Chapte 334

If anybody is counting, my blog is late due to the Martin Luther King holiday and Mary Lou and I went "off the grid tomorrow until we got home Monday night. I'm in tv/radio/internet purgatory where my T-Mobile doesn't work and, by contract with T-Mobile, ATT throttles me down to two giga-wheezers which isn't even enough to download one (of many photo) of Reagan.

One benefit of blogging late is that I get to poach pictures from JoAnn's blog. Look at these little cuties Payton and Carter!

A few years ago I made this sign that  I post outside the door when the students need to bring their book to class. I post it outside the door with the target class appended to the sign. This year is worse than ever that the students claim they don't see the sign so they don't bring their textbooks to class. My teacher Kurt is fast learning how to get the student's attention. He punched holes in the sign and dangled strings from them. Most of the students notice something brushing their head and are inquisitive enough to notice the sign and go back to their lockers and get their books. Some notice the strings but don't care enough to go back to see what's up. I think we should tie washers (or 2 x 4's) to the strings to get amplify the effect.

Yay, look our building is done! The brick facade to match the rest of the school, the parking lot is done, the sign is finally on and we have that amazing glass door for the bad guys' viewing pleasure. It's nice to get rid of that old 80's ribbed concrete look and match the rest of the school again. We've never, ever matched since the building was built in 1980.

We all know that spoilers on a truck bed help the air escape the box more smoothly and increase mileage. I'm pretty sure that this fancy operation does neither. It's high on the creative scale and low on the attractive scale.

Friday evening Mary Lou and I loaded up my car and headed for the cabin. Mary Lou loves herself a good quilting/crafting weekend. We turned the cabin into a sewing wonderland and  busted out projects to do. Mary Lou started with her wall hanging and I got new elastic put in Bob's sweatpants and started the JagMag Newsletter.  Here she has the wall hanging squares laid out to sew together.

 

Mary Lou is pondering if the squares are all in the right places before she does the final sewing.

Mary Lou even brought her monster steam iron to press her seams out.

After all the heavy duty crafting we pooled the leftovers we brought from home and Mary Lou made an awesome pasta primavera with REAL BUTTER AND CREAM. You can't eat like that ll the time, but it sure was a wonderful change from  "skinny" eating.

Between rain squalls we walked out to town and along the beach.  It was pretty windy and the wind was carrying the wave spray up making for a nice view.

Mary Lou finished her beautiful wall hanging and I started-restarted-got bored on several projects resulting in the completion of getting the elastic done in Bob's pants, making Reagan's I Spy and being so unhappy with my finished product that I need to re-do it.

 

A while ago, I sealed the cork on my Haflinger clogs. I remember when I sealed my Birkenstocks the sealant just smelled like white glue. Everything I read said "Use white glue, it's cheaper and that's what the official Birkenstock sealers smell like." So although some little voice deep inside me said that white glue is water soluble and why would I use it on shoes in this wet and wild State of Washington, I overrode that little voice and did it anyway. The net result is that every time my shoes got wet they turned white and collected all the debris that came in contact with the white glue no longer seemed like such a good idea. Now I not only had to buy the correct sealant, I had to soak and scrub my shoes to remove the white glue before I could reseal them.

Shoes sealed and ready for action. Let's all cross our fingers that this $11 stuff worked better than the $1.99 bottle of white school glue. 

 

After a busy day of sewing and doing whatever I did, we settled in for the evening with Mary Lou knitting and me blogging and working on the JagMag.

While we are busy finishing some of our products, Nitro looks annoyed when I flip the covers back to see what he's up to.

When Mary Lou and I walked on the beach, we were enthralled with all the cool patterns and colors in the sand. They seemed to be very different from the usual cool patterns in the sand.

The sandpipers were in full search and destroy mode. First they would follow the wave out, eating in it's wake, then be pushed back up the beach as the wave came in.

 

Sometimes the wave came in too fast and the sandpipers had to lift and fly up the beach a ways.

While the little birds whiz around the beach looking for snacks, the lone seagull just says "Pshaw, silly little birds."

If you want to see all these little guys in action, check out the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfHEW5Uxxoc.

I tried to get a picture of a gull in flight so I thought I would scare this guy into flight. All I managed to do is to get in a walking stare down with a teen aged gull.

After continuing to pursue the gulls, all I got was "feathery middle-fingers" and no picture of a seagull in flight.

Finally. A bird in flight. At least one of them was listening to my pleas for a flighted bird.

Look at this pattern in the sand! It looks like the glass in a shower door. I took waaay to many pictures of this sand.

This arrangement of sand looks like fabric. Well, maybe not, but I've been talking fabric all weekend with Mary Lou so that's the first think I thought of.

Mary Lou was smart enough to wear tall rubber boots. While she's tramping through the puddles with a smile on her face, I'm forging a path around the path despite the "For your safety, please stay on the paths" signage. I didn't think the "path" was all that awesome for me to stay on since I was wearing wool sock and foam Birkenstocks. I found a buoy to play with and someone had already put it on a stick for me!!! People were looking at me funny like I was carrying a skewered spaghetti squash.

Mary Lou was in so deep that a small ripple would have gone over the top of her very tall boots.

Look, the sun is coming out!

We got back to the cabin to find Nitro still in bed grabbing a very long catnap.

While I was at the cabin and Bob was home alone with the Bear, the Walker's were on family vacation. It was Reagan's first plane ride as a toddler so that she had the power to be a full-on a trip wreaker for everyone. As it turned out, she was an absolutely perfect little traveler.

"No more noisy indoor pools for me. Outdoor swimming pool, here I come!"

Ummm...

It may morning but this kiddo still looks tired!

Happy San Diego Zoo do-ers.

I guess Reagan loved the flamingoes.

Reagan and Chris watch a helicopter together. Since they were staying on a military base, there were a lot of airborne things to point at.

A bit of reading makes the vacay even better.

Wide open rock-free sand to explore.

Vacation 1: Reagan 0

Carissa: "As I left the room I said "get ready so we can go to the park" I came back to this - she had put her boots on the wrong feet and my sunglasses on."