Grenada

I'm back from my vacation to Grenada, and it was a blast! I really enjoyed it, and the best part was getting to spend time with my friend who's going to school down there. It was so much fun.

The only travel issues I had were on the trip down there. I flew from DFW to Miami, Miami to San Juan and then San Juan to Grenada. They delayed us leaving DFW for about 40 minutes because they had too much fuel on the plane and had to off-load a bunch. True. Then on final descent into Miami there was a plane on the runway, so our pilot hit the gas and began climbing. We had to go around and try again. All of which would have been just typical travel events, except that I only had an hour between flights in Miami. Luckily my Miami-to-San Juan flight was also delayed.

I arrived in Grenada at about 8:30 at night and my friend picked me up at the airport and for the next week we played. Well, I played the whole week. Two of those days she had to go to classes, but the other days we ran around. She lives at a resort which sits up above a beach (BBC beach?). We spent time strolling the beach and also swimming, generally in the morning before it got too hot. The climb back to the hotel is steep and in the heat it's not very fun. There are a million flowering plants along the way though, so it's beautiful and sweet smelling. It doesn't matter if you take your time. The bird in the picture above is a little blue heron who was hunting from the rocks along the shoreline. He was polite enough to stay still and let us take pictures. The bird later down in the blog is a night heron and he was hunting up on the shore. You can also see in this top picture that the sky was grey rather than blue. I'll talk about that later.

One of the days I was there we took a car and drove to the "Seven Sisters" Falls in Grand Etang Forest Reserve. We took the 'scenic' route since roads are ... less than well marked, but it was a lot of fun and I got to see a fair amount of the island. Grand Etang is a reserve in the center of the island. It is tropical rain forest and it includes the highest peak on the island, which is just under 3000 feet high. One of the things to do in Grenada is to 'jump' the Seven Sisters, which means to jump off each of the seven falls into the pool below. We didn't do this. One of those falls is said to be a 35 foot drop and I'm kind of a chicken. So we hiked out to the last two falls you jump and waded in the pools below them. We also hiked to Honeymoon Falls which is shown in the picture to the right. Hiking in tropical jungle was a fun adventure and I'm glad to have done it, but all told, I think I prefer the mountains, and less heat.

We also saw part of the birth of a calf. A cow was giving birth on a small farm near the trail, so we saw the front legs and nose emerging as we hiked in, and arrived in time to see the afterbirth and watch the calf take it's first steps and drink it's first meal. We kind of wanted to watch the whole thing, but didn't know how long it would take. We had a guide for this hike, and he identified and showed all sorts of plants to us, including cinnamon and nutmeg trees. It was totally fun.

An interesting phenomenon was taking place while I was in Grenada. I thought that it was really foggy and wondered why the fog wasn't burning off. Come to find out, it was Sahara dust. At times dust from the Sahara Desert crosses the Atlantic and blankets the eastern Caribbean. It was amazing. Of course the sky wasn't it's usual brilliant blue, but also the sun wasn't beating down on us continuously, so I felt like it was a fair trade-off. That explains the grey sky in the first picture.

We also went to St. George University where my friend goes to medical school and toured the school. The campus itself is absolutely gorgeous, as well as being surrounded by the most amazing scenery and views.

I had to laugh, though. Grenada has the usual laid-back, get-to-it-when-you-get-to-it lifestyle, and into that you put all these type A medical students. I can see why my friend occasionally gets really frustrated trying to get things done. Luckily for me, on vacation things just aren't urgent. We could take things as they came.

The last night I was there we went to a restaurant called Aquarium. The food was great and you sit out on an open veranda. It was night so we couldn't see the undoubtedly gorgeous view, but there was a lovely breeze off the ocean and the whole thing felt special. Actually, the whole trip felt that way. I hope to do it again some time.

Is it summer yet?

Actually I'd settle for just Spring. This picture is my peach tree, blossoming in our most recent snowfall, which was March 20th. I was at a meeting in Chicago on this day and it snowed all day there. When I returned the next day it had snowed here and this is what my poor little peach tree looked like. Luckily, it didn't drop below freezing so it doesn't look like the blossoms or tree were harmed by the snow.

Unfortunately despite all these blossoms, and now new leaves, the limbs on the back half of the tree are dead. You can't tell from the house because the house side looks like this, but there are no blossoms or new leaves on the half of the tree facing away from the house. I'll have to either cut them off or hire someone to come and do it.

