Vacation Adventures

Monday morning brought a workout, the usual chores (laundry, run the dishwasher), and two rather unpleasant surprises.

The first was that a previous renter of this unit had broken the carafe for the coffee maker and replaced it with one that was the wrong type. This resulted in the coffee maker overflowing and not dripping correctly, and sent me looking for the kitchen towels to clean off the counters.

That led to the discovery of the second unpleasant surprise. There were only two kitchen dishtowels, because the others were in the bottom of the cloth lined laundry hamper, and had mold on them and the cloth liner. They had apparently been thrown in there wet. It's a good thing we were using the pop up hamper I had brought.

When I went downstairs to get a cup of coffee, I told one of the ladies at the front desk about our two surprises and dropped something in the mail.

The day's agenda was shopping. Clothes, shoes, kitchen gadget type shopping. Grandma loves to shop, and loves to take us every year. I'm certainly not going to argue with that. So Grandpa watch the 3 youngest children, who didn't want to come, and the rest of us spent several hours stimulating the economy.

After shopping, the children went fishing on the dock. They love doing that, and feed most of the fish to a long legged bird who lives out there. I'm not sure what kind he is, some type of stork or crane, and they have nicknamed him Turd Bird. He is very polite, waits quietly to be thrown a fish, looks at the person who threw it and bows his head to that person before eating it, and then genteelly wipes his beak on the dock after swallowing. We always look forward to seeing Turd Bird.

The evening brought two more unpleasantries, as if the end of the day had to match the beginning, two ugly bookends framing a lovely set of leather bound classics. Sweetie lost his phone and glasses, and became Mr. Grumpy for the rest of the night, and the oil finally moved in.


Today is

Abused Women and Children Awareness Day

Canadian Rivers Day

Feast of Epona -- Ancient Celtic Calendar (Rhiannon in Wales, Macha in Ireland, guardian goddess of horses, stables, horse owners, agriculture, and transportation)

First-in-Line and Queue-Jumping Tournament -- Fairy Calendar

Kitchen Klutzes of America Day

National Lobster Day

Quinquatrus Minusculae -- Ancient Roman Calendar (festival of Minerva)

Sewing Machine Day

St. Anthony of Padua's Day, the "Hammer of Heretics" (patron of young lovers, the poor, Portugal, spinsters; against infertility, lost objects)

Trooping the Colour, UK (military celebration of the monarch's birthday)


Anniversaries Today:

Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, 1525


Birthdays Today:

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, 1986
Raz-B, 1985
Rivers Cuomo, 1970
Jamie Walters, 1969
Ally Sheedy, 1962
Tim Allen, 1953
Richard Thomas, 1951
Malcolm McDowell, 1943
Siegfried Fischbacher, 1939
Christo, 1935
Paul Lynde, 1926
Ralph Edwards, 1913
Red Grange, 1903
Dorothy L. Sayers, 1893
Basil Rathbone, 1892
William Butler Yeats, 1865


Today in History:

Coronation of Alexander III as King of Scots, 1249
Ibn Battuta, who was to become the foremost world traveler of his day, seeing most of the known world in his time, begins his first hadj, 1325
Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves, 1774
Mission San Luis Rey de Francia is founded, 1798
Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River, 1803
A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia, 1886
King Ludwig II of Bavaria is found dead in Lake Starnberg south of Munich at 11:30 PM, 1886
Yukon Territory is formed, with Dawson chosen as its capital, 1898
The University of the Philippines College of Engineering is established, the largest degree granting unit in the Philippines, 1910
Mir Mine, the first diamond mine in the USSR, is discovered, 1955
The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them, 1966
Thurgood Marshall is nominated to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, 1967
Fahd becomes King of Saudi Arabia upon the death of his brother, Khalid, 1982
Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the solar system, 1983