Journal Entries
"Distracted by Bagels"
Posted Jul 2, 2005
I was getting ready to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things and said to myself "I'd better go check the list and see what we need". So... there I was in the kitchen reading the list on the fridge, when I suddenly realized I was going after 7pm, and they'd have the day's leftover bagels marked way down 
, which meant that if we needed any, I'd better find out which kinds we were getting low on. I don't eat them, but everyone else in the family likes them, so we keep a few different flavors in the freezer, and each person gets out the one they want for breakfast the night before to give it time to thaw.
I returned to the living room, not with a list of other things that were on the grocery list pad, but instead with a mental list of which bagels to look for. 
So I grabbed my electronic brain (which I definitely need, since the brain in my head is obviously so addled 
), and returned to the kitchen muttering something about needing to find out what was on the list in the kitchen, which I'd just said when I headed out to the kitchen the first time, not two minutes earlier. Of course the rest of the family picked up on this, and pointed out that's why I went to the kitchen the first time, so I explained that I was "distracted by bagels".
While I was in the kitchen this time, the rest of them had a real 
about the idea that anyone could be *that* distracted by bagels, and by the time I returned to the living room, they'd decided that Distracted by Bagels would be a good name for a rock group. 
heavy metal guitar riff 
I guess if we can have a group called Smashing Pumpkins, why not have one called Distracted by Bagels?
Of course "Distracted by Bagels" has become their favorite phrase since then. *rolls eyes*
So today, Amy+ and I were driving up to Ephrata to WallyWorld when we came upon 4 young mennonite men riding bicycles. Somehow this led into calling them a "Mennonite Biker Gang", which Amy+ decided should be the name of the new hit song by "Distracted by Bagels".
Suggested lyrics welcome.
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Latest reply: Jul 2, 2005
Guess what I found at Wallyworld today?
Posted Apr 21, 2005
I was wandering around in Walmart today, just picking up odds and ends (which everyone seems to need lots of), and just happened to come across something called...
...wait for it...
...Ready?
Ok, here goes...
Blue Goo Cracked Heel Skin Softener!
I kid you not!
Nice stuff too, smells good, and has emu oil in it.
We'll see how good it really is, since I just put some on my rough, dry feet.
*reads label again*
Uh-oh. I didn't notice it also has lanolin in it - I'm allergic to lanolin!
*
to wash off 
*
Discuss this Journal entry [49]
Latest reply: Apr 21, 2005
Fall Foliage Weekend
Posted Oct 27, 2004
That wasn't the primary purpose of this past weekend's trip, but the trees were certainly beautiful, even though the weather was decidedly gloomy for the entire trip. I decided very quickly that most places in Virginia have prettier fall colors in cloudy, misty, rainy, foggy, gloomy weather than Lancaster county ever has, even on a bright sunny day.
As I've complained about before, we seem to only get really dull, muddy fall foliage - most of the trees are murky greenish-brown, murky yellowish-brown or even murkier dark greyish-brown. Things started brightening up somewhat once we were out of Pennsylvania, and I started to notice a definite difference along about the time we hit Thurmont, Maryland. As we travelled on into Virginia, the leaves became brighter and more varied. I was expecting the colors to dull out as we headed eastward towards Richmond, but they really didn't. (I think it must be against the law to have ugly trees in Virginia. ) Even when it was nearly dusk and there was hardly any sunlight on the leaves at all because of the weather and time of evening, they were still brighter and more varied in color than what we have in the Lancaster area. There must have been a dozen variations of yellow, and another dozen variations of red, and still another dozen variations of orange in the leaf colors! 
There were even leaves that looked almost hot pink (seriously!) and purple.
I have really, really, *really* missed the beautiful fall colors that are normal for Virginia, but now I've had my fix. I just hope it isn't *another* 20 years before I get a chance to see them again.
The *reason* we were headed towards Richmond was so that Shorty could do a tour of the University of Richmond, on her quest to find another uni to apply to, just in case Duke doesn't accept her. We arrived in Richmond after dark, found our motel and spent a restful night, before heading out to see the U of Richmond in the morning. We had no problem finding the University, and it is indeed quite lovely. You can do a virtual tour of the campus here:
http://www.richmond.edu/visit/virtual.htm
It really is every bit as beautiful as it looks on there.
Even better than that, Shorty likes the place, and from what the Admissions person was saying during the information session before the tour, it looks like Shorty's grades, SAT scores, AP tests and SAT2 scores (along with her extracurricular activities and volunteer work) will almost guarantee her admission to Richmond if Duke doesn't want her for some reason. 
