Nov. 30, 2007

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today... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:39 am

soooo tired. such a very busy week of massaging this week. i was going to get up and DO WEIGHTS at the fit club this morning, but it just didn’t happen. i don’t care. perhaps i’ll take mollie for a short walk b4 giving a long massage this afternoon, but NO RUNNING. just don’t care. too tired.

tonight we were going to go to the illinois symphony’s chamber concert of the messiah at a church, but instead i think we’re going to go to the bee movie instead. i have my doubts about the bee movie; i just don’t think it’s going to be that funny, but it seems like a much easier option than getting dressed up and listening to music. i’m pretty sure i’d nod off during the music. if i nod off during the movie that’s ok because it’s in a theater with great big stadium seats so i can lean my head back.

a relaxing weekend would be nice, but on sunday we’re driving up to chicago to take freddie baskett to a fencing tournament because his parents are going to be on a cruise. i wish i were on a cruise. but there’d be all that packing...

i have to start on xmas things. gifts, cookies, decorating. all that stuff, must start getting to it.

but maybe i need a nap right now, b4 the day gets busy.

ok then,

tired friday grace.



Nov. 28, 2007

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Randy Pausch [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:26 pm

have you heard of this man? tonight i finally got to some actual content in oprah magazine, and there, on the very very last page, was oprah’s back page column, and she mentioned Dr. Randy Pausch, “the Carnegie Meloon professor who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only a short time to live.” who was this guy? why was he on Oprah?

so i looked him up, and he’s only 47 years old, and in august he had a recurrence of pancreatic cancer and the doctor gave him only three to six more healthy months. and then he gave a speech at carnegie mellon, where he’d been a professor, and the video of the speech has been ALL OVER THE INTERNET, except of course i never heard of it. but i watched it tonight, the whole thing, over an hour long. it’s very inspiring; his message is basically that you need to live life as best as you can, you need to spend every day enjoying it. the lecture is also, of course, incredibly sad, because this man actually knows he has very little time left.

but nobody knows how much time they have left, which is why you have to make the most of today.

if you want to watch the video, here is the link. (you’ve probably already seen it, since on google alone it’s been viewed 351,567 times, not to mention the viewing on youtube).

Randy Pausch video

now go out and enjoy yourself.

ok then,

wednesday grace.



Nov. 27, 2007

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p.s. roofing [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:18 pm
the cat honey sleeping next to me reminded me of last week’s roofing debacle. here are some of the photos i took in the morning, before the fatigue caught up to me and i was ready to weep from fatigue and hunger.





ok, see that peak of the roof? mom and randy had to rip that off, and then they had to rip off the shingles under it. when they were done, there was a long hole running the length of the roof. it was imperative that they replace all the stuff, or the rain and snow would rain and snow right down into the house. this is my favorite picture, because of the yards in the background. it was a beautiful day.





this is also a favorite picture of mine. see that plastic canopy behind honey? that’s our awning in the back. honey liked to jump around on the awning, which isn’t particularly good for an awning. that morning she slept on it for a while, even though it was very wet from the dew. she just didn’t care.

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THINGS ACCOMPLISHED! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:09 pm

ok, well one thing, anyway. ok, i called erica. i mean, this was actually something on my list of THINGS TO GET DONE. but i was going to save calling erica till i had done other things that i didn’t particularly want to do.

so actually, then, calling erica was actually not accomplishing much because it was something i wanted to do, not something that i NEEDED TO GET DONE. except i did give her details about the VERY EXCITING NEW YEAR’S EVE we’re going to have. a group of us is going to go somewhere down in southern illinois to hear kevin’s band play. i am coordinating this event, because i don’t want to go hear his band all by myself. that would be a TERRIBLE way to spend new year’s eve. instead, it should (theoretically) be a fun new year’s eve. which will be very good, because i’m not sure that i’ve ever actually had a fun new year’s eve. i guess most of them weren’t even memorable at all since i can’t remember many of them.

i definitely remember some that weren’t fun at all, or were just mildly amusing for a while, or were supposed to be fun but weren’t.

but this year, things will be different. not to mention the fact that we’re going to be celebrating the beginning of 2008, and eight is my favorite number.


i really wish there was one more thing i could cross off my list, but the cat honey is sleeping peacefully up against me and i don’t want to disturb her.

i should add DON’T DISTURB THE CAT to my list, and then i could cross it off.

maybe the cold weather is making me a little crazy. but the problem there is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, cold-weather-wise.

i need some hot chocolate.

ok then,

gracefully grace.

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the problem last night was the jammies... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 7:55 pm

my great big pink jammies, to be exact. i bought them last year at kohl’s and they’re very very soft and fuzzy and comfy and they’re extra-large so they’re really really huge and i love them.

yesterday during the day i was thinking that there are many many things i needed to get done. kind of like randy and his yard - randy is STILL worried about mowing. it’s almost december, dude, you need to move on. randy talked about mowing his lawn almost every single day for the past many months.

anyway, i needed to get stuff done and i was energized and was going to go home and write down a list in order to focus better.

i put on a sweater, but then i decided that i might as well put on my jammies, instead. this was at about 6:30 last night.

i sat down in my comfy fuzzy pink jammies and proceeded to read my new copy of oprah magazine which had lured me into buying it the other day when we were at lowe’s. i was remembering how i had decided a few months ago not to subscribe to the oprah magazine because it’s mostly ads. lots and lots and LOTS of ads. but somehow the magazine sucked me in. the funny thing is that we bought our new dishwasher that day and we put it on this special plan whereby you don’t have to pay for the dishwasher for about a year. and so it turns out we don’t have to pay for the oprah magazine for that long either.

last night i started reading it, or at least flipping the pages, and i remembered exactly why i don’t want to subscribe to it because even though the cover PROCLAIMED that there would be articles inside, i never did get to any actual stuff that wasn’t ads.

i was happy that i didn’t have to pay for the magazine for a year

after that i turned on the tv, and even though there was nothing at all that interested me, i spent a great deal of time flipping the channels.

and that, my friend, is how i managed to fritter away the entire evening.

tonight, though, TONIGHT is a different story. i’ve started some laundry, i’ve heated up stuff for dinner, i’ve already made my list of STUFF TO DO.

and most importantly i’m not wearing the fuzzy jammies yet. because i know if i put them on i’d just sink right down into my chair and remain there for the rest of the evening.

everybody in our neighborhood has their xmas lights and trees up. ok, maybe not everybody, but MANY MANY PEOPLE.

it’s too early.

ok then,

tuesday night GETTING STUFF DONE grace.



