Whose hair is that?

My hair stylist wanted to play with her curling thingy today...

Betty's Birthday

Betty is having a weird birthday this year. First, no cake because she and Jerry are off sugar. Next, she has a very bad cold (poor Betty). Finally, although we visited her for her birthday, we had to leave the morning of her birthday; but Maria and Jodi arrived on her birthday, so I guess it's okay.

Dennis and I had an appointment Tuesday morning to apply for the Global Entry system, then caught a plane to Gig Harbor for our visit with Betty & Jerry. We stayed until Friday morning and had a wonderful visit.

Dennis skied with Brent on Wednesday while I visited with Betty. She and Jerry showed me their Silver Strider website and explained the ground-breaking work Jerry is doing by expanding the race rankings by age. The rankings used to stop and 70, so a runner who was 80 would be running against runners 10 or more years younger. I was very impressed.








We stayed at the Best Western Plus in Gig Harbor and had a very nice suite. I kept eyeing the little stuffed shih tzu dog that was sitting on the counter in the room. He was a replica of a real dog, Parker, and was available for purchase with the proceeds going to charity. Need I say more? Parker (the stuffed one) now lives on our bed. I wish he was a real dog.













Betty, Jerry, Laura and I had an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant on Wednesday. We stayed long enough for Dennis and Brent to drive back from skiing and have dinner there, too. On Thursday, Dennis and I drove to Polsbo for breakfast and a visit to the bakery. We ate too much and then ate some more at lunch with Betty, Jerry and Laura at an Italian restaurant. Betty wasn't feeling well, so we ended our day together after lunch so she could go home and rest. We went back to the hotel and rested for awhile, too. Later, we went to the Galaxy Theater and saw Three Days to Kill, a spy thriller starring Kevin Costner. Sorry to say, the movie was horrible. Dennis thought it was produced by teenagers. I really like Kevin Costner and was disappointed that he didn't have a better production to star in. Oh, well.

Friday morning we met Betty, Jerry and Laura for breakfast at Panera. We had a nice visit and then drove to Seattle to catch our plane for home. We missed Maria and Jodi, who arrived at the airport earlier that morning (bummer).

Movie Tuesday

Today we saw Winter's Tale, a romantic fantasy loosely based on the 1982 novel by Mark Halprin. If you read the reviews, you probably will read the book and skip the movie. Because we only expect to be entertained for a couple of hours, we were satisfied. It had a flying horse, so how bad could it be?

What a Ride!

On Monday Betsy and three of her students brought their horses to train in the arena and go for a little trail ride. The main purpose was to expose their horses to different surroundings and scary environments. They all signed waivers just in case something bad happened. Well, something bad did happen but not to them. My steady, trusty horse, Doc, threw a temper tantrum and reared up. I fell backward off him, landing on the ground on my back. Ouch. Nothing really bad happened but my back is a bit sore. Doc has never reared in the ten years I've owned him. He must have really been upset about the disruption in his routine. We're going to have to fix that.

Movie Tuesday

Today's movie was The Monuments Men, a George Clooney production (starring, written by, and directed by). It started off a little slow but turned out to be an interesting true story about the seven museum directors, curators, and art historians whose job was to locate art work stolen by the Nazis in World War II, retrieve and return the works to the owners. I would recommend this movie.

Update on Ivan

It doesn't look like Ivan will be happy in the house after all. He just wants to hide. Last night we found him behind the cabinets in the old craft room. He stuffed himself in a 4 or 5 inch space and went all the way to the end. Dennis had to bang on the drawers to make him come out.

I spent some time with him last night and this morning, brushing him and petting him so he would feel safe. Later this morning I found him stuffed in a hidey hole in the craft room closet. I took him back outside to the cat house and he seems happy there. He has the wooden box that he hides out in so I guess it's for the best.

Looks like I will be cat-less for awhile. I really miss 50-50.

Ivan

I brought Ivan into the house today. He doesn't have any cat friends in the cat house and spends most of the day in a little wooden house we had made years ago -- for kittens, I think. Anyway, he's adopted it as his home and no one can bother him there. A couple of weeks ago Bob-B attacked him and tore off some hair under his chin; and Precious 2 hisses at him. So I thought of all the cats we could bring in, he was the most needy--like 50-50 was when she came into the house.

Right now Ivan is in our closet hiding in the shady part under our clothes. I think that's the way they all start out. We will see if Ivan will be a house cat or will prefer to go back in the cat house. As a house cat he will have a collar that lets him go in and out of the cat door. He is wearing the collar now, but we will have to teach him how it works--if he wants to stay a house cat.

Only time will tell. Ivan would be a nice cuddly cat, but I don't think we would ever find another cat like 50-50, who used to snuggle as close as possible to me whether I was sitting on the sofa typing on the laptop and watching TV or sleeping on the sofa during those insomniac nights. Sigh.