So after having no trouble finding the campus, we attempted to retrace our steps, heading back out the way we came in. The only problem is that even though we had the directions right in our hands and were following them (backwards, of course, since we were leaving), we couldn't find the one road we'd come in on. We drove up and down the road looking for the place to turn, but either Glenside drive was suddenly and without warning renamed something else during our tour, or it somehow slipped into the space-time continuum. 
We drove back and forth on that road at least three times trying to find the proper road, but finally came to a road where Shorty saw as sign for Route 64 to Charlottesville, which is where we wanted to go anyway, so we turned there.
We had smooth sailing to Charlottesville. Then there was heavy fog on the mountain between Charlottesville and Waynesboro - and by this time it was early afternoon! 
I remember one time when my Dad took me to Uni and we drove over that mountain along about mid-day, the fog was so thick you couldn't see 10 feet in front of the car! That was a scary trip, but the fog wasn't nearly so bad this time.
So we finally got to Rt 81 and headed south to go to Radford to visit Amy+ for the weekend, but shortly after we hit 81, there was a big electronic sign that said the road was closed 37 miles ahead. We only travelled as far as the Natural Bridge exit before we could see that traffic was already backed up, so we exited at Natural Bridge, thinking we could just take Rt 11 past the closed area on 81. Not so fast though... there were about a blue-million other cars doing the same thing. Traffic came to a dead standstill less than a mile off 81. We sat there for ages, then slowly inched our way along, going about 2 miles in the next 1/2 hour. As Rt 11 crossed over 81, we could see that traffic was moving on 81, so we decided to get back on 81, since it seemed to be moving a lot faster than we were, even though it was also rather slow.Of course as soon as we got back on 81, it also came to a standstill. 
Well, not exactly a standstill. We'd inch forwards about 1/10 of a mile, then sit there for about 5 minutes, then inch forwards another 1/10 of a mile.
Finally, we reached the location of the accident:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke%5C12621.html
By the time we reached the scene of the accident, they had one lane of 81 open, so we were able to just stay on the highway. They had the mess in the photo off the road by the time we got that far, but the guard rails were still badly mangled, the debris from the truck was still piled along both sides of the roads, and they were in the process of moving concrete barriers into place where the accident had torn up a bridge railing.
It's just as well that we were able to stay on 81, because in the interim, there had been another accident at the Buchanan exit off 81, and the mess from that was still in the way.
All in all, it took us 2 *hours* to drive about 10 miles.
The rest of the trip to Radford was smooth sailing, although I made the mistake of deciding to go through Christiansburg to get to Radford, instead of taking 81 all the way to the Radford exit, since I felt like I'd spent more than enough time on 81 for one day. I figured, why shouldn't I go through Christiansburg? I mean, it's part of my old stomping grounds, surely I could find my way easily enough... Only it's been 30 years since I did much driving down there, and all the landmarks had changed drastically, so I was totally lost and confused. We did finally find our way to Radford though, and met Amy+ at the coffee shop, went to get something to eat, then settled into her dorm for the night.
Shorty and Amy+ slept in a friend's room, and I slept in Amy+'s room. Well, I use the word "slept" in only the most generalized sense, since I was up until about 12:30, then the roommate came in at about 1:30 (which woke me up, of course). She went to sleep, and I managed to get back to sleep too. 
But then along about 3:30 she had a phone call from someone making sure she was getting up and getting ready, because she was supposed to go on a trip to Washington, DC, with the bus leaving at 5 am! So there were various alarms, phone calls and other noises keeping me awake until about 4:30 when she finally left to catch her bus.
Of course by that time I was thoroughly awake, so I got up for a while and answered email until I was finally sleepy again 
, about 6:30, thinking I'd be able to catch a couple more hours of sleep before Shorty and Amy+ would be downstairs in the morning, since they assured me they'd sleep until at least 8am. But nooooooooo.... They were downstairs by about 7:30. Needless to say, I was slightly tired all day.
Still, I managed to take the girls shopping to get various items that Amy+ needed, and because their bathroom was so disgusting (loads of mildew in the shower, and not even a loo brush 
in the place, so the toilet was disgusting 
, and the sinks were seriously stained) I ended up doing a lot of cleaning - If I was going to use that bathroom, I wanted it a little cleaner! At least the girls seemed appreciative of my efforts. Although with all the clorox I'd sprayed in there, the whole dorm could probably tell that there was a mother on the premises!