Nov. 24, 2007

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a couple more photos, while i’m at it [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:39 am

here are a few more photos of mom’s trip to europe back in the 50’s. i know that the people out there who don’t read this but just look at the photos will be very confused about these pictures because sometimes people seem to think that we’re STILL on our bike trip in austria.

but that’s what you get when you don’t read.

this is mom and her friend judy with some “character” they encountered.



and these are a couple of photos in Volendam.



Volendam is a “popular tourist attraction in the Netherlands, well-known for its old fishing boats and the traditional clothing still worn by some residents. The women’s costume of Volendam, with its high, pointed bonnet, is one of the most recognizable of the Dutch traditional costumes, and is often featured on tourist postcards and posters (although there are believed to be fewer than 50 women now wearing the costume as part of their daily lives, most of them elderly).”

mom took many gorgeous photos of the place, and it makes me want to go there.



one more photo, this is a lake between Linz and Salzburg.



and, just to clarify here, these are all photos that mom took a long time ago on her trip to europe.

ok, that’s all for now,

grace

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Cha Cha Thanksgiving [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:29 am
after the requisite gobs of turkeystuffingcranberrysaucemashedpotatoessweetpotatoescorncasserolegreenbeansalad dessertsgaloreincludingagermanchocolatepecanpiethatwassosweetitwasalmosttoosweetformeandyouknowthat'sreallysweet,
it was time for the highlight of the holiday, our traditional Thanksgiving Karaoke.

one year when i was living in LA and never came back for thanksgiving because it’s so close to xmas, for some reason the rest of the family decided to sing some karaoke at thanksgiving. it was a crude affair, with no karaoke machine at all, so they had to sing along with CDs they had around the house. but it was quite a production, with costumes and microphones and everybody stood up on the fireplace base stage to perform.

i was sad that i missed it, but luckily they preserved it on videotape. it was definitely the funniest thing i’ve ever seen, one of the highlights being my brother david’s rendition of “you dropped a bomb on me,” wearing a wig and a shower cap.

priceless.

we did thanksgiving karaoke one year after i moved back, and that, too, is preserved for posterity.

kevin, though, never got to partake in our family’s only actual holiday tradition of any kind, and this was the year.

we bought a karaoke machine for our GIGANTIC HALLOWEEN PARTY, but people were so busy dancing all over the house that karaoke never happened. so there sat our new karaoke machine, complete with a cd package of 576 songs that we’d gotten for an incredible deal on ebay. anything you’d want to sing is on one of those cd’s.

except, actually, for “puff the magic dragon,” one of my favorite songs, but then again it would have been kind of sad to sing it at thanksgiving because of jackie paper leaving puff. if you don’t remember the whole song, here’s a summary of it from wikipedia:

The lyrics tell a bittersweet story of the ageless dragon Puff and his playmate Jackie Paper, a little boy who grows up and loses interest in the imaginary adventures of childhood and leaves Puff alone and depressed. The story of the song takes place “by the sea” in the fantasy land of Honah Lee

the last time i wrote about puff was after we went to hawaii and visited Hanalei, which wasn’t actually the same town as the Honah Lee in the song but it was magical anyway.

but i digress. thanksgiving karaoke.

we spent a lot of time setting up the various cords and things to make it all happen, and then amy dragged out her big speakers that she’d used for her disco band and we were all set. but this year, i think we all ate way too much, because nobody wanted to get up and sing. instead we did karaoke korean-style, meaning we sat in our chairs and passed the microphone around.

it was still a lot of fun, and when we got to barry manilow’s “copacabana” (which, as you may recall, is all about lola, a showgirl who ends up perhaps even more depressed than puff the magic dragon), many of us got up to dance.

and this is where the cha cha part comes in.

kevin and i started dancing together, and then i realized he was doing the cha cha. i knew he had taken couple dance lessons before we went out, plus he had studied dance in various forms at various times. but we have never really dance together much, except at the wedding, which is a little bit of a blur but i’m sure there was no cha cha.

as we danced on thanksgiving, though, he kept doing more and more steps. they were all things i’d learned when i’d taken lessons in college, and i suddenly that he was really good at the cha cha and a great dancer and did an excellent job of leading.

and WHY HAVEN’T WE GONE DANCING BEFORE THIS???

that is my central question.

it’s because we’ve been busy with roofing and fencing and running and biking and fencing and he’s been busy with his band and tomorrow he’s starting something new, some kind of cowboy shooting thing that starts way too early in the morning but at least i don’t have to go with him.

but WE NEED TO GO DANCING. holding out on me.

thanksgiving was fun, and the leftovers were even better last night, but tonight we’re going to eat something besides turkey. i’m having the family over for mexican tortilla soup, and afterwards we’re going to stack the copious dishes in the BRAND NEW DISHWASHER that we bought yesterday, and that makes me very excited because we have not had a working dishwasher since i’ve lived here and there are frequently many many dishes to wash.

and finally...last night randy BEAT ME AT BOGGLE. i kept wanting to call christine to try to pry out of her the secret of being able to write down thousands of boggle words, but maybe she just has a special gift for it and i’ll never achieve that.

but randy did beat me, although i’m sure it was because he was flagrantly cheating his head off, plus i was so tired that i thought i was coming down with a cold.

ok then,

holiday grace.



