Dancing Away Hard Labor

My Dancing Partner at Silverman's Last Night

Our last free weekend in a while was devoted to yard work. I was back on my wall while my wife finally tackled the growing population of flowers she’d purchased over the past couple weeks. She’s in the middle of transforming the deck back to summer mode after the cold of winter/spring rendered it depressingly somber. I had what I thought was the easy task of moving the debris pile from the front yard gardens to the other side of the wall before adding the next layers of bricks. I totally underestimated either the difficult nature of the task or my increasingly diminished physical abilities.

Tulips Are Out - Pile I ad to Move at Far End of New Wall

It took me nearly two hours to move the piles the short distance, mainly because I couldn’t just shovel the piles as was laced with so much cut up sod. I made use of my long dormant water polo skills by backhand flipping a lot of it over the wall before I devised a system using the mulch shovel and rake. Buddy, my less than able assistant, was a little miffed because he’d been using the now defunct pile as a lookout perch. By late afternoon I had the piles moved and the next two rows of bricks in place and can finally see the end of the tunnel. It needs one more row of bricks and then the capstone level and some top soil.

End of the Day Progress - One More Row

The day was not without adventure. My wife was planting dahlias in the completed terraces when I was maneuvering at the far downhill end of the new wall. I was so tired and to be perfectly honest clumsy that when I shifted my feet around I lost my balance. As I started to fall the only thing I could grab was a nearby small tree. I knew if I did that the tree was coming out of the ground and I’d still end up on my butt. I accepted I was going to fall and prepared to land (old airborne ways die hard). I miscalculated in that second though while considering options. I forgot I was on a fairly steep part of the hill and the fall took a lot longer that I imagined. Two somersaults later I was at the bottom of the hill with a very solicitous Wonder Pooch inquiring into my health. My first thought, after ascertaining I was uninjured except for a sore shoulder, was checking to see if my wife had witnessed my pratfall. I was saved that indignity and only told her about it a couple hours later. If she had seen it I know I’d have to argue her out of a trip to the ER (she tends to over-diagnose).

Helping Dad out 

You Missed a Piece

We weren’t the only ones doing yard work yesterday. Both the New Hampshire and New Jersey clusters were also out in the beautiful spring day. My son tackled the first lawn mowing of the year while Wingman was trying to impose some sort of order onto their overgrown backyard. He enlisted the stalwart help of the First Blog Reader who was only too happy to help out. My daughter posted a video of her backyard adventures to Instagram which became a huge hit down in Panama. My wife was yelling at me that we needed to get on Instagram when my daughter reminded her that we were, that she’d done it for us during the last trip.

What to Do Next?

We were both a little battered and bruised after the long day working outside but we still decided to go out for dinner and dancing. We’d made several aborted plans over the past few months and overruled what our bodies were trying to tell us. We had dinner and then three hours of dancing at Maxwell Silverman’s and it was so much fun. We hadn’t had a night out like this since early last year and it was exactly the medicine both of us needed. We left for home around 1130pm as the weirder crowd and attendant music started to arrive. Sleep was not a problem last night.

Creeping Wall

Back to Work Grampa

Yesterday was one of those days I felt like I was chasing my tail all day long. There were several meetings with the politicos in the morning and then our annual Retiree Luncheon consuming the middle of the day. Each year we invite the company’s retirees back for a picnic and recognition of those who retired over the past year. It led me to realize how long I’ve been in Worcester now. After the transitory lifestyle for most of my adult life in the Army I’m now in my twelfth year here. What caused me to reflect was the aged state of several of the retirees who returned. Many of them were senior employees when I first showed up. Time is such a fleeting commodity.

The Wall After Yesterday's Efforts

Most of the afternoon as devoted to wrestling with the scheduling software as I’m passing the torch in that arena to a team of subordinates and I had to walk them through in excruciating detail. I was in serious need to some sort of diversion after I got home. My usual and very dependable sun source of diversion, my Favorite Panamanian, was unavailable since she was engaged on one of her shopping frenzies with the Neighborhood Mafioso. We have a long weekend next week with our granddaughter coming up and that kicks my wife’s shopping scent, already keenly developed, into overdrive.

