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Barbara Fritchman Thompson Diary Week of 0 January 2002 Latest Update: Friday, 10 May 2002 11:55 |
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Monday, 0 January 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| Only Bob could come up with a 0 day of the year so he could
start our diary pages off on Monday.
I felt considerably better yesterday mainly because I could bend over without my head feeling like it would fall off. I deep cleaned the hall bath and took down the Christmas decorations from all the rooms except the living room including Lenore's room and basically finished up my office. I still want to move some books around at some point. We spent the evening reading and listening to music. This morning I am off to get a hair cut and then right back home. I am deep cleaning the den today. This is the only room where I really need Bob's help. We have This End Up Furniture and the couch and love seat are hard to move. We also have a good sized stand with the TV and other equipment on it that want to move so I can wash the inside of the den windows. I also want to wash the windows of the den door and have Bob hand the new blind. Happy New Year's Eve to everybody. If you go out be careful of other drivers. We are usually in bed before midnight but once the fireworks start the guys will be awake and frightened.
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Tuesday, 1 January 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| Happy New Year to everyone and Happy Birthday to Duncan. He
turns seven today.
After spending the entire day on getting the den cleaned, the new blind hung, and washing the cushion covers on the couch and love seat I declared myself officially finished at 3:30. Of course Bob hung the blind and he helped me with some of the cleaning. He went back to take a nap and I sat down to rest. As I was scanning the TV listing I noticed a movie starting at 4:10 on the MoviePlex channel, Napoleon and Josephine. From the beginning it looked like it was going to be pretty good so I settled in to relax and enjoy a movie. Bob was still asleep when I got hungry around 4:45 so I fixed my left over pizza and a Pasta Anytime spaghetti and ate my dinner. Bob got up sometime later and heated his pizza. We walked the dogs during one of the intermissions they provided since the movie ran until 9 pm. Since I am not as familiar with this portion of history or the life of Napoleon I have no way to vouch for its authenticity, but the movie itself enjoyable. After we walked the dogs I searched around to find something New Year's related to watch but all that was on was the Dick Clarke show from Time's Square. Other than interviewing a bunch of loud idiots standing in a large crowd there was really not much to watch. Clarke has gone from being out in the weather among the throng to having a warm inside studio where he proceeds to introduce old concert footage of musicians I could have cared less about. I guess TV networks have decided it is useless to waste a viewing evening on the few people who are at home and want to watch something interesting. We finally turned off the TV around eleven and went to sleep. Today is the big day. Taking down the tree and boxing up the decorations. It will take most of the day just to get this done leaving the cleaning until tomorrow. I will most likely take a break periodically and watch some of the Rose Parade from CA. The weather predictors seem to think we may get some snow tomorrow or Thursday. I will believe it when I see it falling from the sky. They usually miss it one way or the other. We either get nothing or we get slammed. Should be interesting. I hope you enjoy your day what ever your plans may be.
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Wednesday, 2 January 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| The house next door to us was occupied by an older lady who
lived alone. Her son, who lives in town, did not do anything to help her
out including help to take care of the yard. Periodically she would pay
someone to mow it in the summer and after all the leaves had fallen from
the trees, she would finally be able to get someone over to get them up.
After she died the property has been just sitting there with no one doing
anything inside or out. The son finally put the house up for sale but did
nothing about the yard.
After getting my lawn cleaned up and mowed of all the leaves one last time every time we got a good wind I would get all the leaves from her yard. This past weekend over a several day span, the neighbors who live down the street from us very nicely cleaned up the yard, got all the leaves up, and mowed. It looks very nice. I am sure the son did not pay them to do it. But, now that they are all up I took a break from my taking down Christmas decorations to go out and give the lawn a quick mow. This morning Bob is going along with me to take the dogs to the vet to have their stitches removed. This way I do not have to try to handle two dogs at one time or leave one in the car while the other one gets attended to. After I drop them back off at the house I am going to the grocery store, maybe! Today is my regular day to grocery shop but with the threat of a couple of inches of snow tonight the store may be too packed for me to try to deal with the mob. I will just have to wait and see what it is like when I get there. This afternoon I will began deep cleaning the living room and dinning room. The Christmas decorations are all downstairs waiting to be packed away in the closet. I have a list of indoor projects I want to get done in the next couple of months that I will start on as soon as I get the deep cleaning out of the way.
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Thursday, 3 January 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Yep, we got a couple
or inches over night with more to come during the day today. It is the
wet, clingy type that sticks to the trees and makes everything look real
pretty. I will take the dogs out and let them run around and play in it
later today. I have a few shots left on my 35mm camera and will get a few
pictures for the photo album. Perhaps Bob will get a couple with the
digital for tomorrow's journal pages.