Nov. 22, 2007

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old photos [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 1:16 pm

here’s mom in vienna, on the square in front of st. mark’s cathedral.



and this is the danube river, taken from somewhere in vienna.



this is mom with some man named johann emmerstorfer. i have no idea who he is, but i’ll find out today when we show the slides.



now that it’s after one p.m., i really have to change out of my pajamas. randy is already serving thanksgiving dinner to a house full of people! i don’t think we’re going to eat till six. so i don’t really have to change into clothes yet if i don’t want to.

ok then,

grace

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HAPPY TURKEY DAY! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:58 pm

i haven’t written in a whole week because i’ve been very busy scanning, going to missouri, and roofing.

yes, that’s right, roofing. i can add that to my resume of very valuable skills.

when we were in missouri over the weekend (it was beautiful, by the way, and we did take photos of our cabin in the woods, but of course i haven’t had time even to download them from the camera yet), on monday, a shopkeeper in the quaint town of hermann mentioned that it was supposed to snow by wednesday. when we were driving back to splfd monday night, kevin said that if it freezes and snows, it could completely mess up the unfinished part of the roof.

remember kevin working on the roof? starting in the spring? one section of the roof wasn’t finished. and suddenly he had ONLY ONE DAY to finish it. i said i’d help. because of his knee injury, it would have been very bad for him to lift the bundles of shingles onto the roof, so i cut the bundles open and carried them a few at a time.

i made it up to the roof even though i was fairly petrified. it was a perfectly lovely day on tuesday, sunny and warm and the view from the roof was great. honey our cat has been climbing the ladder all summer long and jumping on the awning in the back, and she was quite happy that we were up there to visit with her.

sometimes, though, she wanted to climb down the ladder at the exact same time as i was climbing down, so we had words. at one point she decided to lie down right on the step below me. by some miracle neither of us fell.

after i got comfortable walking on the roof, i started laying out the shingles for kevin, who then pounded them in. after a few hours - well i was very tired after a few hours. it was amazing, the energy needed for carrying shingles up the ladder. i was ready for lunch an hour after we started. but after a few hours it was clear that we’d need more shingles. randy had called me and said he was off work for the afternoon, and i suggested to kevin that we ask randy to come over and help me load more shingles into the car. i said, maybe we could even persuade him to carry the shingles to the roof, then i could buy another roofing hammer and help pound, because it didn’t look like rocket science to me.

so randy arrived, thinking he was going to be done in an hour, and we managed to kidnap him for the entire afternoon. we went to the store (while kevin kept pounding nails) and bought more shingles and loaded them up and i asked him if he’d help carry them up and he said, sure, and pretty soon he was very hard at work. much much more than he’d bargained for.

hammering wasn’t so bad, actually easier than lugging the shingles onto the roof.

on monday i had suggested that we get mom to help us, because she’s always up for anything. i described the time, a year or so ago, when she teetered on the very top of a tall ladder in the living room of amy and jim’s old house, and painted the very top part of the very high ceiling.

kevin, though, didn’t think we should ask mom to climb up on the roof. clearly he’s still not fully aware of mom’s many talents.

mom showed up tuesday afternoon, dressed nicely with earrings and a matching necklace, which i could see in detail because suddenly there she was up on the roof with us, in her sandals, asking what she could do.

at this point it was about 3 o'clock and the day was quickly getting away from us. it seemed impossible that we’d finish before nightfall. kevin started ordering her around, and soon the four of us were buzzing around the roof, just like the amish people. that’s how i thought of us, anyway, although if we were amish, i’m sure mom and i would have been downstairs making pie instead of pounding in nails and ripping up pieces of old shingles.

(i just made a perfect mince thanksgiving pie, by the way, or at least it looks perfect. a couple of thanskgivings ago i made a pumpkin pie but forgot the sugar and hopefully this pie will be better than that one.)

as we worked and worked i got more and more tired. pretty soon i had no strength left in my hands at all.

and i had to give a massage at 5:30, so i had to stop hammering by 4:30. but how was i going to give a massage with no strength left in my hands, not to mention all-over fatigue? i kept telling randy that i was so tired that i was going to cry. he and mom both kept making noises like they had to leave, but kevin would have none of it. even though he’s one of the most mild-mannered people i know, he somehow impressed upon them that they COULD NOT LEAVE.

but i did. i showered (i wish i had a photo of how completely horrible i looked while roofing) and ate something and felt that i would at least have the energy to drive to the massage appointment. as i left, at about 5:10, it was pretty dark, but they were still at it. the rain was supposed to start tuesday night, and there was a couple-inch hole along the entire length of the roof peak. so it had to be done.

i sort of had some doubt, but i knew that somehow kevin would do it. i wasn’t sure how he was going to finish in the dark, but he did. by the time i got home of course i couldn’t see how it looked, and kevin was at work already. i, personally, was ready for bed right then, but i HAD TO DO MORE SCANNING.

oh, and i had to buy groceries and make pies.

so now you see why i haven’t written.

but now the roof is done, the pies are made, the scanning has been stopped for now. there are many many great slides of mom’s trip to europe, plus many great ones from when we were growing up. as a matter of fact, i’ll put a couple of them up right now.

but first, a few photos of austria. we were in the wine country, monday afternoon, and we went to the little touristy quaint town of Durnstein. we had to climb a fairly steep hill to get into the town.

the main street was, indeed, crawling with tourists. we walked our bikes and talked about just walking right through and out of town, but we decided to park on a side street.



we went to a restaurant and had a glass of wine and looked at the river. it was completely uncrowded, away from the shoppers.



we walked down to the water, and here’s me in my lovely biking gear.



this is a view of durnstein castle, taken from the river. it’s one of my favorite photos that kevin took.



