Handymen We Are Not

Ever since we had our little outdoor closet or shed built on the side of our house, I have been meaning to get out there and add a tier of shelves on one end wall. Saturday seemed the perfect day: not too hot, not too cold, and nothing of importance planned. 

I first cleaned out all the boxes, pails, bottles, and whatsits, swept it well, and then I started planning the layout. I envisioned buckets on the floor, a shelf, then tubs of yard chemicals, another shelf, bags of fertilizers, another shelf, small bottles and cans, another shelf, and misc at the top. I sketched, measured, did the math, measured and marked the walls, and thought through the problem areas. With a list of lengths, I went to Home Depot and chose the lumber, awkwardly trying to muscle a 10 ft long 2x4 AND a 12 ft long pine board to the power saw all by myself. Someone finally rescued me. I asked to have the pieces cut to size, which they did. 

The Professor was relieved to hear that he didn't have to do the cutting, because, well, power saws just aren't his friends.

So far, so good. Nothing I couldn't handle yet.

I eagerly got out the hammer, nails, screws, power screwdriver, the level, and several other tools. I even thought to drive the nails part way through the first 2x4 shelf support, to make the final hammering easier. Soon I was frustrated that the nails bent, the 2x4 slid, and I couldn't get any space to swing the hammer no matter which position I stood. So I pulled the nails out. 

Then I thought screws might work better. But I stripped the heads on those just as they got within an inch of being driven in completely. So I took the screws out. The Professor tried too, but he did just as I did. There may or may not have been a few bad words scattered in here. There were definitely bad thoughts, and grumping, and a bit of head-scratching.

Next we decided that what we really needed was a nail gun. We went back to Home Depot to find one, but all we found were a few tools that spit out tiny brads, nothing that is long enough to go through a 2x4. Hummpf. 

I was determined to conquer this. My only other thought was to hire someone to install the shelves but that seemed utterly ridiculous. Next I thought I would try installing the shelf support on the opposite side, the one going into 2x4 only, rather than 2x4 and then hardboard siding. Finally, I had success. I bent only one nail! Yay!

From there it was reasonably smooth sailing to pounding and even at appropriate times, toe-nailing, the support pieces in place. We found drilling a starter hole in the siding helped when necessary.

 A few final details and it was near-dark and time to get the last shelves loaded.

 DONE! Just don't look too closely at the supports please.

It Must Be Fall

 The Professor and I took a quick trip up to the mountains today because our favorite apple orchard opened for U-Pick apples this weekend. 

We ate a few, we picked a few, and ate and picked some more. Mostly, we picked Rome Beauties, but we also got a few other varieties.

Home again, I made a fresh apple pie for after dinner.

Anniversary Trip

The Professor decided it was high time we celebrated our anniversary with a little getaway. The problem is, that seems to be a popular thing to do around Valentine's Day. After we decided on Savannah, he searched online for a hotel, but they were all booked for most of February. Eventually he found a little place, if we were willing to begin our stay on a Sunday. That seemed a little odd, but we decided to go with it.

We stayed at a delightful little inn called East Bay Inn, right in the middle of the historic district. Once we arrived and parked the car, we didn't get back in it until we left for home three days later!

We also visited and photographed ourselves in all 22 squares,
we walked about 15 miles,
we climbed to the top of Tybee Lighthouse, we ate lots of seafood,
we toured four historic homes,
we admired lots of historic architecture,
we enjoyed a special dinner at The Olde Pink House,
we danced in Reynolds Square late one night,
and we explored two old forts.

I Survived

I'm going up in this tiny toy plane?

Immediately after David landed on Saturday and collected his congratulations from his instructor and us, he offered to take us up for a flight. The Professor excitedly said, "Yes!", while I hesitated and seriously thought about staying on terra firma to be the official photographer. But as I considered, I realized that I would come to regret my decision. There is only one chance to be the very first passenger in my son's flying career, right?

So I cautiously said yes too, and soon I was buckled into the front seat next to David. I got a set of earphones and gulped as we taxied out of the parking space and headed toward those crisscrossing strips of concrete. Past the air control tower the plane did an odd sideways skitter; I was certain there was obviously some sort of mechanical failure and we must head back. But no, David smiled and said, "This plane does that; it even did it when the FAA test pilot was in the plane."

David chattered with the tower and suddenly we were in the air. All was smooth, but very steep, at first, and then we hit air bumps. Not fun air bumps. I hate air bumps. More and more and I was quite scared (I hate that falling feeling). David offered to go back but he also assured me that once we were at altitude the air would be smooth. I white-knuckled it as I tried to take a few pictures and suddenly it really was smooth.

