Bump

Snow fell during the night! Real snow four to five inches and it was snowing as I plowed down my ramp heading toward the train station—this must be March exiting like a lion. True enough the sun came up and vanquished much of the snow by noon only Northern exposed snow remained with clouds and cold temperatures. Its all good warmer weather should be in town for conference. This patch of weather is just a small bump in the road to Spring and Summer.

Save A Memory

I woke at three this morning thinking about my grade school in Boise, Campus School. Campus, so named because the school sat on campus, Boise Jr. College which later grew up to be Boise State University. Besides being a school Campus was also training platform cadet teachers at the college/university. I found a couple of years ago the school had been closed as a school and the building turned into offices for the university. Now I find the school, or building which housed the school is doomed for demolition! Something about wanting the buildings of the university to match and the architecture of the school (built in 1949) does not fit with the bright shiny new structures of glass and steel of today.

Coincidence I am sure but laying there in bed trying to force my brain to shut down enough to fall back a sleep I wondered if a website could be made to commemorate the schools existence. I have tried to link up with some of the students who attended Campus to no avail. I now just want to get some photographs of the school, maybe some events and maybe a place where students might come and write about their experiences and feelings of their time in those brick walls. I am going to go to Boise School District and see if there is a photo dump somewhere such photos exist. Maybe the university has some sort of files in the History Department or maybe the Idaho Museum group or what have you. I know these images are out there I just have to run them down. I cannot believe there is not more interest in such a project. I am going to talk with Kim, John, Tom, Linda, Leah, Paul, Bruce, maybe even Brent some of the folks I know who attended Campus and may have an interest in such a website. John is a historian (trained) and I still know how to contact him. Heck there maybe be a whole pile of images and stories at the University just waiting for a group just like ours. I know it sounds hokey but I would like to see some sort of alum program started—some of the best stories from the place like the “crossed crutches on the bible open to the 23^rd Psalm” or the time Harry Warr beat me up in music class or the great school carnivals where I would get my winter supply of comic books. I have also been thinking a lot about the hot lunches served in the auditorium(Campus did not have a gym). The great mashed potatoes served up with ice cream scoops. I hardly ever got “hot lunch” but I remember the ones I did get, hot rolls and mashed potatoes and gravy with what ever meat product they would serve and the 5 cent carton of milk served from the milk machine in the corner. Flag foot ball in the fall , soft ball in the spring, tetherball and marbles anytime else and the bus ride to and from school. There is a whole history here I cannot remember it all alone somebody help!

500 Words At A Time

I just checked my hit counter and it says I have had an average of 3 hits a day for the last week. He number is up from two. The two look to be from Salem Oregon( thank you Michelle for your consistent support) and one from Boise—Thanks Linda. The third visitor today was from San Francisco and I don’t know who the hell that could be.

So why do I do this silly blog, post after post? The first year was to see if I cold do the 500 words a day. I wanted to see if I could sustain the writing day after day week after week month after month and now year after year. Now I cannot stop—not that I want to—I just keep on typing. I am not blogging with the commitment I once did. I wrote every day regardless of anything else, I WROTE 500 WORDS . Now I can go days and maybe a week before I feel the need to wap something off at a terminal somewhere and load it up to my blog. Heather B Armstrong, just finished a 37,000 work book about her life as a blogger and Dr. Au just finished signing a book deal regarding her Internship and Residency and their capture on her blog. Maybe I believe that by my continued blogging I may just get something published. At least I am writing on a regular basis and more then I have ever written in life. I fantasize that if I had the opportunity to have my days completely to myself to write I could write on a focused committed level or atleast four hours every day maybe longer if I got really fired up; that would be a couple thousand words a day—sooner or later I would have a real live book.

I wrote a book once. I told my work mate about the book a couple of weeks ago. The rough draft took me a year to write. I called the book CMAT: Community Medical Assistance Team. CMAT was a rough accounting of a couple of years of my where I was associated with a medical services delivery program for low-income migrant workers in Southwest Idaho. I wrote the CMAT during the divorce of my first marriage. I used the writing of the book to keep me out of the bars and trouble. It worked more or less. I swore I would not even contemplate the revision until I had access to some sort of word-processor. When I did get such access to a word-processor I found the rewrite to be incredibly difficult and gave up and then I lost the manuscript during my second divorce.

Now I have a great computer system with great word-processor capability and if CMAT is ever going to sere the light of day I am going to have to write the whole thing again—I don’t know if I can and if I do, CMAT will not be the same volume as it was at the end of 1984. The new book will be similar: the characters the same, the chapters bout the same and maybe a whole lot more fiction then the original. I can do it if I start just 500 words at a time.

