Trick Or Treat?

It's Halloween. As a child, Halloween meant candy and excitement. I remember selecting a costume with care, and putting it together with appropriate wings or wand or whatever, donning a mask, and feeling enormously proud of myself. Then I would grab my bag, eager to get outside, and WHAM!! Mom caught me and made me put a sweater on over my charming or spooky outfit.

Trick or treating used to be lots of fun for kids. Considering the danger nowadays, I bet nobody lets kids go out alone anymore.

They had a costume contest here at the old folks home. The lady I eat breakfast with won. She wore all yellow, with a Peanuts characters print on her pants. My favorite care manager is dressed as a Raggety Ann doll. This isn't really her.

WOW!

WILD! This is a totally awesome story that's kind of paranormal!! About a year ago, while living at Sunrise, I woke up one morning and looked at the wall beside my head and was startled to see a centipede crawling along. It was just inches from my face. As I watched, the centipede crawled higher and higher, eventually ensconcing itself in a corner.
I lay in bed and watched it diligently until a care manager, Melita, arrived, on time to get me up.

"Melita!", I said, pointing at the long bug, "Kill it! Kill it!!"

Melita is one of the nicest care managers I've ever known. She comes from the Philippines.

"Oh,no," Melita said. "That's a centipede. Back home, everyone knows a centipede brings money and is good luck."

"Money?!" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "If you see a centipede, maybe you will get rich." If she had been telling me that cockroaches were good luck, I probably wouldn't have bought it, but centipedes were negotiable.

"OK," I said, diverting my attention from the insect. I paid no more attention to it, and assumed it went on to enjoy a long life with it's many legged family (who, I hope, were not also residing somewhere in my room.

When the mail came that afternoon, I had a check from my long term care insurance for a significant amount of money.

Along time went past. No more centipedes appeared.

Until yesterday morning, that is. I woke yesterday morning to see a centipede scurrying, it's many tiny little legs carrying it rapidly up my wall.

When the mail arrived, I had a check from my long term care insurance for a significant amount of money.

WOW,

Smithsonian

I went to the Smithsonian the other day and had an amazingly wonderful time. But, alas, the Smithsonian was not at all where I intended to go! I had asked Metro Access to take me to the National Portrait Gallery. I wanted to to see the Gertude Stein exhibit. The reservationist screwed up, apparently, and put in the address for the American History Museum. So, instead off Gertrude Stein, I got to see an exhibit about Phyllis Diller. As Phyllis Diller herself would say, HA!! Do you think that maybe my guardian angel decided that Phyllis Diller was more appropriate than Gertrude Stein?

At the American History museum, though, I got to see an exhibition that is only here through the end of the month, "For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights". It was fascinating, covered the ways in which the civil rights struggle in America was implemented through the use of visual images in the media.

After that, I went across the sidewalk to the Natural History Museum. They have a really fascinating exhibit called "The Evolving Universe", which studies the beginnings of the universe and the ways it is always changing, with stars being born and dying...... Hmmmm..... Stars dying?? Which me wonder... Is Phyllis Diller still alive?

sightseeing

The Iranians and the "Take Back Washington" screwed up my Saturday. It was a lovely day to be downtown aightseeing, but my Metro Access driver , when hearrived, said that he thought it would be a mistake to go down to the Smithsonian because, "The Iranians are protesting, and traffic is all tied up, and it will take hours!! Also, the Tea Party. And Occupy Wall Street is marching, too. It's a mess!!"

So I didn't go. Bummer. What I was planning to seem, the Phyllis Diller exhibit at the American History

Not under construction

Ron sent an e-mail immediately after my last post saying that I don't need to buy expensive software to mount a web page. He says that I should go to the Google free website page and make one there for free. He told me this a while ago also, but I decided to take the class just because I thought it would be fun to take a class. It was, but apparently I learned nothing. This communication from Ron was wonderful for 2 reasons: 1) I'd forgotten the advice that he gave me. I will give making a free site on Google a valiant try before I buy something. 2) This communication was yet further proof that someone reads my blog! The counter I've installed on the blog's front page goes up numerically every time someone hits on my site, but I always manage to convince myself that the visitors were just me, editing the last entry.

