Quote for the Day 8/30/2009
In Denver--
Hiromi: Tell me where to go.
Me: I have no idea.
Hiromi: Well. Look on the map.
Me: I am looking on the map.
Hiromi: So where do I go?
Me: I don't know. Some of these are one-way streets and I can't tell which ones.
Hiromi: Just calm down and tell me where to go.
Me: I AM calm, and I still don't know where to go.
As you can tell, we aren't really good at helping each other figure out city driving. To begin with, neither of us care much for driving. Period. If it's nighttime driving, as it was the night we traveled from Denver to Penrose where Shane and Dorcas live, we both have vision issues. Signs regularly disappear in the glare of oncoming vehicle lights. Heavy high speed traffic complicates matters. We're not sure where we're going, but we're going there fast.
Unfamiliarity with how the outer lanes peel off the interstate onto connecting roads have us repeatedly departing involuntarily from our planned route. We know that slower traffic should keep to the right (that's us), but those right lanes are the peel-off lanes. Can't win.
Add to this, Hiromi's sudden worries that the transmission is going out, the car is overheating, and since the gas tank registers now at the halfway mark, we've got to find a gas station, and you decide you'd better just not say a word and pray instead. It's hot inside the vehicle since Hiromi is worried about overheating if we run the air conditioner. If we open the windows, it's noisy, the wind is tiring, and the fumes are smelly.
We get to Shane and Dorcas' house safe and sound, and we both relax. A few days later we're back home in Kansas and really relax. Next week we plan to have the cooling system checked out since we still occasionally smell antifreeze and see steam, but the temperature gauge has never registered a problem, even when we run the air conditioner. The transmission is fine, and, thanks to Hiromi's vigilance, we've never come close to running out of gas.
**********************
Downtown Denver streets run at a 45 degree angle to the rest of the city streets. Most of them are one-way streets. I don't know which sections were planned first, but I have a typical Midwestern appreciation for streets being straight with the world, and I do not appreciate odd angles. Downtown Denver looks cockeyed to me.
I do have a fondness, however, for 16th street, which was on our walking route between the hotel and convention center while we were there. No vehicles travel that section of 16th street. Instead, seating areas spill out from restaurants and cafes along the sidewalks, kiosks offer wares in the middle of the streets, groupings of benches invite relaxation and conversation, musicians perform, and well-groomed beautiful horses pull carriages up and down the streets, offering rides. The street surface is paved with brick, or something that looks like it.
Japanese restaurants are plentiful in Denver, and we ate wonderful soup and sushi in one of them. We also ate at Casa Bonita, a Mexican restaurant with one-of-a-kind ambiance--drama, divers, tropical decor, etc.
Eating sushi in Denver, and eating at Casa Bonita were both things we had done in Denver on our honeymoon a little more than 28 years ago, so it was special to be able to do them again.
On our honeymoon we had also shopped at the Pacific Mercantile Company, which is a large Japanese grocery store. When we saw this time that it was only about six blocks from our hotel, we decided to go there before we left town on Saturday evening. Hiromi's version of this has me insisting that we go there. I recall only pointing out that since we had not been within 400 miles of this place for more than two decades, and we were now six blocks away, it seemed to make sense to make the effort to find it. We arrived at 6:20, without a lot of problems, except that the car blew off lots of steam when we stopped, and we smelled antifreeze. Surprisingly we didn't have trouble finding a parking spot, and Hiromi hoisted the hood and looked at the motor. The reservoir for the radiator still had fluid in it, so we obviously weren't in big trouble yet with the engine's cooling system.
Unfortunately, the store had closed at 6:00, which explained our parking ease. And all the dark way south on I25, Hiromi was quite sure that things would be better if we had not "wasted all that time going to the grocery store." Sigh.
*********************
I thought of my cousin Duane W. when we drove through Colorado Springs. He works as a copy editor for the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Shane tells me he reads this blog, occasionally at least. I'm glad for the connection with Duane, but I'd rather not think about what a copy editor might notice when he reads what appears here.
All the same, I'm sure we would have had a good time with Duane if we had had time to make contact while we were in the area.
********************
The evening at Flying W was a pleasant diversion from our typical activities. Hiromi had gone on a Choice Books run with Shane, while Dorcas and I played thrifty housewife and canned pumpkin and hot pepper relish, and froze eggplant and green beans. So we had to shift gears a bit to spend the evening being entertained.
