Terrapin Station

Friday Five: What to do...

As posted by Kathrynzj at RevGalBlogPals:

Greetings from the land of the Big To-Do!

It seems like every year I enter into the summer with a growing list of HUGE projects/events/trips that seem to have a permanent place on the 'to do' list.
This year I have a huge move pending so that takes up an entire list all on its own, but it doesn't take a big event like that for me to make plans bigger than my summer can hold!
How about you?

Is this the third summer in a row you have made a pledge involving your garage and actually getting a car into it?
Did you once again miss the registration deadline for the continuing education event of your dreams ?
Are you starting to think you couldn't even find the tents, let alone get it together to pull off a camping trip?

Here is your chance to get it out into the open and OWN your Big To-Do! Who knows? Maybe making the list will help you move the Big To-Do to the Big Ta-Da!

Thanks, Kathryn!  I just love this timely Five.  And that I am home with some time to do it. 

1) What home fix-it project is on your Big To-Do?  Fix up the side yard again so we can cook out and spend time there.  In former years we did some grilling, outdoor dining, and hot tubbing in summer months.  Then the man came who was going to build us a waterfall (AKA Teh Big Faker).  He made a huge mess and ran off without finishing.  Ken knows how to do what he wants to do out there, himself, and this is the year we do it and get back outside.  "Stay-Cation."

2) What event (fun or work) is on your Big To-Do?  Not sure yet.  We were supposed to go to England for the Big Fancy Church Choir Tour but thanks to the economy and other factors, we are not going now.    :(  So I've told him we must plan something equally fabulous (????)  in place of that trip.  

Work-related, I do know that I'm going to Atlanta in late July (I know...sucky timing) to repeat the training that I've just started out with.  I'm excited about doing the training, the curriculum rocks! and about the venue for this...it looks beautiful. 

3) What trip is on your Big To-Do?  This weekend we are headed elsewhere in Texas to pick up a Lees-ure Lite trailer.  It's lightly used (recycling!) and should be fun.  We will camp on the way home...hope it's not TOO hot for that already...we will find out! 

4) What do you wish was on someone ELSE's (partner, family member, celebrity, etc...) Big To-Do?   Well, I guess I answered this in #1, because that's his project.  But he needs to get excited about it or it won't get done. 

5) Getting inspired?  What's on your list? 

• I'm planning to continue my "back to Jazzercise ways" and I have paid for a month of Personal Touch classes in June. This will be in addition to regular class attendance. I love me some Jazzercise, in case I haven't told you lately.

• Also have realized that I have to paint (or tile or something) the kitchen stove backsplash (thanks to a smoky, scorchy incident a few weeks ago with turning on the wrong electric burner and cooking/melting an angel food cake in a plastic container. Yuck.

• And the bathroom is going to have to be done. The tiles are Fifties Pepto Pink and when we moved in we painted it a lighter pink, but I'm ready for a change!! Any color suggestions to go with what's there? I'd love to use a pale green but Ken says that reminds him of a hospital...

• and OMG then there's the hall which has NEVER been painted and still has the pickled pine paneling (AUGH!).

• I will be painting all summer!

Baby steps, baby steps.  I'll start with the backsplash! 

As posted by Kathrynzj at RevGalBlogPals:

Greetings from the land of the Big To-Do!

It seems like every year I enter into the summer with a growing list of HUGE projects/events/trips that seem to have a permanent place on the 'to do' list.
This year I have a huge move pending so that takes up an entire list all on its own, but it doesn't take a big event like that for me to make plans bigger than my summer can hold!
How about you?

Is this the third summer in a row you have made a pledge involving your garage and actually getting a car into it?
Did you once again miss the registration deadline for the continuing education event of your dreams ?
Are you starting to think you couldn't even find the tents, let alone get it together to pull off a camping trip?

Here is your chance to get it out into the open and OWN your Big To-Do! Who knows? Maybe making the list will help you move the Big To-Do to the Big Ta-Da!

Thanks, Kathryn!  I just love this timely Five.  And that I am home with some time to do it. 

1) What home fix-it project is on your Big To-Do?  Fix up the side yard again so we can cook out and spend time there.  In former years we did some grilling, outdoor dining, and hot tubbing in summer months.  Then the man came who was going to build us a waterfall (AKA Teh Big Faker).  He made a huge mess and ran off without finishing.  Ken knows how to do what he wants to do out there, himself, and this is the year we do it and get back outside.  "Stay-Cation."

2) What event (fun or work) is on your Big To-Do?  Not sure yet.  We were supposed to go to England for the Big Fancy Church Choir Tour but thanks to the economy and other factors, we are not going now.    :(  So I've told him we must plan something equally fabulous (????)  in place of that trip.  

Work-related, I do know that I'm going to Atlanta in late July (I know...sucky timing) to repeat the training that I've just started out with.  I'm excited about doing the training, the curriculum rocks! and about the venue for this...it looks beautiful. 

3) What trip is on your Big To-Do?  This weekend we are headed elsewhere in Texas to pick up a Lees-ure Lite trailer.  It's lightly used (recycling!) and should be fun.  We will camp on the way home...hope it's not TOO hot for that already...we will find out! 

