Hey y'all.

A busy fun week with Brenda in Nashville working hard together completing many projects and tasks, and playing hard.

• Shopping for furniture for her hobby room and then assembling it.


• Shopping for a sofa but having to settle for love seats because getting sofas up the stairs might be impossible, then finding some love seats are also too big in one dimension. Taking the love seat to the garage for pickup by Salvation Army.


• Fixing a plumbing problem that just happened--a fill valve would not close.


• Being around for some workers to repair nail pops and drywall cracks.


• Geocaching and grabbing a few, and also finding a homeless man in a woods we were bushwhacking and decided to not return that way.


• Cutting back plants for them to overwinter.


• Making drapes and hanging hardware.


• Hanging a fabulous wall sculpture.


• Dining out.


• Watching football and baseball, and being glad the Lions had their bye week.

And missing the tornado producing storms on our drive home. They were to our west on a north-south line stretching from Alabama to Michigan, but the whole trip we managed to stay east of them and got home hours before the tornadoes were spawned in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan.

Closer to the World Series

I am enjoying the MLB playoffs. Though the Tigers did not make it this year, I have some teams that are interesting to me.

Cleveland--because some of my aunts and uncles moved there from PA and the Indians and Browns (the ones who moved to Baltimore) were talked about so much. Grady Sizemore, their centerfielder, reminds me very much of the Tigers' Curtis Granderson. The can both run, hit, hit with power, catch and throw. Not many better all around ballplayers in the game.

Colorado--Clint Hurdle, the manager, is a shirttail relative to Kathy. We followed his ten year career with Kansas City who made him their first pick in the 1975 amateur draft. Kathy has a Clint Hurdle pin with his picture and signature--priceless.

Boston--another American League team that I have followed over the years and rooted for if they were not playing the Tigers.

Am I hoping for a C-C series? Si, si.

I made a mistake

A common phrase used by people who do bad things, endanger other people, or perform criminal acts. Vick, Spears, Rose. Dog fighting, child endangerment, betting on your own baseball team. And it bugs me.

In my humble opinion a mistake is forgetting to carry the 1 when adding or borrow when subtracting, or using "your" instead of "you're" or "her and me" instead of "she and I". It is not the same as doing wrong deeds.

Conscious decisions can be wrong, but they cannot be mistakes.

Music from Alfred Hitchcock

Interesting presentation by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on Saturday. Included with the music from four of his films was footage from the films themselves shown on a screen over the orchestra. It was, for me, difficult to observe the orchestra with the film showing on the screen, competing interests (perhaps more evidence of ADD). The music was terrific, the films wonderful. We are motivated to hope to see the films -- only North by Northwest has been seen recently.

Saturday also was our first event without Vern. We picked Pat up at her house and drove her to DSO. Dinner was at Paradise Cafe at Orchestra Hall. She seemed to handle it well, perhaps better than we did--lots of emotions.

A find start to our cultural season which will be different without Vern.

Then there are the Lions...

Da Lions

played one of the most unusual and exciting games we have ever seen.

Scoring 34 points in a game is a feat for the Lions--scoring 34 points in the fourth quarter, WOW. (A new NFL record for points in a fourth quarter.)

We were worried about the outcome through three and a half quarters. The Lions played a good first quarter, then nothing for the next two. Both teams made crucial errors--blocked field goals, interceptions, fumbles, penalties. After three quarters the Lions established that they could not establish the run and went to the air for a couple scores. With about eight minutes left they had a long scoring drive which included (surprise) several well-blocked runs and finally a touchdown run by Kevin Jones. The Bears were not done. Down ten under two minutes, the Bears scored a touchdown. (The Bears had kicked a field goal with fourth and goal from the two, but accepted a Lion penalty for having a player line up over the center giving them fourth and goal from the one.) The onside kick was returned for a touchdown and that did it.

We sat amongst many Bears fans, most of whom were decent fans--passionate, vocal, jumping up and sitting down while we were sitting down and jumping up. But I tire of some visiting fans, those who are confrontational and threatening, who wave fingers at us, who turn around and tell us we're gonna get our a__es beat, who shake their favorite player's jersey at us after a score. Just go to the game, cheer for your team, stand up and applaud, yell and even scream, whistle, boo an official's call, and even chant "Let's go Bears." Any more than that is unacceptable.