My aloe vera also were snowed on. Yes, the ones I had saved by dragging them into my garage. I left them out when I went to Chicago, and it snowed! Maybe I should pay a little closer attention to the weather forecast, especially when we've been having such a cold year. They also look like they'll be okay, probably because it didn't freeze.

The forecast says it will probably get up to 80 sometime later this week, which apparently will be the first time in about five months and is close to another record. That should reinforce how cold this winter has been for us this year, although they say it's only about the 8th coldest year on record. I'm not sure how they determine that .... most cold days in a row? Lowest temperatures? Lowest temperatures for longest period? *shrugs* Don't know, but this year has seemed pretty cold to me.

My roses are just starting to put out good leaves again after being frozen earlier in the year. And my grass is just starting to grow ... *laughing* just in time to be nice and long by the time I get back from vacation. I'm taking a week starting next Thursday and going to visit a friend in a hot and sunny place. I'm seriously looking forward to it. Which reminds me, I've got a lot of house-cleaning and packing to do before I go, so I'm making this short today. Just wanted to post the picture of the peach tree in the snow.

Starting to warm up

This has really been a much colder year than usual. I was looking at last year's posts and at this time last year I had planted a rose bush and on March 17th I mowed my lawn for the first time of the year. This year, here it is the 13th and the grass is just barely starting to come up in front and not yet showing in the back. My roses started to leaf out and got frozen in the snow. They're beginning to leaf out again, and the peach is just starting to bud out. We've had 2 days that hit low 70s, but it's been generally mid-60s during the day and 40 at night.

It's also been a lot wetter. The news says all the reservoirs, lakes and rivers are at capacity, so we'll have to watch for flooding. *laughing* It's always something, huh? I'd rather have the water than drought, I think.

I've made some progress with the yearly shrub trimming. Mid-60s is actually pretty perfect temps for outside work, though it's cooler than I like for outside stuff in general. I was 'helped' by the snow, in that I trimmed back those big yaupons while they were half-uprooted and laying in my front yard. Saved me having to get on a ladder to trim them. Then I tried to get them back in the ground and upright. The one close to the door should do okay. The other one will survive I think, but it's hanging so far out into the yard that I may have to take it out (or have it taken out). *laughing* My Colorado sister, Monica, called me during/after the snow saying, 'you need to shake that snow off the shrubs/trees or they break'. Too late!Shaking heavy wet snow off of foliage is not knowledge that we usually need down here, just like owning snow shovels isn't something we do. It was pretty amusing watching people shovel snow with dirt shovels.

Monica, her son Brian and his wife Jordan and my grand-niece Julia came down in February to help celebrate my Mom's 80th birthday. We tried to keep it a surprise and the whole Colorado gang descended upon east Texas with me. We had a blast. The weather cooperated mostly and my parents got to play with their kids, grand-kids and great-grand kids. It's amazing to think of four generations. We had a pretty nice group there, with all five of us sibs making it. So we had us five siblings and our parents, plus parts of the siblings families that could come. Besides Brian, Jordan and Julia, we had my brother Gordon's wife, Susan, and youngest son, Ben, my sister Caryn's husband, Rob, and my sister Lynne's son, Jason. It was a nice gathering.

My grand-niece is 21 months old, so she's on the go constantly. We had lots of fun with her. My parents feed a very friendly feral cat and Julia wanted badly to pet it. They were pretty shy of each other, but after some mutual maneuvering around the yard, Julia got to pet it with her Dad's help. Soooooo cute. She gets that curly hair from her Dad. Brian had a mop of thick curly blond hair when he was a toddler.

I have two business trips next week. Tomorrow I'm leaving for the one in Anaheim, then I have one in Chicago at the end of the week. This is going to be a fairly busy year, so I should be getting a bunch of frequent flyer miles.

I'm taking a week of vacation time and going down to Grenada the first week in April to visit a friend. *happy sigh* It's nice to have friends in exotic places. That way you have an excuse to go there. You not only get to visit with someone you haven't seen in a while, you get to see a place you might not have seen otherwise. We should have an amazing time, and I'm already seriously looking forward to it, even though I can't spend much time planning for it until I get these other trips out of the way. *laughing* Okay, that's a lie. I'm already thinking about what to take to Grenada, what I'll need, what to leave here, who to get to check on the cats, etc, etc.

Speaking of the cats, I grew some grass for them. Really. They've been going out and searching for grass along the patio, but because of the cold year, there's nothing growing out there, not even weedy grass. So I got one of those 'grow-your-cat-some-grass' things last weekend and planted it on Saturday afternoon. Yesterday afternoon the grass was three to four inches tall! So I put it down where they could reach it and it's a tremendous hit with them. They both chewed on it for a good while and still periodically go back and chew on it. And no, they're not throwing it up around the house. Apparently it's good grass. Hmmmmm. Maybe if I periodically grow them their own grass they won't go out and eat that weedy grass with the black seed stalks and come in throwing it up on my new carpet. Worth a try.

