Sep. 29, 2007

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AUSTRIA AUSTRIA AUSTRIA [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:59 pm

i talked to chistine this week (that was quite a feat, since we haven’t talked in about...oh, a million years or so. no particular reason, we just haven’t), and she said PUT UP SOME MORE PICTURES OF AUSTRIA.

i really just want to nap right now. could it possibly still be jet lag? no way jose, is what i’m thinking. because we got back a WEEK ago. but last night i was happy to go to bed at 10, then up at seven, it’s not like i’m not getting enough sleep! we took a one-hour bike ride which seemed like nothing, and then i fenced a little. kevin didn’t fence because he has a BIG BITE OUT OF HIS EAR. i need to take a picture so you can see what it looks like. not nearly as bad as the day he got it operated on.

anyway, before i nap (YOU DON’T NEED A NAP, MRS. HUGHES!), here are a few more photos. this is still just our first day. our first day before lunch, as a matter of fact.

as i said, we started in passau, germany, which is on the border with austria. we hadn’t gotten far when we saw this sign.



the first time we stopped for a little longer, i think we’d been going for a whole hour, kevin photographed this statue as i took a video of it. the road you see is the road behind us. we biked next to the road for the first hour or so, but there wasn’t a lot of traffic. the path wasn’t actually on the road, but next to it. but now that i think about it, i think this might have been the most traffic we saw for most of the trip, except outside of Linz and Vienna.



not that we’ll get to linz or vienna photos for months and months. it’ll probably be xmas by the time we get to vienna. linz was just the second day...or was it the third...so you’ll probably see those photos soon.

this is the view across the river from the statue.



hmm, maybe after a while you’ll say “yeah yeah yeah another picture of the river and the quaint houses, YAWN.” but i love to look at the photos because it makes me remember just how beautiful and fun it all was.

maybe i already mentioned this, but we got a detailed book that was a map of both sides of the river. we also got a one-page description of the route, which the bike company in austria gave us. it listed the places where they thought we should cross the river, because one side can be more scenic than the other. i’m pretty sure it said to take a ferry over the river at the first crossing-point, but we decided to cross at a power plant with a bridge. it warned that there were LOTS OF STAIRS we’d have to climb.

we got to the bridge and even though there were lots of elderly german-speaking tourists there on a tour, kevin didn’t want to ask anybody to take our picture, so he propped the camera up on the wall. it came out pretty good, consideringt.



after we crossed the bridge there were, indeed MANY MANY STAIRS. actually, i guess there were stairs at both ends, so even though we’re smiling in the photo i must have already been VERY VERY TIRED. on the stairs almost everywhere, they have little tracks that run up them on the edges so you can push your bike up the path as you’re walking up the stairs.

THIS IS EXTREMELY TAXING, but better than no path at all.

going down the stairs on the other side was pretty bad too, but of course not AS bad.

when we got to the other side we decided to eat lunch in the little cafe that was there. the lone waiter spoke no english, and couldn’t tell us what any of the stuff was on the menu. we found that none of the words on the menus seemed to be in the two german phrasebooks we’d bought. because i guess it’s diferent in AUSTRIA than in germany, except they don’t sell AUSTRIAN language books.

i ordered something that potentially looked delicious, but it turned out to be a big piece of toast with chees, onions, and very undercooked bacon. i tried to scrape off the bacon and it was the only yucky meal i had in austria. kevin got a pizza, which of course he liked because pizza is his #1 favorite food.

the night before, in passau, we’d eaten at a very nice restaurant on the river and the food was quite good. big piles of austrian meat and noodles and stuff, and somehow we had a better sense of what things were there. sometimes we’d find places that had “english” versions of the menu, except there were always a few things that they just weren’t able to translate.

can i nap now? it’s a beautiful sunny day today and i should be outside washing the car or at least watering the flowers, but it’s actually kind of hot. in the 80’s. we just might have summer all year this year.

ok ok ok,

saturday grace.



