Happy Thanksgiving

or A Trip Down Memory Lane

For the last couple of weeks, the topic of what someone is doing for Thanksgiving has replaced the weather as the general conversation starter for friends and strangers alike. "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?" "Are you traveling for Thanksgiving?" "Are you cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving?" and so on.

The answers have been varied ranging from huge traditional dinners to a turkey breast alone with the parades on TV. All of this talk has me thinking about the different ways I have celebrated Thanksgiving in the past. Bear with me as I take a trip down memory lane.

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving always coincided with deer hunting season which was the week of Thanksgiving and the week after. My father would spend the week at a friend's house and they would hunt together, meaning he wasn't home for Thanksgiving. That also meant that we didn't have a big dinner until he came home on Sunday or sometimes not at all. And that was okay. In fact, it was relaxing and fun. We would have things like spaghetti and pizza, that were not favorites of my father's, and watch the parades and old movies on TV.  It was a chore free day, the best kind in my opinion when I was a kid (and maybe now).

The background of not always having a traditional Thanksgiving carried with me when I had my own kids. When they were little, we lived in Texas at least 1000 miles away from the closest relative. We often traveled at Christmas, so we stayed in Texas for Thanksgiving. We did a variety of things from spending the day with friends to having a traditional dinner at home dressed as Pilgrims and Indians. One year we went to a historic park and learned about local history, and for another we rented a hotel room downtown and watched a parade complete with big balloons. And sometimes we spent the day relaxing around the house eating pizza.  It was all good.

When we moved away from the Gulf Coast to the the east and became closer to relatives, we had more traditional Thanksgiving observances with extended family. The houses changed, but there was always a turkey dinner. While we enjoyed our times in Houston, having family around for these special times was wonderful.

Many of our recent years were spent sharing Thanksgiving with my parents. We took food to cook at their house-sometimes a big turkey dinner, sometimes not. During these visits, my sons helped their grandmother prepare her Christmas cards after the task became too cumbersome for her to do by herself. As time went on, they did more and more of the job, but they spent time with her and I know that was appreciated by all.

Which brings me to this year. Today, I will eating my third turkey of this season. An abundance of turkey wealth, you might say. Two weeks ago, Ward's family had a traditional Thanksgiving meal and gathering because some of his family are now traveling. Last week, Theo cooked a turkey because we found it in the freezer and decided it needed to be roasted before it got any older. We didn't have that one with all of the fixings, but he did make a traditional pot of turkey soup last night from the carcass. Today we will be spending the day with Aunt Martha, Uncle Billy and his side of the family with a big traditional dinner. We're bringing the pies.

So for Thanksgivings, past and present, and the families they bring together, I am thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!

Thankful Sunday, November 24, 2019

I am thankful that my children 

grew up to be good adults.

Wally and Theo were not easy children to raise. They were very active and always challenging the boundaries of their world both physically and mentally. The school had us on speed dial. The call would always start with something that they did that interrupted the flow of the classroom and end with that they were nice kids, trying soften the blow, I guess. Some teachers loved them because of the interesting way they approached problems and intellectual depth they brought to discussions and others didn't because of the way they approached problems and the intellectual depth they brought to discussions (too distracting for the teacher and other kids). None liked the extra activity they brought to the environment.

At home, they were very busy and it was nearly impossible to childproof the house. They were very stubborn about things they didn't want to do. They slept little and had a whole night life that we found evidence of the next morning. That worried us a lot, but we had to sleep sometime. Every time I got into a discussion with them, they led me down a path with careful questioning that I never saw coming.

Every child tries their parents. A lot. But others told us they couldn't believe the challenges these boys brought. So I surmised that our kids were more challenging than most.

Ward and I were exhausted for many years while trying to parent these boys. But eventually they grew up. Now both of them are kind, responsible, hardworking, calm adults. Something I wouldn't have believed possible during of their childhood years.

So for my children who matured into good adults, I am thankful.

Porch Building--Week Three

Week three of construction on the porch 

that is being built on the back of our house.  

I thought that I was going to have to show you the same pictures as last week because most of the time this past week, we were waiting for the concrete to cure. Which, by the way, is much like watching paint dry. However, the mason's crew are back at work and making visible progress. 

We have also been doing some behind the scenes work on trying to pick out things for other parts of the project. We have decided on a patio door design and it has been ordered. And after much debate, we have decided that two ceiling fans will suit the space best. We still have to order them after we finalize our design choice.

Here are a few pictures from this week.

The holes are getting 16" bases made from cemented cinder blocks. More concrete is being poured down the openings and dirt is being tamped around the piers.

On top of the base in the ground are 8' squares that will be faced with brick. They are not finished yet.

We are hoping we can get a brick that matches a little better than this one. We'll see.

We also had the trusses delivered for the roof. The truck driver who delivered them was very skilled. He backed easily into the drop off location with only about an inch to spare on either side of the gate opening that leads to the back driveway. There he slid the trusses onto the ground from the truck bed.

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday, November 17, 2019

I am thankful for Alan Turing.

biography.com

Alan Turing was a British mathematician, who is considered to be the father of computer science. He was leader of the team that cracked the supposedly unbreakable German Enigma code during World War II.  His concepts and prototype computing machine that broke the code was the beginning of our computer-filled world today.

So for Turing's brilliance that conceived the first computing machine, I am thankful.

Note:
There are many books on Alan Turing and the Bletchly Park code breaking effort during World War II. A quick Google or check of Amazon will give a list of many of them. Also, there is a movie based on Turing's life called the Imitation Game. It gives a fair picture of his life with cinematic license taken, of course.

