20/20 & You CAN have too much "stuff"

This week has flown by and the weather has been very summery with some days in the mid-90s. Most of our activity this week seems to have been lumped into the first few days of the week with numerous trips to the various charitable organizations "thrilled" to receive our offerings. When we started this trip (on Gail's birthday in June) we set up a storage unit to just set aside and put out of the way, boxes and items that would just be in the way as we moved forward. It was not long before we recognized that another storage unit would be needed -- and so with reluctance we did that.

We are not sure how it happened exactly, but as some of you may have experienced -- we uncovered a ton of things that we had accumulated over the years many of it duplicates . . .

Our immediate goal was to eliminate the second storage unit by assimilating things into the new house and by donations -- in just two days we accomplished that goal -- and we feel so much better for doing that.

During this week we celebrated an anniversary and we began our 20th year of marriage quietly working towards our goals. These last few weeks have put plenty of stress on our plate but we figure that is merely "the cost of living". We are reserving a more suitable celebration for this event at a later time -- thank you to all who sent "best wishes"  . . .

Thank goodness for some "regular" type diversions such as football. We both enjoy escaping everyday things by watching even pre-season football. Since we record the games and then watch them at our leisure we avoid listening to any news that may divulge the scores -- so far we have been pretty lucky with that.

This last week we were glad to watch the exhibition game between the rivals in the Bay Area -- the 49ers and the Raiders. Being 49er fans we were also glad to see the outcome -- but saddened to see the display by some of the fans with beatings and shootings -- any other reason NOT to attend sporting events, opting to watch from our living rooms . . .

Another game that we watched that was excellent was last night's Green Bay win over the Colts (in the last few seconds). The Colts were winning with less than a minute to go when a member of their team (#49, Vaughn) committed two personal fouls which ultimately led to a GB win. I like both teams, but when someone acts like Vaughn did you have to say that "justice" was done . . . can you imagine the discussion that will ensue with the Colt coaches . . .

I actually finally got back into family history a bit this week with several exchanges of emails relating to mostly distant and related-by-marriage links. But I found the involvement stimulating and look forward to the time that I can be close to full-time again. Meanwhile, Gail immersed herself in class-prep work. She is again teaching classes starting next week so that has kept her busy.

Taking a a break from class-prep she found the time and energy to do something else that she enjoys doing -- baking. Our back yard has one very productive apple tree -- we are not sure of the variety, maybe Gravenstein -- but they are good and plenty. She made three Apple Crisps, two for the relatives and one reserved for us and a large batch of applesauce. We also delivered two bags of apples along with the crisps.

 

We found that we could even "bob" for apples if we wanted to . . .


Cousin Connection

I communicated with several cousins this week and even one cousin via telephone whom I had not heard from in over ten years. I hope to have more on that story in the coming weeks. I know that I have a lot of "follow-up" work to do with respect to input from others and I am getting up steam to do just that.


Thank You!

To all of you who sent sympathy wishes regarding Auggie . . .

So ends our week, it is Slider Saturday Night -- see you all in a few.