Info from the FRFF Website

"AFTERMATH REPORT, SURVEYS, FR BUCKS, TIX REFUNDS

This is Anne back in my home office in Sharon CT. Most important news, only a few bruises from monster hail and a couple panic attacks but NO INJURIES.

This was a mini tornado that hit us Sunday, it never touched down. We had been tracking this storm, labeled F5 on NEXRAD radar on my laptop in the Communications trailer. Was moderately severe, very compact and moving rapidly. It was past us & thought we were OK. Storm track animation showed it was moving away.

Than there was a sudden rotation and it came back with 70 MPH winds, 3 inches of rain and up to golf ball size hail. There was no time for a warning like the ones passed on earlier, it happened so fast.

We could not believe the same storm that had passed according to radar was now in front of us again, was on us before we could even get on the radio. I got one call in to mainstage and one to security base. Hail started WHILE I was making these calls on my cell, radio communication was totally OUT.

Tornado formation is very unpredictable. We just did not think anything like that was possible, indeed 4 of us looking right at the radar were puzzled at what we were looking at for several precious seconds. 

As mentioned, no one was hurt, the clean-up is a bear and the income loss, just don't know yet. Janis Ian has donated back half of her fee and other performers have offered to do a benefit. We'll just have to see, honestly don't know yet.

------On surveys, FR Money and Refunds

Will get up survey up on website ASAP, may take a couple days will post a PDF as well as a Text Doc that can be Emailed back.

FR Money, you can use it next year if there is a next year, we hope so.
You can donate it to the local Food Bank as usual by sending back to:

Falcon Ridge Folk Fest
POB 144
Sharon CT 06069

If you have a large amt, over $25 and absolutely need a refund, send back to same address. We will need to take a processing fee of $5 per refund. Sorry about this. It costs us banking fees, staff time, postage, gas to do this and right now every little dribble sends us further in the red.

Tix refunds. Send your unused ticket, wristband, cc receipt or order info. We will keep a list and give all a one day tix of your choice for next year. Worse comes to worse we will send refunds minus the $5 fee to that list.

What is happening now? Site clean-up still in progress, Bub is there all day with a small crew. I am doing 20 or so loads of laundry at home. All our backstage and green room wall hangings, curtains, tablecloths and the 300 or so towels for performers will be unusable if not dealt with immediately.

Lots of other stuff drying out all over the place, lost & found items mostly dried out, hanging in my garage and everywhere else we could hang them. Dealing with Lost & Found and Performer Merch rest of day, Weds.

Thanks to all our patrons & staff who stayed on into Monday and helped us with the stages and dance floor and Cantele Tents who came immediately on Sunday and started on the downed tents.

Big thanks to all of you who I know have unused tix and FR bucks and are NOT asking for a refund. That is so very helpful and could make all the difference in the world to the future of the fest. That's it for now, Anne"

FRFF Weather Update

(I found this on a facebook site appropriately called "I survived Falcon RIdge '08".  It was in response to someone trying to find out exactly what type of weather hit us.)

Actually managed to get an answer to my question about what hit us - here's a portion of the e-mail I received from a meteorologist who covers that area:

"Hi Brian -

... I...am an on-air meteorologist at WRGB. I was tracking the storm you are talking about, which was a severe thunderstorm at the time on Sunday afternoon. That storm produced a microburst in South Cairo and Leeds and Greene County with wind gusts up to 100-125 mph, and straight line wind damage in West Stockbridge, MA with winds estimated between 75-85 mph. While no official microburst was documented by the National Weather Service in Hillsdale, it is likely you experienced severe thunderstorm wind gusts in excess of 70 mph and large hail over 3/4" diameter (North Hillsdale in fact reported 1.00" hail, and Greenport 1.00" hail as well), and trees were reported down in Austerlitz. If you would like more information, you can always click on http://www.cbs6albany.com/sections/weather/historical/daily/ and go to July 2008 and look up Sunday, July 27. Also, here is the official report of the microburst that impacted Cairo and Leeds: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/aly/Past/2008/Jul_27_2008/PNS.txt

storm damage reports can also be found here: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/aly/lsr/index.php?wfo=aly

Hope this helps! 

