Signing Off

I have not been good at keeping this journal updated and I think it is about time to sign off.  This is the 6th anniversary of Sally's death and I still miss her a lot.  But being with Val has made happiness again possible.   

We have been spending some time each week going to Wimberley, TX to our house there.  Val has been gardening to her delight and we are getting vegetables already--lots of lettuce, some early squash and tomatoes and some peppers.  Also there are flowers and some new trees in the yard.  We need to figure out how to keep it watered and alive through a Texas summer which is pretty brutal.  We have had a lot of rain this year and areas not far from us have flooded in Sugar Land and Wimberley.  I think we are pretty safe though.  

We are going to our grandson Nathan's HS graduation and Stephen's College graduation soon.  Stephen's is in Golden Colorado in a couple of weeks.  We are only going for a couple of days and will see our friends Joel and Judy Bedford while we are there.

We will be heading out to California in early June and plan to get there in about a week.  We are planning to go to Palo Duro in Texas on the way and then to Moab, UT to see Arches and Canyonlands National parks before heading into California.  Should be fun.  Neither of us have never been to those places.

We hope to see our California friends and family this summer.  Both of us are still basically healthy aside from wear and tear.

Thanks to all of you who have followed this and have supported me and now us over these past 6 years.
Namaste.

Winter is here

The most exciting thing that we have done in the past couple of months is getting a small place in Wimberley, Texas in the hill country. It is between San Antonio and Austin and is a cute little town with a few good restaurants and lots of stuff to do like hiking, wineries, art galleries and shops.  We have been shuttling back and forth trying to get it furnished and for now will use it as a "country place" and still live in Sugar Land.  We like it a lot and there is still a lot to do.  Val is excited because she can have a small garden and stuff that we can't easily do in our condo.  

Other that that news, not much has happened here.  We have had some cold weather but not like many other places and today is around 70 degrees. Not bad.

Hello y'all

Well it has been a while since I updated this blog. All is well with us. We are finishing a couple of weeks at Panama City Beach. We escaped Texas just before another round of flooding. We have had some weather in Florida but nothing like back home. We are a little anxious to see if everything is ok there. 

Since our last post, we have continued to be pretty busy. For our birthdays, we were treated to a trip to Santa Rosa to visit Lorrie and John in their new home. It is really a classy house in a wonderful setting. We had a lot of good food and, of course, wine. 

Returning to Carlsbad, we then went to Orange for my 60th HS reunion. The night before we had a reunion for our "core" group of OHS friends at Terry and Nancy Teigen's house. The next night at the reunion we had about 50 classmates at the reunion. Fun seeing people, some of whom I could recognize or at least remember. 

At the end of September we returned to Sugar Land. We had been considering getting a place in the Texas hill country, between Austin and San Antonio. So we spent a few days looking around the area. To our surprise, we found a place we liked in Wimberley. You may have heard of it since it since it was one of the areas on national news during the big flood on Labor Day. After that we decided we didn't want a place on the river. Anyway, we made an offer that has been accepted. We will be going back there next week to be sure that everything is as we want it. Closing is to be before the end of November. We will continue to live in Sugar Land but use the Wimberley house as a get away. Val's brother, Chesley, has a place there. So that's exciting. Val has furniture in storage that will be a great start. Stay tuned. 

Home from big trip

Well we have just returned from our big summer adventure.  We joined brother Ken and Mo on an European tour.  The University of Redlands has a campus in Salzburg, Austria and Ken was in the first class to go there in 1960.  They have had reunions in Salzburg periodically since then and one was organized for this summer.  So Val and I just tagged along.  We started at the end of July flying to Munich.  We spent a couple of days there and then a week in Salzburg.  After that we took a train to Budapest and boarded a Viking long boat on the Danube River.  We cruised along the river to Nuremberg.  The last part was on the Danube-Main-Rhine canal with about 20 locks to navigate.  We stopped each day for a tour of the city du jour.  If you want to see some of the pictures, you can look here.  

Hope to relax the rest of the summer except in mid September.  We have been invited to visit Lorrie and John's new home in Santa Rosa for a few days.  They purchased it last year and have been remodeling it.  Exciting.  They still live in Sugar Land but are planning for the future in California.