Anyway, I should start putting things together for my trip tomorrow.

SNOW!!!

Anyone who lives in this area knows what my post will be about today. We officially had 12.5 inches of snow here on Thursday. That's the most EVER recorded for a single day in Dallas. It snowed continuously and heavily from 3:00 am, all through the day and until around midnight. Huge wet sloppy flakes. I took a few pictures. Of course. It's not like I've ever seen it like this around here. This picture to the right was taken Friday morning, looking out my front door toward my little tree over my mailbox ... which looks like a shrub, all weighted down and hanging on the ground. Luckily I didn't have any limbs break on my two little trees.

Dallas dodged at least one large bullet despite the unprecedented snowfall. It never froze. Well it froze last night, but it didn't freeze while the streets were wet and snowy and slushy. They were calling for freezing temperatures every night but it hovered at 33 degrees. So although the work commute wasn't as smooth as usual, there was no ice. No commute at 10-15 mph for 30 miles. I was so happy about that. I could actually enjoy the snow, since it didn't cause me too much trouble.

That being said, I had a flat tire on my way home from work Thursday. I ended up having to change a tire on my car in a snowstorm, standing in ankle deep slushy ice water. Not my most favorite memory. And yes, I have an auto club service. But it only took me about 30 minutes to change it, even in less-than-great conditions, and there's no telling how long it would have taken the autoclub people to get to me. Of course, I was pretty cold, with soaked and icy feet and hands by the time I finished.

Yesterday I went out and spent about four hours cutting back the yaupon in front of my house. I could do it without standing on a ladder even though they've overgrown up to the roof because the weight of the snow partially uprooted them and they were hanging over into my yard. You can see from this picture that they were not quite upright. Usually this one is rubbing under and along the roof edge you see here. So I cut them back and righted them as much as I could yesterday. The one at the far corner of the house I may have to take out. It's hanging way over into the yard and if it doesn't straighten up it will be impossible to mow under. We'll see. I think the one by the front door, which is the one in this picture, may do okay. There are mockingbirds who nest in these yaupons and yesterday morning when I left to run some errands one little mocker was sitting forlornly on a branch sticking out of this snow-covered, bent-over yaupon.

Quite a bit of the snow is still around. Friday it only got to about 36, so only streets were melted, but yesterday I think it got to about 45. The snow was melted enough out of the yaupons to let me cut them back without too much problem, and it wasn't too cold for me to work comfortably out there. And you know how I hate cold. Of course I was bundled up, but it was still not bad. Today there's still snow in yards, but concrete is clear and most trees and shrubs are clear.

This picture is what my peach tree and backyard looked like on Friday morning when I left for work. Everything was absolutely pristine and snow covered. Of course, I'm one of the lucky ones. The news said 200,000 people were without power from snapped and downed electrical lines. And many, many people have damage to house, car or property from broken off and downed tree limbs, or even whole trees. The funniest thing was watching people try to shovel their driveways with regular dirt shovels. No one around here has any reason to own a snow shovel. Plus the cities have no contingency plan for lots of snow. They have sanding trucks galore, but we didn't need sand. We needed snow plows. So there were definitely some amusing aspects of the situation. Amusing in retrospect of course. Even a snowy tire-change is amusing in retrospect. I can't print the words I was screaming as I realized I had a flat tire, and was getting over and off the highway. I had to replace the tire since I drove on it flat, but at least the wheel rim was okay. I wasn't staying on the side of the highway to change that thing, and the next exit wasn't that far.

So we had some snowy advneture days here in the South. It's okay occasionally, but I hope it's not going to happen a lot. I really will have to move farther south.

Shopping!!!! :D

I really love to shop. It just makes me incredibly happy. I'm sure it's a serious personality flaw, but oh well. I'd like to claim that I'm simply doing my part to stimulate the economy, but the truth is, I just love to spend money.


From the title you can probably tell what I've been doing today. My intentions were good when I started out. I was going to run a couple of minor errands and shop for that oh-so-elusive 80th Birthday gift for my Mom. I did do those things .... too.