Mark Margarit
Weekend Meteorologist
WRGB Albany"

Definitely not in a hurry to go through *that* again...as in, EVER..! :-)

Falcon Ridge Folk Festival

Yes, it's that time of year again. Time for us to spend a weekend camping on a farm, getting all kinds of dirty, and listening to good folk music. This year we went up on Thursday night. The weather was pleasant at dusk when we arrived at the festival grounds. But it had rained enough before we got there to make the makeshift roads (think, lanes sectioned off by caution tape) muddy and impassable. So we had to park in one of the lower lots and carry in all of our gear.  The lot wasn't that far away, but we carried in only the basics on Thursday night. This picture was taken on Friday morning when we made the next several trips to the car. A few hours after trekking in all the gear, they reopened the roads.

Dodd's Farm is the location of the festival.

The garage by the farmhouse was steaming in the early morning sun.

This is the mud we slid through for the first half of the weekend.  We tromped through it  Thursday night in total darkness. I wish there was something in this photo for scale, most of those ruts were at least ankle deep. I ditched my flip flops almost immediately and Joe was wearing crocs. This meant our feet were completely covered in mud for about two days. Regrettably, I never had my camera on me to catch these moments.  More regrettably, I had unbelievable self-restraint that weekend and did not leap on Joe in some variety of flying tackle to drive him, and most likely myself, into the sloshy mud.  He owes me, I think.

This was our neighborhood in the dozens of acres that comprise Falcon Ridge's tent city.

Our spot.  Just to our right of Joe, you can see the speakers for the main stage in the background.  On the right you will see our tent.  

Ranger Joe, scoping the scene.

This is the workshop stage, the smaller of the two music stages at Falcon Ridge.  We usually spend about half of our time there.

That four-peak tent in the distance is the dance tent.  This is by far the craziest spot at the festival and dancing (square, swing, contra) goes on until the wee hours of the night.  We never go in there.  Joe is not a fan of dancing, and it's usually 750 degrees during the day.  Not ideal for any high-energy activity.

This little village is where the food and merch vendors are.  

This is the main stage.  At the ass-crack of dawn people line up at the bottom of the field.  At precisely 7am, they are released and bound up the hill in all directions to lay down a tarp/blanket/shower curtain/you-name-it to reserve their spot for the day.  Joe and I are not generally awake to take part in these few minutes of insanity, and anyway the rule at Falcon Ridge is if you come across an empty tarp, you are welcome to sit on it until its rightful owners come back.  People are generally really good about respecting other people's belongings, and in the past we've even been invited to stay on strangers' tarps, share in their food, and enjoy the festival with them.  Otherwise, we just carry our chairs around with us all day and just grab any spot that seems good at the time.

This year we were actually really disappointed in people.  Some folks would move other chairs out of their way to get better seats, they would slide blankets and bags over that were not their own just to make themselves more comfortable.  Worst of all, they would plop themselves down in their chairs that were already so tall you couldn't see over them, and then open an umbrella to shade themselves from the sun!  This happened with complete disregard for anyone whose view they were obstructing!  This year was the 20th anniversary of the festival, so we are hoping that these rude umbrella monsters were just day visitors, and not tried and true Falcon Ridgers who go every year.  We shall see next summer.

Also, while I am ranting, everywhere we seemed to sit this year had us near some idiot who would not shut up.  I get it's a social setting and people like to interact.  But I need to tell you about one guy in particular.  We unknowingly sat within earshot of him and his friend on Saturday (I think).  We first sat near them during the early afternoon.  He talked to his friend (I say "to" and not "with" because he left no spaces between his words into which his friend could interject their own.) for like three hours straight.  About frozen pizzas and some guy named Bob and his family who comes to visit him at his house and ten billion other things that had no relevance to anything folk.  We got up and went to go make ourselves some dinner back at our tent.  We ate.  We took a nap.  We wandered around the vendors.  We went back to where our chairs were and THE GUY WAS STILL TALKING.  He talked through every act.  During the day he was at least drowned out by the music.  At night he apparently felt he had to talk louder to make up for the darkness (?) and we heard more of him than the people on stage!  Joe turned around at one point and was shouting over the music to tell the guy to be quiet and he didn't even hear us!  Several people around us did, but not Chatty McTalksalot.  I put in earplugs at one point because I had a headache and the act onstage was a saxophonist and I could hear the guy over the sax and through the ear plugs!  Thankfully he finally left and we were able to enjoy the music the rest of the night.

