things accomplished:
two fleamarkets visited
lots of flyers left with folks who buy/sell jewelry
still a few more pawnshops to contact
and yeah, still the irony that shops hold things for 30 days after receiving items, but the police don't look at the tags that come in...so bingo, 30 days later stuff is "released" for sale. grrrrr
adam points out that if nothing turns up, it will be ok for me to let go of "the things." he is, of course, correct.
watched lots of olympics. it's really nice that Michael Phelps is such a sweet guy. i cannot imagine 12,000 calories in a day. well, i can't imagine swimming miles over and over again either. very nice that he acknowledges how hard his mom worked, at a job, in graduate school and taking care of 3 kids on her own. a role model for hard work, he said.
nice concert at Cong Beth El in Aptos (two Iraelis, two Palestinians, playing for peace, percussion and oud, a stringed instrument) followed by Marianne's Ice Cream. OMG how wonderful that is! I had lychee and ginger!
at the fleamarket today i bought two pounds of hand-roasted peanuts. according to the SJ Giants, we can bring in peanuts, sunflower seeds and water. so far i think 18 people are coming, so we need to get some free credit union tix in addition to the 15 BBQ and entry tickets already purchased. i need to send an email confirming and getting final head count.
yum. purchased at yesterday's fleamarket venture: chile lime pistachios. i had forgotten how wonderful they are, tho a trifle hard on the tongue.
ketzl is enjoying having me home in the middle of the day. in and out. out and in. eating. a few scritches and out again.
those mccain tv ads are giving me the creeps. i just had to say that. sorry if that's a repeat.
tissue alert possible...i'll see where this goes.
i'm becoming increasingly aware of how calculated linda's planning was over the last four years. not only were we having great times together, but she was also planting wonderful flurries of memories that will last me a lifetime. that and the photographic evidence of our travels.
i have 8+ years of cards. today i found one from july 2007, before linda took off for her trip to Ohio last summer. it was an anniversary card, celebrating july 11th, one of our many dates. (you will notice that i skipped that this year. ouch.) she was looking forward to her trip, and looking forward to coming home. i look forward to collecting all of the cards, putting them in date order, and being able to access them as needed. those cards, too, are history and memories. linda had the amazing knack for finding wonderful love notes that were totally romantic but not overly mushy. and somewhere here, this is a stash of empty ones, waiting to be sent. i have them too, for all occasions: valentine's, birthday, anniversary.
side note here: looking at photographs...i can't believe that it took linda so long to get a digital camera. audrey left me the photographs from aug 1999 thru whenever linda went digital. they are sooooo dark, not the crispness we have come to expect in more recent years. but there are some nice images there...good to have them.
second side note: linda and i were such totally different photographers. she would take pictures of the people, but often so close that you could not tell where we were. me, on the other hand, i take pictures of scenery, doors, windows, signs, flags, showing where we were but not necessarily that we were there (i.e., no people in them necessarily). also linda understood her camera much better than i do mine...her macro photos, the close-ups of flowers, butterflies, bees... much better than mine. so we have a lot of what i fondly call "the restaurant photos," pictures of the two of us in many many places, where i have to think, remember what we were wearing, to figure out when and where it was.
today i talked with three friends of Linda's: Elly (and Hazel) in Ft. Lauderdale, Lucy in NJ, and Trish in NYC. Elly and Trish are from White Plains HS '66 and Lucy is from camp...this year is 45th anniversary of her first meeting Linda at Camp Owaissa. she and another friend from camp are getting together on Linda's birthday, August 21, which is this week. last year on the actual day, we were at the SJ Giants (see the picture in the celebration of life handout, with Gigante, the orange orangutan who is the team mascot). i truly think that Linda was aware it was going to be her last birthday. so maybe on thursday, let's all do something to honor linda's 60th.