4) What do you wish was on someone ELSE's (partner, family member, celebrity, etc...) Big To-Do?   Well, I guess I answered this in #1, because that's his project.  But he needs to get excited about it or it won't get done. 

5) Getting inspired?  What's on your list? 

I'm planning to continue my "back to Jazzercise ways" and I have paid for a month of Personal Touch classes in June. This will be in addition to regular class attendance. I love me some Jazzercise, in case I haven't told you lately.

Seen in LA: Library Love

 

Your library-loving lady here! 

Here's the tower of the 1926 LA Central Library.  Gorgeous and visible from my hotel.  Entirely dwarfed by the skyscrapers around it but beautiful. 

As we walked down 5th street to dinner one night, we passed the north entry, with carvings by one Lee Lawrie and an inscription on the facade (which, the Web tells me, is taken from Richard de Bury's aspostrophe to books in the Philobiblion):

Books alone are liberal and free; they give to all who ask; they emancipate all who serve them faithfully.

We did not see the West entry, which bears another grand inscription:

In the world of affairs we live in our own age; in books we live in all ages.

I adore that I can observe things like this and then go back and review them...get the quotes...via the Web.  Oh, and tell YOU about them!

Teh Ugh

It's 4:30 am here.  My plane from ABQ to DAL developed a mechanical problem so I spent a long time in the Albuquerque airport yesterday evening and didn't get to Love Field till the wee hours.   I kept debating on paying for a spot of T-Mobile WIFI so I could blog, but instead reviewed conference material, ate Mexican food, read and slept. 

I'll see you all tomorrow...much later tomorrow, I hope!

More from LA LA Land

I finished my portion of the training this am.  Went well I think and done with that until July when I present again at Emory U. 

Have turned up a very painful kink in my shoulder.  In the interest of paying attention to what my body tells me, I eschewed the evening's festivities for a massage / sauna / steam room combo at the hotel spa.  Now I'm waiting on room service dinner.  So very luxurious, seems like I should feel guilty for it but I just won't.  It still hurts, by the way, and I'm covered with Ben Gay to boot. 

So sad to be in CA today with the CA Supreme Court upholding Prop. 8.  

The sleepy now...more later.

In the City of the Angels

I'm here, 2 days into the 2.5 day workshop I'm teaching in...and then the conference starts.  Very annoyed that my university computer does not work at all...such a first world problem.  An expensve piece of weight training equipment to carry...This one costs $7.95 for 15 mins.  Egads!

LA Marathon was run this a.m. which caused some interesting wrinkles for our folks.  All was sorted out in the end.  I saw from hotel window a group skipping in the Marathon.  LOL!

Weather is gorgeous, between 50 and 75 daily.  Room is shaped like a piece of pie & very small!  Meeting with long time friends and good meals, looking forward to good sessions and meetings.  Having dinner tonight with my nephew Brad who is good enough to come get me...getting away from here is proving to be a problem, with schedule really packed.

So long...

Friday Five: Vacation, All I Ever Wanted!

As posted by me at RGBP: 

I'm showing my age...this was an anthem of my high school years. Wanna hear it? Give this link a try.

While you're bopping along to that (or perhaps holding your ears...?), let's think about VACATIONS! I certainly am!

1) What did your family do for vacations when you were a child? Or did you have stay-cations at home?  Every year (EVERY YEAR!) we went to North Florida for two weeks.  My grandparents had a beach house on a private beach called St. Teresa.  My great-grandfather had a house there, too, and I had relatives all up and down the beach.  I've written about it here before.  Let me give you a picture of it right now, from the St. Teresa Cam: 

 

Le sigh.  I won't get there this year but some of my family will.  I'll experience it vicariously though them and their pictures...right guys?!

I grew up in Houston, so the Texas Gulf Coast is my other home beach. 

2) Tell us about your favorite vacation ever:  Hmm.  I think it was the time that Ken and I went to an all-inclusive place in Cozumel...and after a few days got we restless & rented a car (don't tell anyone, I INSIST that my students never ever drive in Mexico, but Ken, I cannot tell him what to do!) and went out on our own...snorkeled at a gorgeous state park...visited the "other" side of the island, full of glorious natural beauty...it was bliss.  Then we went back to the all-inclusive and had dinner prepared for us, all the drinks we wanted at the swim-up bar, etc. 

3) What do you do for a one-day or afternoon getaway...is there a place nearby that you escape to on a Saturday afternoon/other day off?  There is a little park called North Lakes near my house where I go to listen to birds or walk the dogs. 

With a longer time (full day) I would drive north to Lake Ray Roberts and take myself and the dogs swimming at the Isle du Bois State Park sandy beach.  (I don't like to swim in lakes, in the main...they seem muddy and dirty to me after nice clean white sand beaches!!)  But this area has a lovely sand beach built in, and it's a great little place to relax and pretend there's an ocean within reasonable proximity. 

4) What's your best recommendation for a full-on vacation near you...what would you suggest to someone coming to your area? (Near - may be defined any way you wish!) .  I would send you to Galveston, one of the gutsiest towns I know.  As you probably know, a third of its population was destroyed in the hurricane of 1900. 

