Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Patrick wasn't hungry

Angel #4 has a friend who has a snake named Patrick.  #4 and her friend headed to the pet store together to pick up some lunch for Patrick.  Lunch for Patrick = mice....live mice - Patrick apparently prefers fast food.  Well, Patrick wasn't hungry.  I guess this happens fairly regularly, Patrick is a picky eater.  Normally, in cases like this, Patrick's owner then kills the mice and dumps them.  She doesn't want to cage them for later in the event that Patrick gets the munchies because she doesn't want to get attached to the mice.  I can't imagine anyone getting attached to mice, but when you realize that this girl has a pet snake, getting attached to a rodent isn't out of the realm of possibility.  I guess it doesn't take that long for Angel #4's maternal instinct to kick in, because she decided that there was no reason for a couple of mice to lose their lives just because a snake didn't want to eat them, if that makes sense.  Hence, the 2 new members of our family menagerie, Buford & Henry, the mice, aka Patrick's former lunch.  I do not have a happy face over this, but on the plus side, the average mouse only lives about 1 - 1 1/2 years, so these things will be dead by the time she graduated from high school and I won't be stuck raising more animals that drive me nuts after my empty next kicks in.

Talk about stupid animals, Diesel, the doofus dog decided to run into a car and get his leg all messed up...$750 worth of stitches messed up.  His back leg has been in a splint for the last 2 weeks and he's scheduled to get the stitches out Thursday afternoon.  He looks ridiculous in his e-collar and we call him cone-head when he's wearing it.  He doesn't have it figured out yet and he keeps running into things when he's got it on.  When he climbs the steps, he manages to hit the cone on every step as he makes his way up.   Fortunately, he's been leaving his bandages alone now, so I quit putting the collar on him, which makes thing easier, though now we don't have quite as much to laugh at since he no longer is running into the door on a regular basis.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Back to School

Okay, I haven't written in here in ages, but I've got a story that I don't want to forget, so I'm putting it here for my own edification as well as yours.

School started last week.  Over the Labor Day weekend, one of our 4th graders was in a farming accident and had the tips of 3 of his fingers cut off.  Just so you can keep track of everyone, I'll name names.  So Caden was the little guy in the accident.  Today was his first day back at school and as he was going through the lunch line, I asked if he was going to need help holding his tray.  The little girl next to him in line (her name is Caydence) said that she was going to help him because she was assigned as Caden's help buddy so she was going to take his tray through the line for him.  Then I noticed another girl named Grace was grabbing a tray.  I said hey, Grace, you didn't get your lunch number punched in and she said, wait for it....I'm eating cold lunch but I'm holding Caydence's tray for her while she goes through the line holding Cadens tray.  Don't you love it??

I also discovered that my cousin is engaged to be married to the aunt of one of my lunch kids.  She was telling the other kids how we're practically related now because of them getting married.  One of the other kids asked her "is your aunt old?"  It took me a while to realize where that question came from.  The little fart was finding it hard to believe that her friend had an aunt old enough to be marrying someone who had a cousin as old as me.  Kids, don't you just want to smack them sometimes?

Talk about smacking kids.  My babies were all home at the same time this August.  Angel #1 also brought his girlfriend up, and it was great meeting her and WE's girlfriend was a permanent fixture around here the whole time he was home as well.  So between the 5 extra people we had staying here and all the extra friends that came around for bonfires and stuff, things were pretty crazy around here.  I have to say that one of the highlights of the weekend was when Angel #2 was trying to do a Dirty Dancing lift and managed to kick WE in the face.  Someone got it on video and we all watched it over and over again, laughing every time.  WE got his own moment of glory though, too.  Last time the boys were home, they were both wrestling on the floor and Angel #1 put WE in a choke hold, causing WE to blackout.  WE came back here last month looking for revenge.  He bought a stun gun off Amazon and had it all charged up and ready to go when Angel #1 started wrestling with him.  We were all in the other room when we heard the zapping sound and #1 yelling, What the heck??  Brothers being brothers, #1 wasn't mad at all but impressed with his brothers resourcefulness.  My kids are nuts, but I love them anyway.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

RIP Splatty

I was looking for the dog the other day and glanced out the window, my heart skipped a beat.  There was a brown pile of dead something lying in the road in front  of the house.  I gasped and yelled the dog's name and Angel #4 came over to the window and simply stated "it's a goose".  She was right.  What I thought was doofus dog was, in fact, a Canadian Goose.  Who woulda thunk?  Who even hits a goose with their car anyway?  We posthumously  named it Splatty.