Probably, "marketing wise", this has been a horrible blog entry. A blogger is probably supposed to convince readers that they are but one of an abundant trove of other readers...

...which you are, of course. The day is not far in the future when my name will be as commonly recognised as Oprah... or Ellen... or Steve Jobs... I'm afraid that the only thing I have in common with Steve Jobs is that I like apples. (apples, alas, not Apples.)

If at first...

Well, I finished my "Build and Maintain Your Own Website" class last week after 8 sessions. It is supposed to teach one to build one's own website for free on Tripod. I tried for many hours yesterday, and I can fly to the moon about as easily as I could build my own website.

So that was money well spent. I guess I'll try again tomorrow.

Or maybe I'll buy Dreamweaver tomorrow!

Cowpokes

Lloyd sent me a great picture:



This photo was taken at "Ghost Town in the Sky", a tourist trap that is the re-creation of an old time western town. It is in Maggie Valley North Carolina. We (Lloyd and Sister Sue and I and Brother Ed and some girl Ed was dating - this was right before Dayna)went there on a nostalgia trip in about 1987. That is when this picture was made.

One of the coolest things about Ghost Town is that it is on top of a great, huge mountain and one has to ride a precarious, steep cable car 1,250feet straight up the mountain cars to get to it.

(I know neither of those people, but it is a good shot to show what the chairlift is like.)

At the top, the park was divided into several areas. Among these are the "Indian Village", "Mountain Town", and "Mining Town". The heart of the park is the re-created old Western town complete with a two saloons, a schoolhouse, bank, jail, and church, and various other businesses typical of the day. Each hour, a gunfight is staged right in the street. "Famous guest stars" often play the cowpokes. Once Tony Dow was there, and I got his autograph. Wonder where it is? There is also a "saloon show" every hour, with dancing girls.

We Taylor kids had been going to there all our lives because Mom and Dad so often took us to Lake Juneluska on summer vacation. Both Lake Juneluska and Ghost Town are in Maggie Valley North Carolina, which is in the Smokies. There are many funny stories that I can, and will, tell about those times, but one is that we often went to Juneluska with Dad's friends and their families - another clergy family. One year, the father of the other family was a pompous jerk. Mom got mad at him because he never tried to have fun with his sons. Mom finally talked him into taking the chairlift up Ghost Mountain. When he was halfway up, there was a cloudburst. The operators stopped the lift, and he just had to sit in the rain until it stopped. Mom still talks about it with great glee!!

WOW!!! I had a stupid, small, untrustworthy, wobbly glass desk from Staples
But yesterday, my friend Lloyd
came up and put together a new desk he had purchased for me from Office Max

Isn't it a wonderful improvement? It's much bigger, too. I'm real psyched!! I didn't know what to do with the old desk except to trash it, and Lloyd had every intention of taking it apart, but now one of the evening care managers says she wants it, so that's nice!

More about Bob

I decided to tell you more about Bob Edwards, the guy I wrote about yesterday. Here is his picture, along with Sue. They are in my office on election day.

It was Bob's nasty, decrepit dogs that provoked the incident with the naked fat man which I told you about in an earlier post.

Bob came from a wealthy family in Staunton, and was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. In DC, he became "comptroller" of a major company and was quite wealthy himself.

He went to school at William and Mary, which he considered vastly superior to Virginia.

One of Bob's major interests was choral music. Although he never knew David well, he was fascinated by David's job. At the time, David was a full-time music minister.

One of Bob's activities was that he was a member of the DC Gay Men's Chorus. He also had enjoyed being a member of the National Cathedral Men and Boys Chorus. Though he got in a disagreement with the direector and quit the chorus, he was well thought of at the Cathedral. His memorial service was held in in one of the small chapels. After the service, we all released helium balloons in his honor. I think he would have liked that.

