I am going to my mother’s twin sister, Janet’s, funeral today. She was a truly wonderful person with whom I had a very special connections.
Year: 2019 Page 3 of 5
This deer came by just now, stood there for a long time eating grass, chewing her cud, and looking in the window. I actually moved around quite a lot, but she did not seem to mind. After awhile she sauntered off.
Lorena and I are trying to figure out what to do next now that neither of the kids will be in the Pacific Northwest. After the weekend party, Kelly told us we should not move away. She wants to have a place to come to that feels like home.
Kelly, stuff like this visitor, our men’s breakfast once per month and a slew of other make it harder to think of leaving.
Day 28 of 100 (10.8 of 41 pounds) 26.3%
Lorena and I ran down to the McMenamin’s beside the Columbia River in Kalama on Saturday evening. It is a beautiful facility and we enjoyed ourselves very much. We used to go to the McMenamin’s in Wilsonville once a week when we lived there and liked it a lot. The one here in Centralia is really not so good–too noisy and somehow seems to have a culture difference from the ones in Kalama and Wilsonville. It is an hour drive down to Kalama, so we do not expect we will be doing it so often. We had around 30 20-30 somethings at the house over the weekend for a birthday and going-away party for Kelly. It was wonderful.
Day 7 of 100 (10.3 of 41 pounds) 25.1%
There was a big church get-together in Phoenix over the weekend for 18-25 year-olds to play volleyball. Really, it is more about the everyone hanging out and meeting new people from around the country. As you can see from the picture, Christian attended and climbed a palm tree. I have now idea how far his off the ground nor where it is nor who took the picture–Kelly sent it to Lorena in the middle of the night. Looks pretty cool.
Day 5 of 100 (9.9 of 41 pounds) 24.1%
This morning, I finished my latest read through the New Testament. This last pass, one time through the whole Bible and two times more through the New Testament was with the ESV. The next pass will be through the New American Standard Bible (NASB) version. I am still getting a lot out of it and enjoying it more and more. The plan is to follow the normal pattern and read through the whole Bible followed by two additional reads through the New Testament. I am going to try to do the entire Bible again in less than a single year, but using a more structured approach. For now, the plan is to read four chapters every day in the Old Testament and then slow down to three chapters per day when I get to the New Testament.
Day 4 of 100 (8.6 of 41 pounds) 21.0%
This deer stood outside my office window about 10 feet away from me on the other side of the glass door. He (It seems like a he–I might be wrong, but that looks to be the start of some horns between his eyes and his ears) happily ate grass while I moved around and snapped a few photos. We see a lot of deer in the yard again after somewhat of a hiatus in the winter when we only saw a few.
It is hard to believe I am a little over 20% of the way to my weight loss goal. I know this whole deal will slow down pretty dramatically after this first jump, but it is nice to see some progress at the start. The first 100 day goal is not the final end of the plan. The final end is an additional 15 to 20 pounds after that. At least that much, but I need to see how I feel before I decide when to stop.
Day 3 of 100 (7.5 of 41 pounds) 18.3%
A few days ago, I tied my old record for fatness. I am a pretty short guy (5′ 7″) who should not be weighing 231 pounds. But that is where I was three days ago. So, I popped a note to Jon, my old weight loss buddy and 1955 birth year partner and fired up a new weight/calories/steps graph for us. Then I started back in on eating more healthy and walking. I looked back to the last time I weighed that much and calculated that I lost 40 pounds in 100 days. At that time it was without consistent walking. I have decided to give myself a 100 day kick start to get myself under 190 lbs. To do that, I will have to lose approximately 2.9 pounds per week for about 14.3 weeks. I like these kinds of things and plan to keep track here. I got a good jump on it the first few days, but that will slow down pretty dramatically. For the record, here are the first three days:
- Day 1 of 100 (4.5 of 41 pounds): 10.9%
- Day 2 of 100 (6.8 of 41 pounds): 16.6%
- Day 3 of 100 (7.5 of 41 pounds): 18.3%
This is the fig tree in Christian’s kitchen. He has been nourishing it faithfully for a long time and now has some figs to show for it. It has been a bit of a struggle because he has to take it to the lab so one of his friends there can take care of it whenever he travels. It is nice to be able to work remotely from Arizona in February. This is the first time I have really taken advantage of the opportunity, but I am really glad to be able to do it.
It amazing how good it felt when I got my first pair of reading glasses and did not have to struggle to read anymore. It is a pain to have to always be looking for your glasses, but it is a much bigger pain to not be able to read. And with Lorena, there is the added benefit of making a fashion statement.