And then it was fun. We flew north over Lake Allatoona and east over the northern suburbs, past the interstate, to Lake Lanier. When we spotted a regatta of sailboats David said he would go down for a closer look. That was a mistake because we hit air bumps again. So we went back up.

Eventually, of course, we had to come back down, and that meant more bumps. Our house is directly under the airport approach, and I was too scared to look out the window to see it. I just clutched the edge of my seat and stared at a red handle imbedded in the floor.

Near the runway again I could relax because we weren't that high. I said, "It's ok now because we could actually jump from here." We actually couldn't, but thinking so made me calmer. Our landing was one of the smoothest I've ever experienced.

Brazilian Steakhouse

The Professor recently bought a couple of dinner-for-four Groupon deals at a Brazilian steakhouse. (Gotta love Groupon!) We thought it would make two nice evenings out with our daughters.

We invited Greta and Daniel for the first deal. They had never been to a Brazilian steakhouse so it was fun to introduce them to the concept. Daniel, especially, enjoyed the long parade of skewered meats offered. He also loved the baked bananas offered as a side dish. We kept asking for refills! Greta filled up very quickly so she didn't sample as many meats. This particular steakhouse wasn't as high-class as some are. The salad bar, for example, wasn't as extensive and the decor wasn't as elegant as some we have been to. (we recommend skipping the potatoes on the salad bar. They were not good at all.) But it was a nice intro to the concept. And it was a very enjoyable evening with our grown up daughter and son-in-law.

Beethoven's 9th and Christmas Tree Lights

We targeted today, December 28th, as the day to dispose of our Christmas tree. Taking off the lights is the most tedious part. As I take off each string of lights from the tree, I inspect the string for burned out light bulbs. I do this by plugging the lights into an extension cord and checking each bulb. I replace the burned out bulbs with a good one from a stash of bulbs collected from a dead string with a few good bulbs. I then wrap the lights up in a compact way that protects them.

While doing this, I was listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Beethoven's Ninth is rich for me, not only because I love the music, which is skillfully crafted, each segment building on the previous that washes over me unlike any other symphony -- but also because I have many memories associated with the Ninth.

• In second grade, I saw The Bell Telephone Science series "Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays" where Dr. Research (in real life, Dr. Frank Baxter, an English professor at the University of Southern California) introduced me to the mysteries of cosmic rays (as known when the film was made in 1957). In that program, part of the choral music of Beethoven's Ninth was at a pivotal point pondering the mysteries of the cosmos -- and that music burned into my conscious fabric about the universe. I didn't know then where the music came from, but I wanted to find it.
• One day, a couple of years later, while listening to my favorite music station in Los Angeles, 92.3 KFAC FM, I heard Beethoven's Ninth for the first time. I heard the NBC Nightly News music in the second movement -- and then the hauntingly beautiful music of the "Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays" revealed itself in the choral section of the last movement. I had loved Beethoven's other symphonies and his ninth was instantly my favorite.
• Soon I wanted to buy all of Beethoven's nine symphonies and finally did it when I about 10 years old. I saved up my allowances and gift money and purchased a collection of vinyl LPs. I treasured that set.
• Growing up in church, on occasion we'd sing the hymn, "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee", or I'd hear it in a performance, all along knowing the music came from the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth, with the words substituted in place of Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy that Beethoven used. I love that hymn.
• In high school, in German class, the German teacher wanted a class devoted to listening to German cultural music and asked if anyone had any music. I volunteered Beethoven's Ninth symphony. The teacher played the last movement in class; I regretted it for two reasons. First, the teacher played my LP on a school record player, and I cringed at what it must be doing to my precious album. Secondly, a cute girl who sat next to me (who never talked to me before) leaned over and said, "This must take a special temperament to listen to this." I looked around the class and saw boredom in everyone's expressions. Big mistake.
• I attended my first live concert of Beethoven's Ninth when I was in college. The Riverside Symphony Orchestra played the symphony. I loved it.
• The love of my life loves "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" and she wanted to come down the aisle to it in our wedding. So Beethoven's Ninth showed up at our wedding.
• We transitioned from vinyl LPs to CDs. I decided to give up my Beethoven vinyl collection - a difficult thing for me to do, but we weren't going to keep a turntable just to play them. I no longer have a complete collection of Beethoven symphonies. Someday I'd like to have all nine symphonies again. I do have two different CDs of Beethoven's Ninth.
• On Christmas Day in 1989, we watched on PBS as Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth in Berlin. The Berlin wall had just come down weeks before. I was a child of the Cold War and this performance put a capstone on that Cold War period.
• On rare occasions, very rare now, I will humorously pontificate in song my fractured edition of the opening chorus words of Beethoven's Ninth, humming out the orchestral part between the words -- all in German (well, my ridiculous attempt at German). It has become part of our family lore and tradition, one that our new sons-in-law had to endure at least once.