I Just get So Tired

I took off at 12:30 today! I took the whole four whole four hours I worked last night at the gimp-arama. I ended up taking the train over to the Galavin Center with milk crate of materials on my lap. Ironically the shop called a little after four saying my van was done. What a shock. I still blew off picking up the van thinking the stress of having to train all the way down to Sandy Station and drive all the way back downtown just was not worth effort. I must confess I was bit however by the time I got off the train last night at 9:30 and still had to motor my chair the six blocks back to the house. I left the box of materials with an acquaintance ho works for Voc Rehab and has an office not far from my office downtown. I was going to pick the materials up today but blew it off after deciding To cash in my hours today. I am going to load a couple of images I took at the event tomorrow when I get to work, where I downloaded the images.

I was pretty tired all day at work—I did some decent counseling but all in all I was pretty worthless sso I caved in and took the hours. I am a little suspicious of Tory and Kristin in how happy they sounded when I announced I was leaving—I did not know that Claire was leaving too for a two and half day vacation letting me know I was ,again, in charge while she is gone. Before I left she Claire informed me she had hired a new bookkeeper—an guy, maybe even older then me, and I am wondering if my days of being in charge during Claire’s absences are a thing of the past. This is cool, I saw him the other day when he arrived at our building for his interview. He is stately, well retired with lots of snow white hair. He is tall and drives an SUV and is probably a republican which should make for some interesting office discussions. This upcoming quarter should be interesting.

Out of the office and on my own I grabbed a quick lunch and then hopped a train South to retrieve my van. I had to go all the way down to 90^th South which seemed to take for ever. The rocking train and the lack of sleep soon had me nodding in and out of consciousness. I called Justine as I was leaving the Downtown station. Justine offered to have someone pick me up as I got into 90^th South. He has never offered such an amenity which kind of spooked me. He must be feeling guilty for what he is about to charge . Sure enough John the hack was there with my van when I got off the train. I was impressed. This was true service.

Justine is great and doe great work but does this weird think of always having me write out the payment directly to him and that way either does not charge me insurance or cuts the price but I always feel kind of slimey when I am done. I don’t know why but I do. Today he knocked off $35.00 bringing my cost to $300.00 which feels steep but the price of a harness and the hours to repair the door motors…I guess it’s about right but I just cannot get ahead. There is always something which knocks me down. But, I have my van back and I am set for the weekend. The boss is gone and the Spring gets better every day.

Just Charge It!

When I dropped my van off at the shop last week to have the problem worked on I specifically got the impression the vehicle would be fixed by Monday, yesterday and for sure by today. I got a call a few minutes ago and guess what? The van will not even be ready until Friday this Friday!! So tonight I have work I have to do after five at the Gallavan center in Downtown Salt City that is cool because the Gallavan is just three or four blocks a way and I can easily make the roll over there even with a box of materials on my lap. Luckily the center is directly infront of the train station and I’ll just have to jump on the train to go home. I will still have to get from the train to my house which is blocks away. To make matters worse, for one reason or another my battery charger, for my power chair, did not work last night, so I have been trying to get enough of a charge to ensure I get home this evening, this means I have had to literally sit at my workstation plugged into the charger trying squeeze enough juice into my pathetic batteries. The charger is not working very good—same problem I have at the house but I am sure I have enough power to be OK.

ALittle White Van

Since I had so much time to myself yesterday—I did not go over to the offspring’s for dinner for all the reasons alitterated in the previous post. I was surprised I got out dinner so easily but having the van in the shop made a big difference.

Easter being a major Christian holiday I cannot help but think back to my clinic days when I was probably in contact with more Christians then any other time in my life. The medical director—the Captain, for reasons I will one day share with this audience, seemed to be a major Christian. I never have quite figured out if Mack was a Christian because his wife, Alice was a Christian or did Mack pick up his philosophy somewhere else. In any case he was, not only did Mack tote a bible he usually toted his Greek bible and he could read it too. Mary Foreman, maybe not a Christian by definition, was Roman Catholic, a practicing Roman Catholic, so practicing we referred to her as just Sister Mary. In fact, rumor has it that Mary did wind up in a convent somewhere. I was thinking of all these people yesterday and reached out to those I knew where they might be.