Sep. 26, 2007

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surgery and other things... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:22 pm

first of all, mollie is in heaven. well, at the moment she’s sitting on the couch next to me, looking imploringly into my eyes, hoping for some treats. but last night it was mollie nirvana around here.

we had the family and randy, bev and erica over for dinner last night and showed them the first video of our trip. mollie was first very excited because of the nonstop barking opportunities as people showed up.

then, when she realized that food was forthcoming, she was even more excited, and got to run from person to person, looking up at each one with that very sad look of hers and of course people gave her food.

after they left i was putting away a leftover container of rice and it spilled all over the kitchen floor. all over the place, a huge mess. mollie leapt into gear, feverishly gobbling up each and every last little grain. incredible, she’s better than a vacuum.

we left the kitchen and when we returned a little while later, a bag of buns was lying on the kitchen floor. empty bag of buns. that had been half-full. mollie was furiously wagging her tail...and standing by the pantry door, begging for a treat.

because she was still hungry.

always has been, always will be.

ok, so the surgery part...before we went on vacation, kevin had a painful bump on his ear and the doctor wanted to operate on it right away, but couldn’t because we were going on vacation. “it could be cancer,” kevin informed me.

i did a good job of not thinking about this because of all the biking. but when we got back, it was suddenly surgery time.

we thought he was supposed to be at the hospital today at 10, and the surgery was going to be at 11:30. but no, the surgery was at 1. we spent a lot of time hanging out there at the hospital.

as the nurse wheeled him off to surgery, another woman - who was she, anyway? - told me that it would probably only take a half hour.

1:30 arrived. then 2. then 2:30, and i was worrying full-steam. i finally asked the lady at the desk to check on him and somebody on the phone told her that he was still in surgery. jesus, what were they doing, cutting the ear off altogether?

but no, she was wrong, he had just gotten out of surgery. all went well.

whew. another woman had been waiting there since 10. her husband was in surgery all that time. now she looked stressed out.

kevin looked good, he was perfectly lucid even though he’d been unconscious for a couple of hours.

he’s sleeping peacefully now, and i resisted the temptation to go to sleep at eight o'clock along with him.

here’s a photo of our first day of biking. this was wednesday the 12th, passau germany. We’d flown to frankfurt, then took another flight to vienna, then took the train to passau. we’d ride from passau to vienna and fly out of vienna.

the day started out rainy and cold, but we didn’t actually get on the bikes till 11:30 because one of kevin’s tires was soft, and when he tried to pump it up it deflated. the pump that came with the bike was very poor.



so when we finally started, the rain had stopped. we rode down the hill from our hotel to the path and saw the river for the first time. a woman was there taking a photo of her child, and we got her to take our picture. she said she’d spent time in the US, in houston. “hot, huh?” i asked her. i didn’t try to tell her about my friend christine who grew up in a little town called liberty, just outside of houston, because we needed to GET GOING.

here’s a good photo of the beginning of the river (the beginning of it for us, that is).



we crossed the bridge, which wasn’t so bad, but on the other side things were a little sketchy. we realized we had to go down a pretty steep hill, and we walked out bikes down. here’s me, saying, “what on earth am i doing here?”



the route out of passau was a little odd, as we went past people’s backyard gardens and on little bitty paths. but we kept seeing these green bike path signs and we followed them and eventually ended up out of town.

i can’t think of a time during the ride that the route wasn’t clearly marked. they have a great system there, and for most of the trip, we were on a dedicated bike path with no cars. except getting into bigger towns, we didn’t really see many cars, and not many bikes, either. i had bet that the huge amount of bikers that are on the trail in the summer would have dwindled, and i was right.

i have about 295 more pictures, but i probably won’t put each and every one of them up here. it’s after nine now, i’m going to wait until 10 and then go to sleep.

is it still jet lag?

ok then,

wednesday grace


Sep. 24, 2007

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back home again... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:09 pm
and here’s just one of the hundreds of photos from our trip.



beautiful. i started looking at all the photos kevin took, and it made me want to go right back.