Splatty is now lied to rest somewhere out in the woods where hubs dumped her, soon to be joined by a dead chicken, as yet unnamed.  The chicken was looking a bit peaked last night, so I transferred her to the chicken hospital, aka, an empty pen so the other chickens would bug her, aka one of those filthy roosters wouldn't stop having sex with the poor girl.  This morning, she was dead.  I was so disgusted with the rooster's behavior, that as soon as hubs comes home in a couple weeks, we're going to increase our freezer food supply with 2 new roosters.  I really don't like those roosters.  Not only do they participate in sick chicken rape, but they also like to attack people who are innocently going into their pen to feed the ungrateful beasts.  So yeah, I pretty much hate them and look forward to eating them.

In other exciting, non-chicken raping news, we went to hubs 35th class reunion a couple weeks ago.  I know quite a few people from his class, so it was fun for both of us.  I was talking to one guy, then later I mentioned to hubs that I remembered going to his wedding back in 1988.  Hubs said, uh, I never went to his wedding.  Oops, turns out I went with a different date!  These things happen.

We also went to the rodeo this month, went to 2 neighborhood parties on neighborhood party night and today I ate the first fresh veggies out of my garden, broccoli and kohlrabe, yum yum.  Oh, in case you're wondering, neighborhood party night is a big deal around here.  One neighbor, who has more money than God, has a huge party at his place.  There were a couple hundred people. all the food & drinks you could want and a huge fireworks display.  I know last year's fireworks came to about $20,000 and I'm guessing this years cost about the same.  So it's a pretty big show.  But, since that neighbor doesn't actually live here, but about 25 miles away, he invites mostly people he knows from where he lives, not so much around here.  So, all the other people who live on our road also throw parties on the same night so their friends can enjoy the show as well.  People who don't have friends on our road but know about the yearly fireworks display also come by and park along the road and set up their own party at the old abandoned school house parking lot across the road from the actual party.  We went to the original party, but first off, we also went to another neighbors party who have a lot more people we know and we have in depth debates over who was the best Doctor in Dr. Who (#9, obviously) and who was that red headed woman in that John Wayne movie (Maureen O'Hara, not Maureen O'Sullivan, who was in the Tarzan movies).  We've got such cool neighbors.

Monday, June 15, 2015

I beat the rain!

It's been raining lately... a lot.  When it's not raining, it looks like it's going to rain.  Today was no different.  According to radar, it was supposed to start raining at noon, so about 8:30 I hopped onto the lawn mower to see what I could get done before the rain made it grow some more.  It was getting pretty long since it had been raining too much to mow.  I managed to get everything mowed in 2 1/2 hours.  Nonstop.  That's a long time to sit on a jiggly lawn mower.  By the time I got off, my legs were jelly and my butt was killing me.  My original plan was to just do the back yard and make Angel #4 do the rest, but once I started, I just couldn't seem to stop.

Once I got done, I needed to do some moving around, so I jumped in the car to go to the library and help take down after this weekends book sale.  I'd helped set  up last week and got a real workout, so I figured I'd do the same, only in reverse this week.  But we had an extraordinary number of volunteers this year and by the time I got there, they already had everything put away and they were just getting ready to leave.  Yay for them, but not so much for my noble exercise plans.  So, it was back home I went.

Once I got home, I ate a very healthy lunch of spaghetti squash covered in tomato sauce, then I went out to see how my garden was doing.  I started doing a little hand weeding, then realized I'd do better tilling first.  Once again, I'd planned on doing just a little, but I ended up tilling the entire garden, I then hand weeded the peas and replanted the corn.  I don't know if it's too late for corn or not, but the stupid birds had apparently eaten all my corn seed in addition to the other seeds they'd eaten, so I figured what would it hurt to throw more seed in and see what would happen.  I figured I was noble enough for the day and I went inside and took a much needed shower.  It was only then that it finally started raining.  So now I'm having a quiet afternoon listening to the rain on the tin roof.

