Tai Chi Dinner

We were a group of 13 for dinner last night - the 5 tai chi students who completed the 10 week session, their spouses and the owner of the fitness center. Most of the time in class, we are focused on learning the tai chi forms and there is little time to talk and get to know each other. This was a great chance to relax and get to know each other better. I had not met 2 of the spouses and T had only met a couple of the people. We had a Chinese dinner comprised of homemade pot stickers (guōtiē), chicken soup, red-cooked chicken (hong shao ji) - known at our house as Chinese chicken, spare ribs , chow mein with Chinese broccoli, peapods and straw mushrooms and baby corn, and baby bak choi, sticky rice (nuomi fan) and almond jello - known at our house as "white stuff"with fruit and egg roll cookies.

Today was a bright sunny but rather blustery day. In honor of the UConn women making the elite 8, I wore my UConn sweatshirt on my walk today and received a number of inquiries about "why UConn?"

Low Humidity

The weather here on the central coast usually starts off in the 40s and rises to the 60s, 70s or 80s depending on what season it is. We are nearing the end of the "rainy season" which isn't saying much compared to east coast rains. When the winds blow in from the east over the mountains from the valley it can be warmer and dry especially at this time of the year. Yesterday the relative humidity was 5% and the due point was -11 degrees!

Today was my volunteer day at the thrift store. It was also the last Friday of the month when we turn the inventory over almost 100%. I watched an interesting exchange between one of the volunteers and one of the clients today. Since it's the last Friday of the month, the clients can buy any clothing that will fit in a paper grocery bag for $4. The client heard about it from her sister and was piling up the merchandise. The volunteer suspected that the client didn't know it was a paper bag vs. a black garbage bag and tried to enlighten her. Interestingly both the client and the volunteer got huffy - the client wanting the best deal and the volunteer wanting the most money for the goods. One of the other volunteers is a retired priest he came to the rescue and defused the situation. Because it is changeover day, we closed the store promptly at 4 PM and there were many people who came to the door after we were closed hoping to take advantage of the bag sale.

Busy day on the golf course

Yesterday, today and tomorrow the Cal Poly men's golf team is having a tournament. It was the first day I saw how a very busy golf course works. At the golf club all the carts were lined up and ready to be used by the officials. The golfers looked like they were all walking and carrying their bags. There were groups of 4 heading out at specific times throughout the day. There were officials traveling with each group ( I think to verify scores etc.). There were some places where there were back ups. The last two days were perfect golf days - sunny, clear, just a breeze, temps in the high 60s and low 70s.

Today I went to SLO to buy some Chinese food items for the dinner we are having for the graduates of the first T'ai Chi class. The store owner was so helpful. There is a Chinese food store called the San Luis Oriental Market. It's the only game in town. I've been looking for brown bean sauce ever since I got here. I used to get it in WH all the time but the owner says he's never heard of it - he's got black bean, yellow bean, red bean, green bean but no brown bean sauce! I told him when I went back to visit WH I would bring him back a sample so he could show his distributor. Today he had some fresh Chinese broccoli. He says he isn't able to get it on a regular basis but he tells the warehouse to send it if they have it. I was lucky and got what I needed for the beef with Chinese broccoli on fried noodles dish.

Volunteering at the Clark Center

We joined a group of about 20 people last night for volunteer training at the Clark Center. The Clark Center was built in Arroyo Grande about 6 years ago with private donations (over $18 million). The town donated land from the high school. After it was built the Center was turned over to the school and they are responsible for maintaining it. The Center was built as a combination performance space for the schools in the district as well as a place for the bringing in the touring companies of shows and performers. They host about 25 to 30 major performances and 150 to 160 community performances a year - very busy place.

They measured us for vests - uniform is a green vest, white shirt, black pants, shoes and socks. They ask that each volunteer sign up for a minimum of 3 shows a quarter, I think. In return you get to see the show you're volunteering for and you get a certain number of passes for every 6 or so shows you work.

Montaña De Oro

Yesterday we took a trip to Montaña De Oro in Los Osos. It's one of the state's largest state parks and one the governor is talking about closing to come up with the money to balance the state budget. It is over 8,000 acres of rugged cliffs, secluded sandy beaches, coastal plains, streams, canyons, and hills, including 1,347-foot Valencia Peak. There are mountain biking and horse trails, campgrounds and beaches. The park’s name, "Mountain of Gold," comes from the golden wildflowers that bloom in spring which is why we went there. We have been there in the winter and wanted to see the "oro" but we didn't see many golden wildflowers in bloom yet. There is supposed to be lots of wildlife in the park including black tailed deer and the black oystercatcher. We didn't see either of those but we did see these guys - these two horses had been on a great ride on one of the equestrian trails and had just taken a dust bath before I snapped the picture and were waiting to be brushed down.

