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:

Fun with fall and other random things…

1)  I am sure enjoying falling into autumn.  We are a far way from peak here where we live but the trees are turning and it is just beautiful.  I love it and the little fall tidbits.

2)  One morning when I had to get up early, I walked Olive the pug down to the pond.  The air was pretty chilly but the pond water was still warmish.  So the result was a nice mist rising off the pond.

  Just beautiful!

3)  Can you believe it?  I signed up with Twitter again.  I swore I wouldn’t do it but one night I wanted to respond to something while we were watching a Red Sox game and I couldn’t because I wasn’t on Twitter.  Now, I can tweet baseball to my heart’s content but I haven’t felt strongly enough about anything to tweet about it.  Another of life’s lost opportunities…

4)  I’ve been going to water aerobics at the Y with a friend this week.  The jury is out as to whether or not I will become a water aerobics fan.  For one thing, it starts too darn early in the morning and for another thing, you have to get into the water.  I have to admit, though, that it feels kind of good while I’m in there, but the minute I leave the pool I feel like I’ve gained 85 pounds.

5)  Olive is still in the running on the TripAdvisor Facebook thing.  Here’s the link if you want to stop by:  https://www.facebook.com/TripAdvisor?v=app_448952861833126&rest=1  No pressure from either Olive or me.  Voting ends on the 30^th.  This link takes you to the home page for this contest.  If you click on "View Entries" and then click on the drop down menu "Sort by," you'll see "total votes."   Once you go there, you will see the running pug in all her glory.

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.