So, if I ever appear distracted when Beethoven's Ninth is being played, the beautiful music and the memories it evokes are the cause...

Oh yes, I need to finish those Christmas lights.

The Vacation That Wasn't

The Professor and I were planning and looking forward to a vacation in Florida this week: warm sun, beaches, snorkeling, exploring The Keys, seafood restaurants.

Then a transmission went out, the second one this year. There went the vacation fund! So we planned an alternative vacation, one where we would enjoy the local sights and eateries we hadn't had the chance to get to yet. We began collecting as many Groupon deals, half-off coupons, and "freebies" as we could find, and researching local places of interest. We even put together a vacation binder.

The weekend arrived, and The Professor's two-week-old respiratory virus didn't seem to be improving. Then I got sick with a completely different mystery illness. When we felt better we journeyed out to a couple of quick, local places. And The Professor still sounded bad.

Today, I insisted he see the doctor, who pronounced him sick with pneumonia.

So our vacation has become a stay-at-home hospital with yummy treats of antibiotics. Oh, and Diet Coke - to soothe the fevered brow.

The Last Shuttle Launch

We finally made it! We saw the shuttle launch, the very last one there will ever be. We made it to Cocoa Beach/Canaveral Beach by 6:00 am, and waited patiently for 1) the clouds to clear, and 2) the actual launch scheduled for 11:30. #1 never happened. #2 did, about two minutes late. It was very exciting, even though we had to watch it play peek-a-boo with the clouds.

The glowing cone shows just above the distant buildings.

High up in the clouds, it will soon disappear from our view. We couldn't see the separation stage.

Dennis and Wendy had flown out for a quick vacation, and they met up with us at our house a couple of days before we left for Florida. We all drove down together and we had a wonderful time with them. We spent the rest of the weekend traveling up the coast. I'll tell more about in in the next post.

Shuttle or No?

Our attempt at viewing the next-to-last shuttle launch last week didn't pan out, but we had fun in Florida anyway. The Professor and I drove down on Thursday (and saw a tornado-damaged area on the way).

The next day we made it all the way to a quiet spot on Cocoa Beach before we heard that the launch was canceled.
Oh well. Our walk on the beach was fun and the day was beautiful. The next morning we enjoyed a picnic on the beach before heading home.

It Takes Two to Tango!

"Slow, slow, quick, quick" -- various permutations of those words echo through my mind throughout the week. My beautiful bride and I are taking ballroom dancing lessons. We started in February and are now in our second month of Thursday night group lessons. Our instructor is a young lady from Bulgaria. Although she is no older than her thirties, if that, she will sometimes refer to us 50+ year olds as her children.

Foxtrot, waltz, tango, and a few others are the dances we've been learning. It is fun but definitely challenging. It is one thing to learn the sequence of steps in my mind, but quite another to get my "legs to remember" each step. It reminds me when I first learned to ride a bicycle; it was very unnatural at first. We need to practice more during the week, so sometimes we practice in our cramped spaces at home. We are looking forward to warmer weather to practice on our large patio.

A Happy Saturday

1. Breakfast at Douceur de France

2. Hiking at Leita Thompson Park
3. Dinner at Olive Garden (we haven't been there in years!)

Fall in the Mountains

The Professor and I set out this morning with plans to "do something fun", but we didn't know what it would be. We headed north because north is where the fall color is, and eventually we thought of Brasstown Bald in the mountains.

We wound up the steep mountains, enjoying the beautiful colors, sparkling against the sunny sky. At Brasstown Bald we had a choice of hiking the 1/2 mile to the visitor center at the top of the mountain, or taking the shuttle. Not feeling particularly lazy today, we opted for the very steep hike. We saw more color that way.
We heard rumors that someone famous was also hiking today.
If you go, you can skip the movie in the theater. Take our word for it.

Later, as the afternoon waned, we looked for someplace interesting to eat dinner. We stopped at an apple orchard, but they only had a deli. Next to the deli I spied a tourist brochure rack, where a riverside restaurant was advertised. Off we went, following the brochure's directions. On and on we drove, deeper into the forest. It was beginning to look a little hopeless, when suddenly we saw cars parked all over both sides of the narrow road. It must be trailhead parking, I thought, but no, there was a a funky old mountain building on the side of the road. It turned out to be a very good restaurant specializing in mountain trout. Sadly, it was beginning to get dark and cold, so we didn't sit on the deck overlooking the river. Next time maybe.

Apple Picking

The Professor and I drove up to the mountains on Saturday to check out the "Apple Highway", and perhaps buy a bag of apples. We hadn't been up there for over 10 years, so we really didn't know what to expect.