i’m sort of in a jet lag fog, i think. i was kind of ok when we got back on saturday evening. we stayed up till about 9:30, and i slept till 8. kevin was up at four a.m.

but yesterday...he took a nap before going to work last night, and i decided a nap was a great idea. i laid down at six in the evening...and didn’t wake up till five this morning.

i got up and decided i NEED TO CLEAN THE HOUSE, so i did that for a while even though extremely groggy. MUST GET THINGS CLEAN AND ORGANIZED. i’d already unpacked yesterday, but we left the house in kind of a shambles when we left. it looks pretty good now.

after a couple hours of cleaning and watering the plants, kevin came home from work this morning and we sat around and then i went back to bed. two more hours. i think i’ve been asleep more hours in the past 24 hours than i’ve been awake. i’m feeling sort of normal ("normal," of course being very relative), which is good, because i have to give three massages this afternoon.

there are so many great photos of our trip...i want to put many of them up here right now, but i have to do a few more organizational-type things. mollie is suddenly barking her head off, which means that the mailman must be here, delivering a giant tub of mail from the past couple of weeks.

more later. but in the meantime, if you have any desire to take a bike trip, START PLANNING. it doesn’t really cost that much, and it’s really something worth saving your money to do.

except, of course, that we talked to a waiter one night during our trip and he said we were lucky - the week before, it was only 40 degrees and rained so much that people ALMOST DROWNED. whew. we could that on parts of the path they had only recently scraped the mud from the danube off the pavement.

ok then,

grace back home.


Sep. 14, 2007

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GUTEN MORGEN FROM LINZ!!! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:28 am

HELLO THERE! we’re alive and well and cycling like crazy. well, not at the moment - we got up and ate a lovely breakfast and we’re headed to the linz castle.

linz is very crowded, especially after yesterday when we stayed in a little place called Schlogen. the town consisted of the lovely hotel we stayed in, a marina and campground, and another hotel/bar.

the danube is SO BEAUTIFUL! we went about 25 miles the first day, a little farther i think yesterday, but it wasn’t bad at all, at least till we got to the outskirts of linz and rode along the bike path next to lots of traffic. getting into linz itself was tricky and so packed with people, mostly teens dressed in black, that we had to walk our bikes.

we have to go now. i just saw this computer sitting here in the hotel next to the table where we ate b'fast and was astounded that i could just type. it was easy, except on the keyboard the z and the y are interchanged.

the weather is beautiful, by the way. sunny and bright. tonight we’re going to the very nearby town of Enns, which looks like a very short ride.

ok ok ok, auf wiedersehn,

ich spreche keine Deutsch....

austrian grace


Sep. 10, 2007

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the basil be damned [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:12 am

i decided it’s still growing and will still be there to pick when we get back. whew, that took a load off my mind.

tired tired tired, that’s how i spent the weekend. the bike ride on saturday was good; we went about 29 miles. it was fun because we first rode to the rochester trail, then we rode back through town and stopped at fencing (and just watched the fencing) and then bought velcro rearview mirrors to take with us and then stopped at friends' house before heading home.

i made the pizzas and we didn’t go listen to/play any music, which was a good thing because there were way too many things planned for saturday. we ate pizza at amy and jim’s and then went to the “rockballet” which was really good. i stayed awake for the whole thing.

and then yesterday was the SPRINGFIELD CENTURY, with over 600 riders although we never saw that many people, especially on the ride. it was a good day for it, not too hot, and we went a little over 25 miles.

what if we’d gone the 40, 60, 80 or 100 miles? CRAZY. i can’t imagine riding 100 miles in one day.

“next year,” said kevin.

NOT NEXT YEAR.

“ok, maybe the year after that.”

