Fri & Sat, June 18 and 19, 2010

Saturday, June 19, 2010The weather is expected to get into the 90's again . . and probably will feel like it is over 100. It doesn't look like we will get any rain.

A mission team from Bedford, TX worked at our church all week, remodeling the bathrooms on two floors and making them wheelchair-accessible. They stayed all night at the church all week, having brought along sleeping bags. There were 31 of them.

Unfortunately one night someone broke into some of their vehicles in the parking lot and stole some of their equipment. A neighbor heard the dogs barking and called the police but the thieves got away before they arrived.

They will be leaving later today to return to Bedford.

Friday, June 18, 2010

I had to go to the AT&T store this evening and buy a new DSL modem/router box for my computer. I haven't been able to get on the internet from my desktop computer for a couple of weeks now.

I kept calling tech support and getting "punch this, punch that". Finally I got a live person, but I could barely hear him and he sounded like he was in another country. He was very polite, but I just could hardly hear him. He did tell me that it sounded like my old modem was "dead" and that I would have to purchase a new one. So I drove up to their store (about 2 1/2 miles) and got a new one. With tax it cost $108.11, but when I brought it home and installed it, everything works fine now - both my computer and Sis's. That is why we have the router - to hook both computers to the DSL on one account.

It is such a pleasure to read and type on this one instead of the laptop.With my cataract, it is so difficult to read the print on the laptop screen. Even if I enlarge it, it still looks very light.

Our trip to the Lavendar Festival

Saturday morning, June 12, 2010

We had heard that a Lavendar Festival was to be held in Blanco, Texas. That is only an hour's drive from our home and we have always enjoyed festivals so we got up early and headed out. It was an easy drive on route 281 all the way from San Antonio.

Tents were set up all around the courthouse square in Blanco, and of course everything had a lavendar color scheme. There were many, many things featuring lavendar: cakes of homemade soap, lavendar plants, cookbooks featuring recipes using lavendar, jelly with lavendar in it. If you have ever been to a strawberry festival, sauerkraut festival, etc., you will get the idea.

We brought home three cakes of the homemade soaps and they really perfumed the car. We also bought a jar of lavendar jelly and one of peach-lavendar jam. I can hardly wait to taste them.

We could have gotten a map there and toured a nearby lavendar farm, but the day was getting very hot and we decided to go again next year and do that. It is an annual event held on the second weekend in June.

As with all festivals, there were many booths set up that sold things that weren't lavendar-related. One had wooden bowls made from tree roots. They were beautiful and no two were alike. A little pricy, but very interesting to see and I'm sure a lot of work went into making them.

We had lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant before heading back to San Antonio. It was a small diner-type restaurant and quite busy. The food was delicious and we enjoyed homemade lemonade with our meal.

This southwest Texas heat was getting to us, so we were glad to get home to our air conditioning, but we definitely plan to go again next year. Below is some advertising that was put out about the festival.

The 6th Annual
Blanco Lavender Festival
June 11th — 13th, 2010
Free Tours of Local Lavender Farms


Visit beautiful Blanco in the heart of the Texas Hill Country for the sixth annual Blanco Lavender Festival. A Lavender Market will be held on the grounds of the Old Blanco County Courthouse featuring arts and crafts and local lavender products. Tour many of the local lavender farms where you will experience the beauty of lavender in the fields and the unique vision of each farmer.

Monday, June 1 and 3, 2010

June 3, 2010

We had quite a storm overnight. There was thunder, lightning and rain for hours. On the news this morning it said at one point 120,000 people were without power and 68,000 still are. Trees are down across the road in a couple of places.

I turned off the computer and unplugged the modem until this morning. I didn't sleep very well. Calvin must have been very shook up by the storm. He was tearing through the house having a cat fit. Precious was pretty upset too.

Now that it is getting daylight I went out and checked the back yard. We have a pretty good-sized branch broken off and on the ground at the back of the yard by the barbecue grill, and a couple of our tomato plants that should have been staked by now are lying on the ground but not broken. I guess that's mild compared to what a lot of people around the city went through.

June 1, 2010

It isn’t quite daylight yet, but I can hear many different kinds of birds chirping and twittering in the trees outside. It is a pleasant sound early in the morning.

I expect today to be very busy at church. In addition to the usual Monday morning routine work, a trustees meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. There will be a memorial service in the sanctuary at 1 p.m. for the man who died Sunday afternoon. I think there will be a lot of people attending that. He was pretty well known and very active in the community until his health failed. After the service, there will be a reception in the church parlor with punch, coffee, and cake.

Today will probably be as hot as yesterday - in the mid 90's. I was sure glad to stay inside in the air conditioning most of the day yesterday.

By the time I get home this afternoon I may be ready to hit the recliner for sure.

Memorial Day 2010

We had hamburgers, corn on the cob, potato salad, macaroni salad, and watermelon for dinner. It was too hot to cook out on the grill so we did our cooking in the house. The hamburgers were a microwavable kind from HEB and the salads came from the deli, so the only actual cooking was the corn and that didn't take long.

We were going to sit on the patio and eat, but hordes of flies thought they had been invited, so we brought everything back inside and ate in the dining room.

I didn't have to go in to work today, but tomorrow will be exceptionally busy.

Sunday night - May 30, 2010

Sis and I went to church early to finish setting up for the potluck after church. Some of the people who usually do this were out of town. Sis stayed and helped me instead of going to her own church today.

We had done a good bit of it yesterday. This morning we made sure the air conditioning was working, made the coffee and tea, received the potluck dishes as the members dropped them off on their way to the morning service, cut the desserts and arranged them on plates, etc. We didn't go upstairs to the service. I went up a couple of times to see how near finished the service was. Then we put all the hot things out on the table and uncovered them at the last minute.

There were quite a few more people there than usual, since it was the pastor's last Sunday with us. We ended up having to set up an extra table to seat everybody.

Afterward as we were clearing up and most of the people had already left, we got a phone call that one of our members who is in a nursing home had just died. The pastor immediately went to meet with the family. Later in the afternoon she called me and said there will be a memorial service at the church at 1 p.m. Tuesday. Of course the office is closed tomorrow for Memorial Day, so this leaves a lot to do fast.

I spent an hour or more on the telephone calling all the members to notify them of both the death and the arrangements and calling the custodian to tell him what was needed for the service.

The pastor will email me the information for the funeral bulletin, so I think I will end up doing that on my computer here at home. I don't think there will be time to wait and do it Tuesday morning as there are other meetings and things going on then.

So that's how my day has gone. I'm a little tired right now, but at least I don't have to get up and go in to work tomorrow morning...unless something unexpected happens before then. I sure hope it doesn't.

It was another hot day and as I talked to different ones on the phone, three of them were having trouble with their air conditioners. We had to have a part replaced on ours earlier this week. I guess this extremely hot weather is hard on them.

Friday, May 28, 2010

It is finally cooling down in our house. After the a/c went out last night it got up to 90 degrees inside. This afternoon the repairman came out and it didn't take him long to discover the problem. A part had to be replaced on the outside part of the air conditioner. He said it would probably take about 4 hours to get the house cooled down to it's normal settings, but we can sure tell the difference already. Precious and Calvin seem much more comfortable too.

It is 91 outdoors right now.