I Bought New Reading Glasses at the Dollar Store

I thought I'd update on my post that I copied from EO's blog. It was someone's must-read list. I won't copy it here. I printed a list of all the books I wanted to read and put it in my wallet. Each time I went to the library, I'd get a few of those on the list.

My first was The Hobbit, then I went through the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Lots of fun! It was kind of like being in a book club (I think) because I'd talk it over with Maestro everyday and discuss how each book differed from the movies. I thought Peter Jackson & Fran Walsh did a great job adapting the books to the screenplay. Most of the differences just had to do with condensing the story so it could be contained in only 3 movies. I really missed Middle Earth and its inhabitants when I finished Return of the King.

Then, I went ahead in time (or behind, actually, since these were written well before Lord of the Rings et al) to 1800's England for Pride & Prejudice and Emma. It was quite a change in style and subject matter, like seeing 3 guy movies in a row and then going to see a couple of chick flicks. I gotta say I preferred the guy movies. Not that I didn't enjoy Jane Austen's books. They were really interesting and I liked getting a glimpse of what life was like for some in that era.

After that, I read a "trashy" novel that Guatemama & Cissy recommended. Good stuff. I won't do a review on it here, though. Maybe another time.

The Bourne Identity was next. Excellent writing and a great story. The funny thing is, though, that I couldn't get over how completely different it was from the movie. Don't get me wrong, I loved them both. I just couldn't believe they made that movie & named it after the book of the same name. There are some similarities. The main character is named Jason Bourne (or is he?) and he was an assassin (or was he?) who lost his memory. He was trained by a special group named Treadstone 71 (was 71 in the movie?) but not for the same purpose as in the movie, unless I'm not remembering correctly. Ludlum is a terrific writer and I loved how he respected the reader's intelligence. Most of the book is set in Paris (another plus) and when there are phrases in French (or sometimes German) he doesn't bother to translate for you.

Now I've just started The Stand, by Stephen King. It wasn't on my list of books I wanted to read, but EO thought I'd like it, so I'm giving it a shot. It's over 1000 pages, so I may be finished by the time they get here (!) and then again, I may not.

As for other news -- we went out on the boat today and had an expensive -- oh, I mean fun -- time. Cissy has blogged about it so I won't be redundant. What she kindly left out was that when I got out of the boat to get us off the rocks when we were beaching to meet the airboat people, I had our camera and my cell phone.. oh, and the keys to the Trailblazer... in my shorts pocket. The keys and my cell phone are fine. The camera is dead. Or maybe in a coma. And the prop & skag (I learned what this was last year, having ruined a couple of them already) on the boat have to be fixed. So there ya go.

I hope that we'll get a new camera soon so that I'll be able to post pix again. In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to blog on old stuff or non-photo topics.

Visit, revisited

I'm glad you like my photos of Sedona (actually, those are from 3 different photogs). I'm nowhere near the photographer my daughter is, in fact, I'm the worst one in the family, I think. But, boy, you can't really go wrong when you're in the most beautiful place in the USA (some magazine voted it that).

Here's some more about the trip.

We had a great time out on the boat. We went twice, once upriver, and once downriver.

As we headed up, we saw a bunch of wild burros. Poppy told them that once we saw some wild boar, and about 2 minutes later, we saw them! (One is to the left, behind some plants.)

Soon after, we showed them the Native American Petroglyphs:

We went up through a beautiful gorge and then stopped the boat & had a picnic lunch. Here are a few photos of the river -- one of them was taken from a plane ride I took about a year ago.

The next time on the river, we went down, first to a popular spot with the Spring Breakers (don't worry, we didn't earn or give out any beads). It's a really beautiful cove when it's not filled with drunken 19 year olds.

Then, we went to a restaurant for lunch, just past Parker Dam (pardon my language).

After lunch, we stopped in another cove to relax. We saw some desert bighorn sheep up on a bluff. After watching us for awhile, they decided we were safe, and they came down to the water for a drink. There were other boats in the cove and they were louder, but the sheep seemed to like us :)

It was a lot of fun. We stayed there for quite awhile, watching the sheep.

