Miscellany

Here is my experience today at the opthalmologist who gave me a laser treatment for a small retinal tear: Dr. - you will experience bright flashes and possibly some pain; Me - ok,ok,ok,ok,ow,ow,ow,ow,ow,ok,ok,ok,ok,ow,ow,ow,ok,ok,ow,ow - he stops - I think "whew, that wasn't so bad" he says "half way through"; Me - ok,ok,ok,ow,ow,ow,ow,ok,ok...So it went - some flashes brighter, hurtier than others - but he praised me for not jerking or otherwise moving so we got through pretty quickly. He did see the tear, which the referring optometrist hypothesized was there - good on her. To change the topic, the most annoying (to me) overused recent expression begins "At the end of the day..." Maybe you have other candidates? At least for a while, finally, today, the rain has stopped and even a little blue sky was showing! Yahoo! Carrie is feeling a little better, too - well enough to go back to work for a full afternoon, including teaching one class. Emily had a bad day yesterday, much better today. Joseph won both chess games he played against a competing high school, yesterday. He is scheduled for an outdoor outing later in the year and wow what a list of necessaries, mostly clothes, he has to get -hello Salvation Army store! If you buy from the retail sport shops clothes are way high, with many items at or above $250.00. So long for now. Manford

Barbers saw the doctors and the doctors said

Well as the Chinese reportedly said, may you live in interesting times. We have had an interesting two weeks. It has rained and rained and rained - the ground is pretty much saturated now. Enough is enough, we hope for a break in the weather soon. It rains day and night sometimes, with occasional gusts from the East mostly. Carrie has been seeking help with her discomfort which may be a pulled or strained muscle or something else - the doctor said take these new pain pills and finally we have something that works, even if it does make her a little zonky. I may have a slight retinal tear in my right eye and am getting some laser treatment for that. Otherwise I have pretty much recuperated from sore elbow, shoulder and back. The Alexander Technique is helping some - makes me sit up straighter and walk and sit nicely if I remember to do it. It also involves laying down with my knees in the air, feet on the ground, and relaxing for about twenty minutes - very restful. A little meditation time, actually as well as a physical relaxing. I had to cancel an appointment a while back with a local audiology group and since that was the second time I had done that they refused to reschedule me - their loss, my gain. What are some of your favorite sayings: one I like is "For every loss some gain; for every gain some loss." Favourite singers or music groups: Harry Belafonte, Edit Piaf, Kingston Trio, Smothers Brothers, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Modern Jazz Quartet, Johnny Cash, Gary McKnight (in Valley Falls, folks), others later. Favorite news of the weird in NZ - a family thought they were farewelling their deceased mother in a closed coffin with cremation - turns out the hospital or funeral home had mistakenly placed a man's body in the coffin - he was a stranger to the family! Things will get better. We hope all who read this are well and happy and healthy. Manford

Finally

I'm sorry I've been incommunicado. Carrie here. Yes, I've been kind of floored by flu and pnuemonia the last two weeks, but I am recovering now, and basically can do little but sit in the recliner, so I have no excuse but to blog a bit. Except that this laptop, which is the one I use for pictures (I put some new ones! lots!) is about to run out of juice. So this one may be short, but I will write more later, I promise.

Today is Manford's REAL birthday, we could argue, since he was born in the US, where it is still the 22nd. But we're both in rest and recuperation mode, maybe just nibbling a bit of cake and happy the kids are both at school. It keeps alternating promising sunshine and downpours--there must be some rainbows out there--there often are, here. Charlie is looking out the window, waiting for pedestrians to growl at. She's doing better, shifting from barking wildly to just growling to herself, while wagging, of course...

My semester started last week, pretty much without me. Actually, I was there on Monday, thinking I was fine and just a little cough, recovering from the bug, but then Tuesday I got really sick, and Wednesday I could hardly breathe so went off to the doctor's. Thankful for antibiotics--here, amoxicillin is still the drug of choice that seems to work for most things (Joseph is also now on it for a sinus infection)--apparently they haven't gotten the resistenced here to plain vanilla antibiotics. It cost $3. And I am better now, and will start my class, a week late, tomorrow. I did do a bit of lecturing (to the graduate students) yesterday and the day before, and it went ok, but that was sit-down discussion-leading, really. I'm resting up today for the bigger performance (a two-hour lecture in which I try to catch up from missing the first class session) tomorrow.

I'm going to check on that last picture--Manford and his birthday cake--more later.

Carrie

Happy Birthday, Manford, and some other stuff

Hi. Greetings from down under, smaller country version. I have had a lovely birthday so far. We buy frozen croissants from a store here that sells French food; you set them out overnight to thaw and get bigger, cook them 18 minutes at 180 degrees C, and eat this wonderful concoction of flaky pastry and butter - yum! Emily made a little doll for me, Joseph gave me a DVD of the first year of The Office, British version, and Carrie got me a wonderful rain jacket - courtesy of Land's End and brought with them when the family from Kansas visited - many thanks to them, and a neat book about a New Zealander who spent three years in Japan as an English teacher, and the gang gave me a new Kaleidoscope (sp?) to add to the collection my dad started years ago. It has abalone shells in it - a real kiwi product. I found a chocolate cake with caramel icing - my favorite since childhood -at a local Cheesecake Factory. That fit in with my thinking earlier today of what some of my favourite things are, so here is a little list: favourite painters, Rembrandt, VanGogh, most other impressionists, Georgia O'keeffe, Vermeer, Winslow Homer, Renoir. Favourite museums, no ranking, The Louvre, what used to be called the Orangarie but now has another name with a large collection of Impressionist paintings, in Paris, The Kemper in Kansas City, The Prado, the entire Smithsonian collection, the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City, The Phillips Collection in DC, the Met and MOMA in New York, the big and small museums in Wellington, NZ, the Art Institute in Chicago, the main one in Berlin (it has Rembrandt's Man with a Golden Helmet and a lovely bust of Nefertiti), the maratime museum in Barcelona (many wonderful ship models, with some in cross section). So, enough for now - would be interested in others' favourites or favorites. Ta, ta for now. Manford

