Mauri and Sherry

1—On Monday John and Erin climbed Mount St. Helens. Since most of us never get to do that we can enjoy it vicariously by looking at these 15 pictures.

2—This is really cool: “14 months in the making, 42 countries, and a cast of thousands.” Another vicarious adventure.

3—I’ve had the Blue Angels experience but this makes me wonder how safe it is even as a spectator.

4—I wish I could read their minds. They’re probably saying “blah, blah blah” “Ouch!”

5—This blogger provoked some thought.

Bonus—If you’re a Jane Austen fan you might enjoy this.

July 14—the date we’ve been anticipating for nine months. A new season of “The Closer” has begun and I’m a happy camper. If all the other TV series were canceled, even Monk, I’d be okay with that (maybe even happy with that) but please, please don’t take away my Closer.

On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup

by William Oldys

Busy, curious, thirsty fly!
Drink with me and drink as I:
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up:
Make the most of life you may,
Life is short and wears away.

Both alike are mine and thine
Hastening quick to their decline:
Thine’s a summer, mine’s no more,
Though repeated to threescore.
Threescore [and three] summers, when they’re gone,
Will appear as short as one!

Public Domain

I’ve lived 63 years, as of today, and somewhere around 6 p.m. I’ll start my 64th year. I suppose I could retire from my job and start collecting social security, but what on earth would I do with all that extra time? Five years ago, when I started working at Newberg Friends, I wondered if I could adjust to an 8 to 5, Monday through Friday job. Turned out I love the structure and the people and the work, and considering all that, it’s almost a bonus that the church actually pays me.

We’re hosting the team for lunch today, and after everything’s cleaned up, I’m driving to Forest Grove for my annual root beer malt and my annual birthday shopping spree at Goodwill (they offer a special discount to birthday girls like me). Could there be a better way to spend my threescore and third birthday? Because life is short and wears away.

…it is us. The last two Democratic primaries are tomorrow, and the NBA finals start this week. There were other interesting stories, but as I tuned out NPR early this morning my imagination jumped ahead to a Celtic/Laker game seven. Overtime. Final score 102-95. Kevin lifts the trophy and celebrates with his ecstatic team-mates while Kobe holds an impromptu news conference in front of a crowd of weeping, angry fans. “We won,” he says confidently. “We had the ball more than they did, and we had more assists. And the refs should’ve counted the three-pointer I shot after time ran out in the first half—even though the other team was leaving the floor. It was a beauty, and not counting it just wasn’t fair. Besides, we won lots of other important games in the playoffs, and given our experience, doggone it - we deserve the championship.” Fade to reality…and more important things…yep.

Beloved daughter #1 (of 2) Abbie of beloved coworker #1 (of 1), Denise, tagged me with this meme. I certainly wouldn’t want to deprive you faithful blog readers of the following information about me, so here goes!

5 things in my bag:
I take it this means purse, but that’s probably an old-fashioned term. I have a weakness for buying purses (at Goodwill, mostly), but I tend to carry the same one, a small one because I really only usually need two things.
1—a classy red spring clippy thing to hold my credit card, driver license, punch cards, library card, insurance card, etc.
2—cash/coin purse, a stocking-stuffer gift from Ben, years and years ago
3—two, yes two, thumb drives. One holds 4G of data. Wouldn’t want to be caught without at least one.
4—spare pair of glasses
5—gum, Orbit bubble mint, my latest favorite

5 things in my room
We call our room “the sanctuary.” It’s not media free but no TV’s in there. Two skylights brighten it early in the morning this time of year, and I’d be curious to see what shade of gray the carpet is under our bed after nearly 14 years of protection from the sun.
1—a California king, half water, half foam. We agreed to disagree.
2—a headboard that once served as the back door
3—a comfy chair with matching ottoman that holds all kinds of stuff that really will be put away one of these days
4—books, lots and lots and lots of books
5—an antique “secretary” that Mauri and Margaret-Rose bought at a junk store in Aurora, Illinois, when they were newlyweds

5 things I’ve always wanted to do
Goodness, this might be hard, but I’ll give it a whirl.
1—drive on the “wrong” side of the road, legally, of course. Maybe I’ll get to some day.
2—snorkel above a coral reef off Australia or New Zealand
3—watch really good movies from get up to bedtime. Okay, I’ve come close to doing this.
4—swing dance. In my next life, my parents will not think dancing is a sin. (They raised me by a high standard, and I have no regrets.)
5—

5 things I’m currently into
These might be obvious if you’ve followed this blog.
1—pictures, documenting/preserving/enjoying the past (but not living in it)
2—watching movies, buying movies
3—my dear man, his/my/our family, family, family, family
4—blogging, reading blogs, Scrabulous, Facebook
5—golf (just kidding)

5 people who should do this meme
Ummmmm…
1—Any
2—body
3—who
4—wants
5—to

Anticipated appreciation isn’t nearly as sweet as surprise appreciation. On Tuesday, Denise’s and my boss, Elizabeth, surprised us with lily plants, scones, and coffee drinks to demonstrate her appreciation for our work as “administrative professionals.” Today Josh, our youth pastor—who this week suffered a computer crash toward the end of his final paper for his final class before graduating this weekend with a master’s degree—managed to take the time to write us personal appreciation notes on his own handmade photo cards and brought us each a low-maintenance (he knows me) cactus plant to celebrate the way we all work together as a team.