It was a beautiful, warm and sunny fall day. At the first orchard, we bought a half-bushel of Rome Beauty apples so I could make applesauce. At the second orchard we bought a bag of Stayman Winesap apples, just for eating. After that, we decided to stop at every orchard along the highway, and buy something different at each one. Soon we had tried apple cider doughnuts, fried apple pies, dried cinnamon apples, and many varieties of fresh pressed cider.

At BJ Reece Orchards we saw a sign for picking apples. How fun! Soon we were roaming the hillsides, picking a few of one variety here and a few of another variety there, until we had our full weight of 10 pounds.On Sunday I baked an apple pie, and on Monday I turned the Rome Beauty apples into 10 pints of unsweetened applesauce.

Dad/Grandpa

Don Noren: 1924-2010

Went to be with his Lord and Savior Wednesday morning, January 6. At breakfast in the dining room, he told his friend and table-mate that he was tired, then he slumped over. Nurses administered CPR until the paramedics arrived, but he was already gone. It was a blessing that he didn't suffer.

Vacation, Part 2: Florida and the Bahamas

Sunset on Key Largo

On our way home from the Stone Mountain Games, the Professor mentioned that he still had one more week of vacation, and that we could go somewhere else. Where would we like to go? I asked for someplace warm. Early the next morning we got up, threw our dirty clothes back into our suitcases (broken washing machine, remember?), and headed south to Florida.

The Professor had a niggling idea that a short cruise would be fun, but when we tried to arrange it, it seemed that we were a tad too late. We headed toward the Keys instead. Florida turned out to be as warm and balmy as Mexico, and we really enjoyed the quiet time for just the two of us.Dinner at Islamorada Fish Co, an outdoor restaurant on the gulf.

On Monday, we stopped at a rest stop and I browsed the brochure racks for info on the Keys. But another brochure jumped out at me: Celebration Cruise Lines was advertising 2- and 3-day cruises to the Bahamas, out of Fort Lauderdale. The Professor called right away and booked us for Wednesday, two days away.

Meantime, we decided to make a run for the Keys anyway, and see how far south we could get. In that day and a half, we made it all the way to the end of the highway and back up to Fort Lauderdale. It was beautiful (except for Key West, or rather "Sodom and Gomorrah").

Our quick cruise to Nassau, Bahamas was fun too. We really like being transported from one location to another while we sleep. We snorkeled on the reef outside of Nassau, shopped in the outdoor market, and wandered around the town. We also ate well onboard, and relaxed on deck.

In downtown Nassau

Back in Florida, we had two days on the gulf coast before we had to head home, back into Coldsville.

Vacation, Part 1: Puerto Vallarta

The Professor and I had a wonderful week in Mexico! We stayed with my family in a condo (actually, we needed two units) in a beautiful resort right on the beach. Waking up to a view of the Pacific Ocean every morning, wearing swim suits most of the days, swimming in the warm, tropical water...was heavenly.

Chuck went parasailing one day:

We both acted like monkeys when we swung from a rope swing into a river:
Dinner out every night at the local Mexican restaurants:
Shopping the local markets in downtown Puerto Vallarta:When we arrived home, we heard that the washing machine had broken, with smoke billowing out. Welcome home to us!

Chick-Fil-A Dress Like A Cow Day

I guess we'll do almost anything for FREE food! We dressed in black and white and cow spots, cow ears, cow bell, and baby cow-on-the-head to get free meals at Chick-Fil-A tonight. Greta dressed up too, but her spots were gone by the time the camera came out. The Professor wore that cow on his head as he ordered, until I reminded him that mama cows don't put their babies on their heads.

At first it was rather embarrassing, especially with the cow bell clanking around my neck, but the counter people smiled and other customers said, "Oh! They get free food! I wish I had done it!" Then other customers came in looking just as embarrassed as we felt. Misery (or embarrassment?) loves company, it seems.

New Carssss

For a brief six or so hours today, we owned four cars. Yesterday we finally found a 1999 Camry for the college kids' commute. That put us up to three cars. Today we found a 2000 Accord to replace our 15-year-old Aerostar. That put us up to four cars. This evening, we sold the Aerostar, which brought us back down to three cars.Here you see all our cars filling our driveway. It looks like we run a used car lot.

It took the Professor three months to learn how to buy used cars. First he had to train himself to have a critical eye. Then he had to learn to be fast to beat others to test driving the cars advertised in AutoTrader and Craig's List. For a couple of weeks, good cars disappeared from the adds. Then suddenly two showed up within 5 miles of our home. After buying both, we listed the Aerostar, as decrepit as it is. We had 20 inquiries in less than 24 hours. We sold it to the first looker.