Sunday, October 5
What a nice day! Since Kelly had to get ready for a flight to Nashville this afternoon, we decided that we’d just stay in our neighborhood rather than driving all the way in to Richmond to see the kids for just a few minutes.
When we first arrived here, we drove past a pretty little Presbyterian church and commented that it might be nice to attend there some day. Well, today was that day, so shortly after 10:30 we left the RV park and drove a couple of miles down Ridge Road to the Providence Presbyterian Church, where we were immediately greeted and welcomed by members of the congregation.
Providence is a small church with a relatively small congregation, but they were certainly large on heart and love. Pastor Franklin Reding delivered what amounted to four different sermons during the course of the morning, one of which, a great lesson on love, came during the observance of Communion.
We were greeted warmly by Pastor Reding and other members of the congregation following the service and were encouraged to return any Sunday during our stay at Cozy Acres. Of course, we couldn’t resist the urge to take some pictures while we were on the grounds.
Providence Presbyterian Church was organized in 1825 as “Powhatan Church,” a result of the work of ministers from Cumberland County. In 1831 the church moved into a new building, “Mount Carmel,” and in 1890 the church moved into its present sanctuary with the name “Providence Church.”We were going to run to town for a few things right after church and then go back to Big V for the afternoon, but since the service wasn’t over until 12:30 (and we hadn’t taken time to eat breakfast this morning), we quickly voted to go to Big V first to have a plate of spaghetti to stave off the hunger pangs.
While we were eating, we watched an episode of M*A*S*H, the first that we’d seen in a long time. As we told in the first journal, the staff of Liberal High School gave me the first nine seasons of the show as a retirement gift. They wanted to give me the complete set, but were unable to get the final two seasons. We’ve looked for those shows since, but haven’t been able t locate them except through Amazon. While we were in Wal-Mart yesterday I noticed a rack of old TV series DVD’s, and to my surprise, there were seasons 10 and 11 of the M*A*SH series! Not only that, but they were priced at less than half of what Amazon wanted. It won’t take a whole lot of psychic energy to figure out that I immediately grabbed the boxes and set them in our basket. Now the series is complete and we can again parcel out the viewings during special meal times.
With lunch and the show over, we got in the Vibe and drove to Dollar Tree to pick up some items for a couple of projects that we are working on and then to Wal-Mart to buy some meat for the meal that we will prepare for the kids on Tuesday night. We’ve found that both Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart are great currency conversion spots…we give them our currency and they convert it into a couple of plastic bags full of “stuff.”
Back at Big V we just set the evening on cruise…took a short walk just before dark and then came back to roast some fresh Virginia peanuts, have a dish of nachos, check our email, watch some television, and rest.Monday, October 6
Today we turned Big V into a giant kitchen to prepare food for the kids tomorrow night. We’ve been in pretty much constant contact with Margarita and Maria in Puerto Rico the last few days to make sure our recipes are right. We wrote them down in cryptic notes on little pieces of paper when we were there last March and have struggled to remember everything each time we try to make a dish.
While Barbara alternated between working on the slideshow project and making the Puerto Rican potato salad (we have that one down pretty well now), I gathered up all our recipe notes and started plugging them into the computer…ended up with seven pages and several recipes that are now legible, if not 100 per cent correct. After getting everything committed to a file, I sent a copy to Margarita so she and Maria could proofread it and make any corrections.
Meanwhile, we went ahead with several recipes and ended the day with a chicken dish, a cream-cheese pie, and a batch of black beans. As I started on a marinade for the cube steaks tonight I discovered that we didn’t have any white vinegar, so I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow and another visit to the store before I can get that one underway.
We did make a run to the café where the rehearsal dinner will be held to discuss a few details with Wanda, the manager, and then to the store to pick up a couple of items we needed (just wish we had known that we needed the vinegar). As we were walking to the front door of the Food Lion store, one of the employees came out and said that the store was closed because all of the cash registers had crashed. We went across the lot to a Dollar Store, hoping against hope that they would have everything we needed, but no such luck. We did buy a couple of items, but had to drive several miles down Highway 60 to another Food Lion to get the rest of the things on our list.
We stopped at the post office on the way home to buy some stamps and drop off a couple of pieces of mail…our Presidential ballots since we won’t be in TX on Election Day. Then we returned to Big V to spend what was left of the afternoon and evening. Barbara spent her time relearning how to burn a DVD of the slide show she has created. I did nothing of importance and am reporting the same.
Tuesday, October 7
It was another busy day around our place today. Barbara spent a great deal of the morning reviewing and editing the slideshow presentation so the kids could view it tonight and make their suggestions. She had some problems burning the show to the disc last night and was up until 4:30 a.m. getting it done.
