Here it is more than a month later and mom has finally gone! Maybe now Spooky will come out of the bedroom and start exploring. No more mindless television programming every single day! Not much has happened since my last entry, though I have explored the area a bit and found several points of interest. I found out how to get to the Laurel Caverns and on the drive up there I have found two trails in the hills to explore. Just about every time I go up there I see white tail deer and wild turkeys. Usually I see some gray squirrels too and once I found a bunny hiding in a little rock alcove. He was cute and I probably could have caught him, but I did not want to disturb him too much. I like the rock formations up in the hills and there are several little alcove/caves among them. The dogwoods are flowering and they sure are beautiful. Everything is really blooming now. The black walnut and what I think is either a redbud or catalpa tree were the last to get leaves. I will have to check the latter once it develops a bit more to be sure of what it is.
Other than all that above I have just been cleaning up the yard little by little, watching the thunderstorms and taking care of bank accounts and bills. Not much else to write about. Hopefully things will be a little more noteworthy once I get used to being here by myself. :-)
Thursday May 23rd, 2002: Loving it here alone!
It has been nearly two weeks since mom left and I have to say that I love it! I have gone back into my old habit of staying up until dawn and waking up after noon though. I should try to change that. I placed an ad on Yahoo! early last week and got a response from a fellow named Gary on the 16th. He seems like a nice fellow so far so we will probably meet soon. I have also started working out again everyday with my regular routine. I began on Tuesday and will try to keep it up regularly, taking perhaps one day off a week. I weigh in at just over 170 pounds which is 15 pounds over my ideal weight! This I tacked on when I came back here for the funeral. Mom always has to have lots of food in the house and cooks too much! If there is food, I will eat it dammit! Now that she is gone, I have most of the stuff down to the levels I am accustomed to and I should start shedding those extra pounds gradually.
Another thing that happened is that last night the wind or the lightning snapped one of the big choke cherry trees in two. It was about 50 feet tall I guess and over 20 feet of it was on the ground. So I got out the chain saw and spent a few hours cutting it up. With that and the wood from the other tree trimming I have been doing, I have about a cord of wood piled up. And since I don�t have a fireplace, I guess I will just have to give it away to someone. I also made plans to go visit Allen, Rosie and their new addition yesterday for the first weekend in June. I will have to check directions online since I am not familiar with the route, but how hard can it be? I am guessing it is a bout 300 miles, so it should not take too long to get there.
Perhaps we can go see the capitol since it is so close to them. I have yet to go there. The only bad thing is that my camera is broken and I need to take it in for repairs. The shutter won�t fire. If it costs too much, perhaps I will just buy another one somewhere. Maybe I can check some photo magazines or online. I doubt I will get too good a deal though. The package I bought way back in the mid 80�s was an amazing price of $179 for the body, two attachable lenses, two carrying bags a flash unit and some skylight filters. That was an unheard of price even back then. The body alone would normally cost more. I guess I just lucked out back then. Well, I have to get to bed now.