we’d been in town for a couple hours, and by the time we wandered back up to the main street, the crowds were thinning considerably. we stopped at a shop that proclaimed FREE BRANDY AND CHOCOLATE SAMPLES, and did quite a bit of sampling. some other biking americans showed up and one man started ordering the saleswoman around and buying everything. he was kind of annoying, but not horrible. we started talking to his wife - they had just taken another bike trip, from vienna to budapest. i can’t imagine doing two bike trips back to back. she also said that on the first day of this trip, they had started late and therefore missed the ferry that was supposed to take them the last part of the route for the day, so they had to bike fifty miles in a day. i said “i’ve never ridden 5o miles in a day.” and she said “neither had i.” they looked kind of tired.

they were in a big organized group, and were headed for the same hotel in krems where we were going.

we went into a few of the tourist shops, but most of the stuff looked like junk, so we bought very little (except for the chocolate and the brandy). driving out of town, the wine country was dwindling, but it was still very pretty. as we arrived in krems we saw the couple from the group, and the guy had a GPS on his bike, so we decided to follow him, because he must know where he was going.

he didn’t. not really, anyway. we all conferred, using the guidebook, and found the hotel pretty easily.

it wasn’t a great place. kevin kept saying it was like a dorm room. it was a big room, with a view of some old place off in the distance, bu our immediate view was of the back of the hotel and all the trash bins. all the furniture in the room was really cheap and it felt kind of depressing.

we had to wash clothes, so we did that in the big bathtub, and then draped them all over the place, which made it look a lot like a tenement. we walked over to the main street, which was a big pedestrian zone, but most of the shops were closed. i had read that krems was a “hidden gem” of austria, but like linz, we weren’t sold on it.



we were headed for a little town called Stockerau the next day, and we wondered if that hotel was going to be any better. it was called the drei koniskof, but it had been changed to the BEST WESTERN drei knoiskof. hmm.

ok, that’s all for now,

grace.


Nov. 15, 2007

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thursday! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:48 pm
i’m not sure how it got to be thursday already. there continues to be many things i want to do, but suddenly it’s thursday and i haven’t accomplished any of them.

currently i’m obsessed with scanning. we bought a scanner and i’ve been scanning slides from a trip my mom took to europe when she was in college. i want to be able to show the photos at thanksgiving, which is COMING RIGHT UP.

time is running out.

our scanner is very cool; you can manipulate the slides quite a bit, but it’s a little bit time-consuming. i think there are 12 groups of slides, each group containing about 40 slides. so far i’ve finished one of the groups. at this rate i’m not going to have many of them done by thanksgiving. i can’t work on them this weekend because we’re finally going to go down to missouri. NOT to ride our bikes on the katy trail, because kevin continues to suffer from his knee injury. so instead we’ll do a little sauntering around the various little towns down there which are supposed to be very lovely and quaint. and we’ll stay in a little cabin which looks like it should be cozy, but there aren’t enough photos of it on the website to actually know for sure.

hopefully it’ll be a lovely and relaxing weekend, except HOW AM I GOING TO FINISH THE SLIDES?

meanwhile, i finally made a little time to upload a few photos of our bike trip. you may recall that we were about to set out through austrian wine country, the wachau region.

when we set off on monday morning, the weather was great, cool and crisp and sunny.



i was talking to mom about her slides of her trip; it’s nice to have the images of the countryside for your own pleasure, bu i wanted to see more photos of her, and there just aren’t many of them. the problem with the photos of our trip is that i’m always wearing that DAMN YELLOW JACKET and usually TOO TIGHT BIKING PANTS. oh, plus the lovely and sexy bike helmet.

with a light.

ok, i had just taken off the jacket there. it was getting warm as well as sunny.



i’m sure i was about to do some videotaping there.



we stopped at this old church. it had one of those great graveyards with tons and tons of flowers covering each grave, but i can’t believe that kevin took NO PICTURES of them! i took lots of video.



our bikes, with kevin’s bear.



i’m sure people looked at us askance enough because of our bike outfits. but then again, i’m sure they saw plenty of americans dressed like that, especially during the summer. because as i wrote earlier, many of the europeans wore slacks and sweaters, like they were just out for a short ride.

but i imagine they didn’t often see a bicycling, all all and thin and decked out looking EXACTLY like a serious biker...but with a bear riding along with him.

luckily, i rarely think about what people must think about what i’m wearing. like when i go work out at the fit club and i imagine that i’m actually invisible, so i don’t worry that i look very much like an urchin.



this is one of the very quaint little towns we rode through. they mostly seemed deserted, as usual. you could stop and get a glass of sturm from a little roadside place if you wanted to, but it was kind of early in the morning for that, plus i’ve never tried to ride my bike under the influence of any alcohol. and since i’m able to fall down just walking on smooth pavement, i thought it was better to abstain for the moment.




what a beautiful day. we were headed for the town of durnstein, which was supposed to be INCREDIBLY quaint and AMAZINGLY touristy.

it was both.

but i have to save that for another day.

i hope your friday is good.

ok then,

grace in a hurry.




Nov. 12, 2007

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our 1st wedding anniversary [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:56 am

so it’s only taken me almost two months to get to the photos in our bike trip that were taken at the town where we spend the night on sunday, sept. 16th. we had just coasted over a very long bridge over the river and into the tiny town of emmersdorf.

our hotel, the zum schwarzen baren, was lovely. here’s the view out our window.



there were lots of flowers all over the hotel. it was very old, but had been very nicely re-decorated. there was an indoor pool and a whirlpool, which we tried first thing. we couldn’t figure out how to turn on the whirlpool and decided it must be broken, but the pool was nice. empty most of the time, after a couple of older women left.

we ate dinner on their outdoor patio. we were the only ones outside, and our waiter, although he spoke no english, was really friendly. he took our picture and it’s too bad it’s blurry, but you get the idea.



as we sat there, we looked up and somebody was hang-gliding by. this is the first and only hang-glider was saw on our trip.



after a delicious meal, we strolled around a bit. here’s the entrance to the hotel, right next to the patio.



that’s the “baren.”

the place was filled with bear images, including the fancy doorknobs.



we walked around a little bit but it was suddenly way too dark to see. the next morning, though, we found that the tiny town was lovely.



