Sixty is a great age. I plan to enjoy my sixties greatly. Being older is such a good deal, I might have been enticed to wish I was seventy if I were not enjoying sixty so much. Lorena and I are going to celebrate a little more tonight, but she got me a few little gifts yesterday (a wallet, a bell to ring when I want her to bring me something to drink–like that is going to work and a few more little things). Tomorrow, we look for houses. We think we know what we want, but we have been wrong before. Many times.
Betty Blonde #406 – 02/04/2010
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
Independence Day is celebrated in Mexico on September 16. Well, really, the celebration starts on the 15th leading up to el Grito de Dolores on the stroke of midnight, but that is another story. In my humble opinion, the very best part of the celebration is the ubiquitous and unparalleled Mexican mustache. The dapper fellow in the picture with the mustache is my nephew, Luis Leonardo at a school event in Queretero on September 15. He wears the mustache well–quite dashing actually. The costumes and sombreros everyone wears are beyond cool. All the family in Monterrey got together for a carne asada. I am stuck up here in Oregon while Lorena is eating carne asada and all the ripe mangoes she wants. That is somehow just wrong.
Lorena and I pick Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah up on Sundays to take them to church. It was nice to see Uncle Doug and Aunt Jean there at the assisted living home when we arrived yesterday. Aunt Julia had come a couple of days earlier because she went out of town this weekend. All of us kids, of course, brought food, the last thing any of us needed–including Grandpa Milo.
Lorena and I saw this beautiful moon out the window of our car as she drove me to work this morning. It was even bigger and lower in the sky than when I took this picture out the window of my work at DWFritz. Lorena mentioned Oregon would have a blue moon tonight. I looked that up and 
Our family discusses the subject of objective truth frequently. We have done so as a family for pretty close to a decade. As soon as the kids were old enough to understand the concept, we started to talk about it. The direction our culture is going is not friendly to those who want to live their lives in conformances to mandates placed on them by the objective reality of a Christian God. When the culture embraces the immorality of things like abortion, cohabitation outside of marriage and even the pursuit of fun in the form of sport, music, art and leisure at the expense of the pursuit of God and things God hates, lives get wasted and people suffer.
Kelly bought her own car insurance yesterday and will register the Ford Fiesta in her own name later this week. Christian is doing the same this week with the Honda Accord. Lorena and I are now a one car family. The only remaining thing like this that connects to the kids is our family cell phone plan. Some might think it would be best for me to turn that over to the kids themselves, but they would be wrong. I told them that as a condition for their cell phone plan, they have to provide Lorena with tech support for her phone and tutoring for her community college. In my book that is an absolute steal. It would be a steal at twice the price!
Kelly’s whirlwind visit ended yesterday afternoon when Lorena took her up to Vancouver to catch the train back to Seattle. This week has turned into a big week for both Kelly and Christian. I already spoke about Christian’s trip back east to present his research results for the year. Kelly is in the middle of a smaller, but still big chunk of research she needs to show to her boss when he arrives back to Seattle from a month or so away in Europe of some such thing. The upshot is there has been a lot of pressure and angst that should see some relief this week.
One year ago yesterday, Grandpa Lauro died. He was 71 years old. The photo to the left is of Grandpa Lauro and his youngest grandson, Matias. I was trying to think of a way to describe him and it is hard. Of course he was a genuinely Christian man, but that word has been diluted greatly in our day and age so it just does not say enough. After considering it for awhile, about the best I can do is describe some of his accomplishments. There is not time nor room to describe all his accomplishments, but I will try to describe what appealed to me.
De todas mis sobrinas Mexicanas pelirrojas, la Dayanita de San Francisco y del Tec de Monterrey es mi favorita por mucho. Su padre es el hermano mayor de Lorena (Mom) que se caso con Dayana mi concuña. Yo quiero a ella también, pero estoy medio sospechoso de que no quiere tanto (con razón, tal vez) a gringos y yo soy sumamente gringo aun que me gusta pensar que parezco un poco Mexicano. Pero eso es cuento de otro día.
We miss our kids a lot now that they are off at college. Still, there is a big upside to this empty-nester thing. Today, Lorena and I got up late, walked to breakfast at a nice little restaurant about half a block from our apartment. Then, this afternoon, we walked three or four blocks down to Jimmy John’s. Both time we had a leisurely meal. We have not had that luxury for years and years. We had to inhale our food and run off to a library, bookstore or laboratory as fast as possible because there was always a deadline.
It is early in the day and you can see in the picture that Lorena is already hitting the sauce. Christian turned in his last project for the semester yesterday so all he has on his schedule today is a haircut and a trip out to one of our church conventions in Casa Grande. They are having way too much fun.
