Bits and Pieces

The early morning air is humming with the sounds of lawnmowers as neighbors take advantage of the still-under-sixty-degrees weather.   The cats have found a warm spot on my small patio and are stretched out, getting their daily dose of sunshine.  I leave the doors into the house ajar so that they can flee to safety when startled by the bark of the neighbors' dogs.

We've had a lovely weather week, with morning temperatures ranging from the high forties to low fifties.  The humidity is low and it's a pleasure to be outside.  I need to enjoy this break in the weather while it's here; while we've had highs only in the low 80's for the last few days, a warming (or should I say "hotting") trend is on the way, and central Arkansas will be back into more seasonal weather all too soon.

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While I should have been outside more during the wonderful weather,  I've been doing other things, indoors. My stamping buddy and I will host a Stamp Camp on Sept. 16. I designed three cards and cut and packaged materials for twenty of each.  I'm also leading the make and take sessions at two other stamping groups, one on Saturday the 17th and the other on Monday the 19th .  I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess!  While we have several Stamp Camps during a year, I teach only once a year for the other groups.  I usually select September as my teaching months, since it's easy to remember that my responsibilities fall around birthday time.

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I have four wonderful children, three daughters and one son.  Son and two daughters have lived within a few miles of me for many years, while youngest daughter has roamed the world with the U.S. Air Force until her retirement to Nebraska two years ago.  Son has recently accepted an excellent job in a small southeastern Kansas town about 5 hours away.  He and his wife have purchased a lovely older home there, and are in the process of moving their household goods. Daughter-in-law has stayed here to cope with packing and real estate agents and the like, and Son comes back to Arkansas on weekends to help with the heavy stuff.    To their delight, even in a very slow real estate market, their Arkansas home has sold, and they will vacate the premises by month end. I'm looking forward to visiting them in their new digs, but will miss having them close by.

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I marked the milestone of yet another birthday this past week.  My natal anniversary falls on Labor Day every few years, and this was one of them.  The whole nation took a holiday to help me celebrate  Ha ha!  I had a lovely dinner with my children on Sunday night, followed by a quiet Labor Day/Birthday with absolutely no hoop-la --  my kind of day.  I even got in an afternoon nap.  The evening brought a small gathering of my closest friends. One of the ladies also has a September birthday, the day before mine, and we have a joint celebration.  We enjoyed a good visit, exchanged gifts (with the other birthday girl and I on the receiving end of gifts from the others).  We also shared a delicious cake that has become "our" birthday cake.  The cake, called "Summer Fruit Tart," is made by Silvek's European Bakery in Little Rock (look here for a photo of our cake and other delicious treats they prepare), and it's been our birthday treat for the last four or five years.  Birthdays do have some nice things about them.

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When not doing card stuff, I've been reading. Light reading only; I'm not up to material that requires a lot of brain power to digest.  I'm finally comfortable with my Kindle, and have read seven books in the last ten days, four of them, by the same author, in two days. If you're interested, the seven "cozy" books I read were by authors Robert Spiller and Judy Christie, and are listed in "Books Read in 2011" on my sidebar.   Other than tiring my aging eyes a bit, I've thoroughly enjoyed the quietness of entertainment that doesn't require sound. I had been watching far too much television.

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Speaking of TV's -- my Gardening Daughter's husband gifted me with a huge surprise for my birthday, a new-to-me wide screen HD TV!  He's a "latest and greatest" techie and a big time movie buff, and recently acquired one of the 3-D televisions.   Having no room in their home for another wide-screen TV, something had to go, and the sweet boy was kind enough to replace my old, beginning-to-get-fuzzy television..  The television set that used to be in their living room is now in my living room.  I'm still getting used to being able to read all the fine print on the commercials!  Gardening Daughter assures me that it was entirely his idea to pass the still good-as-new TV on to me, and he delivered and set up the unit (and a new DVD player) while I was away from home for a day.

Guess that's about it.

Tomorrow is also a day.

A Fine Evening Out

Photo - Shogun Japanese Steakhouse

My son, who lives nearby, called me yesterday to invite me to a birthday dinner for his youngest daughter. One of her favorite places to eat is the Shogun Japanese Steakhouse in Little Rock --  and that's where we dined earlier this evening.  Amidst flashing knives and spatulas, flaming oil and much showmanship, we were served delicious food, and plenty of it.  I have a take-home box that will provide a generous lunch tomorrow.

My granddaughter married a fine young man from northern Arkansas, and she moved there a couple of years ago. They live in a small, rural community not too many miles from the University of Arkansas Fayetteville Campus where she is studying.   It's a moderate commute, but she seems not to mind at all.  It was wonderful to see her and her family (her husband has a lovely young daughter who came down here with them.)

I drove to the home of  my son and daughter-in-law about 30 minutes before we needed to leave for Little Rock for the express purpose of meeting their two newly acquired dogs; five year old greyhounds which they adopted. They are beautiful male brindle greyhounds named Heart and Luke.  Huge dogs, but quite social. I was greeted politely, then mostly ignored. 

These are not the first greyhounds in their home. They had an adored female named Hope who lived with them for a long time before she died a couple of years ago. She, too, was adopted.  They have been looking for another greyhound for some time, and originally thought they would take only one, but fell in love with both dogs and couldn't leave one behind.

I had an extremely pleasant evening, made even more so by viewing the beautiful super perigee moon on our way home.

Tomorrow is also a day.