Life in Weyers Cave

Tonight was David's turn to take me out for a hot date. We went to an absolutely wonderful French Restaurant in Lexington which is about an hour away. Mmmm. Mmm, Mmm. MMMMMMmmm. I had Loster Bisque and Shrimp au Gratin and Creme Brulee Cheescake. The chef really knows what he is doing. Oh, the restaurant is Cafe Michel and expensive, but worth the drive. Since the Dianna is coming home in the morning, we figured one last date.I won't be able to eat for a week now, and besides, I am assuming she is going to want to head straight for Mr. J's Bagels!

I am SO ADD!!! I'm sorry Many belated birthday wishes to TAT, who does so much for me. Hope you had a good one and we will do lunch! Next week, when the David is gone. (The mice will play!!!)

Dianna gets home on the 9:30 flight into Weyers Cave on Wednesday. Felicia is doing GREAT in the Army and loving it. Contact me for her address. She MIGHT be getting married. Bryan is happy and is about to learn to fly a new plane, a Brazilia. Cathryn still needs a place to stay for school in Alaska next month. Allen is on a Sage Robin training mission for the Green Berets. He is not a Green Beret, just helping to train them. Check out Sage Robin. I worked at the museum again today. Had fun, but still haven't earned my costume yet. It's about time. The costume is done, but they don't know what the rules are for me earning one since I am a volunteer. Grrr. I had energy yesterday and redid a lot in the basement. I would like to get my treadmill going but I can't plug it in because I am too short. And Ashton wants a job. Ashton is 12. Cute, responsible, polite, hard-working. Anybody looking to hire a great young man?

There is a place in Ancestry.com for New Addition, but I would say it is really New Addiction. Now they have an option called "hints" where you upload your genealogy, then they show you places where you can link into others or find census or military records, etc. I had 650 people in my family tree a week ago. Now I have 1000. There is also a place where you can press "Find Famous Relatives". I told David about it and he looked and found a mistake on his family tree. Of course. It has been a lot of fun. But time-consuming. Funny, I can't sit for twenty minutes to watch a movie, but I can keep going on this nonstop for two hours at a time.

You are in a roomful of other ADD people and everyone is interrupting each other non-stop, nobody ever finishes a sentence and nobody cares. You have seven sets of keys because six are lost at any given time. You have ever started out the door forgetting to wear a significant item of clothing. You know the batteries in your smoke alarm are good because they are used - frequently. About half the time you get on the main road going in the wrong direction from your intended destination. You can turn yourself into don't-pay-attention-to-the-pastor (or parent) mode in two seconds flat. A rubber band around your list is a great distraction. You learn to put what you will need in your car or backpack the night before when you are thinking about it, knowing full well you will NEVER remember in the morning. You ever wondered why the doctor who is supposed to be helping you with your ADD doesn't give reminder calls. You make money on your AFLAC accident insurance policy. You have so many...

I do a lot of work right now with 14 year olds. I never really liked teenagers much when I was a teenager, and I don't think my kids did either. But this is the first time I have really looked at them from the outside DOWN, so to speak. Perhaps it is normal for them to feel they are experts on all of the world's problems. This one expert (a bright girl, just not too educated) had never heard of the Eiffel Tower, although she did recognize it when I described it. Gagged on the Belgian chocolate I gave her. But she KNOWS for a FACT that Al Gore is right on Global Warming. Mean old stupid old people have messed up her world and she will have to make it right, as she is chauffeured everywhere and wears her Hollister clothing. I have to choke when I see someone advertising Hollister. When Allen was 17, he had a job at Hollister -- they make ostomy bags. If you don't know what an ostomy bag is, look it up, but you will never look at a Hollister label the same way again. I never ...

I ran down to Raleigh to help mom with some stuff for a day. Sadly didn't see much of Jeff. Mom has a ghost that shuts a door upstairs each night at 4 am. It woke me up. I don't understand the significance of 4 am and it isn't an old house - Mom is the first to live in it. Jeff has a new dog named BooBoo who is more sedate than most of his others. But very pretty and friendly. Boo is sick, though, and not too social. His favorite trick is going down on his elbows with his butt in the air. Uh-huh. Some trick! On the way home I stopped in Lynchburg to have lunch with my high school buddy and college roommate Debbie Cress. We had lunch at the old Craddock Terry factory which has been turned into a world class hotel and restaurant. Amazingly, the "dirty" district down by the river is cleaned up and looking very nice. Cress told me about super tasters, people with more taste buds on their tongue than normal who can't stand veggies. Jeff says he is one, so I guess I...

Last night I had a feeling I had better be at the hut at 6, since it was a Monday and a new group of (cough, cough ) men would be taking care of it for the week. Sure enough, they were ALL late and disorganized. One wife showed up to fill in for her husband who was an hour late. We had to make popcorn, hot dogs, hamburgers, fries and set out the candy and condiments and wipe down the counters. But fortunately, after an hour it was all under control and I could come home, have our home teachers over, make David's dinner, and I think we will be in good shape for tonight. The leagues used to start at 7 and now start at 6:30, so I need to keep reminding people. Announcements don't work, of course. David is having more troubles with his lawnmower. I have not TOUCHED a lawnmower all year long, and he has had problems nearly every time he goes to mow. The curse remains, and it is NOT MY FAULT! I enjoyed working at the German Farm yesterday. We had Russians and Irish people come throug...

