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Barbara Fritchman Thompson Diary

Week of 21 March 2011

Latest Update: Sunday, 26 March 2011 2:10 p.m.


Monday, 21 March 2011

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Spring is definately here in the Triad. Though it's not unusual for it be warm enough to wear shorts outside in late March I just hope it is not a preview for another long, hot summer.

Carolina and Duke made it through the NCAA to the round of 16. Both teams will have to play better this week if they plan to advance; each winning very close games after loosing big leads. We've watched more episodes of Gossip Girl and Burn Notice over the weekend.

Be sure to check out the kit picture on Bob's page today. Didn't I do a great job putting on those labels?


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Tuesday, 22 March 2011

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Wednesday, 23 March 2011

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The warm weather is about to come to an end with a cold front that is pushing throught right now. We have thunderstorms coming in as I type this. I left work at 4:30 to come home and mow before the storms got here. It's roughly 78 degrees but we are to drop down into the 50's tonight with a high tomorrow of only 59 compared to the last few days of 80's.

Last night I went to the Y and we are watching more Gossip Girls. Not much else to talk about.

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Thursday, 24 March 2011

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We had a series of storms move through last night and of course the worst one was last night after we went to bed. Malcolm was just frantic jumping up and down off the bed and/or lying on top of me clawing at my hands and arms even though I was petting and comforting him.  Even though I hate to use drugs from now on when we have bad storms late at night I am going to give him one of his calming drugs. Not only is he beating me up but I hate for him to be so agitated.

All told we had over an inch of rain the worst of which fell during the night. The part of being up half the night with the storm for me was not getting a good nights sleep. I want to stay up late tonight to watch the Duke game that does not come on until 9:45 because they are playing on the left coast.

I am reading Skeleton Hill, a Peter Diamond mystery, from my TBR shelf by Peter Lovesey. Needless to say this 2009  book, being his latest until later this year, was very hard to come by. I checked online with the library for awhile but finally gave up then I sort of forgot about it until I ran across it in my bookstore notebook earlier this year. I finally ordered a copy online from Border's but after two months it never did ship even after I did a follow-up call to the 800 number after they assured me it would ship the next day. I stopped by the store a couple of weeks ago to see if they could check on the order. With the help of a very nice person in the store we finally managed to get the order cancelled with their 800 service number. Imagine my surprise when the store called a week later and told me the book had come in. I think perhaps when the girl who was helping me try to cancel the order may have reordered it; which is fine with me. Of course all this took place before I started looking at Kindle options which I will do from now on. Oh well. I love this series set in Bath. Diamond always includes a lot of interesting stuff about Bath centered around the solving of the mystery.

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Friday 25 March 2011

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Saturday, 26 March 2011

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Please take a moment of silence as my friends and colleagues at work morn the loss of a very dear lady to cancer this morning. She battled ovarian cancer for several years with such a brave and positive attitude. On April 16 our local Hospice will be having their annual run/walk event to raise money and honor those who are fighting or have lost the battle to cancer. I am one of about 12 people who had already signed up on Mary's team. Now we will be walking in her memory. I will be participating in the 3.5 mile walk.



It's a cloudy, cool day. Great for working out in the yard. As I was leaving this morning to run out to Lowe's for some stuff I saw my neighbor hacking away at the forsythia bushes that run along our driveway that I have to trim back several times during the summer. She decided it was time to cut them back to the ground so they could come back out. They planted them when they moved in about 40 years ago. As will a lot of bushes, they need to be cut back once in awhile to let the new growth come out from the bottom. Unfortunately the birds lost a great place to nest and hide during the winter but it will grow back pretty fast. By the time I got back home her husband was out helping. The hedge runs all the way down the back property. They got about five of them trimmed back that run along the driveway. I helped them haul the brush to the street.

The main bushes had put out a lot of little bushes. I dug about ten of those up and transplanted them along the other side of our property where I have wash problem. I don't mind if they spread out and take over that side of the yard since I've decided I want a hedge along there to seperate our yard from the neighbors.

At Lowe's I purchased four quick growing cypress trees and two red flame nandinas. I put the four cypress trees in a line along the side yard by the house in front of the neighbor's trash bins. They will block our view of their messy trash from the kitchen window once they grow up. I may go back and get more to continue on down the hill with them. It is not as good as a ten foot high wood fence but it will work. There is still a lot of the forsythia hedge for them to cut back. I can grab some more of the off shoot bushes and continue up the hill toward the cypress trees.

I am working on redoing that whole natural area of the yard by the deck where I also have the wash problem. I'm not sure where I want to put the nandinas plus I was too tired to mess with those today after all the other digging and planting.

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Sunday, 27 March 2011

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Winter temperatures have returned to the Triad. Today's high will only make it into the upper 30's with wind gusts making it feel like the low 30's. We had roughly half an inch of rain last night.

I caught up on my ironing this morning followed by the usual house cleaning chores. I helped Bob put a new blade on my lawn mower but I am afaid the mower itself is history. I hit a root while mowing last week and thought I had just badly bent the blade. I got it cranked back up but of course with the blade bent it made a hell of a racket and vibrating something terrible. I pused it rather than used the self propel to finish the left side of the front. Even after we changed the blade it still sounds horrible. I guess it did some damage to the crank shaft. I called the lawn mower guy out to take a look just in case it's not something fatal.

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