I SINCERELY DOUBT IT AND WHY WOULD I WANT TO RIDE 100 MILES IN A DAY ANYWAY?

i was then pretty tired the rest of the day and kept saying HOW ARE WE GOING TO SEE ANY SIGHTS IN AUSTRIA AFTER DOING ALL THAT BIKING?

we’ll take long breaks on our bike rides, instead of just one or two. lots of time to take pictures and stop and eat.

i packed almost everything and now i’m pretty much ready to go.

except we bought an extra battery for my video camera and the extra battery doesn’t work! so i’m going to run out of battery power pretty quickly and i don’t have a converter for their electricity but maybe it’s not too late to find one before we leave...

i’m sure i’ll find a computer somewhere there in austria and i’ll sit down and write on it. they probably have stations set up on the bike trail.

yesterday on our bike ride a kid was biking down the trail in the opposite direction, chatting on his cell phone. i thought this was funny.

ok,

international grace.



Sep. 07, 2007

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i’m now counting down in earnest... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:08 pm

as the time seems to be shrinking all around me. we’re leaving in three days. i feel like i have many things to do before then.

i had an unexpectedly long and busy day working and got home very tired and very hungry because i didn’t eat lunch which is absolutely not like me in any way. we ate dinner and i calmed down a little from being frantic from hunger, and kevin gave me an anniversary present - it’s an exquisite diamond palm tree necklace. very very fancy. he said he wanted to give it to me now instead of waiting till we’re on our trip and the risk of it getting lost in the luggage.

what did i get him? NOTHING. i though the trip was going to be our gifts to each other.

he’s sleeping right now, so let’s see, what’s open at this time of night? walgreens...taco bell...wal mart. the anniversary gift possibilities are slightly limited. a soft taco and some peanuts and some random cheap plastic walmart crap probably wouldn’t cut it.

i’ve been so obsessing about the trip that i hadn’t even thought about ANNIVERSARY GIFTS.

whew.

it’s a dazzling necklace.

ok, so one really bad thing, i mean besides all the stil-at-large terrorists connected with potentially blowing up the frankfort airport WHERE WE WILL BE on sept. 11th - i read that there are seven more guys and at least they know where they are and hopefully they’re keeping good tabs on them - the really bad IMMINENT thing is that kevin is getting SICK.

last night he didn’t feel so great and tonight he’s not feeling so great and he JUST CAN’T GET SICK. this isn’t even a possibility that i’d thought about.

that, and an anniversary gift. because clearly i’m a very bad person.

but anyway, what are we going to do? he is going to get better. the thing is, that when he gets sick, he has the potential of getting pretty darn sick for quite a while.

maybe he’ll feel better tomorrow.

here’s one problem with tomorrow - we’re supposed to get up relatively early and take our 25-mile bike ride. and then go to fencing for an hour or so. and then he wants to go to somebody’s house where they’re going to have a guitar jam session. and then we’re going to mom and dad’s house and i’m making pizza for everybody and then we’re going to the “rockballet.”

and oh yeah, I HAVEN’T STARTED PACKING YET.

plus i have to make two pizzas.

and i know this is crazy, but i MUST PICK BASIL from my garden. i picked basil last week, tons and tons and tons of it. i froze it in ice cube trays, five of them, with water added. i read that you can do this, and it will be very close to having actual fresh basil.

now i have five ice cube trays worth. that’s quite a lot of basil. but i want to pick more because there’s still a LOT MORE out there. i’m going to freeze this batch in olive oil, to compare.

i will have enough frozen basil to last me a year at least.

is this really the best us of my time, is my central question here.

just like, why am i sitting here writing when i should be resting up for the very busy day ahead of me tomorrow?

if kevin still isn’t feeling so good, we won’t take our bike ride in the morning. then i could pick the basil. it’s not like i’m going to keel over from exhaustion on the bike trip if i haven’t practiced going 25 miles two days in a row.

by the way, he did tell me he thought i should keep all three pairs of black pants. so i am.

you can never have too many pairs of black pants.

i’m feeling really kind of crazy right now because i feel like i’m NOT READY TO GO AT ALL. hmm, this is not going to be good for falling asleep. MUST CALM DOWN RIGHT NOW.

i guess if i can’t fall asleep, i could make some pizza sauce.

here’s a photo of the necklace, even though when i tried to copy it, a message said SORRY, OUR IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHTED. but then it seemed to copy with no problem. it’s by a designer named roberto coin, who i’d never heard of before. because i haven’t ever gotten fancy jewels. there’s a tiny ruby embedded in the back of the tree, because he does this with all his jewelry because it’s supposed to be good luck.



here’s what it says about the ruby on the website:

............................................
THE STORY OF THE RUBY
An ancient Egyptian legend tells that a ruby touching a woman’s skin brings great happiness and good fortune. So it has become a trademark of Roberto Coin that each piece of jewelry has, set at a position closest to the skin of the wearer, a marquise ruby.

