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Baby Steps…

I’ve been wanting to ‘cut the cord’ with various forms of Social Media for a while, but have not quite been able to make the break. Despite all of the negatives, they do make it easy to keep in touch with family and friends. And the memories. I do love reading through the memories – all those things we shared with others – or they with us – over the past decade. 

I don’t know how having such easy communication has made us less connected. We know hardly anyone writes real letters – but no one sends email anymore either. We can’t even count on the once a year connection of Christmas cards, since so many people have stopped sending them.  Meanwhile, the Social Media that ‘connected’ us all has become a sea of memes and ads and very little real connection. 

So. Here we are. This is my attempt to connect – in a similar, yet different way. I don’t know what the final answer will be. But expect a Christmas card from us — and maybe we’ll even start writing letters again. Stranger things have happened.

Garden Notes

We moved some plants around this year with varying degrees of success. In the past, we mixed in vegetable plants with the decorative ones in the borders, but this year we marked off dedicated space for vegetables and planted seeds directly into the ground in early June. Lettuce, broccoli, and peas were early successes. The chard is plentiful and the borage seems happy as well.

The tomatoes have been slow, but we have new red ones every day now. We should be overrun with zucchini by this time of year, but we’re just now getting our first ones. Asparagus was a total failure.

Luckily, the Anaheim chiles are doing well. We picked and roasted a few last weekend and are looking forward to using them in all manner of dishes – from soup to green chile cheeseburgers.



Zen Weekend

Between preparing and selling our old house, The Kid’s work responsibilities and foreign travel, then packing him up and moving him to a new place – we’ve all been quite busy, stressed and basically exhausted. During those weeks, we promised ourselves a weekend away when it was all over.

With a Wodehouse audiobook for the road, we left after work Friday for Glenwood Springs. We had a suite room booked, and a five hour premium package at our favorite hot springs.

After a leisurely Saturday morning, we headed to the hot springs where we soaked in a dozen different pools inspired by hot springs around the world –

– from Japan, to Italy, to Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, to the Dead Sea,

sampled various poolside cocktails

and enjoyed lunch with a river view.

Everyone was hot, tired and thirsty, naturally, so we stopped for ice cream. Later, we had an excellent Indian meal, and a quiet evening in our room.

We were disappointed the little bookstore we visited last time was no longer in business, but we filled our time with something else we’d been meaning to do – and hiked up the hill to the old cemetery to visit the grave of Doc Holliday.

It was a lovely weekend – just what we were hoping for.

There may have been some talk of a repeat trip in cooler weather…