Well, that kind of sums up our visit with the Two Sisters. We hope that they can come down again next spring. I'm going to stop writing and get this published!

Visit from Sis-in-Law

Well, I really needed to get around to blogging about our wonderful visit from Poppy's sister (I'll call her Sister J - she really is a Sister) and her roomie, Sister P, also a Sister. I was seeing how many times I could write the word "sister" in one sentence. We had such a great time with them here. They both love to travel and we were thrilled to have them stay with us for a week and a half. We are hoping that they will be able to make this an annual, if not semiannual, event. Here are some pix of our visit. I have to write a disclaimer; there's some strong language that you're not used to hearing, or reading, from me.

On the way home from picking them up at the airport in Vegas, we stopped by a famous landmark -- now that's a Hoover Dam good picture!

We visited Oatman, a little ghost town named after a girl who was captured by Native Americans. I still can't believe it, but it's where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their wedding night. Really, why???? So close to Las Vegas???? I've seen the room and it's not pretty. Anyway, now the reason for going is to feed the wild burros who come down from the mountains each day. Here's a picture of a really nice A$$ --

Then we went to Sedona. Poppy stayed home, b/c his knee was KILLING him. Maestro came along with us. The weather was warming up at home, but it was cold -- okay, cool -- in Sedona. It was cloudy & would rain a bit now & then. It was quite a revelation to Sister P, who was definitely expecting different weather in Arizona. Fortunately for our sightseeing efforts, the only time it rained really hard was when we were inside eating, at a very nice Mexican restaurant, Oaxaca. We started out at Oak Creek Canyon --

for a very scenic view, and some shopping for some Navajo-made jewelry. It started sleeting, and we had a view of the road we would be driving down --

Maestro did a great job driving -- he actually drove the speed limit of 15mph! I didn't cry this time going down. Our next stop was at Slide Rock State Park --

Then we went to the Chapel of the Holy Cross.

The photo on the right is the view from the back door. In the next photo, the rock formations on the left side are called the Two Sisters. And Maestro is standing between -- yep-- Two Sisters.

You can see the menacing clouds behind them. There had been some great lightning, but we didn't get that on film. I mean, uh, memory disk. And boy, was it windy!

We headed to Red Rock Crossing to get some shots of Cathedral Rock.

Maestro climbed a tree --

We started our drive back home, but had to stop & take these pix --

Then, just to make things really interesting, we got to drive through a snowstorm in Flagstaff. Yikes-a-malooney!

Of course, we got home safely, after stopping in Ash Fork and eating at the Road Kill Cafe on the longest stretch of the original Route 66.

I'll blog some more on the trip later, but I want to get this published before, well, the next time they visit us!

Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino...

Well, today I got my kicks on Route 66. Or at least a finishing kick. Kind of. I ran a 10k race in Kingman this morning.

I really did not think it would go well, since I was up until almost 3am with stomach upset and then we had to get up at 5am so we could leave at 6. Yikes! Cissy went with Poppy & me and she woke up at 2:30am. Gee whiz! So, we all went up to the Heart of Route 66 for a fun morning. We arrived at the starting line about 25 minutes before the race. I took as much time as possible in the lovely port-a-potty (nicely name the "head" quarters) -- hoping that this race was going to go better than expected if I could, you know, ... I was really hoping for more port-a-potties along the route or I would probably be in trouble. The 5kers and 10kers lined up at the start and it was time to go (run, not back to the little blue buildings).

I'm the one in pink shorts, under the "n" in LINE.

I was feeling a lot better than I thought I would -- yay! The course was in a street that was open to traffic but separated by cones. It went at first through a "small -town" downtown type area. Then we turned toward the Hualapai Mountains and the scenery was pretty nice. The weather was warm & sunny and wasn't really a factor for most of us. After going solidly UPHILL for 3 miles, it occurred to me that the turnaround was just ahead and it would be DOWNHILL from there on! Made that last bit before the turnaround much happier for me. The last half went pretty well - no, duh, really, ALL downhill. So I didn't need a finishing kick, I just coasted in. This is a shot Cissy took just before the finish line --

I finished in 1:04:07, nice & slow, but 3 minutes faster than the 10k I did a couple of weeks ago. Wow, it's a lot easier if you DON'T donate blood 2 days before a race. The fun thing is, it was enough for 1st place in my age division - 46-55, except there weren't any older than 55 so it was just 46 & up. See what happens when you just keep running -- you can be slow but there aren't too many others out there!