We went on to Morro Bay where we saw the Lynx, a tall ship from Portsmouth, NH. It will be there until April 1. It's an interpretation of an 1812 schooner with cannon and crew dressed in period costume. http://morrobay.org/cm/Calendar/Tall%20Ships%20Lynx.html

Happy Easter

Yesterday was another beautiful day - sunny, warm well into the 70s. I had ordered a crown rib roast of lamb for Easter dinner from our local supermarket. The butcher called me on Friday to say that his warehouse assured him they had a whole lot of them and would be sending them to him. I told the butcher to make up a boneless leg of lamb if the crown did not come in. Well, it did not come in so we are having boneless leg of lamb instead.

Also , yesterday I misread a recipe and even as I was adding the liquid into the cake, and it seemed like a lot of liquid, I ventured forth. Well, it was too much liquid and the cakes fell. Turns out the last set of liquids - pineapple juice, was to be poured over the warm cake after baking, not before baking... So, I ended up making another cake doing it the right way! I tasted the flatter cakes and they actually tasted fine although a little on the heavy side - good for a trifle. So what did I learn - FOCUS!

I went walking with a new friend who lives down the street from us. She and her husband retired here from Thousand Oaks where she ran a 43 acre ranch while her husband was a California Highway Patrolman (CHP). Her son was just awarded a bronze star for his bravery in Iraq. He led his men to try to rescue soldiers from a humvee that was in front of theirs that had run over an IED that exploded. The tendency is to bunker down, but her son wanted to save them if they could. So under heavy fire, he led his men to try to rescue the injured. Turned out that they had all been killed but they found all the bodies, protected them until help arrived.

This morning I went to the 8 AM Easter service. There were double the usual number at the service and there was full choir and organ music. We are having Ping and family, plus our realtor and his wife for Easter dinner. We are going for a walk around the development before dinner. Everyone is interested in what the place is like. It's warm, sunny and clear in the 70s at the moment, so it will be a wonderful afternoon for a walk.

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday

Thursday night the Cypress Ridge Pavillion hosted a girls night out with a special spring dinner menue. There were about 60 women plus 2 men(???) who partook. There were 6 courses and before each course the chef presented a how to plus nutritional value. There was a blueberry gazpacho, orzo salad, mock asparagus rissoto (with pearl barley), mini ahi tacos, barbequed lamb with spinach and strawberry and blackberry empanadas. My favorite was the gazpacho and here's the recipe:

Blueberry Gazpacho
4 c. blueberries
½ - 1 cup OJ
1 c. Apple Juice
½ c. Honey
2 T Lemon Juice
1 8-oz container non-fat mixed
berry yogurt
1 c. finely diced pineapple
1 med apple cored and diced
Reserve ½ c. blueberries. Mix in a blender remaining blueberries, juices and honey. Stir in the yogurt. Chill for 2 hrs. Pour among your serving dishes and top with the reserved fruit. Serves 8.

I went to the thrift store early to put in my volunteer hours and spent the time ironing a huge basket of clothes that have been mounding up ever since I started volunteering there. If an item is too wrinkled to put out for sale but supposedly a really good item, it's put aside for ironing but it appears no one does the ironing! So I worked my way through it before heading off for Good Friday services.

The catholic church in town holds an ecumenical service at 3PM (they hold their own service at noon). It was interesting to be together with Christians mostly from churches with liturgies. The church was filled. They did something called pass the cross where the large wooden cross is passed overhead throughout the congregation, snaking its way throughout. It took about 6 hymns to get it around the church. There were many people crying as they passed the cross over their heads.

In the evening we went to SLO for dinner with the cousins and out to see a great performance by the SLO Little Theater called "That's What I Say", the story of Ray Charles. Very well done.

Exploring Santa Barbara county

Today our travels took us to Vandenberg Village, Vandenberg Air Force base, Lompoc and Orcutt. It was another pretty and warm day and the first day of spring. With spring in California comes the wind. We didn't check the weather before we headed out but when we returned we heard that there was a wind advisory especially in the canyons. We could really feel the gusts buffeting the car as we drove through the canyons on the way to Vandenberg Village.