I didn't remember all the museum-like displays from before. It reminded me of Cowtown in Wichita--a recreated village with residences, shops of all kinds, a school, a church, and a library.
We shared our table with a family from California. The husband and father works for a defense contractor and travels to the area regularly on business with many of the military installations nearby. Once a year he brings his family along and they spend time vacationing too. Shane and he visit some of the same military bases for very different purposes. The guy seemed intrigued with what Shane and Dorcas are doing--working for Choice Books, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't impressed with the idea of earning a combined household wage below minimum wage while doing it.
I wonder if a pleasant professional family man like this defense contractor person seemed to be ever has misgivings about his livelihood. I do hope that the next time he goes to the bases in the area, he notices a Choice Books rack there and reads something from it.
I forgot how enthusiastic an audience member Shane can be. If only Hiromi and I and Dorcas had been there, I'm pretty sure our corner would have been a little quieter. It was all part of the fun though. Grant would have really loved it.
I was surprised at how many of the Western songs were familiar--none of which I would have known before I married Hiromi.
*****************
Ken, who is my cousin Gary's son, is the pastor of the church Shane and Dorcas attend in Colorado. On Sunday evening, after a drive and a walk in Phantom Canyon, we visited at their home, and had a wonderful time. They used to live here, but I learned to know them better in that one evening at their house than I ever did in Kansas.
They live on a 40-acre property, and have a private well, which is a highly coveted amenity in that part of the country. Everything looked lush and green, and someone had obviously taken a lot of care with the landscape around the house. The one-story tan stucco house fit perfectly into its setting. A flourishing garden was visible from the picture window in the living room. From the deck out back we saw deer in the pasture, and trees along the edge, where a creek flowed through the property. The mountains in the west were beautiful and decidedly un-Kansas-like. It seemed like a perfect place to raise six children.
Two days later this place looked very different after a major hail storm hit. The sky lights in the living room shattered and showered glass all over the carpet below. The garden, which had just begun producing tomatoes, was nearly destroyed. Several hours after the storm, when people were helping clean the place up, someone found a hail stone in the back yard that measured two and one-half inches across. I'm familiar with the sickening effects of a summer hail storm, and feel a lot of sympathy for Ken and his family.
*******************
On our last morning in Colorado, Shane and Dorcas had to leave very early--something like 4:30 AM, so we were the last to leave their place.
We decided to visit their next door neighbors yet, since they had been gone on a trip during most of the time we were nearby. They've been wonderful neighbors to Shane and Dorcas and we hated to leave without getting acquainted.
To our surprise, the wife in the household told us she is the sister-in-law of my cousin Edith. Shane had never made this connection. We had a brief but pleasant visit.
Since we left, this family has also experienced hard times. Their son Michael was injured in an accident. The first sketchy reports sounded fairly grave--unconsciousness, transportation by LifeWatch, etc., but later reports sounded better. He was alert, and apparently had no paralysis.
********************
On our way home from Colorado, we stopped to buy melons at a farm market near Rocky Ford. My mother always considered Rocky Ford melons the cream of the crop, so we didn't want to miss the opportunity to get them there. We also got some for my parents, who had helped keep the garden alive while we were gone.
*******************
Most of the way home rain clouds lingered just ahead of us, in the east. Soon after we arrived in Reno County, we finally caught up with those clouds, and we got dumped on before we got home. Our rain gauge showed .9 inch of rain. It had fallen in several showers while we were gone--perfect for the soil being able to absorb a maximum amount of moisture.
*******************
Today I taught my last Sunday School class for the year. It was a good teaching experience, but I'm happy right now for one less weekly obligation. The girls I taught are in their mid-teens and are unlikely to all be in the same class next year, so they're feeling a little uncertain about the changes coming up.
As it is, with Farmer's Market and school teaching, I've been getting up seven days a week with an away-from-home "job" awaiting me that day. I could not sustain this indefinitely. It's a pity that good things conflict so often with other good things.
Hiromi: Tell me where to go.
Me: I have no idea.
Hiromi: Well. Look on the map.
Me: I am looking on the map.
Hiromi: So where do I go?