The trip to the vet was not totally good news. Malcolm, of course, is fine. His stitches healed up just fine. Duncan is still not totally healed up yet. That area on the back of his neck where I first discovered the wound is still not healing up very well. The vet is not concerned. She said it may take a long time to get healed up from underneath. They took the stitches out but a couple of places are still not healed back together. She wants to leave those as drain holes to help it heal from the inside out. I have to wash it with a warm cloth everyday to keep it open. If a scab forms over the wound area like it did before it will not heal. By the time we got back from the vet and I made a grocery store run it was well after 11 am. I got started on the dining room before taking a lunch break. The dining room is small but takes forever to do because of the three cabinets that have to be cleaned plus the stuff in them. My Lenox bird collection is in one and some of my Lilliput Lane cottages are in the other. The big cabinet has plates, cut glass, and other china pieces that belonged to Lenore and her mother. After getting the two smaller cabinets cleaned Bob came out to help wash the glass stuff. It also took me well over an hour just to clean the blind and the windows. By the time I had finished that I was just tired of cleaning so I stopped for the day. Today I will get the living room done which will take equally long because of all the book cases and books and having two large blinds to clean. [Top] |
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Friday, 4 January 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
Bob took these from the den window looking out on the deck. The pictures of the dogs playing in the snow are on another page. The first ones I shot in the back yard while the dogs were running around playing so a couple of them are a little blurred. Then Bob came out and took some while I shoveled the front walk. Malcolm kept trying to get the shovel. Most of the snow that we got fell last night and this morning. Although it continued to snow into the late afternoon it was so fine it did not do much more accumulation. We only got about three inches here at our house but it varied from four to six in Winston and more as you went further east. I finished the cleaning part of the living room late yesterday afternoon. Now, I am tired of cleaning for awhile. The kitchen, hall, and foyer can wait until this weekend. Today I will put the living room and dinning room back together and pack the downstairs closet with the Christmas decorations. Today is to be sunny and windy with temperatures getting just above freezing. I will take the dogs out for some more snow play. The streets are pretty icy this morning but will most likely turn to slush and melt off a little this afternoon when the sun gets up and temperatures warm up.
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Saturday, 5 January 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| Between the holidays, my uncle passing away, my sinus
infection, and now the weather I have not been able to get to the gym
lately. Boy, do I miss it too. Not only just the workouts but the classes
as well.
I need to get to the drugstore today so once it warms up a little I think I will head off to the gym and the drugstore. I also need to pick up some soft cheese and pepperoni to give the dogs their pills with. Dogs are as funny about food as kids are. For over a year now I have been using the soft spreadable cheese in a jar to give the Guys their morning vitamins and/or medicines. Now, all of a sudden Duncan has decided he does not like the cheese anymore and has started spitting his back out. I have switched to the pepperoni for him but I am running low. I keep one of those large bags handy for salads and pizza and normally on need to buy it like once a month or so. Last night I worked a little on my stamp collection. I have been collecting stamps since the late '70s when, coincidently, the uncle that just died gave me a bunch of cancelled stamps and an old album. At the time my dad had a coworker that was avid stamp collector. He always helped the boy scouts to earn their merit badge in stamp collecting. I bought a new album and dad took me over to his house to learn how to mount them. In the process he gave me a lot of the cancelled stamps from the early years that I now have in my book. I only collect cancelled although over the years I have bought a special stamp "new" once in awhile. Now that I do not work at the library I do not get a chance to grab more of the special stamps that are issued during the year having to depend on what comes on our mail. My folks save them for me when they get them. I tear off the corner of the envelope and put them in a jar until I have enough to "wash". By placing the stamps still attached to the paper in a sink of hot water the glue will melt and allow easy removal of the stamp from the paper. With the new self sticking stamps I have noticed it takes a little longer to melt that glue than the old fashioned kind that we licked. It is a nice relaxing hobby that I enjoy doing a couple of times a year when I have enough stamps to work with. Some people collect only certain types of stamps with themes like animals or people but I enjoy collecting all the special issues. Well, the weather folks are uncertain about what we will get tomorrow. It runs the gamut from rain to freezing rain, to sleet and snow. In other words, they don't know. It all depends on the temperatures and the track of the precipitation. Today is to be in the low forties. I had the dogs out again yesterday for a romp in the snow. I had just a couple of pictures left on the 35mm I shot while we were playing. Oh, have I mentioned what I am reading. Bob had been wanting me to read an Elizabeth Peters, so I am reading The Curse of the Pharaoh, one of her early ones. Peters is an excellent writer and quite funny. The subject, archeology, is not one of my favorites but I am enjoying it as a change from the Cozy's. Hope you have a great weekend.
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[Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| The not so great part of about living in the South in the
winter is not the snow but the ice storms. Having lived here all my life I
have seen quite a few over the years. Today we are getting another one.
The problem with ice storms is the weather folks just can't predict their
outcome. When they predict little or no accumulation of ice we can get it
thick enough to topple trees, etc and vice versa. The last time we had a
major ice storm some people were without power for a week or more. We were
only down a couple of days but afterward we had gas logs installed in our
upstairs fireplace.
It is now almost 9 am and the freezing rain has just begun to fall and coat everything in a bright clear coating of treachery. I will be resuming house cleaning duties today. In addition to giving the other rooms a quick vacuum I will finish up the deep cleaning and get that project out of the way. I dropped off my film at Eckerd's on my way to the gym yesterday morning. After a nice long workout and a quick stop at the store it was ready to be picked up. I got some more really good shots of the dogs out playing in the snow for their photo albums. The first part of that roll also had some pictures on it from our visit up to my aunt's for my uncle's funeral. I took one of the remaining five sisters and a few indoor shots of everyone sitting around the table visiting. Yesterday afternoon I headed out to the library and then stopped at back at Eckerd's to drop off the negatives of the pictures I wanted duplicates of. I will send each sister one of the group and get duplicates of the others so Frances can have some for her photo album. While I was out I picked up Chinese for dinner. I finished reading the Elizabeth Peters last night before I went to bed.
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