-be bride, about 10 days before their wedding, and Emily, Jon, and I had a terrific dinner together! I knew their lives would be a lot crazier the following weekend, so I was thrilled to steal a bit of relaxed time with them.

Speaking of stealing... One casualty of my time in Chicago was my new red BlackBerry, which I left in the hotel room one morning. When I realized that I had left it, I didn't rush out of the workshop to retrieve it, and that was my biggest mistake. (I guess I'm not used to having cars or phones that people want to steal.) By the time I got to the room, it had been cleaned, and the phone was long gone. I had borrowed a friend's phone so I could call mine, in case it had fallen behind the bed, but it wasn't anywhere nearby. I continued to call my number periodically, and for 2 days it always rang a few times before rolling over to voicemail, but by the third day, it went immediately to voicemail, so it had either run out of juice or been turned off. I reported it immediately to both Housekeeping and Security, but it never turned up. I had gotten this phone at a bargain price (after rebates, with a 2-year contract), but the replacement phone, purchased via eBay, didn't come anywhere near as cheap! (The guy at the AT&T Wireless store, where I went to activate my refurbished phone last night, said that BlackBerrys are apparently quite popular among thieves.)

Never mind that nutshell thing...

A week after I returned from Chicago, we were back for Jon's and Emily's wedding -- what great family times we had! We weren't sure that Mom & Dad would make it there, due to Dad's complications from Parkinson's Disease, but they made it, he did OK, and everyone was glad they had come!

Also on the medical front... I need to get a crown replaced (symptom: peel-me-off-the-ceiling pain when I drink anything cold), but I don't have breast cancer (based on the results from a needle biopsy), so I'd say I'm WAY ahead of the game! BENIGN is my new favorite word!

In between (and during) my trips here and there, I've kept busy with some CS curriculum proofreading -- I'm actually earning some money this summer!

We're home for a while and eagerly anticipating being able to set up our office. (The rest of the flooring should arrive mid-week.) Maybe I'll even be able to find my paper copies of the score reports from my NTE/Praxis exams! I need them to get a NJ teaching certificate (if I get a job with a public school), and ETS doesn't keep scores after 5 years. Who knew, in 1977, that ETS would change policies so many years later?!

Busy Weekend and My Own "I Did It!"

We worked on home projects this weekend. Bill fixed a problem with the pool (amazing how quickly the water becomes green when the chlorinator runs out of tablets!), and I pruned and/or uprooted some vines that had threatened to take over the fence around the pool, the deck, and several bushes. Bill put up track lighting in the hallway to our bedroom, in anticipation of putting up a wall of family photos. (His frames of Kiwanis pins are on the opposite wall.) We love our new well-lighted hallway!

I finally started working on (machine) hemming the sheers for our bedroom windows (so that they clear the baseboard heaters). Now I need to clear off the ironing board, which has become a holding station for things on their way downstairs, out to the garage, etc.

I also assembled shelves (brought from Lancaster) for our "Christmas closet," the place we store gifts that we have bought for specific people or to hold for future gift-giving, when we find something we know will be perfect for "someone," we're just not sure whom. We still need to make a list so that we can add to it any time we put something in the closet, so we don't lose track of things, but we're well on our way to organization! This allowed me to move in some gifts that I had been afraid of losing in the pit of the smaller closet that previously served that function (in addition to holding random other stuff), which, in turn, freed up some space on shelves in my part of our bedroom closet, which allowed me to move some things up from the floor! It also allowed me to clear out a cardboard chest, which I've now FreeCycled. (It's like a reverse game of dominoes.)

But the most exciting news is -- inspired by Joanna's own "I Did It!" post -- I played the piano for the first time in years! I warmed up with the theme from Romeo & Juliet and then moved on to Haydn's "Gipsy Rondo," my all-time favorite recital piece (from year 4)! It wasn't very smooth, and my wrists felt very aware of movements I hadn't made in quite a while, but my fingers remembered a lot of it (sometimes faster than my eyes could see), and it felt good to have started up again. (I played Kerry's baby grand, since it's in the living room -- my spinet is in the basement for now -- and the touch was unfamiliar, so that gave me another excuse for rocky playing. But I sat on my own piano bench, with the needlepoint cover that my mom made, and that was great!)

Tomorrow, we leave for the Kiwanis International convention in Orlando, followed by CSTA-related events (CS&IT Symposium, board meeting, NECC conference) in San Antonio.

FreeCycle

Combining two full households yields a lot of extra stuff! At Erica's suggestion, I registered at FreeCycle.org, an online clearinghouse for things that people no longer want. You join a list for the region in which you live, and you can post an OFFER or a WANTED notice. (There are strict guidelines -- no money is exchanged, items are picked-up by the taker, no pets or kids, no matter how much they might annoy you at any given time...) The person making the offer may choose from among the respondents, without having to justify.

