Thanksgiving!

And we had much to be thankful for.  Starting with having our first turkey day with Grandma in #*(^  years.  Can't even remember the last one, but we did remember a lot of Thanksgivings with a) early morning drives from Silver Spring  b) hundreds of people sleeping all over the place  c) us taking over Uncle Jim's and Aunt Georgia's house in Greenwich for the weekend, and probably a few others as well.
 
Anyway, all those who think Thanksgiving is the best holidayt, raise your hands.  It's unanimous.  John had driven up on Saturday to get Grandma the week before, and she spent the whole week, climbing stairs, looking for the spoons, dodging the dog, reading two books, and doing the crossword puzzle every day (with John reading the clues.)  She's good at that by the way.  But of course we already knew that.   
 
Unfortunately, we missed Melodie and Jeffrey who were planning on coming over, but Jeff got a cold and they had their own version of Thanksgiving (see photo.)  We did get a chance to see them for brunch on Sunday before, where Jeffrey beat John in the pancake eating contest.  
 
Joe and Margaret came over for turkey and a quiet meal with way too much food.  Annie arrived Friday as she had to work Thanksgiving Day.  She's here now, and she and Margaret and Mary are doing the right thing for the economy that they refused to do last Friday.  Joe missed Annie as he caught an early morning flight to Alabama to join friends there for a weekend of college football fever and some outdoors shenanigans, I think.
 
What's Thanksgiving without a weekend movie?  We did a Philip Seymour Hoffman film festival watching "Doubt" with Grandma and then "Pirate Radio" on Saturday.  Recommend them both, especially the latter for those music buffs who want to re-live the greatest music ever.
 
Here's one I bet nobody else did on Sunday - we went to Thanksgiving dinner all over again.  Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and pies, and theyu weren't even leftovers.  Some Peace Corps friends who just moved to the area had their dinner on Sunday. 
 
So, here it is Monday, and we're going to have....pizza.  Back to normalcy of good eating.   Hope you all had a great turkey day!  Love from down here.

Goodbye and thank you

It seems as if we have lost our dear Bridget.  She wandered off two weeks ago and despite extensive efforts and a large reward, there is no sign she was ever seen again.  We have driven around the neighborhood countless times and put up signs, walked every part of the wooded areas and no clue.  We don't think anyone would have taken her in because she's pretty sorry looking – she's 19 nineteen years old – and deep into dog dementia.  Even if she'd been able to hold out somehow her kidneys have failed and she needs "doggy dialysis" three times a week.  No matter what happened, the dementia is a blessing as she would not have known what was happening. 

We're all very sad about this, and I think more so than many goodbyes to dogs.  By the time I had left college, I had known a number of dogs.  Bridget is the only one Johanna and Sean have ever known.  And for Janet and I, she's the only dog we've had as adults.  No one will ever convince any one of us that there was ever a better dog, anywhere, any time.

We're going to put together a book of memories of Bridget.  Janet is already plotting a new dog.

Veterans Day

A day off.  And it rained all day; Mary had to work, and John had been hoping to ride his bike down to the mall to see the vets and the Vietnam Memorial.  Instead, John had a taste of retirement.  He stayed home, exercised, read and made dinner.  It worked today, but can it work every day?
 
It was a relatively quiet week.  We had Sunday brunch with Margaret and Joe, which was fun, catching up on their work lives, their short-term plans for school or new jobs and other stuff.  We parted ways when they went off to watch the Patriots play and we stayed home to watch the Bengals play Baltimore.  We means John.
 
David sent us a CD last week with a post-it on top explaining it was a new top ten list of songs.  When we played it, it was just one song - "Tequila".  Hmmm.  It did provoke a phone call for an explanation, and a little catching up with what's going in Fairport.  We also talked baseball (World Series) and football.  If men didn't have sports, there'd be nothing to talk about.  I just can't get Grandma to talk about pro sports though.  Or college sports either.
 
She, by the way, is good, and is practicing walking up and down stairs to get ready for Thanksgiving here, if everyone stays healthy.  And we're working on that.  Melodie and Jeff are coming over as well.  Annie has to work, but is coming down the day after for a week.
 
Annie has stories.  Lots of them.  She is figuring out the favorite films of some of the young people she works with, and viewing habits.  One person puts on a dvd and then walks around the room without watching anything.  Kind of sad.
 
Mary's brother Tim has moved to Mexico.  He has a place an hour or so south of San Diego.  Sounds nice, and we all hope it's away from all the troubles in the country.
 
This weekend we broke down and raked leaves.  The leaf blower from Pomfret comes in handy on our deck.  With three big oak trees on the property we get a lot of leaves, and nice shade in the summer.
 
We also went out to dinner with Peace Corps friends who had moved here with their high school children after living out of the country for the last 25 years.  They are having some adjustment issues, and it looks like they will be leaving after only a year.  The wife is Irish so we talked health care quite a bit, and that is one of their adjustment issues, trying to deal with health care when they have had everything provided 100% for their entire adult lives.
 
That's it from down here.  Love

Football, soccer, hockey and baseball

It was a marathon weekend and we didn't even run in the New York City marathon.  But we were tired, at least John was, after watching three games and falling asleep after one inning of the World Series.
 
We drove up to Hightstown for the weekend and packed it in.  Friday night pizza dinner with Grandma, Peter and Janet.  Then sports on Saturday for Peter and John and drama for Janet and Mary who picked up Grandma for dinner.  Sunday, we drove over to the shore with Grandma for an outing to have brunch, in Asbury Park.
 
Now we're home, and still watching sports.
 
The highlight was watching Princeton win a game, finally, and watching it from the sidelines with the coaches and players.  Sure is a different perspective, especially when the players come running right at you!  That happened only a couple of times.  I will no longer laugh when someone on the sidelines gets knocked over.  We then went to a woman's soccer game, a woman's hockey game and back to the soccer field for another game.  John left at half time, but Peter went back and watched it to the bitter end, with two overtimes.
 
The play Mary and Janet saw with a friend from Mexico, was terrific by all accounts.
 
We missed Halloween, but heard about the costumes and parties that the next generation put together.
 
We got a cd from David with his top ten of all time.  Hard to argue with; top tens should really include at least 50 songs.
 
On the way back from the shore, we talked with Andrew and Lur who told us about their family compound (shed and dog house) and Danny and Claire's starting basketball season tomorrow.
 
Down here, Joe was still busy working on his proposal and Margaret's making plans for a trip to Pittsfield this coming weekend, where she hopes to meet up with Annie.  Hope there's heat! 
 
We got some bad news about our house renovation project about needing an engineer analysis for the conservation commission.  Makes you wanna be a Republican - get government out of our lives.
 
Good news from Pittsfield that Natalie, John and Marilyn's grandaughter, Natalie, has fully recovered from an emergency appendectomy and post-op infection. 
 
Nice to end the letter on good news.  And there was a lot of it.  Love, and thanks to Grandma, Peter and Janet for a great weekend.