Throughout history the Burmese have inserted rubies under their skin so they would not be wounded in battle. It was believed that rubies had the power to ensure a peaceful life. On a spiritual level, rubies were believed to banish evil thoughts and reconcile disputes. Considered the “Lord of gems” in many countries rubies were reserved only for kings.

.............................................................................
hmm, great happiness, good fortune, a peaceful life...funny thing is, i felt like all that already happened almost a year ago when we got married.

not to be disgustingly mushy or anything.

and now if it will also banish my evil thoughts, maybe i’ll sleep all night tonight instead of obsessing I’M SURE I’M FORGETTING MANY IMPORTANT THINGS AND I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO GET EVERYTHING DONE AND WHAT IF KEVIN GETS MORE SICK INSTEAD OF LESS AND I’M SURE ALL THE STUFF I HAVE PILED ON THE DRESSER WON’T FIT INTO THE SUITCASE AND WHY DO THEY LIMIT ME TO JUST ONE SUITCASE AND I’M SURE I’M NOT GOING TO GET ENOUGH SLEEP TONIGHT TO HAVE ENERGY TO PICK ALL THAT BASIL TOMORROW.

not just evil thoughts, but crazy ones, too. because i guess my thoughts have a tendency to wander towards the crazy/irrational rather then evil.

goodnight then.

crazy but not evil grace




Sep. 05, 2007

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wednesday already? [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:11 pm

how did that happen?

so they arrested some terrorist who were planning to blow up some things at the frankfort airport on sept. 11th. WE WILL BE AT THE FRANKFORT AIRPORT ON SEPTEMBER 11TH.

so hopefully they caught all the terrorists, not just a few of them. hopefully the guy with the big bag of explosives is safely locked up somewhere.

everything is brown and parched here and i can’t remember the last time it rained. it’s supposed to rain any minute now; at 7:40 there was an 80 percent chance that it’d be raining at eight o'clock. it wasn’t. earlier today it rained about four drops. while i was trying to dig up carrots.

i guess i’d like to know why carrots don’t cost 10 bucks a pound. it was HORRIBLE trying to dig up the carrots. they DID NOT WANT TO COME OUT OF THE GROUND. i used my digging thing, i know there’s a simple word for it, a trowel? not a spatula. but i kept digging and many of the carrots SNAPPED in two so i had to leave half of them in the ground.

i’d just watered, right before it rained, so some of the carrots were muddy, and then i got all muddy, making it even more difficult to try to pull up the other carrots.

now i have a whole bunch of carrots. or half-carrots. i made a carrot cake today with CARROTS RIGHT OUT OF THE GARDEN, but it didn’t taste different than one made with store-bought carrots. and the recipe only called for four carrots. i feel that the rest of them will probably rot. unless mom takes them, and then they can rot in her fridge instead of mine.

i have to bike tomorrow. it’s really really supposed to rain, but kevin said i should ride in the rain, as long as it’s not raining too hard. hmm, that doesn’t sound particularly appealing to me. especially because it seems that i’m suddenly getting way way less graceful than usual. today i dropped something, i can’t remember what, on the floor, only it landed right on the edge of the cat dish and broke it. tonight i dropped the glass sugar bowl (filled with splenda), spilling copious amounts all over the floor. the bowl didn’t break, though, because it landed on my foot. it hurt like hell, and i’ll probably have painful bruise in a day or two and won’t remember how i got it. like my toe - my toe really hurt and i suddenly had a vague memory of smacking into something, but i couldn’t remember what.

so you see why i’m hesitant to ride my bike in the rain with all that slippery pavement all over the place.

we’re going to ride 25 miles on saturday, and then 24 miles in the “springfield century” on sunday. that should be good, because they have rest stops with snacks. it’s a race where you can go 16, 24, 60 or a hundred miles. kevin has ridden 100 miles before. i have no intention of ever riding that many miles at one time.

because that sounds like torture.

i must sleep now.

ok then,
grace h.



