Jenna noticed last week that the trees were just beginning to take on their fall colors. Sure enough, each day presents just a bit more color as the green starts to fade away. Cooler weather comes right along with the change of colors. We've woken up several mornings with the temperature in the 40s.
RA CAMPOUT. The boys and I have gone to the RA campout at Coldstream Camp every year since Ben was old enough to go. This year's campout was a week ago last Friday (the 14th).
The campout was a quick trip for us as we rushed to get there in time for supper that night and then had to leave by mid-morning the next day. What was really nice is that the boys just had plenty of space to just run around and be boys.
FAMILY REUNION. We had to leave the campout a bit early so I could mow the year and clean up before the Hancock family reunion over in Orlinda.
Isn't it funny how you can live within five or ten miles of your relatives and hardly ever see them? Of course, just as with other branches of my family, many of these cousins live far away. Near or far, it was good to have some time to visit and catch up.,
BARBECUE. One thing you can count on when the Hancock family gets together is barbecue. It just so happened that the reunion coincided with the annual Cross Plains Heritage Commission barbecue fundraiser. Now I like barbecue, but I've had enough to last me a while.
LST 325. We've all seen newsreel footage of the D-Day invasion so it's easy to call to mind all those ships that landed soldiers and tanks into the hell waiting for them on the beaches of Normandy that day. We got to tour one of these ships last Saturday (the 22nd).
This ship, which served in the Greek Navy after it was decommissioned from the US Navy, was recently brought back to the US and restored. It is now a floating museum traveling to various cities where there are sea ports or along inland waterways. To that end, it was sort of odd to see an oceangoing vessel docked at Riverfront Park in downtown Nashville. We had a good time touring the ship and it was interesting to see the quarters sailors, soldiers, and marines lived in while at sea. I think this was especially eye-opening for Vicki whose father served in the US Navy during World War II.
We ate at the Big River Grill afterwards.
You can learn more about LST 325 by visiting www.lstmemorial.org.
TWO LOST TEETH. What's even better is that they were lost on the same day from two different boys. Nate was so excited to have a gap visible in his smile for picture day at school.
Joe
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
A New Van in the Driveway
We have been enjoying some of the most pleasant weather! Some days are still sort of hot, but the mornings are cooler with a hint of fall crispness in the air. Bill Chatman has been cutting tobacco and the Pinsons have been combining corn. I just wish the grass would slow down a bit.
WOW, NINE YEARS! Can you believe it? As of last Thursday the Swann Family News is nine years old. I didn't know I had it in me!
TRADING IN. Our old van has served us well, but it was beginning to show it’s age. Vicki have been researching and shopping online for the past two or three weeks and she stumbled on a good deal. We traded vehicles this afternoon.
As a tribute to our old faithful van, we bought it in 2004. It was a 2002 Toyota Sienna with about 20,000 miles at the time. We’ve driven an additional 120,000 miles in the eight years we had it.
Our new van is a 2009 Sienna. It’s a silver gray and has 31,000 miles, and we’re looking forward to it getting us through the high school years.
A LITTLE CULTURE GOES A LONG WAY. Last weekend Vicki and I got the chance to steel away on a date. We went to see Much Ado About Nothing at the Centennial Park bandshell in Nashville. I never knew this, but each fall the Nashville Shakespeare Festival produces a different Shakespeare play. This has been going on for quite some time.
What was interesting was their adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. First of all, they turned it into a musical. Then they changed the setting to be a story about soldiers coming home from World War II. I'm guessing most of the dialog was kept from the original script with a few lines updated to reflect events of the 1940s, but it was actually hard for us to follow the Shakespearian English. Nevertheless, we did keep up with the gist of the story and had a wonderful evening.
I MOVED THE TURTLE. Vicki kept seeing a turtle under one of our apple trees. I had never noticed it. It was quite a while before she said anything to the rest of us about it, but she kept wondering if the poor thing had died over there.
One day we were all walking to the van when she mentioned it. That's when one of the kids cleared up the mystery. "Oh Mom. That's one of our basketballs that rolled over there." They never bothered to crawl under the low branches to get it back." I retrieved it the next time I mowed the yard and now Vicki misses her "pet."
NOT A TRUE WAND. The boys are into reading the Harry Potter books. Nate is one book behind Ben. (As a matter of fact, Ben has to read 40 books for school this year and these books, thick as they are, count for two each.)
Naturally, the world of Harry Potter spills over into their play. They found some cool looking sticks out in the yard and instantly they have wands. The other day Ben and Nate were discussing the various spells from the Potter world at the kitchen table when Vicki asked, “Have you had any luck getting those spells to work?” After a bit of a pause Ben said,” No, we don’t have access to anything like unicorn hair.”
