Electricity

Our electricity went out about 7pm last night, not the first time it's done that lately.  Even though we have underground utility lines it seems like whenever we have a bit of rain we have power outages.
What can you do without the electricity?  Well Mac sat and played his acoustic guitar.  He has loads of music stashed in his head and can sit and strum forever.  His playing made me want to play the piano, but I have next to no music stashed in my head, I mean how many times can you play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb"?  The music I like to play is rather complicated and I need the music in front of me as I play.
Mac suggested that Beethoven played by candlelight and I ought to give it a try.  Well Beethoven  might have done it and I've certainly seen Schroeder doing it in Peanuts for years, but even with my nose pressed up to the page it was hard to read, I would have needed a half dozen candelabras set around me in order to see my music.
Thankfully the electricity came back on and I could see again.  Mac suggests I learn some music by heart, but I'm too old (can't memorize anything any more) and too lazy.

While looking for candelabra pictures I found this one with Godzilla, my hero!  He would definitely light up my piano.

We Went Out Last Night

For the first time in forever we went out last night and did a little dancing.  When we first moved here we were going out 3 and 4 nights a week, but we've definitely slowed down.  Too much traffic, too many folks  texting while they drive, not as much energy and the cat complains when we leave her alone at night.
But last night some friends were playing at a local Tapas Bar (not that the people running it have a clue as to what tapas are) and because it was so close to home we decided to go see them.
The food was ok, we had calamari, shrimp and lobster ravioli.  In Spanish tapas bars these would have been small plates just right for sharing.  These were huge and mostly came home with us.
The music was great, the guys playing actually have a full-sized band, but also play as a duo, calling themselves The Twinz, as unlikely a set of twins as you'll ever see.  They played such a variety of music:  Sweet Melissa (originally by the Allman Brothers Band and a real favorite of ours), Jet ( a Paul McCartney song), Guitar Man (Bread), a song by Lady Antebellum, It Don't Come Easy (Ringo Starr), Domino (Van Morrison), Smooth (Santana)
It was definitely a trip down memory lane.  Seeing as our knees are not complaining too much, just a squeak here and there, I guess we'll have to do it again before our joints lock up like the Tin Man's.

Sold it Right Off My Wall

He did, he sold it right off my wall, but he promised to paint me a new one and it's almost done.  So I guess I can't complain.  Love the colors in it.  One of our bathrooms has all beachy paintings in it and that's where it was and will be again.

One of My Paintings, an Oil

One of My Watercolors

Mac's "The Great Escape"

Southern Living

I don't take many magazines anymore, in fact I only take one: Southern Living.  All its articles, pictures, recipes are about the South, from Maryland to Texas and all the places in between.  That's where we live so I love reading about this part of the country.  It helps us plan trips, gives good gardening tips and has the best recipes anywhere.  One year for our daughter's birthday I made a Key Lime Pie for her based on their recipes.
But more than anything else I love the pictures.  A couple of months ago they had a pictorial on growing lettuces in containers.  One of the pictures really caught my eye and I knew I had to paint it.  Finished it yesterday and it's upstairs drying so we can frame it and hang it.  Have to put it some where in the kitchen.

My Painting

Languages

I saw a funny little blurb somewhere, can't remember where, that soon China will be the largest English speaking country in the world.  It always amazes me how other nations insist on their  citizens learning another language, usually starting at a young age, and a foreign language is not a requirement in high school or in many colleges here in the States.
There was a joke I heard when I was a Bilingual teacher:
What do you call a person who speaks 3 languages?   Trilingual
What do you call a person who speaks 2 languages ?   Bilingual
What do you call a person who speaks 1 language?  An American

It's sad but true.  Other than people who grew up in a home where a foreign language was spoken most Americans only speak English, and not even that very well.
I've lost a lot of my Spanish since I retired from teaching and don't speak it every day, but I'll never forget it, and keep several Spanish textbooks on my Kindle so I can practice a bit from time to time.

I speak a bit of German too, what I call kitchen German, I can shop, order food and ask directions.  We lived in Germany and I took classes in it, but we lived on an American base and didn't have to use it daily.  If you don't use it you'll definitely lose it.

Mac grew up in a house where the parents spoke Spanish to each other, but not to their kids (not after the first one because the school complained when he started school and he didn't speak English) and though he understands it, has a great accent, can really trill those "r's", he doen't really speak it.  In college he took German and when we lived in Turkey he really got quite good at Turkish,  a language I could never get a handle on.

I think learning a foreign language is important, our daughter took German classes when we lived in Germany, French all the way through high school, Spanish in college and Japanese classes for years.  She says that she regrets that she didn't do an undergraduate degree in linguistics.

On April 16 Dawn Treader  at Beyond the Lone Islands wrote about what languages she could speak and read in, I was amazed.  It made me feel very uneducated.