Tomorrow I'm hoping for some sun so I can do some much needed laundry.  I refuse to use the dryer in the summer time, so the laundry's been really piling up waiting for some decent drying weather.  Ironic that California is suffering a drought when I've got rain puddles in my basement.  Isn't life funny sometimes?

Saturday, June 6, 2015

is it wrong to say I love manipulating my kids?

Mother's day is kind of a non-thing when your kids live all over the country.  When other families are getting together for cookouts and stuff. I just kind of chill at home.  Not a big deal, I don't get into those holidays a whole lot, but they are a prime opportunity to do some kid manipulation.

It started when both boys called and started the phone call the same way:  "Happy mother's day, am I your favorite kid?"  Frankly, after that, can I really be blamed for what happened next?  I gave everyone the full 24 hour window to give me the accolades due to me as their mother, then on Monday, they all got a mass text titled "Mother's Day favorite kid scorecard" I listed off the 3 of the 4 kids who got a point for verbally wishing me happy mother's day ON THE DAY.  Then I listed off who got gifting points, 0 for each of the boys, 1 for Angel #2 for sending me a card and a whopping 2 1/2 for Angel #4 for flowers, candy and the half a point came from giving me a thank you card with the words thank you crossed out and happy mother's day written over it.  Then things got tricky.  I deducted one fairness point off #4's score because she still lives at home, making it easier to pony up with the gifts.  Angel #1 got his single point deducted because while he was on the phone with me, he told me he had to call me right back because he was at his friend Jesse's mom's house & he had to run in to give her the flowers he got her for Mother's Day.  Yes, he really did that!!  But he got a half point because while he was on speaker phone with me, his girlfriend chimed in to wish me a happy mother's day.  I gave them their point totals, Angel #4 the obvious winner and I told Angel #1 he was going to have to step up his game.  Shortly after I sent out their scorecards, I got an text from WE's girlfriend wishing me a happy belated mother's day.  I asked if he told her to do that so he could get more points and her response was ".....maybe."  After a few more texts & calls from the kids trying to get more points, I sent out a final text to them all:  "There will be no more Mother's Day points awarded after the actual day, the next holiday is Father's Day.  Good Luck and may the odds be ever in your favor."  Yes people, I Hunger Gamed my own kids.

School is out now, though you'd never really guess it was summer vacation since it's still kind of chilly outside.  I keep optimistically turning off the furnace, then having to turn it back on again when the house gets cold.  I did have the bedroom window open all night for two nights now, the first night there was a fire nearby and I had all kinds of firetrucks racing past with sirens blaring at 2am and the 2nd night the co-op decided to come at 6am and spray pesticide in the field across the road from my bedroom window.  There was a whole lot of rumbling and back-up beeping noises, not to mention the poison being shot into the air about 50 yards from my open window.  Fun and games, folks, fun and games.

Friday, May 15, 2015

she is excellent, and now we know why

We just got back from the high school Evening of Excellence.  Parents get a written invitation if their child is being honored and we pay some money, get a delicious chicken dinner and get to watch our children's excellence being honored.  Problem was, we didn't know what Angel #4 did to be excellent this year.  Last year she went to state for music, so we knew, but this year she wasn't in any music classes, so we were lost.  Well, it turns out she earned an academic letter, which is pretty cool.  You get points for being on the high honor roll and when you get 16 points, you get a letter.  So, turns out she's excellent in being smart.  Yay for her!!

I finally hit the worst of frustration with my old computer and I went out and get a new computer yesterday.  I've been putting it off because of my fear/hatred of Windows 8.  But I've been doing a lot of bookkeeping lately for our business, which has gone through some pretty major changes and I really needed to upgrade in order to get the books done.  I've now got a cute little blue HP Stream.  I'm getting used to windows 8, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  I really hate getting new technology, phones, computers, etc, are such a pain to get all personalized.  One thing I'm really liking about the new computer is the keyboard.  I never really the keyboard on my old computer, it never seemed to work right, but this one is a joy to type on.  All my other laptops have been HP's, except for my previous one, which was a Toshiba, so maybe that was it.  I guess I just prefer an HP keyboard.  I think I"ll like this little guy once I get all used to it.

I"m planning on getting the garden planted tomorrow, weather permitting.  It's been kind of cold lately, but I think it's going to warm up.  I can't wait to get those little seeds in the ground and see them start growing.  I love gardening.