MISS CAT IS GONE. Miss Cat mysteriously disappeared earlier this week -- just when the boys were starting to enjoy her. Her kitten is still here though, and is much braver now that he doesn't have the companionship of his mother.
I think we're going to name the kitten Dusty. He is a pretty gray color with hints of tiger stripes, but also because he got bold and came into the house the other night. Then when he realized where he was he got scared and hid under my desk where it's practically impossible to clean with a broom or vacuum so when we dug him out he had several dust bunnies attached.
Joe
WOW, NINE YEARS! Can you believe it? As of last Thursday the Swann Family News is nine years old. I didn't know I had it in me!
TRADING IN. Our old van has served us well, but it was beginning to show it’s age. Vicki have been researching and shopping online for the past two or three weeks and she stumbled on a good deal. We traded vehicles this afternoon.
As a tribute to our old faithful van, we bought it in 2004. It was a 2002 Toyota Sienna with about 20,000 miles at the time. We’ve driven an additional 120,000 miles in the eight years we had it.
Our new van is a 2009 Sienna. It’s a silver gray and has 31,000 miles, and we’re looking forward to it getting us through the high school years.
A LITTLE CULTURE GOES A LONG WAY. Last weekend Vicki and I got the chance to steel away on a date. We went to see Much Ado About Nothing at the Centennial Park bandshell in Nashville. I never knew this, but each fall the Nashville Shakespeare Festival produces a different Shakespeare play. This has been going on for quite some time.
What was interesting was their adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. First of all, they turned it into a musical. Then they changed the setting to be a story about soldiers coming home from World War II. I'm guessing most of the dialog was kept from the original script with a few lines updated to reflect events of the 1940s, but it was actually hard for us to follow the Shakespearian English. Nevertheless, we did keep up with the gist of the story and had a wonderful evening.
I MOVED THE TURTLE. Vicki kept seeing a turtle under one of our apple trees. I had never noticed it. It was quite a while before she said anything to the rest of us about it, but she kept wondering if the poor thing had died over there.
One day we were all walking to the van when she mentioned it. That's when one of the kids cleared up the mystery. "Oh Mom. That's one of our basketballs that rolled over there." They never bothered to crawl under the low branches to get it back." I retrieved it the next time I mowed the yard and now Vicki misses her "pet."
NOT A TRUE WAND. The boys are into reading the Harry Potter books. Nate is one book behind Ben. (As a matter of fact, Ben has to read 40 books for school this year and these books, thick as they are, count for two each.)
Naturally, the world of Harry Potter spills over into their play. They found some cool looking sticks out in the yard and instantly they have wands. The other day Ben and Nate were discussing the various spells from the Potter world at the kitchen table when Vicki asked, “Have you had any luck getting those spells to work?” After a bit of a pause Ben said,” No, we don’t have access to anything like unicorn hair.”
MISS CAT IS GONE. Miss Cat mysteriously disappeared earlier this week -- just when the boys were starting to enjoy her. Her kitten is still here though, and is much braver now that he doesn't have the companionship of his mother.
I think we're going to name the kitten Dusty. He is a pretty gray color with hints of tiger stripes, but also because he got bold and came into the house the other night. Then when he realized where he was he got scared and hid under my desk where it's practically impossible to clean with a broom or vacuum so when we dug him out he had several dust bunnies attached.
Joe
Monday, September 3, 2012
A Blue Moon for Neil Armstrong
We enjoyed a blue moon Friday night which, as the Neil Armstrong family pointed out, was a fitting farewell to the man who first set foot there. I was beginning to wonder if I would even see it. We had some rain that afternoon, and I enjoyed a large rainbow in front of me as I drove home from work. However, the sky cleared quite a bit by moonrise and the moon was beautiful.
I remember watching the astronauts walk on the moon. The Apollo 11 mission happened just before my third birthday. I am assuming it is the Apollo 11 mission as I distinctly recall Uncle George being in the den with us and TV coverage for subsequent missions would have been less. More likely is that my memory of several moon missions runs together as Uncle George would have been interested in all of them.
A BRIEF VISIT. We got a quick visit from Uncle Bob, Aunt Linda, and Ann Beth last week. They arrived Tuesday and left Thursday. The Bradley/Dee clan was even able to drive over for supper on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see too much of them with school, work, Scouts, and Awana, but the important thing was that they got in some time with Mom and Aunt Mar. I think they even got in a few rounds of Spades.
FUND RAISERS. One reality of parenting I could do without are fund raisers. Everything the kids are involved in requires fund raising. Half the stuff we sell doesn’t even interest me so it’s hard to be motivated. Occasionally, though, the kids sell something really good.
