Terrapin Station

Meme of the Hour (Oddly familiar meme?)

I'm tagged for this meme by Mid-Life Rookie, so here goes:

Rules: The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about himself or herself. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Ten years ago: 1998?  I was just meeting Ken.  Three weeks after I met him, I took him and Brandon to visit my parents in Florida.  We stopped off in New Orleans on the way home.  Life was sweet.  (Awwwww.)

Five things on today's "to do" list: Laundry, scheduling for next week when I will be out of town, work on an online class/orientation for the summer, go to library, Jazzercise.

Things I'd do if I was a billionaire: Tithe.  Make sure my parents have enough money so they don't have to choose which medications to buy each month.  Pay the taxes.  Investigate charities to feed people who do not have food, and invest in ones that do it properly (large portion of the money goes here).  Pay the bills.  Put aside college money for the kids.  Pay someone to remodel our kitchen.  Hire someone to do HR for Ken's company, and buy Ken a fancy-butt Cadillac CTS so he can sit around on the job site and watch other people do the hot, hard, dirty work. Buy a beach house and use it. 

Three bad habits: procrastination, eating ice, driving offensively (not defensively) - I learned to drive in the big mean city. 

Five places I've lived: All in Texas.  Houston (1 place, 18 years!), Bryan/College Station (3 places), Denton (4 places)...that's all!  :)

Five jobs I've had: Silk flower store clerk, library clerk, international educator...many positions over 21 years!, VP of parking lot striping company, stepmamma.

Five people I'm tagging:

Rev.Dr.Kate

Cathy

Widening Circles

MomPriest

Mom (mine!)

Oh, the birds? in my recent posts?

Several folks have complimented the bird photos...as if they thought I took them.  uh, no.  The good ones all have notations that are "copyright someone" in the corner.  I have found almost all of these on the Cornell ornithology website, and I can't recommend it to you enough.  Go look at the Nest Cams!  Coolness!

As I've mentioned, the photos represent birds I see in my thinking place, where I stop to pray on the way home from Jazzercise in the mornings.  Here is a picture of the thinking place (which I really did take myself, with my cell phone!)

Weekend Report

Went to Mertzon and San Angelo this weekend for some family time.  I spent Friday night with Nancy and Scooter and kids...yesterday was N&S's 19th anniversary.  Hard to believe it has been all that long since THE WEDDING OF THE CENTURY with ALL THAT BIG EIGHTIES HAIR!  And Saxon's 12th birthday is on Friday 23rd, and Brandon's 19th birthday, also. 

We had a relaxing evening and morning hanging out with many of their animals.  The rest of the weekend I spent with Mom and Dad and went to church...went to Academy for new shoes...woohoo...went to doctors with Mom.  Oh, we also candled all the adults' ears.  :)  Yes, we are maniacs. 

I also got to go to a special assembly at the Irion County School on Monday morning honoring the kids in K-3 who had received awards for reading, math, PE, and other kinds of improvement and Spencer (2nd grade) won several awards.  It was a real cute program run by Nancy's 5th graders.  That night was the program for 4th - 6th graders and Mallory won awards and Saxon won a Gold Medal for reading!  More AR points than anyone else.  :)  That's my boy.

This new Typepad thing is fancy but it sure does type and back up SLOW.  I'm getting aggravated here!

All for now!

The Alto Line

Last week at choir rehearsal we ran through some hymns for the upcoming Trinity Sunday.  I knew I wouldn't be there, because I'd be at my parents' church visiting them.  But I felt fairly certain that "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty!" would be there, too.  To many it is an old chestnut, but I love, love, love it.

As we started to sing Wednesday night, I realized that what I wanted to sing (and wanted it BADLY) was the ALTO line.  That's where the interest and the movement is in that hymn.  Of course, I'm a soprano, so that didn't work; I was sitting with soprani! 

But as it started for the processional at Good Shepherd Anglican church on Sunday, there I was singing alto.  Probably the only person in the place doing so. 

Ask and ye shall receive!

As a child I used to listen to my grandfather's 1912 Edison Victrola, which had a recording of "Holy, Holy Holy."  We would often follow it with "The Lost Chord" and "K-K-K-Katy."  Great memories.

Friday Five: Grand Tours

Over at RevGals, Songbird says:  One of our original ring members, jo(e), wrote yesterday about a trip she and her sisters are taking overseas with their parents, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Many other RevGals are headed for the Festival of Homiletics in the coming week (click here for information on a RevGals meetup!!). In honor of these upcoming trips, herewith your Grand Tour Friday Five.

Name five places that fall into the following categories:

1) Favorite Destination -- someplace you've visited once or often and would gladly go again:  As I have said many times in this space:  St. Teresa Beach, in NorthFlorida. 

2) Unfavorite Destination -- someplace you wish you had never been (and why):  don't mind if I don't get to Los Angeles again.

3) Fantasy Destination -- someplace to visit if cost and/or time did not matter:  New Zealand.  We have friends there and have been invited many times...but the time and $ have prevented us from going.

4) Fictional Destination -- someplace from a book or movie or other art or media form you would love to visit, although it exists only in imagination:  Narnia.  No question.

5) Funny Destination -- the funniest place name you've ever visited or want to visit.  How about Sopchoppy?  A Seminole name for a place not far from my Florida beach...my parents used to get their mail there.  There is a potter there whom I love dearly; he lives and works in the middle of the Apalachicola National Forest.  One of the local seafood dealers has a portable sign out by the road reading:

$hrimp, Crab, Mullet
Je$u$ i$ Lord!!

Bonus:  This is my grand tour for this weekend:

View Larger Map

Birds in the Thinking Place today

Here is the Blue Heron:

and the cattle egret (there were at least two dozen of these, huddled together):

plus others I can't name

working on it...

And a donkey shall lead them

Just one of me

so many of you

still you let me walk alongside

I am glad for the company.

We are all the same,

and somehow not

I am very much bigger

louder when I talk

I only want

to walk in the middle

one day to be a part of

to blend in with the group.

(the 18th Poetry Party from Abbey of the Arts)

Gratitude List

• Friend and valued colleague who took me out for a soda this afternoon, when it was becoming clear (to me anyway) that I was about to have a hissy fit
• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Going to see my mom and dad, sister and her kiddos this weekend
• Search for my new boss is over and decided
• Cooler weather following the rain
• Jazzercise
• Birds in the thinking place
• List to cross off "things done" and then say, "yeah me!"
• Choir rehearsal tonight.  We are working on Handel's "Zadok the Priest"
• Domestic goddess came today!

Birds in the Thinking Place

Went to the thinking place by the pond this morning.  It was starting to rain, but the birds were flying around busily over the trees.  Catching bugs, I would guess. 

When I was little, my mother told me that if the birds were calling during a rainstorm, it meant the rain was not going to let up any time soon...that the birds knew it and knew they had to get out and get their food, and that it wouldn't do for them to wait. 

I listened and what I heard was that I need to do some work first, and take some rest afterward.  Okay, got it:  Not all the work...not all the rest.  Went home, cleaned out one shelf of the laundry room. 

As Brandon would say:  Boo Ya. 

Pentecost Shoes

We are encouraged to wear red for Pentecost, but I am in a choir robe, no hats allowed there.  So I thought I'd go with red shoes. 

If I was going to buy red shoes, I wanted to buy something I'd wear again. 

So I wore these with my black suit.  Classy, no?