28 Feb: I love you too

Crystal River

28 Feb:  It was a delight to see Tom and Dot again; too bad Smooch smooch is still in Texas with commitments.  Tom & Dot have gone off kayaking for a few hours and left me at home with a magnificent view of Crystal River from the picture window (duckies, wind, and manatee dive boats adding interest).

27 Feb, Sunday: Breakfast this morning with Martha Frank en route to South Florida.  Martha and her son Dave are wonderfully entertaining conversationalists.  She is a closer cousin to Cynthia, and Martha's brother's 67-marker DNA matches exactly some of the Bankston cousins descended from Lawrence (born about 1704).  After a pleasant day of conversation, humor, lunch, and show-and-tell (dollhouse and Baltimore mirror), Ron finished "the last" cup of coffee and commenced driving towards Crystal River on the interstates.  Eight hours and several conversations later, at 1AM, the GPS directed me onto a narrow "cart track" that is North Circle Drive.  Sure enough, Dot left the light on, the bed made, and the key hidden as described.  In the morning I puzzled over my readiness to sleep indoors until the no-see-ums convinced me of the merits of shelter.

26 Feb. Saturday:  We walked to the fitness center and to the nearby recycling before Ron departed alone alas at 12: 15 PM: east on 105 to Beaumont en route Big Pine Key, FL.  Rte 105 proved to be a nice, quiet, pleasant back country road.  In Baton Rouge, Pat was entertaining the family and was unavailable for dinner, so I continued driving until past Mobile, AL.  Thirty miles from Pace, Florida the gauge was nearing empty and Love's gas was $3.19, so, so I filled up and decided to sleep next door at the Bay Inn Motel, "newly remodeled."  Smooch discovered that her flight to Key West is WEDNESDAY and not Thursday!  She lost a day someplace.

Sunrise at the Lake House, 25 Feb.

25 Feb: Ron awakened early and put the time to good use cleaning leaves and slop out of Dorothy's gutters.  The "behind-the-back-pass" motion catalyzed a "muscle memory" convincing me that I've done this before, and the focus needed to land the slop in the yard (not on the porch, not on the railing) convinced me that I've cleaned Dorothy;'s gutters before - and forgotten it entirely.  Dorothy was also amused to think that the muscle memory is better than either of our mental memories.  By early afternoon the gutters were cleaned and the gutter-guard screening was re-installed, and Dorothy was delighted to accept my offer to trim a few limbs overhanging the roof.  The Verizon phone repair showed up just after we had trimmed a couple of 8-inch limbs overhanging the street (to quiet the city's inspectors).  The Verizon guy was sociable, but DSL is his biggest problem.  DSL wouldn't sync until the modem was disconnected; it read 2.8 MIPS when the house wiring was disconnected but only 0.5 MIPS when connected to house wiring.  Dorothy disconnected all but one phone inside the house, we bypassed the surge protector, and Dorothy now has high speed internet - Thank God.  Smooch didn't want her daughter to catch her sinus infection, so she decided to sleep at home, and the allure of another night with my Smooch drew me back to the lake house in Montgomery.  During a stop at Kroger for gas and raspberries, a lovely bouquet of yellow roses screamed "BUY ME," but smooch intercepted me just inside the door, so my attempt to surprise her "failed."

24 Feb: The DSL issues are not resolved (Dorothy's "machine.")  Testing the lines tomorrow.

23 Feb: We celebrated two years by packing furiously.  Boxes of papers strewn throughout the game room were efficiently (or almost) whisked away into the car or closet.  Smooch was promptly delivered to the car rental by one PM, and Ron was en route to Denton once again to retrieve a bag of important papers, cell phone chargers, etc., left the week before by a sleep deprived Someone.  Not to mention names... but that same Someone and Dorothy talked last night way into the wee hours:  TWO AM!

19 Feb: Workers are gone until the end of the week.  Quiet, peaceful day followed by a repeat of last night's moonscape turning the lake water into molten gold. 

18 Feb: Smooch drove home because Someone was too tired.  The sunset on the lake was marvelous, the moon was an incredible golden orb that filled the eastern sky.

 17 Feb: Smooch walked for two hours while Dorothy and Ron worked on computer issues and began indexing her new book.  After dinner, Dorothy and Smooch went to sleep.  Someone else stayed up the entire night to finish the index for chapter one.

16 Feb: Two Blue Herons perched on the boat slip enjoying the sunrise, too.  After lunch at the Caddy Shack we drove to visit cousin Dorothy in Denton, a sprightly and delightful watercolor artist of some renown.  Dinner was delicious: stuffed grape leaves.

15 Feb:  Another early morning.  This afternoon the Dr. will take the stitches out of my toe and admire his handiwork.  I wondered what my Smooch was doing in the wee hours of the AM.  This Feb 14 entry explains her mission.

14 Feb:  Happy Valentine's Day! Smooch!   it was a stellar day, roses, roses everywhere.  The trip to the Montgomery County Recycling left the house empty. We had a lovely lunch at Hyden's and Valentine's dinner at the Caddy Shack.  Happy Days are here again!

