Posted by Brad on March 31st, 2008 — Posted in Journal
Peggy sent an email! She said: “My time is short and my connection—she’s not a so good, so I have to be quick.” hehe… But she sent a pretty good update anyway. Plus, she sent some pictures! Here’s the report:
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As you can see, we made it. Rome was an awesome city. I would have liked to have spent several days there. Pescara is beautiful … that’s where we are right now. We visited another small town where my mother in law was born. It’s the town time forgot.
PICTURE ONE: Outside my father in laws condo.; on the balcony outside the bedroom; when you look to the right this is what you see (the Adriatic Sea) Gorgeous!
PICTURE TWO: Same balcony; when you look to the left you see snow covered mountains-AWESOME and BREATHTAKING!
PICTURE THREE: We ate at a really cool restaurant in the mountains overlooking the Adriac Sea. This is a picture of the view. The meal was HUGE! And they put pitchers of wine on your table like they do with water at home. You don’t ask for it, they just bring it. The fish we ate was deeelicious—fresh of course from the sea.
PICTURE FOUR: I forget what this is. I think it’s the Spotted Dick somewhere. I have several of these, but with this poor connection, I can’t send too many pictures. (Brad here - I gave Peggy a can of Spotted Dick Sponge Pudding before she left. She said she would take it with her and snap pictures of it in various locations. I don’t see it in this picture though.)
PICTURE FIVE: The beach at Pescara. The water is really blue.
PICTURE SIX: Check out this dresser in our room—note the bedroom door on the right for scale.
Please share with everyone. Have a good week—
Keep praying for us—-the drivers over here drive much worse than in New York.
Peggy
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Brad here again. I’ll put full sized pictures in the Middle School folder on the server at school if any school people want to view them.
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Posted by Brad on March 30th, 2008 — Posted in Gardening
What I did on spring break was work in the garden. It was AWESOME! I had hoped to cut a mulberry tree down, but those plans got changed. I did at least get to cut many of the branches off. It won’t be dropping as many berries on my footpath this year. In the before and after pictures, It doesn’t look a whole lot different, but believe me, there were LOTS of branches removed.
BEFORE AND AFTER:
Since I was going to the dump anyway, I did all the other pruning and cleaning up I would normally do in the spring. The plants and bushes are clean and ready to grow!
I also decided to clean out the pond. It’s a little earlier than I usually do it, but I had the time, so did it, I did. The water was a little cold, but putting a net down in the fall makes cleaning the leaves out so much easier, so I didn’t have to do much wading. I’ve already had birds drinking the new, clean water. And last night when I came home, I saw the cat that kills my yard rats taking a drink too!
BEFORE:
AFTER:
And no spring gardening would be complete without new additions. I ordered a bunch of Eucomis ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ and a new variegated Forsythia called ‘Fiesta’. I also went to the best garden center in Maryland, Homestead Gardens, and browsed around, even though it’s early. While I was there, I saw a plant that I have not ever heard of before. Because I read plant catalogs and encyclopedias all winter, it’s a rare pleasure to see a plant I don’t know. It is called Loropetalum chininsis rubrum ‘Burgundy Blast’. I knew immediately that it must join my garden children.
Its flowers give it its common name: Fringe flower.
This morning I mourn because after church I must go in to school and prepare for the week ahead. Good-bye, spring break. Good-bye, daily gardening. I will weep for you.
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Posted by Brad on March 29th, 2008 — Posted in Haircuts
In the back of my mind, I was kind of thinking I’d go to New York for another haircut during Spring Break. As the week wore on, it became apparent I wouldn’t be going. I certainly couldn’t wait any longer to get my hair cut, so I decided to do it here in Baltimore.
Denis has recently discovered a barber he likes. Her name is Ning. She is Filipino. Not having any other leads, I decided to go to her. I think why I like the guy in New York is that he doesn’t listen to me. He just cuts my hair the way he thinks it’ll look good. When I sat down in Ning’s chair, she said, “So we’ll just use the clippers to clean up the sides and back?” And I said, “No. Don’t take too much off.” She ended up just trimming a little with the scissors. I ended up being disappointed. I wanted to come away with something really different looking. All I got was the same thing, only neater. And it was my own stupid fault.
Next time I get my hair cut, I will say, “Give me a haircut. Do whatever you think will look good.” If nothing else, it’ll make for exciting lunchtime conversation at school.
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Posted by Brad on March 28th, 2008 — Posted in Journal
Today’s post will be delayed because I stayed in a four star hotel in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area last night. I got an incredible Priceline deal! I’ll write all about it when I get home.
UPDATE: I’m home now. The hotel was great! I offered $100 for what Priceline said normally went for $300. I was surprised it was accepted, but it was fine with me! I was in the Marriott Baltimore Waterfront hotel. It was very swanky. In fact, I was a little uncomfortable. I think I might stick with three star hotels from now on. There was also the disturbing lack of a hot tub. Do rich people not like hot tubs?
Anyway, my room was awesome. It was high up in the tower. The photo below is the view from my room. After checking in, I walked around the Inner Harbor some, went to Barnes and Noble, and had dinner. Then I watched TV from my fancy hotel bed and slept. This morning I woke up, watched Pluto Nash on HBO, and took my sweet time getting ready for the noon check out.
It was a very relaxing Vacation Day.
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Posted by Brad on March 27th, 2008 — Posted in Journal
Peggy has been pretty nervous about her trip to Italy. She leaves from home today just after 2pm. Yesterday, she and I planned to get together and have lunch or something so she could be distracted from her thoughts of travel. On the radio, I heard about an exhibition at one of our art galleries in town. It was a display of all sorts of maps. I’m not normally very excited about maps, but there were several original maps drawn by famous people. There were some by Leonardo DaVinci, Ben Franklin, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. There was also a map from Babylon in 1300BC. But I was most excited about sketchings of the Lonely Mountain and Minas Tirith by J.R.R. Tolkein. They were actual pages actually written on by him. One of the pages was the back of a student test paper. hehe
I couldn’t take pictures. There was a sign. And there were docents crawling all over the place. Peggy the Scofflaw kept telling me to take one anyway. I don’t know what world she lives in, but in my world, defying authority figures means serious trouble. Those museum docents might’ve looked like they were 100 years old, but I bet they had secret ninja skillz. I wasn’t going to mess with them. Peggy went back in after we were done and snapped some shots with her phone. I don’t think she realized how close she came to death. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get them loaded into my computer. Dnag.
Anyway, thanks for the little bit of excitement in being on the wrong side of the law, Peggy. I hope you aren’t tracked down by the DaVinci branch of the Illuminati while you are in Italy. They have powers. And I hope your plane trip goes fast. Watch some romantic comedy with Hugh Grant or something. Then you’ll wish your plane would crash.
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