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Barbara Fritchman Thompson Diary Week of 18 February 2002 Latest Update: Saturday, 26 April 2003 08:54 |
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Monday, 18 February 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
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Restful afternoon. After house cleaning and lunch I settled in to watch the race. However, the first half of the race I spent napping. I woke up every once in a while to see what was going on then fell back to sleep. About the time Malcolm got up from his nap and came out to give me a big slurp to let me know it was time to wake up Bill arrived. As usual, the race was more like the Daytona Melee than a race with a big 18 car pile up with about 90 laps to go. After dinner I finished the dog puzzle just before time to watch the Olympics. Bill left sometime after eight. Off to the gym this morning for Body Pump. Our friend Robin is coming over for dinner tonight. I am grilling steaks along with red potatoes boiled in their jackets and rolls. Chocolate éclairs for dessert.
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Tuesday, 19 February 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| We had a very nice visit with our friend Robin last night.
She left around 9:00. We took the dogs out for their last time and then I
went to bed early to watch a little of the Olympics and read. I guess I
turned the light out about 10:15.
This morning I am off to run errands before my 11:30 dental appointment for a new filling. Dr. Miller is replacing a filling that has been in for over twenty years. The filling has a small crack and needs replaced before it gets any worse. Not much else going on to talk about. [Top] |
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Wednesday, 20 February 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| On the run. I left the house yesterday morning at 8:30 and
furiously ran around trying to find things on my list before my dentist
appointment. I did get almost everything by 10:30 at which time I stopped
to grab a bite to eat. I knew I would not be able to eat anything for a
few hours until after the Novocain wore off.
I left the dentist and came straight home. One of the things I had to pick up was Magic Sliders for Bob. He wants to use them on the base of the 10" telescope to make it move around smoother. Well, I it turns out I bought the wrong ones. He needed the kind that screw in not just attach. So, after checking my mail I headed back to Wal-Mart to return the ones I bought and get the ones Bob needed. I also decided I would stop at Lowe's at pick up my weed and feed and fertilizer for the lawn as well as a small load of the landscape blocks. We have a small hill that runs along the driveway. I want to build one of those small retaining walls along the drive and backfill it with mulch. The way the hill slopes I can't keep pine needles or mulch from washing down the hill. Right now landscape timbers line the drive from the top all the way along the drive to the back corner of the house. I am only going to the front corner of the house with the wall. Then I may replace the other landscape timbers with one of the small, flat edging blocks along the rest of the drive down to the other corner of the house. Back home from those errands I checked my mail and caught up on web pages until time for dinner. Bob fixed Chef Boyardee Ravioli for us for dinner since I needed to eat something soft that did not require a lot of chewing. The Novocain had worn off and other than my jaw being a little sore from the shots and the work he had to do I was not really bothered too much. After dinner Malcolm and I drove over to meet Nancy to do a home visit on a young man who applied to adopt a dog from CBCR. That took about an hour. By the time I got back home however, I was feeling pretty tired from all the running around and the dental work. We walked the dogs again and I went to bed about 9:45. This morning I think I will go back out to Lowe's and pick up another batch of the bricks for the wall and work on it some today. I also need to go to the grocery store. It will take me several days of work to get the wall built but I did want to get started. There is a slight chance of rain showers or a thunderstorm during the day so I may not get to work on it too much. Tonight is library and Astronomy Club night. Looks like we will get clouded out of seeing the moon/Saturn occultation.
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Thursday, 21 February 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| The hardest work is finished. I put the entire first row in
and started the second one before running out of blocks. You can see from
the pictures below the tedious job of aligning each brick with the one
before it to make sure it is level. Since I was working down the hill I
had to keep adding dirt along the way to make sure the wall came out even.
Malcolm had a great time helping me with my project.
I took a quick break for lunch about 11:30 and then got back to work finishing up with the curved part toward the house. All I need to do now is go buy 20 more blocks for the second row and get the mulch delivered for the back fill. I wanted to get the wall built first before getting my spring mulch and pine needles delivered for the spring. I finished up around 1:30 and felt pretty tired so decided to call it a day. Adding the remaining second row will not be as hard work. The downspout tub will also look better once I get some mulch filled in around it.
After I took a shower I worked on some things at my desk until time to go to the library, dinner, and our meeting. This morning I am off to play golf with my dad. He wants me to help him put out some fertilizer this afternoon after we grab a bite to eat. And, last but not least, here is a picture of the dog puzzle finished. I am getting ready to break it down and start a new one I got from my parents last week.
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Friday, 22 February 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| Lovely day for golf yesterday. However, dad was too tired
to do the yard stuff so I came on back home after we had lunch. I spent
most of the afternoon working on the Friends newsletter to go next week
and typing up the minutes from the Astronomy Club meeting Wednesday night.