We have been involved with the Boy Scout popcorn sale for six years now, and yes, we do have popcorn to sell this year. In addition to the popcorn Ben’s troop also sells barbecue. One of the dad’s of the troop makes it. This year they cooked 32 shoulders. All of it was sold by pre-order. Friday night the troop camped out over on this family’s farm and the boys worked in shifts to help tend to the barbecue pits (Ben had the 3-5 am shift). Yesterday morning we set up an assembly line where we processed the meat and packaged it in two pound bags.
I mention this because we’ve thought this was the best barbecue we’ve ever had. My family’s preference for barbecue has always been Baldwin’s, but they just got moved to second place with us. If Ben’s troop does this again next year I will let you know. Those of you who live locally may be sick and tired of buying coupon cards, popcorn, etc, but you won’t regret this purchase.
ODE TO THE LAMP POST. When Uncle George and Aunt Mar built their house back in 1965 Uncle George put up a lamp post at the corner of the patio next to the driveway and it has brought a warm, cheery light to the patio all this time. We noticed the lamp beginning to lean sometime last year and tried to stake it up, but nature finally took its course last night. Mom was sitting in the den and saw it fall over. She called saying, “It’s the end of an era!”
A trip to town and an hour of install time later and they have a nice, new lamp post standing where the old one used to be. The new one features an ambient light sensor so I won’t have to reset the timer whenever we have an interruption in power!
MISS CAT. I think I’ve mentioned before that we have a momma cat and kitten that have taken up residence at our house. The kitten is really skittish but I am starting to gain its trust.
No one has offered any names for our cats so I call the momma cat Miss Cat. She has taken up with me, but she is not a cat that likes to rub your legs or be picked up. She’s more like a dog than a cat in some respects. She followed me out to the shop the other day. It was warm so I left the doors open while I was working in there. I would have thought Miss Cat would have explored every nook and cranny of the building but I was w rong. She walked in a few feet, did a quick visual survey of the building, and walked out. The whole time I was working she sat just outside the door with her back to me and her ears turned back to listen to what I was doing. When I got done for the evening and closed up she happily escorted me back to the house. I don’t think she’s been back in the shop since but is content to sit outside and wait for me to get done.
UNEXPECTED NEWS. Over the past month or two I had begun to notice a little bit of vision loss in my right eye. At first I thought it might have been due to accidental exposure to a laser from a barcode scanner at work, but I kept feeling like I should go in and see about it. To be brief, after a visual field test and a 3D scan of my retina I have been diagnosed with normal-tension glaucoma.
Glaucoma is usually caused by high interocular pressure which causes capillaries that supply blood to the retina to collapse which, in turn, causes nerve damage. With my variety of glaucoma the interocular pressure is normal so the traditional “puff” test we all get when we visit the eye doctor doesn’t raise any red flags. It is not yet known what causes the nerve damage in cases like mine.
Glaucoma cannot be reversed, though it can usually be slowed to a virtual crawl. The standard treatment is to use eyedrops to lower the interocular pressure, and I am testing one of these now to see how my eyes respond. Please pray for me as I see my way through this. By the way, Aunt Mar is the only person I am intentionally not telling about my glaucoma so to those of you who may see her please keep this in mind.
A MUCH NEEDED LAUGH. My first trip to the eye doctor was back on the 21st. I was feeling mighty low when the appointment was over. I would rather have heard, “Yes, Mr. Swann, I can see where that laser has damaged your eye.”
I had to swing by the office to pick up a few things before heading home. When I got there I discovered that one of our schools had gone into lockdown due to the report of a suspicious character in the area. This turned out to be a false alarm, but the lockdown happened right at the end of the day and delayed dismissal by 20 minutes. The principal felt it would be wise to send a call out to all parents alerting them that their kids would be late getting home, but, as Murphy’s Law would have it, the internet was down at her school right then and she couldn’t access the phone broadcast system. I happened to be the only one at the district level in town who knew how to place the call, however, my eyes were still dilated from my exam and I couldn’t read anything smaller than the E on an eye chart. So here’s me and my boss trying to work together to send out this call -- I’m driving the mouse and he’s reading my screen -- and we get to laughing so hard we can hardly accomplish the task.
Sometimes I wonder if God doesn’t plan things like that for people when they need a laugh. Who knows, that delay may have thrown the timing of our buses off and kept them all safe on the road that day as well. Whether God was behind it or not, I got a chance to put my troubles behind me when I needed it most.
Joe
I remember watching the astronauts walk on the moon. The Apollo 11 mission happened just before my third birthday. I am assuming it is the Apollo 11 mission as I distinctly recall Uncle George being in the den with us and TV coverage for subsequent missions would have been less. More likely is that my memory of several moon missions runs together as Uncle George would have been interested in all of them.
A BRIEF VISIT. We got a quick visit from Uncle Bob, Aunt Linda, and Ann Beth last week. They arrived Tuesday and left Thursday. The Bradley/Dee clan was even able to drive over for supper on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see too much of them with school, work, Scouts, and Awana, but the important thing was that they got in some time with Mom and Aunt Mar. I think they even got in a few rounds of Spades.
