Sunday, again, after a busy half week. Today is more clean up and sorting day with no Taize’ tonight because the students are gone on the long weekend with Presidents’ Day tomorrow. A friend reports (and I am amazed) that the schools in Alabama do not recognize the Federal holiday. We will be going to town today by way of the house lifting to try out John’s “fix” to the color and background of the pictures my digital Canon camera takes. Before I realized I wouldn’t be going to town tonight, I had put in a special order for fritters and donuts. So, we were supposed to come home and work on cleaning up, but I spent all my time getting articles off the web for my colleagues, and working on other resource material building. Now it’s time for bed. Tomorrow has its challenges, that’s for sure.
Monday. Slept in and then started on clearing the table. Have made pretty good progress in 3 hours but need to rest and eat lunch. We are both resting while the shrimp cooks. Have sorted out a bunch of old tests to toss, and am just loading receipts into a box for further sorting when there is more time. Found a number of books we can recycle to people at school on the geography faculty.
All of the stuff setting around has accumulated dust from 4 dogs coming in and out of the back door to the patio and backyard. Stuff has to be vacuumed before it’s touched. Growing up in Atlanta, I always worried whether the cereal was closed tightly against the humidity, we worried about mold, and whether the Lysol was running low. Not here. It is dry most of the time and cereal, bread, potato chips or whatever is as apt to get crisper than less so. The flip side of this is the dust. It is a fine sharp-edged sort of stuff that, when dry, floats in the wind as easily as sprites and fairies. Apparently this environment is deadly to flees and hostile to ticks. Our dogs have been flea-less since arriving here in 1989. The brush down by the creek will yield a tick now and again, but not many.
When we sat down to rest and read our email and news John found there had been a horrible earthquake in Christchurch, NZ. We have friends there and haven’t heard yet if they are all right. We ate dinner and responded to more emails, and are too tired to do any more tonight. Perhaps early morning we will be back up to snuff with some energy.
Well, surprise. We got an inch of snow tonight while we rested after supper.
Tuesday: This morning we awoke to heavy snow that accumulated to 4 or 5 inches, and now it is sun shining. John went out and cleaned the back patio and some of the yard so the Sears Delivery person can drive to the back door. Then he went out and cleared the drive out front (in front of the out building, where we park and turn around). I have continued to clean up and the delivery person will be here at 1:00. They arrived just before 2:00 and the new one is installed J at 2:35. I have to go to town to a talk of another job candidate at 4:00. Rushed in to school for the lecture and drove home to more snow that accumulated to 2 inches. The temps are to go down tonight, and we will have a cold several days.
We had pizza tonight cooked in our new stove. Yum.
Thank goodness we heard this morning from our friends in Christchurch, NZ that they had survived the earthquake with not too much damage to their house (but more than the Sept 2010 quake). And, our mutual friends who had been there Monday night, left Christchurch 3 hours before the quake occurred! With that luck they need to buy a lottery ticket.
Wednesday: Slept in after a really early morning phone call at 7:15 a.m. Then spent time on various email chores, and left for town at 1:00, John driving, with kitty in a crate. He dropped me off at the SAIL exercise class, and went to the bank, grocery store/pharmacy and to have the stitches removed from the kitty’s spay operation. After picking me up, we saw a friend walking back to his house from getting his paper, and so stopped to say hello. He invited us in for tea or coffee, but we just visited instead. Tonight I’m going to CWU for a slide lecture by a former student: CWU Outdoor Speaker Series: Kurt McCanles’ Two-Wheeled Adventure. After graduating last spring, Kurt took his bike and headed south, biking from Cancun, Mexico, through Central and South America, to Guayaquil, Ecuador, a trek that took 110 days and took him through 10 countries. He showed video snippets and many slides of the cultures and physical areas he traveled through. It was very well done and fascinating.
Thursday morning I woke at 4:30 a.m., looked out on rapidly accumulating snow. 5 inches in just a couple of hours! John cleared it in appropriate places. We left for town at 1:30. I played music at Hearthstone and John sat and read. We left 10 minutes early to make it to Dean Hall for a presentation by one of our former students (at the time 6 years ago he was an exchange student for a year from Australia). He was a great guy and at the head of all the classes he had from me and Elaine Glenn, his mentor. We have kept in touch and now he is a graduate student in Oregon. His Master’s thesis was on Tibet, and today he gave a presentation about it with fantastic pictures and cultural information. I’m so glad we went. It was well worth it. He was happy and surprised to see me there and gave me a big hug. He knew about my illness. His Ph.D. work (Geography at Oregon) will be on water resources in China. Okay. Dinner was part leftovers, chicken and rice and part new (fresh asparagus).
Friday: Busy day today. Starts with shoulder massage at Sr. Center; scholarship luncheon at noon (great pizza and salad); SAIL exercise class was cancelled because of a Pine Basket weaving workshop that went for 3 hours. So, I went from lunch in the Psychology building to Dean Hall with my box of books to share (unload may be the better word) with my Geog colleagues. Tired so am getting ready for an afternoon nap. John is already napping. He did a nice job cleaning up dishes today while I was away. It’s down to 9 degrees as we head to bed, and is supposed to hit minus 5 tonight. Yikes.
Saturday: Woke up to blinding sunshine on snow. The -5 forecast missed. It stopped dropping at +4. We are having a heat wave – it is going to make it to about 31. Lazy day till tonight when we go to the Trace Bundy guitar concert (finger-picking with both hands):
The web has other videos – just search using his name.
Hope you all have a good week. Best regards from Nancy & John and all the critters.