Actually I was pretty tired myself last night. I watched a little of the Olympics and started a new book but ended up turning off the light around 10:15. I am currently reading The Passion of Artemesia by Susan Vreeland also the author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Just as I finished writing my journal entry for today and started to get dressed I got a call from my sister. She was with my dad at the doctor's office. I knew he did not feel well yesterday by the time we finished playing golf and he looked terrible when we got to the restaurant to have lunch. He evidently got to feeling much worse by last night and mom called the doctor. She advised him on what to do and if possible to wait until this morning to come to the doctor rather than go to the emergency room. He was running a high fever, listless, and no appetite. I hope he just has the flu or a bad bug of some kind but I will not know until I get a call back from Frances. Frances called back. He has pneumonia, so I hope they'll be able to treat it with antibiotics. I'm on my way over there now to spend the day. Have a great weekend. [Top] |
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Saturday, 23 February 2002 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| Dad seemed to be a little better by the time I left last
evening. I spent most of the day reading and working on some paperwork
stuff I took with me. I fixed him some lunch and made sure he took his
afternoon medicines. The doctor called about 3:45 and wanted him to come
down for some more chest x-rays but he did not feel like going yesterday
afternoon. He will get those done on Monday morning.
I stayed up last night long enough to watch the four man Bobsled competition since one of the USA teams includes a guy from Winston-Salem. While I watched the Olympics I folded the Friends newsletters and put address labels on them. I did the layout while I was at dad's yesterday and stopped at Office Depot to have them printed on the way home last evening. There is an Agility Tournament in Winston today that I was planning to attend. Several of the CBCR volunteers will be running their dogs in this event. I am also supposed to meet and talk with a new CBCR volunteer that lives here in the city that is attending the Agility Tournament, too. On the way over to the tournament I will stop by and check on dad. I told mom to call me if she needed anything and did not hear from them or my sister last night or this morning so I assume he is feeling better or at least is not any worse. Tonight is the public observation at Pilot Mountain. So far, it looks like the weather is going to cooperate. It is supposed to be clear skies and temperatures in the mid- twenties. As long as there is not wind that will not be bad at all.
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[Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |
| This week seems to be one of those weeks where what I plan
to do turns out to be different from what I actually do. I did stop over
at my parents' house yesterday, supposedly on my way to the Flyball
Tournament, to see how dad was doing. He is doing much better.
When I got there mom told me my aunt from Virginia was down visiting/staying with one of the other sisters who lives in Greensboro. They were coming over later that morning to bring Frances a wedding gift. I decided to stick around to eat lunch and visit with them for awhile instead of taking off for the tournament. By the time they arrived and we ate lunch at was well after 1 o'clock. I left mom's at 1:30 to drive out to the tournament and hung around there for an hour or so. By the time I got home it was almost 3:00. We needed to leave for Pilot Mountain around 4:30. We stopped at Wendy's on the way up to the observing site to pick up dinner, arriving at Pilot Mountain before five. Several of the club members where already set up doing some solar stuff. We unloaded and got set up, then I ate my dinner. Bob ate his in the car on the way up. Here are some pictures of the scopes set up in the parking lot. The first two are of our little 3.5" refractor scope. We are set up beside Phil (looking into the eyepiece of his 12.5" scope with his wife standing there. Don't know who the kid is.) The third one shows Jeff's 20" Obsession set up on the other side of us. The fourth one is the Obsession and the last one is Steve's 16" scope with the Obsession in the back ground. You can see how white and overcast the skies look.
Between the cold and the persistent fluffy clouds that kept blowing in and out we did not have a very good turn out or good viewing conditions. The Sky Clock predicted the clouds would be gone by six or six thirty but they never did completely blow out. But, we did have a phenomenal huge ring around the moon that was awesome to see. The other really cool thing was watching one of Jupiter's moons, Ganymede, go behind the planet just a little after 7. After that we pretty much had to take our chances seeing things through breaks in the clouds until almost 10 o'clock when it was time to watch Ganymede come back out from behind Jupiter. By this time almost everyone had packed up and headed for home. We left not long afterwards ourselves. As we left the viewing site the "Check Trans" light kept blinking and the transmission was not shifting gears. Fortunately we were able to more or less coast down the mountain until we reached the bottom where I pulled into the Ranger's Office parking lot. Bob pulled out the car manual to see what could be causing the problem. After determining that it was okay to drive home I suggested to Bob that I turn the car off and back on to see if the light would go out. After I started the car again the light went out and did not come back on the remainder of the drive home. I am not sure if the transmission just got stuck in gear when I backed out or what happened. Oh well, it is time to have the oil changed in Astro-truck anyway. I will call Tim next week and we can take it in to have the transmission checked just to be safe. By the time we got home, walked and played with the dogs a little, it was midnight before we got to bed. Today is house cleaning day. This afternoon I will try to watch the race from Rockingham, NC but will most likely fall asleep as usual. My sister's engagement picture is in the local paper today. [Top] |