An early Happy Mother's Day to any mommies (or mommies-to-be) reading this! I hope that it finds you all feeling loved and appreciated. I will be lucky enough to be with my Mom tomorrow!

Love You Forever

This is not my official Happy Mother's Day post, but I wanted to tell you about my morning at JuJu's school. She had a Mother's Day breakfast. They each made a picture frame out of puzzle pieces and put a photo of themselves and their mom in it. It said, "I love you to pieces". Cute, huh? She and the kids made muffins yesterday and someone (juju?) brought fruit, yogurt, donuts, and juice. This morning, Cissy and I (surrogate moms for anyone whose mom couldn't make it) showed up at 8:00. The other moms were in the hallway waiting to be invited in. Juju peeked her head out the door and let us know she was already a BASKET CASE emotionally. So then, we all went in. The door had decorations hanging down with a sign to welcome the moms. She and a few kids blew bubbles as the moms walked in to music on the CD player -- "You'll Always be Beautiful in My Eyes." The moms were already starting to cry.

Cissy and I were directed to sit in for a little girl whose mom is in prison. She lives with her grandparents and 4 yr old brother (who's diabetic). The kids all served their moms breakfast. The menu was written on the blackboard. It was so cute!

After they were done serving, the kids lined up for a song -- You are My Sunshine, complete with motions & choreography --the next pic is them saying, "You'll never know DEAR, how much I love you."and their memory verse, Ps 23, also with motions. (He makes me to lie in green pastures)Lots of tears. Just to make things more poignant, then JuJu introduced the book "Love You Forever" written by Robert Munsch. (If you haven't read this, you MUST!)She struggled through telling when she first heard the book at a Mother-Daughter banquet at church. The storyteller sang the words,

I love you forever,
I like you for always,
As long as I'm living,
My baby you'll be.

So she got through the book as the kleenex box traveled around the room. It seemed that we were the only ones who had known the book before, but I could be wrong. Those moms will NEVER forget this morning, I assured JuJu. Then she thanked me for the help I've been able to giver her these last few weeks (she exaggerated and said 3 months -- wonder where she gets that from??). We also had a Mother's Day word search puzzle and a crossword puzzle to do with the kids and "our" little girl loved that.

Cissy and I stayed to help with some stuff for tonight's Young Author's Night, where everything they've written this year (or I suppose just a representative sample) will be on display. Then, there was a fire drill. Actually, it was a messed up fire alarm, not scheduled. So we went out with all the kids. They behaved SO well. It was hot outside and they had to line up on the pavement but they weren't suffering too badly. JuJu played "Follow the Leader" while still standing in line to keep her class occupied. I gave them stories about how all of OUR fire drills were cold, and we couldn't even grab our coats!!! Before too long, we went in. Then I was too cold :)

Happy Birthday Teeners!

Happy Birthday to t~!

Here's one of the first pix ever taken of her --

She's quite an amazing (and, yes, I hate the overuse of that word, but it works here) and talented woman and has always been that way. Here she is playing the piano during a recital (please ignore the socks, please...please...) and showing her medal at the Midwest regional spelling bee in Indianapolis.

She was a cheerleader --


World traveler -- Homecoming Queen --

Married the man of her dreams --

Graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing --

Had a bunch of cute kids (yes, I know she's not done yet :) )

Became a Girl Scout Leader --

And a photographer (sorry, I don't have a pictures of that)

We're very proud of you, t~, and always have been. I hope you have always felt how much we love you. Have a great birthday and enjoy lots more! Remember, you can't complain that you're old to your parents , 'cause that would make us really old!

Love, mom & dad