Vandenberg Village is a town of about 6,000 people, mostly white and we think it's the bedroom community for Vandenberg Air Force Base. Vandenberg AFB is huge and we think much of the land around Vandenberg Village belongs to the government and is not built on. There is a small center in Vandenberg Village with very basic banks, grocery and small shops. The average income appears to be higher than the CA average.



Lompoc is a city of over 50,000 people and was pretty sprawling. Now for some history on the city of Lompoc. First, Lompoc is pronounced "Lom-Poke"; not "Lom-Pock". The establishment of La Purisima Mission brought the first European settlers to the Lompoc Valley. But the very first known settlers were the Chumash Indians. Lompoc is a Chumash word which means little lake or lagoon. Lompoc was incorporated as a city on August 13, 1888. The city was once a temperance colony in the 19th century. The city was also mainly an agricultural one. As time went on, the economy began to grow as did the city. One of the main factors in Lompoc growing economically and becoming so diversified is that Camp Cooke was established. Camp Cooke is now known as Vandenberg Air Force Base. There are many strip malls in Lompoc and the prerequiste Walmart, Mervyns, grocery stores, banks etc.



Orcutt has about 20,000 people and looks very wild west and interestingly has a massage parlor on almost every corner! It is in what is known as unincorporated land of Santa Maria and it's known as a bedroom community of Santa Maria. Because of its affordability it is known as the fastest growing community in Santa Barbara county, that is before the recent housing bust.

Spring has sprung

This week had the endings of a couple of activities - the first session of guitar lessons and the first course of t'ai chi. I've signed up for the second session of guitar with the same instructor. We are down to a class of 5 from 7 but we're all progressing at the same rate and all 5 are returning. We managed to learn chords for G, Cmaj7, C, Em, and D. I added E and A on my own, just for fun. We have learned strumming techniques and have worked our way to smooth transitions between chords and are speeding up the tempo. The t'ai chi also suffered some attrition but 5 students managed to complete the entire 10 week series and have learned the 24 forms pretty well. All are coming back for the second session which will begin next week. I'm trying to devise a way to teach it in more of a drop in style to see if we can get more people interested. Commitment is difficult for people at the fitness center, so signing up for 10 weeks of t'ai chi doesn't work for many.

In addition we completed our gutter project today. The gutters were installed last week and today our landscaper brought his crew and connected the two downspouts to the drainage system. They had find ways to run the pipes from the downspouts through gardens, not disturb the roots, burrow under the concrete and connect with the drains that take water to the sewer system. They were here for about 6 hours but got the job completed. Fortunately there is under the concrete so the digging was too laborious.

Tonight at 10:48PM spring arrives. On my walk today I noted that spring has indeed happened here at Cypress Ridge. The blue flowers are called ceanthus, also known as California lilac; the red ones are huge geranium plants and the orange ones are birds of paradise. Flowers are busting out all over!

Buffalo???

It's been a day of wildlife! This morning on our local news there was a story about a child seeing a bobcat in his yard in Lebanon, CT! They followed that up with a story of a kid in our area who found a seal on his porch. I guess I'd rather have the seal than the bobcat. Then when we started off on our explore ride this afternoon, we came upon a small herd of bufallo at the end of El Campo just across Los Berros Road. I had to stop and adjust my vision to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing and indeed we agreed there were 5 buffalo!

Our drive took us down Thompson Road which took us through some pretty country the back way into Santa Maria. We turned up route 166 toward Bakersfield and turn down a canyon road and that winded around a canyon, through farmlands and orchards until we ended up in Santa Maria. It was a really beautiful clear day!

Craicmore

The Clark Center in AG is the town's performing arts center totally built with private donations. Tonight they brought Craicmore to town. Craicmore doesn’t do rebel songs or drinking songs. Instead, they draw their words and music from the traditional music of Ireland and Scotland while claiming influences as diverse as the Afro Celts, Chieftains, the Pogues, rock, and Australian indigenous music. They may be singing “Cunla” in Irish, but they will also be delivering “Mairi’s Wedding” complete with electric bass solo, and featuring conga drums in their show-stopping “Cape Clear Set.” They are from all over but Ireland now mostly from LA - they were very good.

