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Mackinaw Island

Well, we made it home safely. We had a good time. The weather was great for the guys. The women arrived on Monday and we had excellent, cool weather for the Traverse City area. Went to the Sleeping Bear Dunes, Leland, Charlevoix. There were 8 of us in 2 cars. Then on to Mackinaw Island. It was beautiful when we arrived on Wednesday. Thursday when we were going to bike and see the fort, it was blowing like crazy and raining. There were now 16 of us, so we shopped and drank. Friday we headed out after buying fudge for the staff. I called Bert and he helped us find mom and dad's gravesite. Excellent directions, we stopped there, took a look and Charlie and Bernice's old place (now painted gray), Jim and Norma's old place and the schoolhouse lot. The original merry-go-round was still there, but the house (trailer) was a disappointment. I would have liked to find a cool house there. We flew home on Saturday, left out of Traverse City, spent 4 hours in Detroit airport and finally got in the house at 11:30 p.m. The leaves were just beginning to turn, but you could see the difference when we returned to the Traverse City area. A lot had changed in just a few days. The group we were with (Woehler Study Group), mostly from Florida, Texas and South Carolina couldn't believe how beautiful it was in Michigan and how clean and all the lakes. They all think of Detroit when they think of Michigan.

We are going to Bay City on Thursday for Rick's 45 year high school class reunion. We'll be back on Sunday. Gary Nearman is supposed to be home from Cleveland Clinic so I hope we will be able to see him too. Denny Poirier is running for Michigan State House Representative, so we'll see his signs around town. The election is in November, he was unopposed in the primaries.

Ryan and Tracy took Baxter up to Brunswick with them while we were gone. They brought him back last night and went with us to the Jaguar game this afternoon. We lost and they played terrible.

That's all for now. love, Marilynn

Happenings on STJ

Good day, today. We were talking on the porch. I mentioned to Bob that I thought we should think about selling the rental house. Funny, he says, I was just thinking the same. Met with a realtor yesterday. now we will meet with the tenants on Sunday and let them know our intentions. Hopefully, they will stay in the house. Could be a year or more before it sells. Stopped by to see a friend at her little shop in Coral Bay about getting my hair cut and to give her a piece of driftwood from the beach for her art work. She had 3 pair of shoes, her old ones, that she said she would give to the first person who came up to the shop. luckily, they were my size. I took two pair. Bob got a call today from someone here on the East End about concrete polishing the deck. Went to look and talk on the way in to town, but looks like he will have to use some other method. It's just not viable for polishing and the concrete and house are very old. Hope he gets the job. He'll put down a topping which will make the old concrete look great. These people have been here since the '70's and they own 4 rental houses here on St. John. Very nice people.

Marilynn, hope the MI trip was great. Looks like on the national weather that the leaves are changing in the UP. Send some pics.

Herb, I think the computer is fine now. Bob installed an anti spyware program the other day and now it quarantines all the emails and lets us look and decide who we "let in". Strange, we got an email from Nathan saying he had been taking the ACAI slim pill for the last 2 weeks and had lost 21 pounds. You can imagine the email I sent him as to caution. He wrote back and told us he didn't send it, that it was SPAM. How did that get in if we had the spyware on there?

Have to go. Dinner is calling the chef.

Ron is coming back on island today. He hasn't been here since Feb. Says he is going to put the roof on the pool house.

Looking forward to the MI and OH visits.

love,

b

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stranger than fiction

6:40 a.m. Taking a walk this morning and on the way back, our "neighbor", the guy renting the house below us, stops us on the road (he's driving) in the Privateer Development, and wants to know how we are and we say where are you going? Did you get a new car? He says, "no, it's Jeannie's", like we are supposed to know who Jeannie is. We look, curiously. He responds that he has company for the week. "Good for you", we say. This is a 47 yr old batchelor looking to find himself. He's been here since May. Then he asks if we have seen Jeannie perhaps walking on the road. He awoke this a.m. only to find her gone. NO. He drove up and down the roads a couple of times after that. Wonder if he ever found her......

How ludicrous is that, asking your neighbors if they have seen your girlfriend!!!

I'll keep you posted.

Attached is a pic of "our neighbor" with Marie, the boat captain when we went snorkeling at Flanagan several weeks ago.

Herb and Kathy, think we might be able to see Sara and Stu when we come for a visit?

tales from the Far Side

hi Guys,

This is kind of a funny story. I went to Connections (mail center) the other day, early to drop off important mail, one doc. to the IRS. We had lunch at Skinny's and waited for the mail to come in. After lunch, I checked in with Vicky and noticed that the two plastic boxes containing our "out mail" were still full. so, Vicky, what about the mail going out? Oh, yea, I was kind of spacy and so was the mail lady when she came in, so we both forgot and she didn't pick up the outgoing mail. Vicky assured me that the mail would go sometime that day as so and so was going in to Cruz Bay and would drop it off at the PO. That's how things happen here. So, when I mark a bill "pd", I usually date it 2 days hence.

We are missing Igor and Julia, thank goodness.

Going to MI Oct. 12 to 26th. Seems like that is very soon. Maybe we can play some golf. going to see Herb and Kathy, David and family. that should be fun.

the pool pump broke, but my genius husband ordered a new part and it came in today and he fixed it!!

Marilynn, have a great trip to Traverse and Mackinaw Island. Don't eat too much fudge. I'm sure Bob is soooo jealous!! Take lots of pics. I'm sure the colors will be beautiful!!

Herb and Kathy, didn't tell you, Nathan is short selling his house and is going to a commercial diving school in Jax, FL beginning Jan 31. He's very excited. He's driving down with his girlfriend and she will fly back. Hope they make it thru the 5 mo. separation. Looking forward to visiting you soon.