Now I ask you, could anyone want for a better work environment?

I’m delighted to report I have some new Facebook friends! You’re so good to me. I promise not to beg again until I reach 999.

Maybe you will indulge me again. This time with one of those stories that show up in our e-mail at least daily. This one was new to me, so maybe it hasn’t made the rounds yet. Well, I thought it was pretty funny.

9 Months Later…

Jack decided to go skiing with his buddy Bob. So they loaded up Jack’s minivan and headed north. After driving for a few hours, they got caught in a terrible blizzard. So they pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who answered the door if they could spend the night.

“I realize it’s terrible weather out there and I have this huge house all to myself, but I’m recently widowed,” she explained. “I’m afraid the neighbors will talk if I let you stay in my house.”

‘‘Don’t worry,” Jack said. “We’ll be happy to sleep in the barn. And if the weather breaks, we’ll be gone at first light.” The lady agreed, and the two men found their way to the barn and settled in for the night. Come morning, the weather had cleared, and they got on their way. They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing.

About nine months later Jack got an unexpected letter from an attorney. It took him a few minutes to figure it out, but he finally determined that it was from the attorney of that attractive widow he had met on the ski weekend. He dropped in on his friend Bob and asked, “Bob, do you remember that good-looking widow from the farm we stayed at on our ski holiday up north about nine months ago?”

‘‘Yes, I do,” said Bob.

‘‘Did you, er, happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house, and pay her a visit?”

‘‘Well, um, yes,” Bob said, a little embarrassed about being found out, ‘‘I have to admit I did.”

‘‘And did you happen to give her my name instead of telling her your name?”

Bob’s face turned beet red and he said, ‘‘Yeah, look, I’m sorry, buddy. I’m afraid I did. Why do you ask?”

‘‘She just died and left me everything.”

Scott Nilson just invited me to be his Facebook friend. I knew I was getting close to 100 friends, so after I accepted his kind offer I checked my Facebook friend count. I now have 99 friends!

I’m having a blast with Facebook, and I do only minimal things with it—mostly play Scrabulous and read the updates (and post my own update from time to time). It’s such an easy, comfortable, non-invasive way to stay connected with 99 people I know casually or well, doesn’t matter—I find them all interesting. And I can do this in the comfort on my “cockpit,” Mauri calls it, right here next to the woodstove he keeps going. I can wear my party pants (Liz’s term) and sip my daily hot chocolate and watch TV and enjoy close proximity to my dear man and read what’s going on in my friends’ lives. Ben, Taylor, and Dusty are my friends as well as my sons. Erin and Linsey are my friends as well as my daughters.

You might think 99 is a satisfactory number of friends. As of a moment ago, son Ben has 572 friends. I don’t know 572 people, so I don’t aspire to matching his number. But 99 is so close to triple digits. So if you aren’t already my Facebook friend, would you be willing to join the “Sherry Needs More Friends” campaign and invite me to be your friend? I realize that having to beg for friends makes me appear rather pitiful. Okay, so I am pitiful, but if that’s what it takes to have triple-digit Facebook friends, it’ll be worth a little groveling.

Be my 100th Facebook friend. Just search for Sherry Macy (I’m holding a cup of hot chocolate in front of my face in the picture). Or maybe you don’t have a Facebook account yet and I’ve convinced you how much fun it is. Just go here and sign up, then maybe I can be your first Facebook friend!

Then there’s Twitter.

I just snapped this picture of my dear man getting ready to grill some meat for supper.

Notice how the bright sun overexposed his face? Notice how squinty-eyed he is? Could you guess that just five minutes—FIVE minutes—before I took this picture we stood on the porch watching pea-sized hail fall from the heavens? That in itself would not be so unusual except that we’ve had back-and-forth weather like this for two days straight. Yesterday I sat in my office at the church and watched it rain, then hail, then sleet, then the sun would shine, then more rain, more hail, more sleet, then snow, then more sunshine. Crazy.

I’m not usually a weather watcher. I figure whatever it’s gonna do it’s gonna do. But even I have found our weather the last few days interesting.

Notice the moss all over that old apple tree? Do you think it has something to do with the weather in Oregon?

This photo, discovered on friend Craig’s blog, captured my interest. I can’t stop looking at it. So here’s my plan: post it on this blog so I can look at it any time I want for as long as I want.

You’re hooked too, aren’t you? Maybe you can help me figure out what intrigues me so about a foot circle.