13 Feb: Rachel and Ryan visited around dinnertime.  I was not at my best, having little sleep for 2 of three nights while preparing to start traveling again.  The big accomplishment was addressing and writing a note in each of the 75 annual letters going to friends without e-mail.  Oh, and opening 6 months worth of mail to do my financial accounting - I'm not broke yet.

8 Feb: Goodie, Cynthia uploaded a good close-up picture of my colorful toe.  The Dr. calls the red stuff a splint.  Sorry that the snow is not more vivid in the picture; it was certainly cold on the foot !  The laptop has frozen four or five times now.  Your neighbourhood geek knows how the scare the living snot out of it; take it apart and spray that icy electrical contact cleaner all over it's innards; threaten it with EBay.
The second CD "chapter" is on the web today ... only ten more to go.  Google books and Open Library and Internet Archives AMAZE me with the text of so many genealogical books on-line.  It has helped resolve errors but has tons of time because "prospecting" for answers is just too appealing and is usually unsuccessful.     3 blocks walking today.

7 Feb: My old laptop provided me quite a scare today when the screen suddenly went dark.  Once I realized that the Caps Lock indicator wasn't lighting, it was obvious that the system had crashed and a reboot was unavoidable.  Fortunately the reboot worked, leaving only the question, "Why?"  The fan has been making more noises, and all the plaster dust in the air has probably reduced air flow and caused overheating.  [Good theory, but no dust devils in there.](Where does one buy a new fan for a 10-year-old laptop?)
The remodeling crew was back at work after the weekend off, and the entire house smells of aerosol from the texture spray.  That huge wall should be nearly finished this time tomorrow.[it is]  Once the computer failed and the house was filled with noxious fumes, a long walk seemed like a healthful idea, so I walked around the block and talked with brother Dean for the duration.  The toe formerly hammer-toed never hurt during the walk, thank God.

6 Feb, Sunday:  Cynthia was up at 5:30, omelet-ed, and off to church by 6:30.  Her hearing aids enabled her to enjoy the sermon, and she was delighted to see Jim & Julie & Eric.  After all those days of a cold house, it was nice to be comfortable again.  We ate lunch at Hydens and were surprised to find absolutely no flowers at Walmart.  (Cynthia thinks that the SuperBowl addicts bought the entire supply to try to avoid marital discord during the game.)  Amazing how relaxing it can be to be home alone without a remodeling crew providing "amusement."

Well, the Dr. SAID to ICE the toe!

5 Feb: Last post was just minutes ago ... in January?  Smooch smooch has again been enjoying egg white veggie omelets for breakfast at home.  The Rambo CD is progressing ever so slowly despite huge investment in time, but is still very satisfying.  Toe is healing nicely, but I'm still in bed with foot elevated and iced most of every day.  The house is still full of plaster dust and cold air, but remodeling is nearing completion.  Setting the thermostat at 83 degrees overnight didn't even maintain the 65 degree temperature we enjoyed most of yesterday.  Thank goodness that Cynthia's study receives morning sunshine thermal gain.  (No problem for the chronic hypothermic.  Gosh, I betcha that "chronic hypothermic" alone will Google my site only.  Fooey, it is a medical situation, and even discussions in Greek and Japanese show up ahead of me.)  Air conditioning maintenance was called and replaced the filters.  Amazing that clogged filters can cause the system to pump out only chilly air.

4 Feb: Dinner last night with the "work crew" and Katie was again a wonderful treat for us all.  Jim and Cindy, who are working semi-professionally at remodeling as a retirement hobby (you may have to read that twice - it is an outrageous concept), showed up on their normal day off to complete working on the 20-foot high wall.  I knew they would because ...

3 Feb: ... when I sneaked upstairs to work on the CD last night, the scaffolding and ladder was nearly blocking the entire staircase. (Amusing that lying in bed all day reduces the amount of sleep needed at night.)  This evening we took Jon, Jim & Cindy, and Hank, Felicia, & Katie to dinner at the Caddy Shack.  Everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughly again, and our waiter, Matt, was more sociable than his usually sociable self.  We decided that he was smitten by Katie because she is a "water girl" and had terrific fun tubing despite 50 degree lake water temperature.  (Besides the fact that she is cute, smart, sociable, fun, mature-for-her-age, and good with sodoku.)  The big event of the day was the visit to Dr. Ehret to find out if my toe was still alive.  Again reassuring to have the professional opinion that it is still there.  He was very pleased that I hadn't done anything stupid to retard healing.  I was happy to hear that everything looked excellent to him but was disappointed that the stitches didn't come out and that the next appointment is 10 days from now on a Tuesday.  He encouraged me to spend as much time as convenient in bed with the foot elevated and iced.  I'm allowed to wear shoes that don't cause pain and to be up and about more gradually.  The big shocker to me is that nowadays a medical "splint" is nothing more than gauze and a compression bandage.  We are "training" the "soft tissue" to lie in alignment with the other nearby toes.  (Never mind that one of those looks to be beginning to hammer.")

2 Feb: Sub freezing temperatures forecast, and the house takes forever to warm up in the morning.  I suspect that the heating system is dead or dormant.