What do you think?

I Need a Mulligan

Using our backyard and the putting green we golfed today and Mac absolutely skunked me.  He even eagled one hole.    Whereas my long game, or what passes for a long game in our backyard was totally off.  I had to take a drop because of one lie (we're talking major stickerweed infestation here) and had to hit left handed for another.  I had a beautiful putt going and my ball decided to stop and  just sit on the lip of the cup.  Mac made an almost identical putt and his went in.   My only excuse is that I was tired from housework and aerobics.  He laughed.  Wait till next time.

Piano Tuning

My piano tuner came today, it takes about an hour to get it to sound like I haven't been hammering on it for a year.  As we sat in the other room Mac commented that it sounded, literally, like a rather boring job.  I said that at $100 an hour it was pretty lucrative though.
Miss Kitty hates to hear the piano being tuned.  Though she enjoys my playing and has been known to pick out a few notes herself she becomes quite "bat-earred" when it's tuned.  She'd probably pay him not to do it.

Another Great Book

I go through long spells of reading books that are ok, not great, not brilliant, just ok.  Then I get lucky and start hitting some gems.  One of those gems was The End of Your Life Book Club, and from that book I found The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett.  Bennett is an author I was not familiar with, but I should have been .  He is better known as a playwright and wrote the play The History Boys and co-authored the screenplay for the movie.  I LOVED The History Boys!  He also wrote the play and screenplay for The Madness of King George another movie I love.  So I shouldn't be surprised by his absolutely brilliant little  book The Uncommon Reader, it was wonderful, and far too short at 120 pages.  I plan on rereading it immediately!
The story is simple, one day while chasing her dogs outside at Windsor Castle Queen Elizabeth notices a Book Mobile, a traveling library from the City of London parked out back.  The dogs enter it and she follows.  Inside she chats with the driver/librarian and the lone patron, Norman, who turns out to be a worker in her kitchen.  Not wanting to be ungratful, and though she's not much of a reader, "she read of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people." she checked out a book.  She worked her way through the book and meant   to  have someone else return it the next week, but   instead finds herself in the book mobile once again  where,  with the help of Norman her kitchen helper she checks out another book, and soon her fascination with books  really takes off.   To the  dismay  of nearly everyone she turns into a reader.
Oh it was so much fun to watch her journey through books and how she grew as a person.
What a great movie this would make, I picture Judie Dench or Helen Mirren (hasn't she played her once before?) playing her.
If you're looking for an amusing, well written book I couldn't recommend it more highly. Mac, after listening to me go on about it, says he's going to read it too.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Busy, not like a beaver particularly, though I do waddle a bit like one.

How did I ever find time to work?  Did I have my students working for me?  I barely get things done now that I'm retired, I must have been much better organized.

Monday wasn't too bad I finally got cushions made for my outdoor chairs, that's only been on my to do list for 3 years, but  it took me forever to:
a)  find an outdoor fabric I liked
b)  find an outdoor fabric that didn't cost an arm, leg, firstborn cat
c)  figure out why my sewing machine wasn't working right, eh, that will have been pilot error

Then I started a raspberry pink throw for what's going to eventually stop being the white bedroom and become the pink bedroom or at least one wall of it.

Tuesday was spent grocery shopping, have I mentioned I hate grocery shopping and hauling tons of groceries up the stairs?  We've started pricing dumbwaiters.

Today  Mac and I walked 2 miles and then made peach jam, all of their jar lids have popped so they're ready to put up.

We also wrapped a painting that sold on Ebay and need to get another wrapped.
Then I listed 7 more paintings.

In between I did my aerobic exercise, I'm really getting too old for all of this.

Mustn't Grumble, HA!

It was 87˚ here yesterday, working in the garden I sweated enough to fill a small goldfish pond.  Doing my aerobics was even worse.  Then the rains came, and that's a good thing because it washes some to the pollen out of the air, pollen that has been running around 5,500 parts per cubic meter.
So the rains came, the air cooled and today the high is supposed to be 69˚, but it's going to be a real struggle to reach that because it nearly noon and it's only 54˚ and it's not acting like it plans on warming up much more.  Now I know that 54˚ isn't really cold, but compared to 87˚ it is and my bones and joints would be the first ones to tell you so.
But I'll be good and I won't grumble because then it might turn 90˚.

New Purse

I've been carrying my backpack purse forever, I'm not very stylish, and I began to worry that I was going to wear it out and I need it for when we travel.  So while shopping the other day I gave the purse aisle a look and found this one that's not quite as big as I like, but I refuse to carry what look  like oversized messenger bags and that's what most people seem to be carrying.  Nor am I attracted to the neon sacks that are posing as purses these days.
Last year I was all into polka dots, this year I think I prefer little checks.