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Barbara Fritchman Thompson Diary

Week of 13 May 2000 (Week 20)

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Saturday, 13 May 2000

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Since my sister has to work all day tomorrow, we are having a Mother's Day brunch at her house today. Francis planned the menu and I will help her cook. She has a nice deck on her house to accommodate our little celebration. I made a planter for my mom. She loves flowers and rather than buy a ready made one I purchased some pretty bedding plants and made her one myself.

The dogs and I had a nice home visit yesterday at a ladies house that does search and rescue. She is interested in adopting a BC for her use on the team. 

I put out my pine needles yesterday afternoon and finished planting some more of my flowers. 

Sad news in the racing world. The young son of Kyle Petty and grandson of Richard was killed while practicing for the Busch race today in New Hampshire. It is always tragic when a young person is killed  regardless of his status as a celebrity or a member of John Q Public. And for it to happen on Mother's Day weekend is especially hard for the family. He seemed like a real nice young kid and had a lot of potential as a rising star in the sport of auto racing.  Both Richard and Kyle escaped from serious wrecks in their careers while racing. Several racing stars have been injured or killed while practicing rather than in an actual race.

We are supposed to go from 90 degrees to a high of 70 tomorrow. Sounds like thunderstorms may be the rule for the afternoon.

Sunday, 14 May 2000

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Happy Mother's Day to all moms of humans and animals. I have posted a picture of the two baby Doves outside my office window. Mom and dad left them for a few minutes yesterday. It's the best I could do through the window.    

Here is a picture of my mom having her Mother's Day brunch at my sister's house yesterday. We had steak, eggs, hash browns, bread, stir fry vegetables, and fresh fruit with pineapple sherbet for dessert.

Sometime today I will take some pictures of my "kids" and post them tomorrow. Today is cleaning day and I have a lot work to do this afternoon. I am still polishing up my web site and adding new material.

We have a friend coming over for dinner. I am cooking steak, chicken, and squash on the grill and fixing pasta salad. 

I may mow the lawn this afternoon too. We went from a record high of 90 degrees yesterday to a high of 70 degrees today. 

Monday, 15 May 2000

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I have new pictures of Malcolm on my Border Collie page.

I did not get the yard mowed yesterday afternoon. After I cleaned house and paid the bills I worked on some computer stuff. About 2 pm Bob decided to take a nap so the dogs and I went out to the den and took one too. By the time I woke up, around 3:30 it was time to start getting dinner preparations under way.

We had a nice dinner with Laura and afterward I took the dogs over to her house to play Frisbee for a while. 

I will mow this afternoon and work on computer projects in between gym and mowing.  I also need to fix my hose reel connection. 

I have a meeting in Knoxville this week on Friday. I need to do some preparations for that this afternoon and work on some other projects before I leave on Thursday.

Tuesday, 16 May 2000

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It was funny after it happened, it could have been serious.

We always save a few bits from our dinner plates to share with the dogs. After we eat I always bring in their food bowls and mix it in with their dog food. They were eating and I was helping Bob clean up the kitchen.

Malcolm is going through a skittish stage where everything frightens him. As I was walking from the kitchen into the den I stepped on his nylon chew bone. We have hardwood floors, so you can image what happened. It slid under my foot just like a banana peel. I yelled whoa real loud as I slid into the den still up right on both feet. I frightened Malcolm who was eating. He jumped into the water bowl and up on the hearth spilling water all over the floor, the hearth and himself.

It's okay if you laughed. I am as I write this. Other than having water all over the floor we all escaped unscathed.

I mowed yesterday and then worked all afternoon and most of last night. I am going to the gym this morning for a light workout and stop at the drugstore to pick up some things.

The baby doves are sticking their heads out of the nest. The larger one is trying to fly.

Wednesday, 17 May 2000

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A fond memories post today. I have started a real research project for the FAQ page project discussed as a sample of the work I do. One of the reasons Bob chose this topic when he helped me with the FAQ's was because we have a pretty good collection of photography books.

Photography is one of the things we did when we first met. I had just gotten into photography and had an old German camera my aunt had passed along to me. I had also bought a fairly easy single lens reflex 35mm to learn with. I was a member of a photography club and was just learning focus and light meters, etc. Bob owned and still has a Pentax Spotmatic.

Bob had been doing photography all his life. We set up a dark room in our laundry room and bought all the necessary equipment for processing our own color prints. He also taught me how to do black and white. When we moved to our second rent house we did the same thing, set up a dark room and processed most if not all our own pictures.

During our early years we bought several manual 35mm's cameras and lenses just before the auto focus cameras got real popular. We shot all our trip to New England on slide film, processed it and I mounted all three trays worth of slides. Bob taught me a lot about shooting that I still enjoy, hence my Canada and Mackinac Island trip pages. I still enjoy shooting 35mm film and  use the same manual meter camera. I think I have improved a lot over the years and take some pretty good pictures. 

Bob left cameras and darkrooms for computers. When we bought this house we left a space downstairs to build a darkroom but never did and now we don't need it. With digital stuff, Bob is back into photography but using it in conjunction with the PC. I will hang on to the traditional 35 as long as it is available. When I travel on those long trips I take two cameras to have one as a back up or to shoot with different lenses and not have to switch all the time.

Back to what started all this rambling. We had so many photography books that I spent one summer  cataloguing our collection putting Dewey numbers on the books with CIP and searching for the call numbers for the other books in actual library catalogs  Looking through the shelves for books to list for the project was like visiting old friends.  Most of our books are late 70's and early 80's. We stopped buying them when Bob lost interest in the hobby in the late 80's, about the time we moved into this house.

Thursday, 18 May 2000

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I am off this morning for Knoxville for my meeting tomorrow. I want to get in early this afternoon and go over to the genealogy library to do some research. It is about a 4 1/2 hour drive. I am staying at a Bed and Breakfast near our meeting location.

No post for Friday. 

I will be back with a new post on Saturday. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Friday, 19 May 2000

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