December

New  Year Eve. Beautiful weather today, very clear but too cold for my little body. When I got home yesterday I found that a spring had broken on the garage door so I took the broken one off this morning and went to the hardware store for a replacement. As luck would have it they had no such animal in stock so I decided to put that project off for a while. This afternoon I put together one of my world famous stewps with some meat and veggies I had purchased yesterday. Put lots of garlic in it too. Great stuff.

December

Thursday 30^th. . . . I left about 11:30 this morning to keep my bowling appointment. It turned out to be a good day, 131-157-169. That gave me an average of 153 for the day. Our team lost and we are now down to 10th place out of 22 teams. One member of the team is out of town so we had to rely on her 69 handicap to get us through. Dave, our top bowler got a 258 in his second game and that made us look pretty good.. . . . I stopped by Wal-Mart for some grocery shopping on the way home and arrived back at the house a bit after 4pm. We are expecting a freeze tonight and as a  matter of fact we had frost this morning when I got up.

December

Wednesday 29^th. . . . The few snow flakes that fell earlier did not continue their attack for long. Sunshine won the battle by early afternoon. That pleased me.  My sore throat remains, I hope that corrects itself in time for me to get to my bowling meeting tomorrow. I suppose I could bowl with a sore throat but the fear of what it might turn into if I do lingers with me.. . . .I lucked out and beat one of my stronger opponents in chess. My rating is now 1862.  I have been higher but never for long. . . . . .The sun came out long enough for me to brave the elements and make the long walk to the mailbox. Only my new drivers license was awaiting me. The picture is not a bad likeness. It was worth the walk.

December

Tuesday 28^th. . . . The rain continues to fall. My chess games were caught up by 9:30 and breakfast was over. I have a ‘tickle’ in my throat so decided to baby myself for the rest of the day. I didn’t even bother to go out to the mail box. It’ll wait.

December

Monday 27^th. . . . Had two loads of laundry finished and put away before leaving the house to bowl 5 lines. My average was exactly 140 for the day with the first line being lousy and the second was 159, after that I held things up well enough to end the day with a bit better than my league average. I was home by 2:30 and the rest of the day was spent watching commercials and getting my chess games up to date. The rains are coming with promise of snow before the week is out. I hope the snow is light so there is no trouble getting to my bowling meet on Thursday.

December

Sunday 26^th. . . . .Bowled 6 lines today, one of them was a 189 and the rest were far from it. My average for the day was 137, just a hair over my league average. It sure took me a long time to get myself into the groove. During league bowling I get about three balls to throw as practice before they start counting. What I need is about three lines of practice. I arrived home about 4pm. Relaxed the rest of the day and watched the rain coming down. This evening I watched a movie ‘Three O’clock High’, a fun bit of fluff. The hero won and the bad guy saw the error of his ways.  It went well with the popcorn and cheese.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day. . . . .No snow here but that picture I posted was so cute I could not resist. Had my chess games up to date by 9:30. The weather was wet and dreary but I was warm and dry so I turned on the TV to see what there was to see. As usual nothing. Never accomplished anything all day except I did continue my walking routine during the commercials that came on.

Christmas Eve

Friday 24^th. . . . My chess games were caught up by 10am and breakfast was over. I had a couple of pork chops slow cooking and the kitchen was in some semblance of order.  Weather radar promised some showers during the day but it was too warm to snow. That was a plus. Christmas eve day started off in good fashion.. . . .I added another couple of pictures to my new blog today, The one was take at the location of the last spike in the Canadian Railway and the other was taken . . . you guessed it, in the Canadian Rockies. These pics were taken during my trip across Canada in June 2010. I am going to add more as time goes by. I have no idea how much room I am allowed for pictures, stay posted. . . . . Left the house before 5PM to spend the evening with Caren, Ron, Billy and the babies to experience the arrival of Santa. We had pizza to accompany the gift sharing and a nice time was had by all. When I got home I heated my new hot pack in the microwave and slung it over my shoulder before going to bed. Caren had gotten it for me for Christmas. My bowling seems to be traumatizing my shoulder, perhaps this will ease the unease.

December

Thursday 23^rd. . . . .I had a good day, today was the bowling league ‘Christmas Party’ and I supplied a couple of buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken. After opening the containers and taking a leg bone I walked away to eat it and when I returned to the counter ten minutes later it was all gone. They even took the buckets. Made me feel good. However, all of that changed when bowling time started. I really did not do as well as I expected, I had delusions of Grandeur or something similar. My scores were 127-140-154. That gave me a better than average 140 for the day but after last Tuesday’s 168 I felt pretty bad. We did win two out of three but they beat us in total scoring by one pin. As of the end of last week our team was in fourth place out of 22 teams, can that continue? I hope so.