Sunday, April 26, 2015

A star is born

We had a busy weekend last weekend.  I was so peopled out by Saturday night I literally fell asleep sitting up in my chair, and we still had Sunday to deal with.

Friday night hubs had another one of his sold out comedy shows.  He tries to make each show a little different and this time around there were some comedy skits, a new thing the guys were calling sketch-prov and some straight-up improv.  They'd had some rehearsals leading up to the show which I went to and the guys taught us some beginning improv exercises.  They were pretty fun and as a result, I was called up on stage during the actual show to do an improv sketch with two go the guys.  It was a crazy, convoluted thing that started out as a weather report about a hurricane and ended up in a  meteorology love triangle.  I'm still not sure how it happened, but that's how improv works.  Afterwards, I had a woman come up to me and say she hadn't laughed that hard in years, so I guess we accomplished our goal of making people laugh.  I don't think I'm going to go on stage again though.  As much fun as doing improv is, I guess I'd rather do it in a small group of friends than on stage in front of a room full of strangers.  We also did a little thing where hubs did part of his stand-up act, then I came on and gave a little back story to his jokes.  I suspect that most people think he makes most of his jokes up...that's not true, sadly enough, he really did get me a Shop Vac for my birthday the first year we were married, and yes, we did indeed meet at a demolition derby.  I also told the story of how we got our first set of steps when we moved into our trailer house years and years ago, but I didn't tell my friend Donna's favorite story about flushing the rope down the toilet.  That woman can listen to that story over and over again and never get sick of it.  Maybe some day I'll share it with those of you  (if there are any) who actually read this thing.

We also had hubs niece's wedding on Saturday, an all day church event on Sunday and I had to get hubs to the airport by 5 am Monday morning to head out to Hawaii.  Very dear friends of ours moved down to Hawaii that day, so we met them at the airport with their luggage and helped them get things organized during check-in.  Wow, did that bring back memories of when we moved down there.  I don't miss that episode of my life at all.  Moving across the country like that is no picnic, as you can probably imagine.  But, on the upside, we bought their mini-suv from them and I drove it home from the airport that day.  So, new car, baby!!  Much nicer driving than the 20 year old car we've been driving around in for the last year.  Angel #4 happily took that one over for herself.

I'm glad that after the business of last weekend, this one was nice and quiet.  I needed a little alone time to recuperate from the onslaught of so many people last weekend.

I got my plant shipment in that I ordered from the nursery catalog.  Those guys sure do know when to get us at our weakest, they send their catalogs out during a cold snap when we're all wishing so hard for spring that we'll spend hundreds of dollars on bedding plants in the hope that it'll hurry the warm weather along.   I planted the cherry trees, blackberry bushes and the climbing rose this weekend, I hope it doesn't get so cold they freeze out and they die. I've got my strawberry plants chilling in the basement waiting for their chance at growing.  I've got plans to put them in a raised bed and Angel #4's boyfriend was going to help me build them.  But...the little brat broke up with him last week, so it looks like I'm on my own.  I tried to talk her into doing the breakup after the beds were built, but she's so unreasonable sometimes.  ;-P

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

It's April, fool

We're busy around here doing spring-y kind of stuff.  Last week Angel #4 and I went shopping and hit a prom dress bonanza.  I refuse to buy a new, off the rack dress for prom, they wear it one night then it lies around for the rest of our lives doing nothing.  So I hit all the neighborhood thrift stores, looking for a good buy, benefiting from others who don't have an aversion to spending full price for a useless dress.  The problem with all this is that Angel #4 is really hard to buy for.  She's got a really wide rib cage and once we get the zipper about 3 inches up, it's done.  The first store we went into we found a dress that fit her wonderfully and looked great on her, but she wasn't nuts about the color, gray being a bit too subdued for her butterfly tastes. But, since it was only $12, I decided to buy it anyway figuring that at least she'll have a dress if we can't find anything else that fit her and looked good. The 2nd store we went to we found the perfect dress, all blue and sparkly and looked incredible on her.  We also found a short formal dress that'll be perfect for the Homecoming dance next year, once again, a perfect fit and a perfect look on her.  I paid $25 for the blue dress and $12 for the short one.  So, I got 2 prom dresses & a homecoming dress for under $50, less than half the price that most people fork over for a single prom dress.  Things are looking up.