Anyway, I digress.

This was our view about 90 degrees to the right of the main stage.  Through those trees and a few dozen yards away was our campsite.

By Saturday afternoon we were burnt to a crisp despite numerous applications of sunscreen.

This is the easiest way for me to take a picture of Joe and I, so we have one just like this from just about everywhere we go. You can pretty much just swap out our clothes and the background.

Checkin' out the schedule.

Ouch.

Joe's fish got sunburned, too.

The main stage again.  With the giant umbrellas again.  Notice how one umbrella could block the view of almost the entire stage.  Gr.

I took this picture as I marveled at the uncharacteristically beautiful weather we had for the festival on Friday and most of Saturday.

We were so hot and sweaty and sticky from suntan lotion that I was able to stick honey-nut cheerios on Joe.  You can imagine his elation.

This is what rolled in Saturday evening. It only rained 

on us for five or ten minutes. Not enough to stop the 

music...just enough to get everybody's gear 

completely soaked.

Dar Williams!

Dar played around dusk on Saturday.  Check out that awesome chair on the lower right!

Sorry about the lighting. Dar is on stage playing Iowa 

and as is tradition, the entire crowd is waving around 

glowy things...a la lighters at a rock concert.

This is the weather we woke up to on Sunday morning after a horrible thunderstorm Saturday night. The walls of our tent were blowing in and out, you could feel the thunder in your bones, and the lightning was right above us, giving the inside of the tent a strobe light effect. But our good ol' tent stayed bone dry.

Our "kitchen".

Joe, modeling a climbing harness that was way too

 big for him that somehow ended up in our 

camping gear.

Waaaaaaay close up.

The weather on Sunday was terrible and bordering on dangerous, so here we are in the tarp igloo we hastily constructed to protect ourselves from the elements. Notice how the thunder and gusting wind and torrential rain and hail and lightning striking only a few hundred yards away from us in our metal chairs was not keeping us from grinning like idiots.

When we had to make our tent igloo we were at the workshop stage. Check out that weather. Notice how you can no longer see the ridge in the background. Go ahead and scroll back up to that other picture of the workshop stage in the sun. This was some VERY bad weather.

The wind was brutal.

That guy to the left side with the rainbow umbrella sums it up nicely.

I think I will put him on a t-shirt for next year, with the caption "I survived Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, 2008".

So we were huddled in our tarp-igloo, trying to figure out the likelihood of us actually get struck by lightning, when OW!  What the...

Hail.

HAIL!!!

It was marble sized hail that was pelting us through the tarp. This was the first hail I'd ever seen in person.

It hurt.

I think I do not like hail.

We kept peeking out of our tarp-igloo to make sure we weren't in Kansas.

This was our view. 

Notice that guy to the right, just standing there holding his umbrella. 

Standing.

Holding an umbrella.

Mere hundreds of yards away from where lightning was striking a nearby field.

Darwinism in action.

The merch tents did not fare as well as we did.

If you look carefully, you can see that the rain was coming down at a pretty steep angle.

The aftermath. The vendors tried their best to gather

 their wares between cells of the storm.

We had packed up all of our gear early that morning

 before it started raining. Our neighbor was not so

 lucky.

Us. 

At this point we were fleeing a weekend where the night air chilled us to the bone, the daytime heat nearly melted us, the sun fried our skin, the rain thoroughly doused us, the wind practically blew us away, the thunder tried to rattle our teeth right out of our mouths, the hail bruised us, the mud encased us, and the lightning almost ended us.

We LOVE falcon ridge. 

Really. :)

These are the best sneakers I've ever worn.

Women's Adidas Microbounce Spotu.

I bought these sneakers tonight and wore them to the gym for a few games of racquetball.  They are hands down the most comfortable sneakers I've ever worn.  This includes every pair of running shoes, volleyball shoes and casual shoes I've owned.

You should find your nearest Sports Authority and go try them on.  Run around the store like I did.  Zig zag between the displays.  You will not be disappointed.

Anger Management

So I was thinking the other day about anger management.  My job makes me crackers on a daily basis, so I was trying to think of little things I could do to help myself calm down in those moments when I am more inclined to snap someone like a twig.

Count to ten.  That was my first idea.  But I hold hammers and other sharp tools while I work that could certainly be mistaken for weapons, so I tried to think of something to do with my hands.

