Thursday, 28 March 2013
A short break in transmission
while we go to Houston for the weekend to celebrate my 21st birthday (he!he!) and get some culture and probably a snack or two! Hasta la vista!
Sit and fit
I must learn not to be so cynical. I must write out 100 times, "I must learn not to be so cynical and condescending!"
About 10 men and women were seated in a room in the community centre facing a video screen. Age range? Difficult to tell, but at a guess from 80+ down to 65. Fitness level also very wide, from slightly fitter than me to plain doddery. A young looking event manager put on the DVD. We watched a very toned young woman in a shiny purple leotard taking us through exercises. She had a bright, breezy voice and a toothpaste smile and sat in a multicoloured studio surrounded by a reassuring selection of gaudily dressed participants...thin and young to old and grossly obese! My friends had saved me a seat in the back row, which was just as well as I found it difficult to tell my left from my right, confused by the flailing limbs of the people in front and the reversed instructions on the screen!
We were holding weights and after about 10 minutes I was feeling a bit puffed but my 80 year old friend was going strong so I pulled myself together and carried on. After the first video was over the event manager came in and put on a second - Seated dancing - similar movements again but this time to music, Viennese waltz, country and western, polka, you get the idea - and not with weights this time but waving paper plates! ¡Ay, caramba!
I would have laughed if I had time to draw breath!! It was surreal! BUT the exercises were extremely fast paced and lasted for 45 minutes, with only a short pause to take your pulse. It was very hard work! I really felt my muscles aching! Enjoy the video. You can have a good laugh imagining me at it, but I'm certainly going again next week!
About 10 men and women were seated in a room in the community centre facing a video screen. Age range? Difficult to tell, but at a guess from 80+ down to 65. Fitness level also very wide, from slightly fitter than me to plain doddery. A young looking event manager put on the DVD. We watched a very toned young woman in a shiny purple leotard taking us through exercises. She had a bright, breezy voice and a toothpaste smile and sat in a multicoloured studio surrounded by a reassuring selection of gaudily dressed participants...thin and young to old and grossly obese! My friends had saved me a seat in the back row, which was just as well as I found it difficult to tell my left from my right, confused by the flailing limbs of the people in front and the reversed instructions on the screen!
We were holding weights and after about 10 minutes I was feeling a bit puffed but my 80 year old friend was going strong so I pulled myself together and carried on. After the first video was over the event manager came in and put on a second - Seated dancing - similar movements again but this time to music, Viennese waltz, country and western, polka, you get the idea - and not with weights this time but waving paper plates! ¡Ay, caramba!
I would have laughed if I had time to draw breath!! It was surreal! BUT the exercises were extremely fast paced and lasted for 45 minutes, with only a short pause to take your pulse. It was very hard work! I really felt my muscles aching! Enjoy the video. You can have a good laugh imagining me at it, but I'm certainly going again next week!
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
4.5 hours at the library...
and my eyes are tired! I wish some Texan oil billionaire would come along and pay for the library to digitise it's newspapers! I've been winding my way through the Bryan Daily Eagle for 1937 on microfilm looking for historical and significant events though I have to say that the advertisements for shoes and clothes are much more interesting. As for the cigarette ads!
Tomorrow I've been invited by a lovely couple (circa 80 years old) to go with them to a 'sit and fit' class at a community center where they have 'senior adult programmes'. Apparently you do exercises from a seated position. It's very kind of them to ask me along and who knows, it MAY be just what I've been looking for but somehow I doubt it. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, I'll let you know in graphic detail tomorrow!
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
A very full day
The bad news is that I put on 0.8lbs last week. Must have been the matzo balls!
The good news is that this has been a event-full day.
Event 1.
It started with an invitation to a book group which meets over lunch. A lady I met last night invited me and she insisted that we meet up in a car park half way there. She had been attending a class on living with chronic illness and I lurked in the car park until she came out - then we went in her car to the Briarcrest Country Club where the group meets in a private room.
As an aside, the class on chronic illness is something she really enjoys. She has fybromyalgia, which is pain in the muscles and joints, and other people in the group have different conditions. It's a self-help group. They discuss their problems and how they cope with them. It sounds like a barrel of laughs to me and I only mention this to illustrate how unimaginative, callous and uncaring I am!