She Wanted to Wear Striped Socks So She Could be Like Dad

I contented myself with another trip to Home Depot and loading and unloading fifty more bricks for my wall. I understand why Pink Floyd has been echoing through my subconscious recently with one of the defining songs of my generation. I’ve figured I end up picking up each brick a total of five times, off the shelf onto the cart, into the car, out of the car, out of the wheel barrow and onto the wall. So 250 lifts later the wall is about three quarters complete. I think it will take two or three additional rows which I hope to knock out this weekend. Before I do that I’ve got to shovel the pile of fill (from the front yard garden expansion) sitting just below it to behind the wall. I’m not a genius but lifting it over the lower wall makes more sense than waiting until it’s at its final height. My engineer son would be so proud of Neanderthal Dad.

Best Buds - At Least from One Side

While I was out on the wall (you need me there) I received my FaceTime call from the shopping catalyst herself. My granddaughter heartily approved of her grandmother’s absence from the call since she was involved in acquiring additional items to support her style in the style she has become accustomed. I came in from the wall to do some homework, remoting into my office desktop to drive a stake in the heart of one schedule that just didn’t want to cooperate.

Sister in Air Assault Mode

Meanwhile the Great Aunt, Soxfather, and Namesake Nephew are terrorizing Central Florida this week. Based on what the Red Sox are doing (or not doing – like hitting the ball) it’s probably a good thing the Soxfather is out of town. I received some pictures of my sister and her son taking a helicopter ride. I’ve ridden in hundreds of those things over the Army years but always thought it was cool, well except for the few hard landings or rappelling into triple canopy from a hovering chopper. They’re much more enjoyable from the inside.

Turn About

She's Back!

Yesterday we were happily, if briefly reunited via FaceTime air waves with the First Blog reader. She paid scant attention though as she has had a plate of Spinach Pasta in front to of her which she was methodically destroying. At one point she was going at with both a spoon and a fork. I’m guessing she likes it. Wingman was a bit distracted because the electricians finally showed up at the house to address several issues except they showed up six hours late and barely spoke English. Yet another chapter in his rapidly increasing book on the joys of home ownership.

Wall Progress

I snuck out between rain showers to exhaust the existing pile of bricks on the final terrace. I made it to the uphill end and started the turn into the hill before the bricks ran out. There’ll be another trip to Home Depot tonight after work. I’m actually getting pretty good at this. None of the prior walls fell over the winter.  I owe a lot to the engineer son who preached the importance of leveling the bottom row, even though it’s an incredible pain in the butt.

We hooked up with the Neighborhood Mafiosos for a movie double date last night to see Unforgettable. This was a like a Lifetime (Evil Man) Channel movie on steroids with an A-list cast who truly delivers. The one, huge, change is the villains are women and the men in the cast just window dressing, turn about fair play. I’m not sure Heigl is this good an actress or this is her real personae but she was chilling as the crazed ex-wife. This is a woman’s movie with the two leads squaring off against each other instead of being victims. The final confrontation was worth the wait although there were stretches leading up to it that I found excruciatingly boring. A good taut thriller with the obvious plot holes that are required in such fare but don’t detract from enjoyment.  I liked it.

Promising Break

One of Few Photos I was Able to Coax

I re-learned an important lesson a couple days ago. It is not smart to launder your wallet. When I finished work on the back hill terrace I was, as usual, covered in mud and dirt. Since the laundry room is conveniently next to my garage door entry point I divested myself of the unacceptable (to a certain Panamanian) clothes there and threw them into the washing machine before heading upstairs. In order to preserve the sanity of the neighbors the blinds were previously lowered on all windows. What I’d failed to note was my wallet was in the back pocket of the work pants now sloshing around tin the washing machine.

Wallet and Contents Drying

I discovered this later when I was moving the mass into the dryer when I found an unexplained object in the bottom of the washing machine. We’ve all had these moments (although I seem to be singularly blessed in this department) when it becomes startlingly obvious you’ve done something incredibly stupid. My wife, to her credit, kept her mirth at my predicament to tolerable limits, mainly because I was so pissed at myself. Everything dried overnight but we’ll have to see how all the credit cards with these new magic chips fared through the storm.

I Know Grampa - Hang in There

I’m suffering through some minor withdrawal symptoms in terms of granddaughter exposure. My daughter, because she has a challenging job, hasn’t posted any new pictures for the past few days and last night she was so late home from work that our nightly FaceTime call didn’t happen. I was able to coax today’s three photos out of her after protracted negotiations. It’s a sign of how spoiled we have become with nearly constant access to the First Blog Reader.