Now in cool Carlsbad

We are now in Carlsbad.  On the way out we stopped for two nights in Santa Fe and for two nights in Sedona. Both were very fun places.  We had been briefly in Santa Fe but Val had never been to Sedona.  We (I) thought we might take care of everything that ails us by going to the Vortexes (Vortices?) and getting all the spiritual energy that is supposed to be there.  Didn't work. If fact Val had a fall by tripping over a rock on a driveway and hurt her knee.  


Anyway we had a good time until that happened.  We had planned to visit our friends the Woosley's in Tucson, but decided to just keep on trucking and make it to Carlsbad.  Fortunately the knee rapidly improved so that a few days later she was getting around normally.  

We have been puttering around here getting everything the way we like it.  Val has been busy "gardening" in our pots and  putting up the hummingbird feeder.  

Over the weekend of June 19-22, we went up to Carmel to meet some old friends, Pate and Judy Thomson.  Pate and I interned together in Seattle over 50 years ago and we have kept in touch.  They celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary during our visit.  Carmel hasn't changed much in 50 years when I started going for medical/research meetings.  One thing we did, though, that was new to us was to explore Elkhorn Slough.  This inlet of Monterey bay is home to a lot of wildlife.  Many people kayak there, but we went on a small boat powered by an electric motor. We loved the birds and animals, particularly the otters.

Now back and looking forward to the family reunion for the Nies brothers and their families that will be held in the Newport area hosted by Nancy and George Bravante (Boyd's older daughter. We haven't had such a reunion in a while and this year it looks like almost everyone can make it, including Lorrie and John and their family from Texas.

Toward the end of July we will be traveling with Ken and Mo to Europe on a trip organized by the University of Redlands.  We will start in Munich and then travel to Salzburg during the Mozart festival. We then will take the train to Budapest and board a Viking cruise to Nuremberg.  We get home in mid August.

We're looking forward to seeing our California friends this summer.

Just a word about the rains in Texas.  We were there for most of the worst of the rains and flooding.  Fortunately our area in Sugar Land didn't suffer too much but it was hard to get around because of the flooding. One night we had about 11 inches of rain in about 6 hours. The next morning we saw an alligator in the lake outside our condo.  Later in the morning it had climbed onto the bank behind our Whole Foods market about a block from us. They are probably all there as they are in a lot of the rivers in Texas, but we hadn't seen one so close previously. 
Val's brother has a weekend home in Wimberly, TX that was the site of the first large flash flooding.  Their house is on a bluff above a small creek. They were there over Memorial day when the flooding started. In the middle of the night they got a call from a neighbor to look out the window.  The water had risen to the deck of their house, which is probably about 40 feet above the river normally.  Neighbors whose houses were below theirs lost their houses.  Several people were killed and hundreds of houses were washed away. Normally the river is no more that calf deep at its deepest.
So it is good to be back out the flood zone into the earthquake zone.

Anyone know how to build an ark?

Last night we had a horrific thunderstorm.  Officially we had over 10 inches of rain.  Our rain gauge overflowed at 6 inches so I'm not sure, but I bet it was at least that amount.  There was thunder and lightening and flash flood warnings all night.  Fortunately, it did not flood here, but it did in many parts of Houston.  The day before, there had been a major flood in the hill country.  My brother-in-law Ches (Val's brother) has a vacation house in Wimberly in that area.  They were there for the Memorial day weekend and his neighbor called and woke him.  He looked out the window and the water had come up to his deck.  The little creek he is on had risen over 40 feet in an hour.  About 300 houses were washed away.  Not sure how many deaths.  

Also when we got up today, saw this on our bank going down to the lake out our back door.  I think we had an alligatornado come through.

 We are planning on leaving here on Saturday for the trip to California.  We will stop for a couple of days in Santa Fe and a couple of days in Sedona before heading out to dry, dry California.  With all the smart people in California, why can't someone figure out how to normalize the water in this country??

Starting to think about trip to Carlsbad

Well, spring finally came and we have had a string of gorgeous days punctuated by a few days of torrential rains and high winds.  But I think that it won't be much longer until it starts to get hot.  And that is my clue that we need to start thinking about our annual summer trip to Carlsbad. We are planning to leave here at the end of May and spend a couple of days in Santa Fe and Sedona on our way out, arriving around the 5th of June.  We will be driving Val's new CR-V.  Yes we finally traded in the Acura.  It was still running perfectly and would probably have gone on for another 10 years at least, but Val needed a somewhat smaller car and one that she could really feel was her own.

