Barbara Fritchman Thompson Diary

Week of 16 April 2001

Latest Update: Saturday, 26 April 2003 08:53
 

Monday, 16 April 2001

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Bob spent all day yesterday working on the taxes. This morning he was scurrying around having me sign forms, writing checks, paying estimated taxes, etc. Glad that is over for another year! Except the estimated taxes part anyway.

I am off to the gym this morning and to mail the tax stuff. I want to do some more work on my web site this afternoon and work on another web review. Not much news today.

Hope your week gets off to a good start. 

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Tuesday, 17 April 2001

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That's okay. This morning is a bit too cold and we have a light drizzle for playing golf anyway. I need to mow the lawn this afternoon. Today is supposed to be high near 50 with 15 to 20 mph winds. Chance of freezing temperatures tonight and tomorrow night. So, I may be holding on to the lawn mower to keep from being blown away.

Then, I forgot Bob goes to the dentist tomorrow morning. I had planned to go over and help dad start building his little retaining wall to replace the landscape timbers around the garden at the end of the house. Normally in the mornings we do not leave her by herself since she cannot make her breakfast. But, since Lenore sleeps until 11:00 and Bob is just getting a cleaning he should be back before she wakes up anyway. Since he lost a day of work Sunday to the taxes and a day of work yesterday recovering from working on the taxes he was going to cancel his dentist appointment tomorrow. I discouraged him from doing that since he has neglected his teeth from not going to the dentist for twenty years. I feel like going to the dentist every six months is very important if you want to keep your teeth later in life. Having seen my father and Lenore both loose all theirs, I will fight tooth and nail (no pun intended) to save mine and his too if I can. For some reason I prefer to wake up in the morning with my teeth in my mouth rather than in a dental cup. Right Marcia? You just had to go through all that agonizing mouth surgery that I am desperately trying to save Bob from having to endure.  

Finally new Buffy and Angel episodes tonight. We missed two episodes back to back in March. Since then I have taped it every week to see if they rerun the ones we missed but so far they haven't. I guess tonight we will just have to play catch up with the promo's and maybe catch the other two sometime later in the summer.

Well, Winston Salem got hit with another economic blow this week.   Wachovia, headquartered here in town is merging with First Union headquartered in Charlotte to create the fourth largest bank in the United States. We bank with First Union, which is the largest of the two. First Union will be called Wachovia and is moving the entire operation to Charlotte. Now, we have lost another huge corporate employer in the city not counting the financial loss. 

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Wednesday, 18 April 2001

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We came out of the doctor's office and lo and behold it was snowing to beat the band. The wind was blowing so hard the snow was coming down sideways. It was not sticking to the roads, just making them wet but it was blowing so hard visibility was pretty short. The forecast was for a twenty percent chance of showers with the wind getting gusty in the afternoon. Upon the checking the thermometer the temperature had dropped to 42 degrees in the hour that we had been gone.

I had planned to mow the lawn after lunch but with the snow and rain the grass was now too wet to plow. I worked on some computer stuff until around 2:30. By this time the sun had been in and out and the wind was gusting to around 25 or 30 mph for a couple of hours so I decided to see if the grass had dried enough to mow it. I put on my baseball style jacket, ski cap, and leather work gloves and was able to mow. The sun came out just as I was finishing but the temps had stayed in the 40's. 

Off this morning to my dad's to work on his wall. Tonight is Astronomy Club meeting. Bob and I will head over to the library and then stop and have some dinner on the way to the meeting. At least the sun is shining but it is not to be very warm today. 

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Thursday, 19 April 2001

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Many thanks to Brian for updating my new logo and to Marcia for her input as well. I now need to finish updating the text of my business home page and some of the other pages. I would love to hear your feedback on how you like my new logo.