View from Condo Front

We’re getting closer and closer to realizing our dream of the beachfront condo down in Panama. We’ll be flying down in a couple weeks for the first homeowners’ association meeting of fellow condo owners. The landscaping looks to be finished and just a few remaining items seem to be needed, like balcony barriers. We should sign for the keys in another trip to Panama in August.

Beachside

From the Other Side - Showing Picnic Area

Front Hallway

I took the night off from the back yard terrace project last night due to constant rain. I hadn’t realized the toll the work had been taking on me physically until I woke up this morning feeling better than I had since before I started probing into the earth a couple weeks ago. I’m not ready to perform any Olympic level gymnastic events but the change was notable. I hate getting old.

We went to see The Promise last night on date night. A very long movie that tries to tell an important historical story – the Armenian genocide. I know the proud Turks try to deny it but the last days of the Ottoman Empire were scary times in Anatolia, especially if you were Greek or especially Armenian. This film reminded me of some of the old time epics trying to capture the sweeping events of a major world event. The only problem was inserting a fairly silly love triangle that adds unneeded angst to an already anxiety prone situation. The actors were awesome throughout, with Isaac once again dominating, real screen presence despite his tragically poor luck with women in this one.

I Shall Return!

Electro-Magnetic Personal History

Maybe for First time Ever Daughter Took No Photos Of Granddaughter Yesterday
Had a Backup Supply

As I sit here typing something that will eventually appear on a blog I created (with a lot of help from my daughter) and edit daily I’m a little flummoxed by how far we’ve come in the electro-magnetic spectrum in a relatively short span of time. The next generation finds this hard to credit because they’ve grown up immersed in technology with all the inherent benefits and attendant warts. My one year old granddaughter is already thumbing through menus on her parents’ IPads and is drawn like a moth to the flame whenever one of these devices is left within reach.

When I was a young captain in the late 1980s computers were huge and I had a young Soldier assigned to my office who was the only one trained on using one of the mysterious beasts. I remember sitting beside him as he typed in various reports and having him do all the mundane edits that would seem ridiculous in today’s world. I owned my first home computer in the early 1990s when I was studying for my first Masters’ degree. I found I was a much better student with one of these things where I could actually make changes to typos without reinventing a typed sentence to match what I had mistakenly typed. I had a use a huge floppy disk to boot the computer up. I also had access to a university computer lab where I first fell in love with spell check – a love affair that continues to this day. If you could only see what the initial typing of this blog entry looks like you would understand. It was also around this time that I played my first ever computer game. It was an Apache helicopter flight simulator which I enjoyed but I never got hooked on computer games, something my sons’ generation grew up with idolizing.

During my time as a major in Hawaii in the mid-1990s I first got exposed to email both personally and professionally. My AOL email account proved to be a great life line during a tough time as it allowed me to connect back to Great Aunt and Soxfather during a difficult time. Professionally it started a trend that has continued to this day. I had just returned from a Middle East rotation and was moved to the Division staff. I’d come in to work at 6am and find 15 to 20 emails waiting for me from a hyper G3 (the division operations officer) who’d come to work in the early morning hours each day. I then spent the rest of the day working the issues he’d sent out at oh dark thirty. Nowadays I’d love to have only 15-20 emails daily. I can usually count on between 120 and 300.

In the late 1990s while living in Kansas we upgraded to a Pentium home computer and the internet started to appear as both my kids, young teens at this point, took to this expanded world of information as if they were born to it. It took a lot longer to load back then. If a picture, not to even conceive a video, was involved you’d have to sit and wait while it loaded in agonizingly slow fashion. The internet was always accessed over the phone line so all phone calls were interrupted when someone was online. This didn’t sit well with a certain, phone addicted Panamanian. I was usually the dinosaur. I remember getting angry with my daughter for saving a rudimentary word document on the hard drive. I was scared she would use up too much disk space, not realizing she could have saved an entire book without issue. I clearly remember her patiently trying to explain this to me. I realized at this moment how far ahead of me she was already in this arena – a trend that’s continued to this day.

