How can we be so busy?

Tuesday we exercised and then went to meet Karen and Dallas for the baseball game.  The weather lately has been gorgeous.  The night was calm and we saw a very good ball game.  The Tourists won on a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 10th.  The game was over early, and we planned to stop for a Blizzard on the way home.  The game wasn’t over early enough, and the DQ was closed.  We were still home earlier than after any game this season.  Tonight was our 4th game attended.

Wednesday the weather began to heat up again.  The summer has been pleasant as autumn is usually, but the summer may just be arriving.  The temperatures are supposed to return to the mid-80s.  Evelyn served her normal afternoon at the hospital.  I went with her because I had an appointment to explore serving as a volunteer in hospice.  During the interview, I learned that I would probably be more interested in doing chaplain type work.  There are many other opportunities but the home visitations and work around the homestead were more in cleaning things.  Since I am a trained chaplain, I hate to waste my training.  I forgot to mention that gumbo was served in the cafeteria.  I was ecstatic and nearly ran to the serving area.  Everyone who works there got a big laugh out of my exuberance.  We finished the evening by attending our  choir practice.

The 4th Friday in each month is a free day for Evelyn.  Normally she leads a Bible study for the women of our church.  Today, since she had no obligation, we drove off to find a place to take a hike.  This area is full of hiking trails, so we drove up 276 toward Brevard.  The highway leads to the Cradle of Forestry in America and Sliding Rock.  We stopped at the first trailhead we found, parked and walked about half a mile on some moderate terrain.  We are not in great hiking shape and didn’t go far.  it was cooler in the woods along the east fork of some river.  We then drove on the Cradle of Forestry.  There are hiking trails there, but they are paved.  We took the longest one and had the lunch we had taken.  It was much warmer there than on the former trail.  It featured a long, semi steep hill and we ate lunch at the top.  On the way down the other side we saw an old locomotive that hauled logs to the saw mill that we saw on down the trail.  The unique thing about the engine was that the wheels were not set apart as wide as other train tracks.  The standard width matches that of the old Roman chariots.  This was about 8 inches more narrow.  We left and drove to sliding rock and took a few pictures.  We remember when some of our grandchildren enjoyed the slide down to the 40 degree pond at the bottom.  We took the Blue Ridge Parkway back to Asheville and then I-40 to Canton where we enjoyed the blizzard that we were too late for Tuesday night.  We came home for the evening.  The sad news for us is that Gary is resigning as the president of our living area.  He sites only personal reasons.

We were up and preparing for our guests early.  I had split and deseeded 6 jalapeno peppers last night, preparing to make jalapeno poppers.  We had gone to talk with Gary and Linda, and I had rubbed my eye.  Big mistake!  My eyes burned so badly that I had to hold an ice bag on them until we got home.  I found some old plastic gloves I had got while working at Taco Bell years ago and used them to protect my hands.  Evelyn supervised while I followed Emeril’s recipe and stuffed the peppers.  We put them into the toaster oven and baked them 15 minutes.  I baked them the other 15 when the guests were about to arrive.  I watched the Purdue/Western Michigan game until they arrived at 2:30.  Tom and I ate snacks and watched the rest of the game while Evelyn and Melanie talked.  I don’t think Evelyn had a very good time.  We drove to the Country Vineyard and bought us dinner.  We had decided to take them out because Evelyn didn’t want to cook.  Tom and I consumed the growler we had brought from Roswell last week.  We talked about going on a cruise together next year because Melanie has retired.