Fort Sumter

We have not done too much this winter, but we did take a spring trip to Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah.  Neither of us had been to those old historic cities and we loved it.  There is a lot to see and appreciate.  Charleston was a major city where the Civil War actually started at Fort Sumter.  The fort is a little bitty island in the harbor that still stands, sort of. Charleston was also the center of the slave trade prior to the civil war and there is a museum at the old Slave Mart where this all happened.  


Beaufort is a well preserved city that the Union occupied early in the war so the city was spared the destruction of many other southern cities. There have been a lot of films made in this part of the country including Forrest Gump, Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, The Big Chill and lots of others.  It was interesting to see where some famous scenes were actually filmed.


Savannah is interesting in that it is well preserved and is built around many squares.  If you think about most towns, there is a central square.  But in Savannah there is a square about every other block.  There is a lot of wrought iron like New Orleans and brick and cobblestone streets.  The much of this material was brought from England as ballast on ships and then dumped to make room for cotton, rice, tobacco etc to go back to England.  

Before we came home we went to Charlotte, NC to see the Kings Mountain battlefield that was the site of a major revolutionary war battle where Val ancestors fought to defeat the British.  At the time the war in the north was at a stalemate, and the British were beginning to look to taking over the south.  They occupied a ridge on the SC and NC border called Kings Mountain.  The colonists who volunteered to fight were mountain men who crossed the Appalachian chain.  They used guerrilla tactics to soundly defeat the British and this changed the momentum of the war.  It was said to be the turning point.

Dreary days here

This has been a pretty cold and wet winter for us.  Whereas most of the country with the exception of the far west has had record cold and snow, we have had nearly constant drizzle, rain and cold (for us 50℉ is cold).  I emptied the rain gauge yesterday and it was at 5" for the past week.  We had some leakage from our deck on the 4th floor and after about three months, it is almost repaired, we think.  The weather has impaired the ability of the contractor to do any outside work.  Anyway, spring is almost here and we are ready!! 

We're planning a trip to Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA next month.  Neither of us has been to these grand old southern cities and we are looking forward to it.  The weather should be good and flowers should be out.  It will be good to get out for a change. Can't wait.

Not much new

Just another update.  Not much new.  We attended a wedding for Val's granddaughter that was kinda different.  It was in a barn that was part of a working farm.  Sawdust on the floors and all.  Very Texas with lots of boots. The wedding went very well outdoors (was a nice day for January) and then dinner and dancing.  Gumbo and Catfish and hushpuppies for dinner and, of course, cake.  It was fun.

We went to California for Boyd's 80th birthday.  It was a family occasion at the Santa Ana Country club in Costa Mesa.  We stayed at the Irvine Jamboree hotel.  That area is pretty different from the time we had the scout jamboree there 60 plus years ago.

We watched the Superbowl yesterday, like everyone else I guess.  I was for the Seahawks and they should have won. What lousy play calling.  One yard to go, 3 downs to try and a runner that seemingly could make a few yards every time he had the ball.  So they pass and it is intercepted! Can't believe it.

Not much on the agenda for the next few months.  I have had a problem accessing my blog on this site.  It keeps getting hijacked to some other website.  Wonder if it is a virus or what?  

Just a quick update

I wanted to share a couple of things with y'all.  First, Val and I went to see Val's mom Dorothy at her nursing home for their annual Christmas party.  It was so wonderful to see the group that it almost makes you laugh and cry at the same time.  Here is a video on YouTube of the Christmas Bell Ringers.  Val's mom is in the red sweater second from the right and doing pretty well for 95.  If you look closely, you can see her wink at us about 10-15 seconds into the song.  

Second, here is the newsletter that I sent around to some folks including some of you.

Getting Ready for Christmas

I can't believe it is Christmas already.  There really is something to the belief that the speed of time passing is inversely related to your age.  When you are young Christmas always seems to far away, but when you are old, it seems like it comes every other month.  C'est la vie.

Anyway, we are settled back in Sugar Land.  After returning from California, we stayed here for a couple of weeks and then went to Panama City Beach for our (now) annual trip to check on the condo there.  Although I am partial to the Pacific Coast beaches, there is certainly something to be said for the beautiful sugar-white sand beaches, the beach dunes, and the crystal clear water on the Gulf Coast.  This time of year is perfect there with mild temperatures and almost no tourists.  Our condo building is the large orange high rise in this picture.  We are on the 21st floor and look right down into the water.  Here is a link to some more pictures.