Sep. 03, 2007

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bourne ULTIMATUM [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:42 pm

what will the next one be called? the bourne ULTIMATE ULTIMATUM? and then the bourne VERY LAST ULTIMATE ULTIMATUM? and then the VERY VERY FINAL ONE LAST ULTIMATUM AND THEN THAT’S IT, NO MORE?

i saw the first bourne film (surely with some man, because why would i have chosen a BOURNE film by myself?) but not the second one. this, the final (maybe) one, wrapped everything up quite nicely and i didn’t feel like i missed anything by not seeing the second one.

i’m sure it was full of running away and lots and lots of punching and shooting and getting shot and very crazy car chases and probably other chases maybe involving motorcycles or even a bicycle, perhaps on a train or a plane, and then lots and lots more punching accompanied by lots of grunting and SMASHING of various and sundry things.

in this last bourne movIe, bourne (MATT DAMON, in case you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years) was driving a car really really fast BACKWARDS, WHILE BEING SHOT AT, and he was on the top of a parking structure, and he DROVE THE CAR RIGHT OVER THE EDGE and it fell quite a distance but then of course matt walked right out of it.

there was another big car chase involving his car rolling over and over and being repeatedly smashed by other, bigger cars, but once again, mr. damn walked right out.

he started the movie running away and kind of limping, and i couldn’t then stop thinking about what a shitty life he had. all that being wounded and being forced to run. when did he have time to eat? did he have to steal food? and what about going to the bathroom and also showering? because he never really looked grimy, except when he was involved in the many punching scenese, and even then he was more bloody than anything. but he never looked particularly sweaty, or really out of breath.

it seems to me that matt damon doesn’t want to look happy in movies. wouldn’t it be more fun to be in something lighthearted or zany or something where he could just kind of be goofy and smile once in a while? a long time ago i read that if you force yourself to smile even if you don’t want to, you’ll feel better just by doing it. i think it’s true. try it. i do not believe that matt smiled during the whole movie, except maybe once when he was with his old girlfriend.

he also seems to like looking scruffy. him and leonardo dicaprio. it’s almost like these guys don’t want to be thought of as cute, so they’re in movies where they dress badly and get all bloodied up and never ever crack a smile.

one time when i lived in la i was running up runyan canyon which is a very steep place to go running and i saw hugh grant. i saw him another day, and this time he SMILED at me. but not with his teeth. i’m sure he figured that if he gave me the entire smile he would blow his cover.

bourne ULTIMATUM was an entertaining movie, but if it had been exclusively up to me i’d have picked SUPERBAD, because i’ve heard funny things about it, except when we were going into our movie a group of people was leaving SUPERBAD and this woman kept saying over and over “it was BAD,” and i don’t think she meant that in a good way.

anyway, i hope at the end of bourne ULTIMATUM, poor jason had the chance to rest. take a nap. i wanted the final shot to be of him on a beach, bikini-clad babe at his side, tall drink with an umbrella in his hand.

after seeing bourne ULTIMATUM i felt like KICKING SOME ASS. there was a message from erica on my phone, and she said she was going to barnes & noble. kevin and i were meeting people for dinner and we wanted to invite her along but she has no cell phone so i couldn’t call her. so we drove to barnes & noble and cruised down the center of the store looking for her and then i BURST into the women’s room, KICKED OPEN the doors of all the stalls and yelled DIE, SUCKERS, brandishing my pretend gun.

i didn’t really. but i wanted to. nobody was in there anyway.

instead of kicking some ass, we had mexican food. our friend JL was there, and he said he’s never seen any of the bourne movies, he prefers “chick flicks with explosions.”

