Finally Friday

Whew, this has been a busy week and I am looking forward to the weekend. 

Here's an update on the work that has been going on in our yard. Everyday this week the town has been bringing in fill dirt and bulldozing that around. Today they sprayed the new soil with that green grass seed stuff. Now we need to keep it moist, I guess. We have no experience with that kind of process. It is supposed to rain this weekend, which should get us off to a good start. The town needs to finish off the back corner of our yard, where it butts up to The Source parking lot. I guess we'd like a shrub line to serve as a fence for privacy and to keep people from cutting through our yard on the way to the mall. I am also interested in seeing how some of our trees have survived the ordeal of having their roots disrupted during the digging process. 

Tucker called tonight and he was tired after a week of walking for 10 hours a day on the project he is on. He said that they have found some interesting artifacts so there has been a reward for all that walking. He was looking forward to spending some time with friends this weekend and doing some biking. 

Speaking of biking, I'm hoping the weather cooperates so I can go for a 12 mile ride in the Macedon, NY area. The ride is organized by the Terry Bicycle people and is the lead off activity for their big tent sale. I wanted to get one more of their biking skorts so I figured I do the ride and then shop for a few minutes. I need to do all this before I go to my monthly spinning guild meeting. At this meeting I will be picking up my award winning skein of yarn, along with the 2 ribbons it won and the award check! My spinning teacher brought all this stuff home from the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival because the skein needed to stay on display until the end of the festival and I was leaving before the festival was over. I can hardly wait to put my skein on the mantle along with my ribbons! Finally, something in the shrine will be from my efforts and not be running related!

Sunday we 3 are volunteering at the Lilac 10K race. The weather is not sounding too good for that day, but I think we all have inside jobs (registration and t-shirt distribution) so we should not be too affected by the cool temps and rain. I will take my bike in the van when we go to the race in the morning and if the weather looks OK when it is time to leave, I'll ride home.

Last night Jim and I went out to dinner at the Garland House in Brockport. I do like that restaurant, especially since it is a local place, not one of the many chains on Ridge Road. 

Hope all is well.

This and That

It's been a busy couple of days around here. When we got back from our April trip to Maryland a Jury Summons was awaiting me. Oh, joy! So, as instructed, I phoned  the Hall of Justice to discover that my number did not need to report on Monday morning, but rather I needed to call at 12:45 PM on Monday to possibly report Monday afternoon. When I called, sure enough I needed to be at the Hall of Justice, downtown, in one hour. Fortunately, my student teacher was still at school so I just let the office staff know that they would need to assign a Teaching Assistant to be in the gym with her. Off I went.

I ended up being one of about 75 jurors called into a courtroom for possible seating on a jury for a criminal trial. I was the first one called in the initial group of 21 that was interviewed. After an hour and a half of "interviewing" the 21 of us, the 2 lawyers selected 6 of the 21, and I was not one of them. One of the charges against the defendant was robbery and when the judge asked us if anyone had been the victim of a crime, I had to raise my hand. I was then questioned about the details of our house robbery which occurred 2 years ago. I'm sure I was released because of my experience with being robbed. That was fine with me because the trial was expected to go all week and I had things going on this week at school that I didn't want to miss. So, my civic duty has been fulfilled for 4 or 5 years.

The whole time I was at the Hall of Justice, I had a headache that just kept getting worse. By the time I got home, I was pretty miserable. So miserable that I had to force myself to eat some dinner. After dinner I got into my Lazy Boy, put it in the full, reclining position and slept for awhile. I started to feel better by the time I went to bed and today I feel normal again. Who knows what that was all about!

Tonight I had a great row on the river. It was a perfect temperature,with no wind. We rowed downstream towards the city. We spun the boat around just before the 490 bridge and the late day sun on the downtown buildings and bridges was beautiful.

Tomorrow is my student teacher's last day. She was a great student teacher and I hope she finds a job real soon. I am looking forward to getting my "kids" back, though. 

The work in our yard has resumed, this time it is landscaping work. A good deal of fill dirt has been brought in to level out the area where the storm sewer was installed. I imagine the town will be around in the near future to spray some grass seed.

Corey and Jim dined alfresco on our new patio set. They report that it was a true fine dining experience. Photos another time.

Hope all is well. 

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. I am very blessed to be able to celebrate this day with both my Mom and my Mother-in-law and one of my two children. It has been a good day. Corey cooked us all delicious dinner of featuring lemon salmon that he cooked on the grill. Jim cleaned up so my kitchen time was minimal.

It has been nice to be home this weekend with nothing really pressing on the calendar. Friday night Jim and I went out to Corey's office, Lock 32, for the season opening of this whitewater park. They were providing free hot dogs and hamburgers, so we had our dinner there and walked around watching some of the paddlers play in the waves.

 

On Saturday I was up early so made a trip to the Public Market. Green beans, peppers, cucumbers, apples, cheese and flowers were some of my purchases. It was a great morning to be at the market-lots of plants and flowers for sale in addition to all the fruits and vegetables. 

While Jim was participating in a highway clean-up I went for a bike ride. I was testing out a new bike seat and a new pair of biking shorts. Both worked well, thank goodness! I rode 46 miles, enjoying the apple blossoms in the orchards and the lilacs that made this a very fragrant ride. I was pretty tired when I got home, but mostly because I never took any long rest stops and did not eat enough during the ride. But after a quick lunch and a bit of a rest, I was good to go for the rest of the afternoon. 

Last night Jim participated in the Pub Run, a fundraiser in memory of runner Charlie McMullen for the American Cancer Society. I didn't go this year because I took that long bike ride in the morning.

Today we 3 went to church and had a leisurly afternoon. Jim and I bought a patio set at Wegmans. We tried to buy a set last summer, but got started too late so postponed the purchase until this summer. I'll post a photo as soon as Jim performs the "some assembly required."

In addition to both set of grandparents being here for dinner, Bob and Sally stopped over so Bob could confer with Corey on some work that Corey is doing for Bob. Corey is editing some video that Bob has from his Tibet trip and putting together a DVD from the edited video. At least that is what I think they are doing. I could be wrong-I haven't paid a lot of attention to what they are doing. Hopefully it is all legal!

Tucker called twice this weekend and, as usual, it was good to talk to him. Tucker said that my Mother's Day card was in the mail and that it would be late because he and his colleagues were doing field work out in the middle of Nowhere, UT, when they all realized that Sunday was Mother's Day and none of them had a card yet. The small town that they are working out of does not have a Hallmark store, or anything else for that matter!

Jim gave me a book called On Food and Cooking The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. It is an interesting book about the make up of various foods we eat and why they cook up the way they do. It looks like it will be fairly easy reading as there are small sections to read in a few minutes time. If you like to cook or eat, check out this book. The author, Harold McGee, is one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people.  

I got a jury summons for this upcoming week and had to call in last Friday night to see if I needed to report tomorrow morning. The good news is that I don't have to report, but the maybe bad news is that I have to call again at 12:45 PM tomorrow, to possibly report tomorrow afternoon. Can you believe that you are not allowed to take knitting needles into the jury waiting area? There can be a lot of waiting when you first report for jury duty and that would be great knitting time. 

I spent the last 4 days knitting pretty dish cloths for Gram and Grandma. I really like this pattern and will have to make one for me. Knitting with cotton yarn is really hard on the hands because there is no "give" to the yarn, so I will have to give my  hands a cotton break before I try another one. 

Time to go to bed. 

Hope all is well.