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| While Ryder and Brandy were in Las Vegas with friends and cousins to celebrate their birthdays, we played with Mya, River, and Piper. Piper had the flu the first three days of our visit. We're glad you're well now, Piper! |
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| Mya's loose tooth came out after Mama and Daddy left. The Tooth Fairy paid a call! |
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| Papa and I arrived in Asheville on Mimi's birthday (Feb. 21) and celebrated all three Pisces: Mimi, Ryder (Feb. 19), and Brandy (Feb. 24) with "regular" and vegan birthday cakes. |
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| Nature vs. nurture? From the very beginning, Ryder was inquisitive and analytical. What the photo doesn't show is Ryder dropping the ball into an empty oatmeal box over and over again, until he was satisfied with whatever it was he wanted to find out. |
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| Three generations: Ryder, Mom, and me. Ryder having a laugh with Mema Hogan. |
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| Clowning around: about age 7 |
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| Summer of '88 (age 9) |
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| All the grandsons were together on February 18, 1996, to welcome Colton into the family. Back row: Ramzi, Ryder, Micah. Seated: Michael Craig, Destry, Amon, and Blake. And in Destry's arms: Baby Colton. |
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| The Samsung served us well for 11 years and, but for a part that's no longer available, could have been repaired. |
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| Back in business, with a Frigidaire. Several appliance sales people told us that GE and Frigidaire make replacement parts for their fridges--so far. |
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| One of Zephyr's favorite places to cat nap is in the canasta (basket) that Mom used when we lived in Peru. The basket is close to 60 years old. When I see it, I see a Peruvian woman cross-legged on a blanket on the ground, surrounded by piles of naranjas (oranges). Mom would choose oranges and drop them into the canasta. We'd move on to the next blanket or booth. Mostly, though, we shopped at the bodega, much more like a grocery store. |
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| Zephyr's looking for the Zoomer key. |
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| Red sky at night on February 7, 2019. Shouldn't that have meant "sailor's delight" on February 8? |
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| New word for me: "graupel." Graupel is small snow pellets or soft hail precipitation that is formed when supercooled water droplets are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes. Graupel is seen as small balls of ice, and appear more white than clear. |
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| The weather is confusing the flora. The Carolina jasmine has been blooming for a week, never mind graupel. |
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| Papa chair, Mama chair, and Baby chair? Unwelcome visit by Graupel? |
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| Thanks, Amon, for loaning your chair back to us. Maybe thank your cat Romeo, who won't leave the chair alone? Looking forward to reading in early morning light in the most comfy chair in the world. |
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| Thank you, Amon! |
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| Our 11-year-old fridge isn't cooling any more. Luckily, the freezer works fine and we have the miniature fridge in the sun room. Unluckily, Samsung no longer makes the needed replacement part. New fridge in our immediate future??? |
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| The temperature had been as high as 60 degrees--too warm! After Jerry defrosted the clogged ice the temperature dropped to 44 degrees. Still not the necessary below 40 degrees. |
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| Jerry defrosted the iced over part, showing me the sad little motor as preserved in ice and dead as a woolly mammoth. |
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| My friend Cheryl and her daughters ordered nine boxes of cookies from Fox. Fox, Anjanette, Lala, and Papa Jay delivered the cookies to me (and later I did to Cheryl) on Sunday, on their way to take Fox to Amon. |
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| Fox included a thank you note for Cheryl. She loves to sign her name in cursive writing. |
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| Anjanette and Fox |
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| Zephyr's idea of hiding under the bed from me when I'm calling for her. Love the rings on her tail. |
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| I left the back door open and confirmed-feral-cat Einar sneaked in for a bite. He puffed up when he heard the camera click. |
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| We celebrated Dad's 91st with an assortment of three kinds of king cake from New Orleans. (Thanks for the great photos, Donna!) |
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| No need to find the baby in this one. |
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| Martha, Craig, Martin, Tom, Donna, Dad and Charles. Emma was in New Orleans with the Centenary choir. Next year, Emma! |
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| Martha, me, Martin, Tom, Donna, Charles, and Dad |
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| We rented a hybrid vehicle, a Ford Fusion, for the first time for our most recent trip to Shreveport. I found the owner's manual to contain some fascinating information, including the above regarding how the car learns your frequent destinations. As my eyes were glazing over, all I could think was "Hop on one foot in a circle and use the opposite hand to toss three magic beans over your left shoulder while chanting 'frequent destination' backwards (noitanitsed tneuqerf) 10 times." |
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| I was summoned for jury duty for the first time in my life last Fall. Managed to get a continuance because the appearance date conflicted with the Portland trip in December. But the government will have its due. I was one of 30 prospective jurors who appeared as required on January 14. Six of us would be chosen for the drunk driving case. We were assigned randomly-selected numbers, mine being "17." I learned two things: (1) Being assigned the number 10 or below increases one's chance of being selected; and (2) during the 3-hour process of being questioned and waiting around, you're not allowed to leave to feed the meter. However, you can submit a resulting parking ticket to the bailiff for "fixing." I wasn't chosen and was kind of sad. Would have been interesting to serve on a jury. |
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| Turk Pipkin is an Austinite and author. His "Grace and the Moon," in both English and Swahili, is the story of little girls in the USA and Kenya musing about the moon. Proceeds from the book sales go to funding humanitarian projects through Nobelity, an organization he and his wife founded in 2006. You might have seen Turk on The Sopranos or seen his documentary film "Nobelity," in which a number of Nobel Prize winners are interviewed regarding how to solve world problems. Tom and I attended the book signing at BookPeople, an independent bookstore, because I need to learn how to do a book signing for if/when my book is published. |
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| Amon wanted no cake. But crickets??? Each of us in turn--Papa Tom, Fox, and me--politely declined to partake. They were crunchy like chips. Ew! |
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| Gifts for Amon. What could they be? |
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| The best present of all. Fox in a box! |
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| Ta-da! |
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| Rain, rain, rain all the way from Austin to Shreveport on Wednesday, January 2. This flooded field is on the 314 just north of Brownsboro. The 314 is my route from the 31 to I-20, through the artists' community of Edom. So good to spend time with Dad, Charles, Martha, and Craig. |
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| We waited for Fox to get back from Pittsburgh and Amon to have a day off work before celebrating Christmas. |
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| Thanks, Emma! Fox loves her fox purse and fox sox ... er, socks. |
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| New Year's Eve day found us at the Howells for one last hurrah before Beka, Scott, and kids flew back to Seattle. Here, Sadie, Fox, Lucy, and Jim play Twister. |
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| Watching the sun set on 2018 from the back deck. |
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| One last holiday hurrah with a drive down brightly lighted 37th and 36th streets. "Joy to the weird" indeed. |