I can't seem to put more than one image on the post at a time. Problem?

How much work is it to install a new hard drive on our laptop?

love

b

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Labor Day

Wow, was I ever glad to hear from Betsy. We have been up at Dover Bluff for the weekend. We left Friday and just returned. I was hoping I would hear from you. From our weather reports, it looked like you were going to see the brunt of Fionia and the one that followed. I was going to try calling your house phone when I returned if I didn't get and e-mail (no service at Dover). Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you have a phone that works even if the electricity is out. Did you take your satellite dish down too? Quite an experience living in the hurricane zone! Your house is built like a fort, I don't think even a direct hit would move it. We were supposed to get big 8-10 foot waves last Thursday, but they never got that big. I went to the beach last Tuesday and it was real nice, good waves and nice wind, but not storm winds.

Pictures of Quincy and Bubba are sweet. You should put that picture of Bubba with the one of you Bert and the John Deere's.

We've had a busy weekend. We went to the Jacksonville Suns baseball game on Wednesday night, the Jaguars on Thursday night and then up to Dover Bluff on Friday. Rick fished in a tournament on Saturday with Butch and his brother Cleve. They caught 28 trout, so we ate trout last night with them and brought 4 or 5 meals home for the freezer. Saturday night we went to the clubhouse for a covered dish dinner and BBQ. Ryan and Tracy came over for a little while on Saturday, but they didn't stay long as they both had to work at 8 p.m. I think they were expecting a meal with us, but we were going to the BBQ at the clubhouse at 7 p.m. Yesterday Ryan came over by himself, Tracy was working. He took some freezer food with him and stayed for the trout dinner. I'm doing lots of laundry now, getting Rick's shirts ready for the work week. He leaves for Tampa Thursday evening and will be home Saturday evening.

Our freezer in the basement at Dover Bluff quit working sometime since we had been up there last. What a stinking mess. Mostly we just had a little bait shrimp in there, but boy did they stink. It's all cleaned up now, we left it empty and open to see if we can rid it of the smell. Some got on the cement floor too. We used bleach, simple green, spray, everything we had up there.

I painted the trim around the windows yesterday. The sun had faded the darker brown pretty bad, so they look so much better. We finally found the original paint and it was rusted around the can and top, but the paint inside was still good. We just transferred the paint to a clean container.

I'm going quilting tomorrow. I have a class for wall hangings. One for Halloween and one for the winter season (snowmen!) I can't believe Bert is talking about putting the stove on and cutting firewood. It sure doesn't feel like fall around here, we were at 89 today. Two weeks from today, we'll be in Traverse City, MI. I can hardly wait, now then we really will have cool weather. Rick has a meeting there and we will also go up the Mackinaw Island and spend two nights at the Grand Hotel, never been inside the hotel before.

OK, I've rambled on enough. How's Kathy enjoying her retirement? It always feels like the real thing after the rest of them have gone back to work in the fall.

Love,

Bubby at the Fair

Here's the pix of Bubby at the fair. Every day he went with his Mom & Dad he wanted to climb on the tractors, ... what a surprise! It's a beautiful fall day here, woke up to about 50 degrees and fired up the furnace, anxious to get the wood burning stove hooked up and working. Off to church here in a bit.

Catch you all later,

Good weekend in Ohio

Betsy,
Glad to know all is ok there in StJ, just too bad you have to go through all that. Consider buying a generator, less than $1000 and just run some lights and fridge and cistern pump.

Weather has broken here and we are in the 70's during the day and 50's at night, very comfortable. Kathy and I helped Chuck & Delores cut up 5 big trees this past week, we've got lots of firewood for winter warming, feel like a squirrel.

Here's a short video I took of Quincey laying in the Lilly of the Valley. Here's a picture of Bubby having a great time sitting on the tractor at the Morrow County Fair. Kathy and I worked at the Dairy Producers (Milk Shake) booth Tuesday, I worked at the Helpline booth Thursday and "the gang" all went back there last night for dinner.

Guess that's it for now, (it won't let me upload the Bubby picture). One more day in the weekend, maybe we'll cut or split some firewood, Amish are coming soon to take out some timber (lots of oak and walnut) and we are going to buy new kitchen cabinets with part of the proceeds.

Hurricane Earl

Morning All, Well, we made it thru this one just fine and now he is headed up the East Coast. It's very dark in here when all the shutters are up. No elec. for 4 days. Just so you guys know, we have a phone that doesn't require elec and that worked fine.The food thing was quite a hassle, coolers and ice and all. Cooked everything that was in the freezer except the wahoo. We should go shopping, but I hesitate because the containers for the stores were due to come in on the day of the storm. Makes me wonder how long stuff has been on the shelves by today. We were very lucky here in STJ. there was minimal damage to anyone's house. Some boats up on shore near Cruz Bay, but this end of the island experienced nothing except a lot of debris in the roads and having to replant, etc.

In the midst of all this, Nathan called Wed morning and said they had taken Julie to the hospital. she was complaining of stomach pains. At midnight, they called the Dr. and he had her sent to U of M in an ambulance. Long story short, there was nothing wrong with her. They kept her for observation and Evan went to get her the next day. We spoke to her on his phone as they were on their way back to Gilbert Res and she really had no idea what had happened. She has a boyfriend at Gilbert who waited in the foyer there for 4 hours for her to return.

Going to MI after Oct. 15. Herb and Kathy, would love to come see your new house.

Hope the fair is going well for David and Lisa. Sounds like an aweful lot of work!!

Marilynn, did Earl sweep by you guys? What about the house in Dover Bluff. Looked like you guys might get some winds from Earl.

Well, yogurt and fruit are calling. I'm trying to post more pics, but am having trouble.

love you guys,

b