Jose I got hold of in the middle of his Sunrise service. Of course he just noted my call and got back with me about twenty minutes later following the service. I still don’t know how comfortable I am with Jose being a “born again”. Jose was I were pretty rowdy bring the youngest members of the team so when the word came down that he had accepted the Word I was floored. But Jose has kept the Spirit and grown in his faith. To where he has basically quit his full time work in Texas and has turned his life over to Christ and runs a small church in Mexico not far from Mission, Texas. Jose lives on both sides of the border and talks as if he soon will relocate entirely to Mexico.

Mac or the Captain, is now living in North Carolina which seems just wrong to me but for a major bunch or reasons but that is where he is. Captain is living in a long-term “care” facility. The facility is an intermediate care facility which means Mac has as much autonomy as heis going to get but probably is as much as he needs: all things being equal. Mac has a daughter living close by to make sure has what he needs and stays out of trouble. When ever I speak to the Captain there is a longing in his voice which nearly breaks my heart. Alice is gone, his past is gone and his days are all but gone,living in this antique shop waiting, waiting, just waiting.

We rode circuit everyday in Southwest Idaho to migrant health clinics. We traveled in a white six cylinder Chevy van—Jose has painted Mercy Medical Missions on the side with image of the world infront of an image of a cross. The three of us rode the circuit each day: Nampa to Boise, Boise to Nampa, Nampa to Parma( and lunch) and Parma to Homedale then back to our home base Nampa. In the little white van, to my knowledge now images of the little white van survives but I have included an image of little red van which brings back many memories.

Quiet Easter

I am just passing Eater more or less by myself and that is OK—Dianne is resting and the van is in the shop…till but we should have the van out shortly. Dianne will be going over to Bridge and Gabe’s for Gumbo and I am invited and I appreciate the invite but it’s gumbo in a non- accessible household and I have ranted on that before. So, here I sit on this almost warm Spring afternoon playing on my computer having a rather nice time.

Spring Showers

I was trapped in my van this morning, again. I decided to drive y van into work this morning. I have a meeting at lunch across town and it takes me an hour to get there if I take the bus but only 15 minutes if I drive, so I feel I am doing the tax payer a service if I drive in and drive to my meeting saving 90 minutes in travel time. When I got to work I opened my doors on the van and went to lower my lift and the lift started to act by itself, the opened door began to close and got caught in lift and everything stopped an I was essentially trapped in my van. Luckily the Mexican Embassy is located in the top of our building and they have lots of people always coming and going to their building and some of those folks stopped and tried to help. They don’t speak a lick of English but were willing to do what ever I pointed to. We eventually got lucky and they disengaged the lift from the door my lift and the thing worked and I was able to get out. While all this was happening I had managed to call my lift mechanic on my cell phone and is supposed to stop by the office this morning hopefully to see if he can get the lift working properly. I am afraid now the lift seems to be working correctly he will not be able to ascertain what is wrong with the lift and I will get trapped again somewhere sometime when I least need or expect the system to fail. Oh well, life always seems to be interesting. Luckily today the weather looks absolutely beautiful: clear to partly cloudy with temperatures in the 60’s—so even if my lift fails in the community I could still get round with the buses and train just fine.

So when I went to go home my lift failed again!! The only lucky part was I was sitting infront of a State building full of people who are supposed to work with problems like this. I had my cell phone hanging round my neck and called one of my friends , who I knew was still inside the building and they came out and tried to help but rally could not figure out what the problem was so one of the guys called a lift company I don’t use for a number of reasons and the owner came out and looked at the van and then said if I came to the shop they could fix it. Well, they disconnected my doors but were able to get the lift folded up and we bungeed the doors closed and I drove over to P Q…their people looked at the lift further and did find a problem with the wiring inside the door but they could not work on the lift then which was OK with me. These guys had worked on my equipment before and had not treated me very well, I wanted to go back to my mechanic, who is the fellow who actually installed the lift and knows it best. His name is Justine and I have worked with him for 10 or 15 years.

I called Justine and he was still at his office so I drove by and dropped off the vehicle. As I started off saying my letter that yesterday was a beautiful day and a warm day for the last full day of winter, so I took off for this meeting with out a coat or hat or any type of protective clothing. I had to drive my power chair for about four Sandy blocks in the evening traffic time as the sun began to set. It was a chilly ride to the train and it was even chillier from the train at my station home but I made it.

Wouldn’t you know it, rain this morning. Dianne made me wear my red plastic slicker. I balked at first but was very thankful by the time I got to work. The rain in Murray was just lightly falling but down town the rain was pouring but the red plastic kept me dry and now the storm has moved on and better weather for Easter….I hope!

