TRAVEL

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First, I would like to thank those of you who have been kind enough to enquire about me and mine. Lloyd is back in the hospital (after a couple of months in the care home) for refusing to eat and take his meds as well as threatening the staff. I have a feeling that this will be a cycle for the foreseeable future.

Speedy has finished his Advanced Obedience Class. He passed his Canine Good Citizen certification test (by the skin of his teeth. He has a spring under his tail that bounces his hind end up immediately after he completes his "SIT".) I need to send off for the certificate and tag.

Meanwhile, I have been attempting to (re)build a normal life. I've been attempting to sort out thirty years of accumulated stuff with the intention of not having to do thirty-five years worth when I get ready to retire. I also have attended church, joined a book discussion group at the library, did the Summer Reading Challenge on Goodreads and looked up some friends of long-standing.

The weekend of August 16th, my sister and I drove up to Minneapolis to see my high school friend, Doc Anne. (We had lost touch with one another shortly after graduation, and only found one another again through the sad event of her brother's death.)

We had a great visit. We chatted as though we had only been separated a few weeks. Although I had never met Dan, her husband, he seemed so familiar that we must have been good friends in a former life. As I had never been in Minnesota, they took me on a tour of Minneapolis featuring the park around the stone-arched railway trestle across the Mississippi River and the sculpture garden. My sister decided to spend the day resting in the motel room, but joined us for supper.

On the way home we stopped at our home town: my sister had lunch with her mother-in-law and I lunched with another friend, Alice, whom I have seen infrequently since school days. She's working at the newspaper now. She has a son, who is married now and living out of state.

I drove past the house that I still think of as my Dad's. There's a For Sale sign in the yard. No, I'm not even thinking of buying: I'm in the process of renovating Lloyd's and my house. The current owner probably should tear the house down and make the property into a parking lot.

The word of the day for September 4, 2009 is "travel" — Pronunciation: \'tra-vəl\
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): trav·eled or trav·elled; trav·el·ing or trav·el·ling \'tra-və-liŋ, 'trav-liŋ\
Etymology: Middle English travailen, travelen to torment, labor, strive, journey, from Anglo-French travailler
Date: 14th century
transitive verb 1 a : to journey through or over. b : to follow (a course or path) as if by traveling. 2 : to traverse (a specified distance). 3 : to cover (an area) as a commercial traveler

Our quote for the day is from Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Of Travel:

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.

;^)

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