Family, friends, fall back, finished and finally

Charlottesville, VA
Monday October 21 to Monday November 4, 2013

 

 

This past week, I’ve been hanging out with Jane.

 

 

One of the things I’ve been doing while we have been here for our month is a lot of reading.  In my previous life I was a marathon reader, 100+ books a year.  Prior to coming back to Virginia, I’d read a grand total of 13 books since January 1st of this year.   So even before I returned to my beloved  library, I had gotten on  line and reserved some things I’d seen or heard about and that were new enough not to be in the campground book swaps.  

One I read, rather late in my stay, was Among the Janeites which is a hoot for anyone who has read or likes Jane Austen.   These Janeites (NAJAS-North American Jane Austen Society) are fanatics of both the professional literary research type and the Austen as chic lit type.  What fun reading about their history and listening to them talk  about the characters as if they were real people, take group tours to visit all the Austen sites in  England, have Austen movie marathons, and dress in 18th Century ball attire for the annual conference ball.  Did you know that Bridget Jones Diary was a Pride and Prejudice redo?  And that there are many many redos and spin offs and even sci-fi and gothic Jane as well as Jane Austen mysteries.  It is just amazing.   It was great fun and propelled me back to read all of Jane Austen again.   I’m reading them in order and have gone through Sense & Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and am now on Mansfield Park which I may not finish before we leave.  Apparently I gave away my Jane Austen in the great purge so I’m headed over  to our Goodwill store to see if there happen to be any Austen books for sale cheap!  :-))

 

 

It’s been a  couple of heavy weeks of visiting.

 

 

As we are winding down our stay here in Charlottesville, I’ve been on a heavy social visitation schedule these past  two weeks.  I’ve been  out to lunch 3 times, to after work tea, and out for dinner 4 times.  All  in two weeks.   That’s a LOT of socializing for me.  But these are all my very best friends in Charlottesville  whom I don’t see often.  I have posted pictures of all these folks all in previous blogs  and it just seemed too stilted to take my camera along for our get togethers but David did get this picture of his sister and  her family by borrowing his nephew Justin’s iphone when we met them  for dinner.  They are such a fun bunch, smiling and laughing all  the time just like in this picture.  We were really sorry not to have seen Justin’s wife Carmen and their 2 and 8/9ths children. :-) 

So if you are reading Lynda, Pam, Laurie,Helen, Diane, Robin, Justin, Ashley, Ted and Lynne, it was really wonderful visiting with you.  Sure wish you would all visit with me at a wonderful warm spot in Florida this winter!   Not all at once of course!  :-)

 

 

What is this with Christmas before Halloween??

 

 

Of course Halloween happened this past week and Winnona was ready even though no trick or treaters came to her door.   I have been just amazed to see that the Christmas decorations and advertising were all over the stores  when we first came back in early October.  They don’t even wait until after Halloween anymore let alone after Thanksgiving.  It just makes me very angry this obvious money grubbing.  Next year will  the Christmas stuff be out before school begins in September??

 

 

My trigger thumb is still a problem. 

 

My doctor gave me a steroid shot for the pain and that really did take care of the pain and enabled me to move my thumb some but after two weeks, the upper joint was still popping in and out so he sent  me to The Hand Clinic.  There a therapist who was about 12 years old gave me this thumb brace, some exercises to do and told me if it wasn’t improved in 2 weeks of wearing this full time and then 2 more of wearing it only at night, then I needed to contact an orthopedist and surgery was probable.   In a month I’ll be in Florida so I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do.  But isn’t this a cute little piece of hand wear??  Try writing with your thumb totally straight out, no bending anything.  Even I don’t recognize my signature.

 

  

 

 

 

Of the big things on the list to be done here,  only two actually got finished.

 

 

Pantry walls and floors are all freshly painted.  Glad to have that all taken care  of.  At least that and polishing and waxing Winnona got FINISHED!

David was unable to fix the slide adjustment problem I posted about last time.  It appears the screw there was stripped. So we’re going to have  to find some HWH authorized facility on the road and pay them to do what should have been a very easy fix.  I looked at their on line list of certified repair places and there sure aren’t many and none in Virginia. 

We did get one of the MCD shades hung but it turns out that they sent the wrong size for the other one – OF COURSE – and so we have to go to the trouble of sending it back and having them send the correct one to us on the road  as well.   Why doesn’t anyone ever check their work?  These are custom shades.  I don’t know if they made it wrong in the first place or packed someone else’s in our box.  The size on the packing slip was right for both shades but one of the two was no where near what we ordered or what it said on the list. 

So two of the 3 things we wanted to take care of for Winnona while we are here, didn’t get done.  Such is life I guess but it does seem  to me that the quality of work being done in this country is decreasing pretty rapidly.

 

Some of the work on the farm drive has been completed so it is looking better but not finished.   After the wind storm this past Thursday most of the leaves are now on the ground so the height of color here is not as dramatic as usual

 

 

 

We’ve also had a lot of fog this week.  Foggy fall ridge colors as you drive into the farm’s hollow are very muted this year.  Wish I could find this same shot from  previous years when the colors were gorgeous, I know I’ve taken it but who knows where it is. :-)

 

 

 

 

And of course, my personal favorite, yesterday was FALL BACK

 

 

Most of you know how I feel about this so I won’t make you read through my semi annual rant about the nonsense.  If you haven’t read  any of them and are in need of a good rant, you can read one of them here and another by clicking this link. 

Suffice it to say – WHY DO WE DO THIS?  Our bodies suffer.  Who benefits? I don’t care which one we pick, standard or daylight let’s just stop this stupid flip flop.   If you have wisdom to impart, or even a guess, that might help me understand  why we continue this waste of time and money PLEASE let me know in the comments.

 

 

That’s it for this week and I’m all caught up, finally. 

 

This covering a week in a post thing works pretty well when you are busy doing chores and visiting rather than hiking, biking and kayaking.  Not sure how well it will work as we get back on the road. :-)

We’ll be heading out day after tomorrow, Wednesday morning, on our typical slow trip south.  We’re headed to Edisto Island South Carolina and then on to Hunting Island,  Cumberland Island National  Seashore, Anastasia and Sebastian Inlet State Parks  in Florida.  If there is anything you recommend we see there or on the way, let me know.