this is the first cemetary we saw in austria. instead of covered with grass, the tops of graves are filled with flowers. it’s really beautiful and i’ve never seen this done here in the US and i don’t know why they don’t.



we found this in somebody’s yard. everybody took such good care of their yards, with flowers and plants and much more interesting than i usually see on walks around here.



this day, monday, was our sixth day of biking. we rode through austrian wine country, the wachau region. it was more beautiful than the sonoma/napa wine country in california. or maybe it just seemed more beautiful because we were on bikes.

picture to follow shortly.

if you have the day off today, i hope you rest. yesterday evening i gave chair massages at the restaurant where my friend jill works. it was an employee appreciation party, and they all really needed massages. most of them seemed to work two jobs, plus many of them had children. i tried to encourage everybody to try to make time to rest. but if you have two jobs and three kids, i guess that’s probably not so realistic. but at least they got massages. on my brand new massage chair, which is quite fabulous.

ok then,

monday grace.





Nov. 11, 2007

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honey [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:34 pm

our cat’s name is honey, she’s the killer cat who brings dead or alive birds into the house. she’s a terror, but she’s very sweet when she wants to be.

honey was also the name of kevin’s parents' dog. a sweet golden retriever who i didn’t get to spend much time with, but a very sweet and gentle dog. kevin’s mom said she had to be put to sleep last week, which is very sad. i’m sure she will be terribly missed.

goodnight.

grace

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comedy/tragedy [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:30 pm

the plan: my friend gil arranges bus trips to see different shows. we were to spend saturday night taking a bus down to st. louis to see the musical comedy “the drowsy chaperone,” which looked very funny.

the reality: we were supposed to be at the JC Penney parking lot at 5:00 and the bus was to depart at 5:30, for an 8:00 curtain. in his e-mails to people going on the trip, gil mentioned that we could bring snacks, and NON-ALCOHOLIC drinks.

we all took this to mean that we should bring snacks to share with all the people on the bus. our party consisted of me and kevin, randy, his mom, bev, and my mom. kevin and i brought tortilla roll-ups and cookies, randy brought cheese and sausage and crackers, mom brought cucumber sandwiches and bev brought crackers and a box of fannie may candy.

we all arrived at a little after five and the bus wasn’t there yet. so we waited and it finally showed up at about 5:20.

we got on the bus, along with the other theater folk, most of whom i didn’t know.

we sat on the bus waiting to leave, and decided to break out the food. nobody else seemed to have any snacks, or if they did, they weren’t sharing. but that was ok; we had more than enough food for our group, and we kept offering it to others. almost nobody wanted any.

we continued to eat and it got later. and later. finally, the bus driver climbed aboard and made an announcement. something about the serpentine belt, which had to be replaced, and he didn’t seem very certain about the whole thing and the owner of the bus company was going to be on the phone telling him how to fix the bus.

which was broken.

the driver inspired no confidence whatsoever in us. he staggered off the bus and we waited and waited. and waited.

the show started at 8. it’s an hour and a half to st. louis, as long as there’s no accident delays or anything.

at six we talked of leaving the bus and driving down by ourselves. at 6:15 the driver reappeared. the bus couldn’t be fixed, so we were to all drive down to litchfield (50 miles away) and another bus would take us to st. louis (another hour at least).

all 30+ of us dashed to our cars. we could take five other people in our minivan, except it was loaded with fencing gear. we crammed all the stuff into mom’s car and seven of us piled in the van to join the mad dash down to litchfield, as the clock ticked.

6:55 - we got off on the litchfield exit. all seemed fairly lost, because we had to get into st. louis and then make it to the fox theater. it seemed very hopeless.

7:00 - the bus left. it wasn’t as clean as the first bus, but at least it moved. the bathroom was unspeakably disgusting. it seems they hadn’t had time to clean this bus.

somebody got a call on their cell phone; in the time we’d been gone, there was some kind of explosion at the CWLP power plant at home. a fire. roads closed. terrorism? the rumors flew around the bus. but then it was confirmed that it wasn’t terrorism, but some kind of accident. springfield would still be there when we got back.

we got closer and closer to st. louis, and before we got to collinsville (right outside of st. louis) traffic came to a standstill. up ahead, the lights of cop cars. now what?

we inched along and pretty soon saw the cop cars - and then, in the ditch on the right hand side of the road, was a dog. “cadaver dog,” said kevin. and there it was - a dead body. the person must have been ejected from the car. thrown so far that they had to get a dog to find it.

after all that commotion, traffic picked up. but now in my head was the vision of that poor dead person by the side of the road. some anonymous person, somebody loved this person, and now they were dead. it made our worry about missing the show seem trivial in comparison.

of course there was now no chance of getting to the show on time. gil called the theater and asked if they could hold the curtain and the person there said “of course not.”

we continued into st. louis, but by now things had taken a surreal turn and it all didn’t seem to matter.

but then suddenly there we were, outside the theater. 7:59.

we hurried inside. they had held the curtain for us, but we were only a couple of minutes late.

we made it to our seats and the show started and it was delightful. fun and silly and full of dancing and singing and the costumes were lavish and all very sparkely which i liked a lot.

except every once in a while i thought about that poor dead body.

and before we knew it the show was over. back on the bus, a completely uneventful ride back to our car in litchfield, and then back to springfield.

in the van, bev broke out her box of fannie may. i had two pieces and they were perfection.

the air looked still smoky when we drove into town. they had put out the fire, but the smoke lingered.

this morning the story was a giant headline with a big photo in the paper about the explosion.

but what about the dead body? it happened too far from springfield to make our news.

things have been much quieter today.

spring has returned. i wore my shorts when taking mollie for a walk, which she thoroughly enjoyed.

i hope your weekend was good, but perhaps not quite as eventful as ours.

ok then,

sunday night grace.





