I finally did it.

I've been dragging my feet for some time, but Saturday at Southwest Writers a number of members said that Facebook was a good place to advertise your books. So I opened up a facebook site. It's amazing how many Wayland grads are on it and I've gotten back in touch with after nearly 30 years. No so much luck with high school friends. I'm still trying to get used to the ins and outs of it.

Penni's day one year later

Last July Penni wanted to come back to New Mexico. She knew her time was growing short and needed to visit our Dad's grave. The previous August she drove out here for his funeral, but spent that day in the hospital with a bowel blockage and had to be medevaced back to Texas. The Dallas Morning News was running a seried of articles on Palliative care and she was one the patients they were following. For this trip they sent a staff photographer, Sonya N. Hancock with video and still cameras.
After flying into Albuquerque they spent the night in a hotel. I loaned them (Penni, David, Michelle and Sonya) my little Elantra for the trip to Santa Fe. I drove up with them in my Windstar with Mom, Linda, Melissa, and Eddie.
First stop was the National Cemetary in Santa Fe.


Penni with Mom and her husband, David.




After letting Penni spend as much time as she needed, we then drove to the Santa Fe Plaza.
We parked by a clothing store and did some shopping.




After buying a few items we headed towards the La Fonda Hotel to eat in their restaurant for some green chile.

After a nice lunch we took a leisurely stroll through the Native American vendors that have been selling their wares here for three hundred years.

Sonya then treated all of us to ice cream.

Leaving Santa Fe we then drove to Glorieta prayer gardens where Penni and David were married. (Aside, fittingly while we were holding our service and spreading Penni's ashes around the Cross that is behind the gazebo in this picture there was a wedding taking place at the same time.)

All of us in the Gazebo.

We all headed home, but Penni wasn't ready to head back to the hotel. On the way back they decided to go up the Tram which goes from the base of Sandia Mountain to the Crest.

Penni and Michelle looking out over Albuquerque from the top of the mountain.

They stopped by my house and spent some time with Richie who stayed home with Christina and Daniel.

Penni holding our kitty, Pippin.

The hardest part of the day was saying goodbye.

We recently received these pictures on a disc from Sonya and copies of the special reprint of the five part series the Dallas Morning news printed from Dec. 14-21, 2008.

These are a very few of the more than 600 pictures Sonya took over a six month period for this special.

A long day over. Penni's wish fulfilled.

At Peace

The bench was placed around the cross instead of the gazebo at Glorieta. Actually a better location as a place of contemplation and prayer.


This is the bench with the plaque. May it be used for much prayer and contemplation.

Mom and Penni's daughter, Michelle, spreading ashes.

Penni's wish fulfilled.

Mom's posted about this as well.

Emperical Evidence

Paul Krugman posted these on his blog.

There is something obviously wrong when a Senator gets applauded for calling the climate change which in the next twenty to fifty years will kill millions of people and cause who knows what havoc a hoax. Is the money being paid to him by corporations afraid of losing profits should we take sensible steps to halt this process really worth all this?

Double Whammy

I take off yesterday for my regular round of golf with the gaggle, come home, get on the 'puter to check e-mail and find out Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett-Majors-O'Neil have died.
The media circus for both of them won't subside for some time.
I came of age in the 70's and Farah was bigger in that decade than Marilyn Monroe was in the 50's. For the record. I did not own her poster. Grinnygranny wouldn't let me buy one. We did enjoy watching Charlie's Angels.
I was never a fan of Michael Jackson's music. His video of Thriller came out the second year of teaching and my 7th grade girls that year hounded me into showing the class the video (with administrative approval).
Everyone who lived in that decade and remembers it has felt a part of their lives die with the loss of these two celebrities, and as such all the media circus is justified, even with all the problems facing the world today. With Farah the media, her fans and everyone in general were prepared for the news. Micheal was a shock. It came out of the blue and he was so young.

Death has been a companion in my family for two years. Yesterday's news mirrored in a peculiar way all we've endured. When we learned Dad had cancer and was given a month to live he'd suffered from dementia for a number of years. We were sad and when the time came deeply grieved, but comforted knowing the pain was over and he'd lived a long and prosprous life. Penni's struggle with cancer lasted four years, but when her days came to an end last December the grief was magnified by knowing her life was so tragically short.
Tomorrow we meet to place a plaque on a bench by the gazebo in the prayer gardens at Glorieta in her memory and spread her ashes.

Vans

Grinnygranny and the kids on our trip to San Antonio.

