Lana's Lark

July 1, 2008

I always consider the year half over when July arrives. Again, I don't know where the time goes.

Warren, Kirsten, Lynn and I went to our first "Shakespeare Festival" play for this season on Saturday night. It was a beautiful evening. The play was The Crucible and none of us were overly thrilled with the play. I taught the play to Juniors for so many years that seeing the play (again) was just overkill. The actors were very good though as was the company. Warren just didn't care for the subject. We would both rather have a good laugh. Kirsten thought that it drug on and on and on... Lynn was pretty quiet on the subject.

We see All's Well That Ends Well this next Saturday night. We are taking some friends, as the kids will be camping in a cabin in Garden Valley. Jason and Michele and Shannon's family will all be here to camp and see us for a few days. This is going to be a very busy month.

Warren has a birthday on the 2nd of July. He will be 29. Samir will be three on the 3rd of July. The grandkids are growing too fast. Avery is getting tall and runs everywhere she goes. She is talking plainer every time we see her.

Have a good 4th of July...

June 26, 2008

All of the drama involving the light and the flagpole has ended. The light works just great. We were driving around the neighborhood and I noticed a truck with a long ladder on the top. We stopped just as the owner was coming out and walking to his truck. I asked him if he would consider using his ladder to go up to the pulley on our flagpole to put the rope back through. He was happy to help us, and after two tries, he was able to get the rope wound around the pulley. So, we are flying the flag proudly!

Summer has arrived and we are enjoying some nice weather. My garden has finally started to grow like crazy so we may have fresh tomatoes and Zucchini later this summer after all. Spring was sure a cold and gloomy one for us this year.

Last Friday, I met up with eleven other red hatters to car-pool and caravan to the Lewiston "Funvention." This was my third state convention and I still had such a good time so it is not getting old. This year Lewiston went all out in welcoming us to town. They had red hats on everything that didn't move. The main street was lined with red and purple balloons. The stores gave great discounts to red hat shoppers. I guess there were about 450 women attending the event. Seven of us, in my group, dressed as Huck Finn for Friday night's dinner. The theme was "Rolling Down the River" so we thought that was a good costume.

Many of us went on a jet boat ride up the Snake River into Hell's Canyon on Saturday. What a beautiful trip. The Canyon is unbelievable and we were lucky to see Mt. goats, many birds and a 450 (about) pound Sturgeon that some fishermen had caught and pulled to shore. It is illegal to take them out of the water so we saw it in shallow water along the shore. What a beautiful site! Our trip back down the river was a bit faster with fewer stops, but we still saw several goats with their babies. We were on the river most of the day on Saturday except for getting off for lunch and at a scenic old ranch that is now owned by the Forest Service.

Saturday evening was the dress-up formal dinner and we all put on the glitz for that. It is so awesome to see so many women in the same room in the purple and red. The food was awful but it was still fun to see everyone. I even ran into some relatives who live in Lewiston and Pasco, WA. An Elvis impersonator was the entertainment so I left with the first song. He wasn't very good and it was late and I was tired. Seven of us ended up have a gab session in one of the hotel rooms until midnight so I got even more tired. That was nice, though, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Sunday morning was a pajama breakfast with a writer (Bill Hall) talking to us. Hall has been a humor writer for the Lewiston paper for years, and he has written several books.
(And his wife is a queen of one of the Lewiston groups.)
After that we started moving out of the hotel and getting ready for the journey home. Four of the ladies stayed on at a bed and breakfast called the Dog. The Dog is in Cottonwood and the building is in the shape of a dog. We all stopped and went though the Dog just to see what it is like. The bathroom is in the dog's butt. I'm sure that the ladies who stayed had a great time. After several more stops along the way, the rest of us made it back to Boise about 8:30 pm on Sunday. I slept like a rock Sunday night and took a nap on Monday.

Tuesday, I went back to Curves and things got back to normal. We had Avery on Wednesday, as usual. I went and got a massage today after getting fasting blood drawn this morning. I am back to my normal and busy life!

Until next week...

June 11, 2008

My old MAC just couldn't be fixed so I had to invest in a new machine. The repairmen thought that a brownout probably caused the problems. I got a 24-inch iMAC and I am still trying to get completely used to it. The operating system is the same as on my old one so it should work the same, but it has a few things different that I don't like. I guess that I will get used to the changes eventually. My new computer is hooked up to a battery plug -in strip to prevent any further problems of that kind. It seems that a surge protector protects against surges of electricity but not brownouts.

Our Spring has continued to be less than wonderful. We have had wind and rain and cool weather. Not the Spring that we have grown to expect here. My garden is growing a bit, but it is getting a slow start. The Robins are enjoying the strawberries. Avery and I are trying to keep them picked ahead of the birds, but I have enough berries to share with the birds and still have some to give away to neighbors. The berries are enjoying the cooler weather.

I had a new and improved flagpole installed for Warren. The old one was bending in the wind, rusting and just not strong enough to hold a flag. It was quite an experience getting the pole into the ground and we aren't done yet. I hired a guy to build a rock light post to hold our yard light and he said that he would erect the pole as well. He couldn't find the rock; he went on vacation; he told us he was coming on a certain day and didn't. He finally came to start the job after I located a local supplier of the rock. His crew did the light post and did the pole and the boss was supposed to come back and finish up the pole by putting sand between the sleeve holding the pole and the pole. That was yesterday and we haven't seen him. The flag pole is in the sleeve but very loose and crooked at this point and the light post has no light on it. I made the mistake of paying the looser in advance so I don't expect to see him again. Of course, I didn't expect to hear from him many times along the route to getting this much done so maybe he will fool me. I have told Warren that the guy probably has a drinking, drug or gambling problem. We do like the work that his crew did so things could be worse, I guess.

I have been having Red Hat fun. We have played games, eaten out, and seven of us are going to the state Funvention next week in Lewiston. We are going on an 80 mile jet boat trip down Hell's Canyon and lots of other fun thrown in.

Avery is changing so fast. She says words plainer and plainer every week so I understand most of what she says now. She is a little mimic and says everything that she hears. Warren and I enjoy so much having her close so we can see her growing. I talk to Samir and Armaan on the phone. They are going to be so much bigger by the time I see them in July. The three grandchildren are so close together in age that I can kind of guess what the boys are doing when I see Avery. Grand parenting is the Greatest!

I will try to be better about getting to this writing.

Until next time...