I had a note from Maria with her comments and corrections on the Puerto Rican recipes, so I spent some time making corrections to my copy and getting everything in order. Luckily, I got the notes from Maria in time to stop me from making a couple of mistakes with the dishes we would fix today.
Since what Barbara was doing was a one-person job, I decided I’d go out for a walk. Mike has set it up for all the guys to take a day hike up in the Blue Ridge Mountains the day before the wedding, and I thought that maybe I’d better get some practice. I walked from the campsite down Ridge Road to the little church that we had attended on Sunday, about a 3-mile roundtrip. It was nice to be out and walking again, even if it was a little cool. Barbara: I did take time to go on my own walk with my Sony companion. The beauty of the trees during this time is just breathtaking and even though the camera doesn’t do them justice, I still like to share my camera view.
Jim: After the hike, we had some lunch and then just rested since neither of us had slept well last night. Around 4:00 p.m. we got started preparing the last
of the dishes for our Puerto Rican buffet. While I got the marinated cubed steaks out of the refrigerator, Barbara poured the black beans into the crock pot and put the pan of chicken into the convection to slowly warm.The next two hours were spent cooking the cubed steaks, cooking a pot of rice, preparing toasted flat bread made from slices of garlic bread that I had baked the other day, and preparing the fried plantains (our plantains weren’t working out the way we thought they should, so Barbara made a quick call to Margarita to get clarification on how we should do it. We’re not sure, but we think Margarita was standing by so she could coach us through this project if necessary).
Everything was done just shortly after the kids arrived. We all sat down and enjoyed a real feast,
much more than we would have had for a typical meal, but we figured we wouldn’t have enough time this trip to fix several Puerto Rican meals for them, so we just went the buffet route. Anyway, it was fun to watch them experience new dishes and taste treats.We spent the next two hours watching the 25 minute DVD that Barbara had created for the kids and listening to their suggestions for what should be kept and what could be cut. I kept the remote in my hand to pause the show whenever the kids had a question or comment, and Barbara was sitting at her laptop to immediately delete any of the slides they didn’t want.
All in all, it was a very pleasant and productive evening…good food, good company, and a good time for all…Thank you Margarita and Maria for helping to make it all possible!
Wednesday, October 8
This was just a lazy day around Big V. I scanned and cropped old photographs that the kids had given us last night while Barbara worked on inserting pictures in the slideshow and getting them in the right order (all this, of course, when we weren’t napping or reading).
This evening we got around to playing Washers again…haven’t had many opportunities lately, and we really regret that we weren’t able to teach Mike and Kelly, but they can’t get here before dark, and, while that greatly adds to the challenge, it takes away quite a bit of the fun.
Anyway, Barbara once again showed her mastery of hitting the hole with the washers…had four again this evening, but “slow and steady” won against that skill as I eked out four wins in a four out of seven contest. (Barbara: Makes me want to puke! I fold under pressure!)
Thursday, October 9
Happy Birthday to Jan in Gilbert, AZ, Kelly’s mother!
This morning was more of the same for Barbara…working on the slide show; it’s a new program and we are still learning…just don’t understand some of the glitches that appear from time to time and make it a frustrating job.
We were going to take a little break during the afternoon so Barbara could rest and I could go on another hike, but she decided to continue working on a problem that was plaguing her. I went on out for a walk down Ridge Road to the intersection with Highway 13. On the way back, I discovered a hikers’ entrance to a large plot of Forest Service land. Several trails were clearly indicated on a map at the entrance, so I decided to try a couple of them.
It was an interesting experience…no cars to dodge, and the trails I followed were pretty well marked. I found a large pond along the way and indications that there were some more ponds in the area. Since I had been out longer than I had intended, I went ahead along the trail I was following and ended up across the road from the entrance to the RV park…how lucky for me!
When I got back to Big V, I found that Barbara had temporarily given up working on the slide show and was walking around the park taking pictures. Fall is upon us, and we are surrounded by some beautiful colors developing in the trees, not to mention quite a few leaves that are making their way down to the ground.
This evening we drove to Richmond to visit the kids at their new apartment. While they are still living with their respective roommates, they are spending their “spare” time getting the new apartment set up so it will be ready when they return from their honeymoon. It was obvious at first glance that they have been working hard to get everything just right.
Mike and Kelly gave us the grand tour of the two-bedroom, two-bath apartment (it’s on the third floor, has a vaulted ceiling in the living room and a great balcony/deck that opens off the living room and the guest bedroom). After the tour, we sat down to a dinner of Thai food that they had picked up at one of the outstanding Thai restaurants here in Richmond. Mike has been expanding his culinary horizons to include Thai hot sauce. He usually goes with the medium heat, but tonight he went all out, and I’ll have to admit that I finally met my match in hot sauce…Mike and I both were hitting the water glasses pretty hard as we put away the food!After eating (and cooling down our mouths a bit), we settled down to the business of the night, previewing a draft of the DVD that will be shown at the wedding reception. Before we started the DVD, we told Kelly that it was a really rough draft and that she would just have to imagine how the music would go with the picture selection. What she didn’t know was that Mike, romantic that he is, had emailed Barbara the music selections shortly after noon today and she had been working like crazy to get the slides set to music. Needless to say, the production, while still a rough draft, was well accepted by both of them. The only problem left was how to pare down a 25-minute series to 20 – 22 minutes. For an hour or so, both of the kids went through the show slide by slide (as well as side by side) to choose what they could give up and what had to stay in the show.
