Year: 2014

Ukelele.

Katherine was in town this past weekend.  She was here to join the Cowboy and Indian Alliance’s protest against the Keystone Pipeline.  She’s learning to play the ukelele. The house is a little bit crowded these days.  Seth and Christine and their two kids have moved into the basement as their house gets renovated.  They’ll be here about two months.  Since they are occupying the usual “guest” quarters, we moved Edda into our room and then Kiki stayed in Edda’s room.  We are going to have a number of guests the next two months, so it’ll be a bit of musical beds.

My Daily Menu & Routines

In the morning, I have a bowl of cereal, two pieces of toasted bread with 7 grains.  On top of that, I put some Philadelphia cheese or peanut butter on it.  

For lunch, I usually have a breakfast special from McDonald’s, Hardee’s,  Krystal or Bojangles’ (a local brand), 2 for $3.00 or $3.33.

For Dinner, I usually scavenge with what I have with Mom’s stuffs.  Believe me or not, there are a lot in my freeze.  With that, I added a lot of veggies and other fresh ingredients.  
On Friday, Saturday & Sunday, I will do my laundry, clean the apartment and relax.  Sometimes, I just drive around and enjoy the scenery.  I am trying to learn Spanish.  But, haven’t found a best way to do this yet. Would like to find out that this old dog can learn something new 🙂

My Apartment II

More pictures around my apartment.  Picture 1 is just in front of my apartment.  There are several parks out there.  A fishing walk way into the lake and several boat launching places.

The other three pictures are those places for rowing.  It stretches several miles with cars, equipment lining up every where.  They are just within 5 miles of my apartment. Very close indeed.

May Apartment, Oak Ridge, TN

I rent an apartment with “lake view”.  Picture one shows the scenery view from my bedroom and living room. Picture 2 is the way out of our apartment gate.  The last picture shows my car parked at an unit just in front of mine. Mine is at its back.
It is pretty new and just about 5 minutes drive to my office.  I look forward to having Mom here if she would like to take a break from her numerous work, including yard work. 

Coles Park, Ohio / Portsmouth / Easter

On Easter, we went hunting for the house Gene and Bob lived in when they were in elementary school.  Their father, George, was a labor organizer for the boot and shoe union and he was the leader of the union at the Selby Shoe Company in Portsmouth, OH.  They lived in a small, tiny town called Coles Park.  We found the house they lived in and introduced ourselves to the current owner who has been there since 1974.

Gene and Bob played with the family next door and the family still lives there.   We were hoping to meet the son of their friend in this yellow house.  Alas, no one answered the door.

Then off to find their elementary school.  Here it is, all boarded up and filled with trash.  It seems like the school building had been leased to a sewing factory? or something like that?  But it’s just really shut down and unoccupied.

Then a little Easter egg hunt in a nearby park and an outdoor lunch.

We did try to find the factory in Portsmouth where George worked, but it seems to have been torn down.  We did enjoy frozen yogurt there though.

Then finally, home.

Food from Rena

I have visited Rena’s three times since I came down here (Oak Ridge, TN), twice in Maryland and once in Washington State.  Every time, I brought back a lot of her food with me.

Almost every evening, her food is on my dinner table, with some addition of fresh veggies, of course. I guess they will probably last for a while until I see her again.

I seldom eat out because all these restaurants’ coupons are designed for party of two.  Just one person, there is few bargain out there.  I guess I act more like Rena every single day 🙂

Cincinnati

After Columbus, we headed to Cincinnati.  There we picked up Bob (flew into Dayton) and Gene (flew into Cincinnati).  Half of us stayed in a hotel and half stayed in the beautiful home of a Martin relative.

Resident cat!  This is a very nice cat photo.  I got lucky.

Our first stop was the Cincinnati Music Hall.  Bob ushered there and attended a lot of concerts at the hall.

Then we went to Union Terminal.  Wonderful display of art deco styling.  Gene remembered the place being full of travelers – according to wikipedia, at it’s peak, there were 216 trains coming and going.  Now there is only one train, three times a week, arriving at 2 am.

The inside has been turned into a number of museums.

Oh!  What great fonts.

Then we started hunting for Bob and Gene’s childhood home(s).  This one is on Stirgus Ave – lived in when they were approximately high school age.

Then onto the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.  Edda learned about the cotton gin.

Mecklenburg’s Garden for dinner.  Nice German food.  Well, at least a lot of German food.  Bob and Gene remember this place fondly.

Onto find the high school.  Walnut Hills High School.  The fanciest public high school any of us has ever seen.  Brand new facilities, marble statues in the front lobby.  Today, you have to test into Walnut Hills HS.  I think it might be ranked higher than Wootton nationally.

Finally, Graeter’s for ice cream!

Spring break – 2014. Ohio.

Spring break means a road trip somewhere.  This year, we decided to go to Michigan/Ohio.  There was going to be an engineering/manufacturing portion (Detroit, Dayton), a visiting friends portion (Columbus), and a reminiscing portion (Cincinnati).  Because of nursing school and three exams on Monday and Tuesday, I totally missed the engineering part of the trip (a total shame) and therefore, it was poorly documented.  The kids, Nat, Jeremy, and Kiki made it to the Ford manufacturing plant and museam in Detroit and the National Museum of US Air Force in Dayton.   I did manage to fly into Columbus on Wed to meet the minivan where we visited Paul (Jeremy’s college pal) and his family.  This is Ceci – she taught Vince all there is to know about American Girl dolls.

Paul is still coaching me, I’m still running.  He’s trying to convince me that I can string together 6.2 miles at 8 min pace with about 7 or 8 weeks of training.   I’m a little dubious, but we’ll see how it goes.   He is also determined to find a wife for Donald, he’s going to work his connections in San Fran, so Donald, look out.  Mom, he also wants his finder’s fee of $2500 if it ends up in a wedding.

Resident cat!