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Week of 17 September 2001

Latest Update: Saturday, 26 April 2003 08:53
 

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Monday, 17 September 2001

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We had a very nice dinner at my sister's house. She fixed homemade lasagna, fruit salad, and bread. Dad , Bob and I ate outside on the deck. It was very pleasant evening. We took Lenore along to get her out of the house. 

Off to the gym this morning and to Lowe's Hardware. I need to get my fall lawn supplies to get the yard done this week. Rain or no rain I need to get the fertilizer and seed down. I can water it in until we get a good rainfall. 

The tragedies of last week are not left behind as I start a new week of my diary. They remain fixed in my mind as I attempt to get on with the everyday routine functions of our lives.  

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Tuesday, 18 September 2001

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After my gym workout and dropping off the old television set at Goodwill I drove out to Lowe's to pick up the lawn stuff. Driving home it was such a gorgeous day I decided I would go ahead and do the lawn. I grabbed a quick snack and got started right around 11:30. 

First thing was to scratch up the areas that had died completely from the drought. Then I mowed. Afterwards I put out the fertilizer than I took another break for some ice water. Next I put out a heavy amount of grass seed. Following that came the lime. It is amazing how heavy a small, 50 pound bag of lime feels. All said and done that made four trips around the yard so that by this time I was getting pretty tired. I then cranked up the blower to blow off the driveway and walkway and then set up the sprinklers. I had the front and back going at the same time and moved them around every ten minutes or so. I wanted to water just enough to get the applications watered in good. By the time I was finished it was 4:30. Five hours in all.

I headed straight for the shower then fixed homemade pizza for dinner. Needless to say I spent the evening crashed out on the couch reading. We took the dogs for an early out and I was off to bed around 9:30. I read until ten, then lights out. Boy, did I sleep good last night.

Working at home this morning. I just gave Bob his haircut. I am meeting Nancy and Betsy for lunch at 12:30 than I will head on out to SciWorks this afternoon for awhile. Oh, and thanks to Marcia for the reminder, a belated Happy Birthday to Leah Syroid. 

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Wednesday, 19 September 2001

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Nancy, Betsy, and I had a very nice lunch yesterday. By the time I ran some errands and got to SciWorks it was 2:15. I got in a couple of hours of work before it was time to come home and start dinner. We had pork loin and rice pilaf. After dinner I spent and hour or so catching up on e-mail and stuff.

Then it was play time with the dogs while I read some of the magazines on my side table that have come in during the week that I have not had time to get to. 

We have had some beautiful early fall weather this past weeks with clear blue skies. It was still pretty warm out and about yesterday. Today is cloudy and we do have a chance of some rain this afternoon and tonight. Keep you fingers crossed.

Since I worked late yesterday at SciWorks I missed my exercise class last night. I am off to the gym this morning and the grocery store. Than work on chapter rewrites this afternoon. Tonight is astronomy club meeting so Bob and I will feed Lenore and take off for dinner and the library on the way.

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Thursday, 20 September 2001

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I got several pages rewritten yesterday afternoon along with a few other things done. Bob and I left for the library and dinner around 5:30. Our astronomy club meeting last night was a picture presentation by Bonnie Richardson of her tour of some of the large telescope in the California and the mid-west. She did a very good presentation. We then took care of club business and adjourned the meeting a little after 9 pm. 

And, yahooo!! When we came out it was lightly raining. Those of you who read my page regularly know that I am often on the golf course on Thursday morning. Well, dad and I were not playing today because my mom had a doctor's appointment. But, it is rainy and drizzly this morning so we would not have played anyway. My mom does not drive.

Last night, by the time we got home, walked the dogs, returned a phone call, played with the dogs, etc it was well after eleven before I got to bed. I was not sleeping very well so headed for the couch around 2 am to see if I could go to sleep out there and to prevent my tossing and turning from keeping Bob awake. I finally went to sleep sometime after 3 am. 

The dogs let us sleep in this morning and did not wake us until 8:30 so I am really not all that tired. Working this morning on some more rewrites. Lenore wants to go to Wal-Mart to pick up some more craft stuff. We will ride out there as soon as Gloria gets her bathed and dressed. I need to go out and pick up a couple of things anyway. We just opened a new Wal-Mart super store about a mile from the old one. 

Yesterday Bob was again warning me about how horrid this new computer virus is. Since it can infect systems from the preview panel without even opening up the message I just turned of the preview option on all my mail. I am usually very careful about opening any mail message with an attachment. But, this way I will at least be even more cautious.

I think Bob is changing both our web browsers and our mail packages due to this most recent scare. It seems like Explorer and Outlook are just took vulnerable to these attacks. I told him I did not care what we run just load it and show me how to use it. As long as I can still have my Palm and desk top for the calendar and stuff I don't care. Bob gets the new Pentium processor that showed up yesterday since I got the last one. Guess we will be building a new system soon.

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Friday, 21 September 2001

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While I don't mind taking Lenore out to shop it is certainly a major undertaking. Getting her in and out of the car and handling the wheel chair is one thing. It really is not too bad once we are in the store but because she cannot reach or turn her head I pretty much have to do all the looking and shopping and then hand her what she wants to buy to get a closer look. I really cannot shop for myself when she is with me so I pretty much make it a trip for the things she is looking for.

The store, being just opened and it was almost noon, was very busy making it hard to maneuver her wheel chair and a shopping cart. Plus, I did not know where everything was in the new store like I did in the old one. But, we found some craft stuff she was looking for and managed to have a rather successful trip.