My late father-in-law fell and hurt himself. They called and I went down. I couldn't talk my MIL into calling for an ambulance and all I had to take him to the hospital was the Ranger extended cab. The kids were also getting too big for them to ride in the drop seats. So we bought our first mini-van. It was a used '92 Ford Aerostar. A crazy thing happened. The dealership had a promotion that for buying a vehicle you got a free vacation. There were a few cities to choose from and we chose San Antonio. What started off as a nice family vacation over spring break turned into a family extravaganza. Mom and Dad decided they'd like to go with us in their RV. Penni and her family joined in. Bruce was living in Houston at the time and so was Penni's brother-in-law and his family. When everyone showed up we had seventeen trying to find a table at the Hard Rock Cafe on the River Walk.

The day we left it snowed and we dodged zero visibility all the way down to Ft. Stanton. From there we went to Fredricksburg. We stayed at KOA's on the drive. The so-called free vacation included a room at the Mariott River Walk, which was nice. Everyone else stayed at the KOA. For three days and two nights we toured the River Walk, a really great attraction, went to Sea World, walked through the Alamo. went up the space needle and over all had a fantastic time. Upon checking out having to pay for parking, the lodging tax and a couple of other expenses not covered by the company responsible for our "free vacation", it was just a little bit more than staying at the KOA. San Antonio has a really nice KOA, if you're into those kinds of accomodations. It had a movie room at night a barbeque pit for diiner, and a nice swimming pool. This was the first trip outside of NM we took as a family. We've been traveling fairly regularly ever since. If your traveling cross-country vans are the best way to go.

At White Sands National Monument. The kids are on the sands not the van.

The Aerostar had one major problem. A lousy transmission. Ford has an overdrive on their automatic transmissions. If your going up a steep hill or pulling something you use the drive otherwise you use O on the shift. Between 35 and 40 it would shift and down shift back and forth. Intown driving is pretty constant at that speed. We had the transmission completely rebuilt and it didn't fix the problem. Still with both our parents aging and the kids getting bigger we needed a van. Our next one was a green '96 Windstar. The passenger seats in the Windstar are a lot more comfortable than they were in the Aerostar. We would still be driving this one if not for one big problem. It had bad brakes. They had to be replaced at 24,000 miles and adjusted every time you did an oil change. Ford went on the cheap for an ABS system. They purposely had too little brake fluid, which kept the brakes from locking in a panic stop.

I was turned off by Ford. The last make of van I wanted was another Windstar and we were looking at a Chevy to replace it, but when we compared it with the newer version of the Windstar we chose a silver '99 version. Ford fixed the braking and transmission problems. We still have it and have put on over a hundred thousand miles on it. It's been down to San Antonio a couple of times while E was in basic training and tech school with the Air Force. We've taken it up to Nebraska to visit BIL and his family. Numerous trips to Oklahoma to vist E when he was stationed in Altus and up to see Bruce. The miles were really put on it when Autypesty took it to Canton as she was helping out Mom with Dad and Penni. It has the sweetest ride on the highway. Mom thinks of it as hers and has treatened us with death and destruction if we get rid of it.

We did look at replacing it with a Freestar, but Ford went brain dead by adding two thousand pounds making it way too sluggish and reduced gas mileage. Ford killed the Freestar and doesn't make a mini-van anymore.

Rangers

Over the last twenty years, I've had four Ford Ranger pickups. The first was a Canyon Red 1985 plain Jane. We bought a white camper shell. This was before seat belt laws. We found four real thick cushions, placed them in the bed and E would ride back there. He loved it.

The next one was a 1990 light blue with silver trim (Dallas Cowboys colors) Six cylinder extended cab. It had standard transmission, but was so much easier to drive with air conditioning and power steering. The kids sat in the back drop seats. We bought a silver camper shell that made it look fantastic.

Grinnygranny drove them more than I did. She went through a phase where she liked trucks. While she was driving them I got stuck with a Honda Aero .125 motor scooter. I worked one mile from the school where I was teaching so I really didn't need much of a ride. I went through a series of clunkers until the kids got too big for the drop seats in the blue Ranger. We traded it in on our first van (which will be the subject of my next post).

I finally got to pick out my own Ranger. I didn't choose wisely. The clunker I was driving lost it's heating so I found a 1996 white plain Jane. It wasn't until I'd driven it for a week I finally figured out there wasn't enough leg room. Which I couldn't figure out. The first Ranger had plenty of leg room, why didn't this one? It was a long bed, which cut off about four inches in the cab. I couldn't wait until I had enough equity in it to trade it in on my last Ranger. I picked out a 1999 Jalepeno Green regular cab with air conditioning, power steering, but it still had a standard transmission. The only problem was that I bought it in June and in August transferred schools from across town to two blocks from home. I was back to not needing a vehicle.