small addition

There are places I have visited that I don't think I mentioned when talking about them - Moscow, and Monterrey Mexico. I think I have touched some ground in all the continental US states, and did visit Hawaii but not Alaska or Canada. Forgive me if I double up and repeat France, Spain, a tiny bit of Sweden, Milan, Venice, Florence, Dubrovnik, Munich, Frankfort, Berlin West (the wall was there when I was there). I would love to hear about others' travels. I finally gave in and got an alternative e-mail since hotmail does seem to sometimes kick back messages addressed to me there - manfordb@gmail.com. Try that if you will. Lots of rain yesterday and though the sun was shining this am on the children's first day of the third term of the school year, it still managed to rain and dumb me with no umbrella got pretty well soaked. I drove to Tauranga today, about 105 kilometers from here and did well so and yesterday drove back from Auckland, about the same distance but with fewer curves in the highway, on Sunday after delivering our visitors to a motel near the airport (we left Saturday afternoon and the lady of the group drove, because I thought I could not handle driving in heavier traffic and also because I do not see as well at night as I used to, so I, too, spent the night in the same motel as the family group did - they are stopping in Tahiti for three days before returning to the States - hope they had a great time!! Sincerely, Manford.

What a laggard

What a laggard I have been with (not) posting news from Lake Hamilton (sort of like Lake Wobegone). Well, here is some. Carrie has been battling with pneumonia (located mostly in her left lung) for a week now. It really put her on the fritz, making her sore, weak, tired, listless for a few days, but encouragningly is now on the upswing, except for a persisting cough and that is even a little better. I had a back twinge and a sore knee but they are clearing up, too. Tomorrow here will be July 22, my 67th birthday on this planet. The kids start school for the third term this week, in fact today. Joseph and Emily really enjoyed visiting with their friends from Kansas - as did Carrie and me. The stay for a few days at the beach was fun, and Charlie came back from the kennel dirty but happy - either to see us and/or because she got to socialize with some other dogs while we were gone. I regret that I have yet to find a way to take here out for a run, for at this point I don't feel comfortable letting her off leash, but a trainer whose advertising name is the dog guru will come and teach us how to teach her, I hope, on the 31st of the month. I am so grateful for the kindnesses of friends over the years, and think often about many of you. I will try and post more often, like doing a weekly column, beginning this month, or in August at the latest. There are interesting things going on or being said here and I would like to share at least some of them. Carrie and I are planning a short trip to Sydney in September, and there are lots of other things to write about. Gasoline is now up to 2.19 a litre for premium, and prices for food and clothes are inching up while property values are inching down, a worldwide problem, I gather. We installed a heat pump for the bedroom side of the house a few days before our guests arrived and it was nice to have that section toasty in the morning, instead of shivering so much as we had been. That will probably bump up the electric bill but will be worth it and should only be needed a few more weeks. We are looking forward to a warmer, possibly less wet Spring (boy it has really been raining a lot lately - the drought is really broken), with some highway flooding. Feast or famine, I guess. It was great to have our guests, and we miss them. We miss all of you, and hope you are having a good year. More later. Manford

Suddenly the entry hall was full of people

The pizza man came from Hell('s Pizza, actually) and in response to the cry "pizza is here" there suddenly appeared, besides me, two other adults, three teen-age boys, an 8 year old girl, and two 20 year females and a dog. We currently are housing all but one of these (a school chum of Joseph's), and are bursting at the seams, mom and dad in their bed, Emily in hers, Joseph downstairs with a friend who came with his family to visit, from Kansas, and also with one of his friend's sister, and the other mom and sister in what is usually Joseph's bed. The shower walls are papered with towels, the hot water heater and heat pumps working overtime (below 32 this am), but we are having a grand visit, and the "foreigners" from Kansas seem to have adapted well to New Zealand time. We are off for a few days at the beach later this week. They brought food gifts (e.g. doritos and marshmallows) that we cannot get here and some clothes Carrie had ordered and had sent to them, some books, too, and a wealth of smiles and good nature - we are happy to have there here and will be sad when they go in about a week and a half. (They get a couple or three nights in Tahiti on the way home!). This morning the two moms are going grocery shopping. Yesterday, Carrie suffering the effects of a bad head cold, Manford took the foreign mom out to see some sights and the best was a quick tour (it was cold and the sun was going down) of some really wonderful gardens at Hamilton Gardens - Indian and Chinese and Japanese and a few others - but the strange one was called contemporary American - with Adirondac chairs by a pool with a sculpture in it and a montage of Marilyn Monroe on one wall and a small deck with chairs and a mostly glass enclosure with tables and plants we could not readily identify. All in all, or as they say here"at the end of the day" it was an interesting time. Well I need to go to eat some toast. More later, from Carrie, I hope, telling about the games the Kansans brought. Manford