I also picked up supplies to cook some lunch for Amy+ and Shorty. I made them Garlic Lime Chicken, which was a little more difficult than cooking it at home of course, since the kitchen is in the basement of the building, and you need to drag all your supplies and cooking utensils down there with you in order to cook. As it turned out, the stove was missing it's large burner, so it took longer to cook too. Still, it was very tasty. 
Of course even though the kitchen seemed fairly clean at first glance, the grunge became more evident as I tried to cook, so I ended up cleaning up some of that too.
After that we got our things together and all went over to Grandma's (Lord Scott's mother), since she only lives 45 minutes away, and spent the night there, where it was quiet and restful. Except that on our way over there, Amy+ said we should really drive up there via Green Valley since the scenery is sooo incredibly beautiful, so I told her she needed to let me know where to turn, which she did. At least for the first turn, she knew where I should turn, after that we had no idea. However, we saw a sign for Eggleston Road, so we got on that because I knew that Eggleston was where Lord Scott went to elementary school and I felt like I could probably find my way from there. Except that Eggleston Road doesn't actually go to Eggleston, it only goes *near* Eggleston. It actually goes all the way through to Rt 460, which is the road that goes from Blacksburg to Pearsiburg! At least I was familiar with *that* road, and the route we took was incredibly beautiful, with trees in a glorious array of fall colors along the way.
I forced the girls to get up early the next morning, because under the best of circumstances, the drive home from Grandma's takes at least 7 hours (with minimal stopping), and after the terrible backup on 81 on the way down there, I wanted to start early in case we were delayed by a traffic tie-up again, especially since Shorty had to be in school the next day, and there's almost always a backup on Rt 350 near Harper's Ferry in that direction if you arrive there late enough in the afternoon.
We dropped Amy+ back at her dorm and went on our way. This drive was almost uneventful. At least there were no accidents or major tie-ups along the way, although we did miss a turn in West Virginia and had to backtrack a few miles to the proper road.
Other than beautiful trees, we saw a few other things that we don't see every day - 
I saw a bald eagle flying overhead someplace along Rt 17 in Virginia the first day. I saw this huge bird with a broad white tail and wondered what it was. Then it turned in flight, and I could see it's white head. I've never seen a bald eagle in flight before, just an injured one being cared for at a zoo one time. We stopped to get something to eat at Fredericksburg, Virginia the first night, because we saw a sign for a shopping center, and thought surely they'd have a few restaurants or a food court of some kind. This shopping center was called Central Park, and we've never seen anything quite like it. It was more like a shopping city. Not like a center city shopping area, more like a city of nothing but strip shopping centers, big-box stores, and parking lots, divided by actual named roads. It seemed like it went on forever in every which direction! Obviously, we're used to much smaller shopping centers. We finally found a Panero's and ate there before trying to find our way out of the maze of shopping centers, back out to Rt 95 and on to Richmond. When we exited Rt 81 at Natural Bridge because of the traffic back-up, we hadn't driven far before we saw an odd rock formation in a field off to the side of the road. As we got closer, I could see that it looked an awful lot like Stonehenge. We stopped at that exit on our way home and Shorty was able to take a few pictures, including one of the sign which said "FoamHenge". When we got home, I looked it up online, and it seems that it's a full sized replica of Stonehenge, constructed from foam.
http://www.naturalbridgeva.com/foamhenge.html
It also seems that there are several "stonehenge" replicas in the US, some of them full size, some smaller, some actually work as clocks... and there's even one call "Carhenge", constructed of junked cars.
In case anyone is wondering, Natural Bridge isn't so much the name of a town, there really is a Natural Bridge there.
http://www.naturalbridgeva.com/bridge.html
Rt 11 is constructed on the bridge (so we drove over it twice on our trip), although you can't see it from the road, since they've erected big wooden fences in that area to prevent people from stopping on the bridge. They'd prefer that you pay for the privelege of seeing it from underneath.
We arrived home shortly before 6pm that night. Long day. In fact it was so long that it took me three days to get around to typing out this journal entry. 
Discuss this Journal entry [41]
Latest reply: Oct 27, 2004
Time Warp Weekend
Posted Oct 12, 2004
I went back to Radford for homecoming/Highland Festival weekend.
It's been over 30 years since I've spent the night in a dorm there. Funny, I don't remember it being so noisy at night. Then again, when I was a student there (back in the dark ages), it was an all girls school, and there were strictly enforced curfews.
It was fun though, and I thoroughly enjoyed the Highland Festival, although there was so much to see, so much to do, and so much going on at once that I wish they'd had a second or even a 3rd day, just so I could see everything.
