Project Finished!

Lots of quality knitting time last night and the result was a completed knitting project! I love the top and it fits!! Now I just need the temperature to return to the 80's so I can wear it.

Corey had a good group here for a campfire last night. The group consisted of friends from Odyssey and some running friends from  around the state. As I sat knitting in the living room, I heard lots of laughing and music. A couple of guitars and a banjo made the rounds of the many musicians in the group. It is nice to know that singing around a campfire is still a cool thing to do. They were all on their way home by midnight and this morning's daylight reveals that Corey only has minimal clean-up today.

This morning Corey went running at Mendon Ponds Park with some of the friends that were here last night and then re-fueled at Tahoe's (or more correctly, "Steve T.'s"). Mary Kate came back to our house afterwards and now Corey has her helping to clean up the backyard and "the rig". I'm hoping she has higher standards for "clean" than Corey has!

I went out to Eastview Mall this morning and found some good deals at Coldwater Creek and was able to use my coupons. I bought 4 "trial" glasses at Williams and Sonoma to see if they are what we want for everyday drinking glasses. I have found it difficult to find a set of glasses, in the sizes we seem to need or want, and in a design and price that I like. These may fit the bill. I'll keep you posted on the glasses situation in this blog (I know, you can hardly wait!). I also bought one other item, but I am going to wait and see how long it takes either Corey or Jim to notice it. This will at least get them looking!

Tomorrow we are off to SU-Corey is very ready! 

College Countdown

I guess we are starting to count down in hours, not days, until we take Corey to Syracuse. We continue to accumulate stuff for Corey's room. At dinner with Maw and Porge on Sunday night, Corey mentioned that he would like to have an old bike for getting around campus. Porge had one to donate and we picked it up yesterday. Jim will need to do a bit of clean-up work on it, but it should be good to go. Corey will have a back-up bike as GrandDad also has a bike he could use. Thanks for the offer! 

Today we opened a checking account at M & T bank for Corey so he can have access to cash. M & T has an ATM on campus, so it should be fairly convenient for him. Whatever happened to the days when you'd get a free toaster when you opened a checking account? Not that we need a toaster, but it was a nice gesture. After the bank, we went to Penny's where Corey found 2 pair of pants that fit and met his criteria and 2 throw rugs (with fringe, fringe was a bonus he liked).

Corey is having some friends over tonight for a campfire. The weather looks like it is going to cooperate, the thunderstorms seem to be tracking south of Rochester. 

I am getting close to finishing my knit tank top. I think the temperatures are supposed to drop some in the next few days, but hopefully it will get hot again so I can wear it and not freeze. I will put a photo of me modeling my latest project as soon as I finish it. 

A couple of days ago I had the great idea that it might be fun if Jim and I found a nice B & B to go to on Saturday after we drop off Corey. Well, it would have been a great idea if I had thought of it a couple of months ago, now it is just a frustrating idea. I think I have called at least a dozen nice places and every one is booked solid for that night. I'm really not surprised, just disappointed. I told Jim that if we come back to Rochester, we need to go out to dinner and then to breakfast on Sunday morning because if we were at a B&B we'd get a nice breakfast! 

Adios!

College Prep

Band-aids, duck tape, sticky tack, extension cord, allergy meds, cough meds, Uno cards, one set of silverware, one set of dishes, stapler, tape, scissors, lap board, pillow protectors, nail clippers, bed risers, trash can, laundry basket, another pair of jeans, ink cartridges, towels, shampoo, laundry detergent, the list goes on and the dining room gets fuller! Corey has been working in his room for a couple of weeks now, digging through his stuff, deciding what needs to go to Syracuse, what needs to get donated or thrown away, and what should remain tucked into his dresser drawers. Some days he stirs up the dust to the point that he is sneezing out of control-that's when he knows it is time to stop cleaning. One of my jobs will be to do a serious cleaning of that room once Corey is on campus. That will be a job that provides a lot of satisfaction!!

The heat wave has passed for the time being and we are enjoying more tolerable temps. There is almost a chill in the air first thing in the morning, but I did work up a sweat on my walk this afternoon.

Not much else to report.