we’re going on vacation very very soon. i’ve piled a big stack of clothes on top of my dresser, things i’m planning to take. but maybe it’s too much. but we’ll be there for a while. but i can’t take that much. but i’ll probably go crazy if i have to wear the same things over and over and over. i have two of my three new pairs of black pants, a black skirt and a print skirt. plus some tops that i don’t really like that much and i think instead i’m going to buy a couple new ones. is that too much? plus the biking shorts and shirts and all of that biking stuff. too much? i don’t know. i guess i’ll know when i try to fit it all in my suitcase.

i still haven’t learned any german. i have to take the guidebooks back to the library tomorrow, but i really want to take the rick steves book with me on the trip except it’s too hefty because it covers germany and austria plus i’d have a huge fine when i get back if i take it. i could go buy a new one but we already bought two vienna guidebooks and i don’t need another one.

i’m going to xerox parts of the rick steves book before tomorrow, but i’m also running out of time for that.

i don’t feel like it right now. i have to drive kevin to work pretty soon because he’s going to ride his bike home in the morning when he’s done working because we’re taking a BIG BIKE RIDE very soon.

i hope your labor day was relaxing and full of many good things.

ok then,

monday grace.



Sep. 02, 2007

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sunday [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:46 pm
kevin and i are about to go on a bike ride. it’s already getting pretty warm outside, and i told him we don’t have to go biking if he doesn’t want to, but he’s putting a new inner tube on his tire and then we’re going. i can’t believe it’s already 12:30 in the afternoon. i was up at eight, but the morning simply disappeared.

i can’t think of anything productive that i actually did, and you’d think i’d remember what i just did because it just happened. i made a peach cobbler. i wrapped two gifts for amy. i mixed together four loaves of french bread. i wrote down everything i need to do/buy in the upcoming week.

BECAUSE WE’RE LEAVING A WEEK FROM TOMORROW.

yesterday i bought three pairs of black pants. excessive? definitely. i went crazy trying them on, but also relieved that i found some that fit. i tried on a million more pairs than i did the day before yesterday. and i found these three pairs and thought I CERTAINLY DON’T NEED THREE PAIRS OF BLACK PANTS, but i couldn’t decide. i was thinking of asking the woman in the next booth what she thought, but then after trying them on many times, i decided to buy them all and try them on for kevin and see what he says.

i bet you a dollar he’ll say “why don’t you keep all of them?” as a matter of fact, i bet you TWO dollars that that’s what he’ll say. or even FIFTY dollars.

so now i have plenty of pants to take on our trip. plus a black sweater. i have about five or six black sweaters, but none of them are warm enough, and most are 3/4" sleeves, which wouldn’t do.

kevin bought me a new bike helmet. now i have three of them. but the two i had were too loose and couldn’t be adjusted any tighter. so now i have a fancy one that fits.

my friend gary wrote to me and said that he went to new zealand and managed to take only one 22" suitcase. maybe he just went overnight? that seems like a mighty small suitcase.

i talked to somebody about packing, and she said exactly what i feel - she likes to have options when she goes. THAT’S why i always pack too much. i hate to be locked into having a meager choice of clothes. but i have to do it this time, there’s no choice. not to mention all the washing-out-at-night that will have to be done.

ok, off we go to bike...

grace with the clock ticking away.


Sep. 01, 2007

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lots and lots of tomatoes [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:48 am

last night, after seeing “the trip to bountiful” at new salem, we went to erica’s cast party. we arrived at the party before anybody else showed up, so we sat on the front steps with our bottle of wine. kevin said that if we had a corkscrew we could open it and mom, ever-prepared, pulled out her swiss army knife with many many worthwhile and useful attachments.

so there we sat, in the dark, watching the cars go by, taking turns drinking out of the bottle.

because we’re very classy people. kevin said all we needed was a paper bag to make the picture complete.

the first person to arrive was curt fritzeen, who played the ticket man. he was carrying a very large tupperware container, and we told him we were the party crashers.

