This past weekend my high school class of ’79 got together back in upstate NY to celebrate our collective 50th birthdays! It has been fun reconnecting this past year with many classmates on Facebook and this morning I have been enjoying the pictures that some classmates have posted from the weekend’s events. It would appear that I missed a fun party last night.

It has been interesting the past few months listening to classmates reminiscing on Facebook. Occasionally I am reminded of some good time, some interesting teacher, or some event that I had forgotten. More often I am struck by how different my perception of high school was from those of my peers. A dream I had last night about sums up how high school felt to me … I was at the 50th birthday party, only we all had not aged a bit from 30 years ago. Music was playing. People were dancing. I was having a blast singing along to the music as I danced until I suddenly realized that I still had the towel on my head from when I washed my hair. When I took the towel off, my hair had dried all funny looking, sticking up all over. I frantically search the hallways, looking for a bathroom so that I can try to comb the hair in place. And then I wake up. Phew! And that is how high school was for me, a place of occasional fun with friends, but fraught with imminent social disasters and the pervasive feeling of being lost. Perhaps high school is wasted on 16 year olds; we should go when we are 50!

One major east – west road in North Florida, U.S. Highway 90, is closed at the Madison/Suwannee county line where the Suwannee River bridge is being threatened by floodwaters. Many other Big Bend roads are closed. And Interstate 10 may possibly be closed due to the Suwannee river flooding.

We are learning that it is not tornadoes we need to be concerned with here in the Big Bend area. It is water!

Pictures of local flooding from the Tallahassee Democrat

Pictures of south Georgia and north Florida flooding from the Tallahassee Democrat

So that brings me up to April. For April I had two very ambitious goals. One was to get back to regular blog writing (yeah, I know it’s the 8th of April already and this is the first post, so I have failed miserably) and also get some much needed updating done on my blogs (new software, new looks, etc.). All of which does not seem to be happening. Can you tell that Miss Munchkin is back home? She spent all of February and the first two weeks of March with her daddy, which is the only reason I managed to complete January’s goal in February! But with her back home again I am really accomplishing so very little and it is rather frustrating. And this week she is sick with some cold/fever/sore throat/ear hurt something that she has passed on to David and now I am coming down with it. She is better today, a bit, anyway, but not totally well. At least she’s eating some today and not running the fever.

Anyway, April. My second goal for April is daily exercise. I’ll be fifty this month (gasp!) and I really would like to be in better physical condition. Losing some weight would be an added bonus, but stamina and conditioning is really what I’m after. So beginning on March 30th (a Monday – I begin things better on Monday’s than on the 1st of the month) I set the goal of getting to the gym just as soon as Bill goes out the door to work in the morning. So far, pretty good. Of the eight possible days (I am not counting weekends), I have made it to the gym seven days. And the day I didn’t make the gym, I went for a long, long walk.

I first thought of walking to the town center in Southwood back in February, when Miss Munchkin was not here, but it never seemed to work out, mostly because we had one of the coldest February’s on record. Last Friday, though, was the perfect day, sunshine, low 70s, and Munchkin spending the day away from home with Mommy. So after Homeschool Chat, around 12:30 I headed out, water bottle, cell phone and debit card in hand. I walked to the town center (a distance I figure is about 2 miles) and then had lunch at one of the little cafes there. Then I walked the two blocks to the lake. Halfway around the lake, I sat on one of the benches and called my mom and chatted with her for about half an hour. Then I finished walking around the lake (a total of 2 miles) and headed for home, taking a scenic path that I had not walked before (at least 2 miles, possibly a bit further).

It was a beautiful walk and I wish I had a smaller digital camera that carried easily, as pictures would have been lovely. These pictures of the lake path from last summer will have to do. But I think I went just a tad bit too far. I was extremely sore the next couple of days and didn’t sleep well at night. Also, I should have thought of sunscreen, as I got a small bit of sunburn. Luckily, it was the sort that turns to tan instead of blistering and peeling.

