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,