Lunch and and brief chance to rest when I got back home then tried to get some rewrites done. I fixed leftover pork roast, green beans, applesauce and rolls for dinner. Then it was off to the gym for spinning class. 

At 9 o'clock we watch President Bush give his speech to the joint session of Congress. The speech itself was no surprise nor was it much to talk about. Basically it was a "calm the nation and Americans" message with a hint that we will do "something" about the assault on our country.

I myself was impressed that Prime Minister Tony Blair made the trip to the United States and visited "ground zero".  

I am reading a sort of weird book right now, On Bear Mountain by Deborah Smith. The book is very well written and I am totally into the story to see what will happen. Weird is just the feeling for the plot setting the characters. The basic story is built around a very strange metal sculpture of a Bear built by a frustrated artist who lives in New York with one son, Richard and his librarian wife. The other character is Ursula, born on a mountain in Georgia. Both families are poor but proud. Ursula and Richard's lives become messed from the very outset of their young lives by this sculpture. Very interesting to say the least. The author begins the book with the outcome then proceeds to tell the story of how and why it ended the way it did. That usually is not very appealing to me but in this case it only adds to the suspense of the story.

I am off to SciWorks this morning to do some work on the library. Have a good Friday.

 

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Saturday, 22 September 2001

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I stayed at SciWorks until almost 1 o'clock yesterday. The library project is coming along nicely. They are getting ready to undergo a major capital improvement plan with some renovations to the building. I think some of the staff are being temporarily displaced to other parts of the building. Several of the staff members keep collections of materials at their desks and have asked me if they can move them to the library as well. The room they use to house the library is very small with limited shelving capacity. I talked with several staff members yesterday making suggestions of some things they could do to allow for the extra collections to be housed in the library. 

Yesterday afternoon I worked on an assortment of little things I needed to get done at my desk. We ate an early dinner so I could get to my exercise class. It looked like it was to be a clear night so while I was at the gym Bob made preparations to go up to Bullington. He called a new couple that just joined the club and a couple of others that often join us up there.

We left for Bullington around 7 under some partly cloudy sky conditions. However, it was fairly clear when we arrived at Bullington. The new couple showed up right behind us. Bob discussed telescopes with John and I talked with his wife about how much I have learned in the few months we have been doing this and how much I enjoy it. Once it got dark we looked at the moon, only five days old, and some other bright stars. Bob found a coupe of deep sky objects and we looked at some things with binoculars.

Around 9:30 it started getting cool, cloudy, and damp. Dew on everything; the scope, finder, Telrad, lens, etc. As the clouds streaked in it started to look like the observing for the night would be over. We sat around and just talked and maybe an hour later the clouds disappeared, it actually warmed up, and the skies became clear enough to do some more observing. We stayed late enough to see the Pleiades get nice and high and Saturn come up over the mountain. We still had some fog and haze down low making visibility difficult plus the dew being all over the equipment.

By the time we packed up and got home, walked the dogs, etc it was around 1:30 this morning.

The dogs did let us sleep in until 8:15. It is a very beautiful, clear blue sky type day. I need to water the seed and fertilizer in a little more today and give the dogs their fall bath.  Not sure what else is on the agenda. I hope you enjoy your weekend whatever you have planned to do.

 

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Sunday, 23 September 2001

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Yesterday was a great day to spend outdoors which I did. I think some weeks back I mentioned one of my hose reels needed repaired. I have two, one for the back and one for the front. The one in the back is the one that I did the repair job on. 

 Last week at Lowe's I bought one of those new hose reels that looks like a box. Yesterday I replaced the front reel with the new one which only took about ten minutes. Then I watered down the lawn a little for the seed and fertilizer and watered the plants. I took the front reel to the back and will replace the repaired one with it this week. I intended to do it yesterday but was too tired by the time I did everything else.

First I washed my car and cleaned dog slobber off all the windows. Then I watered down the back yard and the flowers. By now it was lunch time. I went in to fix salads for lunch and take a break. Now, the fun part. Giving all three dogs their baths. Malcolm gets to go first. He is not thrilled about getting a bath. I put and old collar and leash on him and stand on the leash while I hose and bath. Just picture yourself trying to bathe an object that will not stand still, tries to turn around and bite the water and the nozzle or sits down. What a struggle but we finally got it done. After a quick dry off  sent him upstairs for another drying and had Bob send down Duncan.

Duncan is much more behaved and just stood there while I bathed him. He does not like it that much but is old enough to know he will get a bath regardless of how much he struggles. Another quick dry off and I send him upstairs and then do Kerry. Kerry is easy to bathe in the sense that he is too old and slow to move around much. But, he has fur like a bison making it really hard to wash him. An hour or so later I had finished. And of course I am now soaking wet from the head to toe from water and sweat. I guess I could just had Bob come out and do me next. I cleaned up the dog washing stuff, curled the hose up around the old reel and headed for the shower. 

I spent the remainder of the afternoon working inside. I got several rewrites done on the poison pages before stopping to put the casseroles in the oven. Last night I read magazines until we gave the dogs their final walk then I went to be to read more of my book.

House cleaning this morning big time. Hair all over the place which is one of the reasons the guys got their baths. They are shedding their summer coats and bathing will help to wash a lot of it out. 

The race this afternoon is from Dover, DE. And tonight is the season premier of The Practice. 

 

 

 

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