December

Wednesday 22^nd. . ..  Spent some time working on my new blog, I will switch over around the first of the new year. It is supposed to be tied in with Facebook. We’ll see how that goes. I got a little exercise today by cleaning off the driveway. It gets loaded annually by pine needles and pine cones. The work today was done with a lawn rake and a snow shovel. That process left a lot of single needles thinly spread around but one dry day and a high wind will take care of that, I’m sure. Yesterday evening I sat my pedometer back to zero after having it on my slipper for 7 full days. I had a little over 29,000 steps on it. I then multiplied the 29K by 29 inches [my stride for each step] and got 841,000 inches, that divided by 12 inches equaled 70,000 feet divided by 5.280 came to 13.25 miles. This tells me that while walking while commercials are on  TV I covered 13.25 miles. Pretty close to 2 miles per day. What pleases me the most is that my BP meds have been stopped. I check my BP each day and it is staying in the normal range. I was hoping for a trimming of my waist but that has not happened, I still have that little round tummy.

December

Tuesday 21^st. . . . After Dave worked with me yesterday I was so excited about the results I stopped by the bowling alley today. I had to go into town to renew my drivers license [Got a great picture!] so I figured since I was already close I would try my luck. I really felt confident about my chances of doing well and sure enough I blew away my league average with a 168 over 5 games. Since my league average is 133 that shows a fine improvement. Now my next challenge is to carry all that luck over to Thursday when the league games come around. And I must mention that my high game for today, and the last game at that, was a 200. I felt tired but just continued to do as Dave had suggested and things fell into place.. . . . After I arrived home I got my chess games all caught up, I am in big trouble with about three of them, then fixed some lunch. By that time it was 2:30 in the afternoon and I was feeling hungry. The rest of the day was spent watching commercials, eating ice-cream and getting to bed early.

December

Monday  20^th. . . . .I arrived at the bowling alley at noon and Dave got there shortly after. He is a member of the bowling team I am on who promised to show me how to nail the seven and ten pins. I don’t mean the seven/ten split, that is another matter, we worked only on the seven and ten pins. It only took me a couple of times to get the idea and I am sure my score is going to show improvement over the 133 average I now enjoy. I am looking forward to Thursday to see how well I do when the whole team is watching. And the opposing team jeers me when I mess up. {That part was a lie, they really don’t do that]. After bowling I took Dave out to the car and gave him a bottle of Rum as a thank you gift. He said he would see me next Monday also. I then drove over to Wal-mart and bought some ice cream [non-fat] before stopping by DMV to renew my drivers license. I discovered they were closed on Monday. Caren told me later they are also closed on Friday. These States have been too liberal with their money for too many years, this is what it is now costing. You think times are tough now? These are the good old days we will be looking back on very shortly.

This evening was chess, commercials, some walking around the house and ice-cream before going to bed.

Dec. 19

Sunday 19^th. I got out of the house long enough to get the west lawn cleaned up. The exercise was the only reason I used for doing it. Luckily there was not a lot of rain today. I watched Seattle football until they were behind 24-10. I have no idea how it turned out, I went in the bedroom and took a nap then returned to the puter and made some more chess moves. I also lost another game today, poor me. poor me, poor me another drink. My point score is down to 1828. It is a real battle for me to remain above 1800 when 2500 is fantastic.

my efforts

This morning I got the picture of my car posted, now I have to find the way to delete the picture of the hay rake and install a picture of me.

Still practicing

I'll keep trying to use this thing.

Test Test

Saturday 18^th. . . . .I accomplished nothing today. To be fair to myself I have to give myself credit for getting out to the mailbox. All of that stuff was throwaway. We got a lot of rain and more is expected. I may get out for a while tomorrow, I should deliver Christmas gifts to Caren and Ron for under the tree decorations. I wonder if Colter will be able to refrain from opening them before Christmas. It’ll be exciting perhaps, trying to keep him away from them. I do think he is too young to realize there are fun things in Christmas wrap. I never did watch any of the football games today, perhaps tomorrow.

Testing, testing.

December 18

Saturday 18^th. . . . .I accomplished nothing today. To be fair to myself I have to give myself credit for getting out to the mailbox. All of that stuff was throwaway. We got a lot of rain and more is expected. I may get out for a while tomorrow, I should deliver Christmas gifts to Caren and Ron for under the tree decorations. I wonder if Colter will be able to refrain from opening them before Christmas. It’ll be exciting perhaps, trying to keep him away from them. I do think he is too young to realize there are fun things in Christmas wrap. I never did watch any of the football games today, perhaps tomorrow.