GRACE UNCENSORED

saturday at two p.m.

this is the time that amy said we’re going to chicago.  she and mom and i are going up today and we’re going to visit aunt sandy and have a belated birthday celebration for her and we’re going to see a musical tonight and we’re going to the art institute tomorrow.  and at some point we’re going shopping.

ironically, this weekend kevin is at home and i’m the one leaving.  he’s been gone every weekend thus far in june.  but because we biked so long on thursday and then yesterday he was making lots of bullets, his hands started spasming.  so, not good.  he decided to stay home instead of going to a civil war shooting competition.

hopefully he’s going to relax this weekend.  this morning we had a lovely and relaxing boat ride but this was followed by an hour and a half of weed cutting/pulling down by the dock.  it looks a lot better now, but like i said, hopefully kevin will now just TAKE IT EASY.

i’ve realized this is the one thing he’s not so good at.

i’m glad amy hasn’t showed up ready to go yet, because i’ve suddenly decided that i must have a pair of bike pants and i’ve been furiously looking them up online but i think i’m kind of screwed about this because even if i find some, i’m sure they wouldn’t fit and i’d have to exchange them and i’m RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

when we went biking in austria i wore these form-fitting black stretchy warm bike pants.  they were warm and all but i DO NOT WANT ANY MORE FORM-FITTING TIGHT BIKE PANTS.  plus they look even worse because they’re worn over the tight bike pants, so there’s always a line in the middle of my thighs and the whole effect is not so attractive.

i thought i’d solved the problem a few weeks ago; i found a nice pair of capri pants on sale at penney’s and decided they’d be perfect.

but then last night we went to muni and by the end i felt CHILLY.  i knew this was insane, and when we got back to the car, sure enough, it was 74 degrees.  NOT CHILLY.  but since it’s been in the 90’s and obscenely humid, my perspective is all out of whack.

but last night i realized MY CAPRIS WILL BE TOO COLD, because the low in scotland is definitely going to be in the 50’s and we’ll be biking starting out in the morning and it won’t heat up much, only to the 60’s.

SO I NEED SOME KIND OF BIKE PANTS and one problem is that most of them are FORM-FITTING.

i wished i’d taken care of this sooner.  but maybe we’ll find something in chicago.

i’d better pack up my computer now because i know amy is going to be calling any minute and i must be….

NOW SHE’S CALLING.  GOODBYE.

no, wrong, it wasn’t amy.  kevin answered the phone for me.

whew.  now i can get ready in a more leisurely fashion.  unless i decide to spend a few more moments searching for pants that i’m not exactly sure what i’m really looking for.

ok ok ok,

saturday grace.

p.s. my goal for the day is not to give myself a concussion.  i smacked my forehead into two things already today and i have a big welt on my forehead.  so i’m trying to be more careful now.

oh, and here’s a picture of kevin and mollie on the boat.  it was a very hot day yet mollie felt she had to keep kevin warm and spent the entire trip on his lap.

TOO HOT TO EVEN THINK

i just checked weather.com and it says it’s 91 degrees but feels like NINETY NINE.

so we’ve been biking this week, in preparation for our trip.  this morning we didn’t leave till 8:58 a.m.  it was already very humid and sweltering.  yesterday we went all the way to pawnee (23 miles round trip) and today kevin thought we should go to lake sangchris.  he was fairly certain about how to get there.

we got on east lake drive and we came to a road and i said, should we turn onto this, and he said sure.  and we biked and biked and once were were out in the country there was very little shade.  we finally got to route 29, just south of rochester, and we didn’t know which way to go.

luckily i had my phone with me.  i called amy, but i know she was busy outside gardening.  so i called christine.  christine is always there for me.

i told her where we were and that we were trying to get to lake sangchris.  she google-mapped it and gave us directions and we headed down the road.

and then she called again - she’d had the time to look up the lake sangchris website, and we were heading in the wrong direction.  no worries, though, we hadn’t gone that far.  we headed back and down yet another country road.

yesterday there was a gravel truck spreading new gravel on the road to pawnee.  it suck riding in gravel.  today when we got on the right road to lake sangchris, it was gravel.  it seems that many of the country roads are covered with a layer of gravel, and much of it looks like fresh gravel.

i’m getting less freaked out about riding on gravel, but i still don’t like it.