Happy Spring an Happy Easter…

i FEEL TH sTRESS

There seems to be a cloak of stress hanging over the office. I sensed it when my partner came in this morning. Later when the boss got in and started machine gunning emails out and I got one , an email, right between the eyes. A CC for me regarding earlier email shot out last week sometime about meetings and things indicated or promised and could my website handle the information which will be generated by the information piece. I think I have the situation mostly all under control but I am not sure just enough to feel some pressure.

So on top of this my partner seemed to be doing the ‘silent treatment. She was handling a lot of personal calls from her husband and that is always a bad sign sense they have been apart for a while now and are figuring out what the net step is going to be. As we had to communicate, my work partner and myself we finally got some warm conversation going but there was definitely some stress.

Snow Surgery

Snow fell during the night and cold winds are blowing but Spring is just a few days away and last night’s and this morning snow is Old Man Winter’s last Harrah.

Yesterday Primary Children’s Medical Center hosted an open house where kids could come and dress as surgeons and such and mess round in the OR and look cool. Dianne took Anakah who looked like she, they, had a great time.

Chips

One of the best things about cold lunches are chips and I love chips like other people like chocolate. I am surprised movie theater do not sell chips like they sell popcorn. If I had a choice I would rather eat some kind of chip then popcorn swimming in some sort of butter sludge.

So today was a cold lunch day. I asked Dianne to pack me a bag of Fritos. I also grabbed what was left of a bag of frozen dogs and tossed them in my bag pack as well. When I got to work I saw Dianne had packed half the sack in one of those quart sized ‘ziplock’ plastic bags. I never got Fritos as a child. Fritos was one of those high ends that other kids got but not me. Sometime, during the pick-nick holidays like “Forth of July” of Memorial Day and we might be meeting with extended family members at Julie Davis park we actually had Clover Club potato chips—which I think might be some of the best made potato chips on earth. Rarely did we ever get potato chips in our lunch. We did if mom went to the “dead bread” store and the dead bread store had what I called ‘pig chips’. ‘Pig chip” where chips sold in large white unmarked bags and sold at a ridiculously low price. If fact that is how these chips got the ‘pig chip’ name. One time when I was with mom in the store and a pig farmer came in and asked if “the” chips had come in and the clerk said ‘chips’ had and if the pig farmer would pull his truck round to the back they would load the chips for him. Sure enough old Pigdonald backed up his 1957 GMC and they rolled barrels of these ‘distressed chips’ into the truck and the happy farmer sped away ,I assume, to where equally happy swine would receive the carbo delights.

I think of cold lunch I like best with chips would have to be the tuna fish sandwich. Potato chips not only adds a nice salty crunch to the tuna fish sandwich but can also save the tuna fish sandwich if the tuna has been mixed with a little too much mayo or salad dressing and the bread has taken in too much moisture. Potato chips placed on the tuna fish mixture and the bread if the bread can be separated from the tuna. The trips should be applied generously to provide the correct crunch, there by pulling the soggy sandwich away from the edge of sandwich hell. Fritos also works extremely. A little know fact is that potato chips also saves PB&J when too much jam has been used.

Today was corn chip, lots of them, with frozen dog in two week old buns wrapped in paper towels and micro-waved for one minute. I like being able to go out for lunch, I like being able TO go out for lunch but somewhere in the back of my mind I still love the crunch of good chips with the right sandwich from the depths of a crinkled brown paper bag.

Life Excitement an d Chinese Too

Sometimes life excites me so much I have a hard time sleeping. This morning I woke at 3:15 am and could not get back to sleep. I did manage to stay in bed till 4:30 my usual rising time but and I was darn glad to get up but I can tell I am going to be groggy all day and today is Council Day! I also have a Transportation meeting following Council but I really just need to take notes in that meeting and by then I hope I am in my second wind. I guess I am also relating that I am writing this early in my day before I am so wiped out that I will not be coherent.