Here's how the morning went:


I left the house about 8:00 am, and started out by taking clothes to the cleaners. I think this may have been the only stop I made today that I didn't buy something, and of course I will buy their services when I go back to pick up those clothes. Next was Walmart for a hand vacuum, a current/voltage detector and a couple of surge protectors. Then I ran over to PetSmart to stock up on cat food and cat litter, and stopped by Staples while I was near to get some sheet protectors for trading cards. Next I went to Michael's (crafts and hobbies place) and got some poster frames because I ran out in January hanging calendars. Then I went to the Mall. While I was at the Mall I stopped in Barnes & Noble (bought a book ... yes, only one), J.C.Penney (bought clothes), Christopher & Banks (bought clothes) and Macy's (bought clothes) and window-shopped at multiple jewelry stores. I managed not to go into any jewelry stores, so no purchases there. Ah! I went into Things Remembered and didn't buy anything, so that was two places this morning where I didn't spend money. After leaving the Mall, I ran by Fry's Electronics for a possible gift idea and bought it. Then I stopped for gas (bought gas), and stopped at a fast food place to pick up lunch (bought food). I pulled back into my garage about 12:10.


*laughing* Not bad, huh? That's nine stops (counting the Mall as one), or 13 places I went to where I could have spent money. And I did spend money at 11 them. Pretty good average. And in only four hours. That's what I call a productive morning. I'm lucky all those places are within about a 5 mile radius of my house.


No, there's nothing wrong with RoboVac. I've been wanting a small hand vacuum for those small spills of cat litter or other things that I hate getting the upright or Robo out for. Robo still does a great job. Zoe is getting to the point that she doesn't run and hide whenever it's running, although she still stays well clear of it. Addy ignores it completely.


It's nice and sunny out today, if somewhat cooler than I like. It's about 45 degrees, give or take a few degrees. I'm watching the morning temps these days so I can drag the aloe vera back into the garage if necessary. This morning it was 38. It's supposed to stay above freezing until Tuesday, then hit 26 again. We've had a LOT of freezes this winter. We usually get one, maybe two good solid freezes a winter, so this one has been unusual. We call those "hard freezes". That's a Southern term and it means a freeze down into the mid-20's or lower, as opposed to a freeze right at 32 degrees or hovering just below freezing. I'm not sure where the term "hard freeze' started, but Northerners don't use it, so I suspect it originated with the citrus growers. Probably if it's going to be a 'hard freeze' they have to start countermeasures to save their crops. Just a guess.


Hmmmmmm. since I was so productive this morning, maybe I'll continue and get some house chores done.

Later.

Success!

It's been a fairly productive day so far for a Saturday. I got up and ran to Walmart at around 7:00 am. My new chair was being delivered between 10:00 am and noon, so I wanted to get a couple of errands run first.

One of the things I bought at Walmart this morning was a 'tree' floor lamp, a lamp with three staggered fixtures on it. I had a lamp like that before but it disintegrated when I moved it to replace the flooring. Literally, the base crumbled into fragments when I picked it up to move it. So I bought another one this morning and when I got home I assembled it. Of course it requires three 60 W light bulbs and I only had 75 W bulbs that weren't in use. I went around the house switching out 75 W bulbs for 60 W bulbs in light fixtures, until I had three. Then when I put them in, the top of the three fixtures on the new lamp wouldn't light up! Of course I tried more than one bulb. I think everyone's made that mistake.

That left me with a dilemma. Take the lamp back to the store since it doesn't work right? As you probably know if you've been reading this very long, I hate making multiple store trips, and especially for a $20.00 lamp. So I figured, what the the hell. It's broken anyway, I'll take it apart. That's something that I enjoy ... disassembling things to see how they work. I took the fixture apart (yes, I unplugged the lamp first) and figured out how it worked. The on/off switch fell into pieces as I was taking it apart, but it was pretty obvious how it was supposed to operate. So I re-assembled it so that it should work correctly, and I'll be damned if the crazy thing doesn't work fine now. Go figure. While I was fooling with it though, I realized that I need to get one of those devices that lets you test whether there's current to a couple of leads because that's the one thing I couldn't check when I had the fixture apart ... whether current was reaching it. Still, if something's broken and not worth getting a professional to fix it, might as well try to fix it myself, is what I think. I'm going to discard it anyway, so nothing's lost if I can't fix it, and maybe I can. This time it worked.

My chair was delivered on time and I've already sat in it and watched a TV program with Zoe in my lap. This picture is of her breaking in the new chair herself, although you can almost not see the chair for all the protection I have over it while the cats get used to it. I think Zoe's figured out that she can't get under it, so they'll have to give up on that as a hiding place. Which is fine. I have worries about them and the recliner/rocker mechanisms if someone sits in it while they're under it. Now, I hope I can keep the cat-kids from destroying it too quickly. I'm glad I went with the red (Burgundy) chair instead of the blue, even though it isn't even close to the wall color. It's far enough from the wall not to clash, and it's the same shade of red/burgundy in the pattern on my couch. Works.