Me: I don't know. Some of these are one-way streets and I can't tell which ones.
Hiromi: Just calm down and tell me where to go.
Me: I AM calm, and I still don't know where to go.
As you can tell, we aren't really good at helping each other figure out city driving. To begin with, neither of us care much for driving. Period. If it's nighttime driving, as it was the night we traveled from Denver to Penrose where Shane and Dorcas live, we both have vision issues. Signs regularly disappear in the glare of oncoming vehicle lights. Heavy high speed traffic complicates matters. We're not sure where we're going, but we're going there fast.
Unfamiliarity with how the outer lanes peel off the interstate onto connecting roads have us repeatedly departing involuntarily from our planned route. We know that slower traffic should keep to the right (that's us), but those right lanes are the peel-off lanes. Can't win.
Add to this, Hiromi's sudden worries that the transmission is going out, the car is overheating, and since the gas tank registers now at the halfway mark, we've got to find a gas station, and you decide you'd better just not say a word and pray instead. It's hot inside the vehicle since Hiromi is worried about overheating if we run the air conditioner. If we open the windows, it's noisy, the wind is tiring, and the fumes are smelly.
We get to Shane and Dorcas' house safe and sound, and we both relax. A few days later we're back home in Kansas and really relax. Next week we plan to have the cooling system checked out since we still occasionally smell antifreeze and see steam, but the temperature gauge has never registered a problem, even when we run the air conditioner. The transmission is fine, and, thanks to Hiromi's vigilance, we've never come close to running out of gas.
**********************
Downtown Denver streets run at a 45 degree angle to the rest of the city streets. Most of them are one-way streets. I don't know which sections were planned first, but I have a typical Midwestern appreciation for streets being straight with the world, and I do not appreciate odd angles. Downtown Denver looks cockeyed to me.
I do have a fondness, however, for 16th street, which was on our walking route between the hotel and convention center while we were there. No vehicles travel that section of 16th street. Instead, seating areas spill out from restaurants and cafes along the sidewalks, kiosks offer wares in the middle of the streets, groupings of benches invite relaxation and conversation, musicians perform, and well-groomed beautiful horses pull carriages up and down the streets, offering rides. The street surface is paved with brick, or something that looks like it.
Japanese restaurants are plentiful in Denver, and we ate wonderful soup and sushi in one of them. We also ate at Casa Bonita, a Mexican restaurant with one-of-a-kind ambiance--drama, divers, tropical decor, etc.
Eating sushi in Denver, and eating at Casa Bonita were both things we had done in Denver on our honeymoon a little more than 28 years ago, so it was special to be able to do them again.
On our honeymoon we had also shopped at the Pacific Mercantile Company, which is a large Japanese grocery store. When we saw this time that it was only about six blocks from our hotel, we decided to go there before we left town on Saturday evening. Hiromi's version of this has me insisting that we go there. I recall only pointing out that since we had not been within 400 miles of this place for more than two decades, and we were now six blocks away, it seemed to make sense to make the effort to find it. We arrived at 6:20, without a lot of problems, except that the car blew off lots of steam when we stopped, and we smelled antifreeze. Surprisingly we didn't have trouble finding a parking spot, and Hiromi hoisted the hood and looked at the motor. The reservoir for the radiator still had fluid in it, so we obviously weren't in big trouble yet with the engine's cooling system.
Unfortunately, the store had closed at 6:00, which explained our parking ease. And all the dark way south on I25, Hiromi was quite sure that things would be better if we had not "wasted all that time going to the grocery store." Sigh.
*********************
I thought of my cousin Duane W. when we drove through Colorado Springs. He works as a copy editor for the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Shane tells me he reads this blog, occasionally at least. I'm glad for the connection with Duane, but I'd rather not think about what a copy editor might notice when he reads what appears here.
All the same, I'm sure we would have had a good time with Duane if we had had time to make contact while we were in the area.
********************
The evening at Flying W was a pleasant diversion from our typical activities. Hiromi had gone on a Choice Books run with Shane, while Dorcas and I played thrifty housewife and canned pumpkin and hot pepper relish, and froze eggplant and green beans. So we had to shift gears a bit to spend the evening being entertained.
I didn't remember all the museum-like displays from before. It reminded me of Cowtown in Wichita--a recreated village with residences, shops of all kinds, a school, a church, and a library.