Also, I realize that any invention always has several people involved or other people in another part of the world who may have been working on the same idea.

Porch Building--Week Two

Week two of construction on the porch 

that is being built on the back of our house.  

For those of you who are not interested in construction details, which can be tedious at times, you can keep up if you know that after demolition was completed last week, the project moved onto starting the foundation.

Now a few more details.

They started digging the holes for the footers. I was very impressed with the deep holes the mason's crew dug in the rocky soil with only hand tools - a digging bar, shovel and post hole digger. As you may remember, it took me forever to dig 6" deep holes to plant some tulip bulbs.

The porch will be supported by 6 piers. Here are the locations of half of them. The holes are approximately 32" x 32". Those next to the house are 6' deep reaching down to the original footers of the house foundation while the others go down to the frost depth 36". We weren't there to see the workers complete the holes, but it must have taken some special skill to excavate that 6' deep one. 

There were various wires and pipes they encountered while digging. Some of these things they had an idea of where they might be, but others were not known. How they were able to dig and not do any damage is another amazing thing to me. But all of our drains, water, and electricity still work, so all is good. 

A few days later, the inspector came and passed the foundation holes. We have a sticker on the back of our building permit that says we passed the first inspection and work can proceed.

The mason's crew came back the next day to put the concrete into the holes.

Now we wait for the concrete to cure, so the next part can begin.

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday, November 10, 2019

I am thankful for a walk in the woods.

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day. Frost in the morning with warming to the 40's in the afternoon. The perfect day for a walk in the woods. While visiting family, the opportunity presented itself for this walk and I gladly accepted. 

So for the quiet and calm walk I took yesterday in the woods, I am thankful.

And a little later...

Note:
There's a great book by Bill Bryson called A Walk in the Woods that chronicles his attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trail. The book is typical of Bryson who tells the story with humor and an occasional diversion into a lot of facts about a related subject. I have read it twice.

A couple of years ago, Robert Redford starred in a movie made based on the book which I didn't like as well as the book. The movie made a love story a main focus that was only a very small part of the book. I thought the interesting, fun part is his hiking partner and his foibles not to mention what it's like hiking for months on end.

Fotor.com update.

Fotor.com update.

Recently, I posted about the photo editor, fotor.com. Well, when I went back to use it this week, some of the features that were free before, were not available without a fotor watermark on the photo or were black when I tried to save them to another spot. All of this means that is not such a good deal (free) after all. I went ahead and signed up for a year's subscription at $3.33/ month. I guess that's not too bad of a cost, especially since it was late at night and I was trying to get a project done. 

Sorry that I steered you wrong. As I use it more, I'll update you on what I think.

________________________________________

I am thank for fotor.com.

When I first started blogging, I used the free photo editor Picasa. It worked great.  Besides basic edits, it made collages and blurred things out. Then Google bought Picasa and retired it. After that, I have been on a long search for a replacement. I had PicMonkey for a while, even bought the advanced version, but it was awkward to use and, in my opinion, wasn't worth the cost. Then the other day I found a free version of fotor.com. It's the standard set up. The program offers you basics and you can pay for more advanced features if you want. I was thrilled because with the free version, I found a way to blur out personal things in a photo so I can post it.

So for the free photo editing app, fotor.com, I am thankful.

I am also thankful for my cousins, some of which I saw at my recent family reunion. However because of fotor, you won't be able to see them very well. Just as I had planned. And for that, I am thankful.

And So It Begins

or We're Getting a New Porch

Since we bought our first house years ago, Ward has wanted a place to sit outside and listen to the rain. Let me rephrase that, Ward has wanted a place to sit outside and listen to the rain without getting wet. So when we determined that our 30 year old deck needed to be replaced for safety reasons, we decided it was finally time to get our porch with a roof. 

While we've had a lot of remodeling work done over the years, this is the first time that we are having new construction and I am going to chronicle the process here. 

This is the deck that came with our house. We might have just replaced some of the upper parts, but the posts underneath were rotting at the ground.

The first step was to work with an architect to draw up plans.  This was a multistage process with a dialog about what we wanted (a roof and easy maintenance) and what was possible within a reasonable budget. After we agreed on the plans, we sent them to 5 contractors asking for bids. We picked one and soon thereafter we had a signed contract. 

Next step was clearing the deck to get ready for the workers. Ward took out a section of railing so we could hand things over the side. One of the problems with the old deck was the very narrow ramp onto the deck. That is going away in the new design.

After they finally got the permit, next was the mobilization. They brought in the lumber,

A dumpster,

and a Port a John. Then I knew this was definitely bigger than any project we had been involved in before. We had a Port-a John on site! (BTW, they will empty it weekly or when we call.)

After mobilization, they started with demo day, of course. Now we're committed.

Next up will be the mason who will dig and install the masonry piers. Until next time...

Thankful Sunday, November 3, 2019

I am thankful for leftover Halloween Candy.

I have a sweet tooth. And therein lies the problem. As we all know, a steady diet of sweets is bad for us. Except around Halloween. :)

This Halloween was a bad weather day here. Rain all day, thunderstorms, tornado watches--not the best weather for little ones to go out Trick-or-Treating.  So while we had visits from some little ghosts and goblins, the numbers were down from other years resulting in leftover candy. I have enjoyed at least one piece of this leftover candy every day.  And each piece has been delicious.

So for the enjoyment of this extra Halloween candy, I am thankful. And for the fact that Ward and Theo are saving me from eating all of the candy at once, I am also thankful.