we rode…and rode…and rode some more.  we finally got to the place where christine said to turn to get to the lake and i had been whining quite a lot at that point and now i realize i was a lot like the chubby russell in “up,” one of the best movies i’ve ever seen.  kevin said “do you want to go back?’  we could have taken new city road away from the lake but i said, no, let’s keep going.  or maybe i didn’t even say it, but kevin turned towards the lake anyway.

and we rode and we rode and we rode some more, and finally saw a little of the lake, and then a bigger part of it, and we stopped at the very first place you could stop.  there was a picnic bench with a couple sitting on it and i was so tired that i wasn’t even the slightest bit curious about what their earnest conversation was about, or if it really was even earnest.

kevin took this picture of me, to prove that i’m not just making it all up.  i can’t believe i’m smiling.

i sent the picture to christine, who i had to call again to see if there was a faster route back home.  we’d gone almost 17 miles to get to the lake, but we knew we’d ridden out of our way.  she said she’d work on it and call me back, and kevin and i rested, but not long enough.  they didn’t even have a drinking fountain, and my water in my bottle was quite warm by that time.

i took a photos of kevin.  it needs to replace the photo i have of him on my caller id on my phone; i was furiously deleting photos yesterday and deleted his photo by mistake.

Christine called back and told us a better route and we started off…and when we passed the “Lake sangchris” sign, kevin suggested that we stop and take another picture.  ANOTHER PICTURE!??? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND??? LET’S JUST KEEP GOING SO WE GET HOME SOMETIME TODAY!!!

that’s what i was thinking way back in the very back of my brain, anyway - the thought wasn’t even able to fully develop in my overheated skull, much less come out of my mouth.  so we stopped and parked the bikes and kevin took one more picture.

we stopped at the group camp office and got some water.  it was so fabulous to be in the air-conditioned office that i just wanted to stay there all day, but we had to keep moving.

and so we rode…and rode…and kept riding…and finally came to the road where christine said to turn.  ROAD CLOSED said the sign.  we tried it anyway, figuring, how bad could it be?

we rode over gravel, up and down hills, and the farther we went the more i thought THERE’S NO WAY I’M GOING TO TURN BACK.

we finally got to a shady part, and we kept going…and then the road did stop.  up ahead was a high wall of bushes.  clearly they didn’t want anybody going anywhere.

luckily there was a short berm over on the side, and kevin climbed over it and said it was ok and we carried the bikes over and through a little grassy place and there was the road again.

so we rode &rode&rode some more and by now it was VERY VERY VERY hot, and i kept thinking that i was NOT GOING TO MAKE IT.

but we did.  we came home and jumped in the lake, which actually was only refreshing pretty far down.  up near the surface it was more like very warm bath water.  we rode for a total of 3 hours, 40 minutes, and 28.9 miles.  our ride home was only 12 miles thanks to christine.

and now i’m sitting here in the air conditioning and things are very, very good.  all the animals are lying around sleeping and it’s tempting to join them instead of starting in on all the things that i needed to do earlier today.

ok then,

thursday grace.

monday evening…

and things are winding right down.  hmm, a nice cold glass of white wine would be perfect right now.  since we don’t have any, i guess i’ll have to settle for a diet rasberry drink.  not quite the same…

so, the civil war ball on saturday night - we had already driven to jacksonville saturday afternoon, then we drove home so i could gather together my dress and so amy could fix my hair.  she created a fabulous and beautiful up-do.

i borrowed the dress from my friend pam brown.  she had bought the dress and HADN’T EVEN WORN IT YET.  so how nice is that, letting me borrow a never-worn dress??!!  really really nice.  she suggested that i buy a headband and some flowers and create my own flower headpiece, and i thought that was a great idea.

i bought roses.  big roses.  and i put them on a headband and it looked…well, see for yourself.

yes, RIDICULOUS.  very very funny.  when i finished it i had to laugh, and i wore it over to show amy and she also laughed and then we were talking about other things and she said “i can’t take you seriously when you’re wearing that thing on your head.”

maybe it can be the start of a fabulous halloween costume.  i don’t know who i’d be exactly, except for a crazy lady wearing giant white roses on her head.

amy instead put a few small flowers in my up-do and i wish i had a close-up of it because it turned out great.