Missile Launch from Vandenberg

Vandenberg Air Force Base successfully launched a Atlas V rocket today at 3:01 a.m on March 13, 2008. The rocket took off from Space Launch Complex-3 carrying a National Reconnaissance Office payload. Vandenberg AFB is about 60 miles from us. If we were awake at 3:01 yesterday morning we would have had a spectacular view from our back patio as the launch pad is about 60 miles due south from us. We'll have to do with a picture from their website. This is the first launch of an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg but the 13th one in total with the remainder being launched from Cape Canaveral.

One of the spin instructors and her husband got up at 2 something and drove down to the beach to watch the launch. She said they were the only ones there and that it was an amazing sight to see.

This morning Jane and I got together for a blue-tooth walk. I wasn't sure how it would work out today since they were calling for some pretty strong winds here and rain in Bloomfield. It turned out that we actually had pretty similar weather with both areas with temps in the 50s. We couldn't hear each other a few times but sound came back pretty quickly. It's our first blue-tooth walk since before she came for a visit in February.

I worked at the Thrift Store again today and interestingly after a financially challenging February, last week was strong with each day bringing in over $300. Stay tuned. Tom, an A Hand Up board member, reports that the A Hand Up new warehouse space is on target for an April 1 occupancy so we'll have to get busy planning the big transfer.

I've booked my reservations to head to CT. A Hand Up is planning a volunteer appreciation function at the new space, and I hope to be able to see as many people as possible during the few days I'm in CT. Tom will be heading to Chicago to see Kay and her new digs.

Gutters

Yesterday the long awaited date for installing the gutters on our house arrived. We had the fascia and the eaves painted in preparation for the gutters a couple of weeks ago. We figured once the gutters went up we weren't going to want to take them down to paint the fascia in a few years when it was time. Since we were going to paint the fascia, we might as well paint the eaves as well and on a single story house there is a lot of both. Now we have to get the drainage from the downspouts connected to the drainage places. It's like pandora's box.

We had a great spaghetti dinner last night at the cousins' in SLO. Baked up a yummy gingerbread. My cousin is lactose intolerant which limits the dessert repertoire a little but there is plenty that doesn't require dairy products, gingerbread being one of them.

My t'ai chi group is almost done and 5 people will have completed the entire 10 week program. We are going to get together with spouses at our house for a Chinese dinner as a reward for all the hard work, good attendance and practicing. One of the students is going to China in April with the AG chamber of commerce and she excited about practicing her T'ai Chi in China.

Earthquake in CT not CA

The Hartford Courant website had this headline today - "Earthquake Shakes Deep River Area". The article said: "It doesn't happen in Connecticut often, but residents in the towns of Chester, Deep River, Killingworth and Ivoryton experienced an earthquake this morning..... Fox 61 Morning Show Meterologist Joe Furey said the U.S. Geological Survey confirms the earthquake measured 2.0 on the Richter Scale." Fortunately we have not experienced an earthquake in AG since arriving although there are little ones further north on a daily basis.


Today I did some exploring on my walk. I've been seeing this house from the top of the golf course with a huge splash of red and yellow in what would be the front lawn area. You can see the bright red and yellow right in the middle of the picture. So I went off in search of this house to see what it really looked like up close. Along the way I passed a beautiful avocado grove with this warning sign. I guess it can be a problem and very tempting to help yourself to an avocado or two. The sign says "avocado theft is a crime". After about 50 minutes I found the house with the yellow and red flowers in the front yard and this is what it looks like up close. You can just see the garage of the house at the top of the driveway. The entire section above the yellow flowers is all orange/red.

Where do all the missing socks go?

Just another beautiful day here.... We went for a walk on the beach and the shoreline seemed to have changed pretty drastically. We wondered if someone came in and smoothed it all out after the big storms we had or if the ocean just smoothed it out all by itself. I expect it's the latter.

You know how socks have a habit of disappearing in the laundry from time to time. We have this expression at our house when a sock tries to escape...we say "it's gone to the beach!" Well, today we have proof positive!

We also found patches of beach flowers along the beach that didn't appear to be there the last time we walked on this section of the beach. Pretty hardy flowers as the water covers this part of the beach at high tide. These are really pretty - there's a yellow variety as well. We entered the beach through the Monarch Butterfly Preserve and only spotted one lonely butterfly - left behind when all the rest migrated to wherever they go at the end of February.

