A Fun Night

It seems like the life I expected when retirement time came along is just a pipe dream. I am not saying in any way that what I am doing is not what I want to do. It is just that it is not what I imagined it would be. When I lived in Wheat Ridge, Colorado I considered building on an addition to our house. I envisioned a solar room that would face the morning sun. In certain respects it would have been an easy addition to do, but likely more difficult than it was in my mind. I would not try to list the number of quick and easy jobs that I started that ended up being slow and hard before they were done. At any rate I thought of myself getting up in the morning, fixing breakfast, and sitting in the solar room drinking coffee and watching the birds and squirrels in our yard while I read the newspaper or a book. All that still sounds good except for the coffee drinking. It sounds odd to say but in 1996 I quit drinking coffee, mostly by a fluke of circumstance. Somehow sitting and drink a glass of water does not seem to have the same pleasure impact of coffee or perhaps cocoa in the winter.

A lot of other things changed too. One of the biggest changes in direction was deciding that after forty years of thinking of traveling in a motorhome and seeing the country it should be a reality. So we sold the house and any dropped any possibility of building a solar room and went on the road. For several years we did whatever our whim directed us to do. There was a few thing that we did because it was one of the "right" things to do. We have seen some people that are no longer alive and are really glad we added them to our agenda. I think that our summers are going to continue that way, but it feels like our winters are changing.

When we first came to Bentsen Grove Resort we spent a lot of time attending the activities that were going on and we did not have any duties or anywhere we felt we had to be at any particular time. That started to change when I said I could burn a single custom CD of music for the instructor of the line dancing class. That led to more custom CDs for him and also for other people. Then that led to making many copies of that CD for the dancers in the class. The whole idea was to have all the songs that they dance to on one CD, but every time there are a few new songs to dance to there needs to be a new CD produced. Last year I decided that it would be a really good thing if someone was to make an instructional DVD so that the dancers could have something to watch and practice with when they were away from that "classroom" and at home. I cannot volunteer anyone else to do that no matter how good the idea might be. So the idea rattled around in my mind till I bought a camcorder last summer. I have taken many hours of video of the instruction and the class dancing. I was very naive in my estimation of the time it would require to produce a simple DVD. With no instruction from anyone that had done it I have struggled and stumbled to finally create a DVD. I am not about to say it is good, but I am willing to say it is better than nothing. Now I have a lot more respect for the editors of film that I did before. I do not think it would be wrong to say that for every minute of video that I used I discarded an hour of video, maybe more. In the process I have learned a tremendous amount about what works and what is best ignored. This is just dance class.

In the Computer Club I have been teaching (leading, directing, being mouthy in) the second, so called advanced session of the weekly meeting. I have very much decided that all it takes to become known as computer savvy is to know just one thing more than somebody else. To get that way it only takes a willingness to experiment with the different programs on a computer and not be afraid to try doing something you have not done before and learn from the mistakes made. I have told people that I am willing to help them with their computers and am willing to help them figure out what they need to know. This has led to a lot of evenings that went till 9:00 (sometimes later) of helping with a computer. That led to my suggesting that we set aside an hour, three times a week, to have a personal help workshop. That has been a lot more valuable than I would have guessed. It has also been a lot more time consuming than I hoped. Basically a lot of computer help needs take more than an hour to satisfy. Some problems can be fixed in just a couple minutes of time. I did not have to make more that the suggestion to have several people want to help. It has been good for the people that showed up to ask a question.

Recently when a front was pushed further south than normally happens a lot of the vegetation got frost damaged. A lot of plants that I have never seen without leaves have lost all their leaves. I have been spoiled in the years past here by no frost or freezing temperatures. The citrus trees do not seem to have been damaged very much. There is still so much fruit that is available that it is hard to believe. I get an offer of fruit nearly every day.

The show season is in full swing here at Bentsen Grove. There seems to be at least three professional shows a week, for which tickets have to be purchased. Then there are shows that are put on by the park residents strictly for the park residents. While the talent may be lacking in some cases it is so much fun to see people we know on stage. The most recent show was a "Fun Night With The Stars". The residents dressed up like singers and lip synced with some song of the star. Some were good enough that it was hard to tell they were not doing the actual singing. The hall was full of people that were having a good time.


THREE FRIENDS LIP SYNCING AS THE SOGGY BOTTOM BOYS

No to be right honest I never heard of the Soggy Bottom Boys either, but I have heard of the Foggy Mountain Boys. The song they sang was from "Oh Brother, Wherefore Art Thou." So maybe the singers in the movie went by that name.

Both Erma and I have been messing around with colds or something similar. I am not sure if whatever it is that I have is contagious or not. But I have been limiting my public activities to a minimal amount. It has caused some increased duties for others but I would guess that they would rather do more and have me keep the germs at home. At least I hope they think that, I would if the tables were changed.