and the dress is beautiful.  here’s me and my dashing soldier outside the ball.

doesn’t the dress look LONG?  it was actually a little bit too long and i did my best to not trip on it while dancing.  but such a beautiful shade of blue.  i brought the dress with me and had to change in the locker room at the swimming pool next door.  the floor was very icky and it was quite a trick to not let the dress or the hoop touch the floor.  luckily mom and sandy both helped me get into the thing.

the dance itself was…interesting.  by the time we got there the second set had started.  a woman gave all the ladies a dance card when we arrived, and i saw that the other ladies wore them over their wrists, so i did the same.

it was in some pavillion at a park in jacksonville, and there was a nice wooden floor.  kevin had to put tape on the bottoms of his shoes because he had metal…things…on the bottom and they would scuff the floor.  he sounds like he’s always tap-dancing when he walks around in the broughans.

there was a pretty good crowd there, and most of the people who were dancing were dressed in period attire, or at least kind of.  it was definitely a curious hodgepodge of all kinds of dresses and people and it seems that many of the people who do this sort of thing, well, they look just a little…different.  some of the older women looked like their dresses were pretty accurate, and some of the dresses looked homemade, and some wore those cotton day dresses which aren’t fancy at all, just big.  and the men - there were a few in military uniform, some in slacks, a couple in jeans.  there was one really crazy looking guy in a tuxedo with a top hat.  literally crazy-looking.

the band consisted of a woman fiddle player who was 6′ 3″ (dad struck up a conversation with her and of course found out how tall she was) and a guy playing a banjo.  they were good, and they had microphones, but they weren’t nearly loud enough, so it was odd to dance to such soft music.

they served refreshments - lemonade and water and the WORST COOKIES I’VE EVER HAD.  how can you screw up cookies so bad?  tastless snicker doodles, bland chocolate chip cookies, horrid oatmeal cookies.  blegh.

but we weren’t there for the cookies.  but cookies are very important to me.

anyway, the first dance we did was really just a long walk.  we lined up outside on the porch and marched in to the room as the music played, and made a big circle on the floor and came back around and hooked hands with another couple so we were walking four abreast, then eight.  but it was really just a lot of walking.

we did a few partner dances, but the group dances were the most unusual for me.  in one we had to dance with another couple, just a couple of turns with a different partner and then back to your partner and then we moved on to another couple. after doing it a couple of times, we got it.

but many of the people just couldn’t get the swing of it.  we did it over and over and over, so much that it started to get a little tiresome, but some people never figured it out.  maybe that’s why we did it so many times.  one time our other couple were these teenagers; he wore a white t-shirt with black printing on it, and she wore a long cotton dress.  they looked incredibly uncomfortable and awkward, and i don’t kow if it was because they couldn’t figure out the dance, because they had to briefly dance with someone else, or maybe if they weren’t a couple at all and he’d just asked her to dance and they were really shy.

at one point we danced with two little kids, and they were better than many of the other dancers.

during the break the tall fiddle player went outside for a smoke and we talked to mom and dad and my friend sandy, who were all watching.  they said it was highly entertaining to watch the different dancers.

this is a pretty good shot of the hair.  sandy took this picture; it wasn’t easy to get any good pictures using a digital camera with all the moving people.

there’s the fiddle player in the lower left - the microphone is awfully far away from her.

at one point when we came around, we stopped in front of mom so she could get a picture.

and that’s all the civil war excitement for this evening.  i must go look for cold white wine now.

ok then,

everything is good on monday grace.

civil war all the time…

ok,  not ALL the time…but a lot.

i was personally involved in it this weekend.

but here’s a couple photos from when kevin did the living history encampment down at the old state capitol.  there weren’t gobs of guys from the 114th there, but kevin did spend the night right on the grounds.

right there where just last summer i waited for hours and hours in the blistering heat to hear obama speak…

the good part about the event at the old state capitol is that i got to go visit kevin.  we went to augie’s for dinner, and there were plenty of other reenactors eating there, too.  afterwards there was a ball out on washington street, with a good-sized civil war band playing.  quite a few spectators joined in the group dances and it did look kind of fun, and kevin kept saying “let’s join in,” and he finally said “ok, here we go,” so it didn’t seem i really had a choice in the matter.