As another aside, my friend drove me back to the car park after the lunch which illustrates that a) there are no restrictions to leaving your car in any old parking lot and b) it was not in the direction in which she lives but people are very generous with their time and don't mind driving back and forth.
Anyway, we arrive at the country club and find the other 6 members of the group and order lunch ( a salad for me which is a bowl of lettuce, 2 slices of cucumber, three cherry tomatoes, a teaspoon full of a boursin look-alike and half an inch of bacon, crumbled....she says piously!) Other members of the group order more and also less and the two who order more also get a box to take half home in (another American phenomenon).
Anyway, again...it turns out to be a wonderful experience! They are all very well read, very interesting, very intelligent and warm and friendly, left leaning women. In addition to talking about books they have been reading they also stop now and again to throw out ideas for me - things to do around here - and I fill a page in my note book. What a find! I can't wait for next month and am so grateful to my new friend for inviting me! We are going to be reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.
Event 2.
At 3.30 the mother of the woman we are renting the house from arrived to take me to a group called 'Brazos Valley Wearable Arts', Brazos being the name of the county College Station is in and Wearable Arts being any craft,knitting,sewing item that you can wear or carry about your person! There were about 15 women seated around a table in the Brazos Valley Arts Centre. Some smiled, some scowled into their crochet work. The chair person went through the routine..minutes of the last meeting, agenda, welcome. I was introduced and had to explain my craft credentials. Then it was show and tell time. Not many people had brought items they were working on. When it was my turn I held up the latest sweater I am knitting for Abe and that seemed to pass muster, just. I was asked about Downton Abbey and had to admit I hadn't been to the actual house. Murmurs of disappointment! Then a woman got up and gave a talk about her visit to Bali to look at how batik and ikat fabric is made. She had good photographs and many samples of cloth to show. She was very enthusiastic and it was an interesting talk. Afterwards a woman came over to tell me about her cousin who lives near Oxford and she gave me her contact details and said we should lunch sometime. Another woman gave me her details and offered to go with me to the good yarn store in College Station. You'll notice that I am starting to adopt Americanisms....Yarn store! Whatever next.!
A wearable arts challenge was issued for the May meeting. We have to make something to wear that has to do with where we are from. A union jack bag? I think not! Any ideas???
Event 3
When I got home, Peter, Bob and Mary were practically asleep in the sitting room. They roused themselves for a drink and then we went to dinner at Christopher's World Grille just outside College Station.
The restaurant is in an interesting old house, the setting is very elegant and the service attentive. We had delicious food and excellent wine. Bob lets slip it is my birthday and so my dessert plate comes with an iced birthday message on the plate and one candle. Little do they know how many candles short they were! When we were leaving at 9.15 the place had already emptied and the waiting staff were loitering and setting up for the next day. As we passed they told us we had been voted the table with the most interesting conversation! Bob's take on this was that just because we had English accents they were fooled into thinking we were intelligent! It's an easy mistake to make!
Home, exhausted! Bob and Mary decide they are not up to driving back to Bastrop and so they stay the night.
The good news is that this has been a event-full day.
Event 1.
It started with an invitation to a book group which meets over lunch. A lady I met last night invited me and she insisted that we meet up in a car park half way there. She had been attending a class on living with chronic illness and I lurked in the car park until she came out - then we went in her car to the Briarcrest Country Club where the group meets in a private room.
As an aside, the class on chronic illness is something she really enjoys. She has fybromyalgia, which is pain in the muscles and joints, and other people in the group have different conditions. It's a self-help group. They discuss their problems and how they cope with them. It sounds like a barrel of laughs to me and I only mention this to illustrate how unimaginative, callous and uncaring I am!
As another aside, my friend drove me back to the car park after the lunch which illustrates that a) there are no restrictions to leaving your car in any old parking lot and b) it was not in the direction in which she lives but people are very generous with their time and don't mind driving back and forth.
Anyway, we arrive at the country club and find the other 6 members of the group and order lunch ( a salad for me which is a bowl of lettuce, 2 slices of cucumber, three cherry tomatoes, a teaspoon full of a boursin look-alike and half an inch of bacon, crumbled....she says piously!) Other members of the group order more and also less and the two who order more also get a box to take half home in (another American phenomenon).