The early 2000s saw a true explosion of technology and the internet. Both of my kids headed to college and each left with a personal computer of their very own. My son reported problems with his and also that he’d taken the thing apart and repaired it. I knew at that point I was hopelessly outclassed in the tech area by this generation. To their credit they never tired of trying to drag me kicking and screaming into the info age. They are still my info gurus. Whenever my wife or I can’t get a system to work it’s usually de rigueur to place a call to one of the two to talk us through fixing the issue; they’re both really good sports about it.

Two Projects Proceeded Yesterday 

Since retiring from the military probably the biggest innovation of all has occurred, the advent of smart phones. I can now do easily within seconds on a smart phone what that young Solider and I labored at back in the 1980s. It’s certainly changed the world as we can now pick up a phone or tablet to video chat with the far flung computer prodigies we produced or even my wife’s family down in Panama. I don’t miss the typewriter, at all. Young whippersnappers don’t know how easy they’ve got it. Instead of deep snow treks to school my generation complains how we used to bear with dial up internet connections.

Still the Dancing Quee (Princess)

Back Walled

She Chose this Shirt to Wear so She'd Be Striped Like Mom

Alright, pretty tired and sore today but the upside was almost an entire afternoon finally out on the back hillside getting started on the last terrace. After church and grocery store runs I was released to my own devices (as long as I was being productive). Like most New Englanders after a winter which reduces the amount of leisure time outside I was honestly excited about the impending hours, even given that they were performing hard labor. At least it wasn’t cold and rainy, a la the day before.

Front Yard Finished

I made the first of three trips to Home Depot to secure more bricks and cap stones which I used to finish off my wife’s front yard garden wall which came out better than I thought. Buddy took up station on the back deck as I moved operations to the back hillside well within his declared security zone. He was a lot of fun to have back there throughout the day as he revealed a couple of unknown abilities. He demonstrated a fairly impressive slide down the hill on his back and vigorously displayed some hunting technique that resulted in the absolute destruction of an unsuspecting tree branch.

Back Yard Started

About Half-Way on Bottom Row

I’d forgotten how much fun it was working perched on the hillside while struggling to get the base series of bricks resolutely level (or I risk counseling from my Favorite Engineer/Son). I’m dealing with the most severe part of the slope so this is going to take a lot of bricks. After a full afternoon and part of the evening I’m still only halfway on the bottom course but I’m glad to have finally made a dent in the final phase of the backyard transformation project. I’m sick of looking at the barren hillside. It’s in my nature to impose order. I wonder where I got that from? I spent the last hour of sunlight to spread mulch on the completed three terraces - really happy how that came out.

Mulching Results

My Favorite Panamanian bounced back from her Saturday health woes and felt well enough to start on her own project. Since she had finally, at long length made a decision on the paint color and she started painting the kitchen walls. I would come to door periodically to check on progress. I was not allowed inside in my dirt covered state. Evidently the time making the decision was well spent because it looks great; especially since I didn’t have to paint myself. I still don’t know how she can paint an entire room without getting any paint on herself. I always factor in an additional half gallon if I’m involved because that’s the amount that I usually end up wearing.

Painting in Progress

I had some homework from my job that needed an additional three hours after the sun set but that went better than I had a right to expect. I finished up at the Man Cave office computer just as my wife descended from her tinting experience. We finished up with one episode of Parenthood before declaring victory and heading upstairs. I was exhausted after a long day out in the hot sun but for some reason sleep eluded me which was patently unfair. I think I got frustrated at not falling asleep immediately which served to feed the insomnia even more.

Helping out a New Friend

Our joint projects were interrupted by another one of those fabulous FaceTime calls from our granddaughter. She had a great weekend with visiting friends. One of those friends had a baby a few months younger than our granddaughter who immediately began teaching the ropes to. High in the quaintness spectrum. Our daughter sent a couple videos which shows my granddaughter demonstrating her Panamanian heritage in the dance department. If you get more than three Panamanians for any extended time in a room there will eventually be dancing involved. I hope I can get this one to load on the page because it ably shows what a treasure this young lady is developing into. I’ve showed it to everyone that’s come by my office today. 

Full House Weekend Despite Lack of Wingman

If You Visit my Granddaughter - You Will End up Reading with her

Too much Fun Going on to Stay in Bed

Two Striped Beauties in a Funny Face Competition