Nov. 08, 2007

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STOP THE PHOTOS! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:42 pm

I can’t stop, i’m on a roll, there are only a few more abbey photos and i feel i must post them in order to have closure on this day.

this was a special grove of REALLY REALLY OLD TREES. i can’t remember how old, but i do remember that they were endangered so there were lots of chain barriers and warnings NOT TO GET TOO CLOSE TO THE TREES.



we hadn’t seen any tour buses because we stumbled up to the abbey taking the back way, but then we saw them filling the parking lot, and i had to document it. and then kevin had to document me documenting it.



this was some kind of serenity pool fountain thing, but i bet the monks used it for a swimming pool.



the brochure kept going on and on about this pavilion and the fabulous english-style gardens, bu it wasn’t as impressive as the buildup, especially after the abbey itself was so grand. the gardens at the huntington library in pasadena are much more extensive and cool. but this place wasn’t bad.



here’s a photo kevin took as we were winding our way down from the abbey.



we managed to make it out of town after climbing a very very steep hill where i had to get off my bike and push, but kevin made it to the top. whew. we weren’t on the bike path, but somehow we managed to find the bridge across. and boy were we happy when we did, because it was completely downhill from there.

we passed people struggling up the bridge, and were so happy to be coasting our way across the river to emmersdorf, the tiny town where we’d be staying the night.

we literally coasted right into the town after getting off the bridge. this was sunday september, our actual one-year anniversary, and we were hoping the hotel would be nice.

we weren’t disappointed.

more later.

BUT NOT LATER TONIGHT.

ok ok ok already,

too busy grace.

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MORE AUSTRIA PHOTOS RIGHT NOW! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:21 pm



i’m sitting here with the computer on my lap, hoping that the heat from the laptop will make my leg muscles feel less sore. so far it’s not working so great, but the kitty honey seems to be enjoying sitting close to me because i’m wearing my big fluffy pink robe. she was purring like crazy, but when i tried to pet her of course she started gnawing on my hand. because that’s what she’s like. at least she’s not outside killing any small animals.

anyway, so we were in Pochlarn on a september sunday and we rode our bikes through the town looking for a place to get something to drink. we found a little outdoor cafe, which was almost deserted. kevin took this photo of the town square, which was completely deserted.



here’s where the big ferry boats docked.



or maybe that’s where the big river cruise boats docked. there was never a boat docked at any of these docks along the river.

we passed a ruined castle, and i’ve been studying the map, trying to figure out what it might have been. i think maybe it was the “romantic ruin at Weitenegg,” but i guess i could probably just make up any name at all and you wouldn’t know the difference, would you? but i looked at the time that this photo was taken and compared it to the time that ones before and after it were taken and i’m pretty sure this is weitenegg. in case you were wondering.



once we got into the town of melk we fumbled around trying to figure out how to get up to the abbey. we studied the map, we watched other cyclists, and we finally found a place to park our bikes.

this is the narrow little street we marched up to get to the abbey.



here it is, the very impressive MELK ABBEY. there’s an 8x10 of that right here above the couch. it’s amazing that the sky was so very very blue that day. it looks like a photo in a travel book, and looks just like photos that were for sale at the abbey’s gift shop.




another view of the abbey, taken from inside.



and here’s a view of the river from the abbey.



another postcard-like shot.



we walked through the museum, which had a bunch of artifacts as well as a whole lot of tourists. we headed for the library, which was beautiful. my, those monks had a lot of money. wait till you see the church part.





i’m not sure what the historical significance of this document is; maybe kevin knows, since he took the picture.





and the church itself. photos really can’t do it justice; we’d have needed a wider-angle lens.









the view from outside the church.



after touring around inside we walked around the grounds for a bit, but they weren’t nearly as lavish as the interior and the facade of the abbey itself.

more photos soon.

ok then,

grace.

---

BROKEN! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:35 pm
i spent most of yesterday sprinting from one activity to another, rushing rushing rushing all the livelong day.

after all the activity, last night we went to randy’s house to watch the country music awards.

ok, i really had no desire to see the country music awards, but we were celebrating BEV’S BIRTHDAY, which was monday. i baked a chocolate cake for the occasion. to make it more festive i added orange and black halloween sprinkles to the top, plus some of the gold dragees that i got for my wedding cake over a year ago. luckily, gold dragees never ever spoil. a while back my dad made cupcakes for some event and he loaded them with sprinkles. so i’m starting to realize that a penchant for sprinkles clearly is an inherited trait.

randy had made a VERY VERY DELICIOUS pork roast and i was eating it while watching the country music awards and continued to wonder who all these singers were exactly, when i suddenly realized that THE BACK OF ONE OF MY TEETH WAS MISSING.

MISSING.

GONE.

the upside is that i suddenly stopped eating, instead of eating way too much.

the downside is WHAT IF THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF TEETH BREAKING????

i’ve frequently had the dream that my teeth are falling out or shattering. also, some of them are actually loose, two dentists have verified this, so naturally i’m kind of panicky about my teeth.

so when i realized that the back of the tooth had broken off i tried to figure out if this was REALLY A NIGHTMARE, or reality. everything else about the evening seemed normal except that where there had once been a smooth tooth was now a HORRIBLE JAGGED PIECE OF JAGGEDNESS.

bev looked at the tooth and assured me that this happens to people and it can be fixed and not to worry or PANIC UNNECESSARILY. she said this exact thing had happened to her, the tooth broke off from the filling.

i was so freaked out about the possibility of ROOTS BEING EXPOSED that i didn’t even have one single bite of the cake i’d brought.