Bob

It's a beautiful "Indian summer" day
(get it? That's an Indian tattooed on the arm, and it is summer! HA!HA!)
At least it is a beautiful "Indian Summer" day if I really know what "Indian summer" means. It is sunny, and 75 degrees, and it is October. Does that qualify as Indian summer??

I scooted down the street to a nearby park. They had a craft festival today. A bunch of vendors put up tables selling their jewelry or pottery or needlework. I managed to restrict myself to buying only a necklace - - but, you know, the fair is still going on... It is right across the street... I actually need a bracelet... You know, to go along with the necklace.......

This really is a nice little festival. They've held them every Saturday all summer, but I just heard a vendor say that this was the last one until next spring. Bummer.

I guess fall is legally upon us. I made my annual arrangement of pumpkins and gourds and I put it on the shelf outside my door in place of the ugly fake flower arrangement that Emeritus puts there. (No, they didn't say that I could do that - so arrest me, why don't you?!)

Back in the olden days, I made such a fall decoration for Bob Edwards, my AIDS "buddy". This was back in the horrible times when an HIV positive diagnosis meant you'd probably be dead in a year. Whitman Walker set up a program where healthy volunteers were "buddies" with a person who had AIDS.

Bob was my buddy. I'll have to tell you about him some day. He was a character.

Anyway, he loved it and kept it proudly in his living room. When he went to the hospital at the end, though, some of his friends took it apart and found that the pumpkins had developed "weevils".

Class

Arlington is just SO COOL! I'm sitting in a an outdoor plaza in Clarendon, waiting for a class in the Adult Ed building down the street. I have Wifi because I'm outside a Barnes and Noble. A guy just drove past on a segway. It's all just a fun, relaxed urban situation.

The class I am in is called "Build Your own Website". I'm afraid that I'm basically the scourge of the class. We are learning to build a
website on a free site (I'd tell you which one, if I could only remember!) The teacher is this amazingly intelligent man who is real low key and makes these wonderful hand outs that, alone, are worth the price of the class. I could really go back through them at my leisure and, with luck, maybe actually build a site. I haven't accomplished a whole lot this attempt, though, because I sort of started out behind. In the 2nd class, I found that I'd forgotten both my password and my site's name. Because of this, I'm always playing catch- up. The instructor has been quite good- humored about this - he now writes "wiite down your site name and password!!" in red ink, on every handout!

Poor Sue

Sue had an operation on her back today. She threw a vertebrae out of place on that damned roller coaster
in Dollywood.

Sue seemed to be doing real well. She even sat straight up in bed to drink water out of a cup, which sort of amazes me, right after a back operation. They plan to let her out tomorrow.

Poor Mom, it turns out, went to the emergency room last night because her arm was aching so bad. It has been aching for a couple months. I still don't know what they decided was wrong, and neither does Mom, but they put her arm in a sling... which she wasn't wearing when I called just now - aaarg!!

Productive Day

I rode my little wheelchair all the way to Lab Corps to get a blood and a pee test. Fancy people may call it a urine test, but I lost my fancy a good while ago. Luckily, though I lost my fancy, I did not lose the bottle containing my pee test.

The trip through Arlington was quite nice, and it was a beautiful day. I stopped on the way back and ate at "Rio Grande", which has fantastic Mexican food.

It is too bad that I spent such a lovely day doing medical stuff, though. It is all for a new doctor, and, as far as I'm concerned, there is no reason for these tests whatsoever. I, of course, know best. Just because she went to medical school for 8 years, she isn't the boss of me. After all, I could have gone to the National Gallery and seen the Warhol exhibit

But no...! Poor, pathetic me had to drive around outside in beautiful weather.

Virtual rain

I just got an email from a friend saying "Do you plan to start your blog again?". My answer was, "yes, I plan to start again, if I still have readers. I've had real problems here - serious even to the extent that I called in Adult Protective Services and the Assisted Living Licensing Board, and I haven't felt very comical. But that's over, so I'll give it another go!

Or, rather, I will in a minute... Now I have to drink beer and watch the "Prohibition" documentary on BBS.
Deb