Count to ten with my fingers.  Simply place my tools in my work drawer and open my hands completely.  Slowly as I count to ten, I can curl my fingers in.  

ONE...pinky in.  

TWO...ring finger in.

All the way up to ten.  Great!  Except as I pictured this in my head, I realized that this method would cause me to not only be angry, but have both hands curled into fists.  Very conducive to releasing aggression, but definitely not in the correct manner.

Ok, wrong direction, I thought.

Perhaps I can start with my hands in fists, and UNcurl a finger with each number as I count to ten.  Again I did this in my head to see how it would work.  I ended up with two empty hands, palms up.  Success!  I marveled at this, and with my mind's eye examined these newly relaxed empty hands.  I thought how nice they looked.  I slowly turned them over, thumbs inward.

Have you ever looked at your hands, slightly relaxed, with both thumbs pointed inward?  

As it turns out, this is the exact position your hands need to be in grab someone by the throat and shake them like a rag doll.

Sigh.  

Perhaps I will leave anger management techniques to the professionals.

The Happiest 4 Minutes and 28 Seconds of Your Day.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

What are you doing?

I bet you're doing something.  

Anything.

Even when people casually reply that they are doing nothing, they are indeed doing something.  (Yeah, yeah, I get that technically, we are always doing something...breathing, blinking, thinking, yadda yadda.  But that's not what I mean.)  Usually we are doing at least one thing that requires some level of mental acuity, even if it's just watching tv or playing online.  Because it would be weird if someone asked what we were doing, and we actually were doing nothing.  

Just sitting.

No tv.

No internet.

Just nothing.

What I don't get is why that is so weird.  How have we all gotten so used to doing no less than 7 things at once, that we have lost the ability to just stop doing everything?  Maybe we think that sitting and doing nothing is a luxury we simply cannot afford.  There are always things to do, for our jobs, our houses, our lives in general.

Honestly, I think it would serve us all well to just do nothing now and again.  

Go sit out on the porch and drink in some sunshine.

Lie on the couch and listen to whatever sounds your neighborhood makes.

And maybe the next time someone asks what you are doing, you can close your eyes, take a deep breath, and savor the taste of doing nothing at all.

Oh, the freedom.

I deeply regret not having a picture of this.

Joe and I were driving home yesterday and saw a small vending cart pull out into the road.  It was tiny, with a freezer on the back for selling italian ice, and a colorful umbrella, which had been lowered and secured for driving.

As we slowly passed the cart, Joe noticed its wheels.  They were probably only about 10 inches across...and adorned with spinners.

Spinners!

On a tiny little italian ice vending cart!

I really wish I had my camera.