Now back home have a tiny tree and some lights outside.  Val is the decorator and is making the place look festive.  We will be here on Christmas. On Christmas eve we will drive to Beaumont and see Val's "children" and grandchildren. Then on Christmas we probably will go to Lorrie's. This Friday we will go to see Val's mother, who is now 95; there is to be an early Christmas party at her nursing home.

Last weekend we went to Galveston Island to see the annual Dickens on the Strand Christmas festival.  It was fun to see a lot of folks dressed up in old-timey clothes.  Here is a link to a slideshow of the festival.

  

Back in Sugar Land

Well we are finally back in Texas.  We decided to drive home a long way.  We had lunch with Boyd, Helen, Ken and Mo this summer and decided we should go back to our Kansas roots and see the plots of farmland that were left to us by our Dad. He left two plots of 160 acres (1/4 sections) that have been sharecrop farmed in grain.  Both plots have had an oil and gas lease to various companies but nothing had been done about this.  Dad always said that there would be oil there!! Well about a year ago, an oil drilling company decided to use newer techniques to drill on an adjacent plot to one of ours and to extend horizontally into our land.  And they found modest amounts of oil and gas.  We are not going to be like the Beverly Hillbillies, but each of us is now getting a monthly check for our share. So we had to go see what was happening. So the three Nies brothers along with Cory (Ken's son), Boyd Jr., Lorrie and Craig all met in Wichita, KS. There we met with a cousin of ours (Clifford Nies and his wife Joan) who graciously spent an evening and a day touring the area. Clifford is a well-known home builder in the area (Nies Homes!!) who is still very active.  He is about Boyd's age. We also had our farm manager, Tim McKinney showing us the plots.  It was really fun to see everyone and another part of the country. Here are some pics.

Nies Cousins

Nies Bros

All of us with Clifford

One of the plots

Clifford looking at oil stuff

Grandfather Nies

Grandmother Nies

Kansas Cemetery

Busy summer

Well, we are finally back in Carlsbad for the rest of the summer.  Since the last post, we had Val's girls and grand children here for the 4th of July.  Six additional people puts a strain on our little two bedroom condo, but it worked out ok.  The young kids can sleep most anywhere! 

At the end of July we flew to Newark.  I had a meeting in Princeton, NJ and then we spent 4 days in NYC as we have the past couple of years.  There is always something new to do in New York and we really enjoy visiting.  

We flew from NY to Sugar Land and spent several days checking on the condo there and having doctor's appointments.  Val was able to go see her mom, who is now 95.  

A few day after returning to Carlsbad we flew to Seattle where we rented a car and drove around the Olympic peninsula.  It brought back a lot of memories of Sally and my stay in Seattle in the mid 60's.  The beaches and rain forests haven't changed except for more restrictions on things that you can do, like digging for razor clams.  We then drove around to see Jimmy and Teresa Goode (Sally's brother) in Port Ludlow. He sets crab traps there and so we had our fill of Dungeness crabs.  Jimmy introduced us to Pickleball which is a paddle tennis like game played on a small court with a plastic ball like a whiffle ball.  It is becoming very popular with the "mature" set. We plan to followup and learn to play in Carlsbad and Sugar Land.

We then took the ferry to Seattle to see my old friends Len and Alansa Bates.  They have recently moved to a retirement apartment in downtown Seattle.  We had a great time reminiscing and seeing the town again.

We returned to Carlsbad and then turned around for our next adventure. I flew to Colorado to meet John Shinol for a fishing trip.  We spent our time on private waters on the Fraser river and caught some really nice trout.  During this time, Val went back to Sugar Land and baby sat for her younger grandchildren.  

Right after our return we were visited by John Gerber, a long-time friend and colleague from my days at Vanderbilt and Univ. Colorado.  We went to Del Mar races to lose a little money.  I know why I couldn't become a compulsive gambler--I don't like to lose money and the wins are too far apart to compensate.

Tomorrow we will drive up to Orange to see several of my high school classmates for our annual get together.  It is always fun to see them and to look at the old town.

Well that is what I did with my summer.  Perhaps a little too hectic, but we need to do things while we still can.

