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Barbara
Fritchman Thompson Diary
Week
of 25 January 2010
Latest Update: Sunday, 31 January 2010 2:40 p.m.
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Monday, 25 January 2010
Over
the weekend we watched Julie and Julia. What a great movie. I love
anything with Meryl Streep but gosh, did she play Julia Child to
perfection. I am now reading another Deborah Knott, Slow Dollar, about
the murder of a carnival worker.
Really busy at work today then
off to the Y tonight. Overnight last night, we had 3 1/2 inches of rain
causing some major flooding in some areas of our county and surrounding
ones. The temperature yesterday afternoon was 42, last night when
we walked Malcolm it was 59. A cold front is coming back through
tonight bringing temperatures back down into the 30's. The wind was
blowing so hard it was all I could do to get the door open leaving the
building. When I finally got it open the wind blew my had halfway back
down the hallway of the foyer.
This is the last post until
at least Saturday. My dad's only living brother died this past
Saturday. My aunt decided to wait until this Friday to hold the
funeral. The folks and I will leave Wednesday to drive up to Allentown,
PA. We'll have Thursday to do some things in my dad's hometown, then
head back home on Saturday.
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Tuesday, 26 January 2010
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Saturday, 30 January 2010
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I am back. What an adventure. The drive up on
Wednesday was great. We took our time making break and lunch stops
leaving here at 8:45, arriving at our hotel just outside Allentown at
6:30.
Thursday we drove over to our favorite steak sandwich
place that has been in business in the early 1930. From there we drove
into Allentown to locate where the funeral home was and then over to
the Farmers Market at the Fair Grounds. That too, has been there
forever expanding into two long buildings with meat, pastry, bread,
etc. booths on both sides much like the Amish Market we go to in
Annapolis but larger. We look before buying ring bologna, smoke
sausage, and Lebanon bologna to bring back home. The ring bologna and
smoked sausage cannot be bought anywhere like what I am used to eating
from the PA Dutch area. That done, we drove out to my uncle's house
where one of my cousins was house sitting for my aunt who had an
appointment in case anyone called needing information about the
funeral.. We caught up with him and his family, children and
grandchildren. He left when my aunt came home, we stayed a visited for
awhile then left to meet two of my other cousins for dinner. Their
mother is in a nursing home about 20 minutes from where we were
staying. Her brother was in town for the funeral from Phoenix. She took
us out see dad's only living sister for a nice visit. Only two of the 7
kids left now.
When we left for Allentown there was no forecast
of any bad weather in the PA area and maybe snow showers down here for
Friday. Our first surprise was getting up Thursday morning to see show
flying. Fortunately it did not stick on the roads and was pretty much
melted and gone by the time we were ready to leave the hotel.
During
the day I talked to both Frances and Bob plus watching the weather
channel to discover a huge snow/ice/sleet storm forming in the mid-west
heading for here by Friday. Instead of staying over yesterday afternoon
after the funeral we decided to take off and try to get home ahead of
the storm. My uncle had a military funeral with help from the local
Purple Heart Chapter. He won a purple heart, a silver star, and 9
battle stars having served in the WWII under General Patton. The
service started at 1:30. By the time we made the long drive from
downtown Allentown out to the nearby township of Macungie where he was
buried it was 3:30. Then on to the firehouse for a late lunch. We left
at 4:45 making great time taking on one quick stop about 9:45. Updates
from here told us things would be worse today so we made the decision
to try to get home rather than get stranded in a motel somewhere for
days. Actually, once we hit the snow we were only 2 hours from home
normal driving time and past any major towns to find a place. The roads
were snowy but drivable, I was taking my time in dad's car which is a
Toyota Corolla with front wheel.
We were about two miles from
the highway exit to my parents house when the back end skidded out from
under me. I turned into the slid but the car kept on sliding sideways.
We came to rest up against two of those big steel beams holds a bridge
ahead sign. No one was hurt but the left front wheel was bent. We call
the cops then I called Bob. He unloaded his white Trooper and came out
to pick us up. As we were transferring all the stuff from the car to
ours the wrecker showed up in a hurry to pull us out to make other
calls. We got them home around 3:30, unloaded their stuff, and then Bob
followed me home driving my Trooper back. By then we had 4 good inches
on the ground. I'm not sure we could have got all the way to the house
in dad's little car. I was upset about wrecking his car, making it
almost all the way home, etc., etc. But!
We got home and in bed
around 5. I woke up at 7, unable to sleep. I got up and snoozed on the
couch awhile then took another nap this afternoon. We have about 8
inches here. I shoveled the walkway this afternoon. Most of the snow is
finished falling. The road crews will get started scrapping to get
things ready for Monday work day.
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Sunday, 31 January 2010
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We had somewhere around 8 inches of snow in
all. It stopped yesterday afternoon then started flurrying again around
5. I took some pictures if Bob has time to post them on my page
tomorrow. Temperatures today at to make it up into the mid thirties.
What snow melts today will freeze back tonight.
I am now reading
another Ali Reynolds mystery by J.A. Jance, Web of Evil. This is one of
her four series I had not read until I picked up the first book awhile
back. I took the second book in the series to PA with me and started
reading it up there. There are only five in the series right now with
the most recent coming out in 2009. I had bought the first two for Bob
to read but the library has the others.
The usual house cleaning
chores today with Bob doing the laundry. Around midday we lost our
phone service and my PC started acting up. I could not get mail nor
connect to the internet. Bob eventually got the phone service working
then worked on my PC. He vacuumed it out, put in a new fan, and
reconnected all the cables real good. When he first checked to see what
the problem was the Ethernet cable was loose. The cooling fan had also
started making a horrible racket yesterday afternoon.
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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.