Anyway, again...it turns out to be a wonderful experience! They are all very well read, very interesting, very intelligent and warm and friendly, left leaning women. In addition to talking about books they have been reading they also stop now and again to throw out ideas for me - things to do around here - and I fill a page in my note book. What a find! I can't wait for next month and am so grateful to my new friend for inviting me! We are going to be reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.
Event 2.
At 3.30 the mother of the woman we are renting the house from arrived to take me to a group called 'Brazos Valley Wearable Arts', Brazos being the name of the county College Station is in and Wearable Arts being any craft,knitting,sewing item that you can wear or carry about your person! There were about 15 women seated around a table in the Brazos Valley Arts Centre. Some smiled, some scowled into their crochet work. The chair person went through the routine..minutes of the last meeting, agenda, welcome. I was introduced and had to explain my craft credentials. Then it was show and tell time. Not many people had brought items they were working on. When it was my turn I held up the latest sweater I am knitting for Abe and that seemed to pass muster, just. I was asked about Downton Abbey and had to admit I hadn't been to the actual house. Murmurs of disappointment! Then a woman got up and gave a talk about her visit to Bali to look at how batik and ikat fabric is made. She had good photographs and many samples of cloth to show. She was very enthusiastic and it was an interesting talk. Afterwards a woman came over to tell me about her cousin who lives near Oxford and she gave me her contact details and said we should lunch sometime. Another woman gave me her details and offered to go with me to the good yarn store in College Station. You'll notice that I am starting to adopt Americanisms....Yarn store! Whatever next.!
A wearable arts challenge was issued for the May meeting. We have to make something to wear that has to do with where we are from. A union jack bag? I think not! Any ideas???
Event 3
When I got home, Peter, Bob and Mary were practically asleep in the sitting room. They roused themselves for a drink and then we went to dinner at Christopher's World Grille just outside College Station.
The restaurant is in an interesting old house, the setting is very elegant and the service attentive. We had delicious food and excellent wine. Bob lets slip it is my birthday and so my dessert plate comes with an iced birthday message on the plate and one candle. Little do they know how many candles short they were! When we were leaving at 9.15 the place had already emptied and the waiting staff were loitering and setting up for the next day. As we passed they told us we had been voted the table with the most interesting conversation! Bob's take on this was that just because we had English accents they were fooled into thinking we were intelligent! It's an easy mistake to make!
Home, exhausted! Bob and Mary decide they are not up to driving back to Bastrop and so they stay the night.
Passover
Tonight we were invited by friends of friends to go to the house of one of their friends for Seder - to celebrate the first night of Passover. It was a great treat. The service was interspersed with discussions which are endemic to all Jewish gatherings about which pages to skip in the Hagaddah (the order of service) and how to sing the songs and to what tunes. Our host Mannie was full of stories which pleasantly delayed the progress of the service. One of the guests had actually made Matzos, which was a considerable feat. There was a great buzz round the table and the meal was a marathon of Jewish food:
We felt very welcome and very much at home!
Chicken liver pate
Gefilte fish
Chicken soup with matzos balls
Chicken with roast vegetables, carrot tzimmes and matzos kugel
Tea and cake
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| The seder plate |
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| Soup and matzos balls |
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| Anticipating the meal |
Sunday, 24 March 2013
A perfect day...
A perfect day out in the Sam Houston National Forest.
The sun shone, there was a light breeze, the pines
swayed and gave off their scent and the butterflies
danced round our feet.
The path was well sign posted and completely deserted!
We walked 8.4 miles!
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| Tiger swallowtail - we think Not my own photo I have to admit - they were too fast! |
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| Peter on the Lone Star Hiking Trail |
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| Ruth on the LSHT |
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| We're on the right track! |
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| Fungus |
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| Forest service road |
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| Dogwood? |
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| Heading into the Wilderness |
 |
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| Boardwalk |
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| Mushrooms and pine cones |
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| One of the many huge fallen trees |
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| Up hill |
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| Signs of spring |
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| Swallowtail - but what sort? |
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| Spider nest? |
Saturday, 23 March 2013
Grrrr!
Flame roasted vegetables on the menu and the BBQ runs out of gas! Peter's gone shopping and doesn't have a mobile phone. Grrr!
P.S. The food turned out really well, despite all the alarms!
P.S. The food turned out really well, despite all the alarms!
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