Today is April Fool's day.  I can't let an opportunity like that just go past, you know.  I took some brown paper and cut it into the shape of a letter "E".   I made about 6 of them and brought them to school.  My fellow lunch ladies loved my idea and we put them on a pan in the lunch line.  Our principal had a great time offering the kids brown-E's for dessert.  He said he'd never seen such a confused group of kids in his life.  Of course, when they were in line to go into the serving area, I made sure they all knew we had made them brown e's for a treat today.  They went inside all excited,then saw the principal offering them up.  Most got the joke, but a few accused me of lying, until I explained it to them.
It's days like this that make it great to be a lunch lady.

Friday, March 13, 2015

YAY for 60 degrees!!

The last couple days have been so gorgeous!  I've hung laundry out on the line, raked gravel out of the grass at the side of the driveway, cleaned out the asparagus patch and the dead leaves and stalks from the flowers alongside the grainery.   The irises are already starting to come up, how cool is that?  After I exhausted all my excuses for being outside, I brought the outside in by washing windows.  I didn't get them all done, but I've got a good start.  It's just so nice smelling fresh air that doesn't freeze your lungs and seeing a little bit of green showing up outside again.  Angel #4's boyfriend was asking me when I want to get started on building my raised beds for strawberries, so he must be getting spring fever too.  He's going to build the beds for me and get me some sandy soil so I can finally finally finally have my own strawberry patch, something I've wanted forever but never had.  I can't wait.  The boyfriend also fixed a broken barn door for me yesterday.  I've informed #4 that she's never allowed to break up with this boy, and if she does, we're keeping him and getting rid of her.  He's pretty handy around the house and yard and is also really tall, so he can reach stuff on high shelves.  Definitely a keeper, imo.

WE is getting all settled in at his new barracks in San Diego.  After a couple months at Fort Leonard Wood (aka Fort Lost in the Woods) in Missouri, he's more than happy to be back to the land of warmth and beaches.  From the sounds of things, he more than likely will spend the rest of his time in the Marines at Pendleton, which, as a mother makes me happy, but for him, as a Marine, he's a bit disappointed he probably won't be deployed.  Turns out that when you're 18 and think you're invincible, getting sent off to some nasty foreign place where people shoot at you is a good thing.  As a mom, of course, I see things a bit differently.  But, it's his life, his decision, my job is to just grin and bear it.

I discovered that my cell phone is a time machine, as a Dr Who fan, I'm hoping it's a mini-TARDIS.  I got a text today from my friend dated with today's date and time stamped 9:26 pm.  Odd thing is, it was only 6:20pm when I received the text.  Yep, Connie was contacting me from the future!!  I'm sure you're wondering what amazing futuristic insight I got from her text so I'll share:  She wanted to know if I had a rubber chicken she could borrow.  I guess in the future there's a horrific rubber chicken shortage and she was reaching out to the past to rectify the situation.  Sadly enough, I couldn't do anything to change the course of the future as I have no rubber chicken.

Is it weird that I was more taken aback by the wrong time stamp on my text than by the fact that my friend thought I was the go-to person in her search for rubber chickens?

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Is winter over yet???

So while I'm quietly ( or not so quietly, depending on who  you ask) out doing my lunch lady thing, my husband is out conquering the world one giggle at a time.  Thursday he came home from Texas after doing an awesome business promotion, last night he knocked another one out of the park hosting a dinner/comedy show, he's got another comedy show tonight then tomorrow he hops on a plane to go whip Hawaii into shape.  On the other hand, my major victory for the week was getting a new kind of fruit added to next weeks school lunches.  I think I know who would make a better subject for a biography.  But we also turned all our tax information over to the accountant today, so I've got that yearly agony over...though we get another round of agony when we get the accountant's bill.  Getting corporate taxes done for 2 different businesses doing business in 3 different states is not cheap.

