Archive | August, 2016

Road Trip 2016 – The Days Before

5 Aug

Last year when we took our first road trip, we moved out of our rental house putting everything in storage until we returned and moved into our new house in San Louis Obispo. For our second road trip we moved 2 families into their new homes. So on a Saturday, between the husbands and myself we managed to get both families for the most part relocated into their new homes. Both still had a bit to do on the following days but at least all the heavy stuff was relocated.

Because both families were in the middle of their moves, neither one was able to stay in their new homes for the first couple of nights, so we decided to have a family sleepover at our house. What an adventure! It was a little crowded but overall; it wasn’t too bad. The toughest part was the grandkids. Since both families had to spend the daylight hours organizing their homes, YiaYia and Papou (Helen and I) said no problem, we can watch the kids. I mean we figured how tough can it be? We’ve been watching them off and on since they were born, so a couple days straight was no big deal. Or so we thought…

We had raised 3 girls who were close to the same age differences, so this would be easy. What we forgot to take into consideration was sleep schedules and what we’ll call priority attention requirements. In the past when we watched the grandkids they had been on different sleep schedules, not now. To make things interesting Sophia had just gone vertically mobile earlier in the month, so sitting was not a popular activity for her and Elli was busy being herself trying to do everything as close together as possible. Needless to say, they ran us ragged (in a good way). The funniest moment came when we were in the kitchen fixing lunch for the kids and we asked ourselves how in the heck had we managed to survive raising our 3 girls, and then realizing that we would soon be doubling the number of grandkids, Uh-oh.

The Highlight though was that I think during this time that both of our grandkids grew even closer to us and made both of us feel special.  In Yiayia’s case, the highlight was Elli spending a couple of extra nights with us while her parents finished fixing up her room for her. During that time Elli would wake up at 2 or 3 am and start to cry, this would get Helen out of bed and into our office where Elli slept. First she would try and comfort her and if that didn’t work, she would bring Elli to our room and she would have her sleep with us. The first time it happened wasn’t too bad as Elli just laid between our two pillows and slept. The next time Elli was in my bed before I me!! So when I went to bed I pushed back the covers to crawl in and discovered that Elli had decided to sleep in the L formation with her legs filling up my side of the bed!

For me, I cherished the fact that both kids would come to me to be picked up. Only problem was that once one was picked up, the other one would show up and insist on the same honor. I began thinking that if this kept up where in the heck was I going to carry the next two when they arrived….

All in all it was a great way to spend the 4 days before we left for St. Louis, though it was a little sad leaving them there for the next 26 days while we were gone.

 

I know why they call it ‘Mad’rid

4 Aug

We spent 4 nights in Madrid and the city is… frustrating for a celiac.

We arrived late in the day and decided to just walk around a bit to get the lay of the land. After walking for a while we decided to get ourselves something to eat, so we found a nice outdoor restaurant in the square we were in and went up to get a table. Well the gentleman that greeted us spoke very little English. So we let him know that I was “celiacos” and did they have anything I could eat, a look of horror came over his face and he tells us no they have nothing we can eat. We ask for a menu and lo and behold we quickly find a few items we can enjoy so we ask for a table. He now gets a look of disgust and tells us to sit over there, pointing off in the general direction of an empty table and says he will get someone else to wait on us. Maybe he thought celiac was contagious. So we had a pitcher of sangria (good) and a couple different dishes (just okay), paid our bill and then headed back to the hotel. Not a good start.

We tried to see all the big touristy things beginning with the park across from our hotel. Retiro Park is a large Central Park style of park. The park is massive and fortunately we were able to walk through it on a Sunny Saturday. The park is amazing, lots to see and do, from museums to street performers, but the best of all is the people watching.

We entered from near our hotel and after a short walk we found ourselves by a lake that you could easily walk around. The large walkway next to it was lined with street performers. Their were musicians, puppeteers, jugglers, and everything you could think of. The highlight for me was the old puppeteer siting on the ground with his puppets in front of him and a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. I had to snap a picture.

We went to one of the free museums and checked out the modern art exhibits. I can now safely say I am not a cultured guy. Most of the exhibits I would have filed under “WTF?” as I had no clue what the point of them was. I think my old co-worker from my gas station days, art major Chuck, would have been happy here.  I didn’t get it. We did see one interesting exhibit inside a large glass building. It was a trailer that held an odd assortment of miniatures and full size items depicting…something, Didn’t understand it but I enjoyed looking at it.

