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Barbara
Fritchman Thompson Diary
Week
of 19 July 2010
Latest Update: Sunday, 25 July 2010 1:00 p.m.
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Monday, 19 July
2010
I
was not too far behind when I got back to work this morning after being
off Thursday and Friday of last week. In between clearing up the
backlog of filing and e-mails I had some "need to get done now" stuff
to take care of.
I went to the Y after work and then fixed left overs for dinner.
We are watching more Lark Rise to Candleford tonight.
No rain or storms today. It was not too bad today, mid to upper 80's
but hot weather is on the way back to quickly dry things out again.
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Tuesday, 20 July 2010
We had a late afternoon thunderstorm come
through downtown after it left our area of town bringing rougly a third
of an inch of rain. Now it is cool but really muggy.
I leave first thing in the morning for a four day road trip with
Bonnie. We have things mapped out and planned and are ready to go.
Hopefully it will be cooler up there than it will be here. I think
temperatures here are supposed to get close to 100 by the end of the
week.
I spent today getting things as wrapped up as I could. I very large
project landed on my desk late this afternoon that will be waiting for
me when I get back on Monday. Bonnie and I will be back Saturday
afternoon.
I finished the China Bayles. I am taking along another Margaret Maron,
Deborah Knott mystery, Hard Row. Time to pack and then watch some more
Eureka.
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Wednesday, 21 July 2010
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Thursday, 22 July 2010
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Friday 23 July 2010
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Saturday, 24 July 2010
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I'm back. We got to my house around 4:45pm. After greeting Malcolm and
Bob(Malcolm made it out of the door first, then greeted Bonnie before
coming to see me) and getting my stuff in the door I mowed the lawn.
The Bermuda was at least three inches high. The green/brown areas were
about an inch high and I still have some burned out areas. I don't
think we had much in the way of rain while I was gone.
We had a great time, covered a lot of ground, and saw some wonderful
sights. It was pretty hot up there, even up in the higher elevations in
the Joyce Kilmer National Forest in the Smoky Mountains. We got up
there around 2pm on Wednesday and did the 2 1/2 mile hike into the
forest. I had to change clothes when we finished all the way down to my
underwear from sweating. We saw a lot of butterflies and fortunately,
no snakes.
We had a couple of hit and miss thunderstorms while we were gone but
all of them either while we were in the car driving from one place to
another. We were in Black Mountain this morning doing the shops and
galleries. It was already in the 90's up there. The folks in the shops
said it has been unseasonably hot up there this summer too. A lot of
those places do not have AC because it is normally not that hot except
a for few weeks out of the summer mostly in August.
Here, it is currently 96 feels like 103. We are under a heat advisory the rest of today until 8pm and again tomorrow.
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Sunday, 25 July 2010
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Happy Birthday to my dad who turns 88 today.
We are meeting some friends of my mom and dads for dinner at a Chinese
restaurant this evening to celebrate.
More trip updates. Friday Bonnie and I did toured a really nice gallery
at Grove Park Inn in Asheville than drove across town to the Biltmore
Village to check out the shops and a couple of galleries there. We
finished up around 2pm with our planed events for the day. Our plans
for Saturday had been to go to the Bele Chere festival. I booked a
hotel near that put us the near the mall because we were catching the
shuttle instead of trying to find parking downtown. We ran by the hotel
to check on the way to the mall. The festival is a very large street
event with arts, crafts, music, vendor booths, etc. The festival is
free. It was $2 round trip for the shuttle which let us off right at
the festival entrance. We spent about 2 1/2 walking around the booths
and going in some of the downtown stores. Many of the local stores set
up a booth outside their store. The big lure to get people in the
stores was, of course, air conditioning because of the heat. We
finished up around 5, went back to the hotel to freshen up and drove a
mile down the street to an Olive Garden for dinner then back to the
hotel. Between the walking at the galleries and the Village that
morning and then the festival my knees and legs were pretty tired.
The hike at the forest we took on Wednesday was the first major
physical activity I had tried since both knee surgeries and wearing the
brace. I took my time, especially on the steep hills, around the roots,
and in the places where wood steps had been put in. For hikers it is
classified as an easy hike. For me, it was a challange but I am glad I
tried it.
On Thursday we did the Smoky Mountain Railway excursion. That was 2
hours our from Bryson City, NC into the Smoky Mountains near the
Fontana Dam and past the Nantahala Outdoor Recreation center. That is
where they do white water rafting, kyaking etc. We had a little over an
hour layover there to eat lunch and walk around before boarding the
train back to Bryson City. That was a lot of fun and gave me a day of
mostly sitting to recover from Wednesday.
I have some pictures that Bob said he will post on page tomorrow of the
hike and the train ride. Between last years trip and this one I have
seen a lot of the far western parts of North Carolina I had never seen
before. Thursday night we stayed in the little town of Waynesville as
our layover between Bryson City and Asheville on Friday.
I finished reading the Deborah Knott and started a new author from
North Carolina, Maggie Bishop. Her first book that I am reading,
Appalachian Paradise, is not a mystery but more of a romance. Her books
are set in and around the NC mountains.
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Copyright
© 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,
2003,
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
by
Barbara
Fritchman
Thompson. All Rights Reserved.