CHOCOLATE, cake, mind you. with very very delicious CHOCOLATE FROSTING.

this morning i called my dentist but they said they couldn’t see me till NEXT WEDNESDAY. i knew that if i had to obsessively rub my tongue over this JAGGED MESS for a whole week that i’d be crazy by then. kevin called his dentist, and by some miracle he was able to see me right then. well, in about half an hour, after i’d had a chance to throw on some clothes.

and now it’s all better and not only that, but kevin’s dentist seems to think that there’s a way to make my teeth STOP WRIGGLING. very exciting.

it’s funny - last night at fencing, before my tooth trauma, this very cute little girl was showing me that she’d lost one of her front teeth and she was so delighted about it, and another of her teeth is loose. of course i wanted to tell her WAIT TILL YOU GROW UP, KID, ALL KINDS OF BAD THINGS COULD HAPPEN TO THOSE TEETH. AND YOU SURE AS HELL WON’T BE GRINNING LIKE THAT IF THEY’RE LOOSE!

but i didn’t want to freak her out, so instead i expressed joy at the fact that she got a whole dollar for her tooth. her grandma sent her a dollar plus she got a dollar from the tooth fairy, so she had TWO WHOLE DOLLARS, she said to me, her already huge eyes as big as saucers. oh, to be seven again.

things are much calmer tonight.

here’s one more photo from the little town of grein. kevin saw this car parked when were out for an evening walk. i can’t remember what kind he said it was, but he was very excited about it.



the next morning we got up and took the ferry that was right there in the town across the river. the ride was very very pretty. i’m doing my best to not post ALL the millions of great pictures that kevin took.

he took this one from the ferry - that’s grein across the way.



here’s just another beautiful spot along the way. i want to blow these photos up so they’re really huge and hang them on our walls. i’ve printed a few 8x10, but they just don’t seem big enough.



this is what the woods looked like along the path.



we passed a pumpkin field.



here’s me outside a museum in Pochlarn. i can’t recall what they had at this museum. we only stopped here so i could use the bathroom. the woman inside the museum was very nice about the fact that i had no desire to look around at all.



ok, never mind about that, i just checked the photo and the building says OSKAR KOKOSCHKA HOUSE in huge letters there in front, so it wasn’t a museum after all. the guidebook says that it has rotating exhibits presented in the artist’s birthplace. oh. my question is then, why was he born in a museum?

theoretically i’m just going to take a little break now in order to upload a few more photos, but if somehow i get distracted, well, i guess there will be photos at some point but maybe not right now. but you never know. our destination on that day, it was sunday, was the very very famous MELK ABBEY, a spectacularly photogenic place.

ok ok ok,

thursday night grace.



Nov. 05, 2007

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Enns [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:21 pm
it claims to be the oldest town in austria period, not just lower austria.

our hotel was much better than the tiny tiny room we had the night before in linz. but we still didn’t want to just hang out in the room, so we walked around in the town a bit. it was pretty deserted and getting a little bit chilly. we ate outside in the courtyard of the Enns castle. here’s our view as we dined.



after dinner we walked around a bit more, but then headed back to the room. it looked like rain, but it didn’t.

next morning, getting out of enns was much simpler than getting to the hotel. we rode our bikes right down the hill and out of town - we didn’t take the same route as the one we took getting into town. it was a cloudy morning and kind of cold. we passed some pretty bleak countryside and finally found our way to the bridge back across the river. we had some difficulty finding the bridge because all we saw was this bridge that was heavy with traffic. we somehow missed seeing the bike path at first, and had to go back to look at it again. and there was the path, no problem.

however, getting off the bridge on the other side - it was stairs, just like the place on the very first day, where we had to put the tires in this groove at the side of the stairs. at least this time it was just down the stairs, instead of up.



this was the least picturesque day of riding. at least in the morning - it was so grey and the path was kind of bleak. we rode on a flood plain for a while, and it got very bumpy. this isn’t the condition of the road we were actually on, but this is what it’d have turned into if we’d kept on it.



somebody made this funny sculpture along the path.



not only did we not see many people, but there weren’t a lot of towns either on this day. here’s a sign for the town of Mettensdorf, but there wasn’t much more to the town besides the sign.



i’m sure i mentioned this before, but since it’s taken me years to post these photos you’ve probably forgotten anyway - at a restaurant, our waiter said that the week before it had rained so much that people ALMOST DROWNED. this is an excellent photo of all the mud that was scooped up off the road.



i continue to be grateful at our good luck in taking our trip at the best possible time. it would have been miserable if it had rained and been bitterly cold. plus the risk of drowning.

we kept biking and biking, and really it didn’t take so long, but like i said, it wasn’t so scenic. we were headed for the tiny town of Grein, and we kept expecting to see it, but we didn’t. finally, though, there it was in the distance - just as the sun came out.



we rode into the town which was right up next to the river, and there was our hotel! no looking at all for it, it was just right there. we were there by two in the afternoon, and kevin went in to get our room, bu he couldn’t find anybody to help us. it was a fairly large (and very old) hotel, and there was a wait staff at the adjoining restaurant, but nobody at the hotel desk. i went in and tried to help - there was a sign that said “ring bell,” so we did, but it did no good.

kevin wasn’t happy with the situation, and i suggested that we have some lunch. he didn’t want to eat at the hotel because he was mad at the whole place, so we strolled through the town square and found another place to eat.

they were having an arts & crafts show in town that day (it was saturday) and the square was crowded with booths. there were lots of people walking around, and it was fun to sit outside and watch them go by.

after lunch we went back to the hotel and found somebody to give us a room and it was a great room. it had windows on either side, one facing the inner courtyard where they were serving wine and cheese, and the other overlooking the street. here’s the street view.





we walked around and looked at all the stuff, and i don’t know why kevin didn’t take any pictures. i know i took lots of video. there were a couple of guys playing music, a bunch of stuff like simon & garfunkel.

we had dinner at yet another outdoor patio, this time overlooking the river.





it was so neat, sitting there with that fantastic view. we watched the craft vendors right below us, packing up for the night, and the river. it makes me want to go back right now. except this morning i checked the weather in austria, and i think it would be too cold for enjoyable biking. plus it seems they’re going to have rain and/or snow all week. brrrr.

after dinner we took a walk, and went pretty high up into the hills.



at this point we were halfway through the biking portion of our trip. this saturday was the eve of our first anniversary, and a lovely time was had by all.