We shared our table with a family from California. The husband and father works for a defense contractor and travels to the area regularly on business with many of the military installations nearby. Once a year he brings his family along and they spend time vacationing too. Shane and he visit some of the same military bases for very different purposes. The guy seemed intrigued with what Shane and Dorcas are doing--working for Choice Books, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't impressed with the idea of earning a combined household wage below minimum wage while doing it.
I wonder if a pleasant professional family man like this defense contractor person seemed to be ever has misgivings about his livelihood. I do hope that the next time he goes to the bases in the area, he notices a Choice Books rack there and reads something from it.
I forgot how enthusiastic an audience member Shane can be. If only Hiromi and I and Dorcas had been there, I'm pretty sure our corner would have been a little quieter. It was all part of the fun though. Grant would have really loved it.
I was surprised at how many of the Western songs were familiar--none of which I would have known before I married Hiromi.
*****************
Ken, who is my cousin Gary's son, is the pastor of the church Shane and Dorcas attend in Colorado. On Sunday evening, after a drive and a walk in Phantom Canyon, we visited at their home, and had a wonderful time. They used to live here, but I learned to know them better in that one evening at their house than I ever did in Kansas.
They live on a 40-acre property, and have a private well, which is a highly coveted amenity in that part of the country. Everything looked lush and green, and someone had obviously taken a lot of care with the landscape around the house. The one-story tan stucco house fit perfectly into its setting. A flourishing garden was visible from the picture window in the living room. From the deck out back we saw deer in the pasture, and trees along the edge, where a creek flowed through the property. The mountains in the west were beautiful and decidedly un-Kansas-like. It seemed like a perfect place to raise six children.
Two days later this place looked very different after a major hail storm hit. The sky lights in the living room shattered and showered glass all over the carpet below. The garden, which had just begun producing tomatoes, was nearly destroyed. Several hours after the storm, when people were helping clean the place up, someone found a hail stone in the back yard that measured two and one-half inches across. I'm familiar with the sickening effects of a summer hail storm, and feel a lot of sympathy for Ken and his family.
*******************
On our last morning in Colorado, Shane and Dorcas had to leave very early--something like 4:30 AM, so we were the last to leave their place.
We decided to visit their next door neighbors yet, since they had been gone on a trip during most of the time we were nearby. They've been wonderful neighbors to Shane and Dorcas and we hated to leave without getting acquainted.
To our surprise, the wife in the household told us she is the sister-in-law of my cousin Edith. Shane had never made this connection. We had a brief but pleasant visit.
Since we left, this family has also experienced hard times. Their son Michael was injured in an accident. The first sketchy reports sounded fairly grave--unconsciousness, transportation by LifeWatch, etc., but later reports sounded better. He was alert, and apparently had no paralysis.
********************
On our way home from Colorado, we stopped to buy melons at a farm market near Rocky Ford. My mother always considered Rocky Ford melons the cream of the crop, so we didn't want to miss the opportunity to get them there. We also got some for my parents, who had helped keep the garden alive while we were gone.
*******************
Most of the way home rain clouds lingered just ahead of us, in the east. Soon after we arrived in Reno County, we finally caught up with those clouds, and we got dumped on before we got home. Our rain gauge showed .9 inch of rain. It had fallen in several showers while we were gone--perfect for the soil being able to absorb a maximum amount of moisture.
*******************
Today I taught my last Sunday School class for the year. It was a good teaching experience, but I'm happy right now for one less weekly obligation. The girls I taught are in their mid-teens and are unlikely to all be in the same class next year, so they're feeling a little uncertain about the changes coming up.
As it is, with Farmer's Market and school teaching, I've been getting up seven days a week with an away-from-home "job" awaiting me that day. I could not sustain this indefinitely. It's a pity that good things conflict so often with other good things.
posted by Mrs. I at
7:18 PM
1 Comments:
I thought of you this week when I tried a new way of using acorn squash. While some of my family used tortilla chips for a make your own taco salad, I substituted baked acorn squash. I've enjoyed several times throughout the week. It is a quick lunch to warm up the squash and meat and then thrown on your already chopped veggies, topped with salsa and lite ranch dressing. - Linda L.
By
Anonymous, at 9/04/2009
Post a Comment
<< Home