Then after Hurricane Ike, it was really devastated again.  While tourism is starting to come back...it has a long, long way to go.  There are still great old Victorian homes, the Strand district on the north side of the island, beach houses to rent, and camping and eating places.  The city needs your support. 

In the picture below you can see the Flagship Hotel out over the water...it is now so badly damaged that it is uninhabitable and will have to be destroyed. 

5) What's your DREAM VACATION?  A house somewhere on the beach, where I can sit and read as long as I like, and walk to the beach when I feel like it.  Maybe some fishing, easy cooking, get up and do it again tomorrow. 

Bonus: Any particularly awful vacation stories that you just have to tell? ("We'll laugh about this later..." maybe that time is now!)

Ken and Brandon and I were on a trip about 6 years ago that started with a business piece for me in Cuernavaca.  Then we took a bus to Acapulco.  Brandon LOOOOVED that place, but too touristy for Ken and me.  Also, Ken got VERY sick with a bug.  That was bad. 

Then we took another bus to Zihuatanejo, so Brandon could try to learn to surf.  Our hotel was glorious...a little mom-and-pop motel right on the bay, with a deck that had hammocks slung below it and a man to bring you drinks whenever you wanted.  But Brandon wanted to GO!  SURFING!  So we somehow got to a really remote beach and Ken proceeded to almost drown twice.  OMG, it was terrible.  He was still weak from the first illness and never should have gone in that water, there was an awful riptide. 

I ended up changing our air tickets and flying us home from Acapulco, rather than Cuernavaca as planned.  I had to wheel him through the airport in a wheelchair; he was too weak to walk. 

Yeah.  I was glad when that one was over.  Phew. 

Here's an extra bonus:  We are thinking about getting a little camper to pull behind the motorcycle.  Check this out!  Watch the video, it's way cool. 

Here are some things I have to say

I was raised to expect to lead a joyous life.  If you don't want to play that game, then we probably won't hang out together a lot.

I am finding my voice.  I am finding my bottom line.  I'll let you know when all that gets set up.  Check in with me. 

I can't go clothes shopping at inexpensive places, because all the clothes there are totally trendiferous and I hate them.  Wild polyester prints?  Empire waists?  Sorry, I remember the 70's all by myself, and I don't need a clothing style suited for a pregnant person or a 9 year old. 

I believe in newspapers.  As in, that they exist, and also that I like to read and subscribe to them, and think they are important.

I don't know how to use my IPod properly.  Or I guess really ITunes.  I can't figure out how to get things into playlists.  I've got a "dummies" book from the library, maybe that will help. 

Next person that throws a cigarette butt out of their car window ahead of me at a stoplight?  I am going to get out and pick it up and say, "I think you dropped this," and hand it back to them. 

Turn Beauty Inside Out Day

What is beauty?  How can you find it inside and outside yourself?

Check out this little Wiki-how for a start...

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Seen in the univ bookstore when I stopped over there yesterday.  (I saw a real paperback book, not the Kindle version...but Amazon seems to be a little sleepish today.)

I did not buy it; I'm not amused by zombies.  But my son, who will be 20 on Saturday, IS.  Do you suppose this book would be any good if you hadn't read P&P?  Which I feel confident that he has not...

It begins thus: 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.  Never was this truth more plain than during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead.

Who do you suppose makes up this stuff?  or, said a nicer way,

O, brave new world, that has such people in't!

Update

I just got an email saying it was about time I updated my blog.  My public speaks!!!

Well then.

It's a busy time at work...getting all the students and their programs ready to go out.  Next weekend I head to LA for my professional organization's annual conference.  I'll be teaching in a 3-day seminar and having LOTS of meetings and oh, going to sessions.  And, by golly, I'm going to get to the beach at some point. 

I hurt my knee, sort of twisted it, in late February.  I still have twinges in it, especially when exercising, and have been worried that I'm going to injure it further - and I don't want that.  I'm way into taking care of what I've got. 

So I've been to my GP and an orthopod, and yesterday I had an MRI.  Won't get results until June 1, but no big mystery:  orthopod thinks I have a tear in meniscus and says (if it is) that it won't get worse but it won't get better without arthroscopic surgery.  I say, yeah, maybe.  As long as I'm not hurting anything by going on with it as is, surgery can wait.  He did say no arthritic changes in the knee (based on X-ray).  That's great news! 

Then today I came home at lunch time and fell down on the sidewalk, busting my knee.  Yeah, that same one.  Great.  Sports injuries (does this count?) need RICE, right....Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.  So I've had it elevated and iced, and have been resting all afternoon.  No compression except that provided by Boudreaux:

 

In this lovely photo, with a backdrop of my open and messy closet, you see my knee on the right, propped up on a pillow with an ice bag, and the B-Dog on the left.  He stayed right there for at least 30 minutes, which is most uncommon for him.  He never comes and lies on us this way.  He seemed to know something was not right.  My sweetie. 

Hmm, what else...doing a lot of research for one sister...making evil plans that involve another sister and her family...Barbara, don't feel left out; I'll cook up something for you soon! 

Hope you are all well.  I'm off to eat a little dinner here.