So anyhow, after driving all day, I arrived there Poets evening, and parked in the lot in front of Amy+'s dorm - this was the parking lot which had already been closed a couple hours earlier in anticipation of all the vendors coming in to set up in that quad for the Highland Festival. I knew I wouldn't be there very long since Amy+ had been waiting to go get something to eat until I arrived so we could have dinner together, and even though I parked right across from the campus police station, they didn't immediately come out and set up a firing squad just because I drove past the do not enter sign, so apparently they aren't all that strict about it.
We went over to Christiansburg since there really isn't much
of anywhere to eat in Radford, and decided to eat at Applebees, which
was the one place that didn't seem to be too terribly crowded. She wanted the Chicken Fried Chicken because she claimed it was so good, but I looked over the menu for something made with flavor instead of grease and found a chicken dish marinated in lime juice and tequila, which was absolutely delicious. No, I couldn't taste any tequila, they probably put about a teaspoon of it in a gallon of marinade, and even if they used more than that, all the alcohol would have cooked off anyway. Anyhow, Amanda had a taste of my chicken and immediately decided she wished she'd ordered that instead. Next time maybe.
Then we headed back over to Radford, and it was already dark by the
time we arrived, so I called Grandma (Lord Scott's mom lives about 45 minutes away from Radford) and told her that I wasn't going to try to drive over the mountain at that hour, especially since I was tired after driving all day already, and although I'd driven that mountain road maybe half a dozen times, I still wasn't familiar enough with it to be really comfortable driving it at night. So we started trying to decide where I was going to spend the night in her dorm, since it was a sure bet that there would be no such thing as a motel room available with all that stuff going on there the next day. She'd expected her roommate to be gone for the night because she'd said earlier that she wasn't going to be back that night, but then at the last minute one of the roommate's boyfriends decided to drive down from Quantico because he suddenly had a 4 day pass, so when he showed up, that threw all the roommate's plans into limbo, and Amy+ had no idea if she was planning to come back that night or not. As it turned out, she showed up at 4:30 am. Amy+ had also asked Melissa if she'd mind if I stayed in her room on the futon, which she didn't mind, but she hadn't confirmed with Mel that I'd be staying there, and she wasn't able to get in touch with her to ask because she doesn't have a cell phone, and the guy she was out with had either turned his cell off or the battery had died. At any rate, Amy+ wasn't able to get in touch with anyone, and I hesitated to go up to Mel's room with no one there, and just make myself at home because I really didn't want her to trip over me on her way in during the night. I was going to send Amy+ up there, but another monkey wrench was thrown into the plans when Ddombrow (U55674) decided at the last minute to come down to visit for Highland Festival too. He was planning to start driving at midnight, arriving early in the morning, and said he'd call Amy+ when he arrived. On her room phone. Which would have meant I'd have to answer her phone and go find her in another part of the building at what we figured could be as early as 6 am. Not that I wouldn't be awake already, but that would have meant getting Amy awake enough to come downstairs to talk to him at that hour.
In the end, we ended up taking the doubled over king size foam mattress pad off Amy+'s bed and putting it on the floor between her bed and desk and I slept there because I can sleep almost anywhere. Although that hard floor was kind of hard on this old body in spite of the doubled over foam mattress pad. But I slept anyway, just not from the second my head hit the pillow straight through till morning. More like a half hour here and an hour there, in between changing positions to quiet the pain in my hips from lying on the floor while I tried to go back to sleep. There was the usual dormitory type noise, with random whooping and hollering, doors banging shut, that sort of thing in the middle of the night. I enjoyed this little nostalgic return to dorm life (although it's considerably wilder than it was when I was a student there), but if I do it again, I think I'll make sure I have an actual bed (or at least a mattress ) to sleep on first.
Highland Festival day itself was a lot of fun, even if very tiring, because we were essentially on our feet nearly the whole time. When Ddombrow and his friends got there, we walked downtown to watch the parade. Not that we couldn't have seen the parade from the campus, but I must say it was interesting listening to the small town chatter from the guy on the microphone at the reviewing stand, since he felt the need to welcome all the visiting dignitaries (for some reason he didn't mention my name, but I thought it best not to make a big deal out of it ) and thanking every business in downtown for letting them use their parking lots, not to mention the street itself. As parades go, this was really rinky-dink, amusing in a way, primarily because of how small-town it was. All the sororities and frats had "floats" although sometimes it was just a bunch of frat guys in the back of a beat up pickup truck who looked like they were still drunk from the night before, and sorority girls on a wagon chanting and clapping just like they did 30-some years ago. In fact a lot of these girls looked exactly like the girls who were in those particular sororities 30 years ago. Some things never change, it seems.