The park had lots of pathways, which we walked, including a rose garden, that we strolled through. This led to us becoming very thirsty and hungry. Which is where the food fun continued. We walked up to one of the kiosks and when the lady behind the counter asked us what we liked, we once again explained about our need for gluten free, and the smile that was on her face immediately turns to disgust and then she points to the tables outside and says she will get someone else to help us. Obviously we weren’t her kind of customers. This time we left and went and had an ice cream by the lake and called it a day. For dinner we just hid in the hotel and ate at their restaurant.

The next day we went to El Prado museum. What an incredible collection of art, again not for me, although I tried. We walked for hours looking at hundreds of pictures of basically some famous or infamous person standing or sitting in period attire. Before long they all began to look the same and I became quite numb to the whole thing. After several hours of this I finally turned to Helen and said “Okay the museum wins, I can’t take any more lets get out of here”. Thankfully she agreed. We went back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit, while there we tried to hunt up some gluten free options for food. I was dying to try Tapas. Helen ended up finding us a place that ended up being a bit of a hike from the hotel. This place turned out to be fantastic.

Taberno La Concha in Madrid turned in to the best meal we had in the city. It was a bit of a walk from our hotel but well worth it. They set us in their basement, probably to keep us away from all the locals that would be coming in later. And handed us a menu. And the best part was the page of gluten free Tapas that they had, we didn’t know where ot begin. I don’t remember what we ordered. But I loved all of it. And the best part was that they didn’t look at us in disugust when we asked for the gluten free menu!!

We also toured the Royal Palace of Madrid, which was nice and was a great way to wind up our time in Madrid. The next morning we headed to the airport to fly to Rome in preparation for our first cruise aboard the Norwegian Jade.

The Great Outdoors (or don’t come in until the streetlights come on)

4 Aug

Living in California, we always seemed to have good weather. As such; my brothers and I were always outside playing. Being sports minded we would play over the line, touch football, ride our 60’s version of skateboards, ride bikes, chase each other, or just kick balls around (at the time we hadn’t heard of soccer). Sometimes we would take a couple of dads golf clubs and play golf in the backyard, or grab our mitts to play pickle.

Now playing golf was lots of fun for awhile, until the day that mom discovered how we dug our holes for the golf balls. I preferred digging with the putter, while Doug was partial to the wedge. We had learned that the end fo the clubs when swung just right made perfect picks.

We also managed to build an underground fort with some of the other kids on the street. Pearce Ave, our street was a dead end on both sides and on the east side we felt the field was a perfect place to play. So my brothers and I with our friends managed to dig a deep hole that we covered with cardboard to build the fort. The entrance was a small hole that we could crawl through. To disguise the cardboard we covered it with some of the dirt we had dug out. This worked great until the day the someone came along and stepped on the roof. Thankfully the fort wasn’t too deep so no injuries.

Looking at the skateboards of today I have to admit some jealousy. Back in the sixties, our skateboards had wooden wheels unlike the polyurethane wheels of today. What this meant is that every little pebble, twig, or lump of paper made a perfect brake for the wheels. I can’t tell you the number of times my brothers and I would be flying down the sidewalk on our skateboards when we would hit an obstruction bringing the skateboard to an immediate stop, while we continued forward in a rather ungraceful motion, usually resulting in skinned knees. Our mom went through lots of Bactine back then.

While we had lots of fun outside, I have to admit that the main reason we were out there was that every single day, whether after school, or after breakfast in the summer, our mom told us the same thing ever day.

“Get out of the house and don’t come in until the streetlights come on!”

Needless to say she loved summer and hated winter.

 

 

 

Road Trip 2016

4 Aug

 

Yesterday we flew to St Louis so that Helen and my sister Bobbi could attend their Younique convention. I hadn’t really given our flight out much thought, thinking we would just fly there and after her convention begin a 3 1/2 week roadtrip up through New England.

All was fine on our first leg from San Luis Obispo to Phoenix, except for the having to get up at 4 in the morning to catch a 6:15 flight. We made it to Phoenix and our 8:54 flight had been delayed until 9:30, then 10:30, and finally 11:30. So our 50 minute layover was extended to 3 hours. That in and of itself wasn’t too bad, but when I realized that a significant portion of the passenger manifest was filled with Younique conventioneers, it made the layover a little more disturbing as they all began talking about ther uplines and yada, yada, yada. Fortunately I was so tired I fell asleep and when I woke up the youniquers around us had moved on. Also being in first class, I was nowhere near them as we flew to St. Louis. So a rather peaceful flight once we took off in our really old A320 aircraft.