I am really to be working at the job I am doing right now. I like what I am doing and good enough at the job that I have been doing this job to another similar to job for nearly two decades. In this job I am essentially an operator. I answer the phone and give our disability information for the State of Utah. I get a lot of calls from people to lazy to either look the phone number up themselves or two cheap to make a long distant call on their own dime and call in using our toll-free line thinking I will be able to connect them. I cannot connect them and many if not most of the calls have nothing to do with disability. Our Statewide number is listed in the “blue pages” of the phone book and we’re the first number these folks stumble upon. Many of the calls, however, are “good” calls people with disabilities or family members of folks with disabilities needs to know were they might go to get help specific to their disability. Sadly, many times, these folks have gone everywhere one can go with no resolution and I have to be the one to tell them they are SOL(Swift Out of Luck). Because I have done this type of work for so long I often can give them some information or advice which will help them make their next decision. Sometimes when I give the bad news it’s the best new for the people because they at least stop looking and hoping along that particular line of questing. The caller then can open another line of searching hopefully with better results. May times this is the consumers second or third “Information and Referral”(I&R) line and the operators just pass them on to another I&R , the consumer still hopeful if not more frustrated. I atleast stop their search and get them searching somewhere else. We recently hired a nother operator at part time for the time being. She is great, a fast learner and usually covers phones when I go for lunch. I hope to be able to switch this operator over to full-time and benefits soon but I cannot so it yet.

So I' m excited, everyday is exiting and I am getting to do new things , it seems, everyday. I sometimes wish I had more time or more energy to try to get everything done I would like to do. Speaking of which the best part of Council Tuesdays is Council always has a catered lunch…today it’s Chinese.

Riley

Nothing like a new addition to the extended family to see if your equipment is working satisfactorily; I have been working all day to print a decent image of Riley to send to grandparents and other extended family and friends who do not have access to a computer. Sure enough when I dumped the test images the dreaded banding was present: the light horizontal lines which show through the print job making the image les then acceptable in your eyes and most likely everyone else’s. I have done everything I can think of: going inside the printer, running the tests printing page after page of test prints. I was dismayed that some of the tests did not even seem to run. I even replaced the color ink cartridge, the tri-color cartridge, with a new cartridge I found lurking in the back of my desk but still no change the bands are still there. Then I enlisted Dianne’s help who basically did the same things I did but no improvement. Then we decided we would just print the images with the faithful old HP and that printer is printing only pink! So we worked on that for an hour with still no resolution. It looks as if I send any images of the newborn to Mother Smith, the newborn will be decked out with stripes.

Why cannot the equipment just work like the equipment is supposed to? One should not have to be a design engineer or a master tech support person—or have to purchase a new printer every couple of years just because you want to print images of the grand kids. Deep down I think filing printers is just another example of “planed obsolescence”.

Oh yeah, I have also been trying to get selected pieces of software and hardware to work. I cannot install “Quick Time” or my web cam…it seems my system is dying for the “Service Pack 2 or later” and can I figure out how to down load SP2 and install—HELL NO! Trying to download and install SP2 has taken up the other part of my day. I am now going to start asking neighbors and family if any has a copy of SP2 on disk. I was going to have MS send me one but the cost was $10.00—noway!

So here I sit with no printers working worth a damn and only one system recognizing a camera. I may not need it. Shelly is going to hook her web cam up hopefully for a Riley show in the near future. I just want to be ready.

Yesterday I got a new back pack—the one I got from the kids just never worked out and I needed something I felt comfortable with. I found a fine red backpack on sale at a Recreation Outlet- a recreation close out store. And I think the pack will be perfect for my needs, lots o zippered pockets, strong carrying loop small yet large enough to carry all of my stuff I feel whole one more.

I Just Wanna stay In

University of Utah’s medical center, rehab unit is doing a two month class regarding life with spinal cord injury(SCI). they meet once a week on Tuesday’s at 6:00, providing a meal and prizes and what have you. They even meet downtown Salt Lake right on the light rail line—in fact I am even presenting at one of these sessions. so I do not have an excuse not to attend these events except I just cannot do it on a regular basis. I work full time and when I am done with my 8 hours I am really done. I mean I could drag myself to such an event but attending the event is a challenge and one I would not fully enjoy if I did get to it.

I have been dipping back into the disability community more and more as I age—possibly hoping to find some answers to questions and challenges I am having regarding aging in place with a significant disability. I have joined a couple of disability websites with, what looks to be good forums and discussion groups. But I am post injury 40+ years and everything these folks are talking about either just does not hold much interest for me not I have dealt with the issue and moved on and most of the participants are the “young turks”, the” new twists” on the floor so there will be vats of testosterone looking for an outlet in one form or another. Usually wheelchair sports; basketball, hand bike or quad rugby. I am still trying to find a wheelchair volleyball team. I guess I would not be so cynical if all these rehab heads did not think sports was the healer for all things.

I know I am going to be getting a call one of these days wondering why I am not coming to the meetings. Why don’t these guys understand a full time job is a full time job and if you have a disability you do not necessarily have to hang with others who have disabilities to have a life.?