Today was my third guitar lesson. We worked on smooth transitions between chordsand strumming for the entire class. We are a pretty small group - down to 4 students but I think that's temporary. We got a lot of one-on-one attention today. The teacher said that we were progressing better than the previous group at this point. My chords need cleaning up so they are crisp. Practice, practice, practice....It's been lots of fun so far.

SLO International film festival

This is the 14th annual SLO International Film Festival. I'm not a big fan of movies - actually I don't do movies at all. However, this festival has brought some great tourism to SLO for the past decade. This year they broadened the event out to the rest of the county with films shown in 5 different cities in the county. They have created a great link with the wines and vineyard business called Hollywood and Vines Series combining movies and wine. There are about 120 movies being shown throughout the week's festival. One can buy individual tickets or get a week's pass. Hopefully some of my movie loving friends will come to take advantage of this festival in future years. Here's a link to the SLOIFF Hollywood & Vines Series
http://www.slofilmfest.org/2008/filmsnew.shtml

Orchid show

There are many pre-spring events taking place in the county these days. There is the San Luis Obispo 14th annual international film festival, the "over the top" fashion show and Madonna musical revue, and the 13th annual central coast orchid show. We went to the orchid show today.

It was in the local chamber of commerce conference center in AG. It was a much smaller version of the flower shows in larger cities - it was all orchids with competitions in all the various varieties of orchids, for presentation of displays as well as the actual orchids. We were pretty impressed. There were orchids available for sale just outside the competition/display area. I think we were the only people who did not buy at least one orchid.

Thrifty shoppers at the thrift store

Today being Friday took me to volunteer at the St. Barnabas Thrift Store. The economy is hitting everywhere. The store has pledged to give $2,500 a month to the church and another 30% of monthly income to charity. Well, last month the store couldn't meet their pledge for the first time in a long time. The manager on my shift says that the donations fall off every year before Easter but usually pick up right after. We'll see. We're also seeing a lot more people trying to bargain down the price even though the policy at the store is to charge the price tagged. Not only that but the managers visit the other thrift stores and they know our prices are the lowest around. I believe it indicates that people are really feeling the pinch. Shoppers are being much more selective and cautious with their money. Gas in our local area is now between $3.50 and $4.00 a gallon. The news had a report of a station just north of here charging over $5 because it's the only game in town.

Heading up to SLO for dinner with the cousins. My Washington DC cousin is here for the week to see her 91 year old mother. We're gathering there to share a pot luck meal. I'm trying a broccoli salad recipe I tasted at a party earlier this week. It has chopped broccoli, chopped red onion, dried cranberries, peanuts and some Trader Joe's Asian peanut dressing in the refrigerated section. It was really good. Hope this one turns out as good. I also signed up for fruit salad and a pie. The fruit here is so luscious and fresh - much of it is grown right here.

T'ai Chi and sunsets

This is week 8 of 10 of my t'ai chi class. We are a stalwart group of 5 now and they are getting pretty good. T'ai Chi practice is usually done to one's own pace predicated on one's breathing pace. The question came up about doing t'ai chi in groups, for example in the parks in China. If t'ai chi is done to the rhythm of one's own breathing, how do the classes all seem to be doing it together - wouldn't everyone be doing it at a different pace? Well, the answer is that in a group setting the practioner follows the pace of the leader and adjusts one's breathing to that pace, out of respect. The question brought to mind a wonderful memory from my teen years. When I lived in Hong Kong, at one time my bedroom window faced the front of another apartment complex where each apartment had a balcony. In the morning as I was getting ready I would look out at the many balconies and see many people practicing their t'ai chi on their balconies, unaware of each other's pace or place in the exercise. There would be many people all moving at different paces working through the forms! I wish I had taken a picture.

This reminds me of the sunsets here. Almost everyday the sunset is spectacular. The local newspaper prints a picture daily submitted by local residents in the classified ads section. Recently they commented that due to the large number of sunset (and sunrise) pictures, people will have to wait a long time to see theirs in print. I was going to take a picture of the beautiful sunset this evening but heeding the warning by the newspaper, I resisted - therefore no picture today.