Oster Visit

We had a whirl wind visit with Bob and Joanie, cramming a variety of activities into their time with us. After they did their errands to Sam's and Shermie's they came to our house for dinner. We showed them our Idaho and Iceland photos (at their request) before our BBQ ribs dinner. Corey came home from Mike's cabin and brought Mike with him so we were 6 around the dinner table. After eating too many ribs we all went out to Lock 32 to watch Corey and Mike play in the whitewater. While we were there, we could see a couple of boats moving through the lock, so Bob, Joanie, and I walked over to the Lock and watched a tour boat out of Fairport, the Colonial Belle, move through the lock.  When we all returned to Apollo Drive, we watched the recording of Corey's graduation (not the whole thing, only the good parts). Then we watched the DVD of a recent vocal concert of Bob's. It was amazing - 900 kids from elementary school through high school! Bob ordered and picked up a Ponty's and then they headed back to Briar Wood Lane, hoping to get an early start back to Michigan in the morning. It was good to see them.

Today I had to go to church for a bell choir rehearsal, right after worship. The choir is playing tomorrow night at a memorial service for one of our former members. It was good to see my fellow ringers again.

I spent the afternoon riding my bike to and from Brockport for their canal festival, 31 miles round trip. It was a good ride. although it was hot.

Maw and Porge will be here for dinner tonight.

Corey went to Watertown to kayak with some friends and should be home shortly.

For those of you who care, Corey selected Finding Nemo sheets for his dorm room!

Golf Again!

Before I give the golf report, let me update you about yesterday's happenings. I got my filling repaired and guess what time my appointment was with the dentist - 2:30 (tooth hurty!! get it??) - ha ha ha! After it was repaired I had to avoid chewing on the side where the filling was replaced-not so easy to do-you have to think the whole time you are eating!

Last night I went to Lock 32 because Corey wanted some photos of him kayaking. The picture featured here is of him playing in one of the holes on the whitewater course. It was fun to watch him because I haven't seen him kayak in whitewater for a year and he has gotten so good! He does this front flip thing (I cannot remember what he calls it) but it is very impressive. I took about 100 photos and a few short videos on my new subcompact digital camera.

And now, the golf report. We (Sherri, Jan and I) went to Cardinal Creek which is farther west on 104 than Twin Hills. The greens fees were less, but so was the quality of the course. I think I played better today than last week, but it is hard to compare scores from one course to another. I had no swings and misses and was hitting my 3 iron much better. That will probably be it for golf for the rest of the summer because other things are on the calendar. It has been fun though.

Tonight we are going to attempt to record Corey's graduation ceremony from a cable channel on TV at Mom's and Dad's house. Corey is going to try to set it up so that we can record it onto our digital video camera. That will allow us to download it to our computer. I hope it all works because I really want to have a video clip of Corey's duet at graduation. 

I went to the downtown library this afternoon and borrowed some Turkish language CD's to try to learn some Turkish phrases. This past June 2 new families started at Longridge School and the children spoke no English. Through an interpreter, we learned that there may be 6 more families coming to Greece (specifically the Longridge neighborhood) so that the adults in the family can work at the Hickey-Freeman shop. I think it will be a good challenge to learn a few basic words in Turkish! Things like, "Get in line" and "Stop talking" may be a bit advanced, but "Hello, "Goodbye" and "Thank you" might be manageable. 

Corey is going to the family cabin of his friend Mike G. for the night. 

We are looking forward to seeing Bob and Joanie here tomorrow. I am making BBQ ribs for dinner for them. 

Next post will give you the correct response for the question about Corey's sheets.

Blog Minutiae

Here I go with Jim's biggest blog fear-minutiae-those trivial, day-to-day happenings. Oh well, everyday cannot be spent with the Yankees! 

Today Corey and I went shopping for things he will need in his dorm room. He wanted to go shopping for a backpack-type case for his new computer. I saw this as an opportunity to get him involved in the decisions about towels, sheet and pillows. Our first stop was at EMS. Corey saw an ad from EMS featuring a computer backpack that looked good to him. We bought it, and it does seem like a good choice. From there we went to Bon Ton, Macy's, Penny's and Sears to look for above mentioned dorm room items. I'm glad I had him select the stuff because it turns out that he did have some ideas about what he wanted. Please take the poll at the upper left side of this blog to see how well you know Corey! I'll let you know what the answer is when the polling time is up (this Friday at 10 PM). 