eventually erica arrived but susan the stage manager had the only house key and was supposed to have been there to unlock the door. erica tried to break in but couldn’t, but susan arrived and everything calmed down quite a bit.

and inside that big tupperware container were...tomatoes. more cherry tomatoes than i’ve ever seen at one time in my whole life. in the program it says that curt lives in a small town, and has a small garden and keeps chickens and bees.

a CHERY TOMATO garden, no doubt. not a weed garden like ours has turned into. we do have regular tomatoes and a red pepper plant and some basil, but aside from that, all weeds.

anyway, the party was very nice even though it’s always a little weird to crash somebody else’s cast party. i didn’t get a chance to talk to curt about his gardening and bee-keeping. maybe next time. when erica has a cast party.

but the play, THE PLAY. it was SO INCREDIBLY GOOD. please go see it. you have tonight and tomorrow night.

GO SEE IT! it was so touching and poignant and just perfect. marian levin was the lead character, and she was amazing, and troy and shirene pfaffe played her son and daughter-in-law and were also so good...shirene’s character is such an incredibly controlling harping twit, and shirene (who is quite nice in real life)did such a great job of making me hate her.

erica kept saying that she didn’t have a very big part - she was a woman who marian encounters in a bus station as she’s running away from home - but she did such a fine job. everybody did a great job, especially mr. phil funkenbusch, who is also king of the lincoln presidential museum and a delightful fellow although you probably already know that because he also knows everybody.

between scenes, phil had molly and her father mark mathewson play and sing some wonderful old hymns and bluegrass songs and this was the icing on the cake. molly’s sweet singing made me choked up every time and i’m not a choking-up kind of person.

wow. GO SEE THE SHOW. it’s a lovely drive out to new salem, especially if you give yourself enough time to get there.

we didn’t. we were going to leave earlier, but we were eating dinner and talking and then we got stuck at two really really long red lights and then we got behind every single slow driver between here and new salem. and then, when we had only five miles to go, a SHERIFF’S CAR pulled out and followed us and so i couldn’t speed at all even though i finally had the chance.

we got there, though, in the nick of time, but we didn’t get to hear molly sing at all before the play started.

it was nice to go see a show instead of putting on the false eyelashes and zipping up the tight dress and being in a show. plus, it was cool out. it got chilly. the last time i was there, just two sundays ago, it was so incredibly hot.

cool is nicer.

sitting and watching isn’t so bad either.

people keep asking me what i’m going to do next, but there’s just nothing going on theater-wise except we’re going to be in the nutcracker but that won’t involve much except pantomiming as well as dancing.

there’s just the bike trip. which is in a WEEK FROM MONDAY.

time is running out. i don’t even have a list of stuff i’m taking. kevin has already started packing, which is completely unprecedented. yesterday i went shopping for new pants but ended up with two skirts and a dress. i did try on about 10 pairs of slacks and jeans, and they were either too tight or too loose, too short or too long. ugh, i hate trying on pants.

we’ve still been biking; last sunday we went thirty four miles. that’s a lot of miles. a friend who does a lot of biking said we should ride 25 miles two days in a row. i think this is a good idea. but not today. today we fence.

and then kevin has a gig somewhere near jacksonville at a camp where they’re going to have a four dollar buffet. randy and karen and bev and i are all going to listen and eat buffet food. for four dollars.

and plus we’re taking mollie, and this will be the highlight of her day. lots of people who will be eating buffet food, tremendous opportunities to get lots of handouts. oh, and she gets to hear kevin’s band. which will be incidental to the food, of course.

for mollie. not for the rest of us.

i hope your weekend is good and relaxing, although it probably won’t be as diverse as mine.

and if you see my sister amy wish her a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

we’re celebrating tomorrow.

and it was kevin’s mom’s birthday last week, and BELATED HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO NANCEE.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO EVERYBODY.

ok ok ok,

saturday grace.

p.s. GO SEE THE PLAY TONIGHT OR TOMORROW! YOU WON’T REGRET IT!





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