and it was pretty fun except i felt a little bit silly in my short skirt and my purse draped over my shoulder.  but because of this, i said that maybe i’d like to go to the big ball they were going to have at the reenactment in jacksonville…

but first, there was last weekend’s reenactment at bryce’s crossing down in mississippi, where it rained most of the time.  not only was there rain and gale-force wind, but it seems to me that the southerners were showing prejudice against the north.  the southern encampment was located conveniently near the battlefield, but they still got rides on trailers back to their camp a half mile away.  kevin’s group had to walk three miles back to their camp.

they gave the union green, wet firewood making it almost impossible to start a fire.  the confederates’ firewood was dry and well-seasoned.  ice was supposed to be delivered every morning at 10 o’clock…but that’s when the south got it.  the northerners didn’t get theirs till 2:30 or three in the afternoon.  in the sweltering heat.

there were other things, too, that seemed ridiculous to me.  don’t they know THEY LOST?  or maybe because they know it, they’re still mad.  and maybe that’s why there were 4,500 rebels and only 45 union soldiers.  nobody in kevin’s group said they’d go back again because of their poor treatment, plus the general lack of organization.

this weekend, though, was in lovely jacksonville IL. Kevin went over on saturday morning and we went to see the battle take place in the afternoon and it was VERY VERY HOT.  and we weren’t running around a sunny field in wool uniforms.

we kept saying “where’s kevin?” but it was hard to spot him because they all kind of looked alike.  the union guys, anyway.  i finally found him, and i zoomed in on this photo.

he’s there on the far right, loading his musket.  it was very smokey as you can see, and very loud with the cannons going off as well as all the shots being fired.  the calvalry was racing back and forth on the field, too.

here’s a shot of the caution tape that enclosed the battle.  people brought their lawn chairs to sit and watch.  a few people brought their dogs, and one poor dog kept barking and barking and trying to run away, clearly frightened of the noise, but they people didn’t take him away.  bad people.

here are some of the many horses tied up during the day.

i have photos of the ball that night which we attended but i literally must walk out of the door right now.  more later,

ok then,

grace in a hurry.

sunday morning!

for se reason i have LOTS AND LOTS OF ENERGY this morning.  i got up and went for a FAST run and i’m going to be some major BUSH TRIMMING with the electric trimmers.

i was going to do that yesterday but i had one mike’s hard lemonade at linda castor’s birthday party at noon (HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, LINDA!!!), and i went home and had to take a nap instead and decided that working with a power tool capable of chopping off any appendage wouldn’t be such a good idea.

it has been raining and raining a lot there in mississippi, which doesn’t sound like so much fun.  kevin keeps calling and saying that they’re going to be leaving right now, but then they don’t.  there are only eight union soldiers left, so it seems that now is the time to depart.

he said most of the 4,500 confederates left after the battle yesterday because they won, and the scheduled battle for today was one that the union was supposed to win.  so it seems that they’re kind of bad sports about it.  jim said that the unionists should follow the confederates home and continue the battle there…

i have to eat delicious pancakes that my sister has been slaving over now.

ok then,

sunday morning grace.

almost eleven p.m. on thursday night!

i realized it had been a long time since i’d written anything on here, so this morningi i sat down at kevin’s computer and started to write something but then i had to rush away so there’s a title dangling there on that computer, and i should shut that computer off anyway because he’s gone till sunday and what if lightning strikes it and then it’s MY FAULT that his computer got lightning-bolted.

right after he left this morning, headed for mississippi for yet another civil war activity, i was out on the deck trying to prop up this light pole with two big plant hangers hanging off of it, and the twistie thing i was using to attach the pole to the deck suddenly snapped and the pole fell again and at that very moment winston the cat was MEOWING at me like crazy and i looked up and there he was on the roof.

how did he get up there? and why?  amy, who was next door furiously planting and re-potting her plants, said he’d been on the ground only moments prior to that, so he wasn’t chased up a tree by anybody…maybe he just felt like being up high.

but he was clearly blaming me for him being up there, and he wanted me to do something about it RIGHT NOW.

so i got the big ladder that was next to the garage and propped it up and carefully climbed up and winnie DID NOT WANT TO BE PICKED UP but he also WANTED TO BE OFF THE ROOF RIGHT NOW, so i scooped him up and very VERY carefully climbed down the ladder with the giant cat in one hand and the other hand clutching the ladder and somehow we both made it safely to the ground.