The old chair is in the garage. Yesterday evening I tried to drag it out the front door and got it stuck in the doorway. Luckily a young couple were walking by with their baby in a stroller (it's been in the mid-70s here this last week). The guy offered to help and I accepted. It only had to go five more feet into the garage, but we had to unwedge it from the door. People are just generally nice, I think. So this next week I should be able to drag it to the curb for the garbage folks.

After the chair was delivered I made a trip out to the place I found that takes chemicals, old paint, batteries, etc. I finally got that leaky battery out of my garage and gone. So see. Fairly productive day. It's raining now, so my productivity has come to a grinding halt. I was considering getting out and trimming shrubbery since the weather has been so warm. About an hour ago though it began a steady, mild rain. This being Texas, it could clear up within the next hour, but I think they're calling for rain the rest of the day, clearing out tonight. Oh, darn. Guess I'll have to find something inside to amuse myself. It feels weird not to have to move anything or rearrange anything or clean anything. Weird, but nice. I suppose I'll be forced to just enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Two posts

I did get two posts in this weekend. Surprise, surprise. Of course it's a three-day weekend, so that helps.

I've been fairly productive actually. My house and garage are both organized and neat. And I actually sealed all the grout on my new tile yesterday. That was something of a chore, but I've been waiting to do it. The grout sealer stuff says to do it in a well ventilated area, with the house opened up or whatever. It hasn't really been warm enough since I had the tile installed to have the house wide open until yesterday. It reached about 66 yesterday afternoon, which is a lot warmer than it's been. So I opened all the doors and windows and sealed grout. The cats where immensely helpful, meaning that they were in my way and determined not to stay out of the stuff that says to keep pets away for about 2 hours. They just tracked through it like it was no big deal and had no clue why I was so excitable. To me the smell was strong ... not really unpleasant like some chemicals, just strong. They didn't seem to mind the smell at all and made no effort to avoid the stuff. Weird. Plus Addy has a strong drive to get into whatever I don't want her in. She probably would have ignored the stuff if I hadn't been trying to keep her out of it.

Here's a picture of the two of them sitting looking out the open door. They're still somewhat wary about going outside. The black demon terror shows up just often enough to keep us all on our toes. And yes, that huge, fuzzy, calico-colored creature is a cat. A massively overweight, Zoe cat. I've been struggling with that because Addy has been dropping weight lately. You can't really see in this picture but her shoulder blades and hips are beginning to be a little too noticeable. She's 14 years old, so it's probably just her age, but in keeping her well-fed, I'm over-feeding Zoe. It's a balance I'm not doing well with.

I checked on-line and the City garbage service will pick up furniture from your curb if you warn them it will be there before the day of pickup. So I'll probably call them Tuesday and drag that chair out there for the Thursday regular pickup. I also discovered that there's a waste center for hazardous chemicals that takes batteries and is open on Saturday. Whatever did we do before the internet? Rhetoric question, because I know the answer. We used the yellow pages and called around and asked our friends, etc, etc. Word of mouth was probably one of the most important ways people found things. Now the internet is. I still tend to do things the old way first before I realize I can find the answer on the internet. That also dates me. Most of my friends go to the internet first without even consciously thinking about it.

My new chair is red. Burgundy, the store calls it, but it looks red to me. I hope it doesn't clash with my red wall. I actually bought a denim blue one ('paige blue' ... where do they find these names?) so there would be no possibility of a wall clash, but when I got home I realized that I really wanted the red chair. So I called the store and switched them out. Hopefully it really will be the red one that arrives next Saturday. It's a very comfortable rocker/recliner. I took my shoes off in the store and sat in it the way I usually sit at home, with my feet up under me. I wanted it to be comfortable the way I normally sit, and also even though it's not a big chair I wanted to make sure there was enough room for me to curl up with my feet up in it. And if it clashes somewhat with the wall I'll probably be the only one who notices. It won't be up against that wall anyway.

My Mom's 80th birthday is next month and my sisters and I are working on getting a sizable percentage of the family clan there. It should be a blast. I'm working on a birthday gift. It's surprisingly difficult because the styles are soooooo bad right now. My 80 year old Mom in peasant blouses or low-cut smock tops is not an attractive thought. At least I have about a month to work on it.