We love our house here in Centralia. It would be a difficult thing to give up. Competing with our love for our house is that the very reason we moved back out west was to be closer to family. Now, Kelly is on the verge of moving away, probably to Maryland and Christian is probably less than six months away from graduating and we have no idea where he might land. In the meantime, Lorena is only a few classes away from finishing her Associate degree at the community college. We are hopeful that within a year or so we will have a sense for what will be our next step. We expect that, like just about everything other big move, we will be where God wants us to be. Sometimes we could only see that from hindsight, but it seems clear that was the case virtually every time.
This is Gene’s last past at the bean sorter. He has made huge progress, but there is still a lot to go. He was able to take a few, not so satisfying pictures of dropping beans, but that was due to the weakness of my program, not his work. He has plenty to do, but now the ball is really back in my court.
Lorena is taking an Art Appreciation class online at Clackamas Community College this spring. It was a similar class Kelly and Christian took when they were at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh that turned our family into big art museum fans. Long before that, we had read a book in our homeschool that turned us into Diego Velazquez fans.
So, when Lorena and Kelly were at the National Gallery in London, they were very excited to see their first real live painting by Velazquez. Now, Lorena is going to take a couple of the pictures she took of those paintings in a report in her Art Appreciation class.
It continues to snow hard here at the house. We have been stuck here since Friday and do not expect to get back to normal until at least Wednesday. Fortunately, we have everything we need to eat and keep warm and the electricity and internet have not failed (yet), so we can go along in a semi-normal mode of operation. I am able to work here like nothing happened. It is certainly beautiful.
We had an amazing beautiful snow starting this afternoon. Right now there is about six inches on the ground and it is still coming down. Lorena took this picture from the upstairs window looking out at the entry. It is really beautiful. We really hope the electricity stays on. Our understanding is that more snow will fall in this storm than normal falls in Western Washington for the whole year. It is certainly beautiful at night, but we can hardly wait to see how it looks during the day. In the mean time we have started a fire in the wood stove and are just enjoying the view.
It is Conchita’s 73rd birthday. She is Lorena’s mom and my mother-in-law. As I have said previously in this blog, she is the best mother-in-law in all history. She takes my side on virtually everything. She misses Grandpa Lauro a lot, but she is doing very well. We have plans to visit her very soon.
Lorena took this picture a couple of days ago after a fairly light snow. Every time I think about selling the place we have a new event that makes me thing we would be crazy to leave. It is GORGEOUS up here where we live. We have our fireplace going now–still learning how to use the thing properly and big plans for the house (still). We do not know what will happen in the future, but we do know the kids will not be in Washington or even anywhere close. We do know that we are going to have to make another move or even several more moves before this is all over. Maybe the move will be just to down-size, but probably the move will be to get closer to family, whether that be Lorena’s family in Mexico or Kelly and Christian up here in the US.
We are now living a life of relative ease. For some reason that makes me uneasy. I have been talking to Kelly about this. It is not that we are depressed or anything, but just not so motivated to do much. Kelly is waiting to start a big new chapter in her life and, in a way, Lorena, Christian, and I are all in that same state. I am close to retirement with lots of interesting opportunities to do side stuff, but not enough to turn that into a real job yet. Christian is a few months away from Graduation as is Lorena. There are lots of things on which we can work, but it is hard to find the motivation. In the mean time, all of us (maybe not Christian) live in nice situations. I think I am going to try to push myself off center and start being motivated again. We will see how that goes.
It is snowing lightly again here in Centralia and it is very cold (for this part of the world) so I am working on my wood stove fire maintenance skills. I am way past the “getting the fire started stage” and on to the more difficult skill of maximizing warmth while maximizing burn time and minimizing wood consumption.
Lorena and I have so much joy with our wood stove right now, we are considering a wood burning fireplace rather than a gas one. It smells good, it is easy to do once one gets the hang of it and it really is better once you get the hang of it. I cannot believe I am actually saying this, but we like it a LOT!
Lorena drove up to Seattle on Friday so she and Kelly could go to the Seattle Museum of Art on Saturday to complete an assignment for her Art Appreciation class at Clackamas Community College. They had a super time. The museum is really not the same level of quality or experience as the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh nor the top three art museums in Dallas, but they felt it really was not too bad. What is especially great about this is that our family got started going to art museums in general when Kelly and Christian had to take a required visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art for their Art Appreciation class at Wake Technical Community College. It seemed like a chore before we went, but every since, we have been big, big fans of art museums and go to them whenever we get the chance.
Lorena’s next visit assignment is to go to a gallery rather than a museum.
The picture does not really do it justice, but it is a beautiful, snowy day in Centralia. The snow was not supposed to start until tomorrow, but right now it is actually coming down pretty hard. The temperature is five or so degrees above freezing so this is definitely not going to stick. I just looked at the forecast and now it says it should continue snowing through the night, but not get much colder the 33 degrees. That is a fine thing and means we will get the beauty of the snow, but not the hassle. This is the perfect weather for programming!