On a more humorous note it seems that Marcia is so far the winner in the "count the shoe" contest that the Netwidows has been conducting via e-mail. It seems that so far the other women reporting are at 20 pairs or less. Ann and Leah win the low count at six. I have twelve because I own four pairs of tennis shoes alone since I wear them everyday. I can get roughly a year out of a pair before they become yard shoes to be replaced by another daily, nice looking pair. After about a year the inner soles break down and need to be replaced to support my horrible arches. As a matter of fact I am off this morning to run errands and one of them is to purchase another new pair. I just tossed a pair out and converted another pair to yard status. Since I don't wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row, I need two pair for daily alternating purposes. Lynne, I hope that Bob's father is out of danger very soon. It was a lot of fun and we all enjoyed the funny conversations and enlightenment that you brought on with your challenge. We will be looking forward to hearing your official count, which was never revealed, as well as a post of the final results. 

Speaking of fathers. Dad and I headed off to Lowe's to buy the retaining wall blocks first thing yesterday morning. We purchased 25 to get us started. At least by the time we got back home with the blocks the temperatures had warmed up even though the wind was blowing and gusting. We pulled up the old landscape timbers. Dad put up a guide string and I began to dig out dirt and level under where each block goes. We worked until 11:30 by which time my knees and arms were getting tired. After a quick lunch at the nearby diner we came home and got back to it. Getting the blocks to set right and level is time consuming and painstakingly slow as well as hard on the back, knees, and arms. I finished getting the bottom row set and level about 1:30. We then had to pry all the landscape timbers apart where Dad had nailed them together. I finally loaded those in the car to bring home and arrived around 2:30.

I was quite tired. Damn, I can remember when I used to be able to work in the yard all day and not get nearly as tired as I was yesterday. I love to work outside and do that kind of stuff. I consider myself to be in good shape but at 46 the old knees, hand, and shoulder joints as well as the back just don't hold up like they used to. At least I have enough sense to listen to my body  now and quit when I get too tired. We will finish the wall next week by putting in a second row which will be much easier and doing the sides of the bed. 

Bob and I took off around 5:00 for the library. I made a drugstore stop for Lenore on the way to dinner and then we had a short meeting of the Astronomical Society last night. I was glad since I was pretty tired anyway but we had a nice program on what to look for in the skies during the spring and summer months. Quite informative. Back home to take the dogs out and I headed off to bed to read for awhile before turning off the light.

Well, I am off to run errands this morning and stop at the grocery store on the way home. 

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Friday, 20 April 2001

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Yesterday was just one of those very interesting days. I did my marathon errand run which I utterly despise but had to do. For the most part I was pretty successful in finding some of the things I was looking for. Yes, I did buy another pair of tennis shoes. I shall be tossing out a pair to remain at my current count. By 12:30 I was back on our side of town and getting quite hungry. I stopped for a quick bite to eat, made two more quick stops, and then stopped to do the grocery shopping.

In the grocery store I ran into the mother of a former neighbor/friend from my early childhood days. I have not seen my friend Bonnie in well over thirty years, I guess after they moved away from our neighborhood while we were in high school. I had talked to her mom about ten years ago when she stopped in the library. one day. At any rate it was so nice to chat and reconnect with her mom and to find out how Bonnie was doing. Later that afternoon her mom sent me her e-mail so that I can get in touch with her again. She lives out in the mid-west but may be moving back to the East coast at some point.  I was too tired last night to send her a message but will do so this morning after I finish my page updates.

Then last night after dinner I was working at the computer when I got a call from my friend Nancy. I had been wondering why I had not heard from her all week or received replies about a couple of e-mails I had sent her. I am one of those people who will think about someone but not necessarily make direct contact right away especially as busy as people are today. I thought maybe she or one of the children had been sick or she was just very busy and had one of those weeks that gets away from you. Instead, she called to tell me her husband had gone to the emergency room Monday night and had to have an emergency appendectomy. Jeff is in his early thirties but he suffers from some heart problems so this was very much a major scare for them. Hopefully he will go home today if the doctors feel there is no longer any risk of infection from the surgery. Fortunately for Jeff, Nancy is a nurse so he will have good home care. 