Last weekend I had a wonderful day spent with Angel #4, WE's girlfriend, who's pretty much another daughter for me, my sister and her daughter.  My sister gave me an awesome gift, a signed biography by Alison Arngrim, Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie.  A little known fact about me is that back in the day, I could do a pretty kick-butt Nellie Oleson imitation.  Yep, I have some kind of talent, just not a bankable one.  BTW, if you haven't read any of the 3 Little House girls biographies, this one is DEFINITELY the best out of the three.  I want Nellie to be my friend and hang out with her at Starbucks.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Go home Wise Men, you're drunk

It's the end of January, high time people took down their Christmas decorations.  But, then again, if they did that, I'd miss one of the highlights of my drive home from work every day.  One of the bars in town has one of those big nativity scenes in front of it, with the big, 4 foot tall plastic people that light up on the inside.  Nobody there has figured out the art of weighing the figures down though, and they frequently fall over.  The first time this happened, Mary was face down in the gravel while Joseph and the 3 wise men were all standing in a circle staring at her and appearing to be saying "go home, Mary, you're drunk".   Mary eventually was put upright again, but it seems like everyone is taking turns taking a digger.  Currently, Joseph and 2 of the wise men are flat on their faces while the third wise man is standing there holding his little treasure chest of frankincense and wondering the the rest of them are going to grow up and stop acting like frat boys.  Mary and baby Jesus appear to have flown the coop and are nowhere to be seen.  Maybe she decided that it simply wasn't the proper atmosphere to be raising a child in.

I'm reading a fascinating book written by a NYC medical examiner about forensic medicine and autopsies.  This morning while drinking my coffee and eating my bagel, I was reading a step-by-step on how to perform an autopsy on a drug overdose victim, including what order to take out the internal organs.  I had no problem eating while doing this, but a half hour later, I was gagging uncontrollably from brushing my teeth.  I suspect this isn't normal.

Tonight hubs and I went to watch the high school boys (and 1 girl) wrestle.  It was against our biggest wrestling rival.  We tend to come up on the short end of the stick with this rivalry because the other school is quite a bit bigger than we are, they're not only not in our conference, but they're a division 2 school while we're a division 3.  But, what makes this a particularly active rivalry is the coaches.  Two brothers coach our wrestlers, our rival school is coached by a 3rd brother and their father.  So it's kind of a family rivalry more than a school one.  Our boys fight hard for  our coaches honor, but we're pretty much out-gunned, though we only lost by 9 points, so it wasn't a complete massacre.  I enjoy watching wrestling and, according to hubs, I get a bit wiggly during the matches.  He's been calling me Mr. Lowney, after one of the wrestling fathers in hubs old hometown.  Mr. Lowney was a big man with a whole slew of wrestling sons.  He would get so worked up he's start leaning over in the bleachers and end up accidentally pushing people off the end.  I don't think I'm that bad, but I do know that my heart rate goes up a whole lot better watching wrestling than it does when I'm exercising so it's pretty obvious which activity I need to focus on for my health.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

FIne, upstanding cititzen....NOT!

I'm at work today, minding my own business, not really paying attention to what's going on around me because I was, wait for it, yeah, working!  So apparently,while I was doing my job, one of the other lunch ladies and our Superintendent were harassing each other, a common occurrence in our lunch room where we tend to call each other fathead and slacker and generally pick on each other.  But, like I said, I was working and not really paying attention, which meant that when the Superintendent came over by me and asked me to stand in a certain way, I just moved where he asked, wondering what was going on,  Well I found out quickly.  He stood behind me, then said, "Hey, Diane"  Without even looking, Diane turned and shot water hose right at him...which since he was using me as a human shield, hit me instead.  Yes, the man in charge of my town's children's education USED me to cover his own sorry butt!  Of course, now I must plot my revenge.  Suggestions will be appreciated.

In other news, it's been pretty quiet around here.  Hubs has been in Hawaii for the last week or two and Angel #4 has been out and about, or working, so I've been home alone in the peace and quiet a lot.  This weekend we were kind of busy though.  I went out with my friend Connie on Friday night.  Angel #2 went out that night as well, though I think she partied a bit more than me since it was her 21st birthday.  I can't believe she's that old already, I still think of her as a little girl.  Now I've got 2 kids who can legally buy a drink in a bar.  Amazing, since I'm still so young.  Saturday morning, Angel #4 & I met Connie and her daughter (aka WE's girlfriend) for breakfast, which was really nice.  We go to a little local place which has the yummiest food and the friendliest staff around, which makes going there even more enjoyable.  That night the four of us, along with Connie's other daughter and #4's boyfriend, we went bowling.  I did much better than when we went bowling as a family when the boys were home. We only bowled 2 games, which is good because my hip started hurting again in the same place as it did last time I bowled.  I guess I"m going to have to start working out if I want to continue with my bowling career.