While chewing gum tonight, I pulled out part of a filling on a back tooth. I will have to call Dr. Mesolella in the morning and see how soon he can see me. Fortunately, there is no pain associated with the missing filling, but then again, I haven't had anything hot or cold in my mouth to test its sensitivity. 

The squirrels have been working overtime in our backyard and the grass was covered with lots of small twigs and branches. Jim and I got that cleaned up tonight. 

That's all for the past 2 lazy summer days. I have been doing a fair amount of knitting, which is delightful!

Don't forget to test your "Corey Knowledge" by doing the poll at the top of the blog.

Go Yankees!

We had a wonderful, whirl-wind trip to Toronto, with the finale being the Yankees beating the Blue Jays! 

We had an easy drive to Toronto, with no problems or delays at customs. The huge delay was going into the States with the traffic being backed up almost to Toronto. There was some civic holiday in Ontario so it was a long weekend for many Canadians. Our first stop in Toronto was at a yarn store called Lettuce Knit. Stephanie Pearl McPhee writes about this store in her knitting blog. It was a tiny shop in the Kensington Market area, filled with beautiful yarns-lots of Lorna Lace, and Fleece Artist. Yes, I did buy something, but I cannot disclose any details because the purchase was for a gift for a reader of this blog!

After a mexican lunch in the Market area, we checked into our hotel, the Intercontinental. This was the view from our room! It was especially beautiful at night when the CN tower and baseball stadium were illuminated!

We arrived at the Rogers Center (the Blue Jays home stadium) about 90 minutes before it was time to, "Play Ball" and in time to see the Yankees take batting practice. We walked around the 3 general levels of the stadium, stopping to take some photos and check out what ballpark food would be available for lunch. 

This stadium has a retractable roof which was opened for this sunny day. Our seats were under the overhang (think shade!) just inside the foul line pole in left field. The seats were actually pretty good and we were thankful to not have to sit in the 90 degree sunshine for 4 hours. The stadium looks pretty empty right now, but by game time it was quite full with over 42,000 fans in attendance.

We got fairly close to the field during batting practice and got to see Derek Jeter in action. He looked good in batting practice, but went 0 for 4 when it counted!! Oh, well. It was fun to see him play. 

Tucker, you may be interested to know that we did get to see Frank Thomas play. He is the designated hitter for the Blue Jays and early in the game hit a double to drive in a couple of runs, but later in the game struck out twice when the go ahead runs were on the bases! Remember when we saw him play in Chicago?

There were lots of Yankees fans in the stands so it was great that the Yankees won 5-4. It was a good game. 

Our drive home was cruising right along until we got to the bridge to the USA and then it took us 53 minutes to get through customs. 

Time to go. We had a great 30th Anniversary weekend!

Saturday

Check out this photo! It is the picture from the front of the anniversary card sent to us by Bob and Joanie. It is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time! Hopefully my blog won't be flagged for inappropriate content, but I just had to share it. Thanks Bob and Joanie, Jim and I love the card! I love it when I find the perfect card for someone-I imagine you saw this card and said, "YES!"

So, we had another beautiful summer day here. I went to the Park Avenue Festival and walked around for 2 hours-they didn't make much money on me, but I was glad I went. 

We spent a bit of time cleaning up the house this afternoon, because we hope the friends that we are going out to dinner with will come back here for dessert. We are dining with Tony and Ann Vodacek-Jim runs with Tony and we have done dinner with them in the past. I made a fresh peach cobbler before going to the festival so we have a delicious dessert to come home to. Of course, Corey would have liked to have had the cobbler for breakfast, but I squashed those hopes and told him we would try to save him some for when he came home from his boss's wedding. 

Tomorrow we go to Toronto, probably leaving in the mid-morning. I have the address of a yarn store that I've never been to in Toronto and I hope we can make a stop there. I put Jim in charge of picking a restaurant for dinner tomorrow night so he has been doing some internet research. My next post will include the highlights of our trip.

Fore!

 They say that practice makes perfect, but that proved not to be the case today. I did get Jim and Corey to go to the driving range with me last night (but only if I promised to buy them ice cream afterwards!) and we split a large bucket of balls. Jim quit soon after we got there because he was consistently hitting the ball out about 200 yards! Corey and I finished up the bucket, because we were inconsistent, to say the least. We must have been fairly entertaining because one of the guys who works at the driving range came out and sat to watch us! 

