Monday, August 02, 2010

Sweet Sailing for your Monday


























Sunday was gorgeous here...topped at about 80 but not too high humidity. We took our (one month shy of three years) Granddaughter out for her first time sailing and she had a blast! She loved it when the boat went fast, laughed when we tacked and her favourite part was when a power boat went by and made big waves for us to bounce through. What an adventurous little person she is! Ha!

29 comments:

  1. Howard is quite firstly, together with Renee who made this place for us to keep such good company.

    Congratulations to R&D!

    I hear what you said, listener, about not having folks who knew the ropes of going to college. It's a major factor.

    Our daughter proved to be something of a late bloomer; I knew at least roughly what I wanted to do from about second or third grade; she seems to have figured it out about 5 or 6 years into college. Everybody's different, and we don't know what event or experience is going to set us on our particular path.

    I went to junior college, then to state college (not university); we couldn't have afforded anything fancier. It depends on a lot of things, but some junior colleges are really fine for transfer students. And there are colleges that actually charge little or nothing, although they play the government grant game for all it's worth. Berea College is the most famous, and I recall reading of a well known school in NYC (I'm tired from working the weekend and can't think of the name just now) that's the same way. You want to go to medical school for free? You can, at the expense of the people of Cuba. They ask only that you pledge to work among the poor--and they ask knowing full well that many will not honor that pledge. Where there's the will, there's a way. But it must be the student's will, not the parents'.

    We have hummingbirds at the feeder, but also sometimes woodpeckers! And the other day Miyoko saw an adult woodpecker with two little ones at the hummingbird feeder!

    I don't remember if I told of the two youngish possums we trapped under the peach tree the other night; I released them in a nearby nature preserve. (Unlike older possums they ran out of the traps and down the bank of the lake/river as soon as I opened it up for them.) Then I looked up and saw a bobcat! It didn't follow the possums, but went on its way towards an area where there were lots of rabbits. (Juvenile jackrabbits, maybe?).

    And now to bed. TTFN, and good wishes to all.

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  2. donna in evanston8/02/2010 08:57:00 AM

    Congratulations to Renee and Demetrius are indeed in order.

    But what do kids know about love, anyway? ;)

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  3. Hey. I'm freaking exhausted.

    Spending a lot of time doing stuff that will pay off eventually, but at the moment it's just draining my energy.

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  4. HugZ Renee!

    Another gorgeous day, if drab, right here in Sugar Grove. Pegging right at seventy and not feeling humid. Overcast but I kin live with that.

    My rightie sister in law is having conniption fits on my facebook page. (She lurvs Beck.) She is also the sister in law who believes the world is out to poison her, so won't eat other people's food, only stuff she's made herself. I need to find a way to back out of this . . . .

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  5. She is also Tanner's grandmother.

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  6. Well, puddle, we is who we is.
    Just keep being who you are no matter whom fusses.

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  7. Alan, I appreciated hearing your story. So much hoopla is made about where a person is going to go to college, but once you graduate in most jobs nobody even asks where you went, just what your degree was in. Unless you're planning to go to grad school, it hardly matters anymore. What matters more is how you have lived and how you have used your education.

    Oh, and the woodpeckers were there for the ants.

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  8. Just had a very cool thunderstorm here.

    Radio and radar agreed it would pass to my north, so I headed into town to do errands. I had four places to go and it was sunny out. While in the second shop the radio cut to an Emergency Broadcast Announcement, telling us of severe thunderstorms in the area, containing up to one inch size hail, but again indicating the storm would go north of us. As I pulled into the parking lot of the fourth and last place I needed to go, Healthy Living in South Burlington, I saw lightning flash over Lake Champlain. I stood there and studied the sky a bit, and noted two low cloud systems passing over one another, the upper clouds heading south to north and the lower clouds moving north to south, but not moving terribly fast yet. I took my raincoat in with me. Good move. Came out about 20 minutes later into a deluge. Drove home okay, but it was a bit eerie, as I was running just slightly ahead of the worst of the storm, some of it circling around to one side of me. Green leaves were streaming off the trees and there was an orange glow in the sky, where it was still light. I kept saying out loud, "Hang on kitty, I'm coming!" I am sorry I didn't have my camera with me, but picture mountains with pale orange sky behind and very dark black clouds moving along them, dipping down to the tops of them in places. Came home, braved grabbing the mail (from the car) at the road, cleared the garage enough to squeeze the Mini into it, and brought in my stuff...all with lightning and loud thunderclaps right overhead! Very cool! Kitty was hunkered down in the downstairs hallway, equidistant from all windows. Smart kitty! Brighter than many peeps! LOL!