that’s all the pet animal incidents i’ve had thus far, but since this one happened only 15 minutes after kevin left i was kind of leery about how the day would go.

it went fine except it’s now after 11 and i wish i was lying in bed right now.

last night i helped kevin make 200 bullets.  not quite 200 - he had already made about 50 of them.  not actual bullets, but blanks, for the battles he’d be fighting in mississippi.

the battle of brice’s crossroads, and the battle of tupulo, both of which the confederates won, even though they were outnumbered.  they weren’t grossly outnumbered, though, not like the union reenactors.

there are 43 union reenactors at the event.  and FORTY FIVE HUNDRED confederates.

somebody should tell the confederates that THEIR SIDE LOST.

also kevin doesn’t think i should have any worries that maybe one of these confederates might shoot a real bullet instead of a dummy.

so they’re not crazy?  hmm, it’s just hard to believe that with that many guys dressed up as confederate soldiers AND THEY LOST THE ACTUAL CIVIL WAR running around with guns, that one of them wouldn’t be crazy.

but i’m hoping they’re not.

their first battle reenactment is at FOUR A.M. TOMORROW.

oh boy.

how will they reenact in the dark?

making blank bullets is a little bit time-consuming, and since kevin waited till last night to make most of them, i felt that he really really needed some help.  it involves wrapping a piece of paper around a dowel, and then crimping the end, tearing off a one-half sheet of toilet paper and folding it over and over again and wadding it up in a ball and stuffing it down the tube you’ve created, and then pouring black powder over that and then pressing the open end shut and folding it down and stuffing it in on itself and creating this little origami creation…

i should have a video so you can see what i mean.

but hopefully i won’t be assisting with the making of 150 more bullets anytime soon.

kevin also makes actual, real bullets using lead he got from a guy who works at a place that does roofing and so they have lots of leftover lead from roofs.

time-consuming.

i will make no bullets this weekend.

this was all just going to be a preface to what i actually wanted to write about right now, but now it’s too late and i’m too tired and i can’t exactly remember the critical thing i wanted to write anyway which leads me to believe that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t all that critical after all.

tomorrow is going to also be busy.  followed by a busy saturday.

i also had many important things to write in the middle of the night last night, but i didn’t have the energy to actually get out of bed to write.  i could have the computer right next to the bed, and since kevin is gone i could have the computer right there on the bed, but then mollie wouldn’t have enough room to sleep.

she needs lots of room to spread out.

i’m going to sleep now.

tomorrow, i hear, is friday.

ok then,

mrs. grace hughes.

for randy, who is barely coherent very now and very woozy…

…and not for a fun reason, but because he just had outpatient surgery today and i talked to him earlier this evening but then he called me back just now and wasn’t sure if we’d talked and i assured him we had plus i once again said AND YOU’RE ALIVE!  bcause when is operated on, he feels that he is going to die.

i can’t say how i’d feel about being operated on, because i never have been.  i don’t think i’d care for it so much.

here’s a picture of randy on a happier day, out on the boat with the dogs.  randy always brings them treats, and so they ALWAYS WANT THE TREATS from randy.

yes, we’ve finally gone out on the newly-refurbished boat, and it’s mighty fine.  that photo plus these other were all taken with my new cell phone.  i love the quality of the photos that the phone takes, and didn’t even know how good they were till tonight when i finally managed to send them to my e-mail.

the clouds were spectacular on another evening.

this cloud was so cool that amy called me from her cell phone driving home from work to tell me about it.  but by that time i’d already documented it on the boat.  you know, i think maybe the cell phone takes better pictures than the digital camera.  maybe it’s time for a new camera (THIS IS NOT A HINT TO KEVIN IN ANY WAY.)  sometimes if i even mention something like that in passing, BOOM, there is a new one.

the only problem with the camera phone is that it doesn’t zoom.  i haven’t been able to make it zoom, anyway, but i haven’t actually read the instructions.

this is rather historic because mollie and shadow were actually touching.  mollie is trying to avoid the whole thing, though.

here’s last night, the first night of the tomb ceremony this season.  i got another one of the guys in the 114th to take our picture but kevin looks blurry.  i’m wearing one of my new “flight of the conchords” t-shirts that kevin gave me for my birthday.  my hair is in braids which amy says is copying off of her, but actually i think there’s a photo over there on the scrolling photos of my with my hair in braids when i was little, so really, she is copying off me.