This morning I went to Twin Hills golf course with Sherri Taber and Jan Stanton. Let's just say that we got our money's worth and had more laughs than strokes (and we took a lot of strokes)! On one hole we each lost two balls-I lost one in the creek and one in the woods opposite the creek! I did get a bogey on one hole which I thought was amazing and never scored a 10 or more on a hole. It was hot on the course, but there were a good number of trees and my ball was like a tree magnet so I was in the shade a fair amount. We three went out for lunch after our golf outing and agreed to check our calendars to see if we could hit the links again next Friday. 

Tomorrow I am going to the Park Avenue Festival and in the evening Jim and I are going out to dinner with some friends. Corey's boss is getting married tomorrow and he asked Corey to be at the wedding/reception to "help out," whatever that means. He needs to be there from 10 Am to sometime in the evening. Hopefully, there will be good food for him to eat.

Just had a nice phone call from Tucker. He still plans to come home at the end of August which we are happy about. 

I've done a fair amount of knitting this week. I made a new dishcloth out of some of the leftover yarn I used for gift dishcloths and I finished the back of my cotton/lycra tank top and started on the front. Hopefully I will finish the top before the cold weather arrives!

I'll post an entry tomorrow before we go to Toronto on Sunday morning. I have my new Yankees baseball hat ready to go-it is pink!

Dog Days of Summer

Summer is here in full swing! Yesterday the temp hit 90 and today we're going for the record of 96 degrees! We must be approaching that mark right now in the mid-afternoon.

We've turned on the A/C and the house is comfortable, but it would be great to be at Jenny Lake where one could jump into to the lake and float to escape the heat. Bob and Joanie should be at camp by now-lucky them!

The above photos are from my 30 mile bike ride this morning, from Apollo Drive to Pittsford and back. The first photo is of the novice rowers from Pittsford High School, out for a work-out. Photo number two shows a couple of cabin cruisers heading for Pittsford. The last photo was taken by the mother of the little boy standing behind me. They were sitting on the rocks feeding the ducks when I asked the mother to take my picture.   I had a great ride and may try to organize a ride from Greece to Pittsford for some of my biking friends and colleagues. We could ride to Pittsford, eat lunch at Alladins Restaurant right on the canal and then head back to Greece. That might be a good thing to plan for the time right after we take Corey to SU and Jim is in Belgium (for work). 

Yesterday was August 1st and the first of any month means 2 things have to happen. One, the flower in my Beetle needs to be changed and two, the cross-stitched Snowman of the Month needs to be changed. I now have 2 minature yellow sunflowers in the Beetle and the August Snowman is standing in a field of sunflowers. I see a theme here!

We got some sad news yesterday and that is that Tom Ricci's wedding has been cancelled. We recieved a short letter from Tom's parents with that announcement, but no details. I'll have to ask around to see what has happened. I e-mailed Tucker with the news and am not sure what he will do about his plans to come home at the end of August.  

I went to the Greece Farmer's Market and got some peaches, blueberries and corn on the cob. We're all looking forward to the fresh corn with dinner tonight.

Tomorrow I am going to play golf with Sherri Taber-an annual summer escapade! Maybe I can get Jim and Corey to go hit a bucket of balls with me tonight so I can remember what it feels like to swing a club and hit a ball. Watch this blog for the highlights and low-lights from that outing.

Summer Fun

Ahh, the lazy days of summer.

I've been for 2 bike rides in the past couple of days. Yesterday I did a quick 12 miles and this morning I got 25 miles in. Both days were beautiful mornings for riding. 

Last night Jim and I went to Maw and Porges's. We took over a blueberry cobbler and our Iceland photos. We showed our photos and shared our cobbler in exchange for a colorful bouquet of flowers from Maw's cutting garden. Now I have beautiful flowers in the kitchen and living room. 

Corey is kayaking tonight and Jim is at track practice so I will eat solo tonight. I am trying a Turkey Club Quesidilla recipe in a Kraft foods cooking magazine that Maw gave to me. Instead of cooking the quesidillas on the grill, I'm going to use the George.

This afternoon I went out to lunch with Sherri Taber and Jean Tomasso. We went to the Pelican's Nest down by the river and had a good lunch and enjoyed the cooler breezes off the lake.