FUND RAISERS. One reality of parenting I could do without are fund raisers. Everything the kids are involved in requires fund raising. Half the stuff we sell doesn’t even interest me so it’s hard to be motivated. Occasionally, though, the kids sell something really good.
We have been involved with the Boy Scout popcorn sale for six years now, and yes, we do have popcorn to sell this year. In addition to the popcorn Ben’s troop also sells barbecue. One of the dad’s of the troop makes it. This year they cooked 32 shoulders. All of it was sold by pre-order. Friday night the troop camped out over on this family’s farm and the boys worked in shifts to help tend to the barbecue pits (Ben had the 3-5 am shift). Yesterday morning we set up an assembly line where we processed the meat and packaged it in two pound bags.
I mention this because we’ve thought this was the best barbecue we’ve ever had. My family’s preference for barbecue has always been Baldwin’s, but they just got moved to second place with us. If Ben’s troop does this again next year I will let you know. Those of you who live locally may be sick and tired of buying coupon cards, popcorn, etc, but you won’t regret this purchase.
ODE TO THE LAMP POST. When Uncle George and Aunt Mar built their house back in 1965 Uncle George put up a lamp post at the corner of the patio next to the driveway and it has brought a warm, cheery light to the patio all this time. We noticed the lamp beginning to lean sometime last year and tried to stake it up, but nature finally took its course last night. Mom was sitting in the den and saw it fall over. She called saying, “It’s the end of an era!”
A trip to town and an hour of install time later and they have a nice, new lamp post standing where the old one used to be. The new one features an ambient light sensor so I won’t have to reset the timer whenever we have an interruption in power!
MISS CAT. I think I’ve mentioned before that we have a momma cat and kitten that have taken up residence at our house. The kitten is really skittish but I am starting to gain its trust.
No one has offered any names for our cats so I call the momma cat Miss Cat. She has taken up with me, but she is not a cat that likes to rub your legs or be picked up. She’s more like a dog than a cat in some respects. She followed me out to the shop the other day. It was warm so I left the doors open while I was working in there. I would have thought Miss Cat would have explored every nook and cranny of the building but I was w rong. She walked in a few feet, did a quick visual survey of the building, and walked out. The whole time I was working she sat just outside the door with her back to me and her ears turned back to listen to what I was doing. When I got done for the evening and closed up she happily escorted me back to the house. I don’t think she’s been back in the shop since but is content to sit outside and wait for me to get done.
UNEXPECTED NEWS. Over the past month or two I had begun to notice a little bit of vision loss in my right eye. At first I thought it might have been due to accidental exposure to a laser from a barcode scanner at work, but I kept feeling like I should go in and see about it. To be brief, after a visual field test and a 3D scan of my retina I have been diagnosed with normal-tension glaucoma.
Glaucoma is usually caused by high interocular pressure which causes capillaries that supply blood to the retina to collapse which, in turn, causes nerve damage. With my variety of glaucoma the interocular pressure is normal so the traditional “puff” test we all get when we visit the eye doctor doesn’t raise any red flags. It is not yet known what causes the nerve damage in cases like mine.
Glaucoma cannot be reversed, though it can usually be slowed to a virtual crawl. The standard treatment is to use eyedrops to lower the interocular pressure, and I am testing one of these now to see how my eyes respond. Please pray for me as I see my way through this. By the way, Aunt Mar is the only person I am intentionally not telling about my glaucoma so to those of you who may see her please keep this in mind.
A MUCH NEEDED LAUGH. My first trip to the eye doctor was back on the 21st. I was feeling mighty low when the appointment was over. I would rather have heard, “Yes, Mr. Swann, I can see where that laser has damaged your eye.”
I had to swing by the office to pick up a few things before heading home. When I got there I discovered that one of our schools had gone into lockdown due to the report of a suspicious character in the area. This turned out to be a false alarm, but the lockdown happened right at the end of the day and delayed dismissal by 20 minutes. The principal felt it would be wise to send a call out to all parents alerting them that their kids would be late getting home, but, as Murphy’s Law would have it, the internet was down at her school right then and she couldn’t access the phone broadcast system. I happened to be the only one at the district level in town who knew how to place the call, however, my eyes were still dilated from my exam and I couldn’t read anything smaller than the E on an eye chart. So here’s me and my boss trying to work together to send out this call -- I’m driving the mouse and he’s reading my screen -- and we get to laughing so hard we can hardly accomplish the task.
Sometimes I wonder if God doesn’t plan things like that for people when they need a laugh. Who knows, that delay may have thrown the timing of our buses off and kept them all safe on the road that day as well. Whether God was behind it or not, I got a chance to put my troubles behind me when I needed it most.
Joe
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)