my hair was in braids because we started the day with a 21-mile bike ride.  mom joined us for the last hour of it.  it was a good ride, and we’re very happy because it’s one exercise that doesn’t cause kevin knee pain.  as opposed to walking, running, and fencing.

after the bike ride we took yet another motorcycle ride.  this time we had to go pick up kevin’s car in litchfield which was there because it broke down after he went to his shooting event last weekend.  he had also ordered a new motorcycle battery in litchfield, so we drove the motorcycle down to litchfield to pick up the car and get the battery.

we stopped at wayne’s house and he drove on his motorcycle with us.  it was a nice day, but hot.  and of course on a motorcycle it was INCREDIBLY VERY VERY RIDICULOUSLY WINDY and once again i was pretty sure that my NECK WAS GOING TO SNAP OFF and my glasses were DEFINITELY GOING TO FALL OFF.

we took back roads to litchfield, instead of going 70 mph on the highway.  it’s about a 45-minute ride on the highway.

at first i thought I DON’T THINK I CAN DO THIS.  THEY COULD DROP ME OFF HERE IN A FIELD AND I COULD JUST REST TILL THEY GET BACK.

but of course then there would be nobody to drive the car back to spfld.  so i thought YOU CAN DO THIS GRACE, YOU BIG WIMP.  at least i figured that all i had to do was get to litchfield; after that i was free of the motorcycle.

i know that somehow it must be fun and exhilirating and liberating and all of that, but i’m not there yet.  it wasn’t so bad if we were going 40-50, and it was fun to drive through all the little towns (even though we never stopped at any dairy queens)…but once we hit 60, i thought OK I’VE HAD ENOUGH.

also motorcycles seem to definitely be for people who prefer silence instead of talking.  and who don’t care about having a drink of something or anything while riding.

this trip took an hour and 20 minutes.  almost twice as long as the highway.  early on i realized it was going to be much slower and thought about suggesting that we get on the highway but then i thought I REALLY CAN’T BEAR THE THOUGHT OF THAT.

we finally got to carlinville, and then over to litchfield, and stopped at the car dealership to pick up the car…and there were bugs on my sunglasses.  at least they didn’t fall off.  it felt like there were things all over my face, but then i realized that it was tingling.  kevin assured me that it was supposed to feel like that, and he thought it was kind of cool.

hmm.  at least it wasn’t bugs all over my face.

we picked up the car, i followed him to the motorcycle shop, and kevin replaced his battery.  i staggered around and was very warm and tired and i sat down on the curb and took a picture of him at work in the hot sun.  i would have gotten closer but i had no energy.

and then i took this art photo.

then we went to ruby tuesdays and had the most delicious bison burgers i’ve ever eaten.  this probably has something to do with the fact that i had been starving since 12:30, and it was now 3:00.

wayne didn’t join us for lunch because he was going to a baseball game.  he also said it might rain.  by the time we left the restaurant it had started to rain and thunder and we went back to the motorcycle shop and the woman there looked it up on her computer and there was a big storm rolling in.

so we left the motorcycle there in litchfield and kevin drove us home in the rain.

this morning we again headed to litchfield in the car to pick up the cycle even though it was raining.  but no thunder or lightning.

we took the dogs with us, and here’s an incredibly cute photo of shadow in his car seat/seatbelt apparatus that amy and jim bought for him a long time ago.

so yesterday was very very busy with cycles and motorcycles and cars and shooting civil was rifles and stuff like that.

oh yeah, and here’s a couple photos of the tomb ceremony.  last summer (kevin’s first summer of doing this), the tomb was under construction, and now it’s much better. this is the large number of people milling around but there were many more by the time it started even though it was rainy and cold.

ok then, BOY that’s a lot of different photos…

mrs. grace hughes.