Tomorrow is August 1st. Yikes! I don't want to start thinking about school just yet!

Home Again

We had an uneventful trip home from Jenny Lake-it was especially easy for me because Jim drove the whole way freeing me up to knit on my pink tank top. We arrived home to find Corey in the middle of making dinner for us!! What a treat! He made Chicken Fijitas using 3 different colored peppers, Spanish rice, and guacamole dip with chips. It was excellent.

Our Iceland Slide show was a success. There were about 17 people there, not counting Jim and me and the slides lasted about 35 minutes. People asked good questions and several folks stayed after the show to get more in depth details. Jim and Sue Allen, along with Matt, Laura and baby Audrey came back to camp after the show for ice cream (Adirondack Bear Paw!!) and cookies. We will now put the photos up on Kodak Gallery and if you want to see them, let me know and I will have Kodak Gallery send you an invitation to view them.

I read a whole 300 page book while at camp this weekend! It was an easy read, the third book in a series with a knitting theme! Mom had gotten it out of the Corinth Library, but was going to return it when I told her that there were 2 other books before that one that she should read first. 

There were a couple of comments asking about what the rules were. Here they are:

1. Nobody at the house.

2. Don't be stupid (this one covers a lot!).

Jenny Lake

The sun is shining after a rainy start to the day and I just came in from a row around the lake. Life is good!

Jim and I drove to JL last night, arriving in just under 4 hours. One of the reasons that we came to camp this weekend is that we are going to show our Iceland slides at the Community House tonight. So, after we got all our stuff down from the car to camp, Jim decided to see if the computer and projector worked. They didn't. The computer was working and the projector appeared to be working but they were not working together! After a couple of hours of trying everything he could think of to make the set-up work, we were still unable to project our photos from the computer. Jim then had the brilliant idea that Jim Allen may have a projector and since the Allens were coming to camp today, if he had one, he could bring it to us. Well, miracle of miracles, he did have a projector and he dropped it off an hour ago, as they arrived at JL. The show will go on!! We had to hang a sheet on the Community House wall because the screen that was there looked like something that George Eastman personally installed! So, I guess we are ready to go tonight. Hopefully, someone will come.

I hear the beach calling my name so I must go! Rumor has it that the lake temperature is 80 degrees.

Corey, hope you are remembering the 2 rules! :)

Downtown Fun

Whew! The hot, humid weather has come to Rochester-I break into a sweat just sitting here at  the computer. 

Today I wrote and mailed our first tuition check to Syracuse University! I am very thankful that Corey has a partial scholarship or writing full tuition checks might put me in the grave. I know that SU is a great school and that Corey will make the most of his opportunities there, so I figure that it is money well spent.

This morning at 6:15 AM, I thought about two of my favorite things about summer vacation. Number 1 - I love rolling over for a little more sleep when Jim's alarm goes off at 6:15 AM. Number 2 - I love having choices about what I am going to do on a summer day. Do I want to go for a bike ride, or should I clean out the porch, when will I knit, shall I try a new recipe for dinner? Choices, choices, choices! It seems that I have very little discretionary time during the school year. 

Tonight we 3 went downtown for "Ribbin' on the River - A Blues and BBQ Rib0ff." There were 2 stages set-up outside near the Blue Cross Arena and 4 BBQ trailers and other food vendors set up near the stages. 

After checking out all the BBQ places, we chose to buy our dinner from a Florida-based BBQ vendor named "Porky-N-Beans. Jim and Corey went for the Porky Platter-a sampler of all the BBQ this company had to offer. I opted for the Pulled Pork Sandwich. All of it was delicious.

We enjoyed the 2 bands that played while we ate. We didn't stay too long after dinner

because Corey was exhausted from his long run this morning and several hours of kayaking this afternoon.

Mixed up a batch of soft molasses cookies tonight and will bake and frost them tomorrow. 

Welcome to the newest Empty Nest reader, Liz. Thanks for your kind comment!

Take me out to the ballgame

It was baseball night for Jim and me. Jim and Corey have won some tickets to a Red Wings game at some of their races, so Jim and I took advantage of free admission. We got to the stadium in time to grab some dinner and then watch the game. Rochester was playing Syracuse and I think the Red Wings beat Syracuse last night but that was not the case tonight after 7 innings. Syracuse looked great, and the Red Wings couldn't make a good play if their lives depended on it. Makes no matter to us-it was a perfect evening to be at the ballpark. Corey didn't go with us because he had to work.

