Monday, September 28, 2009

I'm Late For Important Dates.... Life :-)

I'm Late

I missed my brother-in-law's, Rich's, birthday on the 12th.... Happy Belated Birthday, Rich! I missed the wedding anniversary of my niece Marcy and her husband Ralph on the 21rst... Happy Belated Anniversary wishes to a wonderful couple. I missed my nephew Jared's birthday on the 24th.... Happy Belated Birthday, Jared! I'm early in wishing Tom, Frank's brother, a Happy Birthday tomorrow :-)... Happy Birthday Tom!

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Life.... :-)

We visited our daughter last week. We left on Saturday the 19th and stayed at F. D. Roosevelt State Park that night. It came down a heavy downpour right as we neared the park. Fortunately it was only a light rain during setup of our travel trailer.... leveling, hooking up water and electricity. We managed to get in a walk and a shower between rain showers. It rained hard most of the night.

Sunday morning the rain let up and we were able to break camp and head towards Woodstock Georgia where our daughter lives. We were in more rain showers. It was misting rain when we set up the trailer at Victoria Campground, Allatoona Lake, Georgia. It rained hard most of Sunday night.

Monday we decided to go visit Sonja and not bring her back to camp being there was so much rain. We called her to tell her that we were on our way. She told us bad news... her dog Otis, a Boston Terrier, had died that morning and she needed to make arrangements. Sonja had Otis since he was a few weeks old, he turned eleven people years last April.

We picked Sonja up and took her to Arby's for lunch. Not that she felt much like eating, but it got her away from her apartment for a while. It poured rain while we were in Arby's. We stayed there for over an hour because of the rain. Then we went into Wal Mart.... it was still raining. We walked around for a while and left... it was still raining.

By now there are reports of a lot of flooding. We asked Sonja the best way to get back to the campground without having to cross a flooded area. She told us and we took that route back to camp. A tree had fallen over the road, but it was quickly cleared away. It rained hard most of Monday night.

Tuesday we stayed in camp. It was cloudy most of the day. One of the campground host said it had rain seventeen and a half inches of rain at the campground... but we don't know how many days that covered. We think three.

Part of the campground was flooded. This picnic table eventually went out of sight into the water.

Victoria Campground, Allatoona Lake, Georgia


This camp site is under water. The road I was standing on eventually had water over it.


Victoria Campground, Allatoona Lake, Georgia

Some of the interstates and main highways were closed at one time. There were deaths. This was a flood much like what we had here in Albany in 1994... they call them 500 year floods. It takes a while to heal from such flooding.

Tuesday was mostly cloudy. Wednesday it started clearing. We brought Sonja back to the camp site and had a nice visit.

Thursday and Friday we visited more. There were reports that heavy rain might come again by Saturday evening. We decided to come home a day early. Just in case major highways were to be closed again.

Our timing was awful for this trip. We were on edge a lot. We did enjoy our visit with Sonja and her boyfriend, Bryan... and their dog, Houdini. I'll show you pictures of Houdini another time.

Sonja still has not found employment. Could you please keep her in your prayers.

I'll try reading your blogs over the next few days.
blogsig

Friday, September 18, 2009

A Little Disaster - Farm Town - Birthday

Just checking in.... it will probably be a couple of weeks before I post again. I will visit your blogs as I get a chance.

Last week our pecan tree looked like it does in the photo below. Frank had talked to the extension agency about its health. The man called on Monday... I think... and told Frank the tree had dogwood borers and told him some steps to help possibly save the tree.


(click on photo for larger view)


On Wednesday we went to the Commissary and bought groceries and stopped by Captain D's for take-out. When we came home we discovered one of the limbs had broken off from the tree. Sorry no photos of the mess it made... which was huge. Frank's sister and sister-in-law are too quick to clean messes up... just kidding :-)

Our plans after lunch were to go to see Mama. She lives about 35 miles away from us. We decided to go anyway. On the way we stopped by Frank's folk's to look for one our chainsaws.... not there. So we went to Frank's brother's home in hopes our nephew was still there to find the chainsaw. Good luck... it was there! So off to Mama's for a while.... there was road work on hwy 82, so we had to a pig trail detour for a bit.

Mama is having a hard time with her back and neck, but is a trooper in handling it all. She has a doctor that is working with her with the pain.

We got home around six in the evening and we discovered Frank's sister and her sister-in-law cutting the tree limb up. They had brought their tractor over. It was a good idea for it made the work a lot easier.

Below are pictures after the clean up. The limb that broke off is larger than the one that is left. It had more branches too.






(click on photo for larger view)

If you go back to the first picture.... the limb landed on the fence to the right of the photo. A couple of sections will have to be replaced. We're grateful that there was not worse damage.

This is where it broke off from.
(click on photo for larger view)
The tree will have to be cut down for sure now.


* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I have gotten hooked on Farm Town at Facebook. I blame it on my old classmate, Virginia :-) I think she is at the highest level of the game. I need more neighbors... anyone want to be my neighbor? I'll be away from Facebook a while too... but we can be neighbors when I return :-D

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Tomorrow is my brother Zane's birthday.... So Happy Birthday Zane!



Love you!

blogsig

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Catching Up and another Recipe

I have been busy cleaning the kitchen this morning. I gave the counter tops a good cleaning, cleaned the toaster real good... amazing where the crumbs hide... cleaned the kitchen door and ran the Perfect Sweep over the floor. I bought it for the travel trailer, but found out that I really like to use in between vacuuming.

We hope to visit our daughter, Sonja soon. So the trailer needs to be restocked. Frank and out went out to the travel trailer this morning and made our list of what we need to put in the trailer and what we need to buy for the trip.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
I have worked on my project of learning Paint.Net. I have only played with the features it comes with. It is compatible with many Photo Shop filters. I have never played with that program's filters even though my Microsoft Digital Image Pro program is compatible with them. I really think Paint.Net will be easier to learn than Photo Shop. I tried the trial version of Photo Shop and the learning curve was way above me... I like things simple :-) I can see that Paint.Net has a lot of possiblities for graphics and editing photos.

My next project is to clean my table.... a table that I use as a desk. Doing so requires working on other projects, so it will take me a while.

I decided to put up another one of my recipes. I made my chicken and rice casserole yesterday, but didn't think to take a picture. I don't think I can get a half-eaten casserole to look pretty :-) Leftovers for today. Just follow this link: Zaroga's Chicken and Rice Casserole for the recipe.

I hope to read some of your blogs later today.

blogsig