Homeward Bound-2011

Last night, we stayed at High Springs Campground in northern Florida. It was a journey of about 300 miles from Bonita Springs. The trip went well, with the normal stop for lunch and another for gasoline. We did have a traffic jam after we passed Sarasota that probably cost us an hour. We still arrived at the campground at 4:45pm. Our site is shown below.


A pretty good thunderstorm arrived around 4:30 am. We lost our electricity for a while and got a lot of rain. Further north, in Georgia, the storm was more severe and six people were killed in the state.

We started out today (Tuesday) with gray skies and cooler temperatures. As we moved into Georgia, the sun came out and made for a really nice day on the road. We got to the KOA campground near Forsyth, GA about 4:15. Wickett has been sleeping even more than usual today. He was awake a lot last night because of the storm. We have stayed at this KOA before. One of their traditions is that they deliver a box of three very large chocolate chip cookies to your site after you have had time to get settled. They are very, very good cookies. Below is a picture of our site here in Georgia.


Tomorrow, we go to Jellystone Park Campground in Nashville for a three night stay and a visit with Howard and all the Moomys and Meadors. The forecast here tonight is for temps in the upper 30's, so it will be time to turn on the furnace. I guess that is good preparation for Ohio weather.

Farmin' Is In Their Jeans (Genes).

(click on the picture to enlarge it)

The Garden Club in Streetsboro had a contest for sunflowers and Kris and Mike each won ribbons. One prize was for the tallest sunflower(Mike is next to that one) and the other was for the plant with the most flowers (Kris is next to that one). Since I see that Mike has two ribbons pinned on him, I think that he might have gotten one for the biggest flower too.

Slides From The Past

These few pictures are my first attempts at transferring 35mm slides into digital form on the computer. I did no enhancing or other editing on these. That will come later. The scanner was a present from Kris and Mark over a year ago. Don't ask me why it took so long to get started on this project. My only excuse is that the user's manual was so confusing that I didn't really make any progress until I put it aside and just let the program guide me. These pictures are from the collection of my father-in-law, Howard Moomy.

I need to practice my guitar playing more often.

IBE Variety Show

Here are a few pictures that Sue took during the Friday night performance. On Saturday night, we do it all again. In the one above, I am hiding behind our director.


This is me, Rudy, Glenn and John singing "Lida Rose" during the medley of songs from "The Music Man".





This is The IBE Jam Band. From the left, Angela, Rudy, Joe the Drummer and me.







Here are Philippe and Marcella, from Quebec. They sang two beautiful songs in French, accompanied by The Jam Band.








Below is a picture of one of several dance teams that performed for this show. We had jazz, line dancing, tap and more.


We had a full house on Friday (200 people) and Saturday night is sold out also. There were a lot of good performances and a variety of acts. The show started at 7:00 and was over just a little past 9:00, with no intermission.

Hands Across The Border

Next week on March 18 and 19, I will be participating in the annual variety show here at IBE. I will be singing with the chorus as we do medleys from Carousel and Music Man. Also, four of us from the IBE Jam Band will be doing two songs. And just recently, the jam band was asked to back up a couple of our French-Canadian neighbors as they perform two songs. I have included YouTube videos of these two songs. It will be a busy week. Tech rehearsal on Monday, regular chorus rehearsal on Tuesday, dress rehearsal on Thursday and then the show on Friday and Saturday.

Comet Guillaume-H-3111??

(click on the picture to enlarge)

No, not really. After dealing with pain in my lower left abdomen, ranging from mild discomfort to "ouch, dammit, ouch", for all of last weekend, Sue drove me to the emergency room at a nearby hospital early Monday. They did some tests, including a CAT-scan and found that I had a kidney stone.

They said that it had almost completed its path to the bladder and should pass out of my system on its own soon. The fact that it was only 3mm in size would help that process. Stones as big as 7mm usually pass easily. So, after 4 hours at the hospital, they gave me prescriptions for pain (Vicodin) and Flomax (to help the exit happen easier) and sent us home.

I used the Vicodin twice, but didn't have much pain after about 10:00 pm on Monday. Then, around 6:00 pm on Tuesday, this little guy presented himself to the world. (much to my relief)

Tomorrow (Thursday), I go to a urologist here in Bonita Springs. He will look at the stone and decide which one of four possible types it is. Some are caused by infections, others by mineral deposits. One very rare kind is even hereditary. I don't think that I have that last kind, but both my Dad and my brother had kidney stones.

A big thanks to Sue for expertly applying the light source so I could use a magnifier and camera to take the picture. I wanted to have a record of the event in case the urologist doesn't return the little boulder to me.

To all blog readers, I fought the urge to post this picture on Facebook. I believe that it was a wise choice.