    Proceeded to set up the new "squirrel proof" feeder because I am so tired of raids by the gray squirrel thugs. The chickadees were there instantly, of course, rejoicing. It took about 15 minutes for a red squirrel to show up and slip into the cage around the feeder and chow down. Sigh. So I guess I'm going to have to spring for the pricey model from Birdwatcher's General Store. It truly is squirrel proof, but it's not bear proof, which is how we lost our last one. I was thinking I'd wait until late October (once the bears are sleeping) to get that one, but we'll see.

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  9. Thanks for the heart thingies.

    We didn't really do anything to celebrate our anniversary yesterday because Daughter had a friend over. NONE of her friends from K-8 will be going to the same high school with her, and she's been missing them a lot.

    And D has been working on an animation project--and doesn't know for sure if he's done yet. Next, he's booked to make Daughter's costume for an upcoming anime convention.

    I've been trying to figure out how to make up some of the lost income that results from teaching only one class this quarter. Keeping a closer eye on my campus e-mail for opportunities to fill in for other instructors. Just found out that a sub was needed for a class tomorrow morning, so I volunteered. Now I feel like, "Oh crap! Why did I agree to do that?"

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  10. {{{ {{ ♥ Renee ♥ }} }}}

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  11. Err... You could block her...

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  12. No desire to create a family crisis. . . .

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  13. Well, that's easy to answer, Renee. We do what we have to do when money is tight.

    Hmmm, Madeleine L'Engle used to say that people have clear to Easter to get their Christmas cards out. I never did hear her take on Anniversaries, but I suspect she'd say celebrate as soon as you are up to it. ♥

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  14. Well, yeah, my higher thought processes know why I agreed to it. I think it's my id that is balking.

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  15. My Id would balk too! All good luck and blessings!

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  16. I got a good-night phone call from Eldest*Granddaughter on Grandad's cell phone (also known as Stall Tactic #15). Worked great and we both enjoyed it hugely. :-)

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  17. Grandad is over there helping with Daughter's renovations, and since Daddy is away at the moment he thought the elder little one could use a perk. So he helped her make the call, but they got busted by Daughter and then Mommy coming up to check on the bedtime situation. Grandad tells me that as soon as Granddaughter saw Daughter (her Auntie) walk into the room she pushed the phone back into his hand. LOL! He laughed so hard!

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  18. I used to make bedtime as pleasant as possible for the kids. Sometimes baths first, but always read alouds and quite often I would sit by the doorway and sing them to sleep.

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  19. RIP Mitch Miller

    http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wirestory?id=11308650&page=1

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  20. 99 years young--wow. Takes me back--the Mitch Miller Orchestra; The Yellow Rose of Texas; Mule Train; Rosemary Clooney. Vacuum tube radios. Wow.

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  21. Couldn't your facebook page just come down with some sort of dread disease and croak of it?

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  22. Is such weather typical in your neck of the woods?

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  23. Bill Thomasson8/03/2010 12:12:00 AM

    puddle ~~ too bad more people can't have conversations, then agree to disagree. I got a call tonight from a friend I met at teeh 2008 World Science Fiction Convention. He basically called to say he won't be going to this year's North American Science Fiction Conventino because they didn't tell him what days his panels were on until it was too late to arrange kenneling for his dog. But he is way conservative and almost inevitably we got to talking about health care. Eventually I said, "Well, you believe things that, given what I know about the medical system and the pharmaceutical industry, I can't believe. We'll just have to disagree." And his response was that it was great that we could disagree and still like each other.

    It's too bad more people don't feel that way. Because I really do enjoy talking to him.

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  24. Bill, that's so refreshingly civilized.

    In fact, I have a friend who is a really great guy, and I like him a whole lot. But, we can't talk about politics at all, and that includes the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. It's very hard for me not to talk about politics, but somehow I manage with Steve, because his friendship is more important to me than shooting my mouth off. But, I don't try that hard with most people.

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