Sounds like some neat vacations!
Whew! I’ve been away for a bit but so glad to see everyone here!
MP - congrats on the Pieson’s engagement - great news!
It sounds like everyone is thoroughly thriving and moving ahead with terrific adventures - and I don’t just mean our children! So great to catch up!
cq - I was on the Westside highway for far too long today and I was thinking of your profile pic - too funny! I guess that is why I was moved to post tonight. Ha!
shaw, loved Calgory when we went last year. I had no idea that I would find the architecture so interesting and we had a wonderful meal.
woody–where have you been?
Brag-- D has been chosen as a member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society at Brown Medical School.
(I had to look it all up and am thrilled for her). Loads of being empathetic and patient-centered. Nominated by peers and then a keen evaluation by the teaching members. Quite an honor.
She will be home late Tues. evening for my B-day on the 12th. Here mainly to study and then THE BF will come to meet us and experience Oregon. I am thrilled and fingers crossed that we are all a good fit!
Moving day for Son. Having followed him for years, you should think this is funny: he and fiancé thought they were renting a furnished apartment. But no. Totally Empty. I think I’m the only one who thinks it’s pretty darned funny.
LOL wow
hope you have an Ikea nearby
Or maybe you will be getting some new things for yourself so they can have yours
MP, don’t you have lots of stuff your H doesn’t want to part with? Time to dig it out!
MP: oops . . .
Fiancé’ dad was able to scrounge a cast off couch and chair from a relative with a phone call. Can use a card table and chairs for a while. Both had dressers. The only urgent need is a bed. So typical of the two of them.
Good morning.
Woody, nice to “see” you 
Kudos Oregon, on D’s accomplishment, and fingers crossed that BF is good fit!
Missy, that is hilarious…at least to me
So I am sitting on the covered portion of the deck watching the stupid rain thwart my aquajogging and hot tubbing. But then remembering I should be grateful because the plants and the terrace desperately needed watering.
This last week hasn’t felt very summery…I want more Summer in my summer
Oregon101, congrats.
MP. Very funny.
On my way to London. Have a couple of days too kill in Europe. I think I will go someplace I haven’t been. Lisbon?
Yes, Lisbon. I have never been but it’s high on my list. I quiz everyone who has been there and the reports are very positive.
A little more explanation on Son’s apartment. His lease just finished on a 2 bedroom in the same complex. All of the two bedrooms come furnished. In the one bedrooms, I guess you can rent unfurnished, or pay $75 more a month for furnished. He didn’t even know that was an option. It’s pretty amazing to me that the folks in the rental office never asked if he wanted furnished or unfurnished. (You’d think they’d be all over the potential upsell.)
Woody! Welcome back!
Younger D left at 7 this morning to go back to school. She’ll be staying with friends until she can move into the substitute apartment (where she’s moving until the new complex is ready.) “Staying with friends” is a euphemism for sharing her BF’s bedroom because H just can’t fathom the idea of that. (He knows but prefers not to believe or acknowledge it.)
Our house looks like a parade just passed by. Will likely take all fall to make order of the messy nest.
Been out straight with work and my friend and school. I finished my class, and am now starting to learn Reiki. I am a o closet hippie. new England is not as amenable to being a hippy but that is my ambition.
We are planning trips to South Africa and Hawaii. keeping me very busy. I have to be the vacation planner. I wont know what to do with myself when we get back. Oh yeah I am going to attempt 3 classes. Um that might not be a good choice.
Congrats on Pie son engagement, I wish we lived closer I could give him some things.
Please share more about reiki and why you believe in it. I am interested but it seems…out there. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
DTE - well I grew up in Maine and now live in western NY and I’m a hippie and not too much of a closet one although my kids wish I was. 
I think that there are TOO many laws for people - that at some point common sense ought to come into the equation. I wear tie-die regularly. Am really laid back for the most part and think that people are way to uptight - especially those I work with. I work to live - I don’t (and never have) lived to work. I have taken yoga - but have little or no flexibility with my arthritis. Love to do most things myself and basic (cook from scratch, knit, sew, etc). Not 100% sure what you mean by hippie but I think I fit the equation. I do wish people would be more considerate and more love each other. I really don’t care about people’s life style choices, religion, race, etc as long as they are “good people”. The people that I call my friends are fairly wide reaching and just people that I want to spend time with. Yes they are different from me and have made different decisions in life - that just makes them more interesting to me.
Here’s to the hippies among us!
Toast! H and I were with another family recvently and the 20 year old and two friends talked with us about thier lives and I mentioned that I had been a Hippie. Then I did stop myself from saying all of what that had meant to me…
I think they thought it just meant tie-die. :-"
I remember that the Dean of one of the U’s I was working at called me in his office to question my living arrangements and whether I was going to get married (no). And I lived by the Farmer Almanac. Had Woman’s full moon gatherings and such. Setting up a woman’s abuse center.
Good times. Life was interesting.
Yup - H and I also lived together for a while prior to doing the ring thing. Tie-die was only my attempt at humor since the kids equate it so. I even still wear (gasp) a headband when working out. Hey it keeps the sweat out of my eyes! I’m working out - not impressing anyone.
One of these days I really do need to grab a bus and arrange a meet-up.
And MP, I’m sorry, but I laughed at the unfinished apartment story. I can see exactly how it happened. Life is full of learning experiences for all of us.
In a way it reminds me of the howls I heard from D when she got her first full paycheck at the real after-college job. They took out HOW much in taxes? I guess you can know what taxes are intellectually, but it is seeing those large numbers poofing away on your paystub makes it all very clear in a way it wasn’t before.
On the fun news front, D took a sailing class this past weekend and loved it. She’s signing up for more. (Funny story: of the four students on the boat, one was a woman originally from Japan. Apparently it took everyone else about half a day to learn that though she might acknowledge an instruction, it didn’t mean that she actually understood the words. “Steer towards the big water tower,” has different results when you think the water tower is the big barge anchored further up the harbor.)
DTE, 3 courses? Pretty ambitious on top of work.
ShawD is laboring under her course load and inadvertently working full-time. She’s sick, I think in part because she is just run down from simultaneously working and going to school full-time. So, if you are working full time and taking three courses, sounds tough.
I was never a hippie, although I had long hair in college. Just too hyper-ambitious. But ShawWife? She lived on a commune before going to art school. When I met her, she was in art school and wore plaid overalls and after our first weekend together, I got up and put on my sportcoat and tie for teaching and she put shiny metal stars in her hair. We both looked at each other and said, “Who is he/she?” After she finished school, I think we lived together We didn’t get married for three or four years, I think.