As we walked around the stadium before the game, we came upon the wife and daughter of the late Charlie Ane, center for the '57 Lions, the last championship that was honored at halftime. I told them how much I enjoyed Charlie's play and that championship season. There were not many of us in the crowd who remember that team. It was the third championship for the Lions in the 50s. And we thought it would always be that way, that they would be in the hunt for the title. We're still waiting.

Next week is off to Washington to take on the Redskins and try for their first win there. (Not first win since such-and-such a year, just first win.)

Goooo Lions!

Stratford on Saturday

We saw an excellant performance of An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde's skewering of genteel Londoners. Great acting, great seats, great company, great weather, great food.

We left with Jim and Sandy early Saturday morning, picked up Bill and Dorothy in Marine City, and crossed the Blue Water Bridge after a short delay. We arrived to bright sun and cool temperatures in the 60s and strolled some of the downtown Stratford, Ontario streets before our lunch at Bentley's Restaurant in the heart of Stratford. Their gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches are not to be missed. Off to the Festival Theatre (there are four theatres in Stratford) to walk their gardens before the performance. We found a beautiful fall-blooming crocus that we intend to put in some of the flower beds next season.

On our return to US customs and immigration, after a much longer wait, the officer took our passports, asked about our travel, and then wanted to talk to Sandy. He is a former student of hers who spoke fondly of the books they read and the trips they took, especially to Meadow Brook Theatre to see A Christmas Carol. Such a small world.

Ten days in the northwest

After the Lions' victory over the Vikings we spent the night near the airport, rose at 3 am, shuttled to the airport at 4:30, and boarded our flight on Frontier Airlines to Denver. Changed planes for Seattle where Amy and Garrett picked us up.

The days were busy. We walked Spencer to school in the morning and home in the afternoon with Garrett accompanying us on his tricycle--up hill both ways!. Some days we stopped for morning coffee and a muffin or cinnamon roll on the way back. After school we all went to Spencer's soccer matches and Tae-kwon-do classes, then geared down with baths and showers, video games, and reading children's books together.

We took Garrett to Pacific Science Center in Seattle to see their dinosaur exhibit and an IMAX 3D about dinosaurs where Garrett sat with his feet straight out, munching his popcorn and sipping his drink, watching the tail of a dinosaur tail appear to swipe near our noses. Another day Garrett took us to Snoqualmie for a train ride and four train-related activities hosted by volunteers for the Northwest Railway Museum.

Our hike to Snoqualmie Falls was exciting--trees two hundred years old lying beside our trail, views of the valley through breaks in the trees, several varieties of slugs and beetles, benches to sit on and have our snack and hydration break with a view of the falls, and a return trip culminating in a challenging (for me) four hundred foot climb from the rail-trail up to their neighborhood playground.

We did find time to follow the Tigers' attempt to recover from their post-All Star game slide, Michigan's defeat of Penn State, MSU can of whoop-a__ they opened on ND, and the Lion debacle in the City of Brotherly Love (none shown for the Lions)

Landscape changes will be noticed--moved some things, trimmed others, and set many new plants (Kathy, mainly). Spencer and Garrett both love to play outdoors so we took them to parks and their backyard to swing and climb structures.

Learned about how to use a computer to help manage geogaching waypoint and cache information, and then used the info to grab a few caches (missed a few, too). And used a Skyscout to locate given stars and constellations, and, conversely, to identify them.

When we were ready to return, it was clear and sunny at the Reagan house but Amy returned from an errand to tell us she heard of flight delays out of Seatac airport. We checked and our flight was moved to an hour later. As we drove we could see the fog over Seattle that caused it. Mostly we had seen clouds in the mountains and clear below, but this was reversed. We did not mind because our layover in Denver was originally over three hours. (We purposely did that to accomodate everyone's schedule.) Smooth sailing home--not much traffic from Metro Airport to Romeo at 2:30 in the morning.

Great trip, had a ball. It's always good to be home.