Sunday, Nov 6, 2011 — Nice morning and we drove to Cle Elum, meeting our friend Morris at 9:00 a.m. at the Cottage Cafe. We had a great visit (over 3 hours, starting with breakfast), and presented the memory book to him. I told him there were additions coming, and we will take them to him later, or mail them to him if he is gone from Roslyn.
I have 74 student entries and 7 colleagues. I know he will cherish the memories. He said he will start reading it tonight, and he will cry.
I imagine he will. John did just proofing them. John also had tears in his eyes today just listening to Morris’ stories. It was really neat. I only teared up once, but several times while putting the book together.
He’s a good fellow; that much I know and he was very appreciative of our friendship (John’s and mine) over the years. As we were leaving he hugged each of us and told us each, “I love you.” We love him too, and we will keep up with him wherever he goes. He knows he can call on us if he needs to. It’s still on my camera but I took a picture of him with the book, outside under a tree. I should send it, I think, to everyone who put a letter in the book. I only wish I had been able to find more people from his past. There is still time to add to the book. I will just format them, add to the table of contents, and send him the copies and a new copy of the content names (now at two pages, soon to start a third).
John did more work this afternoon (in the cold) on the inside of the cat house. I stayed inside and worked on music and emails, pretty much. I’m tired and will try to go to bed early tonight. John fixed some good dinner with ground beef & onions, cheese on top, a baked potato, and I had two types of tomatoes. They are thinning out. I will miss them when they’re gone.
Monday, Nov 7, 2011 Loose cows in the front yard of our neighbors out by our mailbox. John went and helped herd them back into the fence, with the help of two other neighbors. He’d make a good cow dog or cutting horse. Neither were with him. He saw our horses upset with the bawling cow sound from up on the road, and went to check it out.
We went to town for lunch, and then John dropped me off for exercise class while he ran some errands. We had to get our Absentee Ballots . . .
[John says: Absentee? Nancy is showing she needs to pay attention to current developments. Washington State voters vote by mail. Our county switched for the 2008 elections. Most others earlier. Pierce County went from 90% to only-mail this year.]
. . . turned in to the Courthouse pickup before tomorrow (Election Day). He got an electrical outlet for inside the cat house. Also, he checked the price on some boots he wanted. We are back from town and just ordered $69.98 worth of boots and slippers for John with free shipping from Blair in PA.
[John says: Blair Corp. was founded as the New Process Company and is still headquartered in Warren, PA. John’s dad’s family is from Warren and some relatives worked for the company when it was a simple hometown affair. Things are considerably more complicated now! See the section titled “Continued Growth” on this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Corporation
He looked in town for the same thing (the boots) and similar things were $115 – $250, plus would have had 8.1% tax added. The slippers are $20.00, and are the about same as obtainable in Yakima but he’s not found them here in town. A local store had slippers starting at $60. Maybe they were made of real sheep wool?]
Tuesday, Nov 8 — It was another crazy day.. I was gone most of the day to 3 things: foot care at noon, back home briefly, 4:00 Acupuncture, stayed and ate in town, and then played music at 6:30, not getting home till 8:00 pm. Now my feet are cold and I need to check the fruit in the dehydrator. John and I spent over an hour loading one up while it was still early and cold outside. We put in banana chips, a pear, Gala apples and a Rome. I need to go turn them. I looked at them and had to ask John for his opinion and to help put it back together. There are some plastic clamps on the sides I can take off but not put back on. I have to concentrate the next time I take them off so I can restore it. I think I have before, but tonight, I wasn’t making the connection (literally)!
Wednesday, Nov 9 – John and I got the dehydrator unloaded and reloaded with a couple of pears and mostly Gala and a couple of Rome apples. We only got 6 ounces of apples dried from the bunch ?? (how many John? >10 ) yesterday. Maybe that’s why dried fruit is so expensive. I went to town for music and food at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen. Over 40 there today, so not enough food to go around. We eat last because we play music through their lunch. We had a tomato basil soup, with a very few oyster crackers, a small serving of meat loaf (and the servers didn’t get any! (sad). A little fruit cocktail, the garlic bread toast was all gone, and there was a small piece of apple pie. I didn’t need any more. I took cans of V8 tomato juice for me and the banjo player. Then off to check the price of gas, and to exercise class. Home now, and need to put together our Veteran’s Day music to practice tomorrow at the rehabilitation facility where I was last year for 7 weeks. It’s practice for the next day at a downtown stage next to the library, where there will be a meeting for ice cream sundaes, honoring the veterans who also have a morning parade and a free BBQ at the downtown fire station. My group is playing from noon for 50 minutes, and we will do a few patriotic songs, mixed in with songs about America.
Thursday. Nov 10 I ended up spending most of last night on music (U.S. Army Air Force Song). Was going to transpose for the clarinet player, but the fellow who wrote the score had about 5 notes wrong. I figured it out by playing on a virtual piano keyboard. (uses a Java Script). Boy, it is so cool what can be done nowadays.
However, I don’t want to take the time to write in the Chords and the words, so will just print them in, and then make copies on my printer. That didn’t work. This morning while John was cutting apples, I cut and taped the words onto the “new music”. Then I wrote in the chords by hand. I finished just an hour before I had to leave and made copies to give out (and punched 3 holes in everything). Meanwhile, John finished putting the dehydrator stuff (apples and pears) out so we could load it this morning with apples. Earlier he put up the applesauce (beautiful dark red from the Rome’s skins) into freezer containers.
Playing went well this afternoon, even though were very short on players.
We had only two violins (and it was just me when the other one played his mandolin). We had a guitar, banjo, and a bass fiddle. Plus a singer joined us. All there today, except the banjo player will be there tomorrow at the Veteran’s Day playing.
Chili for dinner and a tiny bit of ice cream with cashews. That’s the end of our ice cream from a major sale a few weeks ago. Waiting now for the next sale (on large plastic tubs).
Friday, Nov 11 – Happy Veterans’ Day. We went today to town for the Veteran’s Community celebration and played music from noon till 12:48. We included America, America the Beautiful, This Land is Your Land, and Anchors Aweigh, Battle Hymn of the Republic, The Marine’s Hymn, God Bless America, The U.S. Air Force Song. Our group did really well, and got lots of applause and appreciation as we were leaving. We did some patriotic songs mentioned above, and played lively regular old time music such as Five Foot Two, and Jambalaya. We ended with You Are my Sunshine, and everyone sung along. Several people I know from exercise class at the senior center and also people from nursing and retirement homes and one person from the community we know were there.
Then visited and watched other performers (cute little girls doing jazzercise), and then some Peruvian dancers. John came in after I was done and had an ice cream sundae. I had a root beer float. He had filled his Subaru with gasoline, and gone to the grocery store for a few things. Then we went to Burger King for a Whopper we halved. We had a coupon entitling us to a free one if we bought small fries and a small drink. So we both ate lunch for $3.43. It is overcast (was sunny earlier), and cool.
Now John and I have had a pork roast dinner (he bought it today on sale), and then we looked out and it was SNOWING big flakes. We are not ready. One western mountain reporting station had a foot of new snow today by early afternoon. We won’t get much as the air is coming from the Northwest and moisture doesn’t cross the Cascades well. Ellensburg is within the deep red area near the center of this map:
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/pcpn/wa.gif
However, the ground is covered in white. Welcome Winter!
We will post this tonight (Fri.) because Saturday evening we are going to a music potluck and jam session.
Hope your next week is wonderful.
Nancy & John
on the Naneum Fan