On her recent promotion. I think she wouldn't want me to toot her horn as loudly as it ought to be tooted, but I sure am proud of my baby sister! Way to go! Now everyone, go out and buy a Coca-cola and give her a toast! I was called out to find two computers that wouldn't go on the internet and then that night, the one I was troubleshooting wouldn't go on. Seems that Microsoft has sent out an update that is incompatible with ZoneAlarm, so if someone you know can't get on, tell them that the internet setting on ZoneAlarm needs to be set to medium. Allen got back from his Field Training Exercise, apparently tired and happy. He didn't get to jump with the full pack because of weather. Maybe next time. I think FTX's are his favorite thing because they push him to his limits. I am working on brochures and a website to get more consulting business. I went to a business networking breakfast yesterday that was nice, but probably not for me. It was great and I did learn...

by a lightning strike. John is a WWII vet and a wonderful, wonderful guy. A member of the Ruritan club here. I promised to peek at his computer that was making strange noises. The second you press the on button there is a loud pffft (almost like a fart) from the speaker and then it clicks, faster and faster, until it stops. It also has no sound on the videos. Sadly, it looks like it was plugged into a telephone line during one of the recent storms around here. I have taken out the drivers for the sound card and tried to reload but can't. It doesn't even think there is a sound card or modem present. He knows better. He is an electrical engineer. I love working with smart older people. He is like me, he thinks mowing lawns is environmentally stupid. So he has mulched over his back yard and has swings and waterfountains and gardens. It is so beautiful. And he does as much maintenance free as possible. He is also big with Hunters for the Hungry. I draw the line at eating deer. I ca...

I spent some time at the German House today. I ate some boiled lentils with vinegar and LOTS of salt, and some spelt noodles with crumbled fried rye bread in them. We had someone come down for lunch while the normal people were gone, and I think I impressed him enough so he can put in a good word and I can get a costume soon. I learned a lot, but still haven't found a chicken egg sitting around. There are nine chickens that lay an egg a day in random places and I haven't found one yet! We have a big bowl of fresh eggs, though. Then this afternoon I worked on a laptop that makes a really, really strange noise on bootup, then clicks a lot from the speaker but no normal speaker sounds. I am going to try to see if I can make the headphones work, but am scared his sound card is gone. I might be able to replace it, but maybe not. It poured rain this afternoon. Of course. I bought buns for the games tonight. Now they will be day old tomorrow. If you haven't looked at Dianna's ...

If you want to have this emailed to you whenever I update, let me know because I can add you to a list of email addresses and it will do it automatically. I am humbled by the people (like Barbara) who read my ramblings! I got an email from someone I didn't know that said "Thanks for your blog, now check out mine." Since it was a hand-done email, and even said Happy Fourth, I checked it out. I found some absolutely amazing, amazing pictures. I think the owner is in Italy so I can't read it, but the pictures are worth the visit. We made it back just before midnight last night from the Army base. We went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and mom was able to join the eight of us. We had a great time and had some fun food. The servings are so huge that Mom and I split a salad and still only ate half of it. Mom sent me home with some homemade truffles she gets at the Fairgrounds where she works on weekends. Num! I told her David wouldn't get any, but he found a way...

Allen and Bryan enjoy seeing balloons in the sky, because they say every time they do, they think of some little kid crying. Stupid boys. David and I drove down to see Allen yesterday. He has two friends, Hamis and Lupee. Hamis is a 19 year old woman from Texas and Lupee is an Army brat. Great people, very smart and good values. Hamis's family was here so we hung around with them for the day. There was a big fair at the grounds at the base, some skydivers came down with rockets in their boots. They shot off Howitzers, had a big concert, and then the best fireworks display I have seen in many, many years. Since fireworks are illegal anywhere in North Carolina except an Army base, they really do it right. Allen said they were supposed to have 50,000 and although there weren't that many on the field where we were, I don't doubt that there were that many people watching them. Hamis's parents wre a lot of fun. The brought extra chairs so we could sit and watch the fireworks....

Where does time go? Hmmm. Yesterday I drove to Monterey with David to replace a hard drive. It turned out the instructions were wrong and it was a RAID drive, which I had never done. Well, I have now. An hour and half over the mountains. Nice drive and I enjoyed spending the time with David. Today I had a printer install in Elkton. Plus running errands and Ruritan Board Meeting and I had dinner with Ashton. All of 13 years old, but very, very polite. We went out and saw some baby cows, but couldn't feed them. He helped water flowers. We made dinner: cubed steak, pea pods, and a baked potato. He had never had any of them before, including the baked potato! He says his mom makes a lot of macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. lol Tomorrow we are going to Fort Bragg to spend the fourth with Allen. I hope they have good fireworks at an Army base!