Trees

Here are a few pictures of trees in my yard. We planted 3 peach trees and a cherry last May or June, so we missed the blooming part of their life. Two of the peach trees are from Big Lots and they are still alive. In fact the pink blossom is from that tree. The white blossom is from the cherry tree that we bought at Klaerfields out in Amesville.


Last night I (Lori) went to see the Royales play at Casa. It was a great show. They are an exciting band. The lead singer puts on a great show, and the horn section is outstanding. The band reminds me of the Blues Brothers, in the type of music and their style. They are super fun and I highly recommend them. The band that opened play bluegrass/country, including 2 Johnny Cash songs, so you know they got to be good.

Here are a couple of photos taken in our yard. Enjoy.

It's springtime in Athens...

Name that modified lyric and you get a prize...

The kids are back and you can tell. Especially since the weather has been awesome, so they are everywhere hanging out of their jeeps, half naked. Yeah, I know you went south for the week and got a great tan, blah blah blah...

Well, it is nice because I have my frisbee friends back and I've been dying to play. But things are going to get busy real soon. The Athens Marathon is this Sunday, so I have prep for that and then Passover on Monday. That will be a long day. It seems I get super busy, then things slow down. I hope they slow down in late April and May, because that is the best time to be in Athens. Not only is it beautiful with the trees in bloom, but the town is alive with culture and life. The International Film Fest starts it off and then is followed by the Literary Fest and the International Street Fair. Oh yes, and I can't forget that UPA College Nationals are going to be in Columbus again. Excitement all around.

Tale of the woeful Car, Part deuce

The Truck.

On Monday, Kent came home to a hissing sound. When he pulled into the driveway and opened his door the rear tire was losing air. He quickly found the hole but there wasn't much he could do as he watch the tire deflate.

That's two vehicles out of commission.

The next morning we changed the tire, I mean, Kent changed the tire. I watched. He got a ride to work and I brought the tire down to Appalachian Tire to get it patched. Thirty minutes and 13 bucks later, all is good and I drive out to Mo's to work for Herbal Sage, with the spare still on. I get to the intersection before her house and I hear "hisssssssss". F*ck. What is with us, do we have bad car karma or something. What did we do??? Thankfully we have AAA and I had them do the dirty work.

Kent took the spare tire down to Huddle Tire who patched it for free. (I know where I am buying my next set of tires.) It's been 2 days since we had anything go wrong with a car, but I am still going to keep to my bike and own 2 feet.

Tale of the Woeful Car, Part I

Last Thursday, Kent and I were heading off to pick up Carol and go to a birthday party. Driving down Madison we stopped at the bottom to turn left and we heard a loud clunk come from the rear of the car. Like maybe we had just run over a street sign, or maybe the muffler fell off. So we pull over and look behind the car and on the street and didn't see anything unusual so we travelled on. We were running late (of course) and I wanted to get to Carol's and on to the party. So off we go for this short drive and we continue to hear the clunking. It is really loud. It sounds like there is a person in the trunk beating on the inside. Of course, it's erratic so it's hard to tell if it happens when we go over bumps or around curves, turning left or turning right. It doesn't seem to follow a pattern. Luckily nothing is very far in Athens, so we pick up Carol and go the party. We'll deal with it later.

After the party we drive Carol home, still clunking, and go home ourselves. This is where it gets fun. Kent jacks up the driver side rear tire. It is definitely making noise. That funny, creaky, clunking noise. We look at the shocks and it does perhaps look broken, but being the un-connoiseur of cars, I really have no idea. Kent being curious decides to jack up the other side and compare. Well that worked. We jacked it up and it looked different. Then we hear a loud Crack! The other side breaks completely and we have a low rider... On the rear driver side at least.

Diagnosis: broken shock absorber.

Kent has most graciously jumped into the fixit process once again. He ordered the shocks online (he's replacing both, so we have equal springiness on each side) as well as new brake pads. I expect he'll get some help from our neighbor, Jim, who has a "coil compressor" or "spring compressor"? Anyhow, all I know is that both rear tires are off and the car is up on jacks. I'll leave the rest to him.

Ghost Town

That's what Athens is right now. I don't remember so many restaurants, shops and even bars closing down over spring break. I guess they are getting smarter as the years go on. Everyone leaves town, so why bother staying open. Walking around town after 6 PM is quite freaky in that there is no one around. I half expect to see a tumbleweed blow by.