100 Things You May Not Know About Me

1.  Blue is my favorite color.

2.  I love to travel.

3.  I have spent somewhere around 20 hours underwater as a certified Scuba Diver.

4.  I love football, specifically the New York Giants.

5.  I have a scar on my right knee that is shaped just like Woodstock, Snoopy's friend.

6.  I love balloons.

7.  The first (and only) gymnastics team I was on was an All-American team.

8.  I once had B/Yamagata virus, along with only 5 other people in my entire town of 125,000.

9.  Photography is my favorite hobby.

10.  Acoustic guitar music is one of my favorite sounds.

11.  I love the smell of fresh cut grass.

12.  I love being barefoot, and was for my high school and college graduations, and my wedding.

13.  I love to sing.  In the shower, in the car, at work, everywhere!

14.  I sing and dance to the radio while I drive.

15.  I played division two volleyball as a middle hitter/middle blocker.

16.  I hit three home runs in my three year, fast-pitch softball career.

17.  I love the ocean.

18.  In college, I sang the national anthem at all of my home volleyball games.  Some as a duet.

19.  I am not a trusting person.

20.  I have never broken a bone.

21.  I graduated college a semester early.

22.  I missed graduating cum laude by .07 points.

23.  I have a B.S. in Studio Art with a specialization in Jewelry and Silversmithing. 

24.  I got engaged when I was 22.

25.  I got married when I was 24.

26.  I do not like babies.

27.  I make stained glass.

28.  I love trap shooting.

29.  My favorite gun to shoot is a .357 magnum.

30.  I have 7 tattoos.

31.  I have never lived alone.

32.  Friends is my favorite show of all time.

33.  Filet mignon, medium rare, is my favorite food.

34.  Shirley temples are my favorite drink.

35.  I only had two wisdom teeth.

36.  I no longer have them.

37.  I am 2 years and 8 months younger than my only sister.

38.  I do not drink alcohol.

39.  I do not wear makeup.

40.  I have donated 10" of my hair, twice, to Locks of Love.

41.  I once dressed as a chicken to promote a car wash.

42.  I bought my first house, with my husband, when I was 26.

43.  I installed the cabinets in my kitchen, with my husband.

44.  I did all of the finish carpentry in the kitchen and bathroom in my house.

45.  I love fire.

46.  When I was in fourth grade I made it the city-wide spelling bee and was eliminated on my first word, "beginner".

47.  In fifth grade, I was the first female student body president in my elementary school's history.

48.  I had blue hair for a year.

49.  I get extremely nervous when I sing in front of people.

50.  I love sunshine.

51.  My biggest pet peeve is inconsideration.

52.  Four people (and counting) besides myself have tattoos that I designed.

53.  I am not as secure as I seem.

54.  I find pleasure in the simplest of things.

55.  I pick my nose.  People who say they don't, lie.

56.  My first concert was New Kids On The Block.

57.  My laziness keeps me from living up to my potential.

58.  I did not get the chicken pox until I was 12.

59.  Rent is my favorite play.

60.  I love shooting stars.

61.  I got straight A's in elementary school except for one B from my fourth grade teacher who gave it to me because she felt I should know what it was like to get a B.

62.  I love to sleep in.  Like, till noon at the earliest.

63.  I have had one emergency surgery (ureteroscopy) , one laser procedure (extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy) and several hospital stays for kidney stones.

64.  I once got a paper cut on my eye.

65.  I can cross one eye.

65.  I bite my nails.

66.  I rock when I sit, even when I'm not in a rocking chair.

67.  If I could have one super power, it would me mind-control.

68.  My husband is my best friend.

69.  I like to bake.

70.  I am a picky eater.

71.  I love folk music.

72.  I love being outside.

73.  If I plug my nose and exhale, air comes out of my right eye.

74.  I can curl my lip, Elvis style, on both sides of my mouth.

75.  I prefer odd numbers.

76.  I hate getting water splashed on my face.

77.  I wear contact lenses.

78.  I do not believe in god.

79.  I love riding motorcycles.

80.  I can throw a perfect spiral.

81.  I like cartoons.

82.  I can sew.

83.  I once drove a back hoe.

84.  A five pointed star is my favorite shape.

85.  I own leather pants.

86.  Diamond is my favorite gemstone, followed by Tanzanite.

87.  I can peel an egg and keep the shell in one piece.

88.  My dreams are so vivid that sometimes I think they are real.

89.  I have dreams with places or buildings that I've never seen, and end up seeing those things in real life.

90.  I like to read.

91.  I enjoy projects that have a lot of fine detail.

92.  I hate the color red.

93.  I love my mac.

94.  I love my digital SLR.

95.  Walking barefoot in the sand always relaxes me, no matter how stressed I am.

96.  I have my own business.

97.  I love gargoyles.

98.  When I was little, I wanted to grow up to be a bird.

99.  I once had box seats behind home plate at Yankee Stadium.

100.  I have driven a Porsche.

Tattoos are like potato chips.

You can't have just one.

So, on June 7, I got two new ones!  

The one that took most of the day (around 4 1/2 hours) was the tree tattoo.  I have wanted a tree tattooed on my ribs for a long time.  I just couldn't nail down a design.  My artist and I went back and forth with some ideas, but the version I liked best was one I drew that was inspired by my favorite painting, Grey Tree by Piet Mondrian.

I LOVE it!  I am so happy with the way it turned out.

I always draw a star on my hand when I need to remember something, and I got so used to having a star there that I began to hate not having it there.  So after the tree was done, I had the star added to my hand.  I had gotten the spiral last year. It's a tibetan symbol meaning origin of the universe.  

I designed this piece for my husband and I.  The components added together mean eternal friendship. I got mine first.  Joe was supposed to get it in the same spot, but he chickened out and ended up getting it on the back of his calf instead.  I love him anyway. :)

This is my stylized version of a volleyball.  I fiercely love the sport.