Till later this is Uncle Duck

A BUSY Typical Day

I am very well aware that the weather here in tip of Texas is a lot warmer than it is most places in the USA. It has only gotten down to about 31 degrees for a few hours last night and maybe 32 the night before. Tonight will be somewhat higher and the temperature into the 60's tomorrow. That is a lot better than anywhere else I have heard about. Still when I retired I made a vow to go further south whenever it got too cold to wear sandals. AND IT IS TOO COLD TO WEAR SANDALS NOW! But where would I go, I am only about three miles from the Mexico border and I do not have a passport. I guess that I will just have to tough it out. In one of the blogs I follow, a daily photo blog, there was a picture of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada where the wind chill factor was down to -54 degrees. With that in consideration I guess that long pants and a flannel shirt for a couple days is not hard to take after all.

Every day here in Bentsen Grove is busy. I often think I would just enjoy a while at home to work on some project of my own without feeling obligated to help someone else or feel that I should be going to some activity in which I want to participate. Everything I do is something that I have volunteered to do for several different reasons, all of which I enjoy doing. So this comment is simply a statement and not a complaint by any means. At the end of the winter season these activities will go away and I will have plenty of time to pursue my own personal activities. I say all of this so that I can write about yesterday. It was similar to most days, but a bit fuller than usual.

I was up and ready for line dancing class from 9:00 to 12:00. There is a class four days a week, some mornings, some afternoon. While I have not been dancing all the dances because my knee has been acting up again, I have been trying to video the dances and eventually create a dance instructional video. So the whole time was busy with one thing or the other. Next was a period of time devoted to a computer workshop period. There are many people here in the park that need help with the use of computers whose needs are being addressed inadequately (at least in my opinion). So this last week I decided that to salve my conscience I had to do something. That something was to offer a workshop, with other volunteers, for individual assistance to people. Lacking a real plan, I simply said that I would be in a room every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday between 12:00 and 1:00. So I had to be ready for the workshop as soon as I was done with dancing. In actuality I was ready about 11:30. That was good because people showed up early, as they should. Other helpers showed up a few minutes early, which is even better. There is no way that I could do it by myself. Even after only three workshops that is evident. It was supposed to last until 1:00. That is written with a #2 pencil on paper and we have a big eraser. So it really lasted till 2:00. We did provide a lot of help for several people. The time would have been alright except for the fact that my quilling class started at 1:00 and I don't want to miss that. I walked home quickly and dropped off my computer, my cameras and my tripod, grabbed my box of quilling supplies and got to class over an hour late. That was still okay because I could stay and work by myself for as long as I wanted after the theoretical class ended. By 5:00 I was getting hungry, it was a long time since breakfast so I quit and went home to a meal that was nearly ready.

The instructor of the quilling class had asked me how he could get a better copy of a picture of a Monarch butterfly that he needed and was there a way to make it a different size. I told him that I would try to scan it with the computer and make something that was good. After eating I worked a while on the picture, which was B&W and came up three different sizes on a single sheet of paper so that his quillers would have a choice of sizes. Plus I went to the WWW and got a couple color pictures of Monarch butterflies so they could have a better idea of the colors for quilling. I took the pictures to his home and he wanted my opinion on some quilling that he is doing. I feel a bit odd about that because I have only been doing quilling for a few months during the last year. It may be that because I do not feel the need for strict patterns that he believes I can "think outside the box." That is a compliment to me I believe. Then on the way home I was walking along the street past a unit here in the park. I heard someone pounding on the window and looked towards it and I see an arm waving me to come over to the house. It was a request to go get Erma and come back and play a game called Pegs and Jokers with the people that lived there. We have been wanting to do just that for a couple months, but have never gotten it done. We accepted and we had a very enjoyable social evening until nearly 10:00.

This was a nearly typical day for me. Any part is not unusual at all. What is unusual is to do it all in a single day. I want to be somewhere in the South to be away from the cold weather. So we have a limited area in which to winter, the southern parts of Florida, California, Arizona, or Texas. It is because of the activities here and days like Friday that make it worth while to be here in Mission Texas.

I have mentioned my taking quilling in this and a time or two before. Quilling or paper filigree is the art of rolling thin strips of paper into different shapes and using the shapes to form designs. Quilling has been around since the Renaissance age. I started doing it in December of 2008. I quit working on it during the summer but got back into it when I returned to Bentsen Grove this season. Mostly I have been working on creating special Christmas Tree ornaments. I take a simple Christmas ball and decorate it by gluing on shaped pieces of paper. I do not have a pattern and simply place the paper where I think it looks good. I have given several as gifts, but I forgot to take pictures of them. These three are not quite complete but at least I have pictures of them. These will be complete before long and I can give them as gifts to someone also.


CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS DECORATED WITH A QUILLING TECHNIQUE

It will not be to long before it is time to go to bed so maybe I should close this out. If you are in a place that is too cold you should think about coming down here in the Valley where a LOW temperature is freezing or just close to it.

Till later this is Uncle Duck