Just Shut Up!

I usually play well with all the kids in my sand box but lately I have been having an issue with one I have to play with at least once a month maybe even more frequently as this program I am affiliated with grows.

I have written about the reutilization project before—I think. I project designed to re- utilize all the assistive technology which is scattered round the community and best of all to get this assistive technology to consumers who can use it. There are six or seven of us in the area who are part of this team maybe even a few more.

Some of the players include Vocational Rehabilitation, Independent living, Center for assistive technology, Center for People with disabilities, my program an a few others. The local Center for Assistive technology had some extra space so the committee decided to house the operation there. This is where we would house the storage area, maintenance of equipment and distribution of product. The director of the CAT is a retired Air force guy and someone seems to want to control everything at what ever table he happens to be sitting at. Now that recycling program in his building he is beginning to usurp control of the project.

Yesterday at another meeting I attend at the building in question we toured the recycling program and this guy starts babbling on and on and even giving disinformation regarding program. I called him on a couple of the things he was saying and it got to be a bit of a shouting match. I do not know what it is with this guy but he just sets my nerves on edge and I come out swinging when ever we are together.

I am a bigger person then this and I am quite embarrassed at my actions and I don’t know what it was which pushed me over the edge like that. I would hate for word to get out that I was becoming a hothead and not being able to be worked with. I have called the director of the group I was with yesterday and apologized and she was gracious indicating she did not know what I was talking about and she said that no one else had said anything to her regarding the incident so I am off the hook for the time being. I am sensing something is happening to me and I cannot hold my patience for stupidity like I once was able to—sometimes I feel that time is just running out.

Stop The Music...Please!

FOX used to have a pretty good Tuesday and Wednesday night line up. Bones and House. There was some other offering, I cannot remember right now but now FOX is running American Idiot(Idol) Tuesday-Thursday I am going to have to really explore the other networks. I of course blame the writers strike for this type of reality programming but in fairness I must admit FOX was doing American Idol, sadly, long before he writer’s strike.

Sometime I get caught up in the “Idol” but for the most part I fine the show a boring, embarrassing example of American egocentrism. Even the most benign of the contestants are so caught up in the quest for fame and austerity they nearly have nervous breakdowns when their name is called to go home.

Even the Sara Conner Chronicles, the only science fiction programming I have access to, finished up their mini-season last night, of course with a “cliff-hanger”. The only hope I have left is to start trolling the other networks on hopes of finding something worthwhile. Who knows I may have to start reading in the evenings, writing or even art work. Daylight

Savings time starts this weekend so I am going to be having lots more opportunity to be outside so maybe I can get over to my neighbors and visit.

The writers strike is finally over, give us a break from reality TV, PLEASE give us something we can chew on.

Weekend

Seems for ever since I updated. I apologize. I will try to do better. There are more images of Riley but I am not able to access those from my office—if anyone has them please send to my Netscape account or office account if you have it, other wise I’ll try to get the images this evening or sometime when I can get to my My Space account.

This weekend was our 16/4^th anniversary—I took the day off on Friday just to spend the time with Dianne. Dianne had a doc’s appointment( which I attended with her) and spent the afternoon at the “free” movie place taking in Vantage Point and Jumper. Both movies were OK but not as good as I was hoping for especially Jumper. Jumper was wrecked by two noisy sitting behind us whispering and rattling their pop corn sack all the Way through the movie. Dianne was doing the Seinfield of “aheming” and turning round and looking (disgustedly) at the offender as I sunk lower and lower into my power chair. Following the movie we had dinner at Lieutenants the restaurant, which is in the same building as the movies. Lieutenants is a pretty much a hamburger shop or what used to be. It is supposed to look like a “malt shop” out of the 50’sor ,60’s. Lots opf red, white and black tiles, Coke images, a counter with soda jerks and lot and lots teenage help, some dressed in bobby sox and poodle skirts. The movie got out a little after six in the evening and so the first wave of kids were in attendance; Attached to the movies and restaurant is a skating rink. So there are tons of kids and teenagers hanging round the restaurant skating this way and that tons of energy. This kind of stuff used to never bother me in fact I loved the chaos and random energy. I just could not wait to finish my meal and get back in my van and head for home. This behavior is really bad and I just need to get a reality check.

We spent the rest of the weekend just hanging out, Talking bout kids and grandkids and watching Movies on Demand and having a pretty good time. We both agreed that we had had a great anniversary weekend and would have to do it again in another four years.