When we arrived we collected our bags in the normal fashion, 2 bags showed up immediatley and 1 bag took forever, and headed off to pick up the rental car. I thought it was great that I had just gotten notice that Avis had upgraded me to a Cadillac XTS, what a great way for us to road trip! So we took the shuttle bus over to avis and the driver kindly dropped us off right in front of our car. We put the bags at the trunk  and I popped open the door to get the keys and release the trunk. So I looked in the cupholder, the glovebox and the armrest storage, no key. I did find the Avis sheet that said it was my car, I guess they just didn’t want me driving it. Fortunately as a Presidents club member I was able to just pick a different car and change it as I drove off. So now we will be roadtripping in a Lincold MKS, Mathew McConaughey would be pleased.

This is my second trip to the city, with time to sightsee,  so there isn’t much I want to see. Although we did go to the Gateway arch and rode to the top. Went at night which was pretty cool. Unfortunately there is a lot of construction going on which sort of ruins the visual effect at ground level.

The Younique Crew – Bobbi, Jacki, and Helen

Today is the first day of their convention so I chose to just hide out in the concierge lounge and type. Felt good.

Jr. High Talents and the lack there of…

4 Aug

In Jr. High, I attempted many things for the first time. First up was Woodshop. I went in pretty excited as I had heard that I would get to play with power tools. This was big, up to this point the only machinery I was allowed to operate was the lawn mower or our creepy crawly factory. I was now going to saw, drill, and sand stuff. This was awesome!

So I reported to class ready to unleash my creativity on some unsuspecting wood when the first thing I hear from the shop teacher is “for this first quarter we will be focused on learning to draft”

WHAT, Wait, your kidding me right? But no we spent the first two months learning to draw and print.  I could have cried. But its November now and we finally get to work with wood and my first project would be to cut out a kidney-shaped piece of wood and drill two holes part way through it to hold the family salt and pepper shakers.

So I went home to make incredibly precise measurements of the base of the salt and pepper shakers. I mean I used a ruler and even a set of calipers that my dad had. I was going to nail this project.

So at school I did my drafting making sure that everything was within acceptable tolerances for the kidney and holes. I selected my piece of wood carefully, and then proceeded to cut, drill, and stain to make this an incredible looking finished product. I was dang proud of what I had accomplished.

I don’t remember my grade, because that wasn’t important. I do remember the pride I had though when I took the stand home, proudly displaying to my mom my handiwork. She told me it looked nice (uh-oh) and then sat it on the kitchen island. I tell her to wait, and I grab the salt and pepper shakers and the stand . I place the pepper shaker in its stand and it fits perfectly!! See Mom this is useful! I take the salt shaker and stick it into its spot and it doesn’t fit even a little bit! What I goofed up! I couldn’t believe it. So I took it back to school to fix and discovered that if I made the hole big enough it would basically go right through the side of the base. OOPS.

It was at this moment I knew I would never be a worker of wood.

My next talent was music. There was no way I would be caught dead resurrecting my skills with an accordion, so I had to pick a different instrument, unfortunately the time I had available for music was for string instruments only, and I picked up the violin. To this day I have no understanding on why I chose the violin. I think my mom was happy, I know I wasn’t.

To make matters worse, I played (loosely defined) that instrument both years I was in Jr. High. But since I chose this class the least I could do was my very best. And so I tried and I tried, worked hard to be my very best. We were each assigned a certain position based on talent. I started as 4th chair and through challenges, I worked my way up to 3rd chair. This ended up being the best I could do. So I was at least the 3rd best violinist in my class, something to definitely to be proud of.  So when school let out for the last time, I said good-by to the violin section and watched them walk off. All 3 of them…..

While at Doig, I had the opportunity to demonstrate my intrapersonal skills in dealing with people. One of the school bullies, was busy tormenting one of the smaller kids, I accidentally got in the way and caused him to slip and fall. No big deal, I thought. Then he got to his feet and he was pissed, so at that point I realized I had two choices, I could try to talk to him and explain it was an accident, or I could run. So I ran and looking back on it I now realize that I probably would have been okay if I hadn’t been laughing so hard while he chased me, it seemed to upset him. So weeks later when he finally cornered me, I had to apologize, which I did, and I think my whimper convinced him of my sincerity because he immediately let me go and walked away. So note to self, don’t laugh (out loud) at people, even if they deserve it.

And finally Soccer. During my 7th grade year Doig tried to implement an intramural sports program with other schools in the area. For some reason, they picked soccer. Which is funny as no school at that time had anything closely approaching a soccer net. Well since I loved to run around I went out for it. I can vaguely remember playing a few games and at least one bus ride to another school. Now I know that the coach at that time knew less about soccer than I did and what we were really playing was a bad version of bunch ball. So my only soccer playing experience was at the age of 14 playing soccer as well as todays 5-year olds.

But now that I was off to high school I knew I would find my new and better ways to improve myself and prepare myself for college.  Santiago here I come….