As I said earlier, I was really tired by early last night. While I sat on the couch and played with the dogs I caught up on a stack of catalogs and magazines on my side table until time to take the dogs for their late night walk. I did manage to stay up to watch ER at 10:00. I must say this show has really gone down hill fast with all the major players having exited over the last few seasons. I look for this show to be cancelled once they do the final storyline with the few major characters left.

Ha! I just read on Bob's page for today that I an now supposed to call him The Red Rat! Seems I am married to a Neanderthal, this being one of the lines from the article

Neanderthals have been characterised as migrant hunters and violent cannibals who probably ate most of their meat raw.

Rest assured that Bob gets all his meat well cooked except he likes his steaks medium rare and up this point I have not noticed any missing limbs on my person, Lenore, or the dogs. 

Wow, earlier this week we had snow showers, thirty mph winds and needed coats, hats, and gloves. Yesterday I was wearing a short sleeve shirt. Today is very nice, sunny, and warm. I think I will finish up a couple of projects I have in the yard today and spend some major time playing outside with the dogs since we did not go to the park this week. Malcolm is much happier when he gets a chance to run and expend some energy. 

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Saturday, 21 April 2001

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I decided that yesterday was going to be organize and put away day. With several projects in mind I proceeded to attempt to get started shortly after I finished my diary page. Several rooms in the house including my office needed stuff put away and tidied as well as doing a load of laundry for Lenore. One of the Daynotes men (sorry can't recall which one right now) calls one of his children "Velcro child". Well, that is the exact description of Malcolm yesterday. He was "Velcro dog". He was in my lap, up on my desk, pawing the keyboard, pestering me to play, following me all over the house with a toy in his mouth, etc, etc. He just wanted constant attention. We went outside to play, we played hall ball, we ran up and down the hall and with his tongue hanging out still would not lie down to rest. Meaning no disrespect for anyone who has a child that is ADD Malcolm has all of a sudden become an attention deficit dog. He just needs constant petting and reassurance that I do not remember Duncan needing at one and half years old. Poor fellow. 

By lunch time I had finished getting my little projects finished, fixed Lenore's breakfast, had the dogs out several times, and was not ready to take my lunch break. After lunch I took the dogs outside with me while I did a few yard things. The two planter areas by the porch needed mulch and a small area of the yard by the street from the recently install curb needed topsoil and seeding. 

Last night we watched the Buffy/Angel tape from Tuesday night and I watched Once and Again that I taped on Wednesday night. Then off to bed to read for awhile.

BTW, Bob the Neanderthal Redhead is now Bob the faded redhead. When we were married in 1983 his hair and beard was real red like Willow's in Buffy. If he would ever fix the scanner (hint, hint) I will scan one of our wedding photo's and you can see just how red his hair was compared to now. Even the picture on his diary page, which was taken a few years ago shows it to be redder than it is now. 

This morning I was off to the gym at 8:00 for the 8:30 Spinning Class. Were are supposed to go to the observation point tonight for star gazing but the weather at this point does not look too promising. Right now it is very cloudy with little chance of it clearing by tonight.

Enjoy your weekend.

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Sunday, 22 April 2001

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The good news is that the skies cleared somewhat and Bob and I decided to load the telescope and other stuff we needed in the car and take off for the observation site. When we arrived around 7:30 one of the club members was already there and getting set up. We hauled the scope out of the car and got our stuff set up and began finding planets and stars for observation. We saw two satellites and a couple of meteors. Later in the evening several other club members showed up. 

We finally packed everything up around 11:15 and headed for home arriving shortly after midnight. After giving the dogs a quick out it was off to bed.

The Guys did let us sleep in this morning until almost 8:30. Clean house this morning and get ready to watch the race this afternoon from Talladega and the final round of the golf tournament. 

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