This is a tiny little tattoo I had originally designed for my finger.  I ended up getting it on my back instead, after the artist (to whom I would not return) convinced me it would not look good on my finger.  I already have plans to cover it with something else.

And I'm not done yet...

Wisdom Teeth

I was born with none.

I grew two, all my myself!

Now I'm back to where I started.

Last week I got my wisdom teeth pulled.  I spent at least two weeks leading up to the big day informally polling people (including strangers in some situations) about wisdom teeth.  Did they have theirs?  Had they already gotten theirs removed?  Could they whistle?

This last question was really the most important because I love to whistle and I was going to be very upset if yanking a few teeth out of my mouth affected my ability to do so.

I heard people say they had no problem with getting their wisdom teeth removed.  

I heard people used only novacaine.

I heard people got knocked out.

I heard horror stories of dry socket and accidental tongue slicings.

My oral surgeon had warned that wisdom tooth extraction comes with small but real possibility of permanent numbness in parts of my tongue and lip.  

One person polled actually had this happen to them!  Luckily for them it turned out to be, in fact, an eight month long temporary situation.

So the day came.  I was expecting hours of pain and suffering.  

Ok, not really.  I had decided against getting knocked out for the procedure, assuming it couldn't possibly be worse than having a kidney stone, and instead chose to only have novacaine.  So really what I was expecting was hours of having my mouth forced unnaturally agape while some strange man used tools I could not identify to steal my teeth.

I think I also expected the crunching, cracking noises of healthy teeth being maliciously obliterated. 

What actually happened was this...

I got to the office at 10:30 for an 11:00 am appointment, having been unable to remember if they needed me there early for any reason.  They did not.  Also, it turned out, the surgeon was in an o.r. (or e.r., I can't remember) somewhere and was running late.  He guessed he would probably not be too late, and was hoping to get there for 11, if not 11:30.

At 12:05 I was finally sitting in the big scary chair.  

I got the novacaine shots.  

The novacaine was given a few minutes to kick in.  

The oral surgeon came in with a tool oddly reminiscent of the bezel pusher I have at work.  He poked, pushed and wiggled my right wisdom tooth and grabbed something in my mouth with what looked like my angled tweezers from work.  

I couldn't really see what was happening.  

He repeated this process on my left wisdom tooth.  Poke, poke, wiggle.  Puuuush.  He also had to briefly drill on that side.  Poke, push, grab with tweezers.

He put some gauze in my mouth and told me to bite down before he stepped back and told me I was all set.

All set?  The clock said 12:16.

That was it.  I was all set.  

No crunching or cracking.

90 minutes in the waiting room and less than 15 in the chair later, I officially had no wisdom teeth.  I also had a mouth full of gauze and no feeling in my whole lower lip and jaw.

Stellar.

This numbness made it super easy to go ask to get my prescriptions filled at CVS right afterward.  Ha.  The guy at the check in computer took one listen to me and literally pointed at me and laughed, explaining he recognized that sound because he had had his wisdom teeth removed a few weeks earlier.  I got my Tylenol with Codeine, Penicillin, and gross, blue Chlorohexadine swish and spit stuff, and made my way home.

My newly vacated gums would not stop bleeding for the next three hours, even after biting down on a dry tea bag so the tannins in the tea could help out with clotting.  (Raw tea bags are, by the way, disgusting.  Especially to a person who doesn't like tea.)

My gums eventually stopped bleeding.  

Feeling in my lip and jaw eventually returned.  

And that was it.  I never got swollen.  Not even a little bit.  Or bruised.  I had a little soreness a few days after the extraction, but that was it.  

I couldn't believe it.

I have a few weeks ahead of me before the holes are fully closed, but after having eaten soup and apple sauce for the first week I am back on a regular diet.

And I'll have you know not only did I regain all of the feeling in my tongue and lip, I can also still whistle!

In Memory of Robert Michael Letkowski

October 18, 1954 ~ May 25, 2008

A Sad Memorial Day Weekend

The Saturday of Memorial Day weekend we went to a picnic at a friend's house and ate and hung out and played wiffle ball and enjoyed a fire, smores, and some good people.  It was a very nice day.