Let's see, what else did they have? Oh yeah, the EMTs drove through tossing candy to the kids and blasting their sirens, apparently hoping some kid would choke on a tootsie roll so they could charge the parents to rush them to the hospital.
Then of course there were the pipe and drum bands - apparently a lot of bagpipe bands make this highland festival and parade an important part of their annual calendar of events.
After the parade, we walked back up to the campus, and I do mean UP.
I haven't walked up that hill (which takes off at about a 45 degree angle) from downtown in over 30 years, but I'd spent a year building up my endurance by swimming 5 days a week and managed to make it up the hill without having a heart attack. 
Of course it helped that we were behind a lot of other old people walking up the hill too, which slowed down the pace a good bit. After we got past Muse dorm, I made Amy+ cross over to the campus and walk through the campus, which is the route I used to always take because if you stay on the street, the slope continues for a lot longer, the grade is much more gentle through the campus.
It was lunchtime, and we bravely (or foolishly, not sure which ) ate at in the dining hall which was actually very good, and by selecting my food carefully, I didn't even get sick from it. Not yet, anyway.
Then it was out to see the games and concerts, and wander
through the stands at the festival. The celtic rock group Enter the Hagis that Amy+ likes so much did two concerts, and we saw part of one and the entire second concert. There were only about 6 rows of chairs inside the tent, with people gathered all around. We couldn't find a place to sit for the first concert, and ended up standing right next to one of their screaming fans ("Haggisheads"), so it wasn't too long before between her screaming and being a little too close to their massive loudspeakers our ears were ringing and we just had to leave that immediate area, not that we couldn't still hear them as we wandered around the stands. They really are an excellent band - they're all quite obviously very accomplished musicians, not just some garage band that does the Celtic festival circut.
I loved all the celtic stuff they had, especially the clothes and the jewelry.
All in all, it was a fun day and really good to visit with Amy+, but extremely tiring because I'm not used to being on my feet all day long any more.
Drove home yesterday, another loooooooooong drive.... left grandma's about 8:30 am and didn't arrive home until about 4:30pm.
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Latest reply: Oct 12, 2004
o/~ **POP!!!** Goes the Sto-ove o/~
Posted Sep 20, 2004
And now it doesn't work at all.
I was in the middle of making dinner, when there was this sudden loud *POP* from the exhaust hood.
Normally, that wouldn't be that much cause for concern, at least as far as the stove itself is concerned, but ours just *had* to be different.
Most stoves are 30" wide and sit on the floor, ours is only 27" wide and is a "drop-in" style. It's also almost 40 years old, and this particular model has the range top controls in the hood.
Anyhow, after the loud **POP**, the burners didn't seem to want to heat at all. Even stranger than that, when you turned a burner on, the hood light would turn on instead. Turn the burner off, the hood light turned off. This is not good. Need a new stove. GE is the only company that makes these stupid 27" drop in stoves. Over the years since we've lived here, we've looked into having the lower cabinets moved over enough to fit in a standard 30" stove since we knew it was inevitable that the stove would need to be replaced eventually anyway, but that would throw everything else off in the kitchen, to the point where the light switch on that wall would end up being behind the refrigerator.
I don't think any appliance stores in this area actually have these stoves in stock, so it'll probably have to be ordered from the company, but I'll call around tomorrow to find out for sure. I'm just hoping that they can install one quickly, and I don't have to wait a couple weeks for it.
Oh and we'll also have to replace the vent hood, since it's obviously fried too.
If it isn't one thing, it's another - just had to have the dryer replaced this past week too, because when the repairman arrived and I'd explained to him what it was doing (or rather *not* doing), he immediately asked how much we wanted to spend on fixing it up, because it was at least 10 years old. We asked some questions, like how much in round figures it would cost to repair, and how much a new one would cost and quickly decided it would be best to just replace it.
With the stove, we're going to cut our losses and just have it replaced - I don't think stoves are expected to last this long, and the last thing we had replaced on it cost more than it was worth.
So, cooking is going to be *interesting* in the interim. I have the microwave, a Georgie, and crock pot, so it's not like we'll starve or anything like that, it'll just be a bit more difficult to figure out how to cook certain things... and there will be certain things I simply can't cook for a while.
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Latest reply: Sep 20, 2004
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