See Canyon

Today we took a drive up See Canyon and you do indeed see See Canyon. It starts off on our side with a series of apple orchards which I hear are well-supported in the fall. At the moment the trees are beginning to flower and the orchard growers were busy tending the trees. Then we started to climb the hills or mountains on See Canyon Road. The road has sections where it is unpaved, goes down to one lane and is a mini Big Sur experience with steep cliffs and no guard rails on the edge of the mountain. Fortunately there was very little traffic - I think there were 3 cars coming up and one SUV came up behind us. There were more bikes than cars! What an amazing training effort for the bikers coming up both sides of the mountain. This picture is taken from the top the mountain. In the middle there is a little dark spot which for those of you who have been here, that's Morro Rock up in Morro Bay about 25 miles away. On the other side you can see the city of San Luis Obispo nestled in the valley. There was nowhere to pull off to take a picture of that and the narrow road fell off steeply on the right side of the car at that point. It was really quite breathtaking. The road connects with Perfumo Canyon Road in San Luis Obispo and ends in a neighborhood where we looked at many houses.

Read Across America

Last night at guitar class, I had a really nice feel-good moment - not just from learning new chords on the guitar and how to strum. When we moved there were a number of things we brought that we have had to ask ourselves - "why did we bring that?" One of those things was a box of Kay's Dr. Seuss books from childhood. At one point when we first started clearing out things in WH she said she wanted us to save them for her, so we did. She did not have a place to store them and was moving too so we brought them to CA with the intent of sending them to her when she moved. In a recent conversation she said she did not want them and I could get rid of them. This is an almost complete set of Dr. Seuss books up through about 1984.

Well, I remembered that there is a woman in the guitar class who is a first grade teacher in Santa Maria. Santa Maria is a city of about 100,000 just to our south and is where many of the workers come from who work in SLO county as it's more affordable. I had this idea that perhaps her class could use them. I threw the box in the car before going to class. I spoke with her after class and wouldn't you know she was so excited and said that yes indeed she could use them and as a matter of fact this week is Read Across America where children are encouraged to read especially Dr. Seuss books. They were having a special person come to the classes today to read to the children. Horton Hears a Who is among the books and with the DVD coming out any day now she thought that would be a perfect book to read to the class. She couldn't wait to get to class today to show the kids the new books.

Self-indulged

Today was a very fun day and super self-indulgent. Started off with a great spinning class, followed by a wonderful 6 mile walk on a warm sunny day. Worked on the agenda and budget for the A Hand Up board meeting tomorrow evening; made some yummy chocolate meringue cookies http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/10336523 (recipe by a low fat, lower calorie cook book writer) for a birthday party tomorrow; practiced guitar; finished another valance for over my desk and went to a guitar lesson - learned the D chord and the E minor chord and how to strum. We're trying to learn all the chords to play Little Brown Eyed Girl in 4 weeks. We're down one student already, but the rest of us are having a ball. Lots of fun!

Guadalupe Beach and Dunes

Today we took a ride to Guadalupe Beach and Dunes. They recently cordoned off a huge portion of the beach to protect the nesting plovers. They do a similar thing at Cape Cod. There is a point near Guadalupe Beach called Muscle Rock. We thought it would be fun to see what it looks like but it's about 4 miles down the beach from where we parked the car. We did not walk out there today. You can walk north and get back to the Oceano dunes about 10 miles up the road. Again, we did not do that today either. The waves were pretty fierce and there were signs up telling folks that it was not recommended to surf, swim or even walk in the water because of rip tides and high surf. They say it can be pretty nice in the summer.
In the last picture you can see Montana de Oro on the middle of the picture which is north about 50 miles in Los Osos, where we spent the month of February 2006. There was an offshore wind most of the day so it got pretty warm into the 70s, but when we got to the beach the wind had shifted to an onshore one and it was getting cooler.

I've got a Nano!

Yesterday I received a fully loaded little red Nano in the mail from Kay. She loaded it up with over 1400 songs! It's awesome. She hid a song she recorded in the middle of the huge list of songs and I found it as I was going through the names of the songs. It was so great to hear her singing and to hear her voice. Very cool - nice touch. I have charged it up and read the manual and I think I'm good to go. It will make my walks so much more enjoyable.

I have been practicing tuning my guitar and practicing the 2 chords we learned during our first lesson. I think I have both of them down now and they actually sound right - pretty amazing. I'm ready for lesson 2.

I've also been studying my Spanish every evening - it's still a struggle to memorize the vocabulary and of course all the verbs they throw at me are irregular. Like English the irregular verbs seem to be the ones we use most often especially in simple language - to be, to have, to go etc. I'm having fun with it.