On Sunday, Joe and I got up and dressed and headed down to Stamford to go to a Memorial Day picnic at my cousin's house.  Since my cousin lives next to my parents, I decided to park at their house and save room in the street for other people.  I pulled in their driveway to turn around and my sister was outside waiting for us.  This was weird.  She told us to just stay in the driveway, mom and dad weren't home.  This was also weird.  She was stammering over her words (which she does frequently and which drives me up a wall...picture someone reading a teleprompter on which the words are scrolling by at half speed) so I told her to just spit out whatever it was she was trying to say.  Without any sort of tact or decorum, she said, "Robert went for a jog this morning and dropped dead."

Through my head tromped the following barrage of thoughts...

Robert.  Letkowski?  But he's not old.  Or sick.  And what about Alissa and Stephanie?  And Ellen? What happened?  Why did you tell me like THAT?  Why didn't anyone call me to tell me not to spend  $30 in gas and 2+ hours in the car on a round trip to Stamford?  I certainly couldn't go the picnic all puffy-eyed and crying.  Robert?

I was shocked.  And pissed.  And sad.  And pissed again.  I yelled a lot at my sister.  Well, more toward my sister.  My family tends to leave me out of the loop a lot (ie my grandmother will spend a week in the hospital with heart problems ((HEART PROBLEMS!!)) and no one will think to call me until she's already been back home for three days) so I was really mad that they didn't have the decency to call me up right away when they heard this news.  I told my sister we certainly weren't going to stick around and wait some undetermined amount of time till our folks got home.  Joe and I went next door to tearfully say hi , bye, sorry we can't stay, only to find out that they already knew about Rob, because someone had called them.  The initial shock had worn off and I was left with sadness for my cousins, punctuated by bursts of rage toward my immediate  family.  Joe had to drive us home.

My dad later called to explain that the reason they hadn't called was because they knew I was going down to Stamford and they wanted to tell me in person.  But because I was supposed to be at the picnic "around 1" and didn't show up until 1:30, they had been forced to leave before I got there so they could drive up to Rob's mom's house where the rest of the family was going to be.  I saw their reasoning as, at best, flawed and told my father how freaking angry I was at all of them for their inability to keep me informed of anything, ever, and for how the news did eventually get broken to me.

He was sorry.  He promised to keep me more in the loop in the future.  We shall see.

Anyway, it turned out that Robert (who was my mom's first cousin) had gone for a jog that morning at the high school track near their house, as he frequently did.  While jogging, he collapsed.  Someone called 911.  The emergency personnel who responded were able to revive him briefly but by the time they got to the hospital, Robert had died.  We later learned his heart failure had been caused by heart disease no one knew he had.

Robert's wake was that Wednesday, his funeral, Thursday.  

Joe was a pall bearer.  

Robert's wife, Ellen, and daughters, Alissa and Stephanie, showed strength and grace beyond my imagination.  They recounted happy stories of Rob...rowing across a lake in a small styrofoam boat with a giant hole in it... donning a helmet and sword to track a bat that invaded their house.  Even in the beautiful, old cemetery, while placing flowers on his casket, they seemed to have found peace.  I truly was in awe of them.

Robert was a great guy.  You would have liked him.

Grrr Aperture.

So my photo software is being pissy and refuses to open.

I do not know why.  

I do know that this means I will have to skip posting pictures about my vacation for now and forge ahead to the rest of the thrilling (ha) posts I promised you.

Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth!

I recently read Water For Elephants and would highly recommend it.  

It's a fiction (with carefully researched factual inspiration) about life in a 1930's traveling circus, The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show in Earth!  

It's a fun read, and Sara Gruen's writing style makes it easy to gobble up chapter after chapter.

Check it out.

Good News!

I know.

I still owe you lots of fun posts about my vacation.  And other things.

And maybe a not so fun one about wisdom teeth.

And I'm not caught up.

But I thought you'd all be very happy for me that I found out today that the physical therapy I've been doing on my shoulder has been working.  This means that the muscles in my rotator cuff are getting stronger, and are more able to keep my shoulder properly in it's socket.

What this really means it that I don't need shoulder surgery!  Woo Hoo!  And, most importantly to me, if I continue the pt for oh, say, the rest of my life, I can go back to playing volleyball!

I'm so stoked.

Happy Belated Arbor Day!

I love trees.

Naturally, I think Arbor Day should be a bigger deal.

In honor of arbor day, I offer some of my favorite tree pictures.