This was our warm-up baseball game because we are going to see the Yankees play the Toronto Blue Jays on our 30th anniversary, August 6th. I've been a Yankees fan for a long

time and this seemed like the easiest way to see them play. We are going to Toronto on Sunday, August 5th, spending the night, and then watching the afternoon game before heading home on Monday night. 

I spent most of the morning working on my Iceland Slide Show that we are showing at Jenny Lake this Saturday night. I think I have it all in order now and a short  narration written. This afternoon I cleaned out our file cabinet, shredding 3 trashcans of papers, and then sorted and filed about 8 months worth of paperwork. I don't have much to show for my efforts but I know that I got a big job done. Hum, what shall I clean out next? Too soon to start in Corey's room, maybe I'll keep working on the porch or try to bring some organization to my yarn room (formally known as Tucker's room!). I'll see how I get inspired in the next few days.

Reliving Iceland

Jim and I are going to show our Iceland pictures at Jenny Lake on Saturday night so I have spent the last 2 days selecting the best photos to tell our story. I think I took about 800 photos so there are a lot to go through. Here is one of my favorites. We watched and photographed these cute puffins at 2 different areas in Iceland and I have way too many photos of puffins-but they are soooo cute!

I have also been typing my trip journal into the computer so that I have a more useable copy. The spellchecker in the computer must be about ready to go on strike as I continue to type in these Icelandic names and then tell the computer to ignore them!

Kodak Gallery is offering a 25% discount right now so I need to look through my river trip photos and Iceland photos to see if there are any prints I'd like to have made.

Jim is at track practice tonight so Corey and I will eat our pork chop dinner without him. Maybe the sauerkraut smell from my pork chop casserole will have lightened up by the time he gets home!

That's all for now!

Sunday, Sunday

Not too much to report today. Jim found a dead squirrel floating in the 55 gallon drum that we filled with water so Maw and Porge could water our plants while we were away. I guess the squirrel was pretty gross. I opted out of the photo opportunity.

After dinner we went to Lugia's for an ice-cream cone and most of Monroe County had the same idea. The line moved along because there were lots of servers. The ice cream was delicious and we came home stuffed.

It's been a good weekend and it has been good to be home.

Beautiful Saturday

What a perfect summer day.

I got a nice bike ride in (22 miles) making a loop trip to Pine Hill Road. Came home to find Jim and Corey wrestling with Corey's kayak on the front yard. They were installing new knee pads and I believe the installation was a success. 

We all attended Mike Thomsen's graduation party this afternoon/evening. We got to visit with many Odyssey families including the Engles and the Cannizzaros. Mike's band played and they are quite good! Dinner was served and it was delicious. We left the party around 8-Corey is sleeping over at Mike's house tonight.

We finally got all the Salmon River trip photos uploaded to Kodak Gallery and the invitations sent out for people to view them. I now need to go through the pictures and select a few to have prints made. 

Dad and I bought tickets for the Yankees vs. Blue Jays baseball game in Toronto on August 6th. We will drive up on Sunday the 5th, stay overnight (Pricelined a room!) and then attend the Monday afternoon game on the 6th. That will be our 30th anniversary celebration! 

I had hoped to include a photo in the body of this entry, but I misinterpreted the page with the directions on how to include a photo, so for now the river picture is in the corner of the post.  There is a lot to learn!

Welcome

Welcome to my blog! As our youngest son heads off to college in less than a month (yikes!), I am going to keep in touch with interested family and friends via this blog. The blog name, The Empty Nest, highlights a new chapter in the lives of my husband and I.

When our oldest son would come home from college, he would frequently exclaim, "Why didn't you tell me that?" when he would hear "old"news. So in order to keep the kids in the loop, and to show how cool Mom can be by writing a blog, I will attempt to regularly write about what is happening at home, what's new with family and friends, and items we have purchased for the house so there are fewer surprises when the boys return to the Nest!

So, I will publish this initial post and then start to learn how to use this blog. 

Please feel free to send a comment. I will try my best to respond to questions or comments.