Month: January 2015

Shovel the Snow

This morning, it was snowing in Washington DC.  Over the phone, I asked Mom to stay home.

This afternoon, it was awful nice that Doris offered Mom to shovel the snow for her after work, around 5:00 PM if she couldn’t pay someone to shovel.  I was kind of worrying about Mom with all this snow on the ground.  With Doris’ help, it was great.

Food.

We had another turkey on Saturday night.  How many times can Jeremy cook Thanksgiving?  I think this is turkey #3 since T’day 2014.  Jeremy also is trying to reduce the number of half empty jars in the fridge.  We are eating a lot of pickles and our fruit has been decorated with maraschino cherries.   It’s kind of retro festive.

The Return

Its been awhile, but thought I would make my reappearance on the blog. Things that have been happening recently:

  • Football playoffs – some friends of long suffering franchises have had thier moment in the sun (Bengals, Lion). They continue to suffer. They continue to be better than the Washington football team.
  • Games – played Ina bridge tournament over the weekend. Messed two hands in the very beginning that psyched me out. Was upset for awhile. But managed to eke out 3rd place overall for the 99er stratified pairs. I have some mild obsession to gain ACBL master points. 
  • Other games – Kevin got the board game Eurorails, for himself. An interesting crayon game where you actually draw with crayons on the board as railroad tracks. Slow, and somewhat random. Not sure this is a game that I fully enjoy. Lawrence will not be playing it again as we spend 6 hours on the game the other night. 
  • Dating – won’t go into too much detail here as this is a public forum, but am enjoying myself and learning about myself. One fun side note is that I really get to explore the city a lot. I get to try out that cool bar where the girl lives. I get to eat at that fun new restaurant across town. 🙂
  • Misc – teaching people how to drive manual is fun. Spinning out on an alpine road is not. 
2015, for all of you, I hope is another year of growth and self-awareness. Be kind to yourself and put yourself in other peoples’ shoes as much as possible. I’ll be seeing you guys a bit more this time. 🙂

The great sock sort.

These are all the socks we own.  It was getting confusing because the kids’ feet are as big as my feet (or bigger) and they keep stealing my socks.  And then the socks get lost or dispersed throughout the house.  Last week, my pile of unmatched socks filled a whole laundry basket.  I was inspired by a friend of mine who encouraged me to just let go of the unmatched socks.  She had just thrown away all her unmatched socks and felt liberated!  So I did it.  I sorted all the socks, clarified who owned which pairs and threw over 20 unmatched socks away.

Now the new year can really start in ernest.  The socks are in order.  Tomorrow the children are back at school.  We are back at work and we will all find matched socks in our drawers.

Back to Routines

After this morning, I definitely will go back to my routines – get up early in the morning; have a bowl of cereal with fruits; drive to work; have a slice of pepperoni pizza or one of those McDonald’s 2 for $3.00 breakfast for lunch; after work, drive to McDonald’s to have a cup of senior coffee while browsing the internet; then drive back to my apartment; prepare my boiling-one-pot-with-everything dish for dinner; have a piece of Mom’s cakes for desert; do some chores and go to bed.  Ready for tomorrow with the same routines again.

Oh, coming Friday (1/9/15), I will fly back to Portland, OR for the weekend and next, next Thursday (1/15/15) to Washington DC again. There, hopefully, I can finish my mulch work for Mom and apply for our 10-year Chinese multi-entrance tourist visa.  Rena and I probably will visit China again soon.

Best Western

Today is the last day Mom will do visiting in Tennessee.  She will fly back to Washington DC tomorrow. And she was happy to learn that Doris will pick her up at the airport.

This time, I arranged Mom’s trip to Tennessee for 4 days without any input from Mom.  With her trip is coming to an end, Mom has enjoyed a lot.  But, she still thinks “Best Western” is more reasonable and pretty good too.  I have to agree to her that the first night at Hyatt was terribly overpriced.  For lunch, we went to Cracker Barrel twice and she liked it.
Tonight, we took advantage of our hotel’s complimentary shuttle service to their main dining place on top of a hill and back.  The service was good and food was good too.  Their pork chop was excellent.
Well, after dropping Mom off at Nashville International Airport tomorrow morning, I will drive back to Oak Ridge, TN.  It is a three hours drive.  Of course, it feels much longer without her 🙂

Finally, Mom Visited My Places @ Oak Ridge, TN

After about a year, finally, Mom visited my places at Oak Ridge, TN which includes my apartment, gym, apartment garbage collecting station, office, McDonald’s, Big Lots and the Double Tree Hilton hotel. I would like to take Mom to a famous local restaurant for dinner.   But, Mom would like to cook instead. And therefore we had a delicious dinner at my apartment.  Mom thinks my apartment is pretty nice and neat.

Since there is no bed in my apartment, we better stay in Hilton for one night before heading Nashville, TN tomorrow noon time.  Early tomorrow morning, I will take Mom to my favorite breakfast fast food restaurant.

Also, we will visit the rowing boat racing courses along the river sand lakes here.

Here, Mom posted a picture in front of floor bed.

NYE party.

Vince said to his pals as they cleaned all the silly string and confetti up, “What happened at the New Year’s Eve party stays at the New Year’s Eve party.”  Per our usual habit, Jeremy and I had gone to bed early on New Year’s Eve and at midnight we were awoken by running and loud thumping and laughing from the first floor.  The next morning, I asked the boys what the ruckus was all about.  I got some muttered answer about Excalibur and brooms.  I didn’t persue any further.

*****

I’m looking forward to Monday.  I hope have fully recovered from December by the time classes start up again for me at the end of January.

Reelfoot Lake, TN and New Madrid, MO


Today, we left Nashville, TN to Reelfoot Lake, TN which was created by the earthquake of 1811-1812. We also went to an earthquake created town of New Madrid, MO.
Pictures 1-3 show the lake scenery.  Picture 4, Mom was playing with snow on the ground.  Actually, it was not snow but left behind cotton after machine harvesting.  The last picture was at New Madrid, MO Mississippi River water front.
This time, I tried to celebrate our new year by staying in nice hotels (Hyatt, Holiday Inns & Hilton) all with hot breakfast (except Hilton). While driving Mom, she kept asking me about hotel rates and looking at her road side hotel coupons.  I guess she [me too:)] are not used to travel several consecutive days in such a fancy style.  Well, everything has its beginning.
After New Madrid, Mom started to look deep into the history of New Madrid earthquake.