We're in California

We are finally out in Carlsbad.  We were going to fly out on June 10th but a couple things came up that made us cancel our reservations.  
     Val had been having trouble with one eye with itching, redness and oozing.  She had been on antibiotic eye drops and orally and on steroid eye drops with no improvement.  So her ophthalmologist referred her to a super-specialist who saw her on June 11.  He diagnosed a blocked and infected tear duct that needed surgery.  Fortunately he was able to squeeze her into his schedule the next day.  The procedure was done in the office and took only about 15 minutes.  He cleaned out the tear duct, removed some impacted pus and bacteria and put her on some more eye drops.  She is now much better. 
     I also had a problem that delayed our travel.  While we were in New Jersey at the beginning of June, I lost a crown from a tooth.  I had no idea that it was loose and was eating some cereal at breakfast when I felt something hard in my mouth.  I fished out the crown and I initially thought it had come from the cereal--gross.  But with some inspection, I realized that it was my tooth!  Fortunately I didn't swallow it.  I brought it home and made an appointment with the dentist who re-cemented the crown and now it seems as good as new. 
    With all these things going on, we decided to drive out instead of making more air reservations and so we left on Saturday and arrived in Carlsbad on Monday.  So we have been here about a week and are busy cleaning and replanting.
     Val's girls and their children are going to be visiting us over July 4.  We are going to be crowded, but we have some blowup mattresses and the grandchildren will be sleeping on the floor or couches.  They have never been to Southern CA so it should be fun.

Getting ready to leave again

I know, I know.  I just left a post a short time ago and now here is another one.  Not like me lately.  But I have spent way too much time on Paris photos and wanted to share then with you. I have three types of formats.  One is picasa that you are all familiar with and is probably the best.  You can access it here.  The other is an Apple product and is called a web journal and slideshow.  You can find them here.  Check them out.  See what you like best.

We are getting ready for the next trip, which is to New Jersey.  Barry Gertz, who took my job when I retired, is now retiring after many years at Merck.  We are going back to his party and it should be fun to see a lot of old colleagues.  We will then spend a couple of days exploring New Jersey, where I lived for 10 years.  It is a very beautiful state that has received a bad rap because most people only see it from the turnpike or tollway and that is not so pretty.  But it is the Garden State and it does live up to that as you move west.  And Val has only seen Princeton so we will look around at my other favorite spots.

We're back home

We got back from Paris safely and am now reacclimatized to our time zone.  It takes a while to get back to normal--probably longer than when we were young.  The trip was great.  We were in Paris for 8 days (10 days including travel).  We stayed in a very nice hotel close to the Eiffel Tower.  We saw many of the sites and had some great meals.  The weather was cool and intermittently drizzly.  People were very kind and forgiving.  Our only French was Bonjour and Bonsoir Madame or Monsieur but everyone was helpful.  I have a bunch of pictures but haven't gotten around to looking through them yet.  

We will be home until early June when we need to go to New Jersey for a few days to celebrate the retirement of a friend and then we will be back here.  On about June 10 we will fly out to Carlsbad.

The fires in SD county, specifically the Carlsbad area are frightening.  Our condo has escaped the flames so far, but they have been close--probably within a half mile.  I hear that now the fire has moved east to San Marcos and Escondido and there is another one in Oceanside. Craig has been keeping me up to date.  It looks like it will be a bad fire season this year.  

Well, it has happened!!

Prada Store

As promised, we got married on Sunday, March 30 in Marfa, TX.  Now many of you may not be familiar with the "city" of Marfa, population about 2000, in deep west Texas.  It has become something of an artist destination and a getaway for people wanting to get back to the basics.  In fact it has been featured on NPR and 60 minutes recently.  Check it out, it is pretty interesting.  There is even a Prada store out in the desert outside of town.  Unfortunately, the Playboy Bunny neon sculpture has been moved to Dallas recently and we didn't get a chance to see it.

Anyway, the wedding was at 6:30 pm in the courthouse dome presided by the Justice of the Peace and now Judge Cinderela Guevera. Everything went without a hitch. Because we "eloped" in this way, we had no family or friends at the ceremony which was quite moving and nice.  We all cried!!

The Judge

After the ceremony, we went on to Cibolo Creek Ranch and then to Big Bend National Park. On the way back we stayed at Davis Mountain State Park and went to the McDonald Observatory.  It was all great!!  We are very happy!!  We will spend a week in Paris beginning a week from Saturday.

McDonald Observatory

Casa Grande at Big Bend

 

 

Judge Roy Bean, Law West of the Pecos