Sunday, January 25, 2009

January 18 - 24, 2009

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On Sunday, Norm and I went to the theater and saw Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood. What a great story of redemption. There are so many similar elements to John Wayne's last movie, The Shootist. I highly recommend it!

Monday, the kids and I didn't have any school because of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, of course, although Norm had to work. The furnace repairman showed up and cleaned the flame sensor to the tune of $100! In the course of trying to figure out what the problem was last weekend, Norm had cleaned out some of it, which improved the situation. Oh, well! At least now we know what to do in the future, and we're enjoying having warm, consistent air flow again.

Missy's boyfriend's mom had knee surgery a week ago Friday and Monday I brought over my famous Spicy Potato Soup along with some sour cream and potato chips. It was a definite hit!

I had four students at my Beginning Online Genealogy class at the Spokane County Library Thursday evening. It was nice to have a few more. I also discovered that I can get a county library card for free, and I was able to pick up They Became Americans: Finding Naturalization Records and Ethnic Origins by Loretto Dennis Szucs. I want to see if I can enhance the Immigration and Naturalization lesson in my Intermediate Online Genealogy class I'll be teaching beginning in February.

Matt and I had our yearly dental exams on Friday, with clean reports except for a soft spot on one of Matt's teeth. It's not yet a cavity, so he has to be sure to keep on brushing and also rinse twice a day with fluoride. We wondered as we drove home if dentists and dental assistants ever tell their patients, "You're brushing too much. You need to cut back." Ha!

Missy went to Winter Camp with her church youth group up at Chewelah Peak Learning Center. Sounds like she had a lot of fun as usual and got quite a bit of scrapbooking done. She's really been enjoying learning how to do scrapbooking for her senior culminating project.

My shoulder has really been giving me grief for about 10 days. I had seen my physical therapist mid-week last week, and she had suggested cutting way back on my exercises, which I did. In fact, I didn't do anything except some light stretches each day, plus I started wearing my sling to work. I was getting to the point where I was really worried that not only had I plateaued, but perhaps had regressed. It was very frustrating and the pain and stiffness were starting to get to me. Finally, this morning, I woke up and was able to do not only my stretches but all my exercises in the shower with the warm water cascading over my shoulder and upper back. I am encouraged and looking forward to going back to therapy tomorrow.



Did you know that Goodwill has its own auction website, similar to eBay? Looks like some great stuff here! I discovered this through one of the genealogy blogs that I read. I've been eyeing the teapots up for bid, because I think I want to get a few more. My aunt gave me two strawberry decorated ones years ago, to match my kitchen decor. One, the smaller one above left, is a two-cup teapot and I've been using it a lot lately for tea for both Norm and myself. Our favorites are usually the Stash brand, both black and decaf. I am looking for a good, quick, easy teapot cozy crochet pattern for free online, but haven't run across anything I like so far...believe me, I've looked! I might have to just make up my own.

Speaking of crocheting, I haven't added anything this week to the afghan I'm making for Missy because I was too sore this week. We'll see what next week brings!

Our yucky stagnant air will hopefully be going soon. The hoarfrost on fences and trees is just beautiful, but the gray skies and gray and brown frozen berms of snow everywhere are not. Just to the west of us, in Lincoln County, the hoarfrost (fog that freezes in feathery patterns of heavy frost) has brought down power lines all over the county and with them the poles, both wooden and metal, that hold them. School has been out for a few days in those districts and the local power companies' crews have been working 18 hours a day to get the lines back up and the power turned on for the thousands of unfortuante families in the area.

And that's a wrap!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I look forward to hearing more about your geneaology classes. I speak on the topic, but mostly from a busy mom perspective who loves scrapbooking, but wants her kids to know their family.

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

I hope your shoulder continues to improve! It has been an awful winter nationwide this year. We all need a break.