After that bit of work was done, we took some more pictures of them in the new place, some to use in the slide show and some just because, and then said goodbye…it was late for us old folks, and we had a one-hour drive back to the RV park, all in the dark.
Friday, October 10
Happy Birthday to Carol Crenshaw (Barbara’s older sister) in Roswell, NM!
After checking email and taking care of business around Big V, Barbara settled in to do some more work on the slide show. Her goal was to get everything she had so far transferred to a DVD so we could see how it looked and sounded. Unfortunately, she was still having trouble with a few of the slides not doing what we thought they should do. She is trying to pan and zoom through the slides to give them a little more interest, but it seems that some of them won’t transition to the next slide after she’s worked with them…no matter what we try (by “we” I mean me commiserating with her and offering suggestions that so far haven’t panned out).
I took a break and fixed a late breakfast…bacon, scrambled eggs, and French toast and we took time out to eat and watch another episode of M*A*S*H.
After taking a break, Barbara returned to the slide show and worked on it into the evening. I spent some time this evening watching the Dodgers/Phillies baseball game, but didn’t get too excited since I didn’t really care which team won. Artesia’s football team had an open date this week, so there wasn’t a game to watch or listen to. I did track the progress of the Red Sox and Rays on the computer, but that is no way to watch a baseball game!
Saturday, October 11
While Barbara slept in a little, I got an early start on the computer to catch up on news and sports…found out that Liberal had lost their homecoming game against Great Bend last night.
We spent the morning pretty much the way we have been spending most of our days lately…checking our lists to see what needs to be one before everyone begins arriving for the pre-wedding activities and working on the slide show. With only a couple of glitches and a couple of things she wanted to edit for clarity, Barbara had the show in good shape…all that was left was to burn it to a DVD so we could see how it was really going.
By noon I had the TV turned on to watch the Texas/Oklahoma football game. Barbara doesn’t like to be in the same room with me when Texas is playing because, evidently, I get pretty vocal whenever the Longhorns make really stupid mistakes. It didn’t take long for me to get heated up, and there were enough mistakes along the way to warrant a few loud exclamations, but in the end, Texas overcame a great Oklahoma team to win the annual Red River Shootout (oops, that’s now the Red River Rivalry to those who are politically correct, but then, almost everyone who reads this knows how I feel about political correctness).
When the game was finally over, we decided we’d been stuck in Big V long enough, so we hopped in the Vibe and drove to town (not that there is really a town close by) to do some more shopping. Barbara wanted to look for another blouse and some accessories for the outfits she will be wearing next week, and we needed to buy a few groceries.
As we finished the last of the shopping, we decided that we’d let someone else do the cooking tonight, so we both started looking for somewhere to get some takeout food. We passed several burger and sandwich shops, but weren’t interested in them. Finally, we spotted a Pizza Hut and decided a large pan Supreme Pizza would fill the bill.
I hesitated on the order when we were told it would take about 25 minutes, but we decided to go ahead with the wait, even though we hadn’t eaten all day. While we were waiting, we walked around the neighborhood, found a genuine 7-11 store and went inside to look around. We were so hungry that we decided we’d buy one taquito and split it to tide us over until we could get the pizza home…maybe not the greatest culinary decision we ever made, but it worked.
After getting the pizza and purchases home, we threw together a salad, piled the pizza on a plate, and settled back to watch M*A*S*H, since nothing else was on. As soon as we finished the show and dinner, we started preparing a meal that we wanted to give the kids tomorrow. Barbara has a delicious crock pot recipe for chicken, potatoes, onions, and carrots, all cooked in a couple of cans of Cream of Mushroom soup, and we thought it would be easy to fix and make a great evening meal for Mike and Kelly.
While we were putting all that together, Barbara also prepared an Apple Betty dessert (she even let me stir the batter for a while), that we would take to church with us tomorrow for a covered dish lunch with the kids’ Sunday school class.
By the time we had done all that, we were tired enough to shut things down for the night. I decided that it was just too frustrating to try to keep up with the baseball game by tracking it on the computer, so I voted to let the Red Sox and Rays slug it out without me.
“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” – Dan Zadra
From our cozy home in Cozy Acres…Jim & Barbara