I am ready to walk it again soon, although I’m not sure walking it at the noon hour / early afternoon will be a good idea in the summertime. Probably I have about a six week window where it will be the perfect walk before it gets too hot. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to walk it again soon. And I definitely want to drive the route I took (as nearly as I can) to see how far I really walked. I figure it was at least six miles.

I find that watching a race and crocheting work well together. I can listen to the race, watch what I’m doing with the crochet project, and if there are any crashes or some other excitement on the track, there will be at least a dozen replays to watch! And I can always hit rewind on the TV if I miss something.

What else made this weekend perfect? Oh, cheesecake and strawberries!

I was reading in The Celtic Book of Days that today is Candlemas, the official end of the Christmas season. If you have not taken down your holiday decorations, today’s the day! According to Wikipedia, Candlemas may have been created as a Christian alternative to a Roman pagan holiday where believers walked the city of Rome with lighted candles. And modern Pagans believe Candlemas to be the Christianization of the festival of Imbolc, which marks the second quarter of the Pagan calendar.

As for Groundhog’s Day, it appears that possibly came to America via the Pennsylvania Dutch. Some countries watch for bears to come out of hibernation to check the weather, others watch wolves. Again, according to Wikipedia, the United Kingdom just watches the weather. If it is clear and bright, more winter; if cloudy and rain, winter will shortly be gone. London is having snow today, so I wonder what that means, other than a lot of traffic jams and cancelled air flights!

Here in the States it appears that Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of winter. Imagine that! I’d be willing to bet it will be all of six weeks in some areas of the country. I certainly hope it is not that here in Tallahassee, although they are forecasting more sub-freezing nights for the coming week. Ugh.

Celtic Book of Days: A Guide to Celtic Spirituality & Wisdom

I never did post any resolutions for 2009, but mostly that is because I decided to do some monthly goal-setting, small, hopefully attainable goals. January’s was to get our financial records in order, which has been a goal for far too long. It really is an important goal, as I am the only one who knows where everything is. If something were to happen to me, Bill would have a devil of a time figuring out what to pay, when to pay it, and where to pay it!

I have worked quite a bit on the project in January, but still have a long way to go. We decided to install new Quicken software and input all of 2008’s information, so that has been quite a time consuming project. At the same time, I have been working on creating one central financial “diary” where all our various account numbers, passwords, payment information, phone numbers, etc. are kept in once place. As I pay each bill, I create a new page with all the pertinent information. Of course, this makes actual bill paying take much longer. And as the month went on, I began to forget all about the diary pages and just paid the bills. So even though all the bills were paid in January, the diary is not complete.

Consequently, January’s goal has spilled over into February and now I’ve added in completing our 2008 taxes. All of this WILL BE DONE by February 28th! I swear! It has to be, since this month Miss Munchkin is away, visiting her daddy and other grandparents (and aunt and uncle). I will take advantage of the peace and quiet and finish one project before I begin another.

Speaking of another project, February’s goal was going to be updating my blogs, writing more frequently (that shouldn’t be too difficult, given my recent record of non-writing) and beginning a new website. Since January’s goal has spilled over in to February, I will modify February and only work at writing more frequent blog posts. All other updates and new sites will have to wait until March, or at least until this financial disaster spread all over my desk is completed!

And thus one goal for February has begun to be achieved, as I have just written two blog posts, one here and one at My NASCAR Race Blog. So far, so good!

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2009 when…

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this list.

AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING AT YOURSELF!

Go on, forward this to your friends. You know you want to

I do have some New Year’s resolutions rumbling around in my head, but they aren’t coherent yet, due to this cold. So maybe I’ll post them later this week when I am hopefully feeling better.

Bill and I went driving around a bit this afternoon. It’s a glorious January day with temps in the mid-70’s, bright sunshine and a balmy breeze. I wish I had taken my camera because I saw redbud trees and azalea bushes in bloom. It’s the fourth of January! Sure beats snow and sub-freezing temps!