I got rid of many things, including some pretty nice stuff (a standing gas grill and a nice dresser that none of my kids wanted) before I left Lancaster, so I could avoid moving things we didn't need. However, I've also joined the list for our county here, mostly to get rid of stuff that was already here, but also moving boxes and some smaller things that I had brought but we discovered we couldn't use. We're still sorting and weeding out, and I'll keep making offers.

I've been amazed at the variety of offerings and requests; when I had a lot of broken pieces of old brick pavers (left over from my patio project), Bill was skeptical that anyone would want them, but a guy came and got them all -- boxes full! One woman came to get a few small things from Erica's earlier years (after Erica had claimed what she wanted), and she mentioned that her husband had lost his job and they were trying to come up with Christmas presents for 12 grandkids. Since the time of my post, Erica (who was still at my house), had weeded out more things, and she offered the woman anything else that she wanted. Bonus for everyone!

Last night, while (finally!) trying to clear the dining room table so that I could set up my sewing machine, I moved a plant to a wobbly set of plant shelves and knocked over the plant at the far end (think dominoes). Pot, plant, and wet soil hit the floor (and baseboard heater), and I struggled not to go ballistic. Bill had earlier suggested that we could cut down on the plant population, so I asked him to be specific about what could go. Around midnight, I posted an offer for 4 different kinds of plants (including a photo of one we couldn't identify), and requests have poured in this morning! Some plants have babies or offshoots, but we have 3 full pots of aloe, which I can divide as many ways as there are requests. (I asked people to prioritize, in case I had multiple requests. Some people follow directions better than others, so those who didn't specify a preference will get aloe.)

Step-by-step, we're getting this place in order, which makes us both happy!

Family visit

Last weekend, we celebrated my 50-something birthday, along with Erica, Jack, and Kent (visiting from Baton Rouge). The weather was hot and humid the whole time, but they're used to it. (At least the pool was available for cool-downs!) Friday's birthday dinner was at a classic New Jersey diner, and we spent Saturday in NYC (well, after we worked out the train schedule): lunch at A Salt and Battery (a great fish & chips place!) and Chelsea Market. Sunday started with church (see Links), including lots of great music (it was recognition Sunday for choirs). Then we went to Trader Joe's, where E & J stocked up, since they don't have one close to home.

Kids change so fast, so it was especially great to spend time with Kent, who doesn't e-mail or call regularly. In April, we spent a weekend with Joanna's family, but I'm ready for another grandson fix soon! Our family get-together in August couldn't come soon enough, as far as I'm concerned! Thank goodness for blogs, digital photos, and nearly-free additional mobile phone minutes. I think of my grandparents in Montana, who saw us once every few YEARS and talked with us on the phone only occasionally, in those expensive, pre-deregulation days. My mom and Grandmother wrote letters about once a week, since that was the main way people could keep up. And if you wanted to keep up with 10 people, you had to write 10 separate letters -- imagine that!

Updates on my life

I just remembered that I had set up this account, and since I haven't posted since November 2006, and a LOT has happened in the meantime, I'm going to post again. (If anyone -- Erica? -- has an automatic notification that I've posted an update, this should trigger a visit.)

I can't possibly go into detail on everything that's happened in the past 1.5 years, but here's a list:

• I met a wonderful man through okcupid.com (85% match). Ironically, there's just one letter difference between his first and last names and that of my late husband!
  
  
• We got engaged in March 2007 and married in November. This was my longest engagement ever, but I had known my other 2 husbands for longer before friendship turned to romance, so this was the longest total time between meeting and meeting at the altar. ;-) Oh, and I didn't change my name.
  
  
• I moved to NJ -- living together seemed like the thing to do, and Bill's job is less transferable than mine (and it provided a significantly-higher portion of our combined income). My dogs and his cat are getting along quite well, so I'm 2-for-2 on successfully-blended families.
  

We just got back from 10 wonderful days in London -- 3 royal palaces (Tower of London, Kensington, and Hampton Court), 3 plays (39 Steps, Billy Elliott, and Spam-A-Lot), and 3 church services (Lincoln's Inn chapel, St. Paul's, and Westminster Abbey). Oh, and a music hall performance that was a revue, rather than a play. We also spent a fair amount of time with David & Angela, good friends of Bill's for the past several years. (He spent Christmas with them the year after his wife died.) Hotel bills and kennel bills were neck-and-neck; fortunately, we used frequent flyer miles for the airline tickets.

New resolution: post more frequently. (It won't be hard to improve my average!)

Cheers!