This old house

If you read this blog and you know Kent and I, you know that we don't have cable. And living in Athens, if you don't have cable you can only get one station. PBS. So needless to say, we don't watch a lot of TV. But I must say that I am a fan of Antique Roadshow and This Old House. Now I remember watching This Old House as a kid with my dad and brothers. It was cool to see them tear out walls here, and put a new window there. They usually tried to keep the character of the house intact, yet update the mechanics of the house. I respect that. I often wonder what Norm and Bob would think of my old house.

We had an architect stop by recently to give us ideas. His idea; move. Unfortunately, we really like our location, our neighbors, and our yard. Plus, we have been watching the real estate market in the area and nothing impresses us. So my dream is to have Norm (Bob is no longer with the show) come out and take a gander at our place. He would probably say tear it down and build again...oy vay.

Update

My brother has been so wonderful about keeping up with his bog after I hounded him about it, and then I slack off. Sorry bro.

Things have been interesting lately, but just not blog worthy. Although, what exactly that means, I don't know. Anyway, I have seen alot of theatre lately, mostly with my good friend Carol. I might have mentioned some that these past couple posts. This past weekend we took the truck up to Cleveland to pick up a canoe from Kent's parents old house. That was an interesting trip because we hadn't traveled in the truck in awhile and now I remember why. It's so frickin' loud. And it doesn't go as fast. Then it wouldn't start in the morning, so we had to push it out of the driveway and pop the clutch. I say we, and it was mostly Kent and our neighbor Tony. Courtney pushed too. I steered until we got to the road and then Kent got in to do the clutch popping.
It was a short visit, as we didn't leave until saturday morning and came back Sunday night. That took a bit longer too, since we ran into traffic on 77 and created our own detour. We enjoyed the lovely sights of Canal Fulton, Massillon and Navarre, Ohio.

Here's an old picture of a trip to Italy we took with Roy and Tif. This is a meter of pizza. Roy is very excited. And yes, we finished it all.

Conference of (for?) the birds

I (Lori) went to see a play tonight performed by the OU theatre department. i was forwarned about it, so I went in with an open mind. It wasn't so much a "play" as performance art. Which isn't bad. I did enjoy parts of it, especially the pretty colored snow. But there wasn't much dialogue just dynamic interpretations of broad expressions, i.e. unity, love, annihilation. Most of which was tolerable. Some of these kids weren't the most fluid. But hey, they tried hard and I give them credit for that. It was pleasant to see something different and at least they didn't keep us there for hours. This one clocked in at about an hour and I still had some energy left. That's when Carol and I decided to sneak in to see the fiddler that was playing at Mem Aud. It was half over, so no harm done. tee hee.

Picture Link

In case you are curious to see pictures from the weekend, follow this link. Kent has a fascination right now of zooming in on people from afar. Making the subject in focus, but the background blurry. Look at the pictures and you will see what I mean.

http://community.webshots.com/user/logromen

And here's a cow picture just for fun.

These cows live across the street from were Kent works so he sees them everyday and takes inspiration from them.

Weekend

What a wild and wacky weekend we had in Delaware, Ohio. Phil and Stacey planned a visit to Ohio, so Doug and Gina planned a huge get together with various OU ultimate alumni coming out of the woodwork to attend. Many of them brought their babies along. It was great to see everyone. If you were there, I plan to post pictures on webshots. I'll try to email the link, or post it here. We spent the night we the Breglias along with Tim and Dre, P & S, and Oli. Then we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast. We sat around and talked for hours. I usually get antsy just sitting, but the time flew by and my butt didn't even get sore. I guess the stimulating conversation and amazing company distracted my (Lori's) usual ADHD self.

It is awesome to think that we all know each other through ultimate. That one sport brought us together and forged these lasting friendships. And we each have our own unique story on how we even found ultimate. For instance, Roy was looking for Rugby and we practiced right next to them and he thought we looked less intimidating. Right on Roy. Just think, if Roy hadn't come to ultimate, who would get the claw?

I get to thank my brother, Jeff, for introducing me to the sport. He even prepped me with the forehand, so I looked like a pro when I first showed up. Thanks Jeff.

Con con.

On Friday night, Kent, Carol and I went to see our favorite AHS 9th grader in the theatrical production of The Snow Queen. It was a show put on by a local youth theatre group. Connor has been in a couple of plays now, but this was the first one we saw. Connor had 3 different roles and (i thought) he was marvelous. He spoke clearly and projected his voice well. He's handsome to boot. I'm glad we were able to support him and the other young actors. There were twenty or so kids in this play from 3rd grade to 10th and I am in awe with the woman who coordinated them all. Not my kind of task but I am glad that someone has the energy.

I tried to find a picture to insert here, but google Snow Queen and you will find information and images. It turns out that this play is a Hans Christian Anderson story.