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Mom's
This picture has been on the refrigerator for years...and I don't know who these people are!!! It has been pointed out to me that I lied recently in identifying the "Cool 101" magnet as "the radio station where Ned worked." It was the radio station where Marta worked. I'm so ashamed :-) Household Hints from A Medieval
Home Companion: If the wine is oily Take 12 eggs and boil them in water until they are hard. Throw away the yellow, leave the whites and the shells together and fry them in an iron frying skillet. Put all this hot into a little bag, pierce it with a stick and hang it in the cask on a string. Take a large new pot and set this egg mixture above an empty trivet. When it is well cooked, cut it up into pieces and throw them into the cask. This will cure the oiliness. tomorrow: I am a theatre critic OK...so it's a new "career", but if you're interested in reading my reviews, go here Updated 2/11/01 WHAT I'M READING... Christmas gift from my friend, Diane, who felt it was time I learn more about Australia also He, She and It Steve tells me I have to read this book. WHAT I WATCHED... Notting
Hill The
Simpsons That's it for today!
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CELEBRATIONS. 25 February 2001
We celebrated Walt’s birthday last night (all the photos at Club Photo). Oh, yesterday wasn’t his actual birthday--that’s Monday--but since I’m going to go off to spend the night with another man on Monday, we decided we’d celebrate last night. (Monday night Steve is speaking to a class at Stanford; I’m going to pick him up in San Francisco and we’ll be spending the night at Stanford after the class.) Ned and Marta and the pugs (Yogi and BooBoo) came for dinner and we had a feast. It was a very low key evening. In fact, dinner was delayed because I’d dozed off in the afternoon and woke with a start when I heard the pugs burst through the front door. Fortunately it was an easy meal (steak, baked potatoes, artichoke, asparagus, sauteed mushrooms and salad, with lemon meringue pie for dessert), so we just sat around chatting while I the potatoes and artichokes cooked.
Walt rides his bike to work every morning. He has ever since we moved here, nearly 30 years ago. When we first moved here, it was a 5 mile ride, but now the office has moved closer, so it’s only a little over a mile. He’s never used a helmet and after he had an accident a month or so ago, we started bugging him about getting one; now he has no excuse. His bike has also been in bad shape for a very long time. The last time Jeri was home, she borrowed it and when she came back reported that it was "scary," because it was so out of alignment. Walt says that over the years he’s gotten used to its quirks, but it’s nice to know that he now has a good working bike. This town has been known as the "City of Bicycles." It’s the perfect town for riding a bike. It’s completely flat (except for three overpasses). And when they were going through building of new housing developments, the city included very wide bike lanes, so it’s very easy to ride a bike here--no competition with automobiles for space on the street (I’ve seen other towns where there are bike lanes and they are teeny things). When we first moved here, you were really aware of the presence of bicycles, especially when school first opened. There would be masses of bikes on the street that rivaled the Tour de France. There would be parades of bikes heading to the nearby high school. Now I notice that I don’t notice bikes and I suspect that more people drive around town than used to. Oh of course there are still lots of bikes here, but it just doesn’t seem like there are as many as 30 years ago. There are also a lot more cars overflowing onto the street at the high school and I suspect more kids drive to school than used to. I had a bike the first years we were here. I shudder now when I think of riding around the city with a kid in a seat on the back of the bike. Those seats were so incredibly unsafe. And of course nobody heard of a helmet. It’s amazing I didn’t kill a kid. I remember a couple of times when the bike toppled and I had to be quick to grab whichever was the child riding on the back. Amazing how all of our children survived the unsafe conditions we subjected them to (they also grew up in cars that didn’t have seatbelts, a thing which is unthinkable today!) I don’t ride a bike any more. It would be great exercise for me, but I’m acutely aware of what I’d look like on a bicycle and embarrassment keeps me off. But we can all relax now; Walt has a safe bike and a protective helmet and we've celebrated the fact that in 2 days he will be 61 years old.
It’s also always fun when the "grandpugs" come to visit as well. |
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Some pictures from this journal |
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Created 2/25/01 by Bev Sykes |
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This is another of
those middle of the night entries. I’ve simply got
to stop sitting down to watch TV before getting anything
done at night!
For his birthday,
we had bought him a bike and a bike helmet. It was a
group gift, with most of the family contributing to it. 
And it was a nice evening with Ned and
Marta. Nothing special, just the joy of sitting around
with an adult child talking about day to day events and
enjoying each other’s company. The nicest thing
about raising children is when they grow up and you
discover that you like who they are as people and enjoy
spending time with them.