Looking back, #2…

In July, Greg and I managed to make it back to Griswold, Connecticut to look at the sunflowers on the last possible day.  The next day we were leaving for our annual trip to Ohio.  We added another leg to our journey by traveling out to Fort Wayne, Indiana first to visit our friends, Misty and Jenna.  It was a wonderful visit with our old friends, who we miss a lot, and we were impressed with Fort Wayne.  Of course, Misty was a terrific tour guide.  And then we headed back to northern Ohio to celebrate our nephew A.J.’s high school graduation and then down to southern Ohio to visit my family.  Whew!  Sometimes you need a vacation from your vacation.

We weathered the dog days of summer by hanging out.  Not much went on in August but we did occasionally make it down to the beach to watch the dogs frolic in the water.

September was the beginning of a graceful slide into autumn and an interesting month for us.  We participated in our neighborhood yard sale, which is something we haven’t done in many years.  We welcomed a new minister to our church, the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church.  I was very happy about welcoming Rev. Craig Nowak because I was on the committee put in charge of finding him.  All that work yielded happy results.  And late in the month, we went down to Bangor, Pennsylvania to visit Greg’s cousins and his Aunt Ann, who we hadn’t seen for years.

October was gorgeous here in New England.  It’s my favorite month of the year.  When we weren’t enjoying the spectacular color, we were staying up late watching the Red Sox win.  To say that we enjoyed the World Series is a supreme understatement.  We also attended the wonderful wedding of Evan’s friends Bryan and Stephanie.  It was a very good month.

November was quiet except that I got to meet my sister Susan in Mystic, Connecticut for a sleepover.  It was great seeing Susan and I had a terrific time at Mystic Seaport.

At Mystic Seaport.  My mother's clan is Thomas, but I don't think any of them were oyster men.

So here we are in December, the end of 2013.  We lost our good friend Jim Egan in December.  And while that brought us great sadness, in general, we had many more gains than losses in 2013.

  It was a pretty good year.

Have a safe and fun New Year's Eve and a Happy and Healthy 2014!

The Art of Random Clicking…

I remember when we got our first desktop computer.  It happened to be a Gateway computer.  Do you remember those?  It arrived at the door in a box with black and white cow-spots on it.  It was awesome!  Greg got it set up after a long and frustrating night and we were in business.  We weren’t on line yet, but we could play games and do word processing.  The world was our oyster.

A Christmas soon after we got the computer, Greg bought us the game Myst.  He and I were so caught up in it that we worked together to finish it off in a week or so spending many nights up to the wee hours.  I haven’t enjoyed a computer game so much since.  I remember though when I got frustrated with it, I would just click on the screen randomly until something or other happened.  And sometimes that opened the gateway to the next level.

These days, four or five computers later, I’m a little more precise with my clicks although I know I don’t really need to be.  I mean, I know that the random clicks I do aren’t going to erase anything or mess anything up that can’t be fixed.  I’ve even figured out how to retrieve an SD card full of pictures that I’ve accidently deleted when I’ve made the wrong click, which I’ve done on more than one occasion.  But even though I know how to do it, there is always that momentary second of sheer panic before I settle down and do what I need to get my stuff back.  Let’s face it, I still kind of sit in awe of the Machine and don’t try to test my limits with it too often.

However, I do get very frustrated when I can’t figure random stuff out.  Like when I couldn’t figure out how to answer people’s comments in an email.  So I am grateful for all of the advice I get from my Blogger friends.  Thanks!  I’ve got it going now.  Actually, it was a pretty simple fix.  And it is entirely possible that I could have figured it out myself if I had been practicing the art of random clicking.  But here’s the point, it would have been random and I probably wouldn’t have recalled what I did to make it act that way and sometimes that’s just as frustrating as not knowing.

Here's how I felt before yesterday:

Here's how I feel today:

Random 5 Friday...

1)  Yesterday was the first anniversary of my new left knee.  It seems that around the three month mark after the surgery, I went to sleep with an achy knee and when I woke up the knee no longer ached too much.  The healing was mostly done and it no longer felt like I had a foreigner living in my body.  These days, there are times when I say that my new knee is the only joint I have that isn’t hurting.  I say that only partly in jest because some days are a true challenge.  Such is the nature of arthritis unfortunately.  The fact is, I am much better off with my new knee and am very happy that the temporary suffering from the surgery was well worth the end results.  I probably wouldn’t have gone out to take these shots last year prior to the surgery on my two aching knees, but am willing to move around more with only one aching knee.

2)  So I’m on Day 123 of my Flickr 365.  I say that with trepidation because I discovered earlier this week that I had mis-numbered my days.  I tend to do this with numbers:  24, 25, 26, 27, 26, 25, 26, 62, 63, 64, 65…  So that I’m never quite sure whether or not I’m coming or going.  As far as my 365 is concerned, I thought I could keep this from happening by keeping a running list of my days written in a notebook.  Well, lo and behold, I did the same thing on my running list in the notebook that I did on Flickr only on a different day.  So I had two mistakes that needed to be corrected.  It took me about an hour to put things right.  Now I’ve discovered that in my 365 set, I have 122 pics but I’m on Day 123.  I know I haven’t missed a day.  Can you hear me screaming?   I just don’t get along with numbers.  Well, I’ll think about that later.  Here’s my latest entry.

3)  I remembered that I promised you a look at my creations from last week’s Craft Night.  Here’s a collage of what I came up with.  The rose print is made from the end of a celery stalk.  Otherwise, I was feeling pretty geometric.

4)  The Titmice have been at the peanuts on our peanut feeder like there’s no tomorrow.  They are so cute.  It’s hard to begrudge them anything.

5)  Well, the Red Sox and the Cardinals are even up after last night.  We have this evening off from the tension of the World Series as the teams travel to St. Louis.  I think these teams are pretty evenly matched and who will win is anybody’s guess.  But I have to say that we had such an enjoyable baseball summer watching the Sox that, win or lose, I am happy with them.  Still it reminds me that baseball season is winding to an end.  Halloween is upon us, followed closely by Thanksgiving.  Soon it will be 2014.

  What the heck?  Where does it go?

LINKING TO A RURAL JOURNAL'S

RANDOM 5 FRIDAY!

Living in a fog...

Dealing with a lack of sleep has been a challenge for me in the last few weeks.  On Sunday morning of this week I woke up and looked outside to a an atmosphere that largely resembled what was going on in my head.  Up and out I went and took a few photos of the fog.  Today it is crisp and clear out and here I sit waiting for the outside to influence my brain.