JUNE!

every time i’m able to actually change the banner up there, i’m SO HAPPY because somehow by some miracle i managed to upload the new banner and put it in the right folders and IT’S THERE!

very exciting, and it’s only the 2nd of june.  my goal is to have a new banner every month.  i finished creating this one a while ago, and i noticed that i’ve even almost completed the one for next month.

it’s nice to know that i’m ahead of myself in at least something in my life.

randy told me YOU NEED TO PUT MORE PHOTOS OF YOU ON YOUR SITE.  instead of all the photos of kevin.  ok, i’ll try.  but i’m not out doing things that people don’t usually see, like doing civil war shooting contests.

i should have had somebody take a picture of me power-washing the deck.  have i mentioned that I LOVE THE POWER WASHER?  dad left it here.  i was just flipping through one of kevin’s thousands of catalogs that are laying around, and i noticed there was a whole page of power washers.  they ranged in price from just over three hundred bucks to about $1,400.  that would be some very very serious power-washing.

ok then, we’re off on a big bike ride now,

very productive tuesday morning grace.

ok, just one more thing on saturday morning…

i actually had two burning questions, not one, but now i can only think of the one.

this is what i’ve been pondering - a couple of weeks ago, the space shuttle atlantis landed, after fixing the hubble.  they were waiting around for a couple of days to touch down in florida, but the weather continued to be bad so they finally gave up and instead went to california to land.

so, how did they get there?  jim thought that the shuttle would have to orbit the earth, that it couldn’t just fly over to california like a plane, which makes sense.  but in the paper the general impression i got was that the shuttle was hovering somewhere over florida, and then somehow was able to shoot over to california.  however they got there, i wonder how long it took.

does anybody out there know how they did all this?  i suppose i could look it up online and maybe i’d find the answer, but surely SOMEBODY can tell me.

that is all for now unless i remember the second question.

ok then,

grace hughes.

saturday morning…

and the only reason i finally got out of bed is because i was lying there thinking about the INFINITE AMOUNT OF THINGS that need to be done around here.

well, also, the dogs had to be fed.  although the dogs and the cat were thoroughly enjoying sleeping next to me in bed, and would have kept doing so for quite a while i’m sure.

because i have EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD to do, i thought the first thing would be to post a few photos.

in order to avoid all that other stuff.

here are a few photos kevin took while at the national shooting competition in virginia.  this first one is their campsite.  i wish he’d taken a few more camp photos, since there were 3,000 people there, but at least there’s this one.  he did take a photo of some of the incredibly fancy and expensive motor homes that people came in.

but the 114th slept in tents.

luckily the tent kevin slept in didn’t leak.  there was lots of leaking going on, apparently, in other tents.  it rained a lot there, of course, since this is the spring of rain.

it looks like it’s going to rain right now, as a matter of fact.  this means there are quite a few things i won’t be able to do this morning because they involve being outside.  a good excuse to not move too fast.

this is my favorite photo.  isn’t it amazing, all that smoke?  pretty to look at, but i wonder if it’d make your throat burn.

kevin would know the answer to that, but he’s at a cowboy shooting competition right this very moment.

i like this photo, too.  imagine how incredibly muddy it’d be.  luckily kevin has some big rain boots.  doesn’t it look like that guy in the yellow shirt on the left is talking on a cell phone?  not very authentic.

they all had to wear those big tags on the backs of their hats or trousers to identify themselves, so random crazy people wouldn’t wander onto the range and try to start shooting.  but wouldn’t people have quickly spotted an interloper?  unless it was a cleverly disguised interloper.

in one of the team competitions kevin was farmed out to another team - of confederates.  i didn’t think too highly of this, but i guess in this battle the union and confederates peacefully shot, without any actual shooting of each other.  a refreshing change from the actual civil war.  much more civilized.

kevin’s friend wayne said that if he was going to do one of these shoots, he’d want to be on the confederate side because that’s where his roots are.

“but they lost,” i pointed out.  he didn’t seem to care.

ok, i’ve had a up of strong lapsang souchong tea and am hopefully able to face the day.

many things to do, but the first thing is to go to the farmer’s market which sounds lovely, and then to the library, also a great place.  the only problem being that i have to change out of my jammies.

the jammy top looks like a t-shirt, it’s a MUTTS ensemble, but that combined with my mutts jammy bottoms looks too much like…jammies.

ok ok ok already,

saturday morning grace.

p.s. i think there are some good photos of the twinkly outdoor party lights in the camera, but after all this typing and photo work, i must take a computer break right now.  more later.  maybe.  definitely some time later, but i can’t say when.  not that you’re sitting around waiting for me to post something else.