have i mentioned that i’ve started researching another trip? scotland this time, i think. except i’m slightly leery of all the hills and the rain. we’d have to go in the the middle of summer, probably, instead of september. but that’s ok by me.

ok then, i PROMISE i’m going to be more diligent about putting up photos of the second half of the ride. not to mention the days spent in lovely vienna.

ok ok ok,

is it really only monday? grace

---

monday afternoon, as the wind HOWLS outside... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:09 pm

...not that i’ve just been SITTING HERE LIKE A SLUG ALL DAY OR ANYTHING! i got up, was NOT going to run, but then mollie was looking so pleadingly at me that i had no choice; we went for 28 short minutes and were both glad we went.

and then i gave a long massage and then i had lunch with my friend linda. a VERY busy monday morning for me! and i have just a few minutes before i have to give yet MORE massages, so i’ll be quick about it here.

the wind is, indeed, howling, but it’s pretty warm out but tonight it’s supposed to be in IN THE 20s. so here it comes. i’m ready, though. i can’t find the flannel sheets, but do we actually have any flannel sheets? why can’t i even remember last winter? i have plenty of fuzzy pajamas but i really need the flannel sheets.

if we have any, i have no idea where they could be, so that’s almost the same as not having any.

ok, anyway, here’s MORE OF AUSTRIA. as you may recall, i left you there at the concentration camp, not a happy place to be.

we left that place after being there all afternoon, and the parking lot was almost empty. we hadn’t really seen a lot of people inside the camp when we were there, so i’m not sure where they ever were.

we rode our bikes down the hill which was great, because of all that coasting. we had no desire to see the actual town of mathausen because we’d just seen their concentration camp. instead, we took the ferry across the river, headed for the town of enns.

i don’t know if i’ve mentioned this, but our guidebook and literature from the tour company never had any maps or instructions for getting to our actual hotels, which could prove challenging. this was one of the challenging days. we were emotionally drained and physically pretty tired, and we rode on a country road and there was enns - but where was the hotel? the small map in the guidebook was no help. the bike path signs were no help, because we had no idea where the hotel was in relation to the signs. it looked like the center of town was up a hill, and i could see a steeple at the top. i felt our hotel must be near the center, but kevin was sure it was out the other way and so we had some discussion about this for a while.

when you’re on a bike and you’ve been biking for a while you really really don’t want to end your day biking around without knowing where you’re going. and you CERTAINLY don’t want to go up a hill if you can avoid it.

but my logic won out and we climbed the hill, and there was the hotel. whew.



that’s the view from our room; the town was the oldest in lower austria, i think, i can’t remember and i actually have no time to look it up because i have to leave FIVE MINUTES AGO to go give a massage and now i’m probably going to be late. well, not actually late, but the client will be early so i’ll appear to be late which is almost as bad.

i go now. more later in the day.
ok ok ok,
rushedgrace


Nov. 03, 2007

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WARNING WARNING WARNING: DON’T EAT ANYTHING [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:14 pm

recalled: over 120 MILLION pepperoni pizzas.

recalled: ONE MILLION POUNDS ground beef.

ok, you can eat something - BUT NO MEAT.

ESPECIALLY NO PEPPERONI PIZZAS AND HAMBURGERS.

you could always do like i’m doing, which is eating gobs of leftover halloween candy.

only the chocolate candy, of course.

that is all for now.

BE ALERT.

vigilant grace.


Nov. 01, 2007

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we left linz... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:35 am
here on the website over a week ago. linz was the second day of our austria trip, and we left the town on the third day, which was friday, sept. 14th. the last photo i posted was from the bike trail heading from linz to enns.

we biked through a couple of little towns which weren’t really quaint or old-looking, and we were headed for the mauthausen concentration camp before spending the night in the little town of enns.

i knew that seeing the camp would be horrible, but the experience was different than i’d imagined it to be. for one thing, in my mind i expected it to look old and creepy, dark and damp and dirty.

the day was brightly sunny, and we had to climb an incredibly steep hill to get there. the guide book claimed it was a 14% grade, which is very very steep. here’s the view from near the top of the climb - we had to walk our bikes the last part of it. here’s the view back down the hill from whence we came.



we could see the camp in the distance, and it gave me chills.



here’s the view of the lovely countryside from the top of the hill. it made the whole experience even that more bizarre, the fact that it was set in such a lovely place.



we got to the parking lot which was full of cars and tour buses. we walked to the visitor’s center, a sever-looking grey building, and got instructions for going into the camp. we could get audio headsets if we wanted them.

the camp is so sterilized now. nothing rotting or decaying. as a matter fact, they’re raising millions of dollars to help restore it, because some of the buildings were damaged by storms. lots of the buildings had been torn down, and the place is all paved now. the effect made it feel like a museum-like representation of the place.

the horror became clear as we listened to our headsets.



they gave us a map of the place, and we listened to a piece about each place we stopped. each segment must have been about five minutes long, and there must have been 20 or so segments.



each description was absolutely horrible. detail upon detail about the atrocities committed right here in this place we were standing. it looked so sterile and clean, bright and sunny - but there was the “wailing wall,” with the metal rings embedded in it, where people were chained, naked, sometimes for days, when they were first brought to the camp.

horrible, it was all so unbelievably horrible. i couldn’t help but cry, and so there we were, shuffling around with these headsets glued to our ears, listening to one awful story after another. i had thought we’d listen to all of them, but we realized we just couldn’t - it was simply too unbearable.



even though there had been so many cars in the lot, we didn’t see a huge amount of other people inside. many of them didn’t have headsets, and i can’t imagine going there and not listening.

the gas chamber - this was absolutely the worst.



i realize my words and these pictures can in no way even begin to describe the impact that this place had on us. the thing is, we’ve all seen movies, pictures, stories of the nazis and their atrocities, but being right there in one of these places is an entirely different thing. it was so horrible to see, and i think that everybody needs to witness one